Trump raises new questions on Nato commitments

CLEVELAND: Donald Trump has raised new questions about his commitment to the defence of Nato allies on the eve of his acceptance of the Republican presidential nomination, The New York Times reported.

In an interview with the newspaper on Wednesday, Trump also expressed little willingness to speak out against purges or civil rights crackdowns by authoritarian allies like Turkey, the Times said. “I don’t think we have the right to lecture,” the Times quoted him as saying during the 45 minute interview in a downtown Cleveland hotel suite.

“Look at what is happening in our country,” he said. “How are we going to lecture when people are shooting policemen in cold blood?”

The Times said that Trump reemphasised the hardline nationalist approach that he has taken during his campaign, describing how he would force allies to shoulder defence costs that the United States has borne for decades.

Asked about Russian activities that have alarmed the Baltics, Nato’s newest members, Trump said that if Russia attacked them, he would decide whether to come to their aid only after reviewing whether those nations “have fulfilled their obligations to us.”

“If they fulfil their obligations to us, the answer is yes,” he said.

A cornerstone of the 28-member trans-Atlantic alliance is its Article 5 commitment that an attack one member state is an attack on all, a pledge invoked after the September 11, 2001 attacks on the United States.

Presidents of Baltic states Estonia and Lithuania were quick to fire back on Thursday.

Estonian President Toomas Hendrik Ilves insisted on Twitter that his nation of 1.3 million people bordering Russia is meeting all its Nato spending commitments. — AFP