According to foreign minister Yvette Cooper, Britain will not participate in the signing ceremony for US President Donald Trump’s “Board of Peace” in Davos on Thursday.
Trump is scheduled to host the founding charter ceremony for his organization for settling international disputes in Davos. Permanent membership will cost $1 billion.
Cooper told BBC television from the Swiss mountain town, “There’s a huge amount of work to do, we won’t be one of the signatories today,” in response to UK worries on the presence of Russian President Vladimir Putin, whose soldiers are still engaged in combat in Ukraine following their invasion in 2022.
She continued, “Because this is about a legal treaty that raises much broader issues, and we do have concerns about President Putin being part of something which is talking about peace, when we have still not seen any signs from Putin that there will be a commitment to peace in Ukraine.”
Dozens of world leaders had already received invitations to join the as-yet-undefined club.
The board’s mandate, which was initially intended to supervise Gaza’s reconstruction, does not seem to restrict its authority to the Strip and seems to want to compete with the UN, which has angered certain US allies, including France.
Trump claimed on Wednesday that Putin had accepted the invitation, even though the Kremlin had previously stated it was still reviewing it.
