White House confirms Trump meetings with Putin, Modi, Xi & others at G20

US President Donald Trump will meet individually with the leaders of Russia, India, China, Turkey, Saudi Arabia, and Germany at this weekend’s G20 economic summit in Osaka, Japan, senior White House officials have confirmed.

Trump’s meeting with Vladimir Putin will likely include discussion of Iran, Ukraine, Syria, and issues of arms control, a senior White House official confirmed to Reuters. It’s an encounter certain to send the president’s detractors into a frenzy. They are still attempting to track down the notes of his interpreter from a previous meeting between the two leaders. 

“The president is quite comfortable with any outcome” to his meeting with China’s President Xi Jinping, the official said, adding that the meeting is an opportunity for Trump to assess his Chinese counterpart’s position on the ongoing trade war. Trump has not met with Xi since the last G20 in Buenos Aires, and has promised to make a decision on whether or not to apply $300 billion in additional tariffs to Chinese goods following the meeting.

Trump will also meet with the recently-reelected Indian PM Narendra Modi, both one-on-one and in a trilateral meeting with Japan’s Shinzo Abe to discuss a “free and open Indo-Pacific concept,” the White House confirmed last month.

A meeting with Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan is likely to include discussion of Turkey’s purchase of the Russian S-400 missile system, which has brought threats of sanctions and Ankara being frozen out of the troubled multinational F-35 program.

Trump will also talk “escalation in tensions in Iran and threats to regional stability” in a one-on-one meeting with Saudi crown prince Mohammed bin Salman during the summit, the official reported. A meeting with German chancellor Angela Merkel is also on the US president’s busy schedule.

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