US Secretary of State to Skip NATO Meeting to Meet with China and Russia

U.S. Secretary of State Rex Tillerson will not attend a NATO meeting in Brussels next month (Photographer: F. Carter Smith/Bloomberg via Getty Images)

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April’s meeting would have been Rex Tillerson’s first with his NATO allies.



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Rex Tillerson, the U.S. secretary of state, will not attend a meeting of NATO foreign ministers in Brussels next month, but plans to stay home for a visit by Chinese President Xi Jinping and then travel to Russia instead, Reuters reported Tuesday.

Tillerson will meet foreign ministers from 26 of the 27 other NATO countries, except Croatia, on Wednesday at a meeting of the coalition working to defeat Islamic State, a state department spokesperson said.

“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,” the spokesperson added.

The April 5-6 meeting would have been Tillerson’s first with his NATO allies. U.S. Undersecretary of State for Political Affairs Tom Shannon will represent the United States in his place.

A State Dept. spokesperson said in a statement that acting deputy secretary Tom Shannon will attend the NATO meeting in Tillerson’s place. The State Dept. also said that Tillerson is scheduled to meet several NATO ministers at a gathering of the Global Counter ISIS Coalition this Wednesday.

“After these consultations and meetings, in April [Tillerson] will travel to a meeting of the G7 in Italy and then on to meetings in Russia,” the statement adds.

The announcement comes on the heels of fresh criticism of NATO from the Trump administration with the president making the dubious claim that Germany “owes vast sums of money to NATO.”

Trump rattled American allies in Europe by calling NATO “obsolete” and questioning during his 2016 presidential campaign whether or not the U.S. would come to the aid of NATO members in the event of an attack by Russia.

NATO’s mutual defense clause — the cornerstone of the 60-year-old alliance — calls for a response by all members of the pact in the event of an attack on one member country.

Trump said during the campaign that he would decide whether to come to their aid only after reviewing whether those nations “have fulfilled their obligations to us.”

Democrats were quick to jump on Monday’s news.

“If reporting is accurate, 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 Vladimir Putin,” Rep. Elliott Engel, the ranking Democrat on the House Foreign Affairs Committee, said in a 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.”

Rep. Adam Schiff, the ranking member of the House intelligence committee, said on “The Rachel Maddow Show”: “I have to hope that that story is not true. We’ve already sent a terrible message to NATO. The only message frankly that has gotten through from this administration to NATO is not that we support you, not that we value you or thank our NATO allies for coming to our assistance in Afghanistan and Iraq where NATO soldiers have stood by, fought by and died with our own troops, but rather pay up. That’s the only message we’ve delivered.”
ABC News’ Chad Murray contributed to this report



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