U.S. President Donald Trump met with Polish President Andrzej Duda in Warsaw on Thursday.

Trump said he would showcase his commitment to the North Atlantic Treaty Organization in a speech and in meetings with a group of nations closest to Russia.

Trump is making the whistle-stop trip to the Polish capital en route to a G20 summit in neighbouring Germany beginning on Friday.

 Aside from shoring up the U.S. relationship with NATO allies, the speech is symbolically significant given Poland’s proximity to Russia and regional fears about Moscow’s ambitions following its 2014 annexation of Crimea from Ukraine.

Poland hopes to woo Trump the businessman with new investment opportunities in Eastern Europe.</s>WARSAW, Poland (AP) — The Latest on President Donald Trump's second official visit to Europe (all times local):

President Donald Trump is calling on nations to confront North Korea's "very, very bad behavior."

Speaking in Poland Thursday, Trump called on nations to exert pressure on North Korea after this week's ballistic missile launch.

He's speaking at a joint press conference with Polish President Andrzej Duda (AHN-shay DOO-dah) in Warsaw.

President Donald Trump is praising Poland for the role it's playing in helping to defeat the Islamic State group.

Trump says Polish armed forces help train Iraqi special forces and conduct reconnaissance missions. He also notes that Polish soldiers have fought and worked side by side with American troops in Iraq and Afghanistan.

He says Poland is also host to 5,000 U.S. troops that serve as a deterrent to destabilizing behavior by Russia.

Trump also notes that Poland is one of the few NATO members that spends 2 percent of its gross domestic product on its military defense.

Trump spoke after meeting in Warsaw with Polish President Andrzej Duda (AHN-shay DOO-dah) and before a joint news conference.

Poland's President Andrzej Duda (AHN-shay DOO-dah) is praising President Donald Trump for "thinking very seriously" about Polish security.

Duda spoke at a joint press conference with Trump in Warsaw, Poland Thursday.

Duda stressed the need for greater trans-Atlantic security and energy cooperation. He also called for long-term liquefied natural gas deliveries as Poland looks to diversify its energy sources.

The White House says President Donald Trump plans to take questions at a joint news conference with Poland's president.

Trump is meeting with Poland President Andrzej Duda (AHN-shay DOO-dah) in Warsaw to start a day of meetings and a speech in the city's Krasinski Square.

The media event will be Trump's first overseas news conference.

It will come ahead of the president's high-profile meeting with Russian President Vladimir Putin and follow North Korea's test of an intercontinental ballistic missile.

President Donald Trump is meeting with Polish President Andrzej Duda (AHN-zhay DOO-dah) as he begins his second foreign trip.

Trump arrived at the Royal Castle in Warsaw, Poland, shortly before 9:30 a.m. local time.

The two leaders exchanged an extended handshake in front of a white marble bust of Stanislaw August Poniatowski, the last king of Poland, then posed for photos before commencing their closed-door meeting.

President Donald Trump is preparing to meet with his Polish counterpart as he kicks off a 16-hour visit to the eastern European nation.

Trump and Andrzej Duda (AHN-zhay DOO-dah) will be holding morning meetings and may hold a joint news conference later in the day.

Trump is also expected to deliver a keynote address to the Poles from Krasinski Square, the site of a monument commemorating the 1944 Warsaw Uprising against the Nazis.

He'll also be meeting with the heads of a dozen countries bordered by the Baltic, Adriatic and Black seas known as the Three Seas Initiative. The group aims to expand and modernize energy and trade with the goal of reducing the region's dependence on Russian energy.

It's Trump's second trip abroad as president.

Poland's Jewish community is expressing deep "regret" that President Donald Trump has not scheduled a visit to a memorial honoring those who fought and died in the Warsaw Ghetto Uprising during his short visit to Warsaw.

The community issued a statement late Wednesday noting that all U.S. presidents and vice-presidents visiting Warsaw since 1989 had visited the monument, a tribute to the Jews who took up arms against all odds against the Nazi Germans in the Warsaw ghetto.

The statement said that, to the Jews of Poland, "this gesture meant recognition, solidarity and hope."

It added: "We deeply regret that President Donald Trump, though speaking in public barely a mile away from the monument, chose to break with that laudable tradition, alongside so many other ones."

