May said she hoped for an open dialogue with Russian Federation even though the two countries have serious differences, speaking at the start of a meeting with Putin on the sidelines of a G20 summit in Hangzhou city in China.
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The two leaders conversed on the sidelines of the Group of 20 summit here for ninety minutes, a senior United States official said, and worked to clarify gaps in negotiations over on the Syrian crisis. The official would not be named discussing the private discussion, which also covered USA concerns over cybersecurity and the situation in Ukraine.
U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry and Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov came together a couple of hours before the presidents’ meeting and are due to meet again later in the week, the official said. They had been working to negotiate a plan that would have boosted military cooperation between the two nations in an effort to better target terrorists and prevent civilian deaths.
But negotiators failed to work though differences, and the talks have ended for now.
Obama said he had heard about the comment and instructed his aides to determine whether it would still be productive to hold the face-to-face meeting.
The official said the US was eager to find an agreement quickly, mindful of the deteriorating conditions around the besieged city of Aleppo. The Kremlin did not rule out earlier that Putin and Obama could hold a meeting even though it had not been agreed officially.
Military officials from the United States and Russian Federation, which back opposite sides in Syria’s five-year war, have been meeting for weeks to try to work on terms of a deal.
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Backed by Russian warplanes, President Bashar al-Assad’s forces have waged an air and ground campaign that has killed hundreds of thousands of people, sparked a humanitarian crisis and forced millions of Syrians to seek refuge in Europe.
