The specter of the ISIS threat and Syria’s civil war hanged over the Turkish seaside city of Antalya as Obama and other leaders descended for the Group of 20 summit meeting of leading rich and developing nations.
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A top Kremlin official said that while Moscow and Washington shared “strategic objectives” to fight Islamic State, divergences still existed.
Yuri Ushakov said earlier Putin and Obama had not planned a meeting during the G20 summit, though could not rule out their contacts on the sidelines.
World leaders gathering for the G-20 are looking to answer a critical question: Beyond tough talk, how will the world respond to bloodshed now extending far beyond the Islamic State group’s foothold in the Middle East?
Russian Federation joined the conflict a month and a half ago with air strikes in Syria, but has been targeting mainly areas where foreign-backed fighters are battling Assad, its ally, rather than Islamic State, its critics say.
As the presidents sat in full view of cameras, Putin and Obama discussed at length Sunday “a Syrian-led and Syrian-owned political transition” – in other words: what the US sees as ultimately removing Assad from power – peacefully.
Besides Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi, the G20 summit is being attended by US President Barack Obama, Russian President Vladimir Putin and Chinese President Xi Jinping.
Antalya: United Nations chief Ban Ki-moon today said he will soon present to member states a comprehensive joint plan of action to prevent terrorism and called for a robust action to combat the threat. The need for continued peace efforts in Syria was made all the more palpable by the terrorist attacks in Paris Friday, which killed at least 129 people.
He said the Syria roadmap was “encouraging and ambitious” and urged its implementation as quickly as possible to pave the way for a nationwide ceasefire in Syria.
The Obama-Putin discussion lasted about 35 minutes.
“We will be discussing terrorism at this Summit”, he noted.
Erdogan wants to use the summit to cement his status as a global leader after winning a resounding victory in an election last month, held three weeks after a twin suicide bombing in Ankara that killed 102 people and was blamed on Islamic State militants.
Europe and Turkey, the most heavily hit by the crisis, had been pushing for the G20 to recognize the issue as a global problem and help to deal with it financially, despite opposition from China, India and Russian Federation.
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“The economy is the main interest of the G20 but it can not be independent of political, social or cultural problems and it is never independent of human life”.
