US ENVOY QUITS IN PROTEST OVER TRUMP’S EURO TACK
HELSINKI— The US ambassador to Estonia has resigned over US President Donald Trump’s comments about the European Union and his treatment of Washington’s European allies.
Veteran diplomat James D. Melville announced his resignation as Austria took the helm of the European Union, with the divisive issue of migration on top of its agenda.
“For the President to say EU was ‘set up to take advantage of the United States, to attack our piggy bank,’ or that ‘Nato is as bad as Nafta’ is not only factually wrong, but proves to me that it’s time to go,” Melville wrote in a private message on Facebook.
Melville said a US foreign service officer’s “DNA is programmed to support policy and we’re schooled right from the start, that if there evercomesa pointwhereone can no longer do so, particularly if one is in a position of leadership, the honorable course is to resign.”
“Having served under six presidents and 11 secretaries of state, I never really thought it would reach that point for me,” he wrote, referring to a career with the US Department of State that started in the mid-1980s.
‘Europe that protects’
On Saturday, the US state department also announced that senior US diplomat for Asia Susan Thornton would retire at the end of July in the midst of negotiations with North Korea and China.
Meanwhile, Austrian Chancellor Sebastian Kurz announced that he would adopt “A Europe that protects” as the motto for Vienna’s third time at the European Union’s rotating presidency.
The presidency gives Austria the opportunity to chair meetings and set agendas as the bloc grapples with the continuing migrant influx, management of its borders and other issues such as Brexit.
As well as migration, Kurz’s government will also have to oversee EU budget negotiations and make progress on the enlargement of the bloc.