Hopes for refugee crisis plan fall into chasm between G7 and Trump
Disagreements with US are so fundamental that Sicily summit might not be able to issue communique
Divisions between Donald Trump and other members of the G7 at the summit in Sicily have become so broad and deep that they may be forced to issue a brief leaders’ statement rather than a full communique, dashing Italian hopes of engineering a big step forward on migration and famine.
With the US president apparently reluctant to compromise with European leaders over climate change, trade and migration, the European council president, Donald Tusk, was forced to admit on Friday that this would be the most challenging G7summit in years and there was a risk of events spiralling out of control.
A draft statement shown to the Guardian reveals Trump wants world leaders to make only a short reference to migration and to throw out a plan by the Italian hosts for a comprehensive five-page statement that acknowledges migrants’ rights, the factors driving refugees and their positive contribution.
The Italian plans – one on human movement and another on food security – were set to be the centrepiece of its summit diplomacy. Italy had chosen Taormina in Sicily as the venue to symbolise the world’s concern over the plight of refugees coming from the Middle East and Africa.
It had hoped the summit would end on Saturday with a bold statement that the world, and not just individual nations, had a responsibility for the refugee crisis. Italy is expected to take in 200,000 refugees in 2017; more than 1,300 have drowned so far this year while trying to make the perilous crossing from north Africa.
Trump’s negotiators brought a new brief text of the final communique to a pre-meeting of the G7 on 26 April and said they were vetoing the Italian “human mobility” plan, which had been the subject of careful negotiation for months.
The new text, offered by the US on a take-it-or-leave-it basis, acknowledges the human rights of migrants, but affirms “the sovereign rights of states to control their own borders and set clear limits on net migration levels as key elements of their national security”.
It also asserts the need for refugees to be supported as close to their home countries as possible.
Diplomatic sources said intense talks were under way to rescue some of the Italian agenda on migration.
Italian officials, faced with little option, insisted the brief wording on migration in the draft represented a good compromise and said there was no problem with the Americans. The communique did reference the idea of “upstream” action on the issue – but also supporting legal pathways to return individuals to their country of origin.
In a sign of the immediacy of the refugee crisis, the Libyan coastguard said as many as 20 boats had been spotted off the Libyan coast on Friday carrying thousands of migrants.
Large rescue and interception operations were under way with the help of the Libyan coastguard, fishing and commercial boats and in coordination with the Italian authorities, the navy spokesman Gen Ayoub Qassem said.
“Today is the day of a massive exodus of illegal migrants toward Europe,” he added.
The disagreements between Trump and other world leaders have spread to climate change, trade and food security, revealing the philosophical gulf about how to handle globalisation and security.
One source said that with four leaders attending their first summit – Trump, the French president, Emmanuel Macron, and the UK and Italian prime ministers, Theresa May and Paolo Gentiloni – the emphasis was being placed on the politicians building a personal bond of trust rather than delivering lengthy communiques.
Speaking at the end of the first day’s formal session, Gentiloni said agreement had been reached on terrorism and Syria, but Trump was holding out on climate change.
“There is one open question, which is the US position on the Paris climate accords … All others have confirmed their total agreement on the accord,” he said. “We are sure that after an internal reflection, the United States will also want to commit to it.”
Trump has come under pressure from other world leaders to stick with the UN climate change treaty signed by Barack Obama’s administration in Paris. He has deferred a decision on whether the US will pull out of the 2015 deal. The Trump administration is internally divided and might simply reduce the level and timescale of US commitments made at Paris on emission cuts.
The German chancellor, Angela Merkel, said “we put forward very many arguments” for the US sticking with the agreement.
May also raised the issue of climate change admitting that “the US is considering its position in relation to these matters” but claiming all seven countries agreed on the importance of the Paris agreement.
Late on Friday, a senior White House official said Trump’s views on climate change were “evolving” following the talks. “He feels much more knowledgeable on the topic today,” said Gary Cohn, Trump’s top White House economic adviser. “He came here to learn; he came here to get smarter.”
In a sign of the tensions over trade, a senior Trump adviser confirmed that the president had criticised Germany as “very bad” on trade at a meeting with EU officials in Brussels on Wednesday.
