Kremlin aide rules out Putin-Obama meeting in 2013

Talks between Russian President Vladimir Putin and U.S. President Barack Obama are unlikely to take place this year, a Kremlin aide said Tuesday. "It looks like this won't work out this year for purely scheduling reasons," Putin's aide Yury Ushakov told reporters, adding telephone talks between the two presidents are still possible. According to the official, Obama is not planning to visit foreign countries due to current domestic issues. U.S. Congress struck a last-minute deal last week to reopen the government and raise the debt ceiling. President Obama signed the bill to fund the government through Jan. 15 and push the debt ceiling deadline to Feb. 7 next year. Earlier this month, Moscow expressed its regrets that another opportunity for the Putin-Obama meeting was missed as Obama canceled his trip to the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation forum in Indonesia on Oct. 7 -8 due to the U.S. government's budget impasse. In September, Obama canceled a planned meeting with Putin on the sidelines of a G20 summit in St. Petersburg, following Russia's decision to grant asylum to U.S. intelligence whistleblower Edward Snowden. Putin's spokesman Dmitry Peskov said bilateral ties between Russia and the United States require "continuation of dialogue at the top level." The two leaders needed to discuss an "abundant" bilateral agenda, which included a series of international issues, and above all the situation in Syria, Peskov added.