Australia has attended a virtual meeting hosted by the UK overnight with more than 40 ministers from around the world to discuss diplomatic solutions to open the Strait of Hormuz.<\/p>\n
Following the meeting Foreign Affairs Minister Penny Wong said Iran was deliberately inflicting \u201ceconomic pain\u201d by closing the strait and carrying out attacks on commercial vessels.<\/p>\n
\u201cAustralia joined partners in condemning the Iranian regime\u2019s weaponisation of the Strait of Hormuz,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n
\u201cMinisters urged Iran to act in line with UN Security Council Resolution 2817, which reaffirmed that the exercise of navigational rights and freedoms by merchant and commercial vessels, in accordance with international law, must be respected, particularly around critical maritime routes.\u201d<\/p>\n
Wong said the focus of the meeting was to discuss \u201cdiplomatic and civilian\u201d actions affected countries could do to make the Strait of Hormuz accessible once again.<\/p>\n
\u201cMinisters agreed on the importance of continued coordination and collective action,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n
\u201cThe Australian government continues to support de-escalation and the resolution of this conflict.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cThe longer this war goes on, the more significant the impact on the global economy will be.\u201d<\/p>\n
UK foreign minister Yvette Cooper said Iran\u2019s \u201crecklessness\u201d in blockading the strait was \u201chitting our global economic security\u201d as she chaired the virtual meeting, which also included France, Germany, Canada, the United Arab Emirates and India.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe have seen Iran hijack an international shipping route to hold the global economy hostage,\u201d Cooper said in opening remarks broadcast to the media before the rest of the meeting took place behind closed doors.<\/p>\n
The United States did not attend the talks.<\/p>\n
The discussions took place after Trump said on Wednesday evening that the strait could open \u201cnaturally\u201d and it was the responsibility of countries that rely on the waterway to ensure it was open.<\/p>\n
Another meeting will take place next week with military personnel for further discussions.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Australia has attended a virtual meeting hosted by the UK overnight with more than 40 ministers from around…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":581758,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[4],"tags":[64,63,255657,5575,6897,12241,44,255658,1346],"class_list":{"0":"post-581757","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-australia","8":"tag-au","9":"tag-australia","10":"tag-conflict-and-war","11":"tag-iran","12":"tag-israel","13":"tag-middle-east","14":"tag-news","15":"tag-united-states-usa","16":"tag-world-news"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/581757","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=581757"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/581757\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/581758"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=581757"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=581757"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=581757"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}