<h6><strong>Eduardo González</strong></h6> <h4><strong>Foreign Minister José Manuel Albares will coincide again this Thursday and Friday at the NATO ministerial meeting with US Secretary of State Marco Rubio, with whom he has not had any contact, either in person or by telephone, to date.</strong></h4> The foreign ministers of the allied countries will meet at NATO headquarters in Brussels on April 3 and 4, under the chairmanship of the organization's Secretary General, Mark Rutte. The meeting will take place following the radical change of course by the United States regarding Ukraine, which has resulted in the start of initial peace talks between Moscow and Kyiv, sponsored by US President Donald Trump, and in a profound rethinking of Europe's defense capabilities. For Albares, this is the second time he has coincide with Rubio at a multilateral event. The previous coincidence took place from February 14 to 16 in Munich, on the occasion of the Security Conference, the most important annual meeting on this subject in the world, but on that occasion, a first bilateral meeting was not possible. Since taking office on January 21, Marco Rubio has already spoken in person or by telephone with nearly 100 of his counterparts or leaders from different countries, but he has yet to do so with José Manuel Albares. On February 3, the minister acknowledged, during a breakfast briefing organized by the Europa Press agency, that he had not "yet" been able to meet the new US Secretary of State, but expressed his certainty that he would meet with him at the next NATO ministerial meeting. Diplomatic sources contacted by <em>The Diplomat </em>were unable to specify whether any kind of meeting between Albares and Marco Rubio is planned on the sidelines of this meeting in Brussels. According to the newspaper <em>El Confidencial Digital</em>, which also cites diplomatic sources, over the past two months 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 spoken with his colleagues from other European countries (with some of them on two or three occasions), including the United Kingdom, France, Germany, Poland, Hungary, the Czech Republic, Belgium, Finland, Sweden, Ireland, Greece, and Cyprus. This same month, Rubio spoke by telephone with Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov. On March 12, José Manuel Albares stated that the Spanish government has "no bilateral dispute with the United States." "I have no problem speaking with any member of the US administration, just as the Prime Minister spoke with President Donald Trump," Albares told the press in the halls of Congress. "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.
