World

G20: Trump and Putin debate US election hack at first meeting

July 7, 2017 4:40 pm

Donald Trump and Vladimir Putin have discussed the alleged Russian hacking of last year’s US presidential election during their first meeting.G20: Trump and Putin debate US election hack at first meeting

US Secretary of State Rex Tillerson described the exchanges as “robust”.

Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov said Mr Trump had accepted Mr Putin’s assertions that his country was not responsible.

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But Mr Tillerson said it was not clear whether the two countries would ever come to an agreement on what happened.

“I think the president is rightly focused on how do we move forward from something that may be an intractable disagreement at this point,” he added.

The US and Russian presidents held their first face-to-face talks on the sidelines of the G20 summit in the German city of Hamburg, which is being held amid sometimes violent protests.

Other topics discussed during their meeting – which lasted nearly two-and-a-quarter hours, longer than originally planned – included the war in Syria, terrorism and cybersecurity.