Although Obama has scheduled no formal meetings with Putin, both the White House and the Kremlin said they expected them to meet on the sidelines.
U.S. President Barack Obama is slated to be briefed by his top advisers on Saturday on the latest intelligence on Friday’s deadly attacks in Paris, a White House official said.
Islamic State claimed responsibility on Saturday for the coordinated assault by gunmen and bombers that killed 127 people across Paris.
French President Francois Hollande has canceled his visit to the G20, his office said, and will be represented instead by Foreign Minister Laurent Fabius and Finance Minister Michel Sapin.
Efforts by the USA and European countries to punish Russian Federation with economic sanctions have done little to change Putin’s approach in Ukraine.
The State Department said in a statement it believes Americans were among those injured in the terror strikes, which occurred at a crowded concert venue, a Cambodian restaurant and France’s national soccer stadium. But the White House did not list Obama-Modi meeting among the bilateral released by it during the trip-preview news conference.
The USA leader will meet in the Philippines with Canada’s Justin Trudeau and Australia’s Malcolm Turnbull, whose countries have signed up to a US-backed trans-Pacific free trade deal, known as the TPP.
But the violence on the streets of Paris added new urgency ahead of the two-day G20 summit in Antalya, Turkey, where Obama was hoping to build support for his administration’s strategy to defeat the Islamic State in the Middle East and bring a negotiated end to the civil war in Syria. Turkey has detained dozens of IS suspects in recent weeks, including a few 20 in or near Antalya. Obama’s National Security Adviser Susan Rice said the goal was simply to make “incremental progress”.
The president’s first meeting in Turkey is with Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan, the Turkish leader whose ties with the White House have become increasingly strained. Their meeting wasn’t announced until shortly before Obama’s departure, a underscoring the “very tense nature” of the U.S.-Turkey relationship, according to Heather Conley, a Europe expert at the Center for Strategic and global Studies, a Washington think tank. With that in mind, Abe and Obama are expected to talk about the importance of ensuring the freedom of navigation, among other issues, the sources said.
“The USA and Turkey do not align on the dimension of the Syrian campaign”, Conley said. Until Putin is willing to abandon Assad and accept new leadership in Syria, it’s unlikely a political solution can be reached.
Obama’s dealings with Russian President Vladimir Putin over Syria have been even more complicated.
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