<h6><strong>The Diplomat</strong></h6> <h4><strong>Foreign Minister José Manuel Albares asserted this Wednesday that the Spanish government has “no bilateral disputes” with the United States, despite having yet to receive a single call from the new US Secretary of State, Marco Rubio, in the nearly two months since he took office.</strong></h4> “We have no bilateral disputes with the United States,” Albares told the press in the halls of Congress. “I have no problem speaking with any member of the US administration, just as the Prime Minister spoke with President Donald Trump,” he continued. “At the Munich security conference, I spoke with General Keith Kellogg,” President Donald Trump’s envoy for Ukraine and Gaza, “about the US position in Ukraine and we exchanged views,” he added. As reported this Wednesday by the newspaper ‘El Confidencial Digital’, Marco Rubio has already spoken in person or by telephone with around eighty counterparts or leaders from different countries since taking office on January 20, but has not yet done so with José Manuel Albares. Diplomatic sources have assured the same newspaper that the Ministry of Foreign Affairs has made efforts, both through the United States Embassy in Madrid and the Spanish Embassy in Washington, to arrange a conversation between Albares and Rubio. The Secretary of State has, to date, spoken with his colleagues from other European countries, such as the United Kingdom, France, Germany, Poland, Hungary, the Czech Republic, Belgium, Finland, Sweden, Ireland, Greece, and Cyprus. Albares and Rubio met in Munich in mid-February for the Security Conference, but a first bilateral meeting was not possible on that occasion either. On February 3, the minister acknowledged during a breakfast briefing organized by the Europa Press agency that he had not yet met the new US Secretary of State, but expressed his certainty that he would meet with him at the next NATO foreign ministers' meeting, which will take place on April 3 and 4 in Brussels.
