Osinbajo off to Italy for G7 Sumit

The Acting President, Prof. Yemi Osinbajo on Saturday departed Abuja for Taormina, Sicily in Italy for the ongoing G7 Summit. The summit began on Friday, May 26 and will end on Saturday, May 27.
The Special Assistant on Media to the Acting President, Mr. Laolu Akande made disclosed to newsmen on Saturday morning in Abuja.
“Acting President, Osinbajo, invited to ongoing G7 summit in Italy to represent Nigeria, leaves this morning and is expected back later in the evening today.”
Members of the G7 made up of the leaders of the United States, Canada, Britain, France, Germany, Italy and Japan – countries collectively known as the Group of Seven (G7) – meet annually to discuss issues affecting the world in general.
The summit kicks off with a ceremony at an ancient Greek theatre perched on a cliff overlooking the sea where war ships patrolled the sparkling blue waters.
Leaders of Britain, Canada, France, Germany, Italy, Japan and the United States said they would hold talks on terrorism, Syria, North Korea and the global economy.
“No doubt, this will be the most challenging G7 summit in years,” Donald Tusk, the former Polish prime minister who chairs summits of European Union leaders, said before the meeting got underway.
The U. S. White House economic adviser Gary Cohn predicted “robust” discussions on trade and climate. However, U.S President, Donald Trump, had dismissed human-made global warming as a “hoax” during his election campaign and he is threatening to pull the United States out of a 2015 climate deal clinched in Paris in 2015.
But fellow G7 leaders are trying to convince him to stay in. Cohn and other administration officials have said Trump will wait until after the summit to decide.
“This is the first real opportunity that the international community has to force the American administration to begin to show its hand, particularly on environment policy,” said Tristen Naylor, a lecturer on development at the University of Oxford and deputy director of the G20 Research Group.
The summit is being held near Europe’s most active volcano, Mount Etna. French President Emmanuel Macron, Italian Prime Minister Paolo Gentiloni and British Prime Minister Theresa May will also be attending the elite club for the first time.
May is expected to leave a day early, following Monday’s suicide bombing at a concert in northern England that killed 22 people carried out by a suspected Islamist militant of Libyan descent who grew up in Britain.
G7 leaders were expected to issue a separate statement on terrorism on Friday, before issuing their formal communique on Saturday. Italian officials have suggested the final communique will be shorter than 10 pages. At the last G7 summit in Japan it totalled 32 pages.