NATO chief welcomes Albo to summit

Mr Stoltenberg thanked Mr Albanese for Australia’s support for Ukraine in the war against Russia as the Prime Minister attended his second NATO summit as a guest.

“To me that really demonstrates your personal commitment to the partnership between Australia and NATO, a partnership we really value because … regional security is global,” he said at day one of the summit.

“What happens in Europe matters for the Pacific. This is demonstrated by the ongoing war in Ukraine which has global ramifications.

“We are extremely grateful for Australia’s support for Ukraine, your military support, your economic support, it really makes a difference every day.”

Mr Albanese said Australia stood “strongly with Ukraine”, saying the conflict had a major impact globally.

“We regard this as a struggle about the international rule of law, about whether sovereign nation’s borders will be respected, about fundamental human rights,” Mr Albanese said.

“ … it has been a reminder to Australia that even though we are at some distance … from the conflict that is occurring after the brutal invasion of Ukraine by Russia. We’ve been impacted.”

Mr Albanese on Monday announced Australia would be increasing its support for Ukraine, by sending a RAAF E-7A Wedgetail aircraft for six months.

The deployment will help to ensure the continued and uninterrupted flow of military and humanitarian assistance into Ukraine.

The aircraft will be based in Germany, as part of Operation KUDU and will operate in European airspace; it will not operate within Ukrainian airspace.

Mr Albanese said cyber security and climate changed were also issues that affected national security.

Australia, New Zealand, Japan and South Korea are all at the NATO summit in the Lithuanian capital of Vilnius, despite not being NATO members, because Mr Stoltenberg says Europe’s security is “not regional, it is global”.

Mr Albanese will make a speech at the NATO summit on Wednesday and hold several bilateral meetings including with French President Emmanuel Macron.

The meeting between Mr Albanese and Mr Stoltenberg had the potential to be awkward after former Labor prime minister Paul Keating lashed the NATO chief as a “supreme fool” who “by instinct and by policy is simply an accident on its way to happen”.

Mr Stoltenberg has plans to officially set up a Japanese outpost during the two-day summit, as a move to counter the rising threat of China, but it is opposed by France – and Mr Keating.

Mr Keating said NATO’s focus of the Asia-Pacific region would be a case of “Asia welcoming the plague upon itself”.

“NATO’s continued existence after and at the end of the Cold War has already denied peaceful unity to the broader Europe, the promise of which the end of the Cold War held open,” Mr Keating said.

“And besides, the Europeans have been fighting each other for the better part of 300 years, including giving the rest of us two world wars in the last hundred.

“Exporting that malicious poison to Asia would be akin to Asia welcoming the plague upon itself.”

Originally published as Anthony Albanese is attending his second NATO summit since becoming prime minister