Tag Archives: Agreement

Russia, Turkey agree ceasefire deal for Syria’s Idlib

By Vladimir Soldatkin and Maria Kiselyova

MOSCOW (Reuters) – Turkey and Russia agreed a ceasefire deal on Thursday in Syria’s Idlib region, their two leaders said after lengthy talks in Moscow to contain a conflict which has displaced nearly a million people in three months.

Russian President Vladimir Putin, standing next to his Turkish counterpart Tayyip Erdogan, said he hoped their agreement would lead to a halt of military action in Syria’s last rebel stronghold in the far northwest of the country.

“I express hope that these agreements will serve as a good basis for a cessation of military activity in the Idlib de-escalation zone (and) stop the suffering of the peaceful population and the growing humanitarian crisis,” Putin said.

Erdogan told reporters the truce would come into effect at midnight on Thursday. “We will work together to supply aid for the Syrians in need,” he said, adding that Turkey retained the right “to respond to all (Syrian) regime attacks in the field.”

Russia and Turkey back opposing sides in Syria’s nine-year conflict, with Moscow supporting President Bashar al-Assad and Turkey backing some rebel groups. They have in recent years reached several ceasefire deals in Idlib which have collapsed.

Russian air strikes have propelled an offensive by Assad’s forces in Idlib that sparked what the United Nations says may be the worst humanitarian crisis yet in a war that has driven millions from their homes and killed hundreds of thousands.

The Russian military has, however, repeatedly played down any talk of a refugee crisis and accused Turkey of violating international law by pouring enough troops into Idlib to make up a mechanised division.

Turkey, which has the second largest army in the transatlantic NATO alliance, has funnelled troops and equipment into the region in recent weeks to resist the Syrian government advance and prevent a wave of refugees over its southern border.

Russia also raced to reinforce its troops in Syria by sea and air before the Putin-Erdogan talks.

MORE DEATHS

The Kremlin said the two leaders had spoken for three hours on their own before being joined by their officials.

The two leaders also agreed to establish a secure corridor near the M4 highway, which runs east to west through Idlib, and hold joint patrols along the road from March 15.

In a joint statement read out by the Turkish and Russian foreign ministers, the two sides said the corridor would stretch 6 km to the north and 6 km to the south of the M4 – effectively advancing Russia’s presence further north into Idlib.

They said their defence ministers would agree on the parameters of the corridor within seven days.

The fighting, which has raised the prospect of a direct clash between Russia and Turkey, has killed 60 Turkish troops in the region since last month, including the death of a Turkish soldier reported by a regional governor on Thursday.

Putin expressed his regret to Erdogan about the recent killing of 34 Turkish troops in an air strike, saying the Syrian military had not known of their location.

Ahead of the talks, at least 16 civilians were killed when Russian air strikes hit a gathering of displaced people near the town of Maarat Misrin in Idlib, according to civil defence workers helping clear the rubble and search for survivors.

Russia denies targeting civilians.

Two witnesses also reported seeing more Turkish military reinforcements deploying into Idlib, and Russia’s RIA news agency said rebels had resumed shelling the strategic town of Saraqeb in Idlib where Russian military police are based.

The Turkish defence ministry said it had destroyed four tanks, five rocket launchers and a dozen military vehicles in artillery and air strikes in the last 24 hours.

Turkey hosts some 3.6 million Syrian refugees and says it cannot handle more. Seeking to extract more funding and support from Europe over Idlib, Ankara said last week it would no longer abide by a 2016 deal in which it stopped migrants crossing into the European Union in return for billions of euros in aid.

(Additional reporting by Orhan Coskun and Tuvan Gumrukcu in Ankara, Andrey Ostroukh and Tom Balmforth in Moscow, Daren Butler in Istanbul, Suleiman al-Khalidi in Amman, and Gabriela Baczynska in Brussels; Writing by Jonathan Spicer and Andrew Osborn; Editing by Dominic Evans and Mark Heinrich)

Trump: U.S. will maintain presence in Afghanistan even if deal reached with Taliban

FILE PHOTO: U.S. military advisers from the 1st Security Force Assistance Brigade sit at an Afghan National Army base in Maidan Wardak province, Afghanistan August 6, 2018. REUTERS/James Mackenzie/File Photo

WASHINGTON (Reuters) – President Donald Trump said on Thursday that U.S. troop levels in Afghanistan were being reduced to 8,600 but that American forces would remain in the country even if Washington reaches an agreement with the Taliban to end the 18-year war.

