ANKARA: Turkish President Tayyip Erdogan praised a deal reached with Australia on Saturday to host next year’s UN climate summit, calling the compromise a meaningful achievement for multilateralism.
Resolving a lengthy standoff, the two countries agreed that Turkiye will host the COP31 summit in 2026 while Australia leads the negotiation process. Ankara and Canberra both bid in 2022 to host the conference and had since refused to stand down.
“Taking into consideration that multilateralism has in recent times lost ground, I find this agreement that we reached with Australia to be meaningful,” Erdogan told an event at the Group of 20 summit in Johannesburg on Saturday evening.
Australian Prime Minister Anthony Albanese said on Sunday that his country would have “exclusive authority in relation to the negotiations” guiding decision-making at the summit.
In a statement, Albanese said the Pacific region would host a special pre-COP meeting to bring “attention to the existential threat climate change poses to the region.”
A bloc of 18 Pacific Island nations, many at risk from rising seas, had backed Australia’s bid.
“Hundreds of bilateral meetings, climate-oriented visits to tens of countries, days of diplomatic negotiations. And finally Turkiye is the COP31 President and Host!,” Turkiye’s minister of environment, urbanization and climate change, Murat Kurum, posted on X late on Saturday.
“As Turkiye, we guarantee to organize a fair and balanced conference of the parties, focusing not only on our own region but also on fragile regions such as the Pacific and Africa, connecting the north and the south,” he later said in a separate statement from the COP30 meeting in Brazil.
The annual COP conference is the main global forum for driving action on climate change.
Turkiye’s Erdogan praises ‘meaningful’ deal with Australia on hosting COP31 summit
https://arab.news/zp6q4
Turkiye’s Erdogan praises ‘meaningful’ deal with Australia on hosting COP31 summit
- A bloc of 18 Pacific Island nations, many at risk from rising seas, had backed Australia’s bid
Blair dropped from Gaza ‘peace board’ after Arab objections
- Former UK PM was viewed with hostility over role in Iraq War
- He reportedly met Netanyahu late last month to discuss plans
LONDON: Former UK Prime Minister Tony Blair has been withdrawn from the US-led Gaza “peace council” following objections by Arab and Muslim countries, The Guardian reported.
US President Donald Trump has said he would chair the council. Blair was long floated for a prominent role in the administration, but has now been quietly dropped, according to the Financial Times.
Blair had been lobbying for a position in the postwar council and oversaw a plan for Gaza from his Tony Blair Institute for Global Change that involved Jared Kushner, Trump’s son-in-law.
Supporters of the former British leader cited his role in the Good Friday Agreement, which ended decades of conflict and violence in Northern Ireland.
His detractors, however, highlighted his former position as representative of the Middle East Quartet, made up of the UN, EU, Russia and US, which aimed to bring about peace in the Middle East.
Furthermore, Blair’s involvement in the Iraq War is viewed with hostility across the Arab world.
After Trump revealed his 20-point plan to end the Israel-Hamas war in September, Blair was the only figure publicly named as taking a potential role in the postwar peace council.
The US president supported his appointment and labeled him a “very good man.”
A source told the Financial Times that Blair’s involvement was backed by the US and Israel.
“The Americans like him and the Israelis like him,” the person said.
The US plan for Gaza was criticized in some quarters for proposing a separate Gaza framework that did not include the West Bank, stoking fears that the occupied Palestinian territories would become separate polities indefinitely.
Trump said in October: “I’ve always liked Tony, but I want to find out that he’s an acceptable choice to everybody.”
Blair is reported to have held an unpublicized meeting with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu late last month to discuss plans.
His office declined to comment to The Guardian, but an ally said the former prime minister would not be sitting on Gaza’s “board of peace.”
