Trump | Pakistan

United States President Donald Trump co-signed a ceasefire agreement between Thailand and Cambodia in Malaysia during the first stop on his Asia tour, which is expected to culminate in talks with Chinese leader Xi Jinping. The ceasefire, following a bloody border dispute, was signed by Thai Prime Minister Anutin Charnvirakul and Cambodian Prime Minister Hun Manet, as well as Trump and Malaysian Prime Minister Anwar Ibrahim. The agreement will see the release of 18 Cambodian prisoners of war, a statement from Cambodia’s foreign ministry said. Clashes between Thailand and Cambodia erupted in July, killing more than 40 people and forcing around 300,000 to flee their homes. While the neighbours agreed an initial ceasefire in late July, they have since traded accusations of violations. In their joint declaration witnessed by Trump, Anutin and Hun Manet reiterated their “firm commitment to refrain from the threat or use of force”. “We reaffirm the unwavering commitment to peace and security between our two countrie...

US President Donald Trump slammed Canada for playing “dirty” on Friday as a row over an advertisement featuring former leader Ronald Reagan that prompted Trump to scrap trade talks showed no sign of abating. The Canadian province of Ontario said it would pull the offending anti-tariff ad on Monday so that negotiations could restart, after Trump alleged that the ad misrepresented the views of fellow Republican Reagan. But Trump showed no sign of backing down, saying Ontario should not have let it air during the first two games this weekend of baseball’s World Series. Adding extra spice to the row, the World Series features a Canadian team, the Toronto Blue Jays, facing a US team, the Los Angeles Dodgers. The Blue Jays thrashed the Dodgers 11-4 in the first game on Friday. “Canada got caught cheating on a commercial, can you believe it?” Trump told reporters before heading on a trip to Asia. “And I heard they were pulling the ad — I didn’t know they were putting it on a little bit more. They could have pulled i...

United States President Donald Trump said on Thursday all trade talks with Canada were terminated following what he called a fraudulent advertisement in which former and late president Ronald Reagan spoke negatively about tariffs. Trump imposed tariffs on Canadian steel, aluminum and autos earlier this year, prompting Ottawa to respond in kind. The two sides have been in talks for weeks on a potential deal for the steel and aluminum sectors. “Based on their egregious behavior, ALL TRADE NEGOTIATIONS WITH CANADA ARE HEREBY TERMINATED,” Trump wrote on Truth Social. Ontario Premier Doug Ford said earlier this week the ad from his province with anti-tariff messaging had caught Trump’s attention. The ad showed Reagan, a Republican, criticising tariffs on foreign goods while saying they caused job losses and trade wars. “I heard that the president heard our ad. I’m sure he wasn’t too happy,” Ford said on Tuesday. The Ronald Reagan Presidential Foundation issued a statement late on Thursday saying the ad by the gove...

President Donald Trump said Israel would lose its crucial backing from the United States if it annexes the occupied West Bank, in a Time magazine interview published on Thursday. Trump’s comments, which Time said were made by telephone on October 15, were published as both Vice President JD Vance and Secretary of State Marco Rubio warned against any annexation. “It won’t happen. It won’t happen because I gave my word to the Arab countries. And you can’t do that now. We’ve had great Arab support,” Trump said when asked what the consequences would be for Israel if it did so. “Israel would lose all of its support from the United States if that happened.” Trump also told Time that he believed Saudi Arabia would join the Abraham Accords, which normalise relations between Israel and Arab states, by the end of the year. “Yes, I do. I do,” he said when asked if he thought Riyadh would join in that timeframe. “See they had a problem. They had a Gaza problem and they had an Iran problem. Now they don’t have those two p...

US President Donald Trump has pardoned convicted Binance founder Changpeng Zhao, a White House official said on Thursday. In a statement, White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt said Trump had “exercised his constitutional authority by issuing a pardon for Mr. Zhao, who was prosecuted by the Biden Administration in their war on cryptocurrency.“ Binance did not immediately respond to a request for comment. Zhao, one of the most powerful people in the crypto world, had to step down as chief of Binance when the company agreed to a $4.3 billion settlement with the US government to end a years-long probe into misconduct at the world’s largest crypto exchange. Trump’s pardon of Zhao paves the way for the crypto mogul to return to the business he helped found in 2017. He has already served his time in prison after a judge sentenced him to four months. Zhao’s pardon is the latest in a series Trump has doled out to executives convicted of white collar crimes. Earlier in April, he was appointed as a strategic advi...

