Guest
Joint press conference by the NATO Secretary General, Jens Stoltenberg and the US Secretary of State, Antony J. Blinken, 3 April 2024. 🗣 | NATO Secretary General: Secretary Blinken, dear Tony. welcome back to NATO. It's always great to see you here. And thank you for leadership. Thank you for your strong commitment to our Alliance. Today, we have already started our Foreign Ministers meeting. And we have addressed how to strengthen our support to Ukraine, to create an even more robust framework for our support. And I thank you for your strong commitment, your personal commitment, commitment of President Biden, to ensure that the United States continues to be a lead nation in supporting Ukraine. Then, burden sharing is always top on our agenda. When NATO made the pledge to invest the 2% of GDP on defence, back in 2014, only three Allies met that target. Today, two thirds of NATO Allies are spending 2% of GDP on defence, that is significant progress. But of course, we want more Allies, we want all Allies to be at 2%, and 2% is minimum. So this is a message that I and we all convey very strongly as we prepare for the upcoming Washington Summit. Then tomorrow, we will also meet with our Asia Pacific partners. And I think the war in Ukraine demonstrates how intertwined the security of Europe is with the security of Asia and the Pacific. North Korea, China, Iran are supporting Russia's war aggression in different ways. So this demonstrates that security is not regional, security is truly global. And therefore, it is important to work together with our Asia Pacific partners. And again, thank you for the strong US leadership on this issue. Then lastly, tomorrow, we will celebrate NATO's 75th anniversary. We will actually meet to tonight at the Truman Hall. But also then tomorrow, we will mark it here at the NATO headquarters. And, then we will also mark the 75th anniversary at the NATO Summit in Washington in July. Thank you for hosting the summit. And it will be a great summit to celebrate the Alliance, but also to ensure that we continue to adapt and to ensure that NATO continues to be the most successful Alliance in history. So, Tony, welcome, it is always great to have you here. ▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬ SUBSCRIBE to this channel SUBSCRIBE to NATO News SUBSCRIBE to NATO History Connect with NATO online: Visit the Official NATO Homepage: Receive NATO updates via email: Find NATO on FACEBOOK: Follow @NATO on TWITTER: Follow NATO on Instagram: Find NATO on LinkedIn: Find NATO on Flickr: #NATO #OTAN #ForMin
