President Donald Trump said Oct. 19 he would consider nuclear arms talks with Chinese President Xi Jinping and Russian President Vladimir Putin, though no three-way summit has been agreed.
Trump told reporters that China could host if Xi wanted the meeting. He said denuclearization would be the reason to schedule it and that trade could also come up.
The Wall Street Journal reported that Putin had proposed bringing the three leaders together to pursue an end to the war in Ukraine. Trump instead placed nuclear arms at the center of his description of the possible talks.
Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov said Trump and Putin had discussed the possibility. He said there was no specific proposal for a meeting or agreement on its agenda, a position described in earlier coverage of the unresolved summit proposal.
Asked whether he would discuss Ukraine with Putin and Xi without Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky, Trump said he was willing to do what he could to end the war. He separately identified nuclear weapons as the reason to arrange a summit.
China’s Foreign Ministry has resisted trilateral nuclear disarmament talks, saying its arsenal is much smaller than those of the United States and Russia and that the proposed format would be unfair at this stage.
Trump is expected in China in November for the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation summit, with talks with Xi planned on the sidelines. No three-leader meeting has been scheduled.
