ANKARA/LONDON – Nine countries have committed to a new global defence bank, Canadian Prime Minister Mark Carney said on Tuesday, in a boost for the multilateral drive to help rearm allied nations.
Carney said in a statement at the NATO summit in Turkey’s capital Ankara that Albania, Belgium, Greece, Latvia, Luxembourg, Romania, Turkey and Ukraine had all pledged their support to the Defence, Security and Resilience Bank (DSRB), which will be based in Canada.
The roster contained no heavyweight G7 nations other than Canada, potentially limiting the bank’s financial firepower, although Canada’s foreign minister, Anita Anand, told Reuters it would remain open to new members.
“This is a beginning, but they may have been hoping for the backing of bigger European players. In principle they can get this airborne with these commitments,” said Linus Terhorst, an analyst at defence think tank Royal United Services Institute.
The bank’s purpose is to bolster the defence of like-minded allied nations by raising up to £100 billion ($134 billion) in cheap financing.
