Rows threaten to derail ‘toughest G7 in years’
TAORMINA, Italy: G7 leaders met yesterday with divisions on trade and climate change, and fresh friction surrounding Donald Trump, threatening to undermine a show of unity against jihadist terrorism.
“There is no doubt that this will be the most challenging G7 summit in years,” European Union president Donald Tusk predicted, setting the tone for the two-day meet in Sicily’s ancient hilltop resort of Taormina.
The meeting comes days after children were among 22 people killed in a concert bomb attack in Manchester.
British Prime Minister Theresa May was to lead a discussion on terrorism with her aides saying she would 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 Islamic State group on the retreat in Iraq and Syria, “the fight is moving from the battlefield to the Internet”, May was expected to tell her colleagues 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 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 on Thursday.
There was no immediate US reaction to the reports, based on leaks to German media, but European Commission president Jean-Claude Juncker confirmed Trump had raised the issue.
“He did not say the Germans were behaving bad. He said we have a problem,” Juncker told reporters, while insisting Trump “was not aggressive at all”.
Trump’s economic advisor Gary Cohn told reporters travelling to Sicily with the president that trade would be a “big topic”.
“We are going to continue to fight for what we believe is right, which is free, open and fair trade, which the president has been very clear on what that means. We will have a very robust discussion on trade,” Cohn said. — AFP