Trump calls his maiden foreign trip ‘historic’

Team Udayavani, Jun 3, 2017, 12:24 PM IST

Washington DC (USA): Donald Trump today claimed that his first foreign trip as US president was full of historic and unprecedented achievements that helped in advancing American interests.

Trump said wherever he went his aim was to unlock a future of peace, prosperity, and hope for all Americans.

“Over the course of nine days, Melania and I traveled to some of the holiest sites in the three Abrahamic religions and met with nearly 100 foreign leaders. Everywhere we went, my goal was to advance American interests, to build a coalition of nations, to drive out the terrorists, and to unlock a future of peace, prosperity, and hope for all Americans and people around the world,” Trump said in his weekly radio and web address to the nation.

Trump in his inaugural overseas trip, a four-country, five-stop tour visited Saudi Arabia, Israel, Italy and Belgium.

“Our first foreign trip was full of historic and unprecedented achievements. Joined by many old and new friends, we have paved the way for the new era of cooperation one that calls upon each nation to take more responsibility to bring peace to their people,” he said.

Trump said in Saudi Arabia, he was honoured to participate in a historic summit with the leaders of more than 50 Muslim and Arab nations, where King Salman and many other leaders expressed their desire to take on a greater role in defeating terrorists who murder innocents of all faiths.

Calling NATO summit an unprecedented summit, he said he discussed the importance of the nations of the region taking more responsibility on migration so that more young people are part of creating a better future in their home societies.

“At this unprecedented summit, we opened a new centre to combat extremist ideology, launched a task force to block funding for terrorists, and agreed to a massive economic development deal that will create hundreds of thousands of new jobs in the United States,” he said.

“I traveled to two summits with our key allies first, the NATO Summit in Brussels, where nations agreed they must do more to meet their financial obligations and pay their fair share because right now, it is not fair to the United States. But it soon will be,” he said with confidence.

Next he attended the G-7 Summit in Italy, where the members worked to improve coordination on shared security threats, achieve more fair trade that gives workers a level playing field, and agreed on the goal that refugees should be resettled as close to their home countries as possible so they can be part of the future rebuilding, Trump said.