Trump faces pressure at his first G7 summit, as squeeze is on climate change. Italian PM: Trump still refuses to back the 2015 Paris agreement

U.S. President Donald Trump will face pressure at his first summit of major industrialised nations on Friday from allies eager to promote free trade and safeguard international accords on climate change.

The annual Group of Seven (G7) meeting is being held in a chic Sicilian resort town, with Europe’s most active volcano, Mount Etna, gently smoking in the background and the Mediterranean Sea gleaming beneath the cliffs.

G7 calls on internet companies to boost efforts to remove extremist content

UPDATE: The world’s seven major industrialised nations on Friday called on internet service providers and social media to increase their efforts to remove extremist content, four days after an Islamist suicide bomber killed 22 in Manchester.

“We will combat the misuse of the Internet by terrorists. While being one of the most important technological achievements in the last decades, the Internet has also proven to be a powerful tool for terrorist purposes,” said a joint statement signed by G7 leaders meeting in Sicily.

“The G7 calls for Communication Service Providers and social media companies to substantially increase their efforts to address terrorist content,” the statement added.

Merkel: “Controversial” debate on climate change, at G7 summit

UPDATE: Group of Seven leaders had a “controversial” debate on climate change, German Chancellor Angela Merkel told reporters on Friday, with U.S. President Donald Trump urged by everyone at the table to back the Paris Accords.

Earlier, Italian Prime Minister Paolo Gentiloni said Trump was still considering the matter, but added that he believed Washington would in the end honour its commitment to cut greenhouse gas emissions under the 2015 Paris Agreement.

Trump still refuses to back the 2015 Paris agreement to fight climate change

UPDATE: President Donald Trump still refuses to back the 2015 Paris agreement to fight climate change, blocking efforts by world leaders meeting in Sicily to get the new U.S. leader to endorse the treaty, Italy’s prime minister said on Friday.

But there was agreement on other issues such as Syria, Libya and fighting terrorism, Paolo Gentiloni told reporters in Taormina, Italy, where the heads of the world’s seven major industrialised economies (G7) are meeting.

“There is one open question, which is the U.S. position on the Paris climate accords… All others have confirmed their total agreement on the accord,” Gentiloni said. “We are sure that after an internal reflection, the United States will also want to commit to it,” he added.

The leaders of Italy, the U.S., Germany, Britain, France, Canada and Japan signed on Friday a statement to bolster efforts to fight terrorism, including a bid to remove extremist propaganda from the Internet, Gentiloni said.

“We showed our united commitment and our determination to continue and to strengthen our fight against terrorism,” Gentiloni said after the leaders signed a document that also expressed solidarity with Britain after the suicide bomb attack in Manchester on Monday that killed 22.

Gentiloni said they had made progress on the issue of foreign trade, but added that the wording of the final communique still needed to be worked out. Trump has previously promoted a protectionist agenda that alarmed his G7 allies.

“On the major theme of global trade, we are still working on the shape of the final communique, but it seems to me the direct discussions today have produced common positions that we can work on,” he said.

“The most challenging G7 summit in years”

UPDATE: Leaders from the world’s major industrialised nations began talks on Friday at a G7 summit in Sicily which is expected to expose deep divisions with U.S. President Donald Trump over trade and climate change.

The two-day summit, at a cliff-top hotel overlooking the Mediterranean, began a day after Trump blasted NATO allies for spending too little on defence and described Germany’s trade surplus as “very bad” in a meeting with EU officials in Brussels.

After receiving warm receptions in Saudia Arabia and Israel, Trump’s confrontational stance with long-standing partners in Europe cast a cloud over the meeting in Taormina, where leaders are due to discuss terrorism, Syria, North Korea and the global economy.

“No doubt, this will be the most challenging G7 summit in years,” Donald Tusk, a former Polish prime minister who chairs summits of European Union leaders, said before the meeting.

White House economic adviser Gary Cohn predicted “robust” discussions on trade and climate.

European leaders, including German Chancellor Angela Merkel and new French President Emmanuel Macron, had hoped to use the summit to convince Trump to soften some of his stances.

