UN Secretary General António Guterres wants to meet with Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan during the high-level week of the UN General Assembly in New York, Farhan Haq, deputy spokesman for the UN Secretary General, said at a briefing, the event will be held September 19-26.
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“The UN Secretary General definitely wants to meet with the Turkish President when he arrives at the General Assembly,” Haq said, answering a question about any planned negotiations at the General Assembly regarding the “Black Sea Grain Initiative.”
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Presidents of Russia and Turkey Vladimir Putin and Recep Tayyip Erdogan met on Monday in Sochi. The heads of state discussed the situation around the grain deal and other issues. Putin said that in a couple of weeks Russia would start supplying free grain to six African countries. Erdogan noted that Ankara is ready to assist in the processing of Russian grain for further shipment to countries in need and hopes for a joint implementation of steps to deliver food to African countries.
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Earlier, UN Secretary General António Guterres sent a letter to Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov with a proposal to resume the grain deal. It is supposed to “summarize previous UN ideas that didn’t work.” The new UN proposals on a grain deal do not contain anything new and cannot become the basis for the normalization of Russian agricultural exports, the Russian Foreign Ministry pointed out.
