Europe

UK to attend US summit on Iran on condition of Yemen talks

The Guardian | :  Jeremy Hunt is first senior European minister to agree to attend controversial meeting

The foreign secretary, Jeremy Hunt, has agreed to attend a summit organised by the US in Warsaw originally billed as an alliance to confront Iran, but only on the condition that the US secretary of state hosts a meeting on Yemen on the summit’s margins.

Hunt is the first senior European minister to declare that he will attend the summit, which starts on 13 February. European diplomats have been reluctant to attend, suspecting that the event is part of a US drive to undermine Europe’s support for the Iran nuclear deal signed in 2015.

The EU shares Washington’s concerns about many aspects of Iranian behaviour but has been at loggerheads with the Trump administration over the US pullout from the nuclear deal and the subsequent imposition of US secondary sanctions on any firms that seek to trade with Iran or purchase its oil exports. The EU is due to publish long-delayed and technically fraught plans to circumvent US sanctions.

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, , , January 27, 2019