Sarkissian too poor to leave home for climate summit

Written by By Celine Gurriel, CNN London, UK

She may have missed a crucial meeting of climate change ministers, but UK Prime Minister Theresa May is forging ahead with a full ceremony to celebrate the first British-Arab summit.

Saudi Foreign Minister Adel al-Jubeir will take part in the event, which seeks to forge strong ties between two economies that should benefit from a recent deal announced by May to increase trade between the two countries.

Now a full apology has been issued following a failure to provide wheelchair access for the foreign minister, Thea Sarkissian, at the conference’s venue in Omani capital Muscat on Sunday.

But in an interview with CNN’s Max Foster, Sarkissian indicated that she wants to improve access to future meetings.

“I feel very bad about this,” she said. “I wasn’t able to leave my house because I had the whole chain of wheelchair and it was impossible for me to get out. … These are the things that we can change.”

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In a tweet, Sarkissian said her ministry was working on opening the main halls to wheelchairs at future climate conferences, saying it would be “great to have this in the future.”

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