While in Iceland, Pence is expected to address the country's strategic position in the Arctic and NATO's anti-Russia efforts. This agenda has drawn criticism from lawmakers defending Iceland's traditional neutrality, but the nation's top official says her move was not meant to humiliate the vice president.
Iceland's prime minister has announced that she would not be around for the visit of US Vice President Mike Pence to her North Atlantic nation.
Katrin Jakobsdottir, of the left-wing, eco-socialist Left-Green party which leads the current coalition government, said “prior commitments” would keep her from meeting with Pence.
She would travel to Sweden's Malmo to give a keynote speech at a conference of the Council of Nordic Trade Unions on 3 September, the day before Pence's scheduled arrival, and does not plan to return to Iceland immediately to meet the vice president.
Speaking to local broadcaster RUV on Tuesday, Jakobsdottir lamented that Pence's visit, organised by Iceland's foreign ministry, “has been bouncing a lot around the calendar” and it was difficult for her to fit it in the schedule.
Mike Pence will travel to Iceland en route to the UK and Ireland to highlight the strategic importance of this tiny nation of just 350,000 people in the Arctic and talk about NATO's efforts to counter Russia in the region.
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