Poland's defense minister says the Trump administration has agreed to sell Poland a new batch of medium-range Patriot missiles to upgrade the European nation's air defenses.

Minister Antoni Macierewicz made the announcement Thursday as President Donald Trump kicked off a day of meetings on defense and energy initiatives.

The purchase deal is still to be signed.

Warsaw is seeking to raise its defense potential amid Russia's heightened military activity, some of it near Poland's air space.

Macierewicz said the purchase could total some 30 billion zlotys (euro 7 billion.)

Trump is scheduled to meet with Polish President Andrzej Duda (AHN-zhay DOO-dah) Thursday, as well as with the heads of a dozen countries bordered by the Baltic, Adriatic and Black seas known as the Three Seas Initiative.</s>Trump arrived on Wednesday in Warsaw where the White House said he would showcase his commitment to the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) in a speech and in meetings with a group of nations closest to Russia on his way to the G20 summit in Germany on Friday and Saturday.

"This is the second foreign visit by president Trump and it starts in Poland. This shows we are a country that matters and it strengthens our position in the European Union," Duda said on public radio.</s>U.S. President Donald Trump delivers a speech in Krasinski Square, back dropped by the monument commemorating the 1944 Warsaw Uprising against the Nazis, in Warsaw, Poland, Thursday, July 6, 2017. (AP Photo/Alik Keplicz)

Ivanka Trump and her husband Jared Kushner arrive for the G-20 summit in Hamburg, northern Germany, Thursday, July 6, 2017. The leaders of the group of 20 meet July 7 and 8.

Ivanka Trump arrives with her husband Jared Kushner, senior advisor of President Donald Trump, for U.S. President Donald Trump's speech in Krasinski Square, in Warsaw, Poland, Thursday, July 6, 2017.

U.S. President Donald Trump delivers a speech in Krasinski Square, back dropped by the monument commemorating the 1944 Warsaw Uprising against the Nazis, in Warsaw, Poland, Thursday, July 6, 2017.

FILE - In this Aug 12, 2015 picture two tourists visit the monument to the Jews who fought and died in the Warsaw Ghetto Uprising of 1943 in Warsaw, Poland. Ivanka Trump and her husband Jared Kushner, senior advisor of President Donald Trump visited the Warsaw 1943 Ghetto Heroes Memorial, Thursday, July 6, 2017.

U.S. President Donald Trump made his emotional address to the Poles speaking at the foot of the metal-and-stone Monument to the Warsaw Uprising, a heroic but failed 1944 uprising by Poland's clandestine Home Army against the occupying Nazi Germans.

The monument stands near the still-existing entry into the city's sewer system that the insurgents and civilians used to flee the area as it was being overtaken by the Nazis. At least 150,000 Poles — both fighters and civilians — died in the fierce street fighting in the uprising.

It was unveiled on Aug. 1, 1989, on the 45th anniversary of the start of the uprising. It shows some fighters entering the sewer opening, while others are fleeing a wall that is collapsing after an explosion. It is a site of great emotions and pride for Poles.

In 1994, during the 50th anniversary observances, German President Roman Herzog apologized at the site for Germany's World War II crimes.

As Trump's tight schedule during the brief visit Thursday to Warsaw did not include another key memorial of a dramatic struggle, the Monument to the Warsaw Ghetto Heroes, Ivanka Trump was there and laid flowers in homage to the fighters.

Unveiled on April 19, 1948, on the fifth anniversary of the start of the uprising, the massive granite-and-metal memorial honors hundreds of Jewish fighters who on April 19, 1943, began their struggle as the Nazis were liquidating the ghetto and transporting thousands of its remaining residents to the Treblinka death camp. The monument's metal figures show the determination of the fighters.

The fighters took up arms, choosing to die in an overwhelmingly lopsided battle. Only a handful of them managed to escape the burning ghetto.

The memorial stands in the center of the former ghetto, near where the fighting began.

Some 400,000 Jews perished in the Warsaw ghetto that the Nazis set up in 1940.

Ivanka Trump also visited the nearby new POLIN museum of the history of Poland's Jews.</s>Ivanka Trump on Thursday visited the Warsaw ghetto memorial, a day after Polish Jews condemned her father, US President Donald Trump, for leaving the monument off his to-do list while in the Polish capital.

