BRUSSELS/MOSCOW: US Secretary of State Rex Tillerson will skip a meeting of NATO foreign ministers in Brussels in April, but will travel to Russia and Italy the same month, a US official said Tuesday.
Russia’s Foreign Ministry however declined on Tuesday to confirm or deny reported plans by Tillerson to visit Moscow, expressing its surprise at the “regular leak” of information from Washington.
Tillerson will be replaced by a lower-level official at the NATO meeting on April 5-6, a development that will likely fuel new concerns about US President Donald Trump’s commitment to the alliance as he pushes for better ties with Moscow.
“Tom Shannon (the US under secretary of state) will represent the United States at the NATO Foreign Ministerial,” the US official told AFP on condition of anonymity.
Tillerson will meet most of the foreign ministers from the 28-nation military alliance at a meeting in Washington this week, the official added.
“He has already met with officials from Ukraine. After these consultations and meetings, in April he will travel to a meeting of the G7 in Italy and then on to meetings in Russia,” the official said.
Under President Barack Obama’s administration, NATO sought to shore up support for the pro-Western government in Kiev after Russia’s annexation of Crimea and its support for an uprising in eastern Ukraine.
But during his election campaign, Trump expressed admiration for Russian President Vladimir Putin and said he would seek better ties with his government, while in January he dismissed NATO as “obsolete.”
Visiting NATO headquarters in Brussels last month, US Vice President Mike Pence sought to reassure the allies about his government’s commitment to them, particularly as the Baltic states and Poland fear Russian meddling in their affairs.
But Pence said that Trump expects NATO allies to make real progress by the end of this year toward meeting the increased defense spending target agreed by the alliance.
NATO chief Jens Stoltenberg traveled to Washington on Monday for the first time since Trump was elected, and will hold talks with members of the US-led coalition working to defeat the Daesh group.
The Trump administration has sought to involve NATO more in fighting the militants.
Meanwhile, sources told Reuters on Monday Tillerson planned to skip his first meeting of the 28 NATO allies in April in order to stay home for a visit by China’s president and then go to Russia.
Russian Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Maria Zakharova said in response to media requests for confirmation of Tillerson’s Moscow visit that the ministry was “not prepared to confirm or deny this information.”
“But we are certainly surprised by the regular leak of sensitive information from Washington,” she said in a post on Facebook.
“It’s time for US political elites to figure out if ‘Russian hackers’ have once again got into State Department servers or if the threat to US cybersecurity has an American origin after all,” Zakharova said.
Deputy Foreign Minister Sergei Ryabkov said later he was unaware of plans by Tillerson to visit Moscow.
Skipping the NATO meeting and visiting Moscow could risk feeding a perception that Trump’s administration may be prioritizing US dealings with big powers over smaller nations that depend on Washington for security.
Tillerson worked with Russia’s government for years in his former role as a top executive at Exxon Mobil Corp. He has questioned the wisdom of sanctions against Russia that he said could harm US businesses.
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Tillerson to skip NATO meeting in Brussels next month
Tillerson to skip NATO meeting in Brussels next month
US military boards sanctioned oil tanker in Indian Ocean
- Tanker tracking website says Aquila II departed the Venezuelan coast after US forces captured then-President Nicolás Maduro
- Pentagon says it 'hunted' the vessel all the way from the Caribbean to the Indian Ocean
WASHINGTON: US military forces boarded a sanctioned oil tanker in the Indian Ocean after tracking the ship from the Caribbean Sea, the Pentagon said Monday.
The Pentagon’s statement on social media did not say whether the ship was connected to Venezuela, which faces US sanctions on its oil and relies on a shadow fleet of falsely flagged tankers to smuggle crude into global supply chains.
However, the Aquila II was one of at least 16 tankers that departed the Venezuelan coast last month after US forces captured then-President Nicolás Maduro, said Samir Madani, co-founder of TankerTrackers.com. He said his organization used satellite imagery and surface-level photos to document the ship’s movements.
According to data transmitted from the ship on Monday, it is not currently laden with a cargo of crude oil.
The Aquila II is a Panamanian-flagged tanker under US sanctions related to the shipment of illicit Russian oil. Owned by a company with a listed address in Hong Kong, ship tracking data shows it has spent much of the last year with its radio transponder turned off, a practice known as “running dark” commonly employed by smugglers to hide their location.