But diplomats conceded as the talks began that the United States was unlikely to budge, meaning the final communique could be watered down significantly compared to the one the G7 unveiled at its last summit in Japan.

Trade and climate

The summit kicked off with a ceremony at an ancient Greek theatre overlooking the sea, where war ships patrolled the sparkling blue waters. Nine fighter jets soared into the sky above Taormina, leaving a trail of smoke in the red-white-green colours of the Italian flag.

The leaders then adjourned to the San Domenico Palace, a one-time Dominican monastery that is now a luxury 5-star hotel. During World War Two, it housed Nazi air force chiefs.

Italy chose to stage the summit in Sicily to draw attention to Africa, which is 140 miles (225 km) from the island at its closest point across the Mediterranean.

More than half a million migrants, most from sub-Saharan Africa, have reached Italy by boat since 2014, taking advantage of the chaos in Libya to launch their perilous crossings.

But trade and climate are the most contentious issues.

Trump, who dismissed human-made global warming as a “hoax” during his election campaign, is threatening to pull the United States out of a 2015 climate deal clinched in Paris in 2015.

Fellow G7 leaders are trying to convince him to stay in. Cohn and other administration officials have said Trump will wait until after the summit to decide.

“This is the first real opportunity that the international community has to force the American administration to begin to show its hand, particularly on environment policy,” said Tristen Naylor, a lecturer on development at the University of Oxford and deputy director of the G20 Research Group.

On Thursday in Brussels, with NATO leaders standing alongside him, Trump accused members of the military alliance of owing “massive amounts of money” to the United States and NATO – even though allied contributions are voluntary.

The remarks went down badly with European leaders, who had hoped Trump would use the opportunity to confirm his commitment to Article 5, the core NATO principle that an attack on one member is viewed as an attack on all.

“When an American president cannot commit clearly to Article 5 at a time when everyone is expecting him to do this then there is the risk that Moscow interprets this as meaning it is no longer valid,” said Jan Techau of the American Academy in Berlin.

“Very bad”

In a private meeting with European Commission President Jean-Claude Juncker, Trump also denounced the German trade surplus as “very bad” and complained about the large number of German cars being sold in the United States, officials said.

Juncker tried to play down the comments ahead of the summit. But they underscored ongoing policy divisions between Trump and his partners four months after he took office.

Trump is attending his first major international summit but is not the only G7 newcomer. Macron, Italian Prime Minister Paolo Gentiloni and British Prime Minister Theresa May will also be attending the elite club for the first time.

May is expected to leave a day early, following Monday’s suicide bombing at a concert in northern England that killed 22 people carried out by a suspected Islamist militant of Libyan descent who grew up in Britain.

G7 leaders were expected to issue a separate statement on terrorism on Friday, before issuing their formal communique on Saturday. Italian officials have suggested the final communique will be shorter than 10 pages. At the last G7 summit in Japan it totalled 32 pages.

One country that will not be present is Russia. It was expelled from the group in 2014 following its annexation of Crimea from Ukraine.

Trump called for improved ties with Moscow during his election campaign.

But accusations from U.S. intelligence agencies that Russia intervened in the U.S. election to help Trump, and investigations into his campaign’s contacts with Russian officials, have hung over his four-month-old presidency and prevented him from getting too close to Moscow.

On Thursday, the Washington Post and NBC News reported that Trump’s son-in-law and adviser Jared Kushner was under scrutiny by the FBI because of his meetings with Russian officials before Trump took office. One of Kushner’s attorneys said her client would cooperate with the investigation.

Kushner and his wife, Trump’s daughter Ivanka, have returned to Washington after accompanying the president for the first part of his first foreign tour.

Protest march along the seafront

UPDATE: Shopkeepers down the hill from where world leaders are meeting boarded up their windows and doors on Friday, bracing for a protest march along the seafront of this normally sleepy Sicilian tourist town.

U.S. President Donald Trump and the leaders of Germany, France, Italy, Britain, Japan and Canada are holding a Group of Seven summit in the hilltop town of Taormina, which is off limits to most for security reasons, so the neighbouring Giardini Naxos has been selected for the “No G7” march.

