Leaders from
the world's major industrialized nations began talks on Friday at a G7 summit
in Sicily which is expected to expose deep
divisions with U.S. President Donald
Trump over trade and climate change.
The two-day
summit, at a cliff-top hotel overlooking the Mediterranean, began a day after
Trump blasted NATO allies for spending too little on defense and described
Germany's trade surplus as "very bad" in a meeting with EU officials
in Brussels.
After
receiving warm receptions in Saudi Arabia and Israel, Trump's confrontational
stance with long-standing partners in Europe cast a cloud over the meeting in
Taormina, where leaders are due to discuss terrorism, Syria, North Korea and
the global economy.
"No
doubt, this will be the most challenging G7 summit in years," Donald Tusk,
a former Polish prime minister who chairs summits of European Union leaders,
said before the meeting.
White House
economic adviser Gary Cohn predicted "robust" discussions on trade
and climate.
Trump was
elected in November after a campaign in which he rejected many of the tenets
that the Group of Seven has stood for, including free trade, multilateralism
and the liberal democratic values.
European
leaders, including German Chancellor Angela Merkel and new French President
Emmanuel Macron, had hoped to use the summit to convince Trump to soften some
of his stances.
But
diplomats conceded as the talks began that the United States was unlikely to
budge, meaning the final communique could be watered down significantly
compared to the one the G7 unveiled at its last summit in Japan.
TRADE AND
CLIMATE
The summit
kicked off with a ceremony at an ancient Greek theater overlooking the sea,
where war ships patrolled the sparkling blue waters. Nine fighter jets soared
into the sky above Taormina, leaving a trail of smoke in the red-white-green
colors of the Italian flag.
The leaders
then adjourned to the San Domenico Palace, a one-time Dominican monastery that
is now a luxury 5-star hotel. During World War Two, it housed Nazi air force
chiefs.
Italy chose
to stage the summit in Sicily to draw attention to Africa, which is 140 miles
(225 km) from the island at its closest point across the Mediterranean.
More than
half a million migrants, most from sub-Saharan Africa, have reached Italy by
boat since 2014, taking advantage of the chaos in Libya to launch their
perilous crossings.
But trade
and climate, to be discussed on Friday afternoon, are the most contentious
issues.
Trump, who
dismissed human-made global warming as a "hoax" during his election
campaign, is threatening to pull the United States out of a 2015 climate deal
clinched in Paris in 2015.
Fellow G7
leaders are trying to convince him to stay in. Cohn and other administration
officials have said Trump will wait until after the summit to decide.
"This
is the first real opportunity that the international community has to force the
American administration to begin to show its hand, particularly on environment
policy," said Tristen Naylor, a lecturer on development at the University
of Oxford and deputy director of the G20 Research Group.
On Thursday
in Brussels, with NATO leaders standing alongside him, Trump accused members of
the military alliance of owing "massive amounts of money" to the
United States and NATO - even though allied contributions are voluntary.
The remarks
went down badly with European leaders, who had hoped Trump would use the
opportunity to confirm his commitment to Article 5, the core NATO principle
that an attack on one member is viewed as an attack on all.
"When
an American president cannot commit clearly to Article 5 at a time when
everyone is expecting him to do this then there is the risk that Moscow
interprets this as meaning it is no longer valid," said Jan Techau of the
American Academy in Berlin.
"VERY
BAD"
In a private
meeting with European Commission President Jean-Claude Juncker, Trump also
denounced the German trade surplus as "very bad" and complained about
the large number of German cars being sold in the United States, officials
said.
Juncker
tried to play down the comments ahead of the summit. But they underscored
ongoing policy divisions between Trump and his partners four months after he
took office.
Trump is
attending his first major international summit but is not the only G7 newcomer.
Macron, Italian Prime Minister Paolo Gentiloni and British Prime Minister
Theresa May will also be attending the elite club for the first time.
May is
expected to leave a day early, following Monday's suicide bombing at a concert
in northern England that killed 22 people carried out by a suspected Islamist
militant of Libyan descent who grew up in Britain.
G7 leaders
were expected to issue a separate statement on terrorism on Friday, before
issuing their formal communique on Saturday. Italian officials have suggested
the final communique will be shorter than 10 pages. At the last G7 summit in
Japan it totaled 32 pages.
One country
that will not be present is Russia. It was expelled from the group in 2014
following its annexation of Crimea from Ukraine.
Trump called
for improved ties with Moscow during his election campaign.
But
accusations from U.S. intelligence agencies that Russia intervened in the U.S.
election to help Trump, and investigations into his campaign's contacts with
Russian officials, have hung over his four-month-old presidency and prevented
him from getting too close to Moscow.
On Thursday,
the Washington Post and NBC News reported that Trump's son-in-law and adviser
Jared Kushner was under scrutiny by the FBI because of his meetings with
Russian officials before Trump took office. One of Kushner's attorneys said her
client would cooperate with the investigation.
Kushner and
his wife, Trump's daughter Ivanka, have returned to Washington after
accompanying the president for the first part of his first foreign tour.
REUTERS
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