“He said they’re very bad on trade, but he doesn’t have a problem with Germany,” said Cohn.
A White House adviser said Trump told the G7 that America would treat other countries on trade in the same way that the US was treated, adding the President’s goal is “free and fair trade, not high tariffs”.
On Friday night, Gentiloni said the leaders had made progress on the issue of foreign trade, but that the wording of the final communique still needed to be worked out. Trump has previously promoted a protectionist agenda that alarmed his G7 allies.
Gentiloni said: “On the major theme of global trade, we are still working on the shape of the final communique, but it seems to me the direct discussions today have produced common positions that we can work on.”
Germany and Japan are trying to pin Trump down to define his version of fair trade by making him accept there has to be a rules-based system in which the World Trade Organisation has a leading role. Trump has vowed that he will cut the US deficit and has pointed the finger of blame at countries such as Germany and China. He has accused China of using exchange rate manipulation to sell goods in the US.
The German trade surplus, which reached a record $283bn (£220.9bn) in 2016, has also been a source of contention within Europe, with Berlin’s partners encouraging it to do more to promote domestic demand.
Michael S Said:
https://www.pri.org/stories/2017-05-28/merkel-warns-us-and-britain-are-no-longer-reliable-partners
https://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2017/may/25/uk-police-end-suspension-of-intelligence-sharing-with-us
https://astoldbydana.com/2016/12/20/my-experience-with-french-versus-american-dentistry/
@ Michael S:
And I remember being taught in school as a boy that the decentralized American system of education in which each state and locality could be like a laboratory of experimentation to see what worked and what didn’t was superior to the centralized French system.
@ Michael S:
I was not merely poking fun at the bogus science of “man-made climate change” here as is usually done, but at the bogus assertion that there is even a problem with the weather that needs to be solved. Anybody old enough to remember the hysteria about the ozone layer? That was big when I was a teenager in the 70s. What happened? We suddenly stopped hearing anything about it as the environmentalist paparazzi moved onto choicer fields. So, did the world come to an end? Will there be a sequel?
There have not been more hurricanes, etc. in the last 150 years than before to the extent that any of this has been recorded. The micro-recording of climate only goes back 30 years.
You didn’t answer my question. How is Europe any friendlier to us than Russia or China? What do we need NATO for? Our problem is Islam in all of its myriad forms, which N. Korea is allied with. Are there really Muslims who reject Shariah? I’ve spoken to quite a few who say they do. Should I believe them? Especially the ones who say they never heard or it? Or are they practicing Taquiya. Mohammed preached peace and tolerance too before he was in a position to deny it to everybody else. And every single Muslim man I have ever known personally treated the women in his life like dirt and laughed about it privately when among men and thought Israel had no right to exist. Including the secular ones. Well, no, I knew one guy who wasn’t like that. An Iranian Marxist who managed to fool himself about every event going on in the world. But, he was truly a mensch.
Group behind Benghazi attack dissolves
http://www.israelnationalnews.com/News/News.aspx/230256
You said, “Without the US present, the others have gotten into the habit of looking at their get-togethers as coffee-clutches, where they can exchange intellectual niceties and try out new ideas through human experiment. That, after all, is the “Marxist Way”. Trump is reminding them that if they actually want to DO something that is PROFITABLE for them and their people, they need to choose a captain (Trump, of course!), put together a quick game plan, then break out of the huddle and go to their positions.”
Huh? Not any kind of “Marxism” I recognize. Your idea that we all have the same interests when it comes to acquiring profit, though the Stalinists rejected profit-based production in principle if not always in practice, sounds more Marxist, or would if we were all Socialist countries. In fact, even the “Socialist” countries had conflicts of interest as well as ideology and even fought wars, hot and cold, which was not supposed to happen.
e.g., Chinese Bloc vs. Soviet Bloc, Vietnam v. Cambodia, Albania vs. Everybody else.
How did this USA position become heresy? This should not have been a surprise to the G-7.
Sounds like Soros lost, this time.
My brain needs a rest.
