G7 foreign ministers gather in Canada Tuesday for meetings expected to focus on Ukraine and find consensus on a path forward to end the four-year-old conflict.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Options to fund Ukraine\u2019s war needs could feature prominently at the talks in Canada\u2019s Niagara region on the US border.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
The diplomats are meeting after President Donald Trump slapped sanctions on Moscow\u2019s two largest oil companies in October, slamming Russian President Vladimir Putin over his refusal to end the conflict.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Trump has also pushed other European countries to stop buying oil that he says funds Moscow\u2019s war machine.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Ukraine is enduring devastating Russian attacks on its energy infrastructure, but Canadian Foreign Minister Anita Anand stopped short of promising concrete outcomes to aid Kyiv at the Niagara talks.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
She told AFP a priority for the meeting was broadening discussion beyond the Group of Seven, which includes Britain, Canada, France, Germany, Italy, Japan and the United States.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\u201cFor Canada, it is important to foster a multilateral conversation, especially now, in such a volatile and complicated environment,\u201d Anand said.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Representatives from Saudi Arabia, India, Brazil, Australia, South Africa, Mexico and South Korea will also be on hand.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
US Secretary of State Marco Rubio is set to hold bilateral talks with Anand on Wednesday, the second and final day of the G7 meeting.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Anand told AFP she did not expect to press the issue of Trump\u2019s trade war, which has forced Canadian job losses and squeezed economic growth.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\u201cWe will have a meeting and have many topics to discuss concerning global affairs,\u201d Anand said.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\u201cThe trade issue is being dealt with by other ministers.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Trump abruptly ended trade talks with Canada last month \u2014 just after an apparently cordial White House meeting with Prime Minister Mark Carney.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
The president has voiced fury over an ad, produced by Ontario\u2019s provincial government, which quoted former president Ronald Reagan on the harm caused by tariffs.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\u2013 Critical minerals \u2013<\/p>\n\n\n\n
The G7\u2019s top diplomats are meeting two weeks after the group\u2019s energy secretaries agreed on further steps to counter China\u2019s dominance of critical mineral supply chains, a growing area of concern for the world\u2019s industrialized democracies.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Beijing has established commanding market control over the refining and processing of various minerals \u2014 especially the rare earth materials needed for the magnets that power sophisticated technologies.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
The G7 announced on an initial series of joint projects last month to ramp up refining capacity that excludes China.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
While the United States was not party to any of those initial deals, the Trump administration has signaled alignment with its G7 partners.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
A State Department official told reporters ahead of the Niagara meet that critical mineral supply chains would be \u201ca major point of focus.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\u201cThere\u2019s a growing global consensus amongst a lot of our partners and allies that economic security is national security,\u201d the official said.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
G7 foreign ministers gather in Canada Tuesday for meetings expected to focus on Ukraine and find consensus on a path forward to end the four-year-old conflict. Options to fund Ukraine\u2019s war needs could feature prominently at the talks in Canada\u2019s Niagara region on the US border. The diplomats are meeting after President Donald Trump slapped […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":8885,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[222],"tags":[1870,3834,193,1884],"class_list":["post-8884","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-business","tag-china","tag-g7","tag-news","tag-ukraine"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/miaminewsnetwork.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8884","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/miaminewsnetwork.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/miaminewsnetwork.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/miaminewsnetwork.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/miaminewsnetwork.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=8884"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/miaminewsnetwork.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8884\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":8886,"href":"https:\/\/miaminewsnetwork.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8884\/revisions\/8886"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/miaminewsnetwork.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/8885"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/miaminewsnetwork.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=8884"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/miaminewsnetwork.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=8884"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/miaminewsnetwork.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=8884"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}