LONDON: NATO is in talks to deploy more nuclear weapons, taking them out of storage and placing them on standby, in the face of a growing threat from Russia and China, the head of the alliance said on Monday.
Jens Stoltenberg told Britain’s Telegraph newspaper that there were live consultations between members to use transparency around its nuclear arsenal as a deterrent.
“I won’t go into operational details about how many nuclear
warheads should be operational and which should be stored, but
we need to consult on these issues. That’s exactly what we’re
doing,” he told the paper.
“Transparency helps to communicate the direct message that
we, of course, are a nuclear alliance.”
Vladimir Putin warns the West a Russia-NATO conflict is just one step from World War Three
“NATO’s aim is, of course, a world without nuclear weapons,
but as long as nuclear weapons exist, we will remain a nuclear
alliance, because a world where Russia, China and North Korea
have nuclear weapons, and NATO does not, is a more dangerous
world.”
Stoltenberg said last week that nuclear weapons were NATO’s
“ultimate security guarantee” and a means to preserve peace.
Russian President Vladimir Putin has repeatedly warned that Moscow could use nuclear weapons to defend itself in extreme
circumstances.
It accuses the U.S. and its European allies of pushing the world to the brink of nuclear confrontation by giving Ukraine billions of dollars worth of weapons, some of which are being used against Russian territory.
NATO, which has taken on a greater role in coordinating arms
supplies to Kyiv, rarely talks about weapons publicly, although
it is known that the U.S. has deployed nuclear bombs to several
locations in Europe.
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