The Indian Express (Delhi Edition)
‘Can end some curbs on Russia for nuke cuts’
Says NATO ‘obsolete but still important to me’, calls Merkel’s decision to let in over a million migrants a ‘catastrophic mistake’
TRUMP’S COMMENTS ALARM EUROPEAN DIPLOMATS
US PRESIDENT-ELECT Donald Trump will propose offering to end sanctions imposed on Russia over its annexation of Crimea in return for a nuclear arms reduction deal with Moscow. The timing and context of Trump’s comments — in a joint interview with two European publications, The Times of London and Bild, a German newspaper — days before assuming the presidency, alarmed European diplomats.
“I took such heat when I said NATO was obsolete,” Trump said, referring to comments he made during his presidential election campaign. “It’s obsolete because it wasn’t taking care of terror. I took a lot of heat for two days. And then they started saying, ‘Trump is right.’” “A lot of these countries aren’t paying what they’re supposed to be paying, which I think is very unfair to the United States,” Trump said. “With that being said, NATO is very important to me. There’s five countries that are paying what they’re supposed to. Five. It’s not much.”
Criticising previous US foreign policy in the interview published Monday, he described the Us-led invasion of Iraq in 2003 as possibly the gravest error in the history of the United States and akin to “throwing rocks into a beehive”.
But Trump, who will be inaugurated on Friday as the 45th US president, raised the prospect of the first big nuclear arms control agreement with Moscow since the Strategic Arms Reduction Treaty signed by President Barack Obama in 2010.
“For one thing, I think nuclear weapons should be way down and reduced very substantially, that’s part of it. But Russia’s hurting very badly right now because of sanctions, but I think something can happen that a lot of people are gonna benefit,” he said.
Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov said Russia would wait until Trump took office before commenting on any proposed deals.
“Right now there are no agreements because the president and Trump have not discussed this in any wa,” he said.
Peskov said he agreed with Trump that NATO, characterised by Russian officials as a hostile remnant of the Cold War, was obsolete. The United States and other Western powers imposed sanctions on Russia in 2014 over its annexation of the Crimea peninsula from Ukraine and its support for pro-russia separatists in eastern Ukraine.
Trump criticised Chancellor Angela Merkel of Germany over her decision to welcome more than 1 million migrants.
“I think she made one very catastrophic mistake, and that was taking all of these illegals, you know, taking all of the people from wherever they come from,” he said. “And nobody even knows where they come from.”
Brennan may have leaked dossier: Trump
Trump suggested that outgoing CIA Director John Brennan may have been behind the publication of an unverified intelligence dossier connecting the president-elect to Russia. “Was this the leaker of Fake News?,” Trump said.