Sign in. It’s quick, free and it’s up to you.
An account is an optional way to support the work we do. Find out more.
Updated at 6.15pm
G7 LEADERS HAVE wrapped up their annual summit with an unprecedented display of division over climate change as US President Donald Trump rebuffed pressure to toe the collective line in the club of powerful democracies.
Trump tweeted that he would reveal his hand only next week as to whether he will keep the United States in the Paris accord, a global pact on curbing carbon emissions that he vowed to jettison when campaigning for the White House.
The Group of Seven leading economies, in an extraordinary summit statement, acknowledged that six members were committed to upholding the 2015 accord while the United States stood apart.
“The United States of America is in the process of reviewing its policies on climate change and on the Paris Agreement and thus is not in a position to join the consensus on these topics,” the statement said in highly-unusual language.
Despite the discord, Trump concluded his first overseas trip on a typically bullish note, telling US service families at the Sigonella base in Sicily he had “hit a home run” shortly before taking off to fly back home.
Condemning this week’s deadly terror attacks in Manchester and Egypt, Trump said such atrocities “steel our resolve”.
“Together civilised nations will crush the terrorists, block their funding, strip them of their territory and drive them out of this earth,” he said.
A short time later, scuffles broke out among protesters near the ancient hilltop town of Taormina where the summit had taken place under high security.
‘Six against one’
German Chancellor Angela Merkel, who also crossed swords with Trump on free trade at the G7, complained that the US president was keeping his colleagues in the dark.
“The whole discussion on the topic of climate was very difficult, not to say very unsatisfactory,” she told reporters, labelling the G7 deadlock as “six against one”.
On trade, the G7 vowed “to keep our markets open and to fight protectionism”, but also to combat “unfair trade practices” and help those left behind by globalisation, after Trump came to power vowing ‘America First’.
On other fronts, the G7:
All change
After starting his first presidential trip abroad wreathed in smiles, Trump ended it with rebukes, upbraiding America’s European partners over military spending, trade and global warming.
An enduring motif of the G7, which represents the lion’s share of global economic output, has been to champion free trade.
At last year’s summit in Japan, leaders issued a lengthy communique in support of resisting protectionism, as well as helping refugees and fighting climate change.
But that was then, when Barack Obama still occupied the White House. Today, his successor is defiant about defying the G7 line after accusing China, Germany and others of cheating in international trade.
Trump reportedly described the Germans as “bad, very bad” in their trade practices while visiting Brussels this past week.
“We had very hard deliberations and discussions about trade but we found a reasonable solution,” Merkel said, stressing the G7 statement’s commitment to open markets.
Migrants’ plight
The G7′s Italian presidency held this year’s summit in the Mediterranean island of Sicily to underline the proximity of the migrant crisis.
But even that prompted discord among participants as Trump resisted the hosts’ desire to issue a declaration underlining the benefits as well as pitfalls of migration.
That sort of language is anathema to a White House that wants to impose a ban on travellers from six Muslim-majority countries.
The G7 statement recognised the human rights of migrants and refugees.
But with Trump promising to build a “beautiful” wall on the US-Mexico border, it also said: “we reaffirm the sovereign rights of states, individually and collectively, to control their own borders”.
No questions
In a telling sign of the divisions now plaguing the G7, this year’s statement came in at a meagre six pages – down from 32 pages last year.
The summit did find common ground yesterday in endorsing a British call urging internet service providers and social media companies to crack down on jihadist content online after 22 people were killed by a suicide bomber in the northwestern English city of Manchester this week.
But while Trump did battle on an array of summit fronts, he also found himself dogged by new allegations as investigations proceed in Washington into whether Russian meddling helped his election victory last year.
The Washington Post reported that Trump’s son-in-law, Jared Kushner, made a pre-inauguration proposal to the Russian ambassador to set up a secret, bug-proof communications line with the Kremlin.
There was no immediate comment from the White House, but Trump has angrily rejected allegations of such collusion.
To embed this post, copy the code below on your site
let me make a prediction here..12 points to Cyprus in the next Eurovision from Greece
@Dean Anderson:
Nice idea for a comment but I think you need to understand the politics of the region a little more before trying to be humerous
Maybe they don’t call it anything but “Skopje Airport”? I never understood the need cities have to “name” airports in cities where there is only one airport of note. No one ever ends up using the name anyway.