US Southern Command, which oversees Latin America, said in an email that it had nothing to add to the Pentagon’s post on X. The post said the military “conducted a right-of-visit, maritime interdiction” on the ship.
“The Aquila II was operating in defiance of President Trump’s established quarantine of sanctioned vessels in the Caribbean,” the Pentagon said. “It ran, and we followed.”
The US did not say it had seized the ship, which the US has done previously with at least seven other sanctioned oil tankers linked to Venezuela.
A Navy official, who spoke on condition of anonymity to discuss military operations, would not say what forces were used in the operation but confirmed the destroyers USS Pinckney and USS John Finn as well as the mobile base ship USS Miguel Keith were operating in the Indian Ocean.
In videos the Pentagon posted to social media, uniformed forces can be seen boarding a Navy helicopter that takes off from a ship that matches the profile of the Miguel Keith. Video and photos of the tanker shot from inside a helicopter also show a Navy destroyer sailing alongside the ship.
Since the US ouster of Maduro in a surprise nighttime raid on Jan. 3, the Trump administration has set out to control the production, refining and global distribution of Venezuela’s petroleum products. Officials in President Donald Trump’s Republican administration have made it clear they see seizing the tankers as a way to generate cash as they seek to rebuild Venezuela’s battered oil industry and restore its economy.
Trump also has been trying to restrict the flow of oil to Cuba, which faces strict economic sanctions by the US and relies heavily on oil shipments from allies like Mexico, Russia and Venezuela.
Since the Venezuela operation, Trump has said no more Venezuelan oil will go to Cuba and that the Cuban government is ready to fall. Trump also recently signed an executive order that would impose a tariff on any goods from countries that sell or provide oil to Cuba, primarily pressuring Mexico because it has acted as an oil lifeline for Cuba.
The Pentagon’s statement on social media did not say whether the ship was connected to Venezuela, which faces US sanctions on its oil and relies on a shadow fleet of falsely flagged tankers to smuggle crude into global supply chains.
However, the Aquila II was one of at least 16 tankers that departed the Venezuelan coast last month after US forces captured then-President Nicolás Maduro, said Samir Madani, co-founder of TankerTrackers.com. He said his organization used satellite imagery and surface-level photos to document the ship’s movements.
According to data transmitted from the ship on Monday, it is not currently laden with a cargo of crude oil.
The Aquila II is a Panamanian-flagged tanker under US sanctions related to the shipment of illicit Russian oil. Owned by a company with a listed address in Hong Kong, ship tracking data shows it has spent much of the last year with its radio transponder turned off, a practice known as “running dark” commonly employed by smugglers to hide their location.
US Southern Command, which oversees Latin America, said in an email that it had nothing to add to the Pentagon’s post on X. The post said the military “conducted a right-of-visit, maritime interdiction” on the ship.
“The Aquila II was operating in defiance of President Trump’s established quarantine of sanctioned vessels in the Caribbean,” the Pentagon said. “It ran, and we followed.”
The US did not say it had seized the ship, which the US has done previously with at least seven other sanctioned oil tankers linked to Venezuela.
A Navy official, who spoke on condition of anonymity to discuss military operations, would not say what forces were used in the operation but confirmed the destroyers USS Pinckney and USS John Finn as well as the mobile base ship USS Miguel Keith were operating in the Indian Ocean.
In videos the Pentagon posted to social media, uniformed forces can be seen boarding a Navy helicopter that takes off from a ship that matches the profile of the Miguel Keith. Video and photos of the tanker shot from inside a helicopter also show a Navy destroyer sailing alongside the ship.
Since the US ouster of Maduro in a surprise nighttime raid on Jan. 3, the Trump administration has set out to control the production, refining and global distribution of Venezuela’s petroleum products. Officials in President Donald Trump’s Republican administration have made it clear they see seizing the tankers as a way to generate cash as they seek to rebuild Venezuela’s battered oil industry and restore its economy.
Trump also has been trying to restrict the flow of oil to Cuba, which faces strict economic sanctions by the US and relies heavily on oil shipments from allies like Mexico, Russia and Venezuela.
Since the Venezuela operation, Trump has said no more Venezuelan oil will go to Cuba and that the Cuban government is ready to fall. Trump also recently signed an executive order that would impose a tariff on any goods from countries that sell or provide oil to Cuba, primarily pressuring Mexico because it has acted as an oil lifeline for Cuba.
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