Brussels, Jan 17 (IANS) The Secretary-General of NATO was confident that the President-elect of the United States would remain committed to the Alliance after taking office, despite his recent criticism of the organisation.
On Sunday, Trump said in an interview with a German daily that NATO is "obsolete" and accused Chancellor Angela Merkel of committing a "catastrophic mistake" with her refugee policy to allow nearly 890,000 refugees into the country in 2015.
Spokesperson Oana Lungescu said that NATO chief Jens Stoltenberg was "absolutely sure that the next US administration (under Trump) would remain committed to NATO", Efe news reports.
In the interview, Trump said that he considered the 28-member Atlantic Alliance to be "very important", but he noted that it was designed decades ago and has not concerned itself specifically with fighting terrorism.
He also said that many members of the alliance do not invest the required percentage of their GDPs in defence.
"The countries aren't paying their fair share so we're supposed to protect countries," Trump said in the interview. "There's five countries that are paying what they're supposed to. Five. It's not much," adding that this was "unfair" to the US.
Trump is due to take office on January 20.
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