[Speaking at G7, president
addresses autocracy and democracy, climate crisis and Donald Trump’s legacy]
The US president also addressed the
issues of autocracy versus democracy, the climate crisis, future pandemics and
problems caused by his predecessor Donald Trump, while holding a press
conference to mark the end of the G7 summit in the English
county of Cornwall.
Overall, Biden said, the summit had
been “extraordinarily collaborative and productive” and – in contrast to
Trump’s divisive, hyper-nationalist approach – he declared: “America is back at
the table.”
Biden had tea
with Queen Elizabeth at Windsor Castle on Sunday, then flew to
Brussels ready for a Nato summit. He will attend a bilateral summit with the
Russian president on Wednesday, in Switzerland.
Putin said
in an interview on Friday that the US and Russia currently had “a
bilateral relationship that has deteriorated to its lowest point in recent
years”.
On Sunday, Biden agreed that
relations were at a low point but indicated this was because of Russia’s
conduct on matters ranging from human rights violations to election
interference to tolerating criminal cybergangs in its region that have been
holding US commercial and government entities to ransom by hacking their
computer systems.
“I think he’s right, it’s a low
point, and it depends on how he responds to acting consistently with
international norms, which in many cases he has not,” Biden said in his press
conference.
Biden said he had told Putin,
before he won the White House in 2020 by defeating Trump, whom Putin had
supported in his 2016 shock win, that he would look at whether the Russian
leader had been involved in trying to interfere with the latest US election.
“I checked it out, so I had access
to all the intelligence. He was engaged in those activities. I did respond and
made it clear that I’d respond again,” Biden said.
But he added that when they meet in
Geneva this week he was “not looking for conflict” but to resolve “actions
which we think are inconsistent with international norms”.
Biden added: “The bottom line is
that I think the best way to deal with this is for he and I to meet, for he and
I to have our discussion – I know you don’t doubt that I’ll be very
straightforward with him about our concerns,” Biden said.
On the news that the two leaders
have decided not to hold a joint press conference, but to hold separate
briefings, Biden said: “This is not a contest about who can embarrass each
other … did they shake hands, who spoke more.”
Biden has pledged to tackle the
subject of organized cybergangs operating out of Russia and former Soviet
territories, which have been increasing the number and scale of attacks using
ransomware on US entities. But he acknowledged, in terms of Putin changing his
conduct, that “autocrats have enormous power”.
Cybergangs, accused by the US of
being harbored by Russia, have recently hacked companies such as Colonial
Pipeline, which supplies petroleum products to the US east coast; the
US’s largest
meat-processing firm; and local government computer systems in Baltimore
and Atlanta, demanding huge ransoms in cryptocurrency in return for
unscrambling their systems.
The US government this month
described authorities’ rapidly
beefed up efforts to combat such attacks as akin
to the anti-terrorism fight spurred by the September 11 attacks.
On Sunday, Biden also agreed with a
proposal by Putin that he would be ready to hand over cybercriminals from
Russia if the US would do the same.
“Yes, if there are crimes committed
against Russia and the people … are being harbored in the US. I think that’s
progress,” Biden said.
He also said he hoped that better
relations with Russia could lead to greater collaboration on addressing the
climate crisis, which Biden called “the existential problem facing
humanity”.
Chuckling about Donald Trump, but
not referring to his predecessor by name, Biden joked at how his G7 colleagues
had remarked that now “the US leadership recognizes there is global warming”.
“I know that sounds silly, but we
had a president who said it’s not a problem,” Biden said, referring to Trump’s
frequent dismissal of human-caused climate change, leading him to take action
against tackling it, including promoting coal and withdrawing
the US from the Paris climate accords (which Biden rejoined).
And Biden pledged that rich
countries would help
provide enough vaccines and the means to produce vaccines to poorer
countries to combat the coronavirus pandemic.
He said he was satisfied with the
G7 final communique’s language when it scolded China over human rights abuses
in the Xinjiang region and Hong Kong and demanded a full investigation of the
origins of the coronavirus.
Biden said he wanted to know
whether the Covid-19 virus “was from the marketplace and a bat interfacing with
other animals … or whether it was an experiment gone awry in a laboratory”.
He emphasized that “we have to
know” in order to be better prepared for future pandemics.
In the bigger geopolitical picture,
Biden said: “We are in a contest, not with China per se, but with autocracies
and whether democracies can compete with them in the 21st century,” saying
younger generations would look back and ask whether their forebears “stepped
up” on this grand battle, adding: “I believe that to be the case.”
Biden will meet Nato leaders on
Monday and positioned himself to shore up uncertainty after Trump frequently
attacked the organization and undermined
the US commitment to the central Article 5 tenet that an attack on one
member is regarded as an attack on all.
Biden said that when the US was attacked on 9/11, “immediately, NATO supported us” and that Article 5 was “sacred”.
Reuters contributed reporting
