By Andrea Shalal and Alistair Smout
ABERDEEN, Scotland (Reuters) -U.S. President Donald Trump formally opened a new golf course at his sprawling property in Scotland on Tuesday, saying he would play a quick round before heading home to focus on addressing crises in the Middle East and elsewhere.
Trump, wrapping up a five-day visit to Scotland, was joined by former soccer players, golfers and business leaders for a first round of golf at his new second 18-hole course at Trump International near Aberdeen, Scotland.
Initially billed as a private visit, the trip quickly morphed into a diplomatic mission, including a trade agreement sealed with European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen, bilateral meetings with British officials and phone calls aimed at ending a nascent war between Cambodia and Thailand.
During a meeting with British Prime Minister Keir Starmer on Monday, Trump raised pressure on Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu over a worsening hunger crisis in the war-torn Palestinian enclave of Gaza.
Asked at Tuesday’s event what he would say to Netanyahu, Trump said he was trying to get things “straightened out”.
During his talks with Starmer, Trump said he disagreed with Netanyahu’s assessment there was no starvation in Gaza, while giving Russian President Vladimir Putin a much tighter deadline to make progress towards ending the war in Ukraine.
Flanked by his two sons, Eric Trump and Donald Trump Jr., with several grandchildren nearby, Trump raved about the beauty of the new golf course in the dunes of northeastern Scotland, before teeing off.
“I look forward to playing it today. We’re going to play it very quickly, and then I go back to (Washington) D.C. and we put out fires all over the world,” he said at a ribbon-cutting ceremony for the new course, alluding in part to a ceasefire between Thailand and Cambodia.
“We stopped a war – we’ve stopped about five wars. So that’s much more important than playing golf.”
Several nations have nominated Trump for the Nobel Peace Prize, a message endorsed by White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt in a social media post in recent days.
Golfers Paul McGinley and Rich Beem teed off with Trump and his son Eric, and an eclectic mix of notable figures followed.
Former Chelsea and A.C. Milan striker and top Ukraine goal-scorer Andriy Shevchenko, who is now the president of his country’s football association, was a guest, as were fellow ex-soccer players Robbie Fowler, Gianfranco Zola and Jim Leighton.
Scottish First Minister John Swinney, who met with Trump earlier on Tuesday, also attended, along with Adrian Mardell, the chief executive of Jaguar Land Rover, and Alastair King, the Lord Mayor of the City of London, who represents Britain’s finance industry.
(Reporting by Andrea Shalal in Edinburgh, Alistair Smout in London and Evelyn Hockstein in Aberdeen; editing by Mark Heinrich)
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