WASHINGTON, August 5 (RIA Novosti) – The White House expects to announce in a matter of days whether US President Barack Obama will attend a Moscow summit with Russian President Vladimir Putin next month, said White House spokesman Jay Carney on Monday.
“While we have a wide range of interests with the Russians, we are continuing to evaluate the utility of a summit. It’s fair to say you can expect we’ll have a decision to announce in the coming days about that,” Carney told reporters during a press briefing.
The scheduled meeting was called into question by Washington after Russia granted temporary asylum to the US intelligence leaker Edward Snowden.
Carney said the Snowden matter is not the only area of disagreement between the two countries.
“We obviously disagree with the Russians very strongly about the decision they have made on Mr. Snowden, but we disagree with the Russians on a number of other issues, including Syria. And we’ve made those disagreements plain, both publicly and privately, in our discussions with the Russians,” Carney said.
“So when it comes to the utility of a summit in Moscow, a bilateral summit, we are evaluating not just our disagreement over Mr. Snowden but on other issues where we have failed to see eye to eye,” he said.
The summit in Moscow is scheduled to take place early next month, ahead of the G20 meeting of top world leaders that begins Sept. 5 in St. Petersburg.