The problem is not being discussed anywhere right now. This is something like Obama Care. You need to read it first to know why you’re against it.
@ Sebastien Zorn:
Hi, Sebastien.
The G-7 countries are our “allies”, in that they have extremely close connecetions to us in historical background, values and interests. At one time, several of them (Germany, Japan and Italy) were enemies. During those days, we could afford enemies; because the G-7 and friends essentially controlled the world. Since WWII’s end, we have a new reality of ex-colonies and near-colonies, like China and India, rising to become economic powers. We also now have the UN, as a major instrument of foreign policy, built upon the five permanent members of the Security Council. Three of those five are the US, UK and France; and the more solidarity we can show with them, the better our position. Finally, note that all the G-7 are either NATO members or major non-NATO allies; and that we necessarily share a great deal of intelligence with them. This helps us in our fight against ALL enemies and potential enemies, from North Korea to Russia to Iran and others.
Your post is so full of sarcasm, it’s hard for me to follow. It seems you’re saying something about “Climate Change”; but I can’t even be sure what side you’re on.
To cut to the quick, here’s my take on the G-7 summit: Trump is bringing the other leaders down to reality, which is this:
The “G-7” consists of two roughly equal parts, (1) the US and (2) all others, plus friends. Without the US present, the others have gotten into the habit of looking at their get-togethers as coffee-clutches, where they can exchange intellectual niceties and try out new ideas through human experiment. That, after all, is the “Marxist Way”. Trump is reminding them that if they actually want to DO something that is PROFITABLE for them and their people, they need to choose a captain (Trump, of course!), put together a quick game plan, then break out of the huddle and go to their positions.
To most, this is a new approach.
@ Sebastien Zorn:Humor:
“Putney Swope – One Liners”
https://youtu.be/KP13OQo7L2Q
I don’t really understand what makes them “allies.” Allies against what? Whom? They don’t seem any friendlier to us than Russia or China with whom we also share information and trade when mutually beneficial, periodic red scares notwithstanding. Europe is our rival in every way, as far as I can see. That’s why they formed the EU and began forging ties with the Muslim world in the first place. Great Power rivalry with US (no pun intended).
Humor:
Incidentally, I think we have a lot to learn from China, seeing as the Left claims that “climate change” is responsible for this great weather we’ve been having and that burning fossil fuels is the cause. I have in mind The “Great Leap Forward” in particular.
“…Backyard furnaces in China during the Great Leap Forward era.”
“With no personal knowledge of metallurgy, Mao encouraged the establishment of small backyard steel furnaces in every commune and in each urban neighborhood. Mao was shown an example of a backyard furnace in Hefei, Anhui in September 1958 by provincial first secretary Zeng Xisheng.[19] The unit was claimed to be manufacturing high quality steel.[19]
Huge efforts on the part of peasants and other workers were made to produce steel out of scrap metal. To fuel the furnaces, the local environment was denuded of trees and wood taken from the doors and furniture of peasants’ houses. Pots, pans, and other metal artifacts were requisitioned to supply the “scrap” for the furnaces so that the wildly optimistic production targets could be met. Many of the male agricultural workers were diverted from the harvest to help the iron production as were the workers at many factories, schools, and even hospitals. Although the output consisted of low quality lumps of pig iron which was of negligible economic worth, Mao had a deep distrust of intellectuals who could have pointed this out and placed his faith in the power of the mass mobilization of the peasants…”
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Great_Leap_Forward
So, if Trump is gonna hire Obama retreads, he should bring back this guy
http://www.conservapedia.com/Van_Jones
So, everybody search your house for fossil fuels to burn every day. Can be a fun, family game like looking for chametz in reverse. You’re just gonna burn it instead of tossing it. “Burn, baby, burn.” and, of course, “drill, baby, drill.”
“Jack Nicholson goes to the dentist”
https://youtu.be/VjIL3fDxSZQ
“While in the West, the insane are so many that they are put in an asylum, in China the insane are so unusual that we worship them, as anybody who has a knowledge of Chinese literature will testify.”
https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Lin_Yutang
This was written long ago. Today the Democratic party, sections of the Republican Party, Courts and Media serve as asylums.