“Oh yeah, you have to keep a presence,” Trump said in an interview with Fox News radio. “We’re going to keep a presence there. We’re reducing that presence very substantially and we’re going to always have a presence. We’re going to have high intelligence.”

Trump said the U.S. force level in Afghanistan was being reduced to 8,600 “and then we make a determination from there as to what happens.” Some 14,000 U.S. service members are currently in Afghanistan, among whom about 5,000 are dedicated to counterinsurgency operations.

The Taliban said on Wednesday it was close to a “final agreement” with U.S. officials on a deal that would see U.S. forces withdraw from Afghanistan in exchange for a pledge that the country would not become a haven for other Islamist militant groups.

“We hope to have good news soon for our Muslim, independence-seeking nation,” Suhail Shaheen, a spokesman for the Taliban’s political office in Doha said.

Both U.S. and Taliban negotiators have reported progress in their talks in recent weeks, raising the prospect of an end to the conflict. Zalmay Khalilzad, the U.S. special representative for peace in Afghanistan, was due to travel from Doha to Kabul this week for a meeting with Afghan leaders.

The United States invaded Afghanistan in 2001 and ousted its Taliban leaders after they refused to hand over members of the al Qaeda militant group behind the Sept. 11 attack on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon.

Trump has long called for an end to U.S. involvement in Afghanistan, writing on Twitter seven years ago that the war was “a complete waste” and six years ago that “we should leave Afghanistan immediately.”

Since becoming president in January 2017, he has repeatedly said he could end the Afghanistan war quickly if he didn’t mind killing millions of people, a claim he repeated in the interview with Fox News radio.

“We could win that war so fast if I wanted to kill 10 million people … which I don’t. I’m not looking to kill a big portion of that country,” Trump said.

He denied the United States was acting too quickly by reducing troop levels, something he criticized his predecessor, Barack Obama, for doing in Iraq.

“We have to watch Afghanistan, but we’re bringing it down,” he said.

Trump warned that any attack on the United States again from Afghan territory would bring a massive response.

“We will come back with a force like they’ve never seen before,” Trump told Fox News radio.

On Wednesday, the top U.S. military officer, Marine General Joseph Dunford, told reporters that it was too early to talk about the future of U.S. counterterrorism troops in Afghanistan.

“I honestly think it’s premature to talk about what our counterterrorism presence in Afghanistan may or may not be without a better appreciation for what will the conditions (be),” said Dunford, the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff.

He said that in the current security environment, local Afghan security forces needed U.S. support to deal with the violence.

“If an agreement happens in the future, if the security environment changes, then obviously our posture may adjust,” Dunford said.

(Reporting by David Alexander; Editing by Chizu Nomiyama and Jonathan Oatis)

Trump promises more ‘to be revealed’ in U.S.-Mexico deal

FILE PHOTO: U.S. President Donald Trump speaks to reporters upon departure from the White House in Washington, U.S., May 30, 2019. REUTERS/Kevin Lamarque

WASHINGTON (Reuters) – U.S. President Donald Trump on Tuesday stood by his comments that part of the migrant deal with Mexico announced over the weekend had yet to be made public, even after Mexican officials unveiled new details of the agreement.

“Biggest part of deal with Mexico has not yet been revealed!” Trump tweeted without giving further details. Representatives for the White House did not immediately respond to a request for comment on Trump’s statement.

On Monday, Trump also said Mexico would soon disclose part of the agreement with no details other than saying that portion would have to be taken up by the Mexican Congress.

Announcing previously undisclosed details of Friday’s deal, Mexican officials said on Monday they had 45 days to show that increased enforcement efforts were effective in reducing flows of migrants. If not, they would have to talk with the United States about additional measures.

The United States wants Mexico to be declared a safe third country in which asylum seekers would have to seek safe harbor instead of the United States, a demand Mexico had long rejected.

Mexican Foreign Minister Marcelo Ebrard dropped his previous opposition to that idea in comments on Monday but said any such arrangement should share the asylum load with other Latin American countries.

He said these measures would have to be taken up with the Mexican Senate.

“If we don’t have results on what we’re doing (in 45 days), we’ll start conversations on what they want,” Ebrard said.

The deal struck on Friday averted import tariffs on all Mexican goods, which Trump had vowed to impose unless Mexico did more to curb migration.

