TRUMP FOR ADDING INDIA TO G7 GROUPING

WASHINGTON: President Donald Trump sought to expand the G7 to include India, Australia, South Korea and Russia, as he postponed the group’s summit the US is hosting to September or November.

“I’m postponing it because I don’t feel that as a G7 it properly represents what’s going on in the world,” Trump told reporters on Air Force One on the way back from the historic launch of the first manned mission into space by SpaceX. “It’s a very outdated group of countries.”

“We want Australia, we want India, we want South Korea. And what do we have? That’s a nice group of countries right there,” he said, skipping Russia. But he appeared to have suggested inviting Russia as well, according to reporters who travelled with him.

Trump said he had “roughly” discussed the idea with the leaders of the four countries he’d like to add. The Group of Seven is an intergovernmental organisation of some of the world’s largest economies: the US, UK, France, Germany, Italy, Canada and Japan. India is a member of the larger version of the body that is called the G20.

A Trump aide said the plan is to bring together all traditional allies to discuss how to deal with the future of China.

Trump has called before for Russia to be readmitted to the group, arguing, as he did before the 2019 summit in Biarritz, “because a lot of the things we talk about have to do with Russia”. But this is probably the first time any of the G7 member countries has called for including India or the other three named by Trump.

Trumpt had pressed the G7 heads of state and government at a dinner during the Biarritz summit to readmit Russia. Only Italy had backed him, according to The Guardian. Japan was neutral. France, Germany, the United Kingdom and Canada had pushed back.

Prime Minister Narendra Modi had attended the Biarritz summit at the invitation of the host, French President Emmanuel Macron. Prime Minister Manmohan Singh had attended a meeting of the body in Gleneagles, Scotland, in 2005 at the invitation of then British Prime Minister Tony Blair.

The group was then called the G8 with Russia as the eighth member. Russia was expelled by the group in 2014 for annexing Crimea.

We want Australia, we want India, we want South Korea... That’s a nice group of countries right there

DONALD TRUMP, US president