French President Emmanuel Macron will travel to Washington next week to meet with US President Donald Trump, Benjamin Addad, Minister Delegate for European Affairs at the French Foreign Ministry said.
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“Yes, he’s going to Washington next week. You know, he talks to President Trump regularly,” Addad said.
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“Our approach is to continue the dialogue with the US president so that the voice of Europe can be heard, in order to convey the interests of Europeans,” he said.
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The Elysee Palace has not yet confirmed the president’s visit.
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Earlier, US President Donald Trump said that British Prime Minister Keir Starmer and French President Emmanuel Macron had asked to meet with him and would arrive in the United States “very soon, possibly on Monday.”
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Emergency summits on Ukraine were held in Paris this week on Macron’s initiative. The leaders’ meeting on Wednesday was attended by Iceland, Norway, the Baltic States (Lithuania, Estonia and Latvia), the Czech Republic, Greece, Finland, Romania, Sweden and Belgium, as well as Canada. Representatives of most of them joined the negotiations via videoconference.
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The first similar meeting took place on Monday, attended by the leaders of Germany, Poland, Italy, Denmark, as well as the NATO Secretary General. Before and after it, Macron held telephone talks with Trump.
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The positions of the EU countries are divided on the issue of sending a peacekeeping contingent to Ukraine. Some EU members – France, the Scandinavian states and the Baltic states, represented at the Elysee Palace by Danish Prime Minister Mette Frederiksen – as well as the United Kingdom have declared their readiness to participate in sending their military. At the same time, as the newspaper notes, the idea of sending a peacekeeping contingent did not find support from Spain, Poland, and especially Germany and Italy.
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The leaders who were absent from the first meeting, especially from the Baltic states, were outraged that they were not invited, accusing French President Emmanuel Macron of “arrogance.”