(Reporting by Susan Heavey; Editing by Doina Chiacu and Andrea Ricci)

U.S., China haggle over toughest issues in trade war talks

U.S. Trade Representative Robert Lighthizer (2ndL), Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin and Commerce Secretary Wilbur Ross (Top-L) pose for a photograph with China's Vice Premier Liu He (2ndR), Chinese vice ministers and senior officials before the start of US-China trade talks at the White House in Washington, U.S., February 21, 2019. REUTERS/Joshua Roberts

By Jeff Mason and David Lawder

WASHINGTON (Reuters) – Top U.S. and Chinese trade negotiators haggled on Thursday over the details of a set of agreements aimed at ending their trade war, just one week before a Washington-imposed deadline for a deal expires and triggers higher U.S. tariffs.

Reuters reported exclusively on Wednesday that the two sides are starting to sketch out an agreement on structural issues, drafting language for six memorandums of understanding on proposed Chinese reforms.

If the two sides fail to reach an agreement by March 1, U.S. tariffs on $200 billion worth of Chinese imports are set to rise to 25 percent from 10 percent. Tit-for-tat tariffs between the world’s two largest economic powers have disrupted international trade and slowed the global economy since the trade war started seven months ago.

Negotiators have struggled this week to overcome differences on specific language to address tough U.S. demands for structural changes in China’s economy, two sources familiar with the talks said. The issues include an enforcement mechanism to ensure that China complies with any agreements.

“It’s not surprising that this week has been more challenging,” said an industry source familiar with the talks. “Once you move from putting together outlines to filling out the details, that is where things would naturally become more challenging.”

Chinese officials did not answer questions as they left the U.S. Trade Representative’s office on Thursday evening after more than nine hours of talks on Thursday.

The discussions began with a photo opportunity where U.S. Trade Representative Robert Lighthizer and Chinese Vice Premier Liu He faced each other silently across a table in the Eisenhower Executive Office Building next door to the White House.

U.S. President Donald Trump will meet with Liu at the Oval Office on Friday, the White House said late on Thursday. The two also met at the end of talks during Liu’s last visit to Washington in late January.

Trump, who has embraced an “America First” policy as part of an effort to rebalance global trade, has said the March 1 deadline could be extended if enough progress is made.

Sources familiar with the negotiations told Reuters the memorandums would cover forced technology transfer and cyber theft, intellectual property rights, services, currency, agriculture and non-tariff barriers to trade.

The two sides remain far apart on demands by Trump’s administration for China to end practices on those issues that led Trump to start levying duties on Chinese imports in the first place.

Chinese President Xi Jinping would need to undertake difficult structural economic reforms to meet U.S. demands. The United States is offering no real concessions in return, other than to remove the tariff barriers Trump has imposed to force change from China.

PEN TO PAPER

One of Trump’s demands that is easier to fix for Beijing is to reduce the trade imbalance between the two nations. The U.S. trade deficit with China reached a record $382 billion through the first 11 months of 2018.

The two sides have reached consensus on how to alleviate the trade imbalances, several Chinese government sources said. Washington and Beijing are looking at a 10-item list for that, including additional Chinese purchases of agricultural produce, energy and goods such as semiconductors.

U.S. Agriculture Secretary Sonny Perdue called China’s pledges to purchase U.S. agricultural produce premature.

“Those proposals are all contingent upon a grand deal,” he said on the sidelines of the U.S. Department of Agriculture’s annual forum in Washington.

“The real issue is structural reforms regarding intellectual property, enforceability of those types of provisions.”

The United States could quickly recover its lost agricultural markets in China if a deal is struck, he said.

Perdue has overseen $12 billion in federal aid to U.S. farmers for losses they have sustained because of the trade war. China had all but halted purchases of U.S. soybeans, which were the single biggest U.S. agricultural export, worth around $12 billion in 2017.

(Reporting by Jeff Mason and David Lawder; Additional reporting by Rajesh Kumar Singh, Humeyra Pamuk in Washington, Chris Prentice in New York and Michael Martina in Beijing; writing by Simon Webb; editing by Paul Simao, Richard Chang and Grant McCool)

‘So far, so good,’ Mnuchin says of trade talks in China

U.S. Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin and a member of the U.S. trade delegation to China arrives to a hotel in Beijing, China February 13, 2019. REUTERS/Thomas Peter

By Ben Blanchard and Philip Wen

BEIJING (Reuters) – U.S. Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin said trade talks with China went well on Wednesday, as the world’s two largest economies try to iron out an agreement to resolve their dispute.

