US says China agreed importance of leader-level talks to advance denuclearisation

The call discussed President Donald Trump's travel to the APEC summit in China next week and Chinese President Xi Jinping's visit to Florida to attend next month's G20 summit.

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WASHINGTON: US Secretary of State Marco Rubio and Chinese Foreign Minister Wang Yi agreed on Wednesday (Nov 11) on the importance of leader-level talks to advance peace and denuclearisation, including in any trilateral summit with Russia, the US State Department said.

Rubio spoke in a call with Wang Yi to discuss US President Donald Trump's travel to the APEC summit in China next week and Chinese President Xi Jinping's visit to Florida to attend next month's G20 summit, the State Department said in a post on X.

It said the two recalled the leaders' "commitment to a constructive relationship of strategic stability on the basis of respect, fairness, and reciprocity".

The leaders "agreed on the importance of meaningful leader-level conversations to advance goals such as peace and denuclearisation, including at any potential trilateral leaders meeting with Russia", it added.

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China's earlier readout of the call between Rubio and Wang made no mention of talks on denuclearisation or a trilateral summit with Russia.

Xi and Trump have met twice already this year and Rubio told reporters on Tuesday there was work underway to arrange a trilateral meeting on the APEC sidelines involving Trump, Xi and Russian President Vladimir Putin.

Trump said on Sunday he thought he would meet Xi and Putin in Shenzhen to discuss ending the war in Iran and denuclearisation.

He said in October he was open to three-way arms control talks with Xi and Putin, which he said would focus on nuclear weapons, although China has appeared less keen on such discussions.

China's Foreign Ministry said last month that its "nuclear strength is by no means at the same level with that of the US and Russia" and that it would be "neither fair, reasonable nor realistic to ask China to join the so-called trilateral nuclear disarmament negotiations at this stage".

China's state news agency Xinhua said Wang held a "positive and constructive" call with Rubio, with Beijing expressing willingness to strengthen communication and cooperation with Washington.

According to Xinhua, Wang said the current stability in China-US relations had not come easily and called it "a rational choice made by the two major countries based on respective and shared interests".

The Wall Street Journal has reported that Putin has pitched using a trilateral meeting to discuss an end to Russia's long-running war in Ukraine.

This year's Trump-Xi summits appear to have helped stabilize relations, but have done little to narrow the broad differences between the two strategic rivals.

In Washington in September, they agreed a two-month extension of a trade truce that had been due to expire in November, but disputes over tariffs, Chinese purchases of US goods, rare earth exports and technology restrictions remained unresolved.

On Tuesday, US Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent said the two sides would advance a new dialogue on artificial intelligence, but should harbor no illusions about their differences as they seek to manage the technology's risks while competing for AI supremacy.

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