Thursday, 5 December, 2019
08 FOREIGN NEWS UK PM denies dodging Trump in pre-election NATO trip LONDON: British Prime Minister Boris Johnson denied on Wednesday he was avoiding being pictured with Donald Trump ahead of a UK election next week, as footage emerged of other leaders mocking the US president. Johnson met Trump away from the cameras on Tuesday before a two-day NATO summit, avoiding the media fanfare that normally accompanies such talks. He also failed to publicly greet Trump and his wife Melania on the doorstep of Downing Street before a reception with other NATO leaders. Johnson’s team are wary of what Trump might say during his two-day visit, with Britain set to go to the polls on December 12. Johnson’s Conservatives are leading opinion polls but the rival Labour party has sought to whip up public opinion against Trump, who is deeply unpopular in Britain. AGENCIES
NATO uNiTy ON The liNe As feudiNg leAders meeT BRUSSELS
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ATO leaders will attempt to make a convincing show of unity on Wednesday when they meet to conclude a summit already overshadowed by bitter rows about the future of the alliance. Last year, the Western allies’ get-together was derailed by US President Donald Trump’s demand for greater European defence spending, but 2019’s provocateur was France’s Emmanuel Macron. The French president has called for a renewed strategic dialogue with Moscow and demanded that Turkey explain itself over its assault — backed by Syrian rebels Paris sees as extremists — on Kurdish forces and its purchase of
the Russian S-400 air defence system. The leaders met in various groups in London on Tuesday before having dinner with Queen Elizabeth II in Buckingham Palace, but Macron refused to withdraw his charge that NATO strategy is “brain dead” and Trump continued to insist some capitals were “delinquent” in paying their way. The row set up a tense last day of what NATO secretary-general Jens Stoltenberg had hoped would be the 70th-anniversary show of unity for the “most successful military alliance in history”, and a demonstration that the West can stand up to challenges from Russia and China. The leaders are to gather at a golf resort hotel outside Watford, north of London, for a three-hour working session followed by a statement, and British host Prime Minister
Boris Johnson will make an appeal for unity. “Seventy years on, we are rock solid in our commitment to NATO and to the giant shield of solidarity that now protects 29 countries and nearly a billion people,” Johnson was to say, according to his office. “If NATO has a motto, it is: ‘One for all, and all for one’.” In recent weeks Macron has tried to shake up the agenda by demanding a review of alliance strategy, but Trump — who arrived boasting that he had forced members to boost defence spending — hit back hard. “I think that’s very insulting,” Trump said of Macron’s assertion last month that NATO is experiencing “brain death”, branding it a “very, very nasty statement”. “Nobody needs NATO more than France,” he warned. “It’s a very dangerous statement for them to make.”
NOT PAID UP IN FULL: Trump defended Stoltenberg’s record of pushing allies for increased defence spending, but he reiterated his own long-standing complaints. “When I came in, I was angry at NATO, and now I’ve raised $130 billion,” Trump said, referring to the sum Stoltenberg says Canada and European members since 2016 will have added to defence budgets by next year. WHERE NEXT?: The substance of the summit is thin, with only one threehour session planned where leaders are expected to sign off on a set of decisions already taken by NATO foreign and defence ministers. These include defining space as a domain of conflict — alongside land, sea, air and cyberspace — as well as acknowledging for the first time the “challenges” posed by China’s rise.