Giardini’s mayor Pancrazio Lo Turco has ordered all shops to be closed on Saturday until the protest is over, even though organisers say it is meant to be a peaceful demonstration aimed at giving voice to the world’s disenfranchised.

Stores and restaurants are forbidden from selling bottled alcoholic beverages, and many have already boarded up their windows. Some have mounted metal plating, fearing the kind of violence that marked a similar meeting in Genoa, Italy, in 2001.

On that occasion, an anti-globalisation protester was shot dead by police during some of Italy’s worst-ever riots.

The organisers of Saturday’s rally expect some 3,500 people will turn up and police chiefs say they have no reason to believe it will turn violent.

“We have to close down because of this summit. Who’s going to give us our money back?” said Antonino Di Franco, a barber who everyone calls “Nino”. “They shouldn’t have held this meeting here, or they should have done it in April, not in May when the tourists start to come.”

In a morning gathering in Giardini’s sunny municipal square, protesters said they were there to give voice to those who have little political clout, like migrants seeking to reach Europe and North America.

“Today with Trump as president there is extreme uncertainty among immigrants without the proper documents who constantly fear deportation,” said Father Tomas Gonzalez, who founded a shelter for migrants in Mexico near its southern border with Guatemala and who came to Italy to take part in the protest.

“The policy of building walls is costing migrant lives on both sides of the Atlantic,” he said.

Some 1,500 migrants have died so far this year trying to reach Europe by boat as the European Union funnels money and equipment to the Tripoli-based coast guard to turn them back to Libya. Hundreds die every year along the U.S.-Mexico border, where Trump has pledged to build a wall to keep migrants out.

G7 leaders must not waver on Russia sanctions, says EU’s Tusk

European Council President Donald Tusk on Friday urged Group of Seven leaders to stick firmly to their sanctions policy on Russia over the Ukraine crisis, a day after a senior U.S. official said Washington had no position on the issue.

The 28-nation EU bloc and the United States imposed sanctions on Russia after Moscow annexed Crimea from Ukraine in 2014 and then backed separatist rebels in the east.

While EU leaders have so far backed sanctions until a shaky ceasefire agreement signed in February 2015 in Minsk is fully implemented, U.S. President Donald Trump’s promise of warmer ties with Moscow has tested the EU’s resolve to remain united.

“A solution to the conflict can only be reached with the full implementation of the Minsk accords,” Tusk said ahead of the summit which gathers together the leaders of the United States, Germany, France, Britain, Italy, Japan and Canada.

“Since our last G7 summit in Japan (in 2016) we haven’t seen anything to justify a change in our sanctions policy towards Russia. Therefore I will appeal to the other G7 leaders to reconfirm this policy,” Tusk told reporters in Sicily.

He warned that this summit would be the most challenging in years given sharp differences on key issues such as climate change and trade.

Tusk was responding to comments by White House economic adviser Gary Cohn on Thursday that appeared to differ to those from U.S. Secretary of State Rex Tillerson, who has repeatedly said sanctions must remain until Minsk is put in place.

“I think the president is looking at it. Right now, we don’t have a position,” Cohn said.

Common ground

Tusk, a former Polish prime minister, said he was optimistic that there would be common ground with Trump on Russia.

“My impression is that when it comes to the conflict in Ukraine we are more or less on the same line as President Trump,” he said. “Of course. I am maybe less optimistic when it comes to President (Vladimir) Putin’s plans and intentions. I’m less sentimental.”

Fighting between pro-Russian rebels and government forces first broke out in April 2014 after a pro-European uprising in Kiev ousted Ukraine’s Moscow-backed president.

About 10,000 people have been killed in the three-year conflict with growing concerns that the situation could once again rapidly deteriorate.

The diplomatic stand-off with Russia has dragged relations between Putin and the West to a post-Cold War low.

UPDATE: European Commission President Jean-Claude Juncker denied on Friday that U.S. President Donald Trump had aggressively condemned German trade policies during at meeting in Brussels on Thursday.

