Pompeo to meet with Merkel next week at start of Europe visit
US Secretary of
State Mike Pompeo will visit Berlin next week at the start of a trip to Europe
and will hold talks with Chancellor Angela Merkel that had been scheduled
earlier this month, but were called off at the last minute as tensions rose
over Iran.
Pompeo will also
visit Switzerland, the Netherlands and Britain on his May 30-June 5 trip, the
US State Department said.
A German government
spokeswoman said Pompeo would meet with Merkel on May 31, and the German leader
will stress that tensions with Iran over its nuclear program and role in the
Middle East must be resolved peacefully.
The State
Department said the talks would also involve Pompeo's German counterpart, Heiko
Maas. "The Secretary welcomes this opportunity to meet soon after his
previously postponed visit to Germany," the State Department said in a
statement.
Pompeo had called
off a visit to Berlin scheduled for May 7 and flew to the Iraqi capital,
Baghdad, instead amid soaring tensions between the United States and Iran.
A senior German
diplomat was in Tehran on Thursday for meetings with Iranian officials to try
to preserve the 2015 nuclear deal with Iran that the Trump administration
withdrew from last year.
Britain, France and
Germany, which signed the deal along with the United States, China and Russia,
are determined to show they can compensate for Washington's withdrawal, protect
trade and still dissuade Tehran from quitting the accord designed to prevent it
developing a nuclear bomb.
Washington has
tightened sanctions on Iran with the aim of pushing it to make concessions
beyond the terms of the 2015 deal.
It also deployed a
carrier strike group, bombers and Patriot missiles to the Middle East this
month in response to what it called indications of possible preparations for an
attack by Iran. On Friday, President Donald Trump said he would send about
1,500 US troops to the Middle East, mostly as a protective measure.
The State
Department said that in Switzerland Pompeo will hold talks with Foreign
Minister Ignazio Cassis and also meet with Swiss business leaders and the
director general of the World Health Organization, Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus.
In the Netherlands,
Pompeo will attend the opening of the Global Entrepreneurship Summit with Prime
Minister Mark Rutte, and he will then join Trump’s state visit to Britain,
which starts on June 3.