Tillerson to meet NATO members next week

We are currently planning to hold the meeting of Nato foreign ministers on March 31, says Nato official

WASHINGTON: US Secretary of State Rex Tillerson will meet with Nato counterparts next week in Brussels, officials said on Friday, as alliance diplomats worked to nail down the date.

“We are currently planning to hold the meeting of Nato foreign ministers on March 31. Consultations on scheduling among Allies are ongoing,” a Nato official in Brussels said.

The Nato foreign ministers meeting had been planned for April 5-6, but that was thrown into chaos on Tuesday when Tillerson revealed he would not be attending.

Skipping the meeting was especially awkward because the former Exxon-Mobil CEO is to travel later in April to Russia, which has had fraught relations with Nato since the start of the Ukraine conflict in 2014.

So Tillerson will head to Brussels on Friday next week, a day after meeting in Ankara with Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan to “discuss the way forward with our campaign to defeat ISIS in Syria and Iraq,” acting State Department spokesman Mark Toner said.

Officials suggested that a complicating factor for the Nato meeting might be the agenda of Britain's Foreign Secretary Boris Johnson, who might not be able to make it to Brussels on March 31.

Published in The Express Tribune, March 26^th, 2017.