Barack Obama has hailed the “clear, candid, direct and constructive” G20 summit which he said strengthened US-China relations.
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And talks with Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan centered on July’s coup attempt and Turkey’s insistence the United States extradite a cleric accused of plotting the attempted overthrow.
Obama, who had just come from a 90-minute session with Putin on the sidelines of the summit, also pointedly noted, “We’ve had problems with cyber intrusions from Russian Federation and other countries in the past”.
Administration officials had said that Obama would make the case for the TPP during his visit to Asia, including in a speech he has scheduled in Laos on Tuesday. “We haven’t yet closed the gaps”.
“If and when we have a meeting, this is something that is going to be brought up”, Obama said, referring to a spate of extrajudicial killings of purported drug dealers that have transpired since Duterte took officer earlier this year.
Washington and Moscow have sought for weeks to secure a ceasefire between Syrian President Bashar al-Assad’s government and terrorist groups operating in the country.
Mr Obama said the aim was to reach “meaningful, serious, verifiable cessations of hostilities in Syria”.
Officials from the two superpowers hurled angry words at each other, with one local officer castigating a White House official during the altercation, and shouting ‘ This is our country! “We commit to complete our respective domestic procedures in order to join the Paris Agreement as soon as our national procedures allow”, said the joint communique issued at the end of the two-day summit.
“Both US and Russian Federation are interested in fighting terrorism”, Putin said at the conference. He’ll be the first sitting USA president to visit the small Southeast Asian nation.
Obama has expressed skepticism that Russian Federation would honor its agreement. But Monday’s launch risked embarrassing its main ally Beijing, which has gone to extraordinary lengths to ensure a smooth summit meeting in Hangzhou.
Obama defined his 20-minute meeting with Putin as “frank and direct”, both on the Syrian situation – about which he called their exchange “productive” – as well as the situation in Ukraine. U.S. officials blame Russian intelligence for a hack on the Democratic National Committee that resulted in a leak of emails damaging to its presidential nominee Hillary Clinton.
European Commission President Jean-Claude Juncker said on Sunday in Hangzhou that the ruling against Apple was clearly based on facts and existing rules and was not a decision aimed against the United States.
Obama said he and Putin instructed their deputies “to keep working at it over the next several days”.
The hard diplomacy on Syria set the tone for an uneven few days for Mr Obama on his last tour through Asia as president.
But the focus on climate quickly gave way to the failed Syria talks.
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(The two presidents) discussed, above all, Syria and Ukraine.
