'The time has come to do more,' US Vice President tells NATO allies

US vice-president Mike Pence has told the US's NATO allies to step up financial contributions towards the organisation.

Speaking during his first European visit since he took office, Pence said “some of our largest allies do not have a credible path” towards paying their share of Nato’s financial burden.

“The time has come to do more,” he told the 500 delegates, government leaders, defence and foreign ministers from around the world in a speech to the Munich security conference.

His speech came immediately after German chancellor, Angela Merkel, had stated that she would not be bullied by the US over defence spending.

Although he did not name individual countries, Pence's comments are understood to be aimed at Germany, France and Italy in particular.

Merkel said Germany would fulfil its commitment to increase defence spending over the next decade and would not be forced into raising spending at the rate demanded by Trump. The German Chancellor said the focus on defence spending could be misleading, adding that Germany saw spending on development in countries in Africa and elsewhere as being as essential to security as military spending.

The conference, the first major meeting between the new Trump administration and European leaders since the President took office also saw America make a thinly-veiled warning to its allies.

Pence said that while the US was bound by NATO's article five, which says that an attack on one member would be considered an attack on all, he reminded the audience that article three contained a commitment to sharing the financial burden, echoing Trump’s warning last year that he did not feel bound to come to the defence of countries that did not pay their share.

“As of this moment, the US and only four other Nato members meet that basic standard.” Those four countries are the UK, Estonia, Greece and Poland. The other 23 Nato members do not meet the target of spending 2% of GDP on defence, he said.

The vice president emphasised that he was delivering a message from the president, assuring that NATO was valued, despite the president's rhetoric about isolationism. “The US strongly supports NATO and will be unwavering in our support of this transatlantic alliance,” he said.

While the US wanted a new relationship with Russia, he said, it expected Russia to honour the 2015 Minsk peace agreement over the Ukraine conflict. “Know this: the United States will continue to hold Russia accountable, even as we search for new common ground which, as you know, President Trump believes can be found.”

In bilateral talks Pence held with the German Chancellor and leaders of Ukraine and the Baltic states after the meeting, Merkel argued formore multilateralism as opposed to “parochialism” warning of the dangers of having “no fixed world order”.