Robles responds to Belarra that she will not go to the NATO summit because she is not invited

Although she tries to maintain her phlegm, the Minister of Defense, Margarita Robles, cannot hide her discomfort at the position against NATO expressed by the ministers of United We Can, the last one being Minister Ione Belarra, secretary general of Podemos.

Thomas Osborne
Thomas Osborne
02 June 2022 Thursday 07:04
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Robles responds to Belarra that she will not go to the NATO summit because she is not invited

Although she tries to maintain her phlegm, the Minister of Defense, Margarita Robles, cannot hide her discomfort at the position against NATO expressed by the ministers of United We Can, the last one being Minister Ione Belarra, secretary general of Podemos.

At the presentation of a book published by the Ministry of Defense on "40 years of active participation of Spain in NATO, Robles took advantage of the numerous questions about the division within the Government regarding the Alliance summit to answer Minister Belarra that they will not go to the NATO summit to be held in Madrid at the end of June, because they are not invited.

They are not, the minister explained, because only the heads of government of each country and the defense and foreign ministers participate in the NATO summit, so they will not be at the summit "because they don't have to be." Another thing will be a side event, a lunch or a dinner, but at the NATO summit, he came to say, they do not paint anything.

In addition, the defense minister made it very clear that whatever some ministers say, "in a particular opinion that does not represent the government", Spain's role is set by the president, and the government as a whole has officially marked that "Spain has a clear and unequivocal commitment to NATO", which has been going on for 40 years, "older than some formation that now says things but did not even exist", he stressed in reference to Podemos.

For this reason, Margarita Robles proclaimed to her colleagues from the United We Can Government who are opposed to NATO and to the June summit "without complexes, that NATO "is an alliance for peace", no matter what some say , he underlined.

For Robles, the balance of Spain's 40 years of belonging to NATO is a balance "of pride, of satisfaction" and of confirming the outstanding position that Spain has, which has shown, he said, that it is a "serious , responsible and committed" with the Alliance.

In addition, the Minister of Defense considers that NATO "is more necessary today than ever, because it is a military alliance, but one that defends global peace", and for this reason she stresses that it is necessary to "say it clearly and without complexes, it is an alliance that It defends our freedom and our security, our values.

And in response to the ministers who question the democratic nature of the Alliance and the countries that belong to it, Minister Robles recalled that the Madrid Summit will discuss the incorporation of two new partners, Sweden and Finland, " of which no one will doubt that they are democracies" just as there can be no doubt that they work "for the maintenance of peace".

A statement that the Defense Minister is also convinced is shared "by the public", who especially now, with the war in Ukraine, have become convinced that "NATO gives us security".