WASHINGTON/ACCRA, Nov. 14 – United States President Donald Trump, Chinese President Xi Jinping and Russian President Vladimir Putin will hold an unprecedented three-way meeting next week on the sidelines of the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation (APEC) summit in Shenzhen, China, the White House has announced.
“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, according to the BBC.
“President Trump will conclude his visit to China with a trilateral meeting between the president of the United States, the president of the People’s Republic of China, and the president of the Russian Federation,” she said.
Nuclear arms on the table, Ukraine off it
The talks come nine months after New START, the last nuclear arms treaty between Washington and Moscow, expired in February, leaving the world’s two largest nuclear arsenals without caps for the first time in more than 50 years, Al Jazeera reported. Mr Trump rejected a Russian proposal to extend the treaty for a year and has demanded a new deal that includes China.
Expectations are modest. “We do not expect to get to any kind of agreement,” a senior Trump administration official told Reuters, describing the meeting as the start of a conversation.
A senior US official said Mr Trump plans to discuss the Iran war with his counterparts but will not discuss Russia’s war in Ukraine. Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy has voiced concern that the meeting could be used to discuss a Ukraine deal behind Kyiv’s back, Al Jazeera reported.
Schedule
According to the BBC, Mr Trump will attend an Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) summit in the Philippines on Tuesday before arriving in Shenzhen late on Wednesday. He is due to hold bilateral talks with Mr Xi on Thursday – their fourth meeting since he returned to office in 2025 – before the trilateral meeting closes his China visit.
Beijing and Moscow had not publicly confirmed the three-way meeting at the time of the announcement, the BBC said, although Chinese state media reported that Mr Xi would hold bilateral talks at APEC. Earlier this month, Russia’s TASS news agency quoted Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov as saying there were “signals confirming readiness” for such talks.
Why it matters for Ghana
China and the United States are among Ghana’s biggest trading partners, and any discussion of the Iran war will be watched closely by oil-importing economies in Africa, where fuel prices respond quickly to global crude movements. Ghana is also a party to the Treaty of Pelindaba, which makes Africa a nuclear-weapon-free zone.
Sources: The White House (via BBC, AP and Reuters), BBC News, Al Jazeera, Reuters.
Featured image: From left, Donald Trump, Xi Jinping and Vladimir Putin. Photos: Daniel Torok / The White House (public domain); The White House (public domain); Press Service of the President of Russia / Kremlin.ru (CC BY 4.0).