Biden has unannounced meeting with Turkey’s Erdogan at G-20; U.S. aid to Kurds still a sore point (updated)
Updated at 5:13 p.m. ET on Tuesday
With fewer than 12 hours remaining in the G-20 summit in St. Petersburg, Russia, Vice President Joe Biden met with Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan in what was originally described as a private meeting.
The Washington Post reports:
Vice President Biden has been meeting with Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan in Russia, where the two spoke for more than an hour late Monday night before moving on to another business issue.
The meeting was previously reported as a one-on-one meeting.
Later in the day, Erdogan addressed a joint session of the U.S. Congress. He said that the U.S. needed to do more to convince Turkey to back its fight against terror, but he did not rule out possible military action against targets in Syria if the U.S. is unwilling to offer a diplomatic solution.
Erdogan was in St. Petersburg to meet with President Barack Obama and to discuss a range of issues with foreign leaders including the Syria question, but the U.S. media focused on the meeting between Biden and Erdogan.
Biden said in his opening remarks that the G-20 “has become a showcase for our strategic partnership and how America leads the world.”
Here’s the AP’s story, which cites White House press secretary Josh Earnest:
Biden met with Erdogan to discuss trade and counter-terrorism, Earnest said. And he said that there was “no indication from either Turkish or American officials that this was anything other than an informal, personal meeting.”
White House press secretary Josh Earnest says Biden met with Turkey’s Erdogan in Russia. @AP: http://yhoo.it/bHN8c
Biden and Erdogan will meet as the G-20 summit gets underway. The agenda, as has been reported at Politico, includes a discussion of counter-terrorism and economic sanctions against Russia.
A Biden aide told the Post that the two spoke for more than an hour, but that the vice president had returned to the U.S. by the time the press conference was over.
Earlier Tuesday, The New York Times broke the news that:
Vice President Joe Biden met with Turkish