(Refiles to fix formatting) By Andrea Shalal WASHINGTON (Reuters) – U.S. President Donald Trump said on Tuesday the leader of Australia, Prime Minister Anthony Albanese, would be coming for a visit to see him soon. Speaking to reporters as he departed the White House for a state visit to Britain, Trump did not give a […]
World
Trump says Australian leader coming to see him soon
Audio By Carbonatix
(Refiles to fix formatting)
By Andrea Shalal
WASHINGTON (Reuters) – U.S. President Donald Trump said on Tuesday the leader of Australia, Prime Minister Anthony Albanese, would be coming for a visit to see him soon.
Speaking to reporters as he departed the White House for a state visit to Britain, Trump did not give a date for the visit by Albanese, who is due in the United States next week to attend the United Nations General Assembly (UNGA) in New York.
“They want to get along with me,” Trump said of Australians, in response to a question by an Australian journalist. “You know, your leader is coming over to see me very soon.”
Albanese, reelected as leader of a center-left Labor government in a May national election, has yet to meet Trump, after a meeting scheduled on the sidelines of the G7 summit in Canada in June was canceled when the president left early.
The allies have much to discuss, including the multi-billion dollar AUKUS project, also involving Britain, to provide Australia with nuclear-powered attack submarines to counter China’s ambitions in the Indo-Pacific, which is currently under Pentagon review.
Albanese will attend a reception hosted by Trump on Tuesday in New York, although a bilateral meeting has yet to be scheduled, the prime minister said in an interview on Monday.
“We’ll see each other in New York. He’s hosting a reception on Tuesday night of next week. And as well, we’ll see each other at various forums that are taking place between now and the end of the year. It’s summit season,” Albanese told ABC Perth in an interview to which Australia’s Washington embassy referred when asked about Trump’s comment.
Asked in an Australian television interview on Tuesday if he would have a face-to-face meeting with Trump in New York, Albanese replied: “We’ll see what happens there.”
Albanese spoke by phone with Trump early this month and discussed opportunities for Australia and the United States to cooperate on critical minerals, his office said.
On Saturday, Australia said it would spend A$12 billion ($8 billion) to establish defense facilities in Western Australia to help deliver submarines under AUKUS.
U.S. Under Secretary of Defense Elbridge Colby, a public critic of AUKUS, is leading the Pentagon review of the project. He said last year that submarines were a scarce, critical commodity, and U.S. industry could not produce enough to meet American demand.
Australia has maintained it is confident AUKUS will proceed.
Albanese has said Australia will join several other states in recognizing a Palestinian state at UNGA, plans that have been criticized by the United States.
(Reporting by Andrea Shalal and Steve Holland; additional reporting by Trevor Hunnicutt and David Brunnstrom in Washington and Kirsty Needham in Sydney; Editing by Sharon Singleton and Chizu Nomiyama)