U.S. President-elect Donald Trump attends a viewing of the launch of the sixth test flight of the SpaceX Starship rocket on November 19, 2024 in Brownsville, Texas. FILE PHOTO/Agence France-Presse
BRUSSELS — 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’ss 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.
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.
READ: Nato chief congratulates Trump, says will keep alliance ‘strong’
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.
READ: Nato leader: Trump put allies at risk over Russia remark
“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.