UK will convene a meeting of around 35 countries this week to discuss reopening the strategic Strait of Hormuz, which has been severely disrupted by the ongoing war in the Middle East, British prime minister Keir Starmer said on Wednesday.<\/p>\n
Speaking at a Downing Street press conference, Starmer said foreign secretary Yvette Cooper will host the talks, though he did not specify a date. The meeting will “assess all viable diplomatic and political measures that we can take to restore freedom of navigation, guarantee the safety of trapped ships and seafarers and resume the movement of vital commodities”, he said.<\/p>\n
He added that military planners would later be brought in to explore ways to secure the strait once hostilities ease. “Following that meeting, we will also convene our military planners to look at how we can marshal our capabilities and make the strait accessible and safe after the fighting has stopped,” Starmer said.<\/p>\n
Countries including Britain, France, Germany, Italy, Japan and the Netherlands, all signatories to a recent joint statement supporting safe passage, are expected to participate. Iran has effectively shut the crucial waterway since US-Israeli strikes on February 28, disrupting a route that carries about one-fifth of the world\u2019s oil and LNG and pushing up global energy prices.<\/p>\n
“I do have to level with people on this. This (reopening) will not be easy,” Starmer cautioned.<\/p>\n
Backing NATO amid criticism from US president Donald Trump, Starmer said, “Nato is the single most effective military alliance the world has ever seen, and it has kept us safe for many decades, and we are fully committed to Nato.”<\/p>\n
Trump, however, told The Telegraph that Nato was a “paper tiger” and said leaving the alliance was \u201cbeyond reconsideration\u201d. He had earlier warned it would be \u201cvery bad for the future of Nato\u201d if members failed to help reopen the strait, and on Tuesday said countries facing fuel shortages should \u201cgo get your own oil\u201d rather than rely on US support.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"UK will convene a meeting of around 35 countries this week to discuss reopening the strategic Strait of…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":558192,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[18],"tags":[23,228644,247680,228242,247679,247678,3,21,19,22,20,25,247677,247676,24,236985],"class_list":["post-558191","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-united-states","tag-america","tag-gulf-news","tag-iran-attack-kuwait","tag-iran-war","tag-iran-war-news","tag-israel-iran-war-news","tag-news","tag-united-states","tag-united-states-of-america","tag-unitedstates","tag-unitedstatesofamerica","tag-us","tag-us-iran-war-news","tag-us-israel-iran-war-news","tag-usa","tag-war-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/558191","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=558191"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/558191\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/558192"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=558191"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=558191"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=558191"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}