White House shows no sign of reopening Paris talks
Three weeks after Trump announced he's pulling the U.S. out of the climate accord, everyone is waiting for the White House to move forward.
By ANDREW RESTUCCIA 06/22/2017 05:06 AM EDT
Three weeks after President Donald Trump pledged to pull the United States out of the Paris climate agreement and negotiate a better deal, foreign allies and U.S. officials alike remain perplexed about the White House’s plans going forward.
Two U.S. officials told POLITICO that senior White House aides, who are prioritizing health care legislation and increasingly preoccupied by the expanding Russia probe, have had very few internal conversations about the administration’s Paris strategy since Trump’s announcement. One official said the administration likely won’t begin mapping out its next moves until after the July G20 summit in Hamburg, Germany.
Interviews with a half-dozen foreign officials and veteran climate negotiators show the international community is deeply uncertain in the meantime about how to interpret Trump’s June 1 Rose Garden speech, in which he vowed to “begin negotiations to re-enter either the Paris accord or an entirely new transaction, on terms that are fair to the United States.”
“Nobody has a clue what the administration is thinking,” said one foreign diplomat, who like others quoted in this story requested anonymity to discuss the issue. “The announcement is so vague. Nobody knows what it means.”
more
http://www.politico.com/story/2017/06/22/trump-allies-paris-climate-talks-239828
= new reply since forum marked as read
