G7 leaders held annual summit talks on Friday with divisions on trade and climate change, and fresh friction surrounding Donald Trump, threatening to undermine a show of unity against jehadi terrorism.
“There is no doubt that this will be the most challenging G7 summit in years,” European Union President Donald Tusk predicted, setting the tone for the two-day meet in Sicily’s ancient hilltop resort of Taormina.
The meeting comes days after several children were among 22 people killed in a concert bomb attack in Manchester, northwest England.
British Prime Minister Theresa May was to lead a discussion on terrorism and issue a call for G7 countries to put more pressure on internet companies to ensure extremist content is quickly taken offline and notified to authorities.
With the ISIS group on the retreat in Iraq and Syria, “the fight is moving from the battlefield to the internet”, May would tell her colleagues, aides said, before flying home early to oversee the ongoing “critical” security situation in Britain.
US officials acknowledged they were expecting a difficult discussion on trade after reports that Trump had described the Germans as “bad, very bad” and vowed to stop them selling millions of cars in the United States, during a meeting with senior EU officials in Brussels on Thursday.
Both US and EU officials confirmed the outspoken President had raised the auto trade issue but sought to play down the language used, as Trump shared friendly words with German Chancellor Angela Merkel and other leaders heading into the G7 gathering.
N Korea problem will be solved, says Trump
Taormina (Italy): US President Donald Trump on Friday said the “problem” of an increasingly belligerent North Korea would be “solved”, as he met his Japanese counterpart Shinzo Abe just before the start of the G7 summit.