Joe Biden, Erdogan hold 'fruitful and sincere' meeting

BRUSSELS: US President Joe Biden and his Turkish counterpart Recep Tayyip Erdogan held their first in-person meeting here on the sidelines of the NATO Summit, which the latter described as "fruitful and sincere".

The meeting on Tuesday was part of Biden's first foreign trip as President. The first leg of the visit took him to the UK for the G7 Summit last weekend and his next stop will be Geneva where the much-anticipated meeting with Russian leader Vladmir Putin will be held on Wednesday.

During the 90-minute meeting, Biden and Erdogan discussed a number of issues, including the global fight against the COVID-19 pandemic and the vaccine situation, Xinhua news agency reported.

"There are no outstanding problems between the US and Turkey that cannot be solved. On the contrary, there are many areas where we could focus on prospective and fruitful cooperation," Erdogan told journalists at a news conference. "Our history goes back a long time and we managed to exchange views on a vast area of issues. We also focused on the incidents on which we have different opinions and, in a very constructive fashion, talked about areas where we could further explore cooperation.

"We agreed on the necessity to effectively use dialogue channels between our nations in a regular fashion so, at the end of the day, it was a very fruitful and very sincere meeting. We also underlined the fact that bilateral cooperation should be revitalised," he added.

In response to a query about whether the S-400 defence system was discussed, Erdogan said: "I expressed our previous opinion on the S-400, I also expressed our opinion on the F-35.'' (IANS)

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