Leaders... and one reluctant handshake
Two world
THEY need to work together to tackle the Syria crisis, but as these photos confirm, it doesn’t mean they have to like each other.
A meeting between Russia’s Vladimir Putin and US President Barack Obama at the United Nations in New York on Monday was a frosty affair, with neither showing any warmth towards the other, and Mr Obama later pointedly refusing to smile back at Mr Putin during a toast over dinner. It came as David Cameron said world leaders were still ‘miles apart’ over Syria.
The Prime Minister’s downbeat assessment of the prospects for a diplomatic solution to the crisis came during an interview with US television station CBS yesterday, in which he dismissed any prospect of a ‘phoney’ solution involving Bashar al-Assad remaining in power in Syria.
He added: ‘The meeting between Obama and Putin was important but we need much more of that to try to build some sort of shared understanding. Is this the most difficult intractable problem that President Obama has faced and that I face? Yes.
‘So many people have died and so many have left the country but that doesn’t mean you give up. Nor should it mean that you go for a sort of phoney solution of thinking you could team up with Assad to fight Isil, because that would be self -defeating.’
Mr Cameron said Russia’s attempts to bolster the Syrian regime in recent weeks showed Assad was ‘on the brink of failing’.
He added: ‘ So far the problem has been that Russia and Iran have not been prepared to contemplate the end state of a Syria without Assad.’