Trump pressed Putin on election meddling

A meeting between presidents Donald Trump and Vladimir Putin at the G20 summit in Hamburg has lasted for over two hours as they discussed a range of issues.

President Donald Trump opened his meeting with President Vladimir Putin by raising the concerns of the American people about Russian interference in the 2016 presidential election, Secretary of State Rex Tillerson says.

"They had a very robust and lengthy exchange on the subject," Tillerson said after the two leaders' meeting on Friday on the sidelines of the G20 summit in Germany.

"The president pressed President Putin on more than one occasion regarding Russian involvement.

"President Putin denied such involvement, as I think he has in the past."

Tillerson said he thought the president was "rightly focused on how do we move forward from something that may be an intractable disagreement at this point."

Trump and Putin talked for about two hours and 16 minutes when the meeting was only scheduled for 30 minutes.

Talking of the meeting as he met with Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe, Putin said "many issues have piled up, including Ukraine, Syria, some bilateral and other issues."

He said he and Trump also spoke about "fighting terrorism and cybersecurity".

Putin apologised to Abe for running late after his meeting with Trump.

The longer-than-scheduled meeting came as US officials said the US and Russia had reached an agreement for a ceasefire in southwest Syria that is set to take effect on Sunday.


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Source: AAP


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