Australia has been invited to be a special guest at the next G7 meeting, but some members say Russia still not welcome
Australia has been invited to join the G7 party and US President Donald Trump wants Russia there, too. But other members are not so sure that Vladimir Putin should have a seat at the table.
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US President Donald Trump said it is simply “common sense” to have Russia return to the G7 and to open a path for dialogue with Moscow.
He said that issues would be more easily resolved with President Vladimir Putin in the room.
“Many of the things that we talk about are about Putin,” Mr Trump said of the summit, to which Australia has also been invited.
“Have him in the room … get things done,” Mr Trump told Fox News Radio.
“The problem is many of the things that we talk about are about Putin. So we’re just sitting around wasting time because then you have to finish your meeting and somebody has to call Putin or deal with Putin on different things. And I say, have him in the room … I don’t say, ‘deserving’ or ‘not deserving,’ I say, ‘common sense.’ Get things done.”
Mr Trump said the Russian leader needs to be included in the G7 discussions, adding that it would be easier to have nuclear negotiations if Mr Putin was in the room. Other members of the G7 do not share his desire to have Mr Putin in the room.
“I want to have a nuclear pact, safe nuclear, because nuclear is the single biggest problem the world has,” Mr Trump said.
Mr Trump has said he wants Australia to be at the G7 summit, which has been delayed to September this year.
Mr Trump said he wanted to invite Australia, Russia, South Korea and India to the next meeting, and that the G7 in its current format was a “very outdated group of countries”.
The meeting had originally been scheduled to take place in Washington DC in late June and will now be held in September because of the coronavirus.
The group’s presidency rotates among the leaders of the member nations — Canada, France, Germany, Italy, Japan, the United Kingdom and the US.
Russia was expelled from what was then the G8 over its annexation of Ukraine’s Crimean
Peninsula, where it remains a presence.
The other members of the G7 have not been receptive to Mr Trump’s invitation to Mr Putin.
Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau said Russia’s “continued disrespect and flaunting of international rules and norms is why it remains outside of the G-7 and it will continue to remain out”.
A spokesman for British Prime Minister Boris Johnson said he would veto any plan to readmit Russia.