Angela Merkel declines Donald Trump's invite to attend G7 summit in Washington

German Chancellor Angela Merkel has declined the US President Donald Trump’s invitation to attend the possible G7 summit in June, international media reported. Stating the reason for her decision, German government spokesman Steffen Seibert, reportedly said that currently, the federal chancellor was considering the “overall pandemic situation” and could not agree to her “personal participation” to a journey to Washington. Merkel had, in March, gone into self-quarantine after coming in contact with a COVID-19 infected doctor.

'Would continue to monitor the pandemic'

Elaborating further, Seibert, however, said that the German leader had thanked Trump for his invitation and would continue to monitor the development of pandemic. Earlier this month, US President Donald Trump announced a possible revival of “face to face “ meeting of the G7 nations after earlier cancelling in-person gathering in the wake of coronavirus pandemic.  Taking to Twitter, the American leader said that he was “considering” to reschedule the G7 meet on “same or similar date” at Camp David, near Washington DC. In his tweet, he also reckoned that an in-person meet would be a symbol of “normalisation”.

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Earlier in March, Trump cancelled a physical meeting of the G7 leader scheduled to be held in June and held the meetings on the virtual platforms. The 'emergency meet' heald on March 16 marked the first time the G7 leaders came together to discuss the efforts to defeat the coronavirus. Trump had come under fire in the previous meet as world leaders made it clear that medical firms must share and coordinate research on Coronavirus vaccines rather than provide products exclusively to one country. This comes as Germany now has 182, 992 positive coronavirus cases and a death toll of 8,450. According to the John Hopkins University coronavirus database, Germany has the eighth highest number of coronavirus cases in the world.

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