e_Paper, Friday, August 18, 2017

Trump blasts GOP
senators over
Charlottesville
criticism
• Reuters, Washington, DC
WORLD
Britain confident of
new phase in Brexit
talks by October
• Reuters, London
WORLD
Britain said on Thursday it
was “confident” talks with the
European Union would move
towards discussing their future
relationship by October,
in contrast to warnings from
the top EU negotiator that the
target is receding.
British Prime Minister Theresa
May’s government wants
to push the discussion beyond
the divorce settlement soon,
to offer companies some assurance
of what to expect
after Britain leaves in March
2019.
But the bloc has repeated
that until there is “sufficient
progress” in the first stage of
talks on the rights of expatriates,
Britain’s border with EU
member Ireland and a financial
settlement, officials cannot
consider future ties.
Last month, the EU’s top
Brexit negotiator Michel
US President Donald Trump
on Thursday fired back at a
growing number of fellow
Republicans who denounced
his response to the Charlottesville,
Virginia violence,
further fuelling the latest controversy
to engulf his sevenmonth-old
presidency.
In a series of posts on Twitter,
Trump lashed out at Republican
US Senators Lindsey
Graham and Jeff Flake as well
as the media, and said he not
had drawn any moral comparisons
between white supremacists
and those who opposed
them.
The weekend violence at
the Virginia college town has
inflamed racial tensions nationwide
and renewed concerns
over hate groups after
Trump blamed both anti-racism
activists and white nationalists.
On Tuesday, the president
offered a more vehement reprisal
of his initial response to
Saturday’s bloodshed, telling
a news conference “there is
blame on both sides” for the
violence, and that there were
“very fine people” on both
sides.
The comments drew rebukes
from top Republicans
and corporate leaders for his
failure to unequivocally denounce
white supremacists,
although many did not name
the president outright.
Other Trump supporters,
including Vice President Mike
Pence, have said they stand by
the president and his words.
On Thursday, Trump called
Graham’s statement a day earlier
“a disgusting lie.” Graham
had said Trump’s comments
had suggested “moral equivalency”
between the two
sides and urged him to use his
words to heal Americans. •
Barnier said talks on future
ties had become less likely to
start in October because of
a lack of progress in the “divorce”
talks.
“Government officials are
working at pace and we are
confident we will have made
sufficient progress by October
to advance the talks to the
next phase,” a spokeswoman
for Britain’s Department for
Exiting the European Union
said on Thursday.
“As the Secretary of State
(Brexit minister David Davis)
has said, it is important that
both sides demonstrate a dynamic
and flexible approach
to each round of the negotiations,”
she said in a statement.
On Wednesday, unidentified
sources were quoted by
Britain’s Sky News as saying
the two sides might have to
delay talks on their post-Brexit
relationship until December
because they would not make
the progress required by the
EU. •
News
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FRIDAY, AUGUST 18, 2017
DT