“So far, so good,” he said when asked by reporters on how the meetings in Beijing went. He did not say who he met.

Mnuchin said earlier he hoped for “productive” trade meetings as the two countries seek to end a festering dispute that has seen both sides level tariffs at one other.

U.S. tariffs on $200 billion worth of imports from China are scheduled to rise to 25 percent from 10 percent if the two sides cannot reach a deal by March 1, increasing pain and costs in sectors from consumer electronics to agriculture.

Asked by reporters as he left his Beijing hotel what his hopes were for the visit, Mnuchin said “productive meetings.” He did not elaborate.

Mnuchin, along with U.S. Trade Representative (USTR) Robert Lighthizer, arrived in the Chinese capital on Tuesday.

U.S. President Donald Trump said on Tuesday he could let the deadline for a trade agreement “slide for a little while,” but he would prefer not to do so. The president said he expects to meet with Chinese President Xi Jinping to close the deal at some point.

Trump’s advisers have described March 1 as a “hard deadline,” but Trump told reporters a delay was now possible.

He said in December that the 90-day truce could be extended, but that he could revert to tariffs if differences could not be resolved.

Speaking to Fox News on Wednesday, White House Press Secretary Sarah Sanders said: “we’ll see what happens on whether or not the president makes a move to change the deadline.”

She also raised the possibility of a meeting between the leaders of the two economic superpowers, saying Trump’s personal retreat of Mar-a-Lago in Florida would make a good venue.

“It will ultimately take … President Trump and President Xi sitting down face-to-face figuring that out and getting that final deal because they are the only two that’ll ultimately be able to nail that down,” Sanders said.

A growing number of U.S. businesses and lawmakers have expressed hopes for a delay in the tariff increase while the two sides tackle the difficult U.S. demands for major structural policy changes by China. They include ending the forced transfer of American trade secrets, curbing Beijing’s industrial subsidies and enforcing intellectual property rights.

Trump said last week he did not plan to meet with Xi before the March 1 deadline.

Mnuchin and Lighthizer were scheduled to hold talks on Thursday and Friday with Vice Premier Liu He, the top economic adviser to Xi.

The latest round of talks in Beijing kicked off on Monday with discussions among deputy-level officials to try to work out technical details, including a mechanism for enforcing any trade agreement.

China’s Foreign Ministry referred questions on the talks to the Ministry of Commerce, which did not respond to a request for comment.

A round of talks at the end of January ended with some progress reported but no deal and U.S. declarations that much more work was needed.

‘DODGED A BULLET’

James Green, a senior research fellow at Georgetown University, believes China was looking to secure a Xi-Trump meeting in the hope that it would make a near-term deal on tariffs far more likely.

“From their point of view, they would have dodged a bullet,” Green, who was USTR’s top official at the U.S. embassy in Beijing until mid-2018, told Reuters by telephone.

But there is growing bipartisan concern in the United States about increasing state control of China’s economy, military activity in the South China Sea, and security issues around its technology companies.

Even if the two sides could come to terms on tariffs, that might not mean an end to trade friction, Green added.

“I think that whatever we might get for an agreement, it will be a pause, because the U.S. government is still going to move forward in the telecoms sector, on law enforcement and legal action, and on sanctions-related issues.”

U.S. Secretary of State Mike Pompeo cautioned allies on Monday against deploying equipment from Chinese telecoms giant Huawei Technologies Co Ltd on their soil, saying it could make it more difficult for Washington to “partner alongside them.”

The United States and its Western allies believe Huawei’s apparatus could be used for espionage, and see its expansion into central Europe as a way to gain a foothold in the European Union market.

Both the Chinese government and Huawei have dismissed these concerns.

(Reporting by Philip Wen, Ben Blanchard and Michael Martina; Additional reporting by Susan Heavey and Lisa Lambert in Washington; Editing by Clarence Fernandez, Nick Macfie and Jeffrey Benkoe)

Canada optimistic NAFTA deal can be struck this month: source

FILE PHOTO: Canadian Foreign Minister Chrystia Freeland takes part in a news conference at the Embassy of Canada in Washington, U.S., August 31, 2018. REUTERS/Chris Wattie/File Photo

By David Ljunggren

WASHINGTON (Reuters) – Canada is increasingly optimistic it can reach a deal with the United States to salvage the North American Free Trade Agreement, although it may take until the end of September, a source with direct knowledge of the talks said on Friday.

