MADRID: Spain hit back at Donald Trump on Friday after the US President suggested expelling the country from NATO for failing to meet his ramped-up defense spending target.<\/p>\n
In June, the 32-nation military alliance agreed to massively boost defense spending to five percent of annual economic output over the next decade under pressure from Trump.<\/p>\n
But Spain, which was NATO\u2019s lowest defense spender in relative terms last year, insisted it would not need to hit the headline figure.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe had one laggard, it was Spain,\u201d Trump told reporters in the Oval Office on Thursday.<\/p>\n
\u201cThey have no excuse not to do this, but that\u2019s all right. Maybe you should throw them out of NATO, frankly.\u201d<\/p>\n
Government sources said on Friday that \u201cSpain is a committed and full member of NATO. And it meets its capacity targets as much as the United States.\u201d<\/p>\n
Socialist Prime Minister Pedro Sanchez has argued that Spain should meet its capacity objectives rather than fixed spending targets, including cybersecurity and the environment in his calculations.<\/p>\n
The Spanish opposition pounced on the stir caused by Trump\u2019s remarks to criticize Sanchez late on Thursday.<\/p>\n
The main conservative opposition\u2019s leader, Alberto Nunez Feijoo, wrote on X that \u201cSpain is a credible, proud member and committed to NATO. And we will remain so. The problem is Sanchez.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cHe can\u2019t be trusted, but that should not hold the country back. Our nation should not have to pay for his frivolity and irresponsibility,\u201d the Popular Party leader said.<\/p>\n
Far-right leader Santiago Abascal, who heads Spain\u2019s third-largest political force Vox, said on X that Sanchez \u201cfurther destroys national interests and seriously harms our security.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cSanchez is the greatest calamity Spain has had in a long time.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
MADRID: Spain hit back at Donald Trump on Friday after the US President suggested expelling the country from NATO for failing to meet his ramped-up defense spending target. In June, the 32-nation military alliance agreed to massively boost defense spending to five percent of annual economic output over the next decade under pressure from Trump. …<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4,"featured_media":87934,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-87923","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-world"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/nabanews.pk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/87923","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/nabanews.pk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/nabanews.pk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nabanews.pk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/4"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nabanews.pk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=87923"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/nabanews.pk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/87923\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":87940,"href":"https:\/\/nabanews.pk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/87923\/revisions\/87940"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nabanews.pk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/87934"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/nabanews.pk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=87923"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nabanews.pk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=87923"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nabanews.pk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=87923"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}