US President Donald Trump is scheduled to meet Chinese President Xi Jinping and Russian President Vladimir Putin in Shenzhen on Thursday (19 November), the White House said. The three-way talks will take place on the sidelines of the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation (APEC) summit.
White House spokeswoman Olivia Wales announced the plan in a briefing on Friday (13 November) Washington time. If the meeting goes ahead, it will be the first time the leaders of the three countries have held talks together, AFP reported.
What Beijing and Moscow Have Said
Kremlin aide Yuri Ushakov described the three-way meeting as forthcoming on 12 November and said work on its agenda was underway. China’s foreign ministry confirmed on 13 November that Xi would chair the APEC leaders’ meeting on 18 and 19 November. Asked about the three-way talks that day, ministry spokeswoman Mao Ning said Beijing was in contact with the other parties.
As of Saturday afternoon (14 November), the White House was the only one of the three governments to have publicly specified 19 November for the three-way talks.
Trump Plans to Raise Nuclear Arms Cuts
Wales said Trump intends to discuss reducing nuclear weapons. In February, New START, the treaty that limited the number of long-range nuclear warheads the US and Russia could deploy, expired.
A senior US official, speaking on condition of anonymity at the briefing, said Trump also planned to raise the war in Iran. The official said Washington was discussing Russia’s war in Ukraine through a separate channel and did not expect it to come up in the three-way talks.
Ushakov had said on 12 November that Putin expected to continue discussing Ukraine with Trump in Shenzhen, Russian newspaper Kommersant reported. A US administration official told The Washington Post the following day that there was no separate Trump-Putin meeting on the schedule.
Trump Will Stop in Metro Manila First
Trump is due in Metro Manila on Tuesday (17 November) for the ASEAN-US Special Summit at the Philippine International Convention Center in Pasay City. The meeting is scheduled for after the closing ceremony of the main ASEAN summit, where the Philippines will hand the bloc’s chairmanship to Singapore.
Philippine officials also said President Ferdinand Marcos Jr. is scheduled to meet Trump separately during the visit. Trump will then travel to Shenzhen.
