1ST LEAD Tillerson to skip NATO meeting in Brussels but will travel to Russia By Gretel Johnston and Frank Fuhrig, dpa

Washington (dpa) - US Secretary of State Rex Tillerson will not attend a meeting of NATO foreign ministers next month in Brussels, the State Department confirmed Tuesday.The United States will send Tom Shannon, acting deputy secretary of state, to the meeting on April 5-6. Shannon served in the same role under former secretary of state John Kerry.Tillerson is preparing to meet Wednesday in Washington with representatives of 68 countries in the coalition to defeat Islamic State.State Department spokesman Mark Toner said a representative of each of the other 27 NATO member countries would attend the meeting, and Tillerson expects to meet with all or nearly all of them. He is also expected to meet with NATO Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg at the coalition meeting.Stoltenberg, who met with Defence Secretary James Mattis on Tuesday, declined to answer questions about the impact of Tillerson‘s decision to skip the NATO meeting in Brussels.Though he will skip the NATO ministerial meeting, Tillerson will attend the G7 summit April 10-11 in Italy and then go on to meetings in Russia, a State Department spokesman confirmed to dpa. The spokesman declined to say whether Tillerson would meet with Russian President Vladimir Putin or Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov while in Moscow.Toner said the State Department was not yet ready to make a full announcement on Tillerson‘s trip to Russia, which he said hadn‘t been formally announced.After Stoltenberg‘s meeting at the Pentagon he thanked Mattis for his "strong personal support" for NATO.He noted that Mattis attended a February 15 meeting of NATO members‘ defence chiefs, "when you expressed a strong support for transatlantic unity and transatlantic bond and the NATO alliance, and we are very grateful for that."Stoltenberg called for NATO to be strengthened "in response to the challenges and the unpredictability we see surrounding us today," emphasizing that the alliance is "good for Europe ... but strong NATO is also good for North America."Mattis said that he found "increased unity" at last month‘s meeting in Brussels."Relationships don‘t stay the same. They are always changing," he said, speaking at the Pentagon. "In this case the bond is getting stronger. It‘s built on a legacy of common commitments and common defence, and we never forget that in this building."