United States President Donald Trump slapped sanctions on Russia’s two largest oil companies on Wednesday, complaining that his talks with Vladimir Putin to end the Ukraine war “don’t go anywhere”. The European Union also unveiled a fresh wave of sanctions to pressure Russia to end its relentless, three-and-a-half-year invasion of its neighbor, which is allied with both Washington and Brussels. Trump has held off pulling the trigger on sanctions against Russia for months, but his patience snapped after plans for a fresh summit with Putin in Budapest collapsed. “Every time I speak with Vladimir, I have good conversations, and then they don’t go anywhere,” Trump said in response to a question from an AFP journalist in the Oval Office. But Trump added that he hoped the “tremendous sanctions” against Russian oil giants Rosneft and Lukoil would be short-lived. “We hope that the war will be settled,” he said alongside Nato Secretary General Mark Rutte. US Secretary of State Marco Rubio said on Wednesday evening tha...

North Korea fired what appeared to be multiple short-range ballistic missiles on Wednesday, South Korea’s military said, a week before a key Asia-Pacific leaders’ meeting in South Korea. It was the first launch of ballistic missiles since May by Pyongyang, which has defied a United Nations Security Council ban on the weapons. It was also the first such launch since Lee Jae Myung was elected president in South Korea, with a platform of engagement with North Korea. Lee and United States President Donald Trump are expected to meet in South Korea next week at a summit of the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation (APEC) forum. Trump is also expected to meet Chinese President Xi Jinping. South Korea detected several projectiles believed to be short-range ballistic missiles fired from an area near North Korea’s capital, Pyongyang, in a northeasterly direction early on Wednesday, its Joint Chiefs of Staff said in a statement. Trump to visit South Korea Lee and Trump have discussed the idea of trying to meet North Korean ...

US President Donald Trump reiterated on Sunday that Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi told him India will stop buying Russian oil, while warning that New Delhi would continue paying “massive” tariffs if it did not do so. “I spoke with Prime Minister Modi of India, and he said he’s not going to be doing the Russian oil thing,” Trump told reporters aboard Air Force One. Asked about India’s assertion that it was not aware of any conversation between Modi and Trump, Trump replied: “But if they want to say that, then they’ll just continue to pay massive tariffs, and they don’t want to do that.” Russian oil has been one of the main irritants for Trump in prolonged trade talks with India — half of his 50 per cent tariffs on Indian goods are in retaliation for those purchases. The US government has said that petroleum revenue funds Russia’s war in Ukraine. India has become the biggest buyer of seaborne Russian oil sold at a discount after Western nations shunned purchases and imposed sanctions on Moscow for its 202...

US President Donald Trump suggested on Friday it would be premature to give Tomahawk missiles to Ukraine, saying as he hosted Volodymyr Zelensky that he hoped to secure peace with Russia first. “Hopefully, they won’t need it. Hopefully we’ll be able to get the war over with without thinking about Tomahawks,” Trump told journalists, including an AFP reporter, as the two leaders met at the White House. Trump added that he was confident of getting Russian President Vladimir Putin to end the invasion he launched in 2022, following a phone call with the Kremlin chief a day earlier. The US and Russian presidents agreed on Thursday to a new summit in the Hungarian capital, Budapest, which would be their first since an August meeting in Alaska that failed to produce any kind of peace deal. “I think that President Putin wants to end the war,” Trump said. But Zelensky, who wore a dark suit for his third meeting with Trump in Washington since the US president’s return to power, demurred, saying that Putin was “not ready...

US President Donald Trump said he expected an expansion of the Abraham Accords soon and hopes Saudi Arabia will join the pact that normalised diplomatic relations between Israel and some Arab states. “I hope to see Saudi Arabia go in, and I hope to see others go in. I think when Saudi Arabia goes in, everybody goes in,” Trump said in an interview broadcast on Friday on Fox Business Network. Trump said he had “some very good conversations” as recently as Wednesday with states that have indicated their willingness to join the accords. “I think that they’re going to all go in very soon,” Trump said in the interview, which was recorded on Thursday. The United Arab Emirates and Bahrain signed the accords in 2020 during Trump’s first term in the White House, breaking a longstanding taboo to become the first Arab states to recognise Israel in a quarter century. Morocco and Sudan followed suit. Trump, who convened Muslim and European leaders in Egypt to discuss the future of the Gaza Strip on Monday, has presented hi...

