NEW DELHI: Former US president Barack Obama launched a veiled barb at his successor Donald Trump on Friday, saying there is “a pause in American leadership” on climate change.
Since leaving office in January, Obama has been relatively restrained in his comments about Trump, who frequently fires broadsides at his predecessor’s policies.
But he took aim at the Republican president in a New Delhi speech over Trump’s threat to leave the 2015 Paris climate accord on slashing global carbon emissions.
“It is an agreement that — even though we have a little bit of a pause in American leadership — is giving our children a fighting chance,” Obama told a symposium organized by the Hindustan Times newspaper.
“And the good news is that in the United States, there are states, companies and universities and cities that are continuing to work to make sure that America lives up to that agreements that we made in the Paris accords,” he added.
Trump has threatened several times to withdraw from the Paris accord saying it is crippling US business. He has called for the agreement to be renegotiated.
Obama would not be drawn into other questions about the US administration during his appearance in New Delhi, but the former president did attack “destructive populism from the left or the right” that he called a threat to modern democracy.
“The thing I love about America and I suspect the thing you love about India is just this cacophony of life and it throws up all kinds of variety,” Obama said in response to one attempt to force a comment on Trump.
“There are political trends in American that I don’t agree with and abide by but I recognize as part of a running thread in American life.”
The two-term leader said he has become “obsessed” with the way news is handled and consumed, particularly by the young.
“We are more connected than ever before but ... more and more we are fitting facts to suit our opinions rather than formulating our opinions based on facts,” said Obama, who was in China before visiting India, and next goes to Paris.
“This poses a great danger because democracies can’t function if we can’t agree on a basic baseline of what is true and what is false.”
Obama digs at Trump over climate change
Obama digs at Trump over climate change
Russia says foreign forces in Ukraine would be ‘legitimate targets’
- Moscow has repeatedly said it will not tolerate the presence in Ukraine of troops from Western countries
MOSCOW: Russia would regard the deployment of any foreign military forces or infrastructure in Ukraine as foreign intervention and treat those forces as legitimate targets, the Foreign Ministry said on Monday, citing Minister Sergei Lavrov.
The ministry’s comment, one of many it said were in response to questions put to Lavrov, also praised US President Donald Trump’s efforts at working for a resolution of the war and said he understood the fundamental reasons behind the conflict.
“The deployment of military units, facilities, warehouses, and other infrastructure of Western countries in Ukraine is unacceptable to us and will be regarded as foreign intervention posing a direct threat to Russia’s security,” the ministry said on its website.
It said Western countries — which have discussed a possible deployment to Ukraine to help secure any peace deal — had to understand “that all foreign military contingents, including German ones, if deployed in Ukraine, will become legitimate targets for the Russian Armed Forces.”
The United States has spearheaded efforts to hold talks aimed at ending the conflict in Ukraine and a second three-sided meeting with Russian and Ukrainian representatives is to take place this week in the United Arab Emirates.
The issue of ceding internationally recognized Ukrainian territory to Russia remains a major stumbling block. Kyiv rejects Russian calls for it to give up all of its Donbas region, including territory Moscow’s forces have not captured.
Moscow has repeatedly said it will not tolerate the presence in Ukraine of troops from Western countries.
The ministry said Moscow valued the “purposeful efforts” of the Trump administration in working toward a resolution and understanding Russia’s long-running concerns about NATO’s eastward expansion and its overtures to Ukraine.
It described Trump as “one of the few Western politicians who not only immediately refused to advance meaningless and destructive preconditions for starting a substantive dialogue with Moscow on the Ukrainian crisis, but also publicly spoke about its root causes.”
