Media playback is unsupported on your device Media caption Nato countries are failing to meet their commitments, Mike Pence said 
 
 The US will be "unwavering" in its support for Nato, vice-president Mike Pence told European leaders at the Munich Security Conference. 
 
 In the first major foreign policy address for the Trump administration, Mr Pence said the US would "stand with Europe today and every day". 
 
 But he told the gathered leaders that European countries were "failing to pay their fair share" on defence. 
 
 That failure "erodes the foundation of our alliance", he said. 
 
 The vice-president pointed out that apart from the US, only four Nato countries had met a 2014 commitment to spend 2% of GDP on defence. 
 
 "The time has come to do more," he said. 
 
 US and Europe weigh each other up at Nato 
 
 President Donald Trump warned before taking office that the US might not uphold its commitment to come to the defence of Nato allies who were not perceived to have contributed enough financially. 
 
 Image copyright EPA Image caption Angela Merkel addressed the conference directly before Mike Pence 
 
 Watching the speech was German Chancellor Angela Merkel, who spoke before Mr Pence. Germany is among the nations yet to meet the 2% target. 
 
 Nato estimates for 2016 show that only the US, UK, Greece, Poland and Estonia do so. 
 
 Media playback is unsupported on your device Media caption Mike Pence: "With regard to Ukraine...we must hold Russia accountable" 
 
 Mr Pence went on to say that the US would "continue to hold Russia accountable, even as we search for new common ground, which as you know, President Trump believes can be found". 
 
 Mr Pence said Russia must honour a 2015 peace deal agreed upon in Minsk, Belarus, aimed at ending violence in eastern Ukraine. 
 
 His comments came amid huge controversy in the US over ties between the Trump administration and Russia, and concern in Europe over whether the new administration would attempt to restrain Russian leader Vladimir Putin. 
 
 Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov, speaking at the conference, rejected accusations that Russia was responsible for destabilising peace and described Nato as stuck in "Cold War" thinking. 
 
 Mr Lavrov also denied allegations that Russia had meddled in the US election, saying he "saw no facts" pointing to hacking by Russian operatives. 
 
 Speaking before Mr Pence, Ms Merkel called for increased co-operation between the US and the European Union on issues including Russian aggression and Islamist terror. 
 
 The two leaders were scheduled to meet face to face later in the day. 
 
 A dig at Trump - Jonathan Marcus, defence correspondent 
 
 Speaking before Mr Pence, Angela Merkel, the German chancellor, said the question now facing the trans-Atlantic community was whether "we will be able to act in concert or fall back into parochial politics" - a subtle but clear dig at Mr Trump's mantra of "America First". 
 
 Asked directly what she thought about the Trump administration's rhetorical onslaught against sections of the media, Ms Merkel insisted that freedom of the press was a pillar of democracy. 
 
 When Mr Pence took to the stage he stressed that he was bringing a message of reassurance from the new president, who would "unwaveringly" back America's Nato allies. 
 
 But he also used the opportunity to repeat Mr Trump's long-held view that Washington's European allies must spend more on their own defence. ||||| On first visit to Europe since taking office, US vice-president tells Munich conference Nato allies must step up their contributions 
 
 The US vice-president has delivered the most uncompromising message yet from the Trump administration to Nato allies that they have to step up financial contributions towards defence spending. 
 
 On his first visit to Europe since taking office, Mike Pence said “some of our largest allies do not have a credible path” towards paying their share of Nato’s financial burden. Although he did not name individual countries, his targets included Germany, France and Italy. “The time has come to do more,” he said. 
 
 Brexit Britain’s Nato strategy is fatally flawed | Martin Kettle Read more 
 
 This section of his speech to the Munich security conference, which is being attended by 500 delegates including government leaders and defence and foreign ministers from around the world, was greeted with lukewarm applause. 
 
 
 
 He was speaking immediately after the German chancellor, Angela Merkel, made it clear she would not be bullied by the US over defence spending. She said Germany had made a promise to increase defence over the next decade and would fulfil that commitment rather than be forced into the faster rises that Trump is looking for. 
 
 Merkel said the focus on defence spending could be misleading. Even if Germany was to spend more, there was not the military capacity available to invest in. She added that Germany saw spending on development in countries in Africa and elsewhere as being as vital to security as military spending. 
 
