{"id":177,"date":"2025-11-26T18:22:00","date_gmt":"2025-11-26T18:22:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/olivenewsnetwork.com\/?p=177"},"modified":"2026-02-02T10:17:40","modified_gmt":"2026-02-02T10:17:40","slug":"german-chancellor-criticizes-us-president-for-boycotting-g20-summit-in-south-africa","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/olivenewsnetwork.com\/index.php\/2025\/11\/26\/german-chancellor-criticizes-us-president-for-boycotting-g20-summit-in-south-africa\/","title":{"rendered":"German chancellor criticizes US president for boycotting G20 summit in South Africa"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<p><strong>BERLIN<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>German Chancellor Friedrich Merz on Sunday criticized US President Donald Trump for boycotting this weekend\u2019s G20 summit in South Africa.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>\u201cI don&#8217;t think it was a good decision on the part of the American government to be absent here. But that&#8217;s something the American government has to decide for itself,\u201d Merz told journalists on the sidelines of the G20 summit in Johannesburg.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>He added that he was fascinated by how, in his words, \u201cyou can see that the world is currently undergoing a realignment and new connections are being formed here.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Merz said the US played a relatively minor role until the summit\u2019s closing remarks by South African President Cyril Ramaphosa, who handed over the G20 presidency to the US as the next host in 2026.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>\u201cSo a lot happened here, and America was only mentioned in passing,\u201d the German leader said.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Trump was absent from the G20 summit in Johannesburg because he accuses South Africa, without presenting any evidence, of persecuting and killing white farmers there.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><strong>Merz highlights secret initiative for Ukraine peace plan<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Merz also again expressed his objections to parts of the US peace plan for Ukraine.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>\u201cAt the moment, I am still not convinced that we will have a political solution on Thursday, given the mutual differences, but we will have to wait and see,\u201d the chancellor said.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>He added that he has launched a new initiative on a point that could possibly be agreed upon by Thursday, declining to \u201celaborate further\u201d on what the point is.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>It could be a single point on which agreement could be reached with the Americans and Russians, Merz said.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>The chancellor said Saturday that the war in Ukraine cannot end without Kyiv&#8217;s &#8220;unconditional consent.&#8221;<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>&#8220;Wars cannot be ended by great powers over the heads of the countries involved,&#8221; Merz said in reaction to Trump&#8217;s peace plan for Ukraine.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>&#8220;If Ukraine loses this war and possibly collapses, it will have an impact on European politics as a whole, on the entire European continent. And that is why we are so committed to this issue,&#8221; he added.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>BERLIN German Chancellor Friedrich Merz on Sunday criticized US President Donald Trump for boycotting this weekend\u2019s G20 summit in South Africa. \u201cI don&#8217;t think it was a good decision on the part of the American government to be absent here. But that&#8217;s something the American government has to decide for itself,\u201d Merz told journalists on [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":178,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":{"0":"post-177","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-uncategorized"},"amp_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/olivenewsnetwork.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/177","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/olivenewsnetwork.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/olivenewsnetwork.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/olivenewsnetwork.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/olivenewsnetwork.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=177"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/olivenewsnetwork.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/177\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":179,"href":"https:\/\/olivenewsnetwork.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/177\/revisions\/179"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/olivenewsnetwork.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/178"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/olivenewsnetwork.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=177"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/olivenewsnetwork.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=177"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/olivenewsnetwork.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=177"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}