Russian president snubs Erdogan at Paris climate conference
Turkish President Tayyip Erdogan and his Russian counterpart Vladimir Putin have no meeting planned while they are both in Paris for a climate change summit, sources in Erdogan’s office said on Monday, according to Reuters.
However, AFP said that Putin has rejected a meeting with Turkish counterpart and “no meeting with Erdogan is planned. There is no discussion of such a meeting,” Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov told journalists.
Putin’s snub comes after the Turkish leader called for a face-to-face talk with Putin on the sidelines of the summit to discuss the shooting down of the plane on the Syria-Turkish border.
According to a statement on the Kazakh presidency, Erdogan called Kazakh President Nursultan Nazarbayev to discuss the Russian Su-24 jet that Turkey shot down and that he is willing to meet Putin at any time.
Meanwhile, Russian Prime Minister Dimitry Medvedev announced on Monday that the economic sanctions against Turkey will include a government veto on Turkish construction firms working in Russia and restrictions on road transport, according to the Turkish Cihan News Agency.
Medvedev also said that he finds it odd that on the one hand his Turkish counterpart wants to discuss the measures taken by Russia, but on the other, he refuses to apologize for downing the Russian jet, according to the agency.
Moscow and Ankara are at daggers drawn over the incident last Tuesday, with Russia announcing a raft of economic sanctions against Turkey and the two leaders engaging in a furious war of words.
Ankara on Monday sent back to Russia the body of a pilot killed in the downing of the jet after it was delivered from Syria to Turkey over the weekend.
Putin is likely to meet US President Barack Obama for informal talks on the margins of the climate conference in Paris, the Kremlin said.
World leaders are gathering in Paris for an historic summit aimed at ending decades of political gridlock and forging an elusive agreement to avert calamitous global warming.
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