TAORMINA: US President Donald Trump, fresh from scolding Europe over military spending, slammed “bad” behaviour in trade by Germany as acrimony dogged the start of annual G7 summit talks on Friday.
The controversy threatened to undermine a show of unity by the world’s richest democracies against terrorism, after 22 people were killed in the Manchester concert bombing this week.
Unusually for such a set piece event, leaders gave up any pretence of papering over their divisions as they opened the two-day summit in Sicily’s ancient hilltop resort of Taormina, which the Italian hosts had hoped would showcase cooperation against deadly flows of illegal migration from nearby Africa.
“There is no doubt that this will be the most challenging G7 summit in years,” European Union President Donald Tusk said.
The meeting comes days after an eight-year-old girl was among those killed in Manchester, northwest England, by a homegrown suicide bomber. Four more of the victims were aged 14 or 15.
British Prime Minister Theresa May was to issue a call for G7 countries to put more pressure on Internet companies to ensure extremist content is quickly taken offline and notified to authorities.
With the IS group on the retreat in Iraq and Syria, “the fight is moving from the battlefield to the Internet”, May was to tell her colleagues, aides said, before flying home early to oversee the ongoing “critical” security situation in Britain.
US officials acknowledged they were expecting a difficult discussion on trade after reports that Trump had described the Germans as “bad, very bad” and vowed to stop them selling millions of cars in the United States, during a meeting with senior EU officials in Brussels.
Both US and EU officials confirmed the outspoken president had raised the auto trade issue but sought to play down the language used, as Trump shared friendly words with German Chancellor Angela Merkel and other leaders heading into the G7 gathering.
White House economic adviser Gary Cohn said that trade would be a “big topic” overall after Trump rode to power on an “America First” platform of protectionism.
With May and Trump among four new faces in the G7 club, the gathering in Italy was billed as a key test of how serious the new US administration is about implementing its radical policy agenda, particularly on climate change. Senior officials are preparing to work overtime in a bid to bridge what appear to be irreconcilable differences over Trump’s declared intention of ditching the US commitment to the landmark Paris accord on curbing carbon emissions.
Officials acknowledge the summit is effectively about damage limitation against a backdrop of fears among US partners that the Trump presidency could undermine the international order in place since World War II.
For Trump, the talks will be the final leg of his first presidential foray overseas. US officials had hoped the globe-trotting trip would enable Trump to position himself as a more statesmanlike figure and he enjoyed largely positive coverage on his stops in Saudi Arabia, Israel and the Palestinian territories, and at the Vatican.
But some of that has been undone by now-viral images of the billionaire tycoon shoving his way past other leaders at a Nato summit in Brussels on Thursday, and by his reported comments on Germany.
The other new face is France’s youthful President Emmanuel Macron, who has vowed to defend the Paris climate change deal.
Japan meanwhile was using the summit to air its concerns about North Korea. Meeting Prime Minister Shinzo Abe in Sicily, Trump bullishly promised the problem posed by North Korea’s missile and nuclear programmes “will be solved”.
— Reuters
Oman Observer is now on the WhatsApp channel. Click here
