White House press secretary Jen Psaki has clarified that Washington is “still working on the details”
According to TASS, the US administration believes there is progress in preparations for a possible face-to-face meeting between Russian and US presidents Vladimir Putin and Joe Biden.
“We specifically released [an earlier] statement saying that the discussion (a meeting in Geneva between Russian Security Council Secretary Nikolai Patrushev and US Presidential National Security Aide Jake Sullivan) was an important step in preparing the planned US-Russian summit, as we feel that we continue to make progress towards that. Although we have not yet reached the point where <…> we [will be] ready to announce [the date and venue of the summit]”, – said a spokeswoman for the Washington administration.
According to Psaki, this was an important step in preparation for the planned US-Russia summit, the dates and venue of which they are not yet ready to announce as they are still working out the details
“I will say that our focus, the goal of such a meeting [between Presidents Putin and Biden] would be to move toward a more stable and predictable relationship with Russia after several years where things didn’t go that way. We believe we can do it in a constructive way. That does not mean that we are going to hold back in areas that we have concerns about, as you have seen over the last few weeks. We then issued an invitation for a meeting [of the presidents] and applied sanctions for actions that we find unacceptable”, – Psaki said.
She said Sullivan touched on such problematic issues in Geneva.
“But we are also having a conversation about how we can move forward with planning for the summit.”
She also confirmed that strategic stability and nuclear issues are likely to be on the agenda for the Putin-Biden meeting.
“In terms of cooperation on nuclear capabilities and threats: I would note that this is one of the areas where, even though tensions [in relations] with Russia have been high in recent years, President [Biden], when he came to power, made the extension of the New START for five years one of the first issues on [his] agenda.”
As she stated, Russia is “of course an important partner when it comes to nuclear negotiations with Iran”, a member of the permanent five of the UN Security Council.
“I would say that discussion and continued cooperation on nuclear stability would be, I suspect, part of the [summit] agenda”, – the White House spokesperson said.