(Adnkronos) – United States President Joe Biden will receive NATO Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg in the Oval Office at 3.30pm today, 9.30pm in Italy. The White House makes this known. The NATO summit will be held in Washington from 9 to 11 July, which will mark the 75th anniversary of the birth of the Atlantic Alliance. Meanwhile, NATO is in talks to deploy more nuclear weapons in the face of the growing threat from Russia and China, the head of the Alliance said in an interview with the Telegraph, adding that the bloc should show the world its nuclear arsenal to send a direct message to his enemies. Stoltenberg revealed that there have already been and are ongoing consultations among members to withdraw the missiles from storage and put them on standby while calling for transparency on the use of nuclear weapons as a deterrent: “I will not go into operational details on how many nuclear warheads should be operational and which ones should be stored, but we need to consult on these issues and that is exactly what we are doing,” he explained. A decade ago, when Stoltenberg assumed the role of leader of the Alliance, the Telegraph points out, nuclear exercises were conducted in secret. Now however, he explains as NATO’s number one, “transparency helps to communicate a direct message” namely that “we are a nuclear alliance”. “NATO’s goal is, of course, a world without nuclear weapons. But as long as they exist we will remain a nuclear alliance, because a world where Russia, China and North Korea have nuclear weapons and NATO does not, is a more dangerous world.” Meanwhile, NATO has launched an ad hoc mission to officially coordinate for the first time the sending of weapons to Ukraine and the training of Kiev’s military engaged in the war against Russia. This is the NATO Security Assistance and Training for Ukraine, the Nsatu, approved in Brussels by the defense ministers of the Atlantic Alliance and which will be formally inaugurated at the NATO leaders’ summit in July in Washington. Its task will be the one that until now was carried out informally by the United States under the supervision of the ‘Ukraine Defense Contact Group’. “We have agreed on a plan that sets out how NATO will lead the coordination of security assistance and training,” the Alliance’s secretary general said at a press conference on June 14. The headquarters of the Nsatu will be in Wiesbaden, western Germany, where among other things the United States Army military base that coordinates the activities of the American military in Europe is located. The Nsatu “will consist of a NATO command located at a US facility in Wiesbaden and at logistics hubs in the eastern part of the Atlantic Alliance, under the command of a three-star general who will report directly to the supreme commander of NATO forces in Europe” ‘, Stoltenberg added. It is expected, he explained, that ‘nearly 700 personnel from NATO and partner countries will be involved’. NATO, added its Secretary General, ”will supervise the training of the Ukrainian armed forces at training facilities in allied countries, support Ukraine through planning and coordination of donations, manage the transfer and repair of equipment , will provide support for the long-term development of the Ukrainian armed forces”. Meeting in Brussels, NATO defense ministers ”also discussed the need to strengthen Kiev’s military deterrence and defense industries” by providing “sustainable demand “. —internazionale/[email protected] (Web Info)
