PARIS: French Foreign Minister Jean-Marc Ayrault said Sunday that if US President-elect Donald Trump moves the American embassy in Israel from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem it would have “extremely serious consequences.”
Speaking as 70 countries gather in Paris to try to revive Israeli-Palestinian peace efforts, Ayrault told French TV he believed Trump would find it “impossible” to fulfil the pledge he made during his campaign to transfer the embassy.
“When you are president of the United States, you cannot take such a stubborn and such a unilateral view on this issue. You have to try to create the conditions for peace,” Ayrault said.
Palestinian leader Mahmud Abbas warned Saturday that peace could be dealt a mortal blow if Trump, who has vowed unstinting support for Israel, moves the embassy to Jerusalem.
Doing so would reverse decades of US policy that has until now maintained that the final status of Jerusalem — whose eastern and largely Arab side has been occupied by Israel since 1967 — should be determined in peace negotiations with the Palestinians.
The Paris meeting is mainly symbolic, but comes at a crucial juncture for the Middle East, five days before Trump is sworn in as US president.
France says ‘serious consequences’ if US embassy moves to Jerusalem
France says ‘serious consequences’ if US embassy moves to Jerusalem
Belarus frees opposition politician after stroke in prison, exiled leader says
- Statkevich was one of 52 prisoners freed in Belarus in September 2025
- Statkevich, 69, ran unsuccessfully against Lukashenko in a presidential election in 2010
MINSK: Belarusian opposition politician Mikola Statkevich, who refused deportation to Lithuania after his 2025 release and was imprisoned again, has been freed after he suffered a stroke while in custody, exiled opposition leader Sviatlana Tsikhanouskaya said on Thursday.
Statkevich was one of 52 prisoners freed in Belarus in September 2025 after an appeal from US President Donald Trump, including journalists and political opponents of President Alexander Lukashenko. All were brought to the Lithuanian border, but Statkevich was the only one who refused to cross.
“I am relieved that he is free and able to hug his wife, who waited for him for so long,” Tsikhanouskaya wrote on X, posting a picture of Statkevich and his wife smiling. She said that he could barely speak following the stroke.
Statkevich, 69, ran unsuccessfully against Lukashenko in a presidential election in 2010. He was arrested in May 2020 and sentenced in 2021 to 14 years in a maximum-security prison for “organizing riots.”
