President Volodymyr Zelensky said that Ukraine will work “swiftly and very sensibly” on an agreement granting the United States access to its natural resources, in an apparent overture to tamp down tensions that had flared with President Trump over the deal.

Kyiv has focused on strengthening its negotiating position as the United States and Russia open talks on ending the war — with or without Ukraine’s involvement. In a flurry of diplomacy on Thursday and Friday, Mr. Zelensky spoke with half a dozen leaders in Europe and Canada to shore up other sources of support.

As he did so, however, Mr. Trump said in a radio interview on Friday that the Ukrainian president did not need to participate in talks intended to end the conflict on his soil.

“I don’t think he’s very important to be at meetings to be honest with you, he’s been there for three years,” Mr. Trump told Brian Kilmeade, the Fox News host, adding that he had been watching Mr. Zelensky “negotiate with no cards.”

“And you get sick of it,” Trump said. “You just get sick of it. And I’ve had it.”

Kyiv and Moscow engaged in direct talks early in the invasion but since April of 2022 have negotiated only over prisoner of war exchanges and to return Ukrainian children from Russia.

The idea of trading natural resources for U.S. assistance was first put forward by Ukraine, but Mr. Zelensky balked when the U.S. proposal suggested that Kyiv provide access to profits from 50 percent of the country’s minerals and energy resources. Mr. Zelensky had also objected that the deal included no American security commitments.

Several aides to Mr. Zelensky believe that a new version of the agreement under discussion on Thursday addresses those concerns, and have now advised Mr. Zelensky to sign it, a person familiar with discussions in the Ukrainian government about the U.S. proposal said on Friday. The shift in some Ukrainian officials’ stance on the deal was first reported by Axios.

In another positive sign for the talks with the United States on resources, Keith Kellogg, the retired lieutenant general who is Mr. Trump’s envoy to Ukraine for settlement negotiations, posted on X praise for Mr. Zelensky as “the embattled and courageous leader of a nation at war and his talented national security team.” Mr. Kellogg said he had “extensive and positive discussions” on his visit to Kyiv.

In a statement Friday evening, Mr. Zelensky said his negotiating team was working with U.S. counterparts on “an agreement that can strengthen our relations,” but that the need remained “to work out the details to ensure its effectiveness.”

He added: “I look forward to the outcome — a just result..”

Talks had derailed last week after Mr. Zelensky declined to immediately sign a version presented to him by the U.S. treasury secretary, Scott Bessent, on a visit to Kyiv.

Mr. Trump responded with a broadside against Mr. Zelensky’s moral standing in the conflict, falsely saying Ukrainian leaders started the all-out war that began in 2022 with Russia’s invasion of Ukraine. Mr. Zelensky, in turn, said Mr. Trump lived in a “web of disinformation.”

But the U.S. pressure on Kyiv continued. On Thursday, the U.S. national security adviser, Mike Waltz, said in an interview on Fox & Friends that Ukrainian leadership needed “to tone it down and take a hard look and sign that deal.”

Mr. Zelensky suggested that talks were progressing in a nightly address to Ukrainians on Thursday, after a meeting in Kyiv with the Trump administration’s envoy to Ukraine and Russia, Mr. Kellogg, saying it was “a meeting that restores hope.”

He offered no details on a potential natural resources deal, other than to say that “economy and security must always go hand in hand,” and that his interest was in securing an enduring agreement with the United States.

The Ukrainian government has simultaneously pursued a flurry of diplomacy with Europe, in hopes that Europe might provide security commitments or military aid to fill gaps if the United States withholds support.

Mr. Zelensky and other Ukrainian officials concede that European nations cannot fully replace the full range of military and intelligence assistance the United States provides to Ukraine, but they have been encouraged by discussions of forming a European peacekeeping force to enforce a cease-fire.

On Thursday, Mr. Zelensky spoke by phone with five European leaders, from France, the United Kingdom, Norway, Denmark and Finland, and with the prime minister of Canada, Justin Trudeau, and on Friday with the president of Poland, Andrzej Duda.

In the nine days since Mr. Trump opened negotiations with Russia in a phone call with President Vladimir V. Putin on Feb. 12, Mr. Zelensky has met or spoken on the phone with European leaders at least nine times. A visit was scheduled for Monday by Spain’s prime minister, Pedro Sánchez.

And Mr. Macron and the U.K. prime minister, Keir Starmer, will continue to press Ukraine’s case in planned visits to Washington next week, where they are expected to present to the Trump administration what Europe and the United Kingdom can provide Ukraine and to lay out what is still needed from the United States.

