Leaders of the United States, China and Russia are set to hold an unprecedented three-way meeting next week, the White House has said.
US President Donald Trump, Chinese President Xi Jinping and Russian leader Vladimir Putin will meet on the sidelines of the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation (APEC) summit in Shenzhen, China's tech hub, the White House assistant press secretary confirmed in an announcement on Friday.
The meeting will take place on Thursday, November 19. Trump will raise nuclear-arms reduction at the talks. "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 talks come nine months after the last nuclear arms treaty between Washington and Moscow expired, leaving the world's two countries with the largest atomic arsenals without caps for the first time in more than 50 years. The New Strategic Arms Reduction Treaty (New START) lapsed in February. Trump then rejected Russia's proposal to extend it for another year and demanded a "new, improved and modernized" deal that includes China.
Expectations are low. "We do not expect to get to any kind of agreement," a senior Trump administration official told the Reuters news agency, describing the meeting as the start of a conversation. Russia holds the most nuclear warheads, followed by the US, then China, according to the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute.
Trump plans on discussing the Iran war with Xi and Putin, but will steer away from discussing Russia's war in Ukraine, according to a senior US official who briefed reporters on condition of anonymity. Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy has voiced concern that the meeting could become a platform to discuss a Ukraine deal behind Kyiv's back. Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov dismissed comparisons with the 1945 Yalta Conference, saying any agreements reached in Shenzhen cannot be imposed on others, but he still called the meeting "extremely significant".
Trump leaves Washington on Monday for a four-day trip to Asia that also includes a stop in the Philippines for the ASEAN summit. He will hold a bilateral meeting and working lunch with Xi on Thursday before joining Putin for the joint engagement, but no separate one-on-one meeting with the Russian president is currently planned. Elon Musk will also travel with Trump to China but will not attend the meeting, the official added. Trump is also not expected to meet North Korean leader Kim Jong Un during the Asia trip. Beijing and Moscow have yet to officially confirm their participation in the trilateral meeting.
