US Vice President Kamala Harris will be embarking on her next set of overseas engagements next week. In her upcoming trip to Paris, Harris seeks to strengthen the recently mended relations between the US and France.
Harris will be traveling to France next week, where she will meet with French President Emmanuel Macron and attend a series of international conferences. The vice president will likely make further efforts to strengthen the recently mended relationship between the two countries. A diplomatic crisis occurred when France was blindsided by the alliance between the US, the UK, and Australia.
“The key message for this meeting is the importance of this relationship and the fact that US-French partnership matters to the world,” said a senior administration official.
Harris will sit down for a meeting with Macron at the Elysee Palace on Wednesday. Following the meeting, Harris will be delivering remarks at the Paris Peace Forum as well as attending a multilateral conference on Libya. Harris would be the most senior US official to attend the Paris Peace Forum since 2018, but French officials did not say whether her attendance at the forum was part of the efforts to mend relations between the two countries.
Prior to Harris’s visit, US President Joe Biden met with Macron on the sidelines of the G20 summit, where both leaders were in attendance. Biden sought to make amends over the recent deal that was believed to be an effort to counter China in the region.
A Biden administration official told CNN that Harris and Macron are expected to discuss a wide range of issues, including US-France relations, European security, the Indo-Pacific region, and health, among other topics.
In other related news, Politico reports that the Justice Department is moving to correct a mistake made by the agency on Harris’s whereabouts when the Capitol insurrection took place on January 6. The record so far stated that then-vice president-elect Harris was among the lawmakers who had to flee for safety from the mob of supporters of twice-impeached former President Donald Trump.
However, the DOJ clarified the record stating that Harris was away from the Capitol when the siege happened. Harris only returned later to cast the votes that certified her election victory.