Length of Alaska Summit Determined by Progress in Conflict Settlement: Witkoff
TEHRAN (Tasnim) – The length of the meeting between Russian President Putin and his American counterpart Donald Trump in Anchorage (Alaska) was determined by the progress in resolving the conflict in Ukraine achieved there, US Special Envoy Steve Witkoff said.
"We stayed there for quite some time because we actually made progress on how we might get to a peace deal," he said when speaking about the summit in an interview broadcast by Fox News.
"A cease fire deal is very, very easy to break because it doesn't have all the ingredients attached to it," Witkoff added meaning the nature of agreements on the temporary cessation of military actions, TASS reported.
"A peace deal is much more different. It's sturdy," he said speaking about agreements on a permanent settlement of the conflict in Ukraine. "The [US] President began to sense in this meeting in Alaska that we had a lot of the precursors agreed to for a peace deal. So why not pursue an entire peace deal?" Witkoff explained.
On August 15, Putin and Trump met at a military base in Alaska. The conversation lasted about three hours, including a change of formats: one-on-one in the limo of the American leader on the way to the main meeting place and in a narrow three-on-three format. On the Russian side, Presidential Aide Yury Ushakov and Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov also took part in the meeting, while on the American side, Secretary of State Marco Rubio and Witkoff. In a press statement following the talks, Putin said that the settlement of the Ukrainian conflict had become the main topic of the summit. The Russian leader also called for turning the page in bilateral relations, returning to cooperation, and invited Trump to Moscow.
For his part, the US President announced progress achieved in the negotiations, though he noted that the parties had not managed to agree on everything. Later, in an interview with Fox News, Trump rated the Anchorage meeting 10 out of 10 and stressed that many positions were agreed upon there, adding that what happens next depends on Kiev. The US President also expressed confidence in the possibility of working out a deal on Ukraine in the near future.
