Trump says he's inviting Kazakhstan, Uzbekistan to next year's G20 summit in Miami
West Palm Beach (AP): President Donald Trump said he will be extending invitations to next year's US-hosted Group of 20 summit to Kazakhstan and Uzbekistan as the Republican administration looks to deepen its relationship with the Central Asian nations.
Trump announced the plan on Tuesday after holding separate phone calls with Kazakhstan President Kassym-Jomart Tokayev and Uzbekistan President Shavkat Mirziyoyev.
Neither country is a member of the G20, but the host country of the annual leaders' gathering of major economies often invites non-members to attend the summit. The 2026 gathering is planned for Trump's golf club in Doral, Florida, near Miami.
“The relationship with both Countries is spectacular,” Trump said in a social media post about the calls. Trump is currently on vacation at his Mar-a-Lago resort in Florida.
The Kazakh and Uzbek leaders visited Washington last month along with the leaders of Kyrgyzstan, Tajikistan, and Turkmenistan for talks with Trump.
The administration is giving greater attention to Central Asia, which holds deep reserves of minerals and produces roughly half the world's uranium, as it intensifies the hunt for rare earth metals needed for high-tech devices, including smartphones, electric vehicles and fighter jets.
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Central Asia's critical mineral exports have long tilted toward China and Russia.
During last month's visit, Tokayev announced that his Muslim-majority country will join the Abraham Accords, the Trump administration effort to strengthen ties between Israel and Arab and Muslim majority countries.
The largely symbolic move came as the administration is trying to revive an initiative that was the signature foreign policy achievement of Trump's first term, when his administration forged diplomatic and commercial ties between Israel and the United Arab Emirates, Bahrain and Morocco.
Trump last month announced that he is barring South Africa from participating in next year's summit at his Miami-area club and will stop all payments and subsidies to the country over its treatment of a US government representative at this year's meeting.
Trump chose not to have an American government delegation attend this year's summit hosted by South Africa, saying he did so because its white Afrikaners were being violently persecuted. It is a claim that South Africa, which was mired for decades in racial apartheid, has rejected as baseless.
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PM's silence on Kharge's insult by Himanta is his consent: Rahul
New Delhi (PTI): Congress leader Rahul Gandhi on Tuesday said the use of "derogatory language" against party chief Mallikarjun Kharge by Assam Chief Minister Himanta Biswa Sarma is an insult to the entire SC/ST community, and the silence of Prime Minister Narendra Modi on the matter "is not his helplessness, but his consent".
"If the prime minister sees an attack on the dignity of crores of Dalits in the country and does not speak up - he is not only shirking his responsibility, but is also a party to that insult," Gandhi said in a post in Hindi on X.
Gandhi said the use of "vulgar and derogatory language" by Sarma against Leader of Opposition in Rajya Sabha Kharge "is entirely condemnable, shameful, and unacceptable".
"Kharge ji is a senior and popular Dalit leader of the country - his experience, stature, and prestige are unparalleled. Insulting him is not an insult to one individual alone, but also to crores of people from the SC-ST community in this country," he posted.
This, he said, just reflected the "old and premeditated mindset" of the BJP-RSS and was nothing new, the leader of opposition in Lok Sabha said.
"Whether it is the insult to Babasaheb Ambedkar, belittling Dalit leaders, or personal attacks on representatives of the SC-ST community - the history of BJP and RSS bears witness that whenever a Dalit leader speaks the truth, they stoop to humiliate him," he posted.
"This is their ideology, this is their true character and face," he added.
Posing a direct question to the PM, he asked, "do you support Himanta Sarma's use of this language? Your silence is not helplessness, it is consent."
Sarma earlier hit out at Kharge, claiming that he was "speaking like a madman" due to old age, after the latter put the onus on central agencies to probe the charges made against the Assam chief minister.
Slamming the Congress chief, Sarma said, "Kharge is ageing and is speaking like a pagal (madman)."
