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Secretary of State Mike Pompeo’s last overseas trip as a top US diplomat has been canceled, the State Department said on Tuesday, citing the need for him to stay in Washington to prepare for the transition to administration Biden.
Pompeo was due to travel to Brussels on Wednesday for meetings with NATO Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg and Belgian Foreign Minister Sophie Wilmès, but the State Department canceled “all trips scheduled for this week”.
The secretary’s brief European tour was originally scheduled to include a stopover in Luxembourg, but officials from the small NATO country canceled the visit after last week’s pro-Trump riot on the U.S. Capitol, according to three sources familiar with the decision.
Luxembourg Foreign Minister Jean Asselborn told The Atlantic that he had been informed that Pompeo was heading to a meeting with Stoltenberg and “would also like to stop in Luxembourg.
“We were waiting for the details. And on Sunday evening we were told that Pompeo would not be coming,” he said.
“I am ready to meet any Minister of Foreign Affairs, from anywhere. But it is perhaps not a bad thing that he is not in Belgium and Luxembourg”, added Asselborn.
In an interview with local RFL media last week, Asselborn called President Donald Trump a “criminal” and “a political arsonist who must be brought before a criminal court”.
A spokesperson for the Luxembourg government declined to comment.
The State Department’s public announcement of the trip, released 24 hours before its withdrawal, listed Belgium as Pompeo’s only destination.
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The senior US diplomat’s trip to Belgium has traditionally involved a meeting with EU leaders, as has often been the case for Pompeo. But no meeting with EU officials was scheduled even before Wednesday’s events, according to two EU officials and two US officials familiar with planning the trip.
America’s allies were united in dismay at the scenes of violence at the heart of American democracy, with some world leaders explicitly accusing Trump of instigating his supporters to storm the building. Both Stoltenberg and Wilmès called Wednesday’s violent attack on the Capitol “shocking” and reiterated the legitimacy of President-elect Joe Biden’s victory.
But the secretary’s meetings in Brussels were still underway on Tuesday morning, the sources said, with some State Department officials already on the ground.
On Tuesday afternoon, Pompeo called Stoltenberg to inform him that he would no longer be traveling, a NATO official confirmed to NBC News. The manager who was not on call said the secretary said the cancellation was due to necessary arrangements around the transition.
A trip to Taiwan by U.S. Ambassador to the United Nations Kelly Craft was also canceled as part of the State Department’s cancellation of all trips this week.
Craft was reportedly the first member of the Trump administration to meet with Taiwanese officials after Pompeo removed all restrictions on U.S.-Taiwan relations last weekend. This move has been strongly condemned by China, which sees Taiwan as a renegade province that it should control.
Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesman Zhao Lijian then warned Pompeo “to stop going further down the wrong and dangerous path”, otherwise he “would be severely punished by history”.
Abigail Williams and Josh Lederman reported from Washington, DC, and Carlo Angerer reported from Munich.
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