US President Donald Trump will hold a trilateral summit with Chinese President Xi Jinping and Russian President Vladimir Putin on the sidelines of the APEC conference in Shenzhen on Thursday, 19 November, the New York Post reported on Friday, citing a White House official. The meeting is expected to focus largely on an ambitious nuclear arms control pact between the world’s three biggest nuclear powers.
Trump has already indicated publicly that he planned to meet the two leaders in China. Speaking to reporters on 8 November, he said: “One of the meetings, I think, will be with President Putin and President Xi, and that’ll be interesting. We’ll talk a lot of things, including denuclearisation, but we’ll be talking a lot of things. We’re trying to end the war in Iran.”
The talks could also touch on North Korea and the war in Iran, the Post reported. The Wall Street Journal has reported that Putin wants to use the meeting to discuss ending the war in Ukraine.
01. Rubio and Wang pave the way
US Secretary of State Marco Rubio and China’s foreign minister, Wang Yi, discussed the possible meeting in a phone call this week. The State Department said the two agreed on the importance of leader-level conversations to advance peace and denuclearisation, “including at any potential trilateral leaders’ meeting with Russia”.
China’s account of the call, carried by the state news agency Xinhua, made no mention of denuclearisation or a meeting with Russia. Beijing has been cool to three-way arms talks: its foreign ministry said last month that China’s nuclear strength is “by no means at the same level” as that of the US and Russia, and that asking China to join trilateral nuclear disarmament talks now would be “neither fair, reasonable nor realistic”.
The Kremlin has confirmed that preparations for the meeting are underway, according to reports. No joint announcement has been issued by the three governments.
02. First meeting of the three leaders
The summit would be the first time the three leaders meet together. Trump has not met Putin in person since their summit in Alaska last August. The APEC Economic Leaders’ Meeting takes place in Shenzhen on 18 and 19 November, with Xi chairing.
Trump is travelling to Shenzhen for the APEC meeting, and Xi is scheduled to visit Florida for the G20 summit in December. Reducing nuclear arsenals has been a stated goal of Trump’s diplomacy with both Moscow and Beijing; he said in October that he was open to three-way arms control talks focused on nuclear weapons.
