Psaki said the Biden administration did not expect it to be a “light switch” in light of the previous meeting between the two leaders….reports Asian Lite News
White House spokesperson Jen Psaki said there are no predictions at present about a possible meeting between US President Joe Biden and Russian President Vladimir Putin at the upcoming G20 summit.
“I don’t have any predictions for you on bilateral meetings. That’s something that we are still working through at this point of time, every day,” Psaki said during a press conference on Wednesday (local time).
Psaki said the Biden administration did not expect it to be a “light switch” in light of the previous meeting between the two leaders.
“We have remaining concerns, but it was an opportunity to express them at a high level, see what work can be done over the course of the long-term to address it,” Psaki said. “I don’t know whether we are going to do a month by month assessment. It’s something that we have continued conversations with members of the National Security team about many of the issues we raised. Those are ongoing. We are continuing to stride to make progress.”
The landmark summit in Geneva on June 16 marked the first meeting between Putin and Biden, and the two presidents assessed it as productive. They agreed to launch consultations on strategic stability and adopted a joint statement reaffirming the commitment to the 1985 formula by Mikhail Gorbachev and Ronald Reagan that a nuclear war cannot be won and must never be fought.
Jen Psaki also said that Biden administration is now working to finalize the details of the bilateral meeting between US President his French counterpart Emmanuel Macron.
“Right now what our focus is on is moving forward,” Psaki said during a press briefing “As you know… they are going to be meeting next month. We are working to finalize the details of that.”
Biden and Macron have agreed to meet in person next month to continue working out tensions between the two nations, a joint statement released after a telephone call said at the end of September.
A US delegation headed by Secretary of State Antony Blinken is visiting Paris this week to discuss confidence-building measures in the wake of the recent Australia-United Kingdom-United States (AUKUS) submarine deal that caused a significant strain in relations with France.
On Tuesday, Macron and Blinken met in Paris for the first time after the crisis in bilateral relations in light of Australia’s withdrawal from the $66 billion submarine deal with France due to joining the AUKUS partnership in mid-September and the decision to be supplied with the US nuclear-powered submarines.
French Foreign Minister Jean-Yves Le Drian described the decision as a stab in the back and said the trust between the allies was severely undermined.