Putin and Trump to possibly meet in Vietnam

Prospects for a meeting between Russian President Vladimir Putin and US counterpart Donald Trump at the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation summit (APEC) in Vietnam this week were unclear after contradictory statements from the two sides.

Putin and Trump, who had their first face-to-face meeting in July to discuss allegations of Russian meddling in the 2016 US election, are both planning to attend this week's summit in the Vietnamese city of Danang.

The Kremlin, which wants to try to improve battered US-Russia ties, says it has been trying to set up a meeting and Trump told Fox News before his Asia tour that he might meet Putin in Vietnam to talk about Syria, Ukraine and North Korea.

Kremlin aide Yuri Ushakov told Russian news agencies on Thursday that such a meeting would happen on Friday.

"Right now the time of the meeting is being agreed. It will be on the tenth [of November]," Ushakov told agencies.

But US Secretary of State Rex Tillerson, on a visit to Beijing with Trump, said no decision on whether Trump and Putin would have formal talks had yet been taken.

Tillerson also questioned whether the two men would have enough to talk about to justify such a meeting.

“There’s never been an agreement, certainly not to a full bilateral,” said Tillerson, who said it would not be unusual, however, if the two men had a spontaneous "pull-aside meeting" chat if they bumped into each other.

Putin and Trump first got together at a G20 summit in Hamburg in July, when they discussed accusations of Russian interference in the US election but agreed to focus on better relations rather than litigating the past.

But ties have soured further since then.

Trump, in August, grudgingly signed off on new sanctions against Russia, a move Moscow said ended hopes for better relations. Putin ordered Washington to cut its embassy and consular staff in Russia by more than half.

Tensions have also flared over the conflict in Syria.