G7 seeks united front vs Putin

TORONTO (AFP) — The foreign ministers of the Group of Seven industrialized nations were gathered in Toronto yesterday seeking a common front against what they see as provocation from Vladimir Putin’s Russia.

The envoys will also be keen on gleaning clues from their United States colleague about whether President Donald Trump plans to tear up the Iran nuclear deal and how he will handle a planned summit with North Korea’s Kim Jong-un.

The envoys from the world’s most powerful democracies are meeting to plan for June’s G7 summit of rich world leaders in Charlevoix, Quebec — but Russia will never be far from their minds.

Acting US Secretary of State John Sullivan’s first bilateral meeting in Toronto late Saturday was with Ukraine’s Foreign Minister Pavlo Klimkin. Neither official spoke to reporters as the talks began.

From Klimkin, Sullivan would expect to hear about Kiev’s struggles to regain control over eastern Ukraine’s Donbas region, in the hands of Russian-backed rebels, and Crimea, which Moscow has annexed.

Canada’s Foreign Minister Chrystia Freeland yesterday hosted all of her G7 colleagues plus the European Union’s representative at a working lunch to discuss the crisis in Russia and Ukraine.

G7 capitals are also worried about Russia’s role in supporting Syrian leader Bashar al-Assad’s regime in his country’s brutal civil war and alleged attempt to kill a defector with a nerve agent on Russian soil.

Last Monday, the foreign ministers issued a joint statement urging the Kremlin to address “all questions related to the incident” and to make a “full and complete disclosure of its previously undeclared Novichok program.”

Novichok is a group of deadly chemical compounds reportedly developed by the Soviet government in the 1970s and ’80s and which Britain suspects was used to poison former Russian spy Sergei Skripal in Salisbury last month.

After their lunch, the ministers were scheduled to also hold a meeting on North Korea and nuclear non-proliferation.

Last month, in one of the most surprising twists in world affairs for decades, Trump accepted an invitation from Pyongyang’s eccentric autocrat Kim to a summit to discuss his nuclear disarmament.