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BRUSSELS: The “resilient” NATO alliance can weather criticism from US President Donald Trump and remains crucial to underpinning Western security in the face of Russia, Canada’s Foreign Minister Anita Anand said Monday. “NATO as a defensive alliance committed to collective security could never be more important than it is today,” Anand told AFP in an interview in Brussels. Canada’s top diplomat was meeting counterparts from the EU’s 27 nations in the latest demonstration of deepening ties as Trump has rocked the global order. Ottawa has been stepping up ties with the EU and other key partners as part of Prime Minister Mark Carney’s efforts to increase cooperation between “middle powers”. “The EU is an extremely important facet of Canada’s work to diversify trade, and we will continue to build supply chains, to build trading relationships so that we double non-US trade over the next 10 years,” she said. “That ultimately has to be our goal, as we see a complete rewiring of the global trading order.” Anand — who was also holding talks with NATO chief Mark Rutte — pushed back against the notion that Trump had fatally undermined the defence alliance. “Not at all — NATO is a resilient alliance,” she said. “It is reasonable for member states to have differing opinions, but the resilience of the organisation means that we come together, have difficult conversations, and emerge from those conversations committed to collective defence and security.”
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