BRUSSELS: NATO chief Jens Stoltenberg has proposed creating a 100-billion-euro ($108-billion), five-year fund for Ukraine in a push to get the alliance more involved in sending weapons to Kyiv, officials said Tuesday.
NATO foreign ministers will hold preliminary talks on the plan in Brussels Wednesday as they seek to forge a support package for Ukraine by a July summit in Washington.
“Foreign ministers will discuss the best way to organize NATO’s support for Ukraine, to make it more powerful, predictable and enduring,” a NATO official said.
“No final decisions are to be taken at the April ministerial meetings, and discussions will continue as we approach the Washington summit in July.”
Officials and diplomats said the proposal was for NATO’s 32 countries to contribute to the fund according to the size of their economy.
But several cautioned that there remain major questions over how any financing would work and the plan would likely change markedly by the summit in Washington.
“There is still a long way to go — numerous allies have questions on practical arrangements,” a NATO diplomat said, speaking on condition of anonymity.
The officials said Stoltenberg’s proposal also envisions NATO taking more control of coordinating arms supplies to Kyiv from a US-led grouping that currently helps oversee support.
Stoltenberg has argued this could help insulate the flow of weaponry to Ukraine from any political changes in NATO countries, with Donald Trump pushing to return to White House at November elections, officials said.
The move would mark a major shift for the Western military alliance which has so far refused as an organization to send weapons to Ukraine for fear it would drag NATO closer to a conflict with Russia.
Up until now NATO has only sent non-lethal aid to Ukraine, while its individual members have supplied weaponry worth tens of billions of dollars.
The proposal comes as Ukraine’s outgunned forces are struggling to hold back Russia in the face of dwindling supplies from Kyiv’s Western backers.
A $60-billion US funding package is currently stalled in Congress but there are hopes lawmakers could move to pass it in the coming weeks.
NATO foreign ministers are also expected to discuss the race to replace Stoltenberg after Romanian President Klaus Iohannis launched a surprise challenge against the frontrunner, Dutch premier Mark Rutte.
Diplomats said Rutte now has the support of some 90 percent of NATO countries, but Hungary and Turkiye remain holdouts blocking a swift nomination ahead of the summit.
NATO chief floats 100-billion-euro fund to arm Ukraine
https://arab.news/87yc6
NATO chief floats 100-billion-euro fund to arm Ukraine
- NATO foreign ministers will hold preliminary talks on the plan in Brussels Wednesday
- They seek to forge a support package for Ukraine by a July summit in Washington
Justice Department says it’s releasing 3 million pages from its Jeffrey Epstein files
- The documents were disclosed under the Epstein Files Transparency Act
- “Today’s release marks the end of a very comprehensive document identification and review process to ensure transparency to the American people,” Blanche said
NEW YORK: The Justice Department said Friday that it was releasing many more records from its investigative files on Jeffrey Epstein, resuming disclosures under a law intended to reveal what the government knew about the millionaire financier’s sexual abuse of young girls and his interactions with rich and powerful people including Donald Trump and Bill Clinton.
Deputy Attorney General Todd Blanche said the department was releasing more than 3 million pages of documents in the latest Epstein disclosure, as well as more than 2,000 videos and 180,000 images.
The files, which were being posted to the department’s website, include some of the several million pages of records that officials said were withheld from an initial release of documents in December.
The documents were disclosed under the Epstein Files Transparency Act, the law enacted after months of public and political pressure that requires the government to open its files on the late financier and his confidant and onetime girlfriend, Ghislaine Maxwell.
“Today’s release marks the end of a very comprehensive document identification and review process to ensure transparency to the American people and compliance with the act,” Blanche said at a news conference announcing the disclosure.
The prospect of previously unseen records tying Epstein to famous figures has long animated online sleuths, conspiracy theorists and others who have clamored for a full accounting that even Blanche acknowledged might not be met by the latest document dump.
“There’s a hunger, or a thirst, for information that I don’t think will be satisfied by review of these documents,” he said.
He insisted that, “We did not protect President Trump. We didn’t protect — or not protect — anybody,” Blanche said.
After missing a Dec. 19 deadline set by Congress to release all of the files, the Justice Department said it tasked hundreds of lawyers with reviewing the records to determine what needs to be redacted, or blacked out.
Among the materials being withheld from release Friday is information that could jeopardize any ongoing investigation or expose the identities of potential victims of sex abuse. All women other than Maxwell have been redacted from videos and images being released Friday, Blanche said.
The number of documents subject to review has ballooned to roughly six million, including duplicates, the department said.
The Justice Department released tens of thousands of pages of documents just before Christmas, including photographs, interview transcripts, call logs and court records. Many of them were either already public or heavily blacked out.
Those records included previously released flight logs showing that Trump flew on Epstein’s private jet in the 1990s, before they had a falling out, and several photographs of Clinton. Neither Trump, a Republican, nor Clinton, a Democrat, has been publicly accused of wrongdoing in connection with Epstein, and both have said they had no knowledge he was abusing underage girls.
Also released last month were transcripts of grand jury testimony from FBI agents who described interviews they had with several girls and young women who said they were paid to perform sex acts for Epstein.
Epstein killed himself in a New York jail cell in August 2019, a month after he was indicted on federal sex trafficking charges.
In 2008 and 2009, Epstein served jail time in Florida after pleading guilty to soliciting prostitution from someone under the age of 18. At the time, investigators had gathered evidence that Epstein had sexually abused underage girls at his home in Palm Beach, but the US attorney’s office agreed not to prosecute him in exchange for his guilty plea to lesser state charges.
In 2021, a federal jury in New York convicted Maxwell, a British socialite, of sex trafficking for helping recruit some of his underage victims. She is serving a 20-year prison sentence at a prison camp in Texas, after being moved there from a federal prison in Florida. She denies any wrongdoing.
US prosecutors never charged anyone else in connection with Epstein’s abuse of girls, but one of his victims, Virginia Roberts Giuffre, accused him in lawsuits of having arranged for her to have sexual encounters at age 17 and 18 with numerous politicians, business titans, noted academics and others, all of whom denied her allegations.
Among the people she accused was Britain’s Prince Andrew, now known as Andrew Mountbatten-Windsor after the scandal led to him being stripped of his royal titles. Andrew denied having sex with Giuffre but settled her lawsuit for an undisclosed sum.
Giuffre died by suicide at her farm in Western Australia last year at age 41.