 The conference marks the first major meeting between the Trump administration and leaders from across Europe since Trump took office. 
 
 Pence went further than the US defence secretary, James Mattis, at Nato headquarters on Wednesday in warning Nato allies to stump up more. He said: “As of this moment, the US and only four other Nato members meet that basic standard.” 
 
 Those four countries are the UK, Estonia, Greece and Poland. The other 23 Nato members do not meet the target of spending 2% of GDP on defence. 
 
 In a thinly veiled warning, Pence said that while the US was bound by Nato’s article five – an attack on one member would be an attack on all – he also reminded the audience that article three contained a commitment to sharing the financial burden, echoing Trump’s warning last year that he did not feel bound to come to the defence of countries that did not pay their share. 
 
 Pence peppered his speech with regular references to Trump, stressing that he was delivering messages from the president. He softened his criticism of allies with assurances that the president, in spite of rhetoric about isolationism, valued Nato “The US strongly supports Nato and will be unwavering in our support of this transatlantic alliance,” he said. 
 
 Pence also attempted to square the contradictory comments made by Trump towards Russia. While the US wanted a new relationship with Russia, he said that the US expected Russia to honour the 2015 Minsk peace agreement aimed at ending violence in Ukraine. 
 
 “Know this: the United States will continue to hold Russia accountable, even as we search for new common ground which, as you know, President Trump believes can be found.” 
 
 After the meeting, Pence was scheduled to hold bilateral talks with Merkel and also with the leaders of Ukraine and the Baltic states. 
 
 
 
 Merkel made the case for more multilateralism rather than a retreat into “parochialism” because of the dangers posed by “no fixed world order”. 
 
 With Pence in the room, she avoided direct references to Trump even though many of her comments during her speech and in a question-and-answer session afterwards were aimed at him. 
 
 Asked about attacks on the media, Merkel said: “Freedom of the press is a pillar of democracy.” ||||| David A. Andelman, editor emeritus of World Policy Journal and member of the board of contributors of USA Today, is the author of "A Shattered Peace: Versailles 1919 and the Price We Pay Today ." Follow him on Twitter @DavidAndelman . The views expressed in this commentary are his own. 
 
 (CNN) The red welcome mat is out at the White House. Angela Merkel in coming to town. This ought to be a cause for celebration. In terms of ideology, Merkel is perhaps the most conservative ruler of a major country in the European Union. 
 
 But look out, this lady is also as close to an Iron Chancellor as any German leader since Bismarck two centuries ago. She's tough, she has three terms under her belt and is headed for a fourth, and she has an agenda she's ready to unfold before her host, Donald Trump. 
 
 That agenda may not be in any sense contiguous with the one Trump has embraced, and that's where the friction could happen -- if it does. One can only hope it won't. 
 
 It's hard to say what's at the top of the agenda since there are so many points of friction before the two even meet: Russia, NATO, trade, climate change, refugees, counterterrorism. So, let's just take them in what should be their order. 
 
 Russia 
 
 No Western leader knows Vladimir Putin better than Angela Merkel. While she led Europe in pressing for tough sanctions against Russia for its seizure of Crimea and incursions into Eastern Ukraine, Putin respects her toughness and longevity in office. 
 
 Indeed, Merkel speaks to Putin virtually every week by telephone. She has told confidants that she sees it as an essential duty. Putin needs to hear from voices outside his immediate Kremlin circle. And without her regular contacts , he would not -- a potential catastrophe for the West. 
 
 If there is anyone who could teach Trump about Putin, it's Merkel. Hopefully, Trump will have the patience and good sense to listen as his course of instruction begins. 
 
 NATO 
 
 Merkel should be pleased that some of Trump's envoys have expressed a commitment to NATO somewhat more accepting than his sentiments during the campaign. Still, he continues to demand that NATO member nations increase to 2% of GDP their defense expenditures. Only four nations — Greece, Estonia, Britain and Poland — managed that level last year. Germany is number 14, with just 1.2% of its GDP. Still, that amounts to €37 billion ($39 billion) and is set to reach €39.2 billion by 2020. 
 
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 "We're moving in the right direction, but we can't do it in one year," German Defense Minister Ursula von der Leyen said in an interview with Reuters. But with a $54 billion increase in defense spending in the new Trump budget, and 3.6% of America's GDP already committed to defense — triple Germany's level — this could be a contentious issue. 
 
