NATO will arrange a brand new coordinating physique to deal with threats to undersea infrastructure, Secretary-Common Jens Stoltenberg mentioned on Monday. His announcement comes simply days after legendary investigative reporter Seymour Hersh mentioned the US and Norway had been behind the September explosions on the Nord Stream pipelines underneath the Baltic Sea.

“Safety of vital undersea infrastructure can even be excessive on our agenda,” Stoltenberg informed reporters in Brussels, following the assembly of NATO protection ministers. The US-led bloc “has been engaged on this for a few years,” Stoltenberg added, “and we are actually taking it to the subsequent stage.”

A brand new “coordination cell” might be established at NATO Headquarters to “map our vulnerabilities, and have interaction with business,” which is able to “assist our efforts to stop and counter threats to vital infrastructure, together with undersea cables and pipelines,” in accordance with Stoltenberg. He mentioned additional measures might be determined on the NATO summit in Vilnius, Lithuania in July.

Stoltenberg, who was the Norwegian prime minister earlier than taking up NATO management in 2014, didn’t deal with Hersh’s story from final Wednesday. Neither did any of the reporters NATO spokeswoman Oana Lungescu referred to as on. 

The Pulitzer Prize-winning investigative journalist had accused the US of ordering the destruction of the pipelines working from Russia to Germany and Norway of serving to to hold out the bombing. 

The White Home denounced it as “completely false and full fiction.” Russian Overseas Minister Sergey Lavrov pointed to the phrases of US Below Secretary of State Victoria Nuland to say that Individuals had been “mainly admitting” the pipeline blasts had been their doing. In the meantime, Beijing mentioned that Washington owed the world a proof.

“If Hersh is telling the reality, what he revealed is clearly unacceptable and should be answered for,” Chinese language Overseas Ministry spokeswoman Mao Ning mentioned on Friday.

As Hersh famous, each Nuland and US President Joe Biden had made very particular threats towards Nord Stream 2 previous to the escalation of hostilities in Ukraine final 12 months. After the blasts, US officers blamed Russia however mentioned the scenario offered an “alternative” for Europe to chop ties with Moscow.