Kerry foresees series of executive orders by Trump admin, hopes pulling out of Paris Agreement isn't one

New Delhi, Nov 16 (PTI) With President-elect Donald Trump set to assume office soon, former US secretary of state John Kerry suggested on Saturday that he may issue "a series of executive orders" on day one itself and said he hoped that one of those will not be about pulling out of the Paris Agreement.

During an interactive session at the HT Leadership Summit 2024 here, Kerry also said diplomacy requires a ripeness to be able to solve a problem, and given the circumstances, he thought Ukraine is a place where "things are ripe".

Trump (78), post the inauguration ceremony in January, will return to the White House for his second term, after registering a resounding victory in the recently-held US presidential election that paved the way for an extraordinary political comeback in American history.

"First of all, I think everybody in the world has learned that it is very hard to predict anything about President Trump. There is no way to know with certainty exactly what will happen. And that unpredictability is something that he actually cultivates and appreciates in himself," Kerry said.

He was in conversation with India's former ambassador to the US, Navtej Singh Sarna, who asked Kerry what he anticipated would be Trump's immediate priorities after assuming office, different from his campaigns, and what will he push for.

"I think it is clear, he is going to try to shake some things up. You will see a series of executive orders issued on day one. I hope that one of those orders will not include pulling out of the Paris Agreement, but it probably will," Kerry said.

And there is "no good reason" to be doing that as the chairman of Exxon Mobil said from Baku the other day, he did not advise it, because he thought it would be counter-productive and against the interests of the US, Kerry added.

The former US secretary of state's comments came at a time when the 2024 United Nations Climate Change Conference or COP29 is underway in Baku, Azerbaijan.

During his first presidency, in June 2017, Trump announced his decision to withdraw the United States from the Paris Agreement on climate change and renegotiate the deal that was agreed upon by more than 190 countries during the previous Barack Obama administration.

Arguing that countries like China and India are benefitting the most from the Paris Agreement, Trump had said it was unfair to the US, as it badly hit its businesses and jobs.

The formal withdrawal happened in 2020. However, in January 2021, on his first day in office, President Joe Biden signed the instrument to bring the US back into the Paris Agreement.

Biden had also picked Kerry as the special presidential envoy for climate.

The Paris Agreement aims at substantially reducing global greenhouse-gas emissions to hold the global temperature increase to well below 2 degrees Celsius and pursue efforts to limit it to 1.5 degrees Celsius above pre-industrial levels (with a baseline of 1850-1900).

With the inauguration ceremony scheduled to be held in January and Trump having announced the names of several appointees, Kerry said the president will "do something on day one".

He will have other executive orders that will probably deal with his deportation promises and the question of immigration, but "he will take some flagship issues and try to put them out there right away, you can count on that", he said.

However, Kerry said the US Congress will work carefully on these appointees because there are troubling aspects to a number of them.

"But I also think on the positive side.... I think President Trump, because of his circumstances ... you know from diplomacy, diplomacy requires a ripeness to be able to solve a problem," he said.

Kerry said he worked very hard for four years, he was the secretary of state to see if "we could advance the process" in the Middle-East.

"And in the end, the two leaders, both of them -- (Palestinian) President (Mahmoud) Abbas and (Israeli) Prime Minister (Benjamin) Netanyahu -- were just not ready to do it, they were not willing.... So it was not ripe. And there are plenty of places where things are not ripe," Kerry recalled.

"But I think Ukraine is a place where things are ripe," he underlined.

"And possibly, depending on the theory of the case, you can have a rapprochement that could take place in the Middle-East, where you have an agreement with Saudi Arabia and Israel, which is accompanied by some kind of an agreement on cease fire and how you are going to approach the reconstruction of Gaza, which is very complicated," the former top US official said.

On the prolonged Ukraine conflict that began in 2022, Kerry said President Volodymyr Zelenskyy has made it clear what his vision is, "but I think that the pressure is going among many European countries, in the US and elsewhere to find a way to not have this inflammatory situation just perpetuated".

Voices have come from many quarters to resolve the Russia-Ukraine conflict that has had wider repercussions on global economy and stability, and India too has maintained that dialogue and diplomacy is the way forward to find a resolution in this regard.

Elaborating his viewpoint on the conflict, Kerry said one can see several different ways, where there can be agreements on land, on defence, mutual defence that does not include joining the NATO.

Kerry said he thought both the leaders in the two countries are "going to look for a way to be able to say they are satisfied".

"So (Vladimir) Putin can claim a victory and say, look I got people to recognise that we have a right to some of these land, and on the other hand, Zelenskyy and the people of Ukraine can hold their heads as high as you can hold heads, because they have done an absolutely extraordinary job of preventing the takeover of Ukraine and preventing the invasion of Kyiv," he added.

And hopefully, the leaders will leave the political space for that to happen, Kerry underlined.

"Because if they use wrong rhetoric or if they get involved in the wrong kinds of claims upfront, it may get harder for people to go forward. So it is a good time for some quiet, really effective diplomacy," he said. PTI KND RC