German Chancellor Angela Merkel yesterday appeared headed for a collision course with US President Donald Trump after vowing to make a stand next week for climate protection and open markets at what is expected to be the most fractious G20 summit in years.
Discussions at the gathering of world leaders in Hamburg, Germany, on Friday and Saturday next week would be difficult given Trump’s climate skepticism and “America first” stance, Merkel said, but added that she was determined to seek a clear commitment for the Paris accord against global warming and a pledge against protectionism.
When Trump earlier this month announced that he would withdraw the US from the Paris deal, “we knew that we could not expect discussions to be easy” at the G20 summit, Merkel told the German legislature.
Photo: AP
“The differences are obvious and it would be dishonest to try to cover that up. That I won’t do,” she said, adding that the US’ exit from the 2015 Paris pact had made Europe “more determined than ever” to make the accord a success.
Without naming names, she also warned that “those who think that the problems of this world can be solved with isolationism or protectionism are terribly wrong” and pledged to seek a “clear signal for open markets and against sealing off” at the summit.
Trump’s divergent stance has left Western allies struggling to find a common front for the G20 gathering — unlike previous summits, when differences were drawn along global north-south and east-west lines.
With Russian President Vladimir Putin, Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan and Saudi Arabian King Salman in the volatile mix for the power meet, the list of potential minefield issues also includes the Syrian war, the Ukraine conflict and the diplomatic shutout of Qatar.
Trump’s anti-immigration stance has also emboldened many of the EU’s formerly communist members in the east, which have staunchly opposed Merkel’s pleas to accept larger shares of the refugees who have flocked to Europe.
With the fault lines multiplying, Merkel was later yesterday to meet with her western European allies to draw up a common battle strategy.
Besides the transatlantic differences, “there is also a new European division growing between east and west,” said Jean-Dominique Giuliani, president of the Fondation Robert Schuman, a Paris-based think tank.
The problems were buried when wealthier EU members supported the east with “financial flows towards central and eastern Europe,” he said, adding that “they are reappearing again on the question of refugees.”
Threatening to deepen divisions, Trump will head to Warsaw for a summit of central and eastern European leaders, likely to include Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orban, a day before the G20 summit.
European affairs online journal Euractiv warned that “as some EU countries shun him and others welcome him with open arms, Trump could become the wedge that drives the union apart.”
Even Merkel’s European guests — the leaders of G20 members France, Britain and Italy, as well as the Netherlands, Spain and Norway — have significantly different relationships with Trump.
British Prime Minister Theresa May, who is leading her country out of the EU, has been derided at home for seeking to curry favor with the US leader after she invited him for a state visit that sparked a national outcry.
French President Emmanuel Macron, who had been dubbed an anti-Trump by some for his strong pushback against Trump’s climate stance, this week invited the US president to attend Bastille Day celebrations.
“With Macron, France is back, there is a rebalancing that was necessary with the relationship with Germany,” Giuliani said.
Ahead of the meeting, German Minister for Foreign Affairs Sigmar Gabriel said it was important for Europe to face up to the US confidently.
“The German government does not have an anti-US strategy, but in America, there are strategists who are planning an anti-Europe, anti-German agenda,” he said. “We do not want to forcefully separate the US from Europe, but what we don’t want either is to appear like an appendage of US policies.”
MONEY MATTERS: Xi was to highlight projects such as a new high-speed railway between Belgrade and Budapest, as Serbia is entirely open to Chinese trade and investment Serbian President Aleksandar Vucic yesterday said that “Taiwan is China” as he made a speech welcoming Chinese President Xi Jinping (習近平) to Belgrade, state broadcaster Radio Television of Serbia (RTS) said. “We have a clear and simple position regarding Chinese territorial integrity,” he told a crowd outside the government offices while Xi applauded him. “Yes, Taiwan is China.” Xi landed in Belgrade on Tuesday night on the second leg of his European tour, and was greeted by Vucic and most government ministers. Xi had just completed a two-day trip to France, where he held talks with French President Emmanuel Macron as the
With the midday sun blazing, an experimental orange and white F-16 fighter jet launched with a familiar roar that is a hallmark of US airpower, but the aerial combat that followed was unlike any other: This F-16 was controlled by artificial intelligence (AI), not a human pilot, and riding in the front seat was US Secretary of the Air Force Frank Kendall. AI marks one of the biggest advances in military aviation since the introduction of stealth in the early 1990s, and the US Air Force has aggressively leaned in. Even though the technology is not fully developed, the service is planning
INTERNATIONAL PROBE: Australian and US authorities were helping coordinate the investigation of the case, which follows the 2015 murder of Australian surfers in Mexico Three bodies were found in Mexico’s Baja California state, the FBI said on Friday, days after two Australians and an American went missing during a surfing trip in an area hit by cartel violence. Authorities used a pulley system to hoist what appeared to be lifeless bodies covered in mud from a shaft on a cliff high above the Pacific. “We confirm there were three individuals found deceased in Santo Tomas, Baja California,” a statement from the FBI’s office in San Diego, California, said without providing the identities of the victims. Australian brothers Jake and Callum Robinson and their American friend Jack Carter
CUSTOMS DUTIES: France’s cognac industry was closely watching the talks, fearing that an anti-dumping investigation opened by China is retaliation for trade tensions French President Emmanuel Macron yesterday hosted Chinese President Xi Jinping (習近平) at one of his beloved childhood haunts in the Pyrenees, seeking to press a message to Beijing not to support Russia’s war against Ukraine and to accept fairer trade. The first day of Xi’s state visit to France, his first to Europe since 2019, saw respectful, but sometimes robust exchanges between the two men during a succession of talks on Monday. Macron, joined initially by EU Commission President Ursula von der Leyen, urged Xi not to allow the export of any technology that could be used by Russia in its invasion