LONDON: Keir Starmer met Donald Trump in New York for a two-hour dinner, the first meeting for the new British Prime Minister and the former US President, media reports said on Friday.
Trump, the Republican nominee in November’s US election, hosted the Labour Party leader at Trump Tower on Thursday, the BBC, The Guardian and The Daily Mail reported.
Speaking ahead of the meeting, Trump told reporters: “I actually think he’s very nice. He ran a great race. He did very well. It’s very early. He’s very popular.”
Starmer won a landslide election victory in the UK’s July general election, ousting the Conservatives after 14 years in power.
Starmer said it was important for him to meet both candidates in the US election but that “diary challenges” meant it had not been possible to schedule a meeting with Vice President and Democrat nominee Kamala Harris.
“We’ve now got the opportunity to meet Trump, which is good,” he said.
Trump and Starmer were also joined by Britain’s Foreign Secretary David Lammy, who has made scathing remarks about Trump in the past.
In 2018, Lammy called Trump “a woman-hating, neo-Nazi-sympathizing sociopath.”
However, Lammy was more diplomatic earlier this year, saying in a speech that Trump’s “attitude to European security is often misunderstood.”
Starmer has taken a neutral stance on the US election, although experts say a Trump presidency could pose difficulties, particularly with doubts over the Republican’s support for NATO and Ukraine.
Starmer was in New York attending the United Nations General Assembly.
Trump, Starmer meet for two-hour New York dinner: reports
https://arab.news/mmtvm
Trump, Starmer meet for two-hour New York dinner: reports
US military kills 6 in strike on alleged drug boat in the Eastern Pacific
- Sunday’s attack brought the death toll to at least 157 people since the Trump administration began targeting those it calls “narcoterrorists” in small vessels in early September
WASHINGTON: The US military said it killed six men Sunday in a strike on an alleged drug-smuggling vessel in the eastern Pacific Ocean as part of the Trump administration’s campaign against alleged traffickers.
Sunday’s attack brought the death toll to at least 157 people since the Trump administration began targeting those it calls “narcoterrorists” in small vessels in early September.
As with most of the military’s statements on the more than 40 known strikes in the Eastern Pacific Ocean and Caribbean Sea, US Southern Command said it targeted alleged drug traffickers along known smuggling routes. The military did not provide evidence that the vessel was ferrying drugs. It posted a video on X that showed a small boat being blown up as it floated on the water.
President Donald Trump has said the US is in “armed conflict” with cartels in Latin America and has justified the attacks as a necessary escalation to stem the flow of drugs into the United States. But his administration has offered little evidence to support its claims of killing “narcoterrorists.”
In a meeting with Latin American leaders on Saturday, Trump encouraged them to join the US in taking military action against drug-trafficking cartels and transnational gangs, which he said pose an “unacceptable threat” to the region’s national security.
To that end, Ecuador and the United States conducted military operations this past week against organized crime groups in the South American country.
With Saturday’s gathering, Trump aimed to demonstrate that he remains committed to focusing US foreign policy on the Western Hemisphere, even while waging a war on Iran that has had repercussions across the Middle East.
Critics have questioned the overall legality of the boat strikes as well as their effectiveness, in part because the fentanyl behind many fatal overdoses is typically trafficked to the US over land from Mexico, where it is produced with chemicals imported from China and India.
The boat strikes also drew intense criticism following the revelation that the military killed survivors of the very first boat attack with a follow-up strike. The Trump administration and many Republican lawmakers said it was legal and necessary, while Democratic lawmakers and legal experts said the killings were murder, if not a war crime.
