by admin | May 25, 2021 | World
Singapore : US President Donald Trump and North Korean leader Kim Jong-un signed a “comprehensive” document at the end of their historic summit here on Tuesday, vowing to forge a new partnership and reverse decades of American policy toward the rogue regime.
The content of the agreement was not immediately clear although both sides touted it as a significant achievement, reports The New Straits Times.
“Today we had a very historic meeting, overcoming our past history and embarking on a new beginning… The world will see a major change,” Kim said before leaving for the St. Regis hotel after the summit.
Trump said he had invited Kim to the White House.
The summit took place at the British colonial style Capella Hotel in Sentosa Island, a tourist paradise.
Kim and Trump became the first leaders of their countries to ever come face to face. Trump said the US relationship with North Korea will be different from the past.
“We’re both going to do something, and we’ve developed a very special bond… We’re going to take care of a very big and dangerous problem for the rest of the world.
“It worked out far better for both of us than anybody could have expected,” he added.
When asked about denuclearisation, Trump said: “We are starting the process very quickly.”
In response to a question on whether the two leaders will meet again, Trump said: “We’ll meet again, we’ll meet many times.”
He said the two leaders learned a lot about each other since they shared a historic handshake for the first time earlier this morning.
Trump described Kim as a “very worthy, very smart negotiator”.
During the signing ceremony, the two leaders sat side by side at an expansive wooden table decorated with white flowers and were flanked on either side by American and North Korean flags, The new Straits Times reported.
The signing came after a one on one meeting between Kim and Trump which was followed by an expanded bilateral meeting with their aides and a working lunch.
They even went for a stroll.
Before the signing, Kim said the summit was a “great prelude to peace”.
“Of course there will be difficulties along the way, but as of today, a day that a good start has been made, I am determined to start a grand undertaking together,” he added.
They began their summit in a carefully choreographed encounter at 9 a.m. The two leaders then shared a 12-second handshake against a backdrop of American and North Korean flags.
They reached Singapore on Sunday followed by their individual meetings with Prime Minister Lee Hsien Loong.
Trump and Kim will depart Singapore later on Tuesday.
The summit, which was almost scrapped by a mercurial Trump last month, comes after a flurry of diplomatic activities and barrage of invective and insults traded between the US President and an equally aggressive Kim.
It also marks a diplomatic landmark between the two countries with a long history of tense ties.
The 1950-53 Korean War ended without an official peace treaty. Previous US Presidents have made several attempts to get Pyongyang to give up its nuclear weapons, without success.
Two major diplomatic efforts – an agreement in 1994 and the six-party talks in the 2000s – were ultimately abandoned, with both sides either failing to agree or accusing the other of not abiding by the terms of the agreements.
—IANS
by admin | May 25, 2021 | World
By Barry Ellsworth,
Trenton, Canada: The aftermath of the G7 Summit was rife with strife Sunday, with American economic director Larry Kudlow saying Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau “stabbed us in the back”.
According to media reports, Canadian officials have been mystified by the attack on Trudeau by both Kudlow and U.S. President Donald Trump, since at a press conference after the summit ended Saturday, the prime minister used the same language as he had all week.
Regarding metal tariffs imposed by Trump for national security reasons, Trudeau repeated an earlier statement that the reason was “insulting” to Canadians who had fought and died alongside Americans in battlefields around the globe.
Trudeau also said Canada “will not be pushed around” byt its mighty U.S. neighbor.
Trump had appeared cordial during the two-day summit in Quebec, but he erupted with a Twitter firestorm of criticism of Trudeau once aboard Air Force One.
He described Trudeau as “meek” and “dishonest” and rescinded his earlier promise to sign the communique traditionally issued following G7 summits.
Trump also called for Canada to drop all trade tariffs, such as the one designed to protect Canada’s small dairy industry, and threatened more trade action if Canada did not acquiesce.
The brouhaha evaporated any goodwill that had been fostered between the U.S. and its allies at the G7.
In other developments at the two-day summit, Trudeau told Trump there would be no North American Free Trade Agreement unless the U.S. dropped its tariffs on steel and aluminum.
As promised on its agenda as G7 host country, Canada announced CAN$400 million (a little over $300 million) to help educate girls in poor countries, including the Rohingya. Other countries and organizations chipped in financially to bring the fund to CAN$3.8 billion ($2.94 billion) . The only G7 country that did not contribute was the U.S.
Trump left the summit after breakfast Saturday to fly to Singapore to prepare for his meeting with North Korean leader Kim Jong-un.
As a result, the U.S. did not participate in discussions designed to tackle climate change and the removal of plastics from the world’s oceans.
The G7 members are Canada, the U.S., U.K. Germany, Italy, Japan and France.
—AA
by admin | May 25, 2021 | Business Summit, Events, Social Round-up, World
Quebec (Canada) : Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau and US President Donald Trump discussed accelerating the North American Free Trade Association (NAFTA) talks during a bilateral meeting at the ongoing G7 summit here.
“The Prime Minister and the President had a very positive, productive meeting and it lasted longer than originally scheduled,” CBC News quoted a senior Candian government official as saying on Friday.
