During his three-day stay in Hangzhou, Obama met with the leaders of China, the United Kingdom, Turkey and Russian Federation – all countries with complicated but integral relationships to the US.
Advertisement
Negotiations to reach a peace deal in Syria are being hampered by “gaps of trust” between the United States and Russia, President Obama said Monday.
These latest talks between Obama and Putin come as the Russian-backed Syrian government troops continue their siege of Aleppo.
“What we can not do is have a situation where this becomes the wild, wild West, where countries that have significant cyber capacity start engaging in unhealthy competition or conflict through these means”, Obama continued. “I am the president of a sovereign country and I am not answerable to anyone except the Filipino people”, Duterte scoffed in a speech Monday.
“It was mainly the two of us who had the discussion, going into detail”.
He added: “Now in this summit, to all of our friends, we have brought up this issue and told them this”.
“Our collaborative effort with the USA in fighting terrorist organizations, including the ones in Syria, may be significantly improved and intensified”, Putin said, before adding he believes that Russian Federation and the United States could reach a deal soon. “I believe that we are on the right track and could, at least for some period of time, agree to carry out mutual energetic attempts to make the situation in Syria more healthy”, he said.
Kerry and Lavrov sat in on the meeting and are making plans to meet again in coming days under instructions to reach an agreement, according to the official.
Obama had talks with his Chinese counterpart Xi Jinping on Saturday, during which they discussed maritime disputes. They also discussed Ukraine and US concerns over cyber-security.
President Obama said today: “Where we see them violating global rules and norms, as we have seen in some cases in the South China Sea or in some of their behaviour when it comes to economic policy, we’ve been very firm”. “He said that they wanted to look at how we could strengthen our trading and economic relationship and that China was open to a bilateral trade arrangement with the United Kingdom”.
Kerry and Lavrov met on the sidelines of the G20 summit in the eastern city of Hangzhou.
Recall that earlier, Russian presidential spokesman Dmitry Peskov told reporters that “the meeting lasted longer than planned”. Ukraine was mentioned at the meeting, Putin said, without specifying further.
But the diplomatic efforts were unsuccessful, Obama said at a press conference on Monday. “This would not be happening without the U.S. and China ratifying the agreement”, he said.
Advertisement
During the packed press conference, which went for over 40 minutes and was attended by more than 100 members of the media, the US president also avoided mention of the return of the US Navy to a base in the Philippines.Instead, he covered his planned visit to Laos, his “candid and blunt” bilateral talks with Russian Federation, the Trans-Pacific Partnership, taxation and overcapacity.
