Jens Stoltenberg asked South Korea to “increase” military support for Ukraine. (file)
Seoul:
NATO Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg on Monday asked South Korea to “increase” military support for Ukraine, suggesting it reconsider its policy of not exporting arms to countries in conflict.
Mr. Stoltenberg is in Seoul on the first leg of his Asia trip, which will also visit Japan as part of a campaign to boost ties with the region’s democratic allies in the wake of the Ukraine conflict and growing competition from China.
He met with top South Korean officials on Sunday, and on Monday urged Seoul to do more to help Kyiv, saying “more ammunition was urgently needed”.
He told AFP that while South Korea and Japan were “providing significant economic aid to Ukraine”, regional allies needed to recognize that global “security is intertwined”.
He said during an interview in Seoul that if Russian President Vladimir Putin won the war, it would “send a very dangerous message to authoritarian leaders all over the world”, with “direct consequences” for security and stability in Asia, he said. .
He pointed to North Korea “providing rockets and missiles to the Wagner Group” – something that Pyongyang angrily denied, with state media saying on Monday that Stoltenberg’s Asia trip brought the region “closer to an extreme security crisis”. Was bringing
‘They need weapons’
South Korea has provided non-lethal and humanitarian aid to Kyiv, and has signed deals to sell hundreds of tanks to European countries, including NATO-member Poland, since the invasion.
But Seoul has longstanding policies against arms exports to governments in active conflict, which it has said makes it difficult to provide weapons directly to Ukraine.
Mr Stoltenberg said Germany and Norway, among others, had similar policies that were revised after Vladimir Putin invaded Ukraine in February last year.
Speaking at the Che Institute in Seoul, he said, “If we believe in freedom, democracy, if we don’t want to conquer autocracy and tyranny, they need weapons.”
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 “appreciation for Korea’s continued support” on the Ukraine conflict, according to a readout released by Yoon’s office.
“President Yun ended the meeting by saying that he would continue to play a possible role in helping the people of Ukraine, in cooperation with the international community,” the statement said.
China’s challenge
Mr Stoltenberg told AFP his trip to Seoul and Tokyo was “not about expanding NATO in the Asia-Pacific” but it was important that the democratic allies cooperate more.
“Cyber is a global threat, terrorism has been a global threat for decades, space is becoming more and more contested, which is truly global,” he said.
He said issues of regional security affect Europe as well. “North Korea’s nuclear programs are also a problem for NATO, because stability in the region matters to us.”
“And then, of course, China, with huge investments in new modern nuclear capabilities, long-range missiles, of course the behavior in the South China Sea – all of this matters to NATO allies as well.
“So the idea that we can have a kind of regional security no longer applies. Security is global. And NATO has to take that into account as well.”
(Except for the headline, this story has not been edited by NDTV staff and is published from a syndicated feed.)
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