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Donald Trump will meet Vladimir Putin and Xi Jinping in China next week for an unprecedented three-way meeting between the leaders of the US, Russia, and China, with nuclear weapons and the war in Iran expected to be on the agenda.
The meeting will take place on Thursday, on the sidelines of the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation (APEC) summit in Shenzhen, the White House confirmed on Friday. It will bring together the leaders of the world’s three largest nuclear powers for the first time, although all three have held bilateral talks with one another.
“The president has made it clear that, among other topics, he will discuss the reduction of nuclear weapons in the world, whose proliferation President Trump believes is very dangerous,” White House spokeswoman Olivia Wales told reporters.
The meeting comes nine months after the expiry of the New Strategic Arms Reduction Treaty (New START), the last major nuclear arms control agreement between Washington and Moscow.
The treaty, which expired in February, had placed limits on the two countries’ strategic nuclear arsenals, leaving the world’s two largest nuclear powers without those restrictions for the first time in more than half a century.
