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Gorbachev regrets Obama’s decision to stay away from talks with Putin

“Recall that you should have meetings and direct discussions with others if you want to untangle problems,” the former Soviet President said

Photo EPA/ITAR-TASS

Photo EPA/ITAR-TASS

MOSCOW, August 8 (Itar-Tass) - Former Soviet President Mikhail Gorbachev said Thursday he finds Barack Obama’s decision to stay away from the talks with Vladimir Putin in September prior to the G20 summit in St Petersburg highly regrettable.

“I really think a decision of this kind is regrettable,” he said. “Recall that you should have meetings and direct discussions with others if you want to untangle problems.”

He recalled his own experience as the Soviet leader, saying the top state officials of the USSR and the USA had not had summit meetings for six years before he took the position of the Soviet Communist Party’s Secretary General.

“A lot of problems had piled up before that and unless we had started discussing them face-to-face we would have hardly managed to normalize the situation - something that had critical importance for ourselves and for the whole world,” Gorbachev said.

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