U.S. President Barack Obama, attending his last summit of the Western defense alliance before he leaves office next January, will urge European allies to stand firm over Russia’s annexation of Crimea and its support for Russian-speaking rebels in eastern Ukraine.
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They also declared the Initial Operational Capability of NATO’s Ballistic Missile Defence.
A few hundred anti-NATO activists have protested in Warsaw against the decision by the alliance to deploy troops on NATO’s eastern flank.
Some protesters carried long loafs of bread Saturday and chanted “money for the hungry not for tanks”.
A separate group of pro-democracy campaigners gathered in a downtown square for a ceremony in which the square was named after Martin Luther King, a USA human rights activist and Nobel Peace Prize victor, who was assassinated in 1968.
The gathering was organized by Poland’s anti-government Committee for the Defense of Democracy.
Stoltenberg said North Atlantic Treaty Organisation will keep troops in Afghanistan through 2017 under its train and advise Resolute Support Mission but could not say when the alliance’s longest military engagement might end. “We are used to these methods”.
The Liberal government is renewing more than $150 million in annual funding for aid projects and to help Afghan security forces until 2020.
The Pentagon has budgeted $3.45 billion in annual US funds to pay for the Afghan forces, with the Kabul government providing an additional sum of around $420 million, for a total yearly budget of almost $5 billion.
Stoltenberg said other allies had “nearly” gathered about $1 billion for next year.
“I believe that our nations must summon the political will, and make concrete commitments, to meet these urgent challenges”.
“These battalions will be robust and multinational”.
Belgian Foreign Minister Didier Reynders says Saturday all the Benelux countries would be “very active in the region”.
Obama was more diplomatic, calling for dialog with Russian Federation, but he too urged allies to keep sanctions on Moscow in place until it fully complies with a ceasefire agreement in Ukraine.
“One of the great achievements of this meeting is that we now have in place the $1 billion in non-U.S. commitments”, NATO Secretary-General Jens Stoltenberg told a news conference on Saturday, the second day of the Warsaw summit.
Britain, Poland, Greece and Estonia were on target but “that means that the majority of allies are still not hitting that two percent mark”, Obama said. Moscow earlier this this year said it would put more troops along its western borders, including two new divisions. And NATO must continue its mission to advance and defend a community of democracies with shared values that will welcome any new members meeting its high standards.
“All of the rhetoric in Warsaw simply clamors for all but declaring war on Russian Federation”, he was quoted as saying. “They only talk about defense, but actually are preparing for offensive operations”.
The discussion of hybrid warfare refers to Russia’s covert and multi-pronged attack on Ukraine. A planned meeting of the long frozen NATO-Russia Council next week would address ways to avoid unsafe situations in Baltic air space, she said.
He said that that the alliance’s leaders had agreed to maintain a united policy of deterrence and dialogue with a resurgent Russian Federation.
Italy’s Prime Minister Matteo Renzi, Britain’s Prime Minister David Cameron, US President Barack Obama, Ukraine’s President Petro Poroshenko, Germany’s Chancellor Angela Merkel and France’s President Francois Hollande talk after posing for a photo after a quint meeting during the NATO Summit at the Polish National Stadium in Warsaw on July 9, 2016.
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Warsaw may have become the world’s most highly secured city during the summit, NATO’s first since September 2014.
