According to the news channel’s official source, the meeting would be of a joint Nordic nature.
President of the United States Joe Biden is considering a visit to Finland, says the American NBC News (switch to another service). The news channel’s information is based on three US official sources.
According to NBC, the White House has been discussing the visit for several months, but no final decision has been made yet. According to one administrative official, the visit to Finland would not be a one-on-one meeting, but a meeting between several Nordic countries.
According to the news channel’s sources, a possible visit could take place in the summer in connection with the NATO summit. The meeting will be held in the capital of Lithuania, Vilnius, on the 11th-12th. July.
According to the officials, the visit to Finland would especially be an opportunity to emphasize the achievement that Biden was glowing about this week in keeping NATO united and getting Finland a member. Biden has often said that the Russian president Vladimir Putin expected to see the Finnishization of NATO, but instead it was the natoization of Finland.
The US National Security Council declined to comment to NBC.
Biden would be the sixth US president in Finland
If Joe Biden arrives in Finland, he would become the sixth US president who has visited Finland during his term of office. Biden was vice president in Finland in March 2011.
Gerald Ford was the first US president to visit Finland. Ford was in Finland in connection with the European Security and Cooperation Conference ETYK in July-August 1975. Ronald Reagan on the other hand, he visited Finland in May 1988.
George HW Bush visited Finland as president no less than twice. First in September 1990, when he met the then leader of the Soviet Union Mikhail Gorbachev in Helsinki. The second time Bush arrived in Finland as president was in July 1992. Bush was also vice president in Finland in July 1983.
Bill Clinton arrived in Finland in March 1997 and met the then president of Russia in Helsinki Boris Yeltsin. In 2018 Donald Trump visited Finland in turn and met the President of Russia Vladimir Putin.