Britain\u2019s chief diplomat said Monday that the U.K. will not ditch its ban on directly engaging with Russian officials after Donald Trump invited Vladimir Putin to the G20 meeting in December.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Speaking in The POLITICO Pub at Labour Party conference, Ed Miliband said it is for the U.S. to \u201cmake their own decisions\u201d on inviting the Russian president to the summit in Miami later this year \u2014 but stressed the U.K. is unlikely to take the same approach next year.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\u201cWe\u2019ve had a long-standing policy not to have direct engagement at my level with the Russians since the invasion of Ukraine. We\u2019re not changing that policy,\u201d Miliband said when asked whether the greater engagement with Moscow is a good thing.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Miliband said the decision is in part about showing solidarity with the Ukrainian people, adding: \u201cDifferent countries make different decisions on these things.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n
The U.K. foreign secretary confirmed Prime Minister Andy Burnham will be at the Miami G20 later this year, but declined to \u201csecond guess the decisions\u201d about who\u2019s invited.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Elsewhere in his interview, Miliband acknowledged that disagreements with the Trump administration over the future of the Chagos Islands were discussed when Burnham met Trump at the U.N. General Assembly earlier this month.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\u201cIt\u2019s pretty clear, as became apparent from that meeting, that the U.S. administration does not at the moment agree with the arrangement,\u201d Miliband said, adding he and U.S. Secretary of State Marco Rubio \u201ctalk a lot\u201d about the way forward. Britain has agreed to cede sovereignty of the archipelago, home to the joint U.S.-U.K. Diego Garcia airbase, to Mauritius. A lease arrangement has been worked out to allow continued use of the base, but critics fear a strategic toehold risks falling into the orbit of China.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Britain\u2019s chief diplomat said Monday that the U.K. will not ditch its ban on directly engaging with Russian officials after Donald Trump invited Vladimir Putin to the G20 meeting in December. Speaking in The POLITICO Pub at Labour Party conference, Ed Miliband said it is for the U.S. to \u201cmake their own decisions\u201d on inviting the […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":24879,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-24878","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-1"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europe24.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/24878","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europe24.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europe24.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europe24.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europe24.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=24878"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.europe24.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/24878\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":24880,"href":"https:\/\/www.europe24.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/24878\/revisions\/24880"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europe24.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/24879"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europe24.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=24878"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europe24.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=24878"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europe24.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=24878"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}