New German Chancellor
Friedrich Merz will meet US President
Donald Trump at the White House in Washington on Thursday, government spokesman Stefan Kornelius said in Berlin on Saturday.
A meeting between the two leaders at the White House, a joint lunch and a subsequent press event are planned, he said.
This is the first meeting between the two since Merz took office on May 6. Before that, they had only briefly encountered each other many years ago in New York.
Merz will depart for Washington on Wednesday evening after a dinner with the premiers of Germany's 16 federal states in Berlin, Kornelius said. At the state premiers' conference on Thursday, he will be represented his chief of staff, Thorsten Frei, he added.
Trump will have the chancellor stay at his guest house, Blair House, next to the White House - a special honour, Kornelius said.
The talks in Washington are expected to focus on efforts to end the Ukraine war, NATO's response to growing external threats and the trade dispute between the United States and the European Union. However, the main issue is whether the two can establish a good rapport.
Merz and Trump have spoken on the phone several times in recent weeks - once one-to-one and then three times in larger groups with several other European leaders regarding efforts to end the Ukraine war.
Merz now has Trump's mobile phone number and exchanges text messages with him. Since the most recent phone call, they have been addressing each other by their first names, Friedrich and Donald.
The top priority is likely to be efforts to end the war in Ukraine. Merz has positioned himself at the forefront of European powers but has recently expressed frustration over the lack of progress.
In Washington, he will push Trump to increase pressure on Russian President Vladimir Putin to agree to a ceasefire.
The Europeans are preparing another sanctions package, aware that they can only truly have an impact on Putin together with Washington.
"We'll find out whether or not he's tapping us along or not and if he is, we'll respond a little bit differently but it will take about a week and a half to two weeks," Trump said on Wednesday.
He is only held back from imposing new sanctions on Russia by the fact that a deal may be close. "If I think I'm close to getting a deal, I don't want to screw it up by doing that," Trump said.
Whether there will be new talks in Istanbul between Russia and Ukraine before the meeting between Merz and Trump remains open. Talks are planned for Monday, but Kiev has yet to confirm its participation. The Ukrainian president complained at the last talks Putin himself had suggested that he only sent a low-level delegation and did not attend himself.