German media reports said Trump had denounced Berlin’s policies as “very bad” and had signalled that he wanted to limit sales of German cars in the United States.

“He did not say that the Germans were behaving badly,” Juncker said in Sicily before the start of a Group of Seven (G7) summit that brings together the leaders of the United States, Germany, France, Britain, Italy, Japan and Canada.

Juncker called the media reports exaggerated, saying it was “not true” that Trump had been aggressive towards Germany in the talks.

UPDATE: Leaders of the world’s rich nations braced for contentious talks with Donald Trump at a G7 summit in Sicily on Friday after the U.S. president lambasted NATO allies for not spending more on defence and accused Germany of “very bad” trade policies.

Just arrived in Taormina with @FLOTUS Melania. #G7Summit #USA?? pic.twitter.com/l7aXolKBiK

— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) May 25, 2017

Trump’s confrontational remarks in Brussels, on the eve of the two-day summit in the Mediterranean resort town of Taormina, cast a pall over a meeting at which America’s partners had hoped to coax him into softening his stances on trade and climate change.

The summit will kick off with a ceremony at an ancient Greek theatre perched on a cliff overlooking the sea, before the leaders of Britain, Canada, France, Germany, Italy, Japan and the United States begin talks on terrorism, Syria, North Korea and the global economy.

“We will have a very robust discussion on trade and we will be talking about what free and open means,” White House economic adviser Gary Cohn told reporters late Thursday.

He also predicted “fairly robust” talks on whether Trump should honour a U.S. commitment to cut greenhouse gas emissions under the 2015 Paris Agreement.

Trump, who dismissed man-made global warming a “hoax” during his election campaign, is not expected to decide at the summit whether he will stick with the Paris deal, negotiated under his predecessor Barack Obama.

Even if a decision is not forthcoming, European leaders have signalled that they will push Trump hard on the Paris emissions deal, which has comprehensive support across the continent.

“This is the first real opportunity that the international community has to force the American administration to begin to show its hand, particularly on environment policy,” said Tristen Naylor, a lecturer on development at the University of Oxford and deputy director of the G20 Research Group.

The summit, being held near Europe’s most active volcano, Mount Etna, is the final leg of a nine-day tour for Trump – his first foreign trip since becoming president – that started in the Middle East.

Hosts Italy hope the luxurious, relaxed surroundings will give the rich-nation leaders a rare chance for wide-ranging debate on an array of international issues, including Syria, North Korea and the global economy.

They will also discuss security cooperation following Monday’s suicide bombing at a concert in northern England that killed 22 people and was allegedly carried out by a young Islamist militant of Libyan descent who grew up in Britain.

A senior Italian diplomat said Trump and the heads of Britain, Germany, France, Italy, Japan and Canada saw eye-to-eye on many issues ahead of the two-day summit, but Washington remained isolated on commerce and the environment.

European Union nations are eager for a clear U.S. pledge “to fight all forms of protectionism”, said the diplomat, who declined to be named. But they were struggling to convince the U.S. president of the merits of free trade.

“We will have a very robust discussion on trade and we will be talking about what free and open means,” White House economic adviser Gary Cohn told reporters late Thursday.

He also predicted “fairly robust” talks on whether Trump should honour a U.S. commitment to cut greenhouse gas emissions under the 2015 Paris Agreement.

He said the president, who has dismissed global warming as a “hoax”, would make a final decision when he returned home, but stressed that he would put economic development first.

Even if a decision is not forthcoming, European diplomats expect their leaders to push Trump hard on the Paris emissions deal, which has comprehensive support across the continent.

“This is the first real opportunity that the international community has to force the American administration to begin to show its hand, particularly on environment policy,” said Tristen Naylor, a lecturer on development at the University of Oxford and deputy director of the G20 Research Group.

Trump has largely stuck to script and kept his tweeting to a minimum on a trip which has taken him to Saudi Arabia, Israel, the Palestinian territories, the Vatican and Brussels. He is not expected to hold a news conference in Sicily before returning to Washington on Saturday.