 "U.S. President Donald Trump shakes hands with Russian President Vladimir Putin. File Image- AP")
China has floated the idea of hosting US President Donald Trump and his Russian counterpart Vladimir Putin to discuss ways to end the Russia-Ukraine war.
According to a report by the Wall Street Journal, Chinese officials have reached out to the Trump administration with a proposal to hold a summit between the two countries’ leaders and facilitate the process of negotiating a ceasefire deal.
Asked about the newspaper report at a regular news conference on Thursday, a Chinese foreign ministry spokesperson said he had “no information to offer”.
The development comes days after the US president talked with Putin on the phone where he said that the latter “wants to see people stop dying”. After their supposed phone call, POTUS expressed optimism over the war’s end and said that the US was making progress with Moscow.
Trump said Putin and Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy had expressed a desire for peace in separate phone calls with him on Wednesday, and Trump had ordered top U.S. officials to begin talks on ending the war in Ukraine.
Meanwhile, the Kremlin had earlier said that Putin agreed to meet Trump and even invited him to visit Moscow. Later, Trump said that a meeting with Putin would “probably” take place in Saudi Arabia.
“China is happy to see Russia and the United States strengthen communication on a series of international issues,” said Guo Jiakun, the Chinese foreign ministry spokesperson. “Russia and the United States are both influential major countries.”
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View All“China has always believed that dialogue and negotiation are the only viable way to resolve the crisis and has always insisted on promoting peace and dialogue,” Guo said. “China supports all efforts conducive to a peaceful resolution of the crisis, and will continue to maintain communication with relevant parties and continue to play a constructive role in promoting a political solution to the crisis.”
China has been repeatedly urged by the West to use its close relationship with Russia to help end the war. Beijing has said it was not a party to the crisis but that it had been consistently promoting peace talks on its terms.
With inputs from agencies