The 35-year-old businesswoman and Trump advisor, who converted to Judaism before marrying a grandson of Holocaust survivors, laid flowers with the message “From the United States” at the monument dedicated to the victims of the 1943 Warsaw Ghetto Uprising.

She then recited the Kaddish prayer with Poland’s chief rabbi Michael Schudrich before touring the POLIN Museum of the History of Polish Jews located next to the memorial.

Ivanka was accompanying her father on his trip to the Polish capital to meet with regional leaders and deliver a speech at Krasinski Square before continuing on to his first G20 summit in Hamburg.

Schudrich called Ivanka’s presence at the memorial “very, very important… not only because she’s a Jew, because her grandparents-in-law are survivors of the Holocaust, but also as a human being it’s important.”

“But it’s sad because her father President Trump is the first US president in 25 years not to visit the Warsaw Ghetto Heroes Monument,” he told AFP.

Schudrich released a joint statement with other Jewish community leaders on Wednesday saying they “deeply regret that President Donald Trump, though speaking in public barely a mile away from the Monument, chose to break with that laudable tradition, alongside so many other ones.”

“We trust that this slight does not reflect the attitudes and feelings of the American people,” said the statement co-signed by Leslaw Piszewski, president of the Union of Jewish Communities of Poland, and Jewish Community of Warsaw president Anna Chipczynska.

POLIN spokeswoman Zaneta Czyzniewska told AFP that the museum only “found out today” that Ivanka Trump would be visiting the monument dedicated to the Jewish partisans who took up arms against Nazi German forces in a doomed revolt.</s>WARSAW — Leaders of Poland’s small Jewish community said they deeply regretted that Donald Trump didn’t find time to visit the monument to the doomed 1943 Warsaw Ghetto Uprising, unlike all other U.S. presidents to visit Poland in recent years.

In an apparent response to the Jewish community’s statement, which spoke of “disregard” and was signed by Chief Rabbi Michael Schudrich, the president dispatched his daughter Ivanka to visit the monument, just across town from the site of his speech Thursday in Krasiński Square.

Trump’s tight schedule in Warsaw, after his arrival on Wednesday night, included a meeting with President Andrzej Duda, a gathering of 12 Central European leaders and delivering a keynote speech, before departing for the G20 summit in Hamburg at 2 p.m.

Ivanka Trump, who was not accompanied by her Orthodox Jewish husband Jared Kushner, laid flowers at the Ghetto Uprising monument as Schudrich recited kaddish. She then visited a nearby Jewish museum, and tweeted: “It was deeply moving to be able to visit The Monument to the Ghetto Heroes and the POLIN Museum of the History of the Polish Jews.”

The statement from the Jewish community, which was issued on Wednesday when it became clear that no presidential visit was scheduled, said: “We deeply regret that President Donald Trump, even though he’ll be speaking just a mile away from this monument, found it suitable to break with the tradition which is worthy of recognition. We believe that this manifestation of disregard does not represent attitudes and feeleings of the American nation.”

Previously, visiting American presidents had seen fit to visit the monument to the Ghetto heroes “in the name of the American nation which played such a crucial role in defeating fascism and to share the universal commemoration of Holocaust victims and condemnation of perpetrators, expressed by people of all nationalities and religions.”

“For Polish Jews, rebuilding life of their comunity in the democratic Poland, after horrors of Holocaust and destruction of Communism, this gesture meant confirmation, solidarity and hope,” the statement said.

The Ghetto museum’s director, Dariusz Stola, told POLITICO shortly before Ivanka’s visit that he wasn’t aware of any such plans and had already left on vacation.

