US committed to Nato's Article Five

US President Donald Trump said Friday that the United States remained committed to Nato's mutual defense pledge, after he failed to endorse it in a speech in Brussels last month.

Amid worries by Washington's European partners that the US leader had not fully bought into the Atlantic alliance, Trump told reporters: "I'm committing the United States to Article Five. Certainly we are there to protect."

"That's one of the reasons that I want people to make sure we have a very, very strong force, by paying the kinds of money necessary to have that force," Trump told a press conference .

The US president stunned Europe's leaders at a summit in Brussels on May 25 when he failed to publicly back the now 29-member bloc's founding mutual defense guarantee.

According to Politico, Trump's defense and security advisors included in his prepared speech a clear endorsement of the mutual defense pledge, but Trump himself struck it out just before speaking.

Just days before his January 20 inauguration, Trump rocked the post-World War II western alliance by calling Nato "obsolete."

Article Five has been the core of the Nato treaty's strength since it was formed amid a budding Cold War with communist states -- particularly the Soviet Union -- in 1949.