HELSINGBORG — Secretary of State Marco Rubio will attend a NATO foreign ministers meeting in Helsingborg, Sweden, on Friday before traveling to India, the State Department said. The gathering is one of the last senior-level NATO meetings before alliance leaders convene at a summit in Ankara, Turkey, in July.

In Sweden, Rubio will echo U.S. demands for increased defense investment and greater burden sharing in the alliance, the department said. He will also focus on Arctic issues and meet with NATO's Arctic members to discuss shared economic and security interests in the Arctic and a strengthened posture in the High North.

After the NATO meeting, Rubio will travel to India, with planned stops in Kolkata, Agra, Jaipur and New Delhi. In New Delhi, he is expected to meet with his Indian, Australian and Japanese counterparts.

The trip follows other overseas travel by Rubio this year. He was dispatched to the Munich Security Conference in February and visited Italy, where he met with Italian officials and Pope Francis.

The Helsingborg meeting will take place as the alliance works through questions about the U.S. force posture in Europe. Trump announced that 5,000 American troops would leave the continent without coordinating with NATO allies, despite U.S. commitments to coordinate military moves with its allies and avoid security gaps. The Pentagon said it would draw down thousands of troops in Europe by canceling deployments to Poland and Germany rather than withdrawing forces already stationed there.