WORLD
Saturday, July 8, 2017
East Oregonian
Page 11A
Trump confronts Putin on election hacking in first meeting
U.S., Russia announce
Syria cease-fire after
Trump-Putin talks
Associated Press
HAMBURG, Germany — At
long last face to face, President
Donald Trump confronted Russian
President Vladimir Putin directly
Friday over Moscow’s meddling in
the 2016 presidential campaign, as
the two leaders sought to use their
historic first meeting to move past
the issue and forge closer coopera-
tion on Syria.
In a two-hours-plus meeting in
Germany, Trump and Putin had a
“robust and lengthy” discussion
about the interference, though Putin
denied involvement, said Secretary
of State Rex Tillerson. His Russian
counterpart, Foreign Minister
Sergey Lavrov, said Trump had
accepted Putin’s assurances that
Russia didn’t meddle in the U.S.
election — a divergent description
of the conversation that illustrated
each country’s effort to show its
leader had held his ground.
“I think the president is rightly
focused on how do we move
forward from something that may
be an intractable disagreement at
this point,” said Tillerson, who
took part in the meeting along with
Lavrov.
Trump’s decision to raise the
issue directly with Putin fulfilled
ardent demands by U.S. lawmakers
of both parties that the president
not shy away from the issue in his
highly anticipated meeting with
Putin. Trump has avoided stating
unequivocally in the past that
Russia interfered, even as investiga-
tions proceed into whether Trump’s
campaign colluded with Russians
who sought to help him win.
On one point, Putin and Trump
agreed, Tillerson said: The issue
has become a hindrance to better
relations between the two powers.
The two leaders agreed to continue
the discussion, with an eye toward
securing a commitment that Russia
won’t interfere in U.S. affairs in the
future, Tillerson added.
Still looking back, though, the
Russians asked for “proof and
evidence” of Moscow’s involve-
ment in the 2016 election. Just a
day earlier, Trump had said Russia
probably meddled in the election,
but that other countries probably
did, too.
With the world watching closely
for signs of their emerging rapport,
Trump and Putin shook hands
firmly but briefly as reporters were
allowed in for part of their meeting.
AP Photo/Marcellus Stein
U.S. President Donald Trump, right, and Russian President Vladimir Putin shake hands during the G20
summit in Hamburg Germany, Friday July 7, 2017.
Mikhail Klimentyev, Kremlin Pool Photo via AP
Russian President Vladimir Pu-
tin greets U.S. President Don-
ald Trump’s wife Melania, prior
his talks with U.S. President
Donald Trump during the G20
summit in Hamburg Germany.
Seated in front of a Russian flag,
Putin slightly hunched in his chair
and rubbed his fingers together as
he listened to Trump, who appeared
informal and relaxed and said it was
“an honor” to be with Putin.
“We look forward to a lot of
very positive things happening for
Russia, for the United States and for
everybody concerned,” Trump said.
Putin, too, described the mere
fact they were meeting as positive,
adding that he hoped it would “yield
positive results.”
“Phone conversations are never
enough definitely,” Putin said.
“If you want to have a positive
outcome in bilaterals and be able
to resolve most international policy
issues, that will really need personal
meetings.”
The meeting, originally sched-
uled for 35 minutes, clocked in at 2
hours and 16 minutes.
“There was so much to talk
about,” said Tillerson. “Neither one
of them wanted to stop.”
He added that at one point, aides
sent in first lady Melania Trump
to try to wrap things up, but the
meeting went on another hour after
that, “so clearly she failed.”
In their meeting, the two also
discussed a ceasefire deal for south-
western Syria that was reached by
Russia and the United States and first
reported Friday by The Associated
Press. Though the U.S. and Russia
have held conflicting views on Syria
in the past, Tillerson said Russia had
an interest in seeing the Mideast
nation become a stable place.
Though Tillerson said details
about the ceasefire need to be
worked out, Lavrov said that
Russian military police will monitor
the ceasefire, with a monitoring
center set up in Jordan — another
party to the deal.
Both the Russians and the Amer-
icans took pains to describe the
meeting as “constructive,” cordial
and wide-ranging, covering key
topics including cyber security and
North Korea. Still, Tillerson said no
next meeting for Putin and Trump
had been scheduled.
“The two leaders connected very
quickly,” Tillerson said. “There was
a very clear positive chemistry.”
The former Exxon Mobil CEO
has done business in Russia and is
one of the few senior members of
Trump’s administration with expe-
rience dealing with Putin.
The meeting has been closely
scrutinized for signs of how
friendly a rapport Trump and Putin
will have. Trump’s predecessor,
President Barack Obama, had noto-
riously strained ties to Putin, and
Trump has expressed an interest in
a better U.S.-Russia relationship.
But deep skepticism about
Russia in the U.S. and ongoing
investigations
into
whether
Trump’s campaign coordinated
with Moscow during last year’s
election have made a U.S.-Russia
detente politically risky for Trump.
The Putin meeting came
midway through a hectic, four-day
European visit for Trump, who
addressed thousands of Poles in an
outdoor speech in Warsaw, Poland,
on Thursday.
He met in Germany with Chan-
cellor Angela Merkel, the summit
host, and had dinner with two Asian
allies — Japanese Prime Minister
Shinzo Abe and South Korean
President Moon Jae-in — to discuss
North Korea’s aggression.
HAMBURG, Germany
(AP) — The United States and
Russia struck an agreement Friday
on a cease-fire in southwest
Syria, crowning President Donald
Trump’s first meeting with Russian
President Vladimir Putin. It is the
first U.S.-Russian effort under
Trump’s presidency to stem Syria’s
six-year civil war.
The cease-fire goes into effect
Sunday at noon Damascus time,
according to U.S. officials and the
Jordanian government, which is
also involved in the deal.
Secretary of State Rex
Tillerson, who accompanied
Trump in his meeting with Putin,
said the understanding is designed
to reduce violence in an area of
Syria near Jordan’s border that is
critical to the U.S. ally’s security.
It’s a “very complicated part of
the Syrian battlefield,” Tillerson
told reporters after the U.S. and
Russian leaders met for more than
2 hours on the sidelines of a global
summit in Hamburg, Germany.
Of the agreement, he said, “I
think this is our first indication of
the U.S. and Russia being able to
work together in Syria.”
No deal on dachas
after Putin talks
WASHINGTON (AP)
— Presidents Donald Trump
and Vladimir Putin discussed
on Friday a pair of Russian
diplomatic compounds that the
U.S. seized last year, according
to a top Russian official, but left
their first meeting without a deal
that Moscow has put high on its
wish list from the new American
administration.
After their more than two-hour
meeting, Putin’s top diplomat told
reporters the fate of the compounds
was raised. Foreign Minister
Sergey Lavrov said Russia is still
seeking “justice.”
A month after Trump’s
election victory, President Barack
Obama seized the Cold War-era
recreational estates and expelled
35 Russian officials. The actions
were a response to claims by
U.S. intelligence agencies that
Russia meddled in the presidential
election to help Trump.