President Biden leaves his first G7 summit for audience with Queen Elizabeth II



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“Don’t bow down to her,” she told him in 1982, according to a memoir by Biden published several years ago.

Little is known about the reunion itself, or the reaction of Biden, 40 or 41, to the British monarch, who by that time already had 30 years of reign.

This is his first one-on-one engagement with a world leader since the start of the coronavirus pandemic. And it’s one of her first public engagements since her husband, Prince Philip, passed away at 99 earlier this year.

The meeting will take place after the end of Biden’s first G7 summit, held on England’s southwest coast, which ended on Sunday afternoon. Biden spent his first international trip in an effort to rekindle American alliances with the richest democracies in the world. After meeting the Queen, he will travel to Brussels where he will spend two days meeting other American allies at NATO and European Union headquarters, before heading to Geneva to meet Russian President Vladimir Putin.

“We have just concluded what has been an extraordinary, collaborative and productive meeting at the G7,” Biden said at a press conference after the G7 and ahead of his meeting with the Queen. “Everyone at the table understood and understood the seriousness of the challenges we face and the responsibility of our proud democracies to stand up and take action for the rest of the world. “

Her first meeting with the British monarch this week was on Friday evening, when she joined world leaders at a reception hosted at a biosphere in Cornwall. After posing for a photo, she took a light hit at the staged camaraderie.

“Are you supposed to look like you’re having fun?” she said.

She was later photographed in friendly conversation with Biden and his wife outside the futuristic domes, with her son Prince Charles and wife Camilla holding drinks in the background.

Sunday’s occasion will be more personal, with only Biden and his wife meeting the Queen at her home.

For Biden, the moment puts him in a long list of predecessors who have also come to visit one of the world’s most famous women. A history student who has consumed biographies of past presidents, the moment provides a living connection to the post he now holds.

The Queen is also helping to continue Biden’s efforts to inject wartime urgency into this week’s G7 and NATO summits, including by renewing the Atlantic Charter signed by US President Franklin Delano Roosevelt and the British Prime Minister Winston Churchill during World War II. The Queen served as an army mechanic during the war.

US Presidents often find themselves charmed by the Queen after meeting her.

“The Queen has been an inspiration to me, like so many people around the world,” President Barack Obama said during a visit to London in 2016 when Prince Philip drove her in a Range Rover from Marine One at the gates of Windsor. Castle. “She really is one of my favorite people.”

President Donald Trump also had a special affection for Queen Elizabeth, having seen her own mother – born in the Outer Hebrides of Scotland – attentively captivate by watching her coronation on television.

Unlike Trump or Obama, Biden is not an Anglophile. He is a proud American of Irish descent who (sometimes jokingly) referred to the long British rule on the island of his ancestors. This week, he confronted Prime Minister Boris Johnson over issues relating to Northern Ireland, fearing that Britain’s exit from the European Union would jeopardize the hard-won peace there.

And one of the first things he did when he arrived in the UK on Wednesday was quote William Butler Yeats, the most famous Irish poet of the 20th century, from his poem on the 1916 Easter uprising against the British rule. He also cited the American Declaration of Independence.

Irish allegiances aside, Biden will hardly voice his grievances when he sits down with the British monarch on Sunday afternoon.

“Joe and I are both looking forward to meeting the Queen. It’s an exciting part of the visit for us,” Jill Biden told reporters this week. “We’ve been looking forward to this for weeks and now it’s finally here. It’s a great start.”

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