SANTA CRUZ DE TENERIFE, 25 May. (EUROPE PRESS) –
The Minister of Foreign Affairs, José Manuel Albares, has been “convinced” this Wednesday that there will be a NATO deployment on the so-called ‘southern flank’ to deal with the “threats” of possible cyberattacks, terrorism in the Sahel or power outages.
In a joint press conference with the President of the Government of the Canary Islands, Ángel Víctor Torres, he said that these threats are not “symmetrical” to those suffered by the alliance in the east due to the war in Ukraine, but they are “similar” and he understands that you have to answer them “if they were given”.
He specified that NATO “is a defensive alliance, not an offensive one” and that it exists to defend the member states, so “nobody should feel threatened”, referring to Russia, because “the only thing it does” is protect security of their states in the face of different threats.
For this reason, he commented that reinforcing the ‘southern flank’ “is on the table” and sees “a lot of receptivity” ahead of the NATO summit at the end of June where Spain is going to present its proposal. “It’s going to be a historic summit,” she added.
Albares has insisted that terrorism “is more present” in the Sahel and that there may be cases in this area of the continent, such as the gas cut from Russia to Finland or the use of immigration by Belarus.
The Canarian president has once again stressed that he supports the deployment of NATO in Africa if it serves to “give more security” to the canaries in an international context in which “the threat” is Russian President Putin and other countries such as Sweden and Finland They have asked to join the alliance.
