Swiss and US parliamentarians meet in Geneva
Keystone-SDA
Although this meeting is scheduled to take place twice a year regardless of the current crisis, tariffs were discussed.
“We obviously talked about it, but we talked about a lot of other things,” Swiss parliamentarian Laurent Wehrli told new agency Keystone-SDA on Friday afternoon at the end of the meeting. The Swiss delegation, led by the president of the Switzerland-US Friendship Group Damien Cottier, was considerably smaller in number than the 28 members of the US House of Representatives.
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The American representatives, who included 20 Republicans and eight Democrats, are not leading members of Congress. And none are considered to be very close to President Donald Trump.
Visit to the WTO
“In the current context, it is important that all channels continue to talk to each other,” said Wehrli specifying that any communication would come from the Americans. The Federal Council is in charge of the negotiations but parliamentarians “can accompany” the dialogue, he added.
For his part, North Carolina representative Greg Murphy expressed his hope on social networking sites that “the trade situation with Switzerland will be resolved quickly”. “The Swiss have always been important partners” on medicines and foreign affairs, he said. “Let’s sort this out”, added the member of the Republican Party.
Security at the Intercontinental Hotel, which is used to holding discussions of greater scope than this one, was more tense than usual. Instructions were given by the delegations’ security managers to keep journalists away, as the elected representatives did not wish to speak immediately.
The American representatives had another experience of world trade in Geneva. On Wednesday, they visited the headquarters of the World Trade Organisation (WTO), an institution openly opposed by Donald Trump, Keystone-SDA learned from a source close to the matter.
Adapted from French by DeepL/ac
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