Trump 'will listen' to concerns about the Ukraine peace deal, Taoiseach insists

Taoiseach Micheál Martin has called for an end to the wars in Gaza, Ukraine, and Sudan in Ireland’s first-ever speech to the G20 summit.

Taoiseach Micheál Martin has insisted that US President Donald Trump “will listen” to the European Union and the Coalition of the Living’s concerns about the Ukraine peace deal.

Mr Martin was amongst several EU leaders who met on the outskirts of the G20 Leaders’ Summit in South Africa to discuss Mr Trump’s proposals to bring an end to the war in Ukraine.

Under the deal, Ukraine would have to surrender significant areas of the Donetsk region, cut its army, and pledge not to join Nato.

The leaders of the European Council, the European Commission, the UK, France, Germany, Italy, Japan, Canada, Finland, Spain, Norway, the Netherlands, and Ireland held a meeting on the deal on Saturday evening.

The group issued a statement afterwards, stating that the “draft is a basis which will require additional work” and that it was “ready to engage in order to ensure that a future peace is sustainable”.

Speaking to the media, Mr Martin insisted that there could be engagement with the United States.

“I think he [Mr Trump] will listen,” the Taoiseach said.

“But clearly, we can see from President Trump's disposition that he hates war. He feels war is very wasteful of human life, which it is, and very damaging to the economy.

“I think that's a basically good principle to have or perspective to have on life itself.

“But that said, Russia invaded Ukraine. Ukraine did not invite this war upon themselves. A terrible price has been hit already in terms of the loss of human life.

“The European perspective is borne out of experience in terms of the Minsk process and other agreements that have been entered into with Russia, which were never adhered to.

“That is very much on the minds of European leaders, so that whatever agreement arises here has to be one that has some robustness, some resilience to future attempts to unravel it, and that does mean significant security guarantees for Ukraine.” Mr Martin said that there cannot be agreements on many parts of the plan without European involvement and agreement.

He stated that the US “clearly wants peace” but the EU wants a “sustainable peace that can last and that can give security guarantees to Ukraine”.

He noted that there were previous ideas proposed, such as after the Alaska summit between Mr Trump and Russian President Vladimir Putin in August, that got “modified” after “engagement”.

Mr Martin reaffirmed that a lot of the peace plan penned by the US “would not be acceptable”, but that there is no point in having multiple agreements and that there needs to be negotiations on the plan instead.

Mr Trump decided not to attend the G20 in South Africa and has been engaging in a back-and-forth with South African President Cyril Ramaphosa through their spokespeople.

The US Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt accused Mr Ramaphosa of “running his mouth” after he suggested that the US may U-turn and come to the conference. This is also uncertainty about what will happen on Sunday when South Africa is meant to pass the G20 Presidency to the US.

When asked what he would like Mr Trump to take away from the meeting, Mr Martin said, “That’s a matter for President Trump”.

“I think the key point is that the world, we need to continue with multilateral fora,” he said, “For us as smaller states, they're very important, and that there's a rules-based international order.” “What emerges from this summit the degree of resilience from a lot of countries that these issues matter.

“Now, there was some torture negotiations going on, a lot of issues around climate and gender and so on, that we would have concerns above that it even reached the stage where what we might consider basic principles where being argued over in minutia. Some of that is tactical.

“But nonetheless, I think the declaration itself, I don't think President Trump has anything to fear from that.” The G20 declaration was agreed and published by leaders on Saturday, despite a previous belief that it would not be completed until Sunday.

Earlier on Saturday, the Taoiseach became the first Irish leader to address a G20 summit after being invited to participate by South Africa.

In his address to the session on inclusive and sustainable economic growth, “leaving no one behind”, the Taoiseach said the world must end ongoing conflicts and that international laws must be upheld.

The Taoiseach told reporters that “war and conflict is the biggest impediment to economic growth, to certainty, to stability, which is key for investment”.

“Then the need really for a reassertion of multilateralism, as opposed to sort of polarised world, and that's a big concern at the moment,” he continued.

“It is becoming more challenging in international fora to get consensus on core issues. We can see that in Cop [30 in Brazil] as well.”