During a tour of the Old City of Jerusalem, French President Emmanuel Macron loudly reprimanded Israeli security officers who he accused of violating rules that prevent them from entering the Crusader-era Church of St Anne, which is considered French territory.
China's president Xi Jinping arrived in France on Sunday for a three-day visit that began on the Riviera and a visit to the tiny prinicpality of Monaco, before meeting with his French counterpart Emmanuel Macron ahead of bialteral trade talks Monday, and further discussions on Tuesday in Paris with Macron, German Chancellor Angela Merkel and European Commission President Jean-Claude Juncker.
French President Emmanuel Macron arrived in Kenya on Wednesday on the final leg of a three-nation tour of East Africa, the first official visit by a French president since Kenyan independence in 1963, when he is due to seal a number of trade deals with his Kenyan counterpart Uhuru Kenyatta and to discuss closer cooperation in the fields of defence and counter-terrorism.
In a post on Twitter, the French army mocked US president Donald Trump’s decision on Sunday to cancel a visit to a cemetery of US soldiers killed in WWI, when bad weather conditions were cited as the reason, during his visit to France to mark the centenary of the 1918 armistice.
In a joint press conference in St Petersburg ahead of an annual economic forum on Friday, the Russian and French leaders reiterated their support for the Iran nuclear programme limitation deal after the recent US decision to withdraw from it, and that despite US President Donald Trump's decision to pull back from planned talks with North Korean leader Kim Jong-un negotiations over the latter's proposed denuclearisation of the peninsula should continue.
French President Emmanuel Macron, on a two-day visit to St Petersburg where he is holding talks with Russian President Vladimir Putin, has highlighted his contacts with the leader of the rights' group Memorial, Alexander Cherkasov, and Natalia Solzhenitsyn, the widow of Soviet dissident writer Alexander Solzhenitsyn, whom he called 'the echo of a voice that marked the 20th century and continues to shine in ours'.
Saudi Arabia's Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman concluded a three-day official vist to France on Tuesday, when a series of draft deals were signed with French companies for petro-chemical, agriciultural, waste treatment, healthcare, tourism and cultural projects worth a total of 14.58 billion euros, which are expected to be finalised during a visit to the Saudi kingdom later this year by President Emmanuel Macron.
French President Emmanuel Macron, visiting the Channel port of Calais on Tuesday, insisted that migrants seeking to cross to Britain would be prevented from regrouping in camps akin to the infamous 'Jungle', once home to 7,000 people, which was demolished in 2016.
French foreign minister Jean-Yves Le Drian has visited Benghazi to revive UN talks between rival groups controlling the west and east of Libya, when he was barred from visiting a migrant detention centre.
French President Emmanuel Macron leaves on Tuesday for visits to Burkina Faso, Ghana and Ivory Coast, officially with the aim of boosting cooperation on education, the digital economy and the environment, and ending with an EU-African-nation summit in Abidjan where migration will top the agenda.
French President Emmanuel Macron on Saturday ended a 48-hour visist to French Guiana, the South American territory ruled by Paris, where he was challenged over what a number of political leaders have denounced as aa lack of aid by France to tackle poor living standards, inadequate transport infrastructures and epidemic crime.
French President Emmanuel Macron, hosting an official visit to Paris by his Egyptian counterpart Abdel-Fattah el-Sisi, said on Tuesday that rights abuses in the Middle East country were discussed in joint talks but that he he understood the “context” of the fight against violent guerrilla groups in Egypt, which Amnesty International says is 'facing its worst human rights crisis in recent history'.
Egyptian President Abdel Fattah al-Sisi's first official visit to France since the election this year of Emmanuel Macron is clouded by demands from NGOs that Paris should place human rights abuses at the fore of the agenda of discussions expected to centre on economic deals and counter-terrorism strategy.
Apple boss Tim Cook, after meeting with the company’s suppliers and developers in northern France and visiting graves at the site of the Normandy landings, met with Emmanuel Macron in Paris on Monday, amid a drive by the French president and other European leaders to force a number tech and web-based giants to pay taxes where their activities are based.
US President Donald Trump’s two-day visit to Paris last week saw him courted with great pomp and ceremony by his French counterpart Emmanuel Macron whose red-carpet welcome provided Trump with a welcome diversion from political turmoil at home and a rare break from his isolation on the international stage. Macron, meanwhile, seized the opportunity of the vacuum created by Brexit and forthcoming elections in Germany to position Paris as Washington’s new “special friend” in Europe. Mediapart’s Washington correspondent Philippe Coste reports on how the manoeuvring was viewed from across the Atlantic.
