PARIS: French President Emmanuel Macron said on Thursday he had called Pope Leo XIV and talked about efforts to reach peace in Ukraine and Gaza in his first conversation with the new pontiff.
In their “first exchange,” the pair “addressed the efforts to let the weapons fall silent wherever conflicts rage in the world, and in particular for a solid and lasting peace in Ukraine and Gaza,” Macron said on X.
“We share the ambition to reconcile the fight against poverty and the protection of the planet,” the French leader said, adding that he had “once again congratulated” the pontiff on his election as head of the Catholic Church last week.
While Macron is not scheduled to join the ranks of the world leaders attending Pope Leo’s inaugural mass in Rome on Sunday morning, France’s Prime Minister Francois Bayrou is due to attend.
Macron calls for peace in first talk with new pope
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Macron calls for peace in first talk with new pope
Zelensky to meet European leaders in Berlin Monday: Germany
BERLIN: Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky is set to travel to Berlin on Monday and meet European leaders as well as the heads of the EU and NATO, German government spokesman Stefan Kornelius said.
Zelensky will attend a German-Ukrainian business forum and discuss “the status of peace negotiations in Ukraine” with Chancellor Friedrich Merz, Kornelius said on Friday.
“In the evening, numerous European heads of state and government, as well as the leaders of the EU and NATO, will join the talks,” he said in a statement.
Britain’s Prime Minister Keir Starmer will be among the leaders attending the talks in Berlin, a UK government official said.
The meeting will be part of a flurry of diplomacy around a plan to end the conflict in Ukraine originally proposed by US President Donald Trump last month.
Ukrainian officials on Wednesday said they had sent Washington an updated version of the plan, building on Trump’s original 28-point proposal.
