Cameron snubbed by US speaker over Ukraine aid
DAVID Cameron was snubbed by the speaker of the US House of Representatives after asking to discuss Ukraine aid on his trip to Washington.
Mike Johnson, a staunch ally of Donald Trump who has refused to table a vote on a bill that would send $60 billion of weapons shipments to Kyiv, reportedly claimed he could not find time in his diary for a sit-down with the Foreign Secretary yesterday.
Lord Cameron was in the US for talks with former President Donald Trump on Monday and with his US counterpart, Antony Blinken, yesterday. The discussions with Mr Blinken centred on what can be done to help Palestinians if the Israel Defence Forces (IDF) invade Rafah, in southern Gaza.
The meeting came after hopes were dashed of a breakthrough in peace negotiations, six months after Hamas’s deadly terrorist attack on Israel prompted reprisals that have killed tens of thousands of Palestinians.
Egyptian and Qatari mediators handed Hamas the proposal which called for a temporary pause in hostilities, to get Israeli hostages out of Gaza and aid in, before both sides negotiate a lasting peace.
But an official from the terror group said: ‘The Israeli position remains intransigent and it didn’t meet any of the demands of our people.’
Speaking at a press conference yesterday, Lord Cameron said the West is drawing up a ‘Plan B’ if a ceasefire cannot be agreed.
He said: ‘We have a clear Plan A for how we bring this conflict to an end. We have a temporary pause, we turn that into a sustainable ceasefire.
‘But we have to think about what is Plan B... I think that’s something we are going to have to be looking at and we were talking about today.’
Lord Cameron met former President Donald Trump in Florida on Monday at Mr Trump’s Mar-a-Lago resort inb Palm Beach. The Foreign Secretary became the first UK minister to meet Mr Trump since his dramatic departure from the White House three years ago.
The pair discussed Ukraine aid, the upcoming elections in the UK and US, NATO, Brexit – and their admiration for the late Queen.
Lord Cameron is expected to have been rebuffed in his lobbying, however, as the Republican presidential candidate is strongly opposed to giving Kyiv more money.
Their meeting is likely to have difficult, as Lord Cameron has made a string of critical comments about Mr Trump over the years.
In his memoirs, published in 2019, he said Mr Trump had won the Republican nomination because of his ‘protectionist, xenophobic, misogynistic interventions’.