(Reuters) U.S. President Barack Obama defied pressure to abandon plans for air strikes against Syria at a summit on Friday which left world leaders divided on the conflict but united behind a call to spur economic growth.
Leaders of the Group of Twenty (G20) developed and developing economies, who account for 90 percent of the world economy and two thirds of its population, agreed that the economy was not out of crisis yet but was on the mend.
But Obama and Russian President Vladimir Putin remained far apart on Syria after a 20-minute one-on-one talk on the sidelines of the summit on Friday, following a tense group discussion on the civil war over dinner late on Thursday.
"There has been a long discussion with a clear split in the group," a G20 source said after the dinner in a Tsarist-era palace in Russia's former imperial capital, St. Petersburg.
Putin said he and Obama stood their ground and neither blinked but at least there was dialogue.
"We hear one another, and understand the arguments but we don't agree. I don't agree with his arguments, he doesn't agree with mine. But we hear them, try to analyze them," he said.
China's Xi Jinping also tried, unsuccessfully, to dissuade Obama from military action.
"A political solution is the only right way out for the Syrian crisis, and a military strike cannot solve the problem from the root," Xinhua news agency quoted Xi as saying. "We expect certain countries to have a second thought before action."
Washington says troops loyal to Syrian President Bashar al-Assad carried out a poison gas attack which killed over 1,400 people in rebel-held suburbs of Damascus on August 21. Putin said the attack was carried out by the rebels in order to provoke outside military intervention against Assad.
Unable to win United Nations Security Council backing for military action because of the opposition by veto-wielding Russia, Obama is seeking the backing of the U.S. Congress.
Read full article here.
0 comments:
Post a Comment