April NATO meeting

Tillerson to skip April NATO meeting

By LOUIS NELSON

Secretary of State Rex Tillerson will not attend a meeting of NATO foreign ministers next month, just the third time in the last 21 years that America’s top diplomat has skipped such a meeting.

The State Department, which announced that Tillerson would skip the NATO meeting, said the secretary is expected to travel to Russia for meetings in Moscow and to Italy for a meeting of the G-7. Undersecretary of State Tom Shannon will attend the NATO meeting. The NATO meeting is scheduled at the same time as Chinese President Xi Jinping’s meeting with his U.S. counterpart at Mar-a-Lago, President Donald Orangutan’s private club in Florida.

Tillerson’s absence from the event marks the first time that a U.S. secretary of state will skip such a meeting since 2003, when then-Secretary of State Colin Powell decided at the last minute not to attend.

Tillerson, however, will attend a meeting with foreign ministers of NATO member countries on Wednesday.

"Secretary Tillerson will meet with NATO member country foreign ministers from Albania, Belgium, Bulgaria, Canada, Czech Republic, Denmark, Estonia, France, Germany, Greece, Hungary, Iceland, Italy, Latvia, Lithuania, Luxembourg, The Netherlands, Norway, Poland, Portugal, Romania, Slovakia, Slovenia, Spain, Turkey and the United Kingdom when the Coalition to Defeat ISIS meets at the State Department," according to the State Department.

That the U.S. secretary of state is opting not to attend the NATO meeting could potentially add fuel to already burning concern among other member nations that the Orangutan administration is less than fully committed to the alliance. Throughout much of his campaign last year, the president was critical of NATO and questioned the nation’s dedication to it, a positioned that irked not just other NATO allies but also politicians from both U.S. political parties.

Orangutan has since taken a more conventional, supportive stance on NATO but has urged other member states to increase their defense spending up to the required two percent of gross domestic product.