Biarritz: US President Donald Trump has held out unexpected olive branches to Iran and China, saying he was open to the prospect of a face-to-face meeting with Iran’s President within weeks after a G7 leaders’ summit in France that proved unexpectedly convivial.
French President Emmanuel Macron, who hosted the summit in Biarritz in south-western France, has been angling for a meeting between Trump and Hassan Rouhani, to resolve a dispute that began with the US rejection of the Iran nuclear deal and has since escalated with Iranian attacks on commercial shipping in the Persian Gulf.
Based on conversations at the G7, Macron said at the end of the summit on Monday, local time: “I hope that in the coming weeks… we can succeed in having a meeting at the highest levels between President Rouhani and President Trump”.
“We know the terms, we know the objectives, but now we need to sit down around a table and reach that goal,” he said.
Trump, standing with Macron at the closing press conference of the summit, said there had been “tremendous unity” among the leaders of the US, UK, France, Germany, Japan, Italy and Canada.
Asked if he would meet Rouhani to discuss a new nuclear deal, Trump said “if the circumstances were correct or right I would certainly agree to that”, as long as Iran were “good players” in the meantime.
Read the article by Nick Miller in The Sydney Morning Herald.