For the second time in seven months at the White House, for a conversation with Joe Biden.
Then to Toronto for the bilateral meeting with Justin Trudeau.
Overseas weekend for Giorgia Meloni, who as rotating president of the G7 continues her visit to the group's capitals in view of the June summit in Puglia.
The face-to-face meetings with the leaders of the United States (Saturday) and Canada (Sunday) - as Italian sources explain - will serve to share the priorities of the G7: the defense of the international system based on the force of law and continuous support for Ukraine, the conflict in the Middle East, with its consequences on the global agenda, the priority attention towards Africa, with the aim of building a partnership model beneficial to all (the recipe of the Mattei Plan, in short), the continuous attention to the region of the Indo-Pacific, the importance of migration issues and Artificial Intelligence.
Although included in the agenda only at a later time, the highlight of the trip is the appointment in the Oval Office (Saturday at 1pm, when in Italy it will be 7pm), which has always been a very important step for every tenant of Palazzo Chigi.
Meloni will have a US president in the running towards Super Tuesday, the Tuesday (this year it falls next week) in which the Republican and Democratic challengers for the White House emerge.
The two discussed Ukraine a few days ago in the G7 video conference, which revealed the US pressure to unlock Russian assets frozen in the West, to be used to support Kiev.
A dynamic about which there is more caution in Europe, even if this direction has just been confirmed by the G7 Finance Ministers in Sao Paulo.
Within a week, Ramadan will begin, and we are waiting to see whether Israel's ceasefire on Gaza, evoked in recent days by Biden himself, will materialize.
At the White House we will also talk about the situation in the Red Sea, where the United States leads the anti-Houthi coalition and Italy has the current tactical command of the European Aspides mission, but is awaiting the parliamentary green light to move.
Topics that intersect with one of the most delicate dossiers on the table, the next NATO summit, in July in Washington, which will choose the new secretary general to replace Jens Stoltenberg.
One topic on which it will be interesting to measure alignment is AI.
Meloni put it at the top of the G7 agenda (geopolitical crises aside), pushing to define ethical barriers at a global level for the evolutions of generative artificial intelligence.
Containing risks and exploiting potential is also Washington's objective: there is no shortage of initiatives in this sense, but the tendency is not to place too many constraints on companies that develop the most powerful systems, focusing instead on the need to share vital information with the US government.
Although not on the formal agenda, among the bilateral topics it is not excluded that the case of Chico Forti be discussed, convicted in 2000 in Miami for a murder of which he proclaims himself innocent, and who requests to be transferred to Italy.
A battle supported by Meloni since he was in opposition.
From Washington, Meloni will then fly to Canada on Saturday to meet the prime minister.
Not in the capital Ottawa, as happens most of the time, but in Toronto, where there is one of the largest communities of Italian origins.
Apart from bilateral issues, the topics of the conversation with Trudeau, which Meloni has just met in Kiev, will be more or less identical, after the meeting on the sidelines of the UN Assembly in September 2023 and the one four months earlier on the sidelines of the G7 of Hiroshima, when the Canadian surprised his interlocutor by expressing concern "for some of the positions that Italy is taking in terms of LGBTQ+ rights".
A topic that is not mentioned this time in the presentation of the bilateral agreement by Canada, which at the end of the year will receive the baton from Italy as rotating president of the G7 in 2025.
Reproduction reserved © Copyright ANSA