 Trump should listen to Merkel's quite sound reasoning that no major nation is an island and that, as her defense minister pointed out, "The most important thing is reliability." 
 
 Trade 
 
 These kinds of economics segue neatly into trade. Last year, Germany posted a $65 billion trade surplus with the United States and so far this year has been running ahead of last year. During the campaign, Trump had threatened to impose a 35% tariff on German carmakers who import their products into the United States. But Merkel could also point to the reality that in 2015, German direct investment in the United States hit $255 billion -- a lot of it German automakers' plants in the United States, employing 670,000 American workers producing cars here for American customers. US investment in Germany was less than half that level. 
 
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 Little is closer to the heart of Trump than trade talks, so here Merkel and Trump have a chance to reach some real understanding. While Trump has condemned multinational trade and tariff agreements like the Trans-Pacific Partnership, Merkel is still hoping to salvage the Trans-Atlantic Trade and Investment Partnership pact. With the European Union considering itself a single tariff unit, it might not be so hard for Merkel to persuade Trump that T-TIP is simply a nice, bilateral trade pact. 
 
 Climate change 
 
 Merkel has been one of the big backers of the Paris agreement to control greenhouse gases and work toward halting global warming. With the Environmental Protection Administration suffering the biggest cutbacks in the new Trump budget and the President lifting tough fuel economy standards from American automakers, it's hard to see how they could reach any sort of compromise in this meeting. But count on Merkel to make an opening argument in what will likely be a long and contentious issue. 
 
 Refugees and counterterrorism 
 
 If there is one issue that has been the most subject to the kinds of rhetoric calculated to poison relations between world leaders, it's refugees. During his campaign, Trump alternately praised Merkel as "a really great world leader," then promptly snapped that she was "ruining" her country by accepting hundreds of thousands of Syrian refugees, who Trump claims conceal hordes of terrorists. 
 
 He quickly pounced on the Christmas truck attack in Berlin by a Tunisian terrorist, swaggering "I've been proven to be right." 
 
 Now with Trump's latest immigration order suspended by a federal judge and Merkel facing her own internal attacks by opponents in her re-election bid, both sides would seem to need some mutual reinforcement, or at least a path toward lowering the rhetorical temperature. 
 
 Taking each other's measure 
 
 Above all, Merkel is here to take the measure of the successor to Barack Obama, with whom she had a remarkably chummy relationship. Clearly the stakes are high for this meeting: the future of the trans-Atlantic alliance, German leadership of Europe, a united front against Russian aggression, billions in trade and investment and a common front against terrorism. 
 
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 Yet it is hardly a meeting of equals. Merkel comes to this session utterly in command, at the very moment the electoral power of European Trump-style populism has been called into question with the sound defeat on Tuesday of the far-right candidate for Prime Minister in the Netherlands. By contrast, Trump is very much under attack on all sides, many of his core priorities still unrealized and still out of grasp. It is this dynamic, more than any other, that threatens a positive outcome. 
 
 Alternatively, Donald Trump could bask in the reflected popularity of Merkel, learning and profiting from her long years of all but unquestioned power and glory. 
 
 Still, there are limits. Merkel will not be going to Mar-a-Lago.
– Mike Pence promised NATO allies Saturday that they had the "unwavering" support of the US, while also making it clear that the administration considers most of them to be freeloaders. The vice president, speaking to European leaders at the Munich Security Conference, said European countries are failing to "pay their fair share" on defense, the BBC reports. Pence said only four other NATO countries—the UK, Greece, Estonia, and Poland—met a commitment to spend at least 2% of GDP on defense. "The time has come to do more," Pence said, echoing President Trump's campaign rhetoric. Pence said the US plans to boost military spending and will "hold Russia accountable" for its actions in Ukraine. "Peace only comes through strength," Pence said, per the Wall Street Journal. "President Trump believes we must be strong in our military might." German Chancellor Angela Merkel also addressed the conference and said Germany will increase its spending to meet NATO's target, but it won't be rushed into it, the Guardian reports. She added that it would be a mistake to believe that defense spending is the only way to boost security. "Security is ensured just as much by increasing one’s development spending," she said. Merkel said the US was a valuable partner in the fight against terrorism, along with Islamic nations who can show "that a misguided Islam, rather than Islam itself, is the cause of terrorism."