Reuters said that Mr Putin said on Monday that an agreement with the U.S. on finding a way to significantly reduce the death toll in Syria could be reached in the next few days.
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President Obama and Russian President Vladimir Putin failed to force a breakthrough in negotiations over a cease-fire for Syria Monday, but agreed to keep looking for a path to provide humanitarian relief to thousands of besieged civilians in the civil war-ravaged country.
It is symptomatic of the state of the world economy that eight years on, the two-day summit meeting of G20 leaders, which concludes in Hangzhou today, will put forward no coordinated measures to boost the world economy, expected to record one of the lowest growth levels since the official end of the recession, and that protectionist measures are on the rise as tensions between the major powers increase.
“We aim to revive growth engines of global trade and investment”, Xi said in a closing statement.
But experts fear the gathering will be short on substance, with no acute crisis pushing leaders to defy rising populist sentiments and to take hard steps such as liberalising trade.
North Korea added to the drama on Monday with the firing of three ballistic missiles off its east coast.
Xi told South Korea’s President Park Geun-hye that Beijing opposed the United States deployment of the THAAD anti-missile system in her country.
New British Prime Minister Theresa May spent much of the summit discussing Britain’s European Union exit, which will force the country to define anew its trading relationships with Europe, the US and other partners.
“There are hard issues between Japan and China, and because of that, it is important that the leaders exchange honest opinions and make improvements”, said Tokyo’s chief cabinet secretary Yoshihide Suga.
That was part of Beijing’s furious reaction to Tokyo’s move to nationalize a string of tiny uninhabited islands controlled by Japan but claimed by China.
Shen Dingli, an global relations expert from the prestigious Fudan University in Shanghai, told Singapore’s Straits Times that the United States should know well what they have done to upset China.
“So where we see them violating worldwide 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”.
A new flashpoint is emerging his week, with the Philippines asking Beijing to explain the presence of Chinese vessels near the disputed Scarborough Shoal.
“Now of course we have to enforce and to follow up”, the official added.
China is intent on keeping the G20 on script.
“We are determined to revive worldwide trade and investment”, Xi said, pledging to “reverse the downward trend in global trade growth”.
US Secretary of State John Kerry speaks at a press conference in Hangzhou, China, during the G20 Leaders Summit on September 4, 2016.
The tarmac kerfuffle included a shouting match that broke out as White House staffers tried to help American reporters position themselves to film Obama’s arrival in the eastern Chinese city for a Group of 20 summit. Obama met earlier with French President Francois Hollande and German Chancellor Angela Merkel on the same issue. -European pact have slowed or stalled.
After the meeting, Xi and the other leaders and guests took a boat trip and enjoyed a leisure moment lightened by glitzy performance and fireworks display on the bank of Hangzhou’s landmark West Lake.
Beijing promised in January to reduce steel production capacity by 100 to 150 million tons by 2020, a pledge Xi repeated Saturday ahead of the G-20 meeting.
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And when U.S. security personnel decided Obama should leave the plane using its built-in staircase, he was left stepping onto the tarmac rather than a red carpet, prompting speculation of a snub.
