US President Donald Trump has said he expects to meet Chinese President Xi Jinping and Russian President Vladimir Putin in a rare trilateral leaders’ meeting on the sidelines of the APEC summit in Shenzhen next week.
Speaking to reporters in West Palm Beach, Florida, on Sunday, 8 November, Mr Trump said: ‘One of the meetings will be with President Putin and President Xi, and that’ll be interesting. We’re talking a lot of things, including denuclearisation, but we’ll be talking a lot of things. We’re trying to end the war in Iran.’
Mr Trump indicated that a deal on the Russia-Ukraine war, the Iran issue and nuclear arms control would be on the agenda. The APEC leaders’ summit is scheduled for 18 and 19 November in Shenzhen, in southern China.
If the three leaders meet together, it would be the first formal meeting of its kind. The Kremlin said on 21 October that a first-of-its-kind trilateral meeting was ‘being prepared’.
China has not confirmed the meeting. Asked about Mr Trump’s remarks on Monday, 9 November, Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesperson Guo Jiakun said Beijing was ‘in communication with relevant parties’ over a possible meeting between the three presidents, without ruling it out.
Mr Trump and Mr Xi are also due to meet bilaterally next week, for the third time this year, following the US president’s visit to Beijing in May and the Chinese president’s trip to Washington in September. The two are expected to meet again at the G20 summit in Miami at the end of the year, which would make it four meetings in 2026.
Chinese analysts have played down the prospect of a structured formal summit, suggesting an informal exchange is more likely, with Russia described as the most enthusiastic of the three about the idea.
Source: The Hindu — https://www.thehindu.com/news/international/us-china-russia-leaders-to-meet-next-week-says-trump-beijing-says-in-communication-with-parties/article71682111.ece
