The US and Russia laid out starkly different views about how to end the Syrian conflict on Monday as Barack Obama and Vladimir Putin exchanged the sort of rhetorical barbs not seen at the UN since the Cold War.
The two men later held a 90-minute meeting at the UN, which both sides described as “frank” and “productive” and where they agreed to try to find ways to end the conflict in Syria, but where their major differences were not resolved.
While Mr Obama told the UN General Assembly there could be no place in Syria’s future for Bashar al-Assad, a “tyrant who drops barrel bombs on innocent children”, the Russian president urged the west to work with the “legitimate” Syrian government to defeat terrorism.