Harris to join Western leaders at Munich Security Conference

US Vice President Kamala Harris will meet French President Emmanuel Macron, German Chancellor Olaf Scholz and British Prime Minister Rishi Sunak on the sidelines of the Munich forum to discuss the next steps in supporting Ukraine on the battlefield and efforts to impose costs on Russia, the White House said.

Munich:US Vice President Kamala Harris will join the leaders of France, Germany, the UK and dozens of others Friday at a security conference in Germany to discuss the next steps in supporting Ukraine as the Russian invasion nears its one-year anniversary. For the first time in two decades, Russian leaders were not invited to the Munich Security Conference, a yearly gathering of world leaders, politicians and security experts, which is set to open with a video address by Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy.

Harris is returning to stage at the conference a year after she shared US warnings, just days before the invasion began, that Russia was about to attack its neighbour. In her speech Saturday, the vice president will lay outwhat's at stake in the war and why it matters, to bolster the case for maintaining US support for Ukraine for as long as it takes, the White House said.

Some Republicans in Congress are calling for an end to military and financial aid to Kyiv, and a new poll from The Associated Press-NORC Center for Public Affairs Research shows support among the American public for providing Ukraine weaponry and direct economic assistance has dropped. Harris will meet French President Emmanuel Macron, German Chancellor Olaf Scholz and British Prime Minister Rishi Sunak on the sidelines of the Munich forum to discuss the next steps in supporting Ukraine on the battlefield and efforts to impose costs on Russia, the White House said. She will also have a joint meeting with the prime ministers of Finland and Sweden in which she will underscore Washington's strong support for their applications to join NATO.

The previously military nonaligned Nordic countries rushed to seek NATO membership after the Russian invasion of Ukraine, but their accession has been held up by Turkey, which has put pressure on Sweden in particular to crack down on exiled Kurdish militants and other groups that the Turkish government considers security threats. Hungary also has delayed approving the two Nordic bids. All NATO countries must approve new members in the alliance.

US Secretary of State Antony Blinken is also scheduled to attend the three-day conference. So is China's top diplomat, Wang Yi, which raises the possibility of a meeting between the two weeks after the US shot down a suspected Chinese spy balloon off the coast of South Carolina on February 4. The incident sparked a new crisis in US-China relations and prompted Blinken to cancel a planned visit to Beijing."

"The State Department said earlier this week that no Blinken-Wang meeting was scheduled in Munich, but spokesman Ned Price added that the US is "always assessing options for diplomacy." The conference will bring together about 40 heads of state and government as well as politicians and security experts from almost 100 countries. Besides the Russians, organizers didn't invite officials from Iran due to the bloody crackdown on nationwide anti-government protests in the Islamic Republic. Russian officials were invited but didn't attend last year's conference in Munich, which ended just four days before the invasion of Ukraine started on February 24. (AP)