NATO commitment has no caveats - British defence secretary

By Idrees Ali WASHINGTON (Reuters) - NATO's mutual defence guarantee is a commitment that comes without any "conditions or caveats," British Defence Secretary Michael Fallon said on Thursday. "It is an absolute commitment that we help each other if any one member of NATO is attacked," Fallon said in Washington. Republican U.S. presidential nominee Donald Trump told the New York Times that if he is elected, he might abandon NATO's guarantee that any member, including the United States, would defend the others if they were attacked, or Article 5. Trump said that Washington would only come to the aid of other members if they had "fulfilled their obligations to us." However, Fallon said that member states were increasingly accepting their responsibilities and the North Atlantic Treaty Organization was an important alliance given a resurgent Russia. "We've seen a growing solidarity and unity about the alliance now," Fallon added. Separately, British Foreign Secretary Boris Johnson told reporters in Washington that the mutual defence commitment was "incredibly important." “Fundamentally it is the NATO treaty, that doctrine of mutual defence, that has guaranteed the peace in Europe for decades and will do, I think, for decades to come,” Johnson said. (Reporting by Idrees Ali. Additional reporting by Kylie MacLellan.; Editing by James Dalgleish, Toni Reinhold)