KATHMANDU, FEBRUARY 20

President of the United States Joe Biden, on Friday, announced that 'America is back' addressing a global audience while virtually addressing the Munich Security Conference.

Stating that the transatlantic alliance was back, the US President remarked that the United States was determined to re-engage with Europe to earn back their position of trusted leadership.

In response to Biden's remark, European Council President Charles Michel said, 'Welcome back, America.'

Biden also was part of a virtual meeting of the Group of Seven industrialised nations (G7) earlier on Friday. The meeting was attended by top leaders of the seven nations - United States, United Kingdom, France, Japan, Canada, Italy, and Germany. The virtual meeting was chaired by British Prime Minister Boris Johnson. It was the first G7 meeting for US President Biden and Italian Prime Minister Mario Draghi as head of their countries.

'I participated in the first meeting of the G7 leaders, where I spoke about the dire need to coordinate multilateral action to address Covid-19, the global economic crisis, and the accelerating climate crisis, and so much else. Achieving these goals depend on a core strategic proposition and that is the United States must renew America's enduring advantages so that we can meet today's challenges from a position of strength - that is building back better our economic foundations, reclaiming our place in international institutions, lifting up our values at home, and speaking up to defend them around the world,' noted US President Biden in his address.

At the G7 meeting, Biden pledged US dollars ($) 4 billion in US aid to the COVAX fund which will help buy coronavirus vaccines for global distribution. From this amount, an initial $2 billion will be released in 2021 while the additional $2 billion will be released over the next two years.

According to a statement issued by the G7 leaders, they have pledged an overall commitment of $7.5 billion to the fund, which is a United Nations coronavirus vaccination programme for poorer countries.

'We, the leaders of the Group of Seven, met today and resolved to work together to beat COVID-19 and build back better. Drawing on our strengths and values as democratic, open economies and societies, we will work together and with others to make 2021 a turning point for multilateralism and to shape a recovery that promotes the health and prosperity of our people and planet,' said the leaders jointly, adding, 'with increased financial commitments of over $4 billion to ACT-A and COVAX, collective G7 support totals $7.5 billion.'

The European Union has doubled its own COVAX funding to one billion euros.