SPAIN’S Prime Minister, Pedro Sanchez, has confirmed that the country will join the pool of NATO members buying arms from the United States to equip Ukraine.
Sanchez’s remarks on Thursday- when he arrived at a European Council meeting in Brussels- followed fresh criticism from US President Donald Trump over Spain not committing to spend 5% of its GDP on defence.
About the arms purchases, Pedro Sanchez said: “It is a proposal that NATO launched a few weeks ago and had the opportunity to speak with President Zelensky and tell him that we were going to join this programme.”
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“Spain is committed to the Atlantic Alliance”, he added.
At a White House meeting on Wednesday with NATO Secretary General Mark Rutte, Trump said that ‘Spain is not a teammate’.
“Spain is a reliable partner,” Sanchez stated.
“We are complying with our obligations and commitments, especially in what has been agreed on capabilities.”
“President Trump knows that as leader of the Spanish government, I am fulfilling obligations and capabilities,” he continued.
The Prime Minister also launched an attack at the main opposition party, the conservative Partido Popular(PP).
“We have corrected the breaches that other Administrations, in this case the PP, left us with.”
“It committed in 2014 to spending 2% of GDP on defence and when he took over, we found found only 0.9% of GDP assigned to the defence budget three years later, in 2017″.
“We are a reliable country,” Sanchez concluded.
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