NATO seminar canceled as US objects to anti-Trump speaker

TALLINN, Estonia (AP) — The Danish Atlantic Council says it has canceled a U.S. government-sponsored seminar on NATO and transatlantic relations after the U.S. Embassy in Denmark allegedly banned an American academic known for being critical of President Donald Trump from speaking there.

The Danish organisation said Sunday in a statement that “regrettably” the U.S. ambassador to Denmark, Carla Sands, “did not want Mr. (Stanley) Sloan’s participation” in the event that the U.S. government was co-organizing and sponsoring.

Sloan, a senior fellow with the Atlantic Council in the U.S., was among several invited speakers for the “Celebrating NATO’s 70th Anniversary” conference scheduled in Copenhagen’s Frederiksberg Palace on Tuesday.

Lars Bangert Struwe, the head of the Danish Atlantic Council, said “we have all the time known that Mr. Sloan has a critical approach towards President Donald Trump. It is no secret — especially when following his Twitter and Facebook profile.” He added, however, that the organisation never doubted that Sloan would deliver “unpolitical and objective lecture.”

The U.S. Embassy said on its Twitter account that the “proposed last-minute inclusion” of Sloan into the conference did not comply with the “agreement that we followed when recruiting all other speakers.”

In his Twitter reply, Sloan said he was sorry that the U.S. Embassy objected to his inclusion, since he was “an experienced public diplomacy lecturer who always represents his country well.”

The State Department did not immediately comment on the situation.