Thursday’s meeting in Shenzhen will also take up the Iran war, a file on which Pakistan has been the principal go-between.
LAHORE: Donald Trump, Xi Jinping and Vladimir Putin will sit down together in China on Thursday in the first three-way meeting ever held between the leaders of the United States, China and Russia, with nuclear weapons at the top of the agenda.
The White House announced the meeting on Friday and the Kremlin confirmed it on Saturday. It will take place on Nov. 19 on the sidelines of the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation summit in the southern city of Shenzhen.
What is on the table
White House spokeswoman Olivia Wales said Trump wants to discuss reducing nuclear arsenals and regards proliferation as “very dangerous”. The New START treaty, the last pact limiting US and Russian strategic warheads, expired in February, and Trump has since proposed a new long-term agreement that would include China.
A US official played down hopes of a concrete deal, describing the meeting as a starting point.
A senior US official said Trump also intends to raise the war in Iran. Ukraine is not expected to feature, with Washington saying those talks run on a separate track with Kyiv and Moscow. Russian and Ukrainian teams met in Abu Dhabi this week for the first time in more than eight months.
The itinerary
Trump leaves Washington on Monday, attends the Association of Southeast Asian Nations summit in the Philippines on Tuesday and then travels to Shenzhen. He will hold a working lunch and bilateral talks with Xi on Thursday, their fourth meeting since he returned to office. No separate meeting with Putin is planned.
Elon Musk will travel with the president but will not join the talks. US officials said export controls on advanced chips would not be discussed, and that the departure of Nvidia chief Jensen Huang over an affair with an alleged Chinese spy should have no bearing on the trip, AFP reported.
Why Islamabad is watching
Pakistan is not a member of APEC and will not be in the room, but two of the three agenda items touch it directly.
On Iran, Islamabad brokered the ceasefire announced in April, hosted the first direct US-Iranian talks and lent its name to the memorandum drafted in June. Trump said this week that the war was militarily “effectively over” while the US naval blockade stays in place. Any understanding among the three powers on Iran’s future will shape the diplomacy Pakistan has invested in, and the oil prices that drove petrol towards Rs395 a litre last month.
On nuclear arms, a framework that brings China into limits for the first time would alter the strategic picture in South Asia. India measures its arsenal against China’s, and Pakistan measures its own against India’s, so a ceiling at the top of that chain would eventually raise questions further down it.
Pakistan has the rare advantage of working relationships with all three capitals. The outcome in Shenzhen will show how much room that leaves for a middle power when the largest ones start talking to each other directly.
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