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Diplomatic back channels: when Reagan and Gorbachev met in Geneva

When US president Joe Biden meets his Russian counterpart Vladimir Putin in Geneva on June 16, it won’t be the first time the leaders of two superpowers hold a summit in the Swiss city.

Biden and Putin will meet on the neutral ground of Switzerland in an attempt to patch up deteriorating relations. Nuclear arms control will be on the agenda, as it was in 1985, when then US president Ronald Reagan held historic talks with former head of the Soviet Union, Mikhail Gorbachev.

That Geneva summit proved to be a turning point in history.

How different was the context then? Why the choice of Switzerland? What was the outcome of the summit?

This video was initially published in French on the website of our partner Genève VisionExternal link.

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US President Bill Clinton, right, shakes hands with Syrian President Hafez Assad.

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Diplomatic back channels: years of USA-Syria talks in Geneva

This content was published on The situation at the end of the 1960s in the Middle East is tense. Israel and the Arab states are at war. Syria clashes against Israel over occupied territories in the Golan Heights. The US hopes to stabilise the region by strengthening ties with Arab nations.   It is in Geneva that presidents Hafez al-Assad and Jimmy Carter meet in 1977 for peace negotiations. The talks are unsuccessful.  In 1990, president George H. W. Bush meets Assad in Geneva again. The context is tense, and only a few weeks…

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