TOKYO, May 20 (Reuters) – A meeting between the leaders of the world’s two biggest economies last week may have lowered tensions but achieved no breakthrough, the UN’s Secretary-General said on Wednesday, raising the stakes for a visit by China’s Xi Jinping to Washington later this year.
Xi and U.S. President Donald Trump did not agree in Beijing to extend a fragile trade truce that expires later this year, though Trump has invited Xi to visit Washington for a reciprocal visit on September 24.
“There was a belief that the tensions between the two countries was easing. But let’s be clear, no major breakthrough was achieved and so the visit of President Xi to Washington gains an enormous importance,” UN chief Antonio Guterres told a press conference in Tokyo.
(Reporting by John Geddie and Tim Kelly; Editing by Jacqueline Wong)
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