Liz Truss’ planned meeting with Joe Biden in Downing Street, which was to be her first major diplomatic event as Prime Minister, has been rescheduled for Wednesday at the UN.
Officials from both countries said a meeting on the sidelines of the UN general assembly would allow for a “fuller” bilateral discussion and was not the result of friction. But whenever the two leaders meet, they face disagreements over Northern Ireland.
“We have been in constant contact with Downing Street and we have both decided that it is preferable to hold a full bilateral meeting in New York on Wednesday,” an administration official said.
Biden and Truss will find a lot of common ground in taking a hard line on Russia for its invasion of Ukraine and in containing Chinese expansionism. But Northern Ireland policy is a major irritant in the US-UK relationship.
The protocol is an agreement with the EU after Brexit whereby there are customs controls on goods transported from the British mainland to Northern Ireland, thus allowing the north-south border to remain open and frictionless, a vital element of the Good Friday peace of 1998. agreement.
The Biden administration has already warned that any unilateral move to undo the Northern Ireland protocol would not be “conducive” to a US-UK trade deal, and the president, who is proud of his Irish roots, make his personal commitment clear. to defend the Good Friday agreement and urge Truss to continue negotiating with Brussels.
“People here are watching and [they] care,” said a senior US official. “Truss continues to say he wants a negotiated settlement. So let’s do it.”
Arguing that the protocol places an excessive burden on British companies, Truss has proposed unilaterally rejecting parts of the agreement, and is considering invoking Article 16 which allows a party to the agreement to suspend part or all of the protocol if it causes “serious”. economic, social or environmental difficulties”.
The protocol is also likely to feature in his talks with Irish Taoiseach Micheál Martin on Sunday, part of a hastily arranged diplomatic tour as representatives of nearly all of the world’s 195 countries, including 100 presidents, gather to at the queen’s funeral.
Truss hosted Australian Prime Minister Anthony Albanese and New Zealand leader Jacinda Ardern at Chevening, his official residence in Kent, on Saturday. The meetings were framed by Downing Street as chats. He will also meet Polish President Andrzej Duda and Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau at No. 10 on Sunday.
Choosing who to meet with allows the new Truss government to send signals about its priorities. His choices emphasize the English-speaking Five Eyes intelligence coalition as the anchor of ‘global Britain’. Duda is the only leader outside this group, a gesture of solidarity on NATO’s eastern flank.
It is also sending negative signals: A handful of countries have not been invited to the funeral: Russia, Belarus, Venezuela, Syria, Afghanistan and Myanmar. The strength of the resentment has been underlined by the fact that North Korea received an invitation to the post, albeit only at ambassadorial level.
The sting was felt in Moscow. Russia’s foreign ministry called the outrage “deeply immoral” and “blasphemous” to the queen’s memory.
China has been invited and Beijing is sending Vice President Wang Qishan, although Chinese officials were not allowed to visit the queen’s coffin as it was in state. The speaker of the House of Commons denied them entry because China had banned several members of parliament for their criticism of the country’s human rights record.
Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman is expected to come to London to convey Riyadh’s condolences. However, he is not scheduled to attend the funeral. It is not clear whether this is due to Buckingham Palace’s fear of negative publicity or his reluctance to participate in an event where he would not be granted front-row status even with other leaders.
If the crown prince arrives, a final decision had not yet been made on Saturday, he will hope it will be a step away from isolation following the 2018 killing of dissident and Washington Post columnist Jamal Khashoggi. Her human rights record has continued to sink with the recent 45-year prison sentence imposed on a mother of five for tweets deemed critical.
He will hope to build on his family’s long relationship with King Charles, who visited Saudi Arabia a dozen times as Prince of Wales.
Truly international funeral diplomacy is relatively recent. It relies on air travel to fly in leaders from around the world within days and refrigeration to preserve the deceased until they arrive.
The title of this article was amended on 18 September 2022 to better reflect the content of the story.