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ASSOCIATED PRESS
Ivanka Trump walks with U.N. Secretary General Antonio Guterres to a meeting in his office at United Nations headquarters.
UNITED NATIONS >> President Donald Trump’s daughter Ivanka had a private lunch today with Secretary-General Antonio Guterres, and the White House said the U.N. chief invited her to follow up on her launch of a fund to help women entrepreneurs access capital.
U.N. spokesman Farhan Haq had no comment on the 90-minute meeting in Guterres’ private offices. Ivanka, a senior adviser to her father, left U.N. headquarters without answering shouted questions on what was discussed. When she arrived, she smiled but also said nothing.
A White House official said the two discussed areas of common interest after the launch of the World Bank’s economic facility to advance women’s entrepreneurship that Trump’s daughter supported.
The official, who insisted on speaking anonymously, said Ivanka Trump coordinated her conversations with U.S. Ambassador Nikki Haley. But Haley did not attend the lunch.
Ivanka Trump joined World Bank Group President Jim Yong Kim earlier this month on the sidelines of the Group of 20 world leaders’ summit to launch the Women Entrepreneurs Finance Initiative.
Kim said at the time that the fund had raised more than $325 million so far for projects and programs to support women and women-led businesses by improving access to capital and markets, providing technical assistance, training and mentoring, and pushing public policy.
The fund grew out of conversations between Ivanka Trump and Kim early in Trump’s administration. The president announced a $50 million contribution from the United States at the launch.
While women entrepreneurs were one focus of their meeting, Guterres was also likely to have brought up the significant cuts to the U.N. budget proposed by the president and U.S. opposition to the 2015 Paris climate change agreement, which the secretary-general strongly supports.
Haley told CBS’s “Face the Nation” earlier this month that she thinks Ivanka Trump considers herself “part of a public servant family” and wants to put forward “some effort to try and help the world.”
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