SAN JOSE DEL CABO, Mexico — President Barack Obama and his Russian counterpart, Vladimir Putin, finally had their face-to-face meeting Monday, as Obama pressed Putin to work with him to ease President Bashar Assad of Syria out of power, a move increasingly viewed by the West as the only way to end the bloodshed that has been underway there for more than a year.
After a two-hour meeting, it was unclear whether Obama succeeded in bringing Putin around. “We agreed that we need to see a cessation of the violence, that a political process has to be created to prevent civil war,” Obama said, sitting next to the Russian leader.
Putin said, “We have found many common points on this issue.” He said the two countries would continue discussions.
Obama described the meeting — rescheduled after Putin canceled his trip to an economic summit meeting Obama hosted at Camp David last month — as “candid, thoughtful and thorough.”
The two men also discussed their joint efforts, along with Europe and China, to rein in Iran’s nuclear ambitions. Even as they were meeting on the outskirts of a world economic summit meeting in Mexico, tough talks on Iran’s nuclear program were underway in Moscow. Obama said that he and Putin had “emphasized our shared approach” and agreed that there was “time” for diplomacy to work.
Obama’s attempt to reset relations with Russia began with Putin’s predecessor, Dmitri Medvedev, who 2½ months ago said that “these were perhaps the best three years of relations between Russia and the United States over the last decade.”
But this first meeting between these two outsize personalities as leaders of their respective countries could not come at a more fraught time. Russia and the United States are clashing over several difficult issues: the U.S. deployment of a missile defense system that Putin considers a threat; pending legislation in Congress that blocks visas and freezes assets of Russian officials linked to human-rights abuses; and statements from the State Department about the protests that greeted Putin’s inauguration that left the Russian leader fuming.
G20: Leaders at summit feel relieved. 11A
