Indonesian President Joko Widodo
Tell Bloomberg In an interview, he had received assurances from Presidents Xi Jinping and Vladimir Putin that they would attend the conference scheduled for November on the Indonesian island of Bali.
According to Bloomberg, he said, “Xi Jinping will come. President Putin also told me he will come.”
The presence of the two authoritarian leaders will escalate the risks to the summit, which is the first of the Group of Twenty since
Russia’s invasion of Ukraine Tensions are rising over the Taiwan issue.
Neither Putin nor anything attended
G20 last year in Rome. Xi only recently began traveling outside mainland China as the Covid-19 pandemic waned.
The White House has not officially announced that Biden will travel to Asia for the summit, but officials say he is expected to attend.
US and Chinese officials are quietly working to arrange the first face-to-face meeting between Biden and Xi since Biden took office, focusing on the November series of summits in Asia: the G-20 in Bali, a meeting of Southeast Asian leaders in Cambodia and the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation summit in Thailand.
Tensions between Washington and Beijing
It has deteriorated in recent weeks After the Speaker of the House of Representatives
Nancy Pelosi’s visit to Taiwan. China increased
military training And the
Weapon Tests Some channels of communication with the United States were closed.
during
Their last phone callBoth Biden and Xi agreed to work toward a personal meeting. Biden is a supporter of regular meetings with his foreign counterparts, even when tensions are high.
Biden and his advisers have been in talks for months about how to approach the G-20 if Putin is present, and it has been a topic of debate among his fellow world leaders in
G7 summit Held in Germany earlier this summer and in
NATO summit in Brussels in March.
At the G7 meeting, in particular, the leaders discussed ways to show a united front against Russia at the November conference, according to officials.
Biden said Russia should be kicked out of the G-20, and senior members of his administration withdrew from G-20 events attended by Russian officials.
But boycotting the G-20 summit was not taken seriously because Biden and his team did not want to appear to be giving up the table to Putin.
Instead, the United States and the G7 countries encouraged Indonesia to invite the Ukrainian president
Volodymyr Zelensky As a guest participant in a show of support for Ukraine.
In April, finance ministers from multiple countries, including US Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen,
He left the closed session of the Group of Twenty In Washington, as the Russian delegate began his prepared remarks, he offered to protest Moscow for its invasion of Ukraine. Before the meeting, US officials said Yellen would not participate in certain sessions of the meeting, which includes Russia.
in
G20 foreign ministers meeting Last month, US Secretary of State Anthony Blinken challenged his counterparts to take a tougher line on Russia, saying that for the G-20 to remain relevant, Moscow must be held accountable for the invasion.
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