US Secretary of State Rex Tillerson plans to skip a meeting with NATO foreign ministers next month in order to stay home for a visit by China’s president and will go to Russia later in the month, US officials said on Monday, disclosing an itinerary that allies may see as giving Moscow priority over them.
Tillerson intends to miss what would have been his first meeting of the 28 NATO allies on April 5 and April 6 in Brussels so that he can attend US President Donald Trump’s expected April 6 and April 7 talks with Chinese President Xi Jinping (習近平) at Trump’s Mar-a-Lago resort in Florida, four current and former US officials said.
Skipping the NATO meeting and visiting Moscow could risk feeding a perception that Trump may be putting US dealings with big powers first, while leaving waiting those smaller nations that depend on Washington for security, two former US officials said.
Trump has often praised Russian President Vladimir Putin, and Tillerson worked with Russia’s government for years as a top executive at Exxon Mobil Corp, and has questioned the wisdom of sanctions against Russia that he said could harm US businesses.
A US Department of State spokeswoman said Tillerson would meet today with foreign ministers from 26 of the 27 other NATO countries — all but Croatia — at a gathering of the coalition working to defeat the Islamic State group.
NATO Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg was due to have arrived in Washington on Monday for a three-day visit that was to include talks with US Secretary of Defense James Mattis and to take part in the counter-Islamic State meetings.
The State Department spokeswoman said Tillerson would not have a separate, NATO-focused meeting the 26 foreign ministers, but rather that they would meet in the counter-Islamic State talks.
“After these consultations and meetings, in April he will travel to a meeting of the G7 in Italy and then on to meetings in Russia,” she added, saying US Undersecretary of State for Political Affairs Tom Shannon would represent the US at the NATO foreign ministers meeting.
US Representative Eliot Engel, the senior Democrat on the US House of Representatives foreign affairs committee, said that Tillerson was making a mistake by skipping the Brussels talks.
“Donald Trump’s Administration is making a grave error that will shake the confidence of America’s most important alliance and feed the concern that this Administration simply too cozy with [Russian President] Vladimir Putin,” Engel said in a written statement.
“I cannot fathom why the administration would pursue this course except to signal a change in American foreign policy that draws our country away from western democracy’s most important institutions and aligns the United States more closely with the autocratic regime in the Kremlin,” he added.
A former US official echoed the view
“It feeds this narrative that somehow the Trump administration is playing footsie with Russia,” he said on condition of anonymity.
“You don’t want to do your early business with the world’s great autocrats. You want to start with the great democracies, and NATO is the security instrument of the transatlantic group of great democracies,” he added.
Any Russian visit by a senior Trump administration official may be carefully scrutinized after FBI Director James Comey on Monday confirmed his agency was investigating any collusion between the Russian government and Trump’s presidential election campaign.
A former US official and a former NATO diplomat, speaking on condition of anonymity, said NATO offered to change the meeting dates so Tillerson, but the State Department rebuffed the idea.
Nearly half of China’s major cities are suffering “moderate to severe” levels of subsidence, putting millions of people at risk of flooding, especially as sea levels rise, according to a study of nationwide satellite data released yesterday. The authors of the paper, published by the journal Science, found that 45 percent of China’s urban land was sinking faster than 3mm per year, with 16 percent at more than 10mm per year, driven not only by declining water tables, but also the sheer weight of the built environment. With China’s urban population already in excess of 900 million people, “even a small portion
UNSETTLING IMAGES: The scene took place in front of TV crews covering the Trump trial, with a CNN anchor calling it an ‘emotional and unbelievably disturbing moment’ A man who doused himself in an accelerant and set himself on fire outside the courthouse where former US president Donald Trump is on trial has died, police said yesterday. The New York City Police Department (NYPD) said the man was declared dead by staff at an area hospital. The man was in Collect Pond Park at about 1:30pm on Friday when he took out pamphlets espousing conspiracy theories, tossed them around, then doused himself in an accelerant and set himself on fire, officials and witnesses said. A large number of police officers were nearby when it happened. Some officers and bystanders rushed
HYPOCRISY? The Chinese Ministry of Foreign Affairs yesterday asked whether Biden was talking about China or the US when he used the word ‘xenophobic’ US President Joe Biden on Wednesday called for a hike in steel tariffs on China, accusing Beijing of cheating as he spoke at a campaign event in Pennsylvania. Biden accused China of xenophobia, too, in a speech to union members in Pittsburgh. “They’re not competing, they’re cheating. They’re cheating and we’ve seen the damage here in America,” Biden said. Chinese steel companies “don’t need to worry about making a profit because the Chinese government is subsidizing them so heavily,” he said. Biden said he had called for the US Trade Representative to triple the tariff rates for Chinese steel and aluminum if Beijing was
Beijing is continuing to commit genocide and crimes against humanity against Uyghurs and other Muslim minorities in its western Xinjiang province, U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken said in a report published on Monday, ahead of his planned visit to China this week. The State Department’s annual human rights report, which documents abuses recorded all over the world during the previous calendar year, repeated language from previous years on the treatment of Muslims in Xinjiang, but the publication raises the issue ahead of delicate talks, including on the war in Ukraine and global trade, between the top U.S. diplomat and Chinese