Secretary of State Mike Pompeo is on a week-long trip to Europe where he is raising sensitive issues with national leaders — from Iranian missiles to Chinese technology to the economic collapse of Venezuela — but the most colorful conversations could take place this weekend out of public earshot in a secretive conclave at a Swiss lakeside resort.
In Montreux, on the eastern shore of Lake Geneva, political and business leaders from Western nations are gathering for the 67th Bilderberg Meeting, an annual forum in which participants agree not to reveal exactly what was said or who said it. It is a shadow version of Davos, the elite annual winter conference in the Swiss Alps that President Trump has attended once but has also criticized.
The State Department has not even put the Bilderberg Meeting on Mr. Pompeo’s public schedule, though a senior official confirmed he was attending Saturday.
Mr. Pompeo landed in Zurich on Friday afternoon after a morning of meetings with German leaders in Berlin, then took a helicopter to Bern, where he spoke at a gathering of department employees at the United States Embassy. Mr. Pompeo was traveling with his wife, Susan.
“Big cheese and chocolate fan,” Mr. Pompeo joked to reporters on the airplane Thursday when someone asked about the three-night stop in Switzerland.
No doubt those culinary treats will be on hand at venues in Montreux, to fuel discussion on 11 central topics now hotly debated in countries around the globe: the future of capitalism, the weaponization of social media, artificial intelligence, Brexit, China, Russia and so on.
Jared Kushner, Mr. Trump’s son-in-law and Middle East adviser, is another top administration official planning to attend. The 130 or so participants also include King Willem-Alexander of the Netherlands; Stacey Abrams, the American politician; Henry Kissinger, the former senior American foreign policy official; Eric Schmidt, the former chief executive of Google; and David H. Petraeus, the retired general. Some top bank executives are on the list, too.
On at least one subject, climate change, many of the participants are expected to have radically different views than Mr. Pompeo. In early May, the American secretary, speaking at a meeting of the Arctic Council in Finland, praised the changes caused by the melting of ice in the Arctic Circle.
“Steady reductions in sea ice are opening new passageways and new opportunities for trade,” Mr. Pompeo said, while noting the abundance of undiscovered oil and gas, uranium, rare-earth minerals, coal, diamonds and fisheries in the Arctic.
Mr. Pompeo and the Trump administration have also found themselves at odds with European nations on Iran. Mr. Trump withdrew from a nuclear deal that world powers reached with Iran in 2015, but European governments still abide by the accord and have urged Iran to stay in.
In fact, it was at Lake Geneva, in the city of Lausanne, that American negotiators led by Mr. Pompeo’s predecessor John Kerry worked with foreign officials to complete the 2015 deal.
The current split between the Trump administration and Europeans became apparent again on Friday, when Mr. Pompeo met in Berlin with Heiko Maas, the German foreign minister.
“It’s no secret that we have differences with regard to the right approach to pursue,” Mr. Maas said at a news conference afterward.
Mr. Pompeo said he also urged Mr. Maas to ban Hezbollah, the Lebanese military and political group supported by Iran, from Germany, as Britain did this year. Tensions between the United States and Iran have soared since early May, when the Trump administration first announced military movements to counter Iran.
The New York Times
