VILNIUS: The NATO summit wrapped up here in the Lithuanian capital amid divisions among members and opposition from the international community. During the summit concluding on Wednesday, NATO adopted its “most comprehen-sive defence plans since the end of the Cold War” and endorsed a new defence production action plan. Under the new plans, NATO aims to have 300,000 troops fully ready for action, Xinhua news agency reported.
NATO allies have also made an “enduring commitment” to invest at least two per cent of their GDP annually in defence, according to a statement published at the summit.
Only 11 of the alliance’s 31 members have reached or exceeded this target after “nine consecutive years of increased defence spending” since 2014, docu-ments released at the summit showed.
NATO leaders also pledged to provide more long-term support to Ukraine and held the inaugural meeting of the new NATO-Ukraine Council with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky. However, they failed to set a timetable for Ukraine’s membership in the alliance, which Zelensky has called “unprecedented and absurd”.
NATO members have been divided on how to bring Ukraine closer to their bloc. While some Eastern European members are pressing for an explicit commit-ment on when Ukraine will join, the US and Germany are reluctant to clarify, according to some reports.
A regional alliance between Europe and North America, NATO again invited leaders of Australia, Japan, New Zealand and South Korea, the so-called part-ners in the Asia-Pacific region, to attend its summit for the second time and vowed to “further strengthen dialogue and cooperation to tackle our shared se-curity challenges,” according to the statement.
In the statement, the military bloc mentioned China 15 times, saying that “China’s stated ambitions and coercive policies challenge our interests, secu-rity and values” and that China posed “systemic challenges” to the alliance. In response, China on Wednesday rejected such claims. (IANS)
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