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White House: Trump to cut short G7, skip bilateral meeting with May

US Materials 8 June 2018 08:11 (UTC +04:00)
US President Donald Trump plans to cut short his trip to the two-day G7 summit in Canada, leaving early on Saturday for a meeting with the North Korean leader
White House: Trump to cut short G7, skip bilateral meeting with May

US President Donald Trump plans to cut short his trip to the two-day G7 summit in Canada, leaving early on Saturday for a meeting with the North Korean leader, the White House said, Sputnik reported.

White House spokeswoman Sarah Sanders said the president would depart Charlevoix in Quebec at 10:30 a.m. after a meeting on women's empowerment, skipping environment and climate sessions.

"The President will travel directly to Singapore from Canada in anticipation of his upcoming meeting with North Korea's leader Kim Jong-un Tuesday," she told reporters.

In the run-up to his visit to the G7 meeting of leaders of the world’s richest economies, the US president fired off a series of angry tweets, accusing EU nations and Canada of imposing "massive" trade tariffs on US imports.

"Take down your tariffs and barriers or we will more than match you!" he warned after unveiling steep duties on EU, Mexican and Canadian metal imports and souring the mood ahead of the summit.

In a sign of a deepening schism between the United States and its long-time allies in Europe, Trump reportedly declined a one-on-one meeting with UK Prime Minister Theresa May on the G7 margins.

The UK’s Telegraph newspaper said Trump had grown frustrated with May’s tone during their recent phone calls on tariffs and regarded the G7 summit as a distraction from the much-anticipated meeting in Singapore where he hopes to change Kim's mind about having nuclear weapons.

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