The world wants to see us get along: Trump

International Desk: Donald Trump and Vladimir Putin met and shook hands at the Finnish presidential palace on Monday, with the two pledging to build a stronger relationship between the US and Russia.

Speaking briefly in front of reporters at the start of a day of meetings in Helsinki, US president Mr Trump told his Russian counterpart that “the world wants to see us get along” and that the two sides have “frankly not been getting along very well” in recent years. He said he now wants to develop “an extraordinary relationship”.

“The time has come to talk in a substantive way,” Mr Putin said.

Earlier, the US president said on Twitter that the US relationship with Russia “has NEVER been worse thanks to many years of US foolishness and stupidity”. Russia’s foreign ministry replied: “We agree.”

The two will hold further talks through the day, including a 90-minute one-on-one meeting.

The dialogue on Monday is aimed at kick-starting new bilateral relations. “We have a lot of good things to talk about . . . trade to military to missiles to nuclear to China,” Mr Trump said.

While Mr Trump said the leaders would discuss “everything” in their meetings, he notably did not mention the subject of alleged Russian hacking of the 2016 US election in the topics for the agenda. When he was in the UK last week, Mr Trump suggested he would broach the subject but said “all I can do is say: ‘Did you?’ and, ‘don’t do it again.’”

On Monday, Mr Trump added that the two countries together “have 90 per cent of the nuclear missiles and that’s not a good thing, it’s a bad thing,” repeating his suggestion that arms control would be a central part of the talks. “The world awaits.”

Mr Trump also congratulated Mr Putin on a “beautiful” World Cup tournament.

Source: Agencies


risingbd/Dhaka/July 16, 2018/AI