United States President Donald Trump said he and Russian President Vladimir Putin on Thursday agreed to another summit to discuss ending the war in Ukraine, a day before the US president was due to speak with his Ukrainian counterpart, Volodymyr Zelensky. Trump said he and Putin would soon meet in Budapest after a more than two-hour-long phone call he described as productive. The Kremlin did not immediately comment. The surprise development came as Zelensky was headed to the White House on Friday to push for more military support, including potential long-range offensive missiles. Yet the positive tone following the US-Russia call appeared to leave in question the possibility of such support in the near term. Energy systems targeted Kyiv and Moscow have been escalating their war with massive attacks on energy infrastructure while Nato struggles to respond to a spate of Russian air incursions. The Trump-Putin meeting will follow lower-level talks between Moscow and Washington next week, Trump said. No date was...

India said on Thursday that its energy priority was the interest of its citizens, after United States President Donald Trump said New Delhi had promised it will stop buying Russian oil. New Delhi neither confirmed nor denied it was shifting policy towards Russia. “It has been our consistent priority to safeguard the interests of the Indian consumer in a volatile energy scenario,” Indian Foreign Ministry spokesman Randhir Jaiswal said in a statement. “Our import policies are guided entirely by this objective.” Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi has previously defended buying oil from Russia, a historic partner of India, despite Moscow’s invasion of Ukraine. Trump in August raised tariffs on Indian exports to the US to 50 per cent, with Trump’s aides accusing India of fueling Russia’s war in Ukraine. “Ensuring stable energy prices and secured supplies have been the twin goals of our energy policy,” Jaiswal added. “This includes broad-basing our energy sourcing and diversifying as appropriate to meet market con...

US President Donald Trump confirmed on Wednesday that he authorised the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) to conduct covert operations in Venezuela, marking a sharp escalation in US efforts to pressure President Nicolas Maduro’s government. The New York Times first reported the classified directive, citing US officials familiar with the decision, saying the Trump administration’s Venezuela strategy aims to remove Maduro from power. The administration has offered $50 million for information leading to Maduro’s arrest and conviction on drug trafficking charges. The new authority would allow the CIA to carry out lethal operations in Venezuela and conduct a range of operations in the Caribbean, the Times reported. Asked why he authorised the CIA to operate in Venezuela, Trump told reporters his reasons were migration of Venezuelans to the United States and drug trafficking. “I authorised for two reasons really,” Trump said. “Number one, they have emptied their prisons into the United States of America…they came i...

Prime Minister Shehbaz Sharif on Tuesday reiterated his praise for United States President Donald Trump, stating that Pakistan would continue to “express admiration” for the American leader’s “unique contribution” to peace. The statement comes a day after Trump and the leaders of Egypt, Qatar and Turkiye had signed a declaration meant to cement a ceasefire in Gaza, hours after Israel and Hamas exchanged hostages and prisoners. PM Shehbaz had also attended the ceremony held at the Egyptian beach resort of Sharm el-Sheikh. At a later press conference, the US president had especially mentioned the premier and the army chief. In a post on X, the premier said: “As I board the plane to return home after the Gaza peace summit in Sharm el-Sheikh, I want to share some reflections on the potentially transformational nature of what took place and why Pakistan has been so deeply involved.” He stated that Pakistan’s biggest priority was the “immediate cessation of the genocidal campaign imposed on Gaza”, which he said he ...

Iran on Tuesday denounced “baseless claims” made by United States President Donald Trump, calling Washington “the largest sponsor of terrorism”. Addressing Israel’s Knesset on Monday ahead of joining an international peace summit in Egypt’s Sharm el-Sheikh, Trump said that Iran wants to reach a peace deal with the US “even if they said, ‘We don’t want to make a deal,’”. In a statement carried by the state news agency IRNA, the foreign ministry said: “The US, as the world’s largest generator of terrorism and supporter of the terrorist and genocidal Zionist (Israeli) regime, has no moral authority to level accusations against others.” “The repetition of false claims regarding Iran’s peaceful nuclear programme can in no way justify the joint crimes of the US and the Zionist regime” in violating Iran’s soil, the ministry said. Israel launched a surprise attack on Tehran on June 13, targeting military, nuclear, and civilian sites as well as senior military commanders and nuclear scientists. Tehran launched retalia...

