Russian President Vladimir Putin meets with his USA counterpart Barack Obama on the sidelines of the G-20 Leaders Summit in Hangzhou on September 5, 2016.
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When asked about the meeting a short time later at his end-of-summit press conference in China, Obama said he’s instructed Kerry and Lavrov to keep working on an agreement.
Putin, Obama said, is “less colorful” than another confrontational leader, Philippine President Rodrigo Duterte, who earlier Monday warned Obama against raising his controversial record combating drug crime in an anticipated meeting.
In this regard, the summit under China’s presidency chose to focus on choosing the most effective ways of carrying out structural reforms and identifying new sources of economic growth, she said.
Putin insisted he believed a deal with Washington could be firmed up in the “coming days” but refused to give concrete details, saying that U.S. and Russian officials are still “working out some of our preliminary agreements”. Secretary of State John F. Kerry and Russian foreign minister Sergey Lavrov have been trying for weeks to broker a deal that would curb the violence between the Mr. Assad’s government forces and moderate rebels backed by the U.S.
Xi said leaders would develop guidelines on global investment and overhaul the International Monetary Fund and the World Bank to help emerging markets.
Putin and Obama spoke for almost an hour and a half. “But typically the tone of our meetings is candid, blunt, businesslike”.
But U.S. and other officials say they plan to bring up Chinese industrial overcapacity and other potentially thorny issues.
“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. Obama said the aim was to reach “meaningful, serious, verifiable cessations of hostilities in Syria”.
“Facing current risks and challenges in the world economy, we will continue to reinforce macro policy communication and coordination”, Xi said at the closing meeting.
A senior USA administration official told Reuters the chat, which also discussed the situation in Ukraine, had a “businesslike tone” and went on longer than expected.
Mr Obama said he “wouldn’t over-crank the significance” of the clashes.
“I’ve said all along we’re not going to rush”, said Kerry, who has negotiated several failed truces with Russian Federation in recent months.
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The sticking points in the latest talks are unclear but key differences remain between the U.S. and Russian Federation.
