Marco Rubio and the Secretary General of NATO meet a week after the US threatened to leave the Alliance
The Secretary of State, Marco Rubio, received the Secretary General of NATO, Mark Rutte, in a meeting at the State Department, prior to this afternoon’s meeting at the White House between the former Dutch Prime Minister and the US President, Donald Trump.
In their conversation, Rubio and Rutte addressed the situation in the war against Iran, the conflict in Ukraine and the coordination between the United States and the rest of the Atlantic Alliance, as indicated by the State Department.
“The two leaders discussed Operation Epic Fury (the Pentagon’s name for the US-Israeli offensive against Iran), US-led efforts to achieve a negotiated end to the Russia-Ukraine war, and increasing coordination and burden-sharing with NATO allies,” said State Department spokesman Tommy Pigott.
Rutte’s visit to Washington was announced after US President Donald Trump last week threatened to withdraw his country from the Alliance, or downgrade its leadership role, in retaliation for what he considers the partners’ lack of collaboration in the war against Iran. On Monday, while warning that he planned to bomb Iranian civilian infrastructure if an agreement was not reached by Tuesday night, the US president again attacked members of the organization.
“If you want to know the truth, it all started with Greenland. They didn’t want to give it to us, and I said: good bye,” Trump said in a press conference, with a comment that reopens a dispute between Washington and Brussels that the European partners had wanted to close.
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