United States President Donald Trump especially thanked Prime Minister Shehbaz Sharif and “my favourite” Field Marshal Asim Munir on Monday for their efforts in achieving peace in Gaza, among many other world leaders. Trump was addressing a ceremony following the signing of a ceasefire agreement between Israel and Hamas at the Sharm el-Sheikh Peace Summit in Egypt. He also invited PM Shehbaz to deliver a special address at the ceremony. Taking the podium, PM Shehbaz thanked Trump and the Egyptian President Abdel Fattah El-Sisi for their efforts in securing the peace deal. “Today is one of the greatest days in contemporary history because peace has been achieved after untiring efforts led by President Trump, who is genuinely a man of peace [and] who has relentlessly and untiringly worked throughout these months, day in and day out, to make this world a place to live with peace and prosperity.” ’’I would say that Pakistan had nominated President Trump for the Nobel Peace Prize for his outstanding and extraordin...

United States President Donald Trump told the Israeli parliament on Monday that the ceasefire he helped broker in the Gaza conflict had ushered in the “historic dawn of a new Middle East”. “And after so many years of unceasing war and endless danger, today the skies are calm, the guns are silent, the sirens are still, and the sun rises on a holy land that is finally at peace, a land and a region that will live, God willing, in peace for all eternity,” he said. “This is not only the end of a war … This is the historic dawn of a new Middle East.“ Trump’s lightning visit to Israel came ahead of a summit in the Egyptian resort town of Sharm El-Sheikh co-chaired by the American president, who has declared the conflict in Gaza “over”. Under the ceasefire deal, Israel is due to release nearly 2,000 Palestinians held in its jails. Addressing the Israeli parliament, Trump called the agreement that brought about a ceasefire in Gaza and the release of the captives held by Hamas a triumph as he thanked mediators from the...

• Emergency crew restore power to many parts of Ukraine after attack on grid • US, UK, and Nato conduct air patrol along Russia’s border KYIV: Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky urged US President Donald Trump on Saturday to use the diplomatic success he achieved in the Middle East as a model to end the ongoing conflict in Ukraine, saying that if Trump could stop one war, “others can be stopped as well.” The appeal came during a phone call between the two leaders, just a day after Moscow launched what Ukrainian officials described as a large-scale attack targeting critical energy facilities across 10 regions, including the capital Kyiv. “If a war can be stopped in one region, then surely other wars can be stopped as well, including the Russian war,” Zelen­sky wrote on Facebook, describing what he characterised as a “very positive and productive” conversation with Trump. The timing of the appeal underscores Ukraine’s growing concern that its nearly three-year conflict with Russia has slipped down the inter...

Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi said he spoke to United States President Donald Trump on Thursday, adding that they “reviewed good progress achieved in trade negotiations” and agreed to stay in close touch over the coming weeks. Indian commerce ministry officials have said that after the latest meetings of trade officials in Washington, another round of trade negotiations is expected soon in either country. Trump imposed a 50 per cent tariff on most exports from India, among the highest for any US trading partner. The move impacts about $50 billion of Indian exports to the US, mainly hurting labour-intensive sectors such as textiles, gems and jewellery and the shrimp industry. The tariffs were doubled on Indian goods from 25pc due to New Delhi’s continued imports of Russian oil. Washington earlier said India’s purchase of Russian oil helped fund Moscow’s war in Ukraine and that New Delhi also profits from it. India had rejected the accusation as a double standard, pointing to US and European trade links w...

The eight Muslim countries that worked with US President Donald Trump’s administration on a plan to end Israel’s genocide and invasion in Gaza have welcomed the “steps taken by Hamas” in this connection, the Foreign Office said on Sunday. On Friday, Hamas said it would agree to some of the terms in Trump’s plan — which was announced on Monday after a meeting between the US president and Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu — and seek further negotiations. While the Trump administration worked with eight Muslim countries last month to bring the Israeli invasion of Gaza to an end, reservations have been expressed from that latter’s side that the plan unveiled by the White House was not the one originally agreed upon. Nevertheless, they see Hamas’s partial agreement to the plan as an opportunity for a ceasefire in Gaza after an onslaught of around two years. “The Foreign Ministers of the Hashemite Kingdom of Jordan, the United Arab Emirates, the Republic of Indonesia, the Islamic Republic of Pakistan, the R...