Trump to meet Putin and Xi in China next week for historic meeting, White House confirms

Detailed summary

The White House says the leaders will discuss nuclear disarmament and the war in Iran

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Donald Trump will meet Vladimir Putin and Xi Jinping in China next week for an unprecedented three-way meeting between the leaders of the US, Russia, and China, with nuclear weapons and the war in Iran expected to be on the agenda.

The meeting will take place on Thursday, on the sidelines of the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation (APEC) summit in Shenzhen, the White House confirmed on Friday. It will bring together the leaders of the world’s three largest nuclear powers for the first time, although all three have held bilateral talks with one another.

“The president has made it clear that, among other topics, he will discuss the reduction of nuclear weapons in the world, whose proliferation President Trump believes is very dangerous,” White House spokeswoman Olivia Wales told reporters.

The meeting comes nine months after the expiry of the New Strategic Arms Reduction Treaty (New START), the last major nuclear arms control agreement between Washington and Moscow.

The treaty, which expired in February, had placed limits on the two countries’ strategic nuclear arsenals, leaving the world’s two largest nuclear powers without those restrictions for the first time in more than half a century.

Mr Trump has rejected Russia's offer to extend it for another year, saying he wanted a new agreement that would also include China.

Beijing has resisted joining such negotiations, arguing that its nuclear arsenal is much smaller than those of Washington and Moscow. China has more than 600 nuclear warheads, compared with more than 5,000 each for Russia and the US.

“We do not expect to get to any kind of agreement,” a senior Trump administration official told reporters, according to Reuters. “This is a difficult topic for China to address, but we do think ​it’s time for China to sort of step up, you know, to the adults’ table, if you will, and have ​adult conversations…

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