Kananaskis, June 17 || US President Donald Trump announced he was abruptly cutting short his participation in the G7 summit and returning home early to deal with the Iran-Israel crisis.
" I have to be back early for obvious reasons", Trump earlier told reporters. He said he would be leaving after the formal dinner “with these wonderful leaders”.
He will be missing Prime Minister Narendra Modi, who arrived in Calgary Monday evening and will be participating in the summit of the powerful industrialised democracies, along with a select group of emerging economies, on Tuesday.
The summit was overshadowed by the escalating war of missiles between Israel and Iran that began on Friday.
When the summit began at this picturesque resort known for its ski slopes, Canada’s Prime Minister Mark Carney told the leaders gathered around a glass-topped circular table that they were at “one of those turning points in history".
The world is “more divided and dangerous” than during the recent G7 summits, and this was a “hinge” moment when the world “looks to this table" for solutions, he said.
Already, there were signs of a rift between the US and the other leaders because White House officials had said that Trump would not sign a joint declaration calling on both the warring nations to de-escalate.