By Jarrett Renshaw and Sabine Siebold
WASHINGTON/BERLIN (Reuters) -U.S. President Joe Biden cancelled his upcoming trip to Germany and Angola on Tuesday in a blow to plans for the highest level meeting ever of the Ramstein group of Ukraine arms donors that aimed to underscore unwavering support for Kyiv.
The Ramstein group was set to meet at the highest level on the sidelines of Biden's Oct. 10-13 state visit to Germany, which would have been the first U.S. state visit in nearly 40 years.
But the White House said Biden was postponing his trip to both Germany and Angola to handle preparations for Hurricane Milton and relief efforts after Hurricane Helene which last month killed more than 200 people.
"I just don't think I can be out of the country at this time," Biden said, adding that he hoped to reschedule the trip "and all the conferences I said I'd participate in".
A spokeswoman for the German president said his office was in talks with U.S. colleagues to find a suitable alternative date in the "near future".
The administration's response to Hurricane Helene, the deadliest named storm to hit the mainland U.S. since Hurricane Katrina in 2005, has already become a point of contention in a tight race ahead of November's presidential election.
Biden and his Vice President Kamala Harris, the Democrats' presidential nominee, have come under fire from Republican challenger and former President Donald Trump for not immediately surveying damage on the ground - though they made clear they didn't want to cause a distraction.
The German government said it regretted the cancellation but understood the reasoning. It did not respond to a question about whether or not the Ramstein meeting would go ahead without Biden.
"While Biden's decision is understandable, it risks cementing the impression that the United States is too pre-occupied with itself to be a reliable partner," Marcel Dirsus of Kiel University's Institute for Security Policy.
"That could embolden America's adversaries, most notably Russia."
RAMSTEIN OVER?
After Russia's full-scale invasion of Ukraine in 2022, Washington gathered like-minded nations at the U.S. air base in Ramstein, southwestern Germany, establishing a group of some 50 nations whose defence ministers meet regularly to match Kyiv's arms requests with pledges of donors.
Saturday's meeting - the first at the level of leaders - had been scheduled to open with public remarks by Biden, Ukraine's President Volodymyr Zelenskiy and Chancellor Olaf Scholz, according to a German official, speaking to reporters on condition of anonymity.
French President Emmanuel Macron, British Prime Minister Keir Starmer and Polish President Andrzej Duda were also scheduled to attend.
"The message to Ukraine will be that our support is powerful and enduring, and to Moscow that there's no use in speculating that we might waver in our support and that time will play for the Russian war of aggression," the German official said.
Germany had expected some 20 leaders to travel to Ramstein where Zelenskiy was set to present his "victory plan" which he describes as clear, specific steps for a just end to the war.
A U.S. official however has characterized the plan as a repackaged request for more weapons and a lifting of restrictions on the use of long-range missiles.
The German official reiterated Scholz's readiness for talks with Russian President Vladimir Putin, provided that they offer a prospect for progress on the way to a just and sustainable peace, but warned Russia to not interpret this as weakness.
Putin said in June that Moscow would end the war only if Kyiv agreed to hand over all of four regions claimed by Moscow and to drop its ambitions to join NATO. Kyiv rejected those demands as tantamount to surrender.
(Reporting by Sabine Siebold, Sarah Marsh and Andreas Rinke in Berlin and Jarrett Renshaw and Katharine Jackson in Washington; additional reporting by Alan Charlish in WarsawEditing by Miranda Murray, Christina Fincher and Ros Russell)
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