UNITED NATIONS (AP) - NATO's secretary-general welcomed President Donald Trump's new strategy for the 16-year Afghan war and said the U.S. leader's insistence that NATO members increase their defense spending is achieving positive results.
Jens Stoltenberg said in a wide-ranging interview with the Associated Press on the sidelines of the U.N. General Assembly's annual meeting of world leaders that Trump has been very clear "the United States remains committed to NATO, but not only in words but also in deeds."
He strongly welcomed the U.S. decision to increase its military presence in Europe for the first time since the end of the Cold War - along with its European allies.
Stoltenberg said he agrees with Trump that all NATO members need to increase defense spending so there is "fair burden sharing."
"After many years of decline, we have now seen for the first time since the end of the Cold War a real increase in defense spending across Europe and Canada," he said, adding the number of countries meeting the target of spending at least 2 percent of their GDP on defense is increasing.
There are currently five members - the U.S., Britain, Estonia, Greece and Poland - that meet the requirement and Stoltenberg said he expects Romania to reach the target this year and Lithuania and Latvia to most likely reach it next year.
On other issues, Stoltenberg said Turkey is looking into the possibility of buying air defense systems from France and Italy in addition to the one it recently purchased from Russia.
The NATO chief also said he is going to Japan and South Korea next month to discuss North Korea's escalating nuclear and ballistic missile program.
"We are condemning the development of nuclear weapons and long-range missiles," he said. "We are engaging with our partners in the region, Japan and South Korea and, of course, we are clearly supporting all efforts to make sure that North Korea stop developing these weapons."
Trump last month unveiled his new Afghan strategy saying American troops would "fight to win" by attacking enemies, "crushing" al-Qaida, and preventing terrorist attacks against Americans.
Stoltenberg welcomed Trump's announcement of increased troop levels and his decision U.S. forces would remain in Afghanistan based on conditions on the ground - "not based on specific timetables."
The Pentagon is preparing to deploy several thousand more Americans to Afghanistan, in order to expand the training and advising of Afghan forces and beef up counterterror operations against the Taliban and al-Qaida-linked groups in the country. Officials have said the U.S. will send as many as 3,900 more troops to the war - which would bring the number of publicly recognized U.S. troops there to approximately 15,000.
Stoltenberg said NATO has also decided to increase the number of troops for its training mission in Afghanistan by "a few thousand."
He said several European allies and partner nations have announced they will provide more troops and "we're now in the process of making the final decisions."