Hamas on Friday said it had turned over to the Red Cross the body of a woman that Hamas officials believe belonged to Shiri Bibas, the Israeli mother whose capture with her two young sons during the Oct. 7, 2023, attack became a symbol of the country’s anguish.

Ms. Bibas’s remains were initially believed to have to been repatriated to Israel on Thursday, with those of her two children, as part of a negotiated exchange for Palestinian prisoners. With a DNA test, Israeli officials then determined the body was that of another person and not Ms. Bibas.

“Tonight, at the request of the parties, an ICRC team received human remains, which were then transferred to Israeli authorities,” The International Committee of the Red Cross said on Friday, adding, “The ICRC cannot confirm any additional details.”

The Israeli military said that news reports of the repatriation were under review.

Mousa Abu Marzouk, head of Hamas’s foreign relations office, said in a text message that the body returned on Friday was believed to be that of Ms. Bibas. Another Hamas official, who requested anonymity to discuss a sensitive arrangement, confirmed the handoff and similarly said it was Hamas’s understanding that they had turned over the right body this time.

A third Hamas official Mahmoud Mardawi told the television network Al Araby TV that Hamas had turned over remains of Ms. Bibas.

It was not immediately clear that Hamas had handed over the correct body on Friday.

Friday’s statements, less than 24 hours after Hamas provided Israel with the wrong remains, were the latest development in a series of crises that have made up the first phase of a cease-fire with Hamas. So far, 19 living Israeli hostages have been traded for hundreds of Palestinian prisoners.

Despite recriminations from both sides, the cease-fire has held for a month. And Hamas’s rapid effort to find and return the body of Ms. Bibas was a sign that it did not want to bear responsibility for endangering the agreement ahead of the next transfer, planned for Saturday.

On Thursday, Hamas said it had handed over the remains of four hostages: Ms. Bibas, who at the time of her capture was 32; her two children, Ariel, then 4, and Kfir Bibas, then 9 months; and Oded Lifshitz, 83. The handoff was staged in front of crowds in Khan Younis, and each casket bore a photo of a hostage.

Israeli officials brought the remains to a forensic institute in Tel Aviv, where the identities of Ariel, Kfir and Mr. Lifshitz were confirmed.

But early on Friday, Israel said that one of the bodies Hamas handed over was not that of Ms. Bibas. The Israeli military called the finding a “violation of the utmost severity” of the cease-fire. In a statement, Hamas acknowledged the possibility of a mistake or a “mixing up of corpses.”

The first phase of the cease-fire deal is set to expire in less than two weeks, and Israel and Hamas have yet to agree on terms to extend the agreement into the next phase.

After an intensive search, the police in Germany detained a suspect in a Friday stabbing attack at Berlin’s iconic Holocaust memorial that left one person seriously injured.

The assault, two days before a pivotal national election, occurred in the labyrinth of concrete stelae that make up the Memorial to the Murdered Jews of Europe, located across the street from the U.S. Embassy and one of the capital’s most sacrosanct sites.

Police said they were verifying the arrested person’s identity and that the investigation was ongoing.

The injured man, a 30-year-old Spaniard, was taken to the hospital, and rescue workers were treating people who witnessed the event for shock, the police said in a statement.

The expansive memorial, described as a “place of remembrance and warning” by Berlin’s tourism website, covers more than four-and-a-half acres and contains 2,711 concrete slabs of varying heights.

Photos published by local news media showed a swarm of emergency vehiclesaround the memorial, illuminated by the glow of blue lights.

The attack comes as Germans prepare to vote in parliamentary elections Sunday that may reshape the country’s political landscape. Frustration over Germany’s stagnant economy and dissatisfaction with immigration have pushed Germany’s far-right party, Alternative for Germany, or AfD, high in the polls.

The AfD party, which has been linked to neo-Nazis, has promised to stop migration and deport immigrants.

Over the last year, Germany has endured a string of seemingly unrelated attacks carried out by immigrants from Afghanistan and the Middle East.

Last week, an asylum seeker from Afghanistan crashed a car into a union demonstration in Munich, injuring dozens in the city, where global figures had gathered for a security conference.

And in December, a Saudi Arabian citizen plowed his car through a Christmas market in Magdeburg, killing six people and injuring hundreds more.

Christopher F. Schuetze contributed reporting.

President Trump on Friday appeared to back off his demand that some two million Palestinians be permanently relocated from the Gaza Strip to nearby countries in the Middle East so the United States could take over the territory and develop it into “the Riviera of the Middle East.”

Earlier this month, the president said he favored taking control of Gaza and displacing the Palestinian population of the devastated seaside enclave. Over the course of several days, he repeatedly waved aside objections to the idea, including flat-out rejections from the leaders of Egypt and Jordan.

