Getting your Trinity Audio player ready...
|
U.S. President Joe Biden has talked to the media after attending his Russian counterpart Vladimir Putin in Geneva. Both officers have shown their four-hour encounter as good. Biden says the tone was “good” and “positive”, while Putin called the meeting “constructive”. Their first-ever appointment reflects an extremely difficult period that has seen relations stretched over several issues.
Earlier, the two prominent leaders accepted to return before dismissed ambassadors to their posts. In contrast to the Russian leader who gave his newsgathering indoors, Joe Biden showed to media with Lake Geneva as a backdrop.
Biden: Need to set ‘basic rules of the road.’
The U.S. president showed support to the meeting by stating there was no replacement for face-to-face talks. He said he told his Russian match that the two teams needed to learn some “basic guidelines of the road” to abide by in rebuilding relationships.
He began his news conference by strongly defending democratic values, saying the U.S. would continue to raise fundamental human rights issues and people’s plight, such as Russian dissident Alexei Navalny.
During his presence in front of the media, Putin said that Kremlin critic Alexei Navalny “wanted to be arrested” and turned to Russia in the full knowledge that he had frequently broken Russian law.
Democratic legitimacy, Biden said, came from the people, not from the government. The U.S. would remain to stress the value of a free press and free speech.
The new resident of the White House described one aim of the meeting as being to agree on mutual areas for cooperation for the people of both countries and global security. There was a need to build a tool for achieving very strategic stability.
Efforts were underway on arms control measures to prevent unintended friction and build a dialogue. This, Biden said, was all the more important given the development of new, sophisticated weapons.