Trump invites Putin and Lukashenko to join his Gaza ‘Board of Peace’

Vladimir Putin has been invited to join US President Donald Trump’s “Board of Peace”, a unilateral US initiative announced last week to oversee the reconstruction of Gaza, Russian business news outlet RBC reported on Monday.

“President Putin received an invitation through diplomatic channels to join the Board of Peace,” Kremlin spokesperson Dmitry Peskov told journalists on Monday. “At the moment we are studying all the details of the proposal and look forward to contact with our American counterparts to clarify the nuances.”

Trump announced the creation of the Board of Peace to support the administration, reconstruction and economic recovery of the Gaza Strip on Friday. According to the Times of Israel, which printed the board’s full charter, the body’s main remit will be to “promote stability, restore dependable and lawful governance, and secure enduring peace in areas affected or threatened by conflict”. 

US Secretary of State Marco Rubio, US Middle East Envoy Steve Witkoff, Trump’s son-in-law Jared Kushner and former British Prime Minister Tony Blair are to form the board’s executive committee, with Trump as inaugural chairman.

The Belarusian Foreign Ministry said on Monday that Trump had also invited Alexander Lukashenko to join the Board of Peace, adding that Belarus looked forward to participating in the body’s activities while hoping that it would increase its remit beyond Gaza in the future.

Some 17 countries in all have been invited to participate as founding members, though the board’s charter mandates that any country wanting a permanent place on the board was expected to contribute $1 billion, Bloomberg reported on Saturday.