French President Emmanuel Macron, who welcomed Donald Trump to Paris two days ago to participate in Bastille Day celebrations, said the U.S. president may seek a solution over the next months for the fight against global warming.
“We’ve spoken in detail on what may allow him to return into the Paris accord,” Macron said in comments published Sunday in the newspaper Le Journal du Dimanche. “It’s important to maintain a dialogue” with the U.S. about its potential comeback in multilateral actions for climate, he said.
In June, Trump announced that the U.S. would withdraw from the 2015 Paris deal and earlier this month Washington was the only member of the Group of 20 nations that didn’t agree that the accord on cutting harmful emissions was “irreversible.” Trump softened his position at a press conference on Thursday with Macron, saying, “something could happen with respect to the Paris accord. We’ll see what happens. We’ll talk about that over the coming period of time. If it happens, that’ll be wonderful, and if it doesn’t, that’ll be OK too.”
Macron and Trump will speak soon about the fight against Islamic State in Syria and Iraq, the newspaper reported. Mentioning his relationship with Russian President Vladimir Putin, Macron told the outlet that removing Syrian President Bashar Al-Assad wasn’t a “prerequisite” any longer but use of chemical weapons and restricting humanitarian access to civilians were “red lines.” Macron added that France and Russia were making progress on these two topics.
France and Russia are also working on a “protocol” to avoid a repeat of hacking of computer systems, Macron said. Macron met Putin in Versailles on May 29.
[“Source-bloomberg”]
