President Trump, Russian President Vladimir Putin and China’s President Xi Jinping will hold the first three-way meeting among the three leaders at a summit in China next week, the White House said Friday.
The three leaders will meet on the sidelines of the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation summit in the southern Chinese city of Shenzhen on Thursday, Nov. 19, White House spokeswoman Olivia Wales told reporters.
Mr. Trump wants to talk about reducing nuclear arsenals at the trilateral talks and is also set to bring up the war in Iran — but he is not expected to discuss Russia’s war in Ukraine, officials said.
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“The president has made it clear that, among other topics, he will discuss the reduction of nuclear weapons in the world. This proliferation, President Trump believes, is very dangerous,” Wales said.
One of the major conflicts dominating Mr. Trump’s second term as president will feature, but the other will not, the U.S. officials said.
“I think the president does intend to talk about Iran in the trilateral meeting with Xi Jinping and Vladimir Putin,” a senior U.S. official, speaking on condition of anonymity, told reporters on a call.
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Washington has a “whole other track” of negotiations with Kyiv and Moscow aimed at ending the war in Ukraine, the official added, referring to talks that U.S. envoys have had in recent days with Putin and Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy.
“China is not really a part of that track, so it doesn’t seem appropriate to have the Ukraine discussion there,” the official added.
Mr. Trump will also hold a bilateral working lunch and meeting with the Chinese president on Thursday — their fourth meeting since the president’s return to power last year.
The United States also did not plan to discuss export controls on sensitive chip technology, which were at the heart of the Nvidia scandal.
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“We do not negotiate American export controls. These are national security matters that we develop in the administration… and we don’t expect it to figure at all in any of our conversations with the Chinese while we’re there,” the second official said.
Tesla and SpaceX boss Elon Musk will accompany Mr. Trump on his trip to China but will not be involved in the meeting with Xi and Putin, the officials said.
Mr. Trump will leave Washington on Monday and arrive in the Philippines on Tuesday for a summit of the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) before heading to Shenzhen.