@Gerard:
Do you fly to JFK or to New York?
@Nick Allen: “ I never understood the need cities have to “name” airports in cities where there is only ONE airport of note”
@PScald:
What other airports are u referring to? Are u thinking about ones in New Jersey, the state south of New York?
@Nick Allen: La Guardia (Queens).
@Nick Allen: LaGuardia airport is also in NYC…
@Nick Allen: Liverpool have John Lennon airport, let’s talk about that.
@Gerard: Naming an airport after a local legend or leader is sometimes a nice thing to do to remember someone important to the city or location… George Best, JFK, Charles De Gualle, Trudeau etc…
Must be a great insult to the people of Macedonia to have Colin Farnell as it’s poster boy.
You have to go with the Greeks on this one. It’s blatant cultural appropriation. Something like 85% of ancient Macedonia is within modern day Greece including Pella and all major cities. Considering how the British and Turks have plundered their tangible heritage and they were already arguing with Albania over who “owned” Alexander (his mother was from Epirus, modern day Albania) you can see why they weren’t going to let their new neighbours pass off Greek culture as their own.
@Seán J. Troy:
Most people know that our republic, whose constitutional name is “Ireland”, is not the same as the island of Ireland. Therefore, we may assume that most people know that the former Yugoslav republic of Macedonia is not the same as the ancient region of Macedonia. After all, as far as I know, the former Yugoslav republic of Macedonia does not have an equivalent of our Republic’s claim over Northern Ireland, which was renounced by referendum as part of the Good Friday Agreement.
@Ciarán Masterson: I don’t think that’s a fair assumption at all. Most people don’t realise Macedonians are basically ethnic Bulgarians. They literally have no ties to ancient Macedonia.
There is a claim of Greater Macedonia over regions of neighbouring countries which speak their dialect of Bulgarian.
Spot on, Mr Troy.
@Seán J. Troy: what a f….ck are you talking we are Macedonian not Bulgarians we spoke different language’s different alfabet it’s England and Ireland same for you to ??? Answer your self
@Seán J. Troy: Macedonians are ethnic Bulgarians? Most people are right not to realise it considering you’ve got it more ways than arse. Macedonian-Bulgarians, a minority group in Bulgaria, trace their heritage to the region of Macedonia in Greece, not the Former Yugoslav Republic.
@Cormac Ó Braonáin: The languages are mutually intelligible and as late as 1880 there were attempts at codification. Similar attempts were made in Greece and Germany to standardise their own dialects. This didn’t happen in the FYROM because Bulgaria was independent and the area now called the FYROM was still part of the Ottoman Empire.
The modern “Macedonian” orthography along with the usage of the term Macedonian only dates to 1945. Until then it was just considered a dialect of Bulgarian.
The point is that if it weren’t for politics, we wouldn’t be making a distinction just like we no longer make a distinction between high and low German or Katharevousa/Demotiki. There have always been regional differences within the same language groups in the past.
@Cormac Ó Braonáin:
The entire situation would be similar to German codification having never happened and Austria as in our timeline not being included in Bismarck’s greater Germany. Then after WW1 ethnic Austrians calling themselves Roman and calling themselves the descendants of the Roman empire while pretending they aren’t a German people.
Technically, parts of Austria were in the Roman empire.
@Seán J. Troy: A Macedonian national identity emerged in the 19th century, long before 1945. Remember, there was no such thing as an Italian national identity before the 1860s, or it was very rare at the least. Likewise, Germans identified as Bavarians, Prussians, etc prior to the middle of the 19th century. The Macedonian language is further removed from Bulgarian than Slovakian is from Polish, yet I don’t hear you saying that Slovakians are actually Polish.
On top of that, the area they live in is called Macedonia. There is no misappropriation of heritage by naming your country after the area in which it is situated. Erasing “Macedonia” as a geographical entity could also, hypothetically, be seen by some as attempting to erase Greek heritage. Basically, the modern Macedonians are in a damned-if-you-do and damned-if-you-don’t situation all while Bulgarians and Greeks belittle them. Ever wonder why they see themselves as Macedonian and not Bulgarian? Partly, it’s because Bulgarians see them as unworthy Bulgarians, and then the Greeks like to take advantage for political reasons. But also because they have a history different from Bulgarians and a culture also different from Bulgarians.