U.S. and Canadian officials resumed their negotiations this week to modernize the 1994 pact, which governs $1.2 trillion a year in trade between the United States, Canada and Mexico and supports hundreds of thousands of jobs.

President Donald Trump has struck a trade deal with Mexico and threatened to push ahead without Canada, a move that would kill NAFTA.

The talks in Washington are focused on Canada’s dairy supply system, which the United States says hurts its exports, Ottawa’s desire to keep NAFTA’s Chapter 19 dispute resolution mechanism and Canadian media laws that favor domestically produced content.

The Canadian source, who declined to be named given the sensitivity of the situation, said Canadian negotiators thought it was quite possible the talks would continue until the end of this month.

A U.S. official told Reuters on Thursday that Canada needed to move further on dairy. In its recent trade deal with the European Union, Canada made concessions on dairy imports.

“We’re down to three issues: Chapter 19, the cultural issues and dairy. We’ve created leverage and driven Canada to the table,” the U.S. official said. “Part of our problem is that Canada has been backsliding on its commitments (on dairy).”

Trump has targeted what he sees as “unfair” trade as part of his “America First” agenda to boost U.S. manufacturing and jobs, imposing tariffs on trading partners, including Canada, China, the EU and Mexico. That has prompted retaliation.

Tens of billions of dollars in Chinese imports have been slapped with U.S. tariffs and a new round of duties are due to be triggered soon.

Both Canada and Mexico want Trump to agree to permanently exempt them from U.S. tariffs on steel and aluminum imports. Washington has used those tariffs as leverage in the NAFTA talks.

Canada has used the provisions of NAFTA’s dispute resolution mechanism to defend its lumber exports to the United States. Washington charges that Canadian lumber unfairly undercuts prices on U.S. lumber.

APPROVAL OF CONGRESS

Trump appeared to set a deadline for a deal this week, prompting aides to U.S. Trade Representative Robert Lighthizer and Canadian Foreign Minister Chrystia Freeland to work well into the evening on Thursday to find ways to move forward.

The Republican chairman of the U.S. House of Representatives Ways and Means Committee, Kevin Brady, a powerful voice in Congress on trade, told reporters differences remained between the two sides over Canada’s dairy quota regime, a trade dispute resolution settlement procedure and “other longstanding issues.”

“My sense is that everyone is at the table with the intention of working these last, always difficult issues out,” Brady told reporters after speaking with Lighthizer on Thursday.

Trump has notified Congress he intends to sign the trade deal reached last week with Mexico by the end of November, and officials said the text would be published by around Oct. 1.

Negotiators have blown through several deadlines since the talks started in August 2017. As the process grinds on, some in Washington insist Trump cannot pull out of NAFTA without the approval of Congress.

(Writing by David Chance; Editing by Paul Simao)

Turkey says will drive Kurdish YPG from Syrian border area if no deal with U.S.

FILE PHOTO: A general view shows the south eastern city of Manbij, in Aleppo Governorate, Syria, June 25, 2016. REUTERS/Rodi Said

ANKARA (Reuters) – Turkey will drive the Kurdish YPG militia away from the Syrian border if it does not reach agreement with the United States on a plan to remove the group from Syria’s Manbij region, Foreign Minister Mevlut Cavusoglu said on Thursday.

“If this plan is not realised, the only option left will be clearing away terrorists. This is not just valid for Syria, but also for Iraq,” he said in interview with state-run Anadolu news agency.

He added that President Tayyip Erdogan and President Donald Trump will speak by telephone on Thursday.

(Reporting by Tuvan Gumrukcu; Writing by Daren Butler; Editing by David Dolan)

U.S. officials say Russian inaction enabled Syria chemical attack

A civil defence member breathes through an oxygen mask, after what rescue workers described as a suspected gas attack in the town of Khan Sheikhoun in rebel-held Idlib, Syria April 4, 2017.

By Sarah N. Lynch

WASHINGTON (Reuters) – Trump administration officials on Sunday blamed Russian inaction for enabling a deadly poison gas attack against Syrian civilians last week as Secretary of State Rex Tillerson prepared to explain to Moscow a U.S. retaliatory missile strike.

