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Trump delays ‘outdated’ G7 summit, invites other countries to discuss China

  • The summit was originally scheduled for June 10-12 at Camp David
  • Trump wants to invite Australia, Russia, South Korea and India to meeting

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US President Donald Trump speaks to reporters aboard Air Force One while returning to Washington from Cape Canaveral, Florida. Photo: Reuters

US President Donald Trump said Saturday that he will postpone until the fall a meeting of Group of 7 nations he had planned to hold next month at the White House despite the ongoing coronavirus pandemic. And he said he plans to invite Russia, Australia, South Korea and India as he again advocated for the group’s expansion.

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Trump told reporters on Air Force One as he returned to Washington from Florida that he feels the current makeup of the group is “very outdated” and doesn’t properly represent “what’s going on in the world”.

He said he had not yet set a new date for the meeting, but thought the gathering could take place in September, around the time of the annual meeting of the United Nations in New York, or perhaps after the US election in November.

Alyssa Farah, White House director of strategic communications, said that Trump wanted to bring in some of the country’s traditional allies and those impacted by the coronavirus to discuss the future of China.

China, the world’s No 2 economy, wasn’t among Trump’s proposed attendees as tensions between Washington and Beijing run high over the coronavirus and Hong Kong.

The surprise announcement came after German Chancellor Angela Merkel’s office said Saturday that she would not attend the meeting unless the course of the coronavirus spread had changed by then.

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