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Secretary Antony J. Blinken and NATO Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg After Their Meeting [1]

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Date: 2024-06 

SECRETARY GENERAL STOLTENBERG: Secretary Blinken, dear Tony, it’s good to see you again, and thank you for your personal commitment to the transatlantic Alliance, to NATO. I look forward to sitting down with you and all the other NATO foreign ministers to discuss and address our preparations for the upcoming Washington Summit. Thank you for hosting the summit. I’m certain that will be a great summit where we’ll celebrate the most successful, enduring, and strongest Alliance in history – NATO. It will be a great summit, both because we’re going to celebrate the Alliance but also because we’re going to make important decisions on how to strengthen our collective defense, our deterrence and defense, and the good news is that NATO Allies are now really stepping up when it comes to defense spending. We’ll have new numbers by the – by the summit, but I expect that at least two-thirds of Allies will invest 2 percent or more in defense, and we’ll be able to announce more precise numbers soon.

We will address how to further strengthen our support for Ukraine. And thank you for the leadership the U.S. is showing, but it’s also good to know that European (inaudible) are also stepping up. And thirdly, we will address how to further strengthen our partnership with our Asia-Pacific partners.

So once again, welcome. It’s great to see you.

SECRETARY BLINKEN: Well, Jens, thank you very much, and I’m tempted to say what he said, because I think the Secretary General has it exactly right. But let me just start by saying once again how much the United States appreciates and indeed is grateful for the leadership that the Secretary General has shown of our Alliance in these very challenging years. We have an Alliance that is stronger, it’s bigger, it will be even better resourced, and that’s critical in facing the challenges of this time and coming years. As Jens said, in Washington for the 75th anniversary, of course we’ll be celebrating the 75 years of our Alliance – the most successful Alliance in history – but even more important is what we’re doing to prepare the Alliance, strengthen the Alliance for the next 75 years. And I think you’ll see coming out of the summit a very, very robust agenda and commitments to do just that – again, an Alliance that is stronger, is bigger, is better resourced, and fit for purpose to deal with the challenges of this time.

Today we’re making, I think, important either decisions or at least getting to important decisions in advance of the summit to finalize not just the agenda, but to finalize the substance of the summit. So I’m grateful for this opportunity to be with all of my colleagues from the NATO countries. You’re going to see as well a very robust package for Ukraine, and that will also be a feature of the summit. And again, as the Secretary General said, strengthening even more our partner – the NATO partnerships with other non-NATO countries, including in the Indo-Pacific.

So we very much look forward to Washington, but for today, grateful for this opportunity to do the work necessary to have the strongest possible summit. Thank you.

[END]
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[1] Url: https://www.state.gov/secretary-antony-j-blinken-and-nato-secretary-general-jens-stoltenberg-after-their-meeting-3/

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