Seoul:
NATO Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg on Monday asked South Korea to increase military support to Ukraine.
Mr Stoltenberg is in Seoul for the first leg of his Asia tour, which will also include Japan, as part of a drive to strengthen ties with democratic allies in the region in light of the conflict in Ukraine and the growing competition from China.
He met with top South Korean officials on Sunday and on Monday urged Seoul to do more to help Kiev, saying there was an “urgent need for more ammunition”.
He told AFP that while South Korea and Japan provided “significant economic support to Ukraine”, regional allies had to recognize that global “security is interlinked”.
If Russian President Vladimir Putin won the war, it would send “a very dangerous message to authoritarian leaders around the world,” he said during an interview in Seoul, with “direct consequences” for security and stability in Asia.
He pointed out that North Korea is “supplying missiles and missiles to the Wagner group” — something Pyongyang has angrily denied, while state media said Monday that Stoltenberg’s Asia trip brought the region “close to the extreme security crisis.”
‘They need guns’
South Korea has provided non-lethal and humanitarian aid to Kiev and has made deals since the invasion to sell hundreds of tanks to European countries, including NATO member Poland.
But Seoul has long had a policy against arms exports to governments engaged in active conflicts, which the company says makes it difficult to supply arms directly to Ukraine.
Stoltenberg said Germany and Norway, among others, had similar policies that were revised after Vladimir Putin invaded Ukraine last February.
“If we believe in freedom, democracy, if we don’t want autocracy and tyranny to win, then they need guns,” he said in a speech at the Chey Institute in Seoul.
South Korea opened its first diplomatic mission to NATO last year.
President Yoon Suk-yeol, who met with Mr Stoltenberg, said the NATO chief had “expressed his appreciation for Korea’s continued support” to the conflict in Ukraine, according to a reading released by Yoon’s office.
“President Yoon concluded the meeting by saying that he would continue to play a potential role in working with the international community to help the people of Ukraine,” it added.
Chinese challenge
Stoltenberg told AFP his visit to Seoul and Tokyo was “not about NATO’s expansion in Asia and the Pacific,” but that it was critical that Democratic allies work more together.
“Cyber is a global threat, terrorism has been a global threat for decades, space is increasingly contested, which is truly global,” he said.
Regional security issues also affect Europe, he added. “North Korea’s nuclear programs are also NATO’s problem, because stability in this region is important to us.”
And then, of course, China, with heavy investment in new modern nuclear capabilities, long-range missiles, natural behavior in the South China Sea – all of this also matters to NATO allies.
“So this idea that we can have some kind of regional security no longer applies. Security is global. And that’s something that NATO also has to take into account.”
(Except for the headline, this story has not been edited by DailyExpertNews staff and is being published from a syndicated feed.)
Featured video of the day
“Grateful for people’s love for Pathaan,” says SRK