United States Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice will not be attending the Ministerial Council of the Organisation for Security and Cooperation in Europe this week. Instead, she will go to India.
Rice was to have come to Helsinki on Thursday for the meeting of OSCE foreign ministers. Her programme was to have included a meeting with Prime Minister Matti Vanhanen (Centre).
Rice is on a visit to Europe this week. She met with British Foreign Secretary David Milliband on Monday, and on Tuesday she attends a NATO foreign ministers’ meeting in Brussels.
On Wednesday she will pay a previously unscheduled visit to India, which has been shaken by the recent terror attacks in Mumbai.
The Finnish Foreign Ministry told the Finnish News Agency STT that Secretary of State Rice’s absence would not have much of an impact on the Ministerial Council meeting, as she would only have spent a few hours in Finland.
She was also not scheduled to attend the OSCE working lunch.
Attending the meeting will be ministers and delegations from 56 countries involved in the OSCE.
Nearly 40 foreign ministers are expected to attend, including Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov.