Trump delivered his speech just a few blocks away from the Ghetto monument, standing at a memorial to another World War II uprising which came a year later, in August 1944. It lasted two months before the massively outnumbered Polish fighters were overwhelmed by the Germans.</s>Sunday was “trivialize violence against the media” day for President Trump. Thursday was “fly to Warsaw and champion Western values day.” As presidential speeches go, Trump’s address in Warsaw was fair. Ish. If you forget who is speaking and what that person has been saying and doing since Inauguration Day—since the opening of his campaign in 2015—and really through his career. But if you remember those things, the speech jolted you to attention again and again. How American Presidents Used to Speak Overseas “We treasure the rule of law and protect the right to free speech and free expression.” This must be an example of what the grammarians should rename the “disjunctive we”: a we that does not include the speaker of the words. Rule of law? Free speech? Shortly before boarding the plane to Europe, President Trump’s advisers were reportedly discussing a pending CNN merger with AT&T as leverage against the news network—a possibility that, if realized, would be a perversion of anti-trust law. And so it went through the catalogue of effrontery. A president who has made lewd remarks about assaulting women said, “We empower women as pillars of our society and of our success.” A president who won’t read his briefing books declared, "We seek to know everything so that we can better know ourselves.” A president who once seemed unsure whether the abolitionist Frederick Douglass is alive or dead congratulated himself: “We celebrate our ancient heroes, embrace our timeless traditions and customs.” A president whose brand is notorious worldwide for gaudy hideousness preened: “We strive for excellence, and cherish inspiring works of art.”

In Poland, President Trump at last delivered the pledge he omitted from his speech at Brussels’s NATO headquarters. “To those who would criticize our tough stance, I would point out that the United States has demonstrated not merely with words but with its actions that we stand firmly behind Article 5, the mutual defense commitment.” But who now will be reassured by these glib words? The whole world has seen how long and how fiercely President Trump squir med to avoid pronouncing them—and the world, friendly and hostile, will draw conclusions accordingly. As President Trump rightly noted, “Words are easy, but actions are what matters.” Trump’s actions reveal a president disturbingly infatuated with Russia first as a businessman, then as a candidate for president. Trump’s actions reveal a seeming affinity for Putin-style authoritarianism. His actions reveal that his words about NATO cannot be trusted—and they will not be trusted. Trump took credit in Warsaw for the increases in defense spending announced by Germany and Canada, among other NATO countries, since his inauguration. But increases—small in scope, but symbolic in importance—were explicitly explained as reactions to decreasing trust in the U.S. guarantee and decreasing confidence in U.S. leadership. “The times when we could completely rely on others are, to an extent, over,” said Chancellor Angela Merkel, and while she did not in that speech name Donald Trump as the reason, her meaning could have been rapidly completed for her by her hearers.

Donald Trump devoted much of his speech to the heroic memory of the Warsaw Uprising of 1944. Those heroes remind us that the West was saved with the blood of patriots; that each generation must rise up and play their part in its defense and that every foot of ground, and every last inch of civilization, is worth defending with your life. Our own fight for the West does not begin on the battlefield -- it begins with our minds, our wills, and our souls. Today, the ties that unite our civilization are no less vital, and demand no less defense, than that bare shred of land on which the hope of Poland once totally rested. A less obtuse president might notice something amiss in comparing the challenges of the wealthy and powerful nations of the West today to the desperate and doomed struggle of the Polish Home Army. The phrase “the blood of patriots” does not belong in the mouth of a president who “likes people who don’t get captured” and demeans the sacrifice of a family that lost its son in the service of the United States. Bad taste aside though, it’s even stranger to hear Donald Trump speak of “our own fight for the West.” If his foreign policy has had one theme since January 2017, it has precisely been to smash the unity of the Western alliance. The spinal column of the Western alliance is the U.S.-Germany relationship, and Trump has undermined it since Day One. This speech itself amounts to one more such blow against unity: Trump traveled to Warsaw to praise and reward a Polish government that all America’s other leading allies in Europe have been reproving for its suppression of free media and politicization of its legal system. Trump’s speech in praise of the unity of the West predictably and perversely ended up being an attack on the unity of the West.

