Britain will not join Donald Trump’s “board of peace” on Thursday, Yvette Cooper has said, citing concerns about Russian involvement.
The foreign secretary said the UK strongly supported the US president’s 20-point plan for Gaza, which he is seeking to draw attention to at the World Economic Forum in Davos.
Trump’s so-called board of peace was set up last week with the stated intention to oversee a ceasefire and reconstruction in Gaza, but critics argue it is a Trumpian alternative to the UN and will undermine existing international bodies. The charter proposed by the White House does not mention the Palestinian territory.
Pressed on whether the UK would join the “board of peace”, Cooper told BBC Breakfast that Britain “won’t be one of the signatories” on Thursday.
“There’s a huge amount of work to do. We won’t be one of the signatories today,” she said. “Because this is about a legal treaty that raises much broader issues, and we do also have concerns about President Putin being part of something which is talking about peace, when we have still not seen any signs from Putin that there will be a commitment to peace in Ukraine. And to be honest, that is also what we should be talking about.”
Cooper said Vladimir Putin had shown no willingness “to come and make that agreement, and that’s where the pressure needs to be now”. She added: “But we will have continuing international discussions including with our allies.”
The Kremlin announced that the Russian president had been invited to join the Trump body on Monday. At Davos, Trump said Putin had accepted an invitation to join the initiative. A Kremlin spokesperson told journalists on Monday that Russia was seeking to “clarify all the nuances” of the offer with Washington before giving its response.
The first appointments to the board, announced last week, included Trump as chair, with a “founding executive board” that included the former British prime minister Tony Blair and the US secretary of state, Marco Rubio.
Also appointed were Trump’s troubleshooting envoy, the property developer Steve Witkoff, the president’s son-in-law Jared Kushner and the president of the World Bank, Ajay Banga. Countries including Saudi Arabia, Turkey, Egypt and Israel have said they will become members of the board.
As talks to end the war in Ukraine continue, Trump is due to meet the Ukrainian president, Volodymyr Zelenskyy, in Davos on Thursday. In a rambling speech at Davos on Wednesday, Trump said “we’re reasonably close” to a deal on Ukraine.
Referencing an expected meeting with Zelenskyy, he said: “They are at a point now where they can come together [with Vladimir Putin] and get a deal done … And if they don’t, they are stupid, that goes for both of them.”
