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Putin, Merkel meet face-to-face on G20 sidelines

Turkey proposed such a “safe zone”, which would stretch roughly 40 km deep into Syria, at last year’s G20 meeting in the Turkish city of Antalya, but without success.

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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.

Obama said he’s instructed Kerry, and Putin had told Lavrov “to keep working at it over the next several days – because the faster we can provide some relief to folks on the ground, the better off we’re going to be”.

Although the summit concluded without a deal, the two leaders discussed ongoing efforts to reach an agreement and noted the progress made in the talks between Secretary of State John Kerry and Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov.

“M$3 y instructions to Secretary Kerry and Mr Putin’s instructions to [Foreign Minister] Mr Lavrov were to keep working at it over the next several days”, the United States leader told the media.

Chinese officials insist steel overcapacity is a global issue, but US and European officials say Beijing’s vast state-owned industry, which accounts for half of global output, is the root of the problem. However, the talks ended with nothing, Reuters reports. “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. I think we reached understanding of each other and of the problems we both are facing.

The White House wants to determine whether the Minsk ceasefire can be implemented before Obama leaves office in January, or whether economic sanctions on Russian Federation will need to be extended, the official said.

The official says Obama and Putin met for 90 minutes on Monday at the Group of 20 economic summit in Hangzhou, China.

“We’ve had problems with cyber intrusions from Russian Federation in the past, from other countries in the past”, Obama said. According to him, proceeding to the next stage of the settlement of the crisis will be hard without concessions from Moscow. Russian Federation has since said that it, too, was hacked.

The US president, on his part, said easing the humanitarian situation in Syria would pave the way for a political solution, adding that a settlement of the crisis would include all parties directly or indirectly involved in the conflict.

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These latest talks between Obama and Putin come as the Russian-backed Syrian government troops continue their siege of Aleppo.

President Barak Obama G20