Perhaps the weirdest moment in the whole weird speech was this. “This great community of nations has something else in common: In every one of them, it is the people, not the powerful, who have always formed the foundation of freedom and the cornerstone of our defense.” But Donald Trump always represents himself as the most powerful person anywhere around him. He revels in a self-image of brutish dominance over others. “Anybody who hits me, we’re gonna hit them 10 times harder.” He and his spokespeople have boasted or threatened that dozens of times since 2015. This man who always yearned to be seen as powerful says the powerful can’t be trusted? Now he tells us! But of course the president did not intend to criticize himself. He was throwing a jab at those sinister elites he’s always contending against—and the transnational institutions they have built. If “the West” exists as more than a figure of speech, it exists because Western countries share intelligence against threats—sharing that Trump sabotaged by his reckless false accusations that Britain wiretapped him. It exists because we trade freely with each other—trade that Trump has denounced over and over as “unfair” and “very bad.” It exists because of the military alliances that Trump has condemned as obsolete and because of shared ideals of democracy and freedom as opposed to the thugs and dictators Trump admires. Peter Beinart heard in Trump’s speech some nasty religious and ethnic exclusion. [W]hen Trump warned Poles about forces “from the south or the east, that threaten … to erase the bonds of culture, faith, and tradition,” he was talking not about Christianity but about Christendom: a particular religious civilization that must protect itself from outsiders. Yet the most troubling thing about the speech was the falsehood at its core; the problem is not with the speech, but with the speaker. The values Trump spoke for in Warsaw are values that he has put at risk every day of his presidency—and that he will continue to put to risk every day thereafter. Trump’s not wrong to perceive a threat to the Euro-Atlantic from the south and east. But the most recent and most dramatic manifestation of that threat was the Russian intervention in the U.S. election to install Donald Trump as president. The threat from outside is magnified by this threat from within—and it is that truth that makes a mockery of every word President Trump spoke in Warsaw.</s>Trump arrived on Wednesday in Warsaw where the White House said he would showcase his commitment to the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) in a speech and in meetings with a group of nations closest to Russia on his way to the G20 summit in Germany on Friday and Saturday.

"This is the second foreign visit by president Trump and it starts in Poland. This shows we are a country that matters and it strengthens our position in the European Union," Duda said on public radio.</s>WARSAW: US President Donald Trump today conceded that Russia may have interfered in the 2016 election that brought him to power but said other countries may also have been involved."I've said it very simply. I think it could very well have been Russia. I think it could well have been other countries. I won't be specific. But I think a lot of people interfere," Trump said during a visit to Warsaw.</s>Ivanka Trump on Thursday visited the Warsaw ghetto memorial, a day after Polish Jews condemned her father, US President Donald Trump, for leaving the monument off his to-do list while in the Polish capital.

The 35-year-old businesswoman and Trump advisor, who converted to Judaism before marrying a grandson of Holocaust survivors, laid flowers with the message “From the United States” at the monument dedicated to the victims of the 1943 Warsaw Ghetto Uprising.

She then recited the Kaddish prayer with Poland’s chief rabbi Michael Schudrich before touring the POLIN Museum of the History of Polish Jews located next to the memorial.

Ivanka was accompanying her father on his trip to the Polish capital to meet with regional leaders and deliver a speech at Krasinski Square before continuing on to his first G20 summit in Hamburg.

Schudrich called Ivanka’s presence at the memorial “very, very important… not only because she’s a Jew, because her grandparents-in-law are survivors of the Holocaust, but also as a human being it’s important.”

“But it’s sad because her father President Trump is the first US president in 25 years not to visit the Warsaw Ghetto Heroes Monument,” he told AFP.

Schudrich released a joint statement with other Jewish community leaders on Wednesday saying they “deeply regret that President Donald Trump, though speaking in public barely a mile away from the Monument, chose to break with that laudable tradition, alongside so many other ones.”

“We trust that this slight does not reflect the attitudes and feelings of the American people,” said the statement co-signed by Leslaw Piszewski, president of the Union of Jewish Communities of Poland, and Jewish Community of Warsaw president Anna Chipczynska.

POLIN spokeswoman Zaneta Czyzniewska told AFP that the museum only “found out today” that Ivanka Trump would be visiting the monument dedicated to the Jewish partisans who took up arms against Nazi German forces in a doomed revolt.

This post was syndicated from The Guardian Nigeria Newspaper – Nigeria and World News. Click here to read the full text on the original website.

Do you something awesome to share with the world? Click here to share

Do you ever have any question about anything you wish to ask and get answer? Click here to ask

Also, Like us on facebook
U.S. President Donald Trump visits Warsaw, where he speaks of defeating radical Islamist terrorism, pledges to uphold the North Atlantic Treaty, and urges Russia to "join the community of responsible nations."