“They did discuss NAFTA at length and they discussed the future of NAFTA, and I would say they also talked about accelerating the talks.”
Speaking after the meeting with Trudeau, Trump said he had a positive meeting with the Canadians during which NAFTA was the principal topic of discussion.
“We had a very positive meeting a little while ago on NAFTA. So this is turning out to be an interesting day. But we had a very, very good meeting on NAFTA with Justin and his representatives,” Trump said.
The reportedly positive tone of the leaders’ one-on-one meeting stood in stark contrast to a week of increasingly testy public statements by Trump, following Canada’s announcement last week that it would impose $16.6 billion in tariffs against US products on July 1 in retaliation against the American tariffs on Canadian steel and aluminium.
Trump’s only other bilateral meeting on Friday was with his French counterpart Emmanuel Macron, CBC News reported.
Like Trudeau, Trump has sparred publicly with Macron on Twitter over what the US President calls unfair trade deals that impoverish American interests to the benefit of its allies.
But on the tariffs, the leaders sounded a bit optimistic on Friday.
“We had a very direct and open discussion,” Macron told reporters Friday of his one-on-one with Trump.
“And I saw the willingness on all the sides to find agreements and have a win-win approach for our people, our workers, and our middle classes.”
Besides the bilateral meetings, the G7 leaders took part in two working groups where discussion of trade was front and centre.
Before leaving for the summit, Trump called for reinstating Russia into the group of top industrialised nations after its expulsion for annexing Crimea, reports the BBC.
But German Chancellor Angela Merkel said all the European Union members were against the idea.
Trump will the two-day summit early to head to Singapore for his landmark summit with North Korean leader Kim Jong-un.
—IANS
by admin | May 25, 2021 | World
Washington : US President Donald Trump said that he was considering posthumously pardoning the late boxer Muhammad Ali, who was convicted in 1967 after refusing military service in Vietnam.
“I’m thinking about Muhammad Ali. I’m thinking about that very seriously and some others,” Trump said on Friday while speaking to reporters at the White House before departing for the G7 summit in Quebec, Canada.
Trump said that the legendary boxer is just one of 3,000 names he’s considering pardoning, because “many of those names really have been treated unfairly”.
Ali’s attorney, Ron Tweel, told CNN later on Friday that there was no contact whatsoever between anyone in the Trump administration and members of the Ali family about the issue.
“So, it’s not like for weeks or days the administration has reached out to the Ali family. None of that,” he told CNN.
“This was all spontaneous and I think, as a lot of people like to say, impulsive.”
In an earlier statement, Tweel said that although he appreciated Trump’s sentiment, a “pardon is unnecessary”.
“The US Supreme Court overturned the conviction of Muhammad Ali in a unanimous decision in 1971. There is no conviction from which a pardon is needed,” he said.
In June 1967, Ali was convicted in federal court for violating selective service laws refusing the Vietnam War draft.
He was stripped of his World Boxing Association heavyweight title, his passport and all his boxing licenses. He was fined $10,000 and faced a five-year sentence in prison.
The Supreme Court unanimously overturned his violation conviction in a unanimous ruling on June 28, 1971, and after anti-war sentiment grew, a judge ruled in 1970 that Ali could box professionally again.
Ali died in 2016 after a battle with Parkinson’s disease.
Since being in office, Trump has granted five pardons and commuted one sentence.
—IANS
by admin | May 25, 2021 | World
Washington : US President Donald Trump on Wednesday reproached Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau, claiming that Canada burned the White House in the War of 1812, although that was actually done by British troops, media reports said.
According to a CNN reported, citing unnamed sources, during a May 25 telephone call to discuss US tariffs on Canadian steel and aluminum, Trudeau asked Trump how he could use national security to justify imposing the tariffs.
“Didn’t you guys burn down the White House?” Trump reportedly responded in what was an overall “testy” conversation.
Since Trump announced that he was weighing the possibility of imposing tariffs on steel and aluminum imports — although he temporarily agreed to exclude the European Union, Australia, Argentina, Brazil, Canada, South Korea and Mexico — the White House has taken the stance that it was being done on the basis of national security.
The justification for that argument, however, has been called into question both by experts and other leaders, Efe reported.
In fact, during an interview last weekend – and with the tariffs already in place – Trudeau said it was “inconceivable” that the Trump administration could suspect Canada, one of Washington’s closest allies over many decades, of posing a national security threat to the US, adding at a press conference that suggesting such a thing was an “affront” to Canada.
When asked whether he simply took Trump’s comment as some sort of “joke,” the Canadian leader said “To the degree one can ever take what is said as a joke. The impact on Canada and ultimately on workers in the US won’t be a laughing matter.”
Regarding the burning of the White House on Aug. 24, 1814, in fact it was British troops who – after invading Washington in the War of 1812 – burned several federal buildings including the White House and the US Capitol.
Canada was still a British colony – and thus did not exist as an independent country – at the time and the British occupation of Washington came in response to an American attack on the city of York, Ontario.
This is not the first time that Trump has made a comment that riled the Canadians. In March, he boasted before television cameras that he had lied to Trudeau by claiming that Washington has a trade deficit with its northern neighbor.
—IANS
