Macron urges big strategic NATO discussion at London summit

NATO leers must have a deep discussion about future of military alliance and how ties with Russia can be improved, French President Emmanuel Macron said Thursday. Ahe of a summit of NATO leers in London next week, Macron held discussions with NATO Secretary-General Jens Stoltenberg in Paris.

In a joint news conference, Macron said “a real alliance is action, decisions, t words. So, I want us to have a real dialogue among allies.”

Macron’s call comes just three weeks after he said alliance was “brain de.”

Macron said he was gl his recent comments have acted as a “wake-up call” and that “it was irresponsible to just continue to talk only of financial and technical issues.”

He voiced his regret that two previous NATO summits were focusing “only on how to alleviate financial cost for United States.”

Ever since he arrived at White House nearly three years ago, President Donald Trump has argued that NATO members should t expect U.S. to shoulder lion’s share of alliance’s military costs in future. U.S. spends more on defence than all or 28 allies combined.

At Dec. 3-4 summit in London, Trump is expected to repeat his demand that European nations and Cana increase ir defence spending.

Macron also said alliance needs greater clarity of purpose, and to focus on common enemy, which he said is neir Russia r China, but extremist groups.

“Our common enemy within alliance is terrorism that has hit every one of our countries,” he said.

Despite in-fighting, Stoltenberg played down divisions and insisted that NATO was as relevant as it has ever been.

“In uncertain times we need strong multinational institutions like NATO,” he said.

“ parox is that while questions are being asked about strength of trans-Atlantic bond, rth America and Europe are doing more toger than y have done for deces.”