BERLIN, Feb 14 (Reuters) \u2013 U.S. Secretary of State Marco Rubio cast the United States as the \u201cchild of Europe\u201d in a message of unity on Saturday at the Munich Security Conference, offering some reassurance as well as more criticism to \u200ballies after a year of strained ties.<\/p>\n
This is the European reaction to his \u200ckeynote speech at the annual gathering of political and military leaders:<\/p>\n
EU COMMISSION CHIEF URSULA VON DER LEYEN<\/p>\n
\u201cI was very much reassured by the speech of the Secretary of State. We know him. He\u2019s a good friend, a strong ally \u2026 and this was, for me, very reassuring to listen to him. We know that in \u200cthe \u200badministration, some have a harsher tone on these topics. But \u2060the Secretary of State was very \u2060clear. He said \u2018We want strong Europe in the Alliance\u2019, and this is what we are working for intensively in the European Union.\u201d<\/p>\n
FRENCH FOREIGN MINISTER JEAN-NOEL BARROT<\/p>\n
\u201cReferring to (our) common legacy can only be welcomed with applause in Europe. The second thing that Secretary Rubio \u200bmentioned that I think is also very important and that is very consistent with the view of European countries is that some challenges cannot be addressed by a single \u2060nation, as powerful and as rich as it may \u2060be \u2026<\/p>\n
\u201cIs it going to change our strategy? Of course not. Because, \u200byou know, what we\u2019re hearing today, we heard already in the past, and we heard this \u200bfrom Democratic administrations, Republican administrations. Build a strong and independent Europe. We will \u200cdeliver a strong and independent Europe. Independent, of course, irrespective of the speeches that we hear at the Munich Security Conference, however right they may be.\u201d<\/p>\n
GERMAN FOREIGN MINISTER JOHANN WADEPHUL<\/p>\n
\u201cThis was the speech I expected from Secretary Rubio. We know that he is a true partner \u2026 I \u2060would say (it was) a very clear message from Secretary Rubio that we have\u2026to stay and stick to our international rules-based order, which is, of course, in first line the United Nations. \u2060This is our Board of \u200cPeace. And we want to keep it like that. We have, \u2060of course, to reform it. We have to make it more \u200beffective, as \u200cRubio said this morning.<\/p>\n
\u201cAnd the most important sentence for me was \u2018let\u2019s \u200bdo it \u2060again\u2019. So he was looking forward. This is good.\u201d<\/p>\n
FINNISH FOREIGN MINISTER ELINA VALTONEN<\/p>\n
\u201cI am very satisfied with the tone and I also think that the content was largely what we here in Europe expected. He said so many times, that we must stand together and be strong for our values. We are, of course, very strongly committed to the international community and to international \u200blaw.\u201d<\/p>\n
(Editing by Sarah Marsh)<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"BERLIN, Feb 14 (Reuters) \u2013 U.S. Secretary of State Marco Rubio cast the United States as the \u201cchild…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":468659,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[18],"tags":[23,3,21,19,22,20,25,24],"class_list":["post-468658","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-united-states","tag-america","tag-news","tag-united-states","tag-united-states-of-america","tag-unitedstates","tag-unitedstatesofamerica","tag-us","tag-usa"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/468658","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=468658"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/468658\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/468659"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=468658"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=468658"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=468658"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}