If there is no claim over the historical region of Macedonia in the constitution of the former Yugoslav Republic of Macedonia then the Greeks have no justification for being obstructive. The Greeks ran their own country into the ground with their tax evasion and laziness.
@Ciarán Masterson: What right do they have to call themselves Macedonia? They’ve only been doing so within living memory. They have no linguistic ties, very little territorial ties and the so-called Macedonian people have only lived in the Balkans 1,000 years or so after Alexander died.
They are Bulgarian who were called Macedonian by a Serbian government trying to coerce them into a federal Yugoslavia rather than harbour claims to a Greater Bulgaria.
It’s nice to hear that somewhere in the world, political leaders are putting their heads together to solve age old issues by compromising and moving on. A thoroughly mature, adult solution. Well done to the parties involved. You are an inspiration.
Alexander the deadly airport
I see parallels with this country: some up north deny being Irish yet claim names and symbols, such as ‘Ulster’ and ‘Cu Chulainn’ as their own.
Just call it “Alexander the Bleedin Deadly” airport.
Sorted lads !
They can call themselves whatever they want – the trick is getting other people to call you what you want.
Macedonia have surrendered acknowledging their history in recent years to plaw maus the Greeks into not blocking their application for EU membership. Humiliating
Aviva doesn’t sponsor the country, but if they did…
Wasn’t he famously rogering his manservant? (Alexander i mean, not Farrell)
Liked his fisting cuffs did Alex.
Greece and England what is a different
@Zoran Markoski: a lot
There will be zero tolerance with FYROM. If Zaev wanted to mend relations with Greece he would have announced the demolition of the grotesque Italian made Hellenic reproduction statues that litter the FYROM landscape, the renaming of the airport in Skopje, the renaming of the highway, the renaming of the football stadium, the removal of the repulsive Baroque Hellenic style facades, the correcting of school carriculum, the removal of the Hellenic symbol on the national flag, the removal of all greater Macedonia maps from government institutions and a heartfelt apolgy to the nation of Greece for his nation being vile for the last two and a half decades. Cultural theft cannot be forgiven easily. Actions speak louder than words. Greeks do not want to hear politicians trying new age diplomacy that they learnt in their political science classes. Dimitrov, Šekerinska, Zaevand all the Slavic Fyromians currently running FYROM are just as dogmatic about an exclusivity of the name as the Gruevski ultra nationalists. There is no scope for negotiation with these antiques. Greece is the victim here. Our history has been hijacked by Fyromian Slavs. Leave our history alone. It’s not a good fit for you. You cannot pronounce nor read the Ancient inscriptions for they are in Greek. If FYROM wants exclusivity to the name Macedonia they will have to change their official language to Greek for this corresponds with the Ancient Macedonian language. We Greeks embrace everyone as a Hellene as long as they speak Greek. You cannot have Bulgarian speaking Slavs of FYROM claiming they are Antiques. It’s ridiculous.
Sekerinska can sit around bagging the VMRO for their crimes but she is just as bad. She claims she is a Slav and a non Antique and in the same breath attacks Greece for not recognizing FYROM. I thought that her hair incident would have knocked some sense into her. Dimitrov has also had a go at it. The fool was part of the negotiation team under Gruevski. He failed miserably because he too will never give up the name. These Slavs are like a dog with a bone but in their case the bone is plastic and has zero marrow.
They know what they have to do and it will never happen. The constitutional name will not change because the antiquated population of FYROM will never vote for it. They have had way too many history lessons from Milenko Nedelkovski. The vile sneaky tactics of attempting to be admitted to NATO and the EU under their provisional FYROM name won’t work either. They are fruitless attempts at diplomacy that not only waste time but also soak up tax payers efforts. Think twice FYROM before attempting negotiations with the Greeks on their history. The Albanian, Roma and Turkish birth rate is twice that of the Slavs. While you lot are busy fixating about exclusivity of your name and your antique culture the non Slavic population of FYROM will become a majority group within their ancient wonderland. The last census was in 2001, these so called minority groups were are 35% collectively. I would hate to think what they are at now. 16 years of fertile breeding has to be worrying for the new government. Back off our history you deluded farm animals.
have your say