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NATO chief Mark Rutte held talks with US President-elect Donald Trump in Florida on the “global security issues facing the alliance”, a spokeswoman said Saturday.
The meeting took place on Friday in Palm Beach, NATO’s Farah Dakhlallah said in a statement.
In his first term Trump aggressively pushed Europe to step up defence spending and questioned the fairness of the NATO transatlantic alliance.
Read Also: Donald Trump Kick-Starts Moves To End Ukraine, Russian War
The former Dutch prime minister had said he wanted to meet Trump two days after Trump was elected on November 5, and discuss the threat of increasingly warming ties between North Korea and Russia.
Trump’s thumping victory to return to the US presidency has set nerves jangling in Europe that he could pull the plug on vital Washington military aid for Ukraine.
NATO allies say keeping Kyiv in the fight against Moscow is key to both European and American security.
“What we see more and more is that North Korea, Iran, China and of course Russia are working together, working together against Ukraine,” Rutte said recently at a European leaders’ meeting in Budapest.
“At the same time, Russia has to pay for this, and one of the things they are doing is delivering technology to North Korea”, which he warned was threatening to the “mainland of the US (and) continental Europe”.
“I look forward to sitting down with Donald Trump to discuss how we can face these threats collectively,” Rutte said.
In other news, the United States President-elect, Donald Trump, is considering appointing his former intelligence chief, Richard Grenell, as special envoy for the Russia-Ukraine conflict, the Guardian UK reports.
The newspaper quoted four sources familiar with the transition plans.
Grenell served as Trump’s ambassador to Germany and was acting director of national intelligence during his first four years in office between 2017-2021.