At the time, Mr. Trump said that he would be able to persuade the leaders of those two countries — and potentially others in the region — to accept the Palestinians through the force of his will.

“They say they’re not going to accept,” Mr. Trump said. “I say they will.”

But in a telephone interview with a Fox News host on Friday, Mr. Trump seemed to concede that his efforts at persuasion had failed and the refusal by Egypt and Jordan to accept displaced Gazans would make the idea unworkable.

“Well, we pay Jordan and Egypt billions of dollars a year. And I was a little surprised they’d say that, but they did,” Mr. Trump told the Fox News host Brian Kilmeade before adding: “I’ll tell you, the way to do it is my plan. I think that’s the plan that really works. But I’m not forcing it. I’m just going to sit back and recommend it.”

The comments were a striking reversal for one of the most brazen foreign policy proposals ever made by a sitting president. And they came after weeks of back-and-forth that included several high-ranking Trump administration officials trying to downplay the proposal, followed by the president insisting that he was serious.

Mr. Trump first publicly raised the idea in early February, when he declared that “The U.S. will take over the Gaza Strip.” With Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu of Israel by his side during a White House visit, Mr. Trump said the United States would “own it and be responsible” for disposing of unexploded munitions and rebuilding Gaza into a mecca for jobs and tourism, pledging that it would become “the Riviera of the Middle East.”

Secretary of State Marco Rubio and Karoline Leavitt, the White House press secretary, said soon after that any relocation would be temporary. But Mr. Trump followed up with a social media posting suggesting again that Palestinians would be relocated into communities where they would be “happy, safe, and free.”

In the interview on Friday, the president said that trying to redevelop Gaza without moving Palestinians out would be impractical, in part because of the presence of Hamas terrorists, who have ruled in Gaza for decades. He said that a U.S. takeover, and the displacement of Gaza’s Palestinians, would be the best approach.

“The U.S. would own the site,” Mr. Trump said. “It’d be no Hamas, and it’d be developed, and you start all over again with a clean plate.”

But he spoke of the idea in past tense, suggesting that he had given up on it.

“I liked my plan. I thought my plan was good,” Mr. Trump told Mr. Kilmeade. “You get them out, you move them, you build a beautiful community and a permanent community.”

A spokesman for the National Security Council did not respond to emails seeking comment on whether the president’s remarks indicated that he was giving up on the idea of the United States rebuilding Gaza.

In the interview, Mr. Trump seemed resigned to the reality that Gaza would have to be rebuilt without U.S. ownership and without moving its people out, though he also appeared to interpret Israel’s long occupation of the territory as ownership.

“We’ll see what happens,” he said. “I thought it was great, because the location is, you know, it’s a great location. I don’t know why Israel ever gave that up. Why did they give it up?”

Pope Francis’ complex lung infection is not immediately life-threatening, his doctors said Friday, from the Rome hospital in which he has been treated for the past week, but they warned he is “not out of danger.”

The 88-year-old pontiff, who had part of a lung removed in his youth, would remain in the hospital for at least another week, his doctors told reporters. Francis, they said, had been prescribed “many drugs” to treat a bronchial infection that had developed into double pneumonia, but he was not on a respirator.

The doctors said the pope was in a “good mood” and had even cracked jokes earlier in the day, but his condition remained critical.

“I know I am an older man, that I have a chronic problem,” the pope told his surgeon, Sergio Alfieri, who shared the conversation with reporters gathered at Policlinico Agostino Gemelli, the hospital where Francis is being treated.

“The situation at my age is grave,” the pope said, according to Dr. Alfieri. The pope, his doctor said, understood the risk of death at his age, and told him “all doors were open.”

Dr. Alfieri said the pope is “not out of danger” and described what he called an “important infection,” which had not entered the bloodstream, a life-threatening condition known as sepsis.

As the pope’s hospital stay enters a second week, questions have grown about the future of the Roman Catholic Church, whether Francis — the spiritual leader of almost 1.4 billion Catholics —passes away or whether he manages to fight his infection but emerges physically diminished. The damage to his lungs was already chronic, and in recent days a few cardinals have openly spoken about the possibility of Francis resigning, as his predecessor Benedict XVI did in 2013.

Calibrating the right treatment involved many factors, Dr. Alfieri said. “Our job is not easy.”

The pope’s medical doctor at the Vatican, Luigi Carbone, noted that Francis was, after all, 88, and that it would take time for him to recover. It would not take much for the situation to become “unbalanced,” he said.

Dr. Alfieri said Francis was fragile but tough and Dr. Carbone said Francis was not one to give up.

Dr. Alfieri said that on Friday evening the pope had left his room to go pray at a chapel in his suite at the hospital.