LONDON: Ukraine is ready to sign a minerals deal with the United States, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky told UK media on Sunday.
\n\u201cThe agreement that\u2019s on the table will be signed if the parties are ready,\u201d he told a late-night huddle with some UK media after a landmark summit in London.
\nThe deal, which was supposed to be a step toward helping to end the conflict in Ukraine, fell through on Friday after a televised Oval Office clash with US President Donald Trump.
\n\u201cIt is our policy to continue what happened in the past, we\u2019re constructive,\u201d Zelensky said, quoted by the BBC.
\n\u201cIf we agreed to sign the minerals deal, we\u2019re ready to sign it.\u201d
\nZelensky had traveled to Washington for a full White House visit on Friday to sign a US-Ukrainian deal for the joint exploitation of Ukraine\u2019s vast mineral resources, as part of a post-war recovery in a US-brokered peace deal.
\nBut in their Oval Office meeting, Trump berated Zelensky, telling him to be more \u201cthankful\u201d for US support in the three-year war and that without US assistance Ukraine would have been conquered by Russia.
\n\u201cYou\u2019re either going to make a deal or we\u2019re out,\u201d Trump added. \u201cAnd if we\u2019re out, you\u2019ll fight it out and I don\u2019t think it\u2019s going to be pretty.\u201d
\nThe US leader had previously said the proposed minerals deal would be \u201cvery fair.\u201d
\nThe proposal was to give Washington financial benefits for helping Ukraine in a truce, even if Trump has repeatedly refused to commit any US military force as a back-up to European troops who might act as peacekeepers.
\nAfter the heated exchange, Zelensky drove off in his motorcade shortly after having been asked to leave, without holding a planned joint press conference. The resources deal was left unsigned, the White House said.
\nUkraine\u2019s allies rallied around Zelensky on Sunday at a summit hosted by UK Prime Minister Keir Starmer who said many European leaders had pledged to spend more on security and assemble a coalition to defend any truce.
\nFrench President Emmanuel Macron, flying back from the London summit, said in a newspaper interview that France and Britain wanted to propose a partial one-month truce with Russia.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
LONDON: Ukraine is ready to sign a minerals deal with the United States, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky told UK media on Sunday. \u201cThe agreement that\u2019s on the table will be signed if the parties are ready,\u201d he told a late-night huddle with some UK media after a landmark summit in London. The deal, which was …<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4,"featured_media":77859,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-77842","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-world"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/nabanews.pk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/77842","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/nabanews.pk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/nabanews.pk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nabanews.pk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/4"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nabanews.pk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=77842"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/nabanews.pk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/77842\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":77860,"href":"https:\/\/nabanews.pk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/77842\/revisions\/77860"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nabanews.pk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/77859"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/nabanews.pk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=77842"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nabanews.pk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=77842"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nabanews.pk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=77842"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}