By Sarah Marsh and Jeff Mason
BERLIN (Reuters) – U.S. President Joe Biden will on Friday seek to cement cooperation with key European partners on issues from the Ukraine war to conflict in the Middle East during a swift swansong trip to Berlin.
Biden, who sought to improve ties with Europe after the 2017-2021 presidency of Donald Trump, will be greeted with military honors before receiving Germany’s highest order of merit from President Frank-Walter Steinmeier.
The distinction honors the 81-year-old’s “contributions to both the German-American friendship and the transatlantic bond” in all the offices he has held over the last five decades, according to the German presidential office.
Biden’s overnight trip comes just weeks before the U.S. presidential vote, during which Republican nominee Trump is seeking re-election in a dead heat race against Vice President Kamala Harris, the Democratic candidate.
The president, who dropped out of the race in favour of Harris in July, is due to hold closed-door talks with Chancellor Olaf Scholz in the late morning to discuss security, trade and other economic issues, before having lunch.
In the afternoon, British Prime Minister Keir Starmer and French President Emmanuel Macron are set to jet into Berlin to join them for talks focused largely on how to end the fighting in Ukraine as Moscow’s forces advance in the east and a bleak winter of power cuts looms.
“The key question is the nature of security guarantees and so that’s what we will talk about tomorrow,” Macron told reporters on Thursday.
Next month’s U.S. presidential election is adding to the sense of urgency about Ukraine given Trump has signaled he would be much more reluctant to continue to support Kyiv.
That Biden is paying what could be his last visit to Europe as president to Berlin is testament to the close working relationship he has with Scholz.
Biden took a big bet on Germany at the start of his term, looking the other way for a while on the Nord Stream 2 Baltic Sea gas pipeline project, designed to double the flow of Russian gas direct to Germany, said Sudha David-Wilp of the German Marshall Fund of the United States.
That paid off, she said, with Germany drastically reducing Russian gas imports, raising spending on defence to the NATO target of 2% and working in lockstep with the United States to support Kyiv after Russia’s invasion of Ukraine.
Berlin also played a critical role in a major prisoner swap in August between Russia and the West that saw the release of U.S. journalist Evan Gershkovich and ex-U.S. Marine Paul Whelan from Russian detention.
“It’s a thank-you tour but it’s also a message to say, ‘please stay the course on Ukraine no matter what happens’,” said David-Wilp.
(Reporting by Sarah Marsh and Jeff Mason; Additional Reporting by Jarrett Renshaw and John Irish; Editing by Stephen Coates)
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