Xi and Putin unite in criticism of US on nuclear, security issues

China and Russia condemned United States President Donald Trump’s Golden Dome missile defence shield plans and Washington’s “irresponsible” nuclear policy at a joint summit on Wednesday, a week after President Xi Jinping hosted Trump in Beijing. A statement from Xi and Russian President Vladimir Putin said Trump’s plan for a ground- and space-based missile interceptor system posed a threat to global strategic stability. It also criticised the United States over the expiry of the last remaining treaty restricting the size of the US and Russian nuclear arsenals, which lapsed in February with Trump failing to respond to Moscow’s proposal to extend the limits by a year. Both sides jointly signed a statement on strengthening comprehensive strategic coordination and a declaration advocating multi-polarity in the world order. “The global agenda of peace and development is facing new risks and challenges, with the danger of fragmentation of the international community and a drift back toward the ‘law of the jungle’,” their joint declaration said, according to the Kremlin. Xi and Putin, who have met more than 40 times, both stressed the closeness of the Russia-China ties that they sealed in 2022 with the signing of a strategic partnership treaty, less than three weeks before Moscow’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine . For Xi, it capped a remarkable week of diplomacy in which he has set out to showcase China as a pillar of stability in a world rocked by trade wars and military conflicts in Iran and Ukraine. While the summit with Trump was largely about managing tensions between the world’s two most powerful countries, the meeting with Putin posed a different challenge — how to demonstrate progress in a relationship that the two sides have already proclaimed is “without limits”. In contrast to Trump’s visit last week, which yielded little in the way of im...

Original source: Dawn Pakistan