Tillerson said Syria was able to execute the attack, which killed scores of people, because Moscow had failed to carry out a 2013 agreement to secure and destroy chemical weapons in Syria.

White House National Security Adviser H.R. McMaster said Syria’s “sponsors,” Russia and Iran, were enabling President Bashar al-Assad’s “campaign of mass murder against his own civilians.”

But Tillerson, who is expected to visit Moscow on Wednesday for talks with Russian officials, said on ABC’s ‘This Week’ program there was “no change” to the U.S. military posture toward Syria.

“I think the real failure here has been Russia’s failure to live up to its commitments under the chemical weapons agreements that were entered into in 2013,” Tillerson said.

“The failure related to the recent strike and the recent terrible chemical weapons attack in large measure is a failure on Russia’s part to achieve its commitment to the international community,” he added.

U.S. President Donald Trump ordered cruise missile strikes on a Syrian air base after he blamed Assad for the chemical attack, which killed at least 70 people, many of them children, in the Syrian town of Khan Sheikhoun. The Syrian government has denied it was behind the attack.

Speaking on “Fox News Sunday,” McMaster said the United States would take further action in Syria if necessary.

“We’re prepared to do more. In fact, we were prepared to do more two days ago,” McMaster said. “The president will make whatever decision he thinks is in the best interests of the American people.”

Russian President Vladimir Putin and Iran’s Hassan Rouhani said in a phone call that aggressive U.S. actions against Syria were not permissible and violated international law, the Kremlin said.

McMaster said Russian leaders were supporting “a murderous regime” and their actions would dictate the future of U.S.-Russian relations.

“Do they want it to be a relationship of competition and potential conflict,” McMaster said. “Or do they want it to be a relationship in which we can find areas of cooperation that are in our mutual interest?”

Tillerson stopped short of accusing Russia of direct involvement in planning or carrying out the attack, saying he had not seen “any hard evidence” to suggest Moscow was an accomplice to Assad.

But he said the United States expected Russia to take a tougher stance by rethinking its alliance with Assad because “every time one of these horrific attacks occurs, it draws Russia closer into some level of responsibility.”

(Reporting by Sarah N. Lynch and David Morgan; Editing by James Dalgleish)

Chinese, Czech presidents forge strategic partnership on Prague visit

By Jason Hovet and Jan Lopatka

PRAGUE (Reuters) – China’s President Xi Jinping and his Czech counterpart Milos Zeman signed an agreement on a strategic partnership on Tuesday, meant to step up business ties and investments.

Zeman has been keen to forge stronger ties with China and Russia since his election in 2013, rather than with the ex-communist country’s partners in NATO and the European Union, although the Czech government not the president is chiefly responsible for foreign policy.

EU relations with both Beijing and Moscow are tainted by disputes over human rights.

The partnership agreement puts the Czechs among about 15 other European countries that have similar ties.

Xi was given a special welcome to mark the first ever visit of a Chinese leader, including a dinner at the presidential residence and 21 artillery salvos in a ceremony at the historic Prague Castle, courtesies not extended to other visitors.

But it drew protests from opposition parties and human rights activists.

Police on Monday detained more than a dozen people who replaced Chinese flags on the main road from Prague airport to the city center with those of Chinese-ruled Tibet. There was a scuffle between pro-Tibet activists and groups of Chinese supporters.

Two demonstrations by activists were called on Tuesday outside Prague’s Lichtenstein Palace, where Xi is to meet Prime Minister Bohuslav Sobotka, and at the Prague Castle.

Czech government officials told Reuters the agreement does not deviate from standard EU language on human rights, diplomatic or economic relations, and reflected Czech interests in continued business relations with Taiwan, which China sees as a wayward province.

The Czechs are hoping to become a financial and air travel hub in central Europe for China, where Czech firms such as financial group PPF and Volkswagen’s Skoda Auto have been active.

Chinese investments in the Czech republic have so far included several acquisitions of financial, airline and brewery companies by a company called CEFC China Energy, whose ownership has not been disclosed.

“I wish that Czech Republic becomes … an entry gate for the People’s Republic of China to the European Union,” he said.

While the Czechs maintain the EU line on China, Zeman has made gestures others have not. Zeman attended a military parade in Beijing last September marking the end of World War Two, the only Western leader to do so.

(Editing by David Holmes)