United States President Joe Biden said on Sunday that America will maintain open communication lines and seek no conflict with China, ahead of the G20 summit in Indonesia this week, Reuters has reported.
Biden and his Chinese counterpart Xi Jinping will meet face-to-face for the first time since Biden took office, as bilateral relations languish at their worst in decades.
Jake Sullivan, a national security adviser to Biden, told reporters the meeting could last “a couple of hours”.
Biden, who landed in Bali Island after meeting Southeast Asian and East Asian leaders in Cambodia, said the United States would “compete vigorously” with Beijing while “ensuring competition does not veer into conflict”.
Russia’s Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov also arrived in Bali from Cambodia earlier on Sunday.
The war in Ukraine and its economic fallout is expected to dominate discussions in Bali and at the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation (APEC) forum in Bangkok at the end of the week, alongside climate commitments, food insecurity and tensions over the Taiwan Strait, the South China Sea and North Korea.
Earlier, Lavrov accused the West of militarising Southeast Asia to contain Chinese and Russian interests in a geostrategic battleground.
“The United States and its NATO allies are trying to master this space,” Lavrov told reporters.
Lavrov is representing President Vladimir Putin at the summits and is expected to hear stinging rebukes from within the G20 over the invasion of Ukraine, which Moscow calls a special military operation.
Reuters
