US President Barack Obama and Russian President Vladimir Putin on Monday issued a joint call for a ceasefire to end the violence in Syria, saying they had found some common ground amid ongoing tensions between Washington and Moscow over Russia's position on Syria, dpa reported.
"We agreed that we need to see a cessation of the violence, that a political process has to be created to prevent civil war," Obama said after a nearly two-hour meeting with his Russian counterpart on the sidelines of the Group of 20 summit in Mexico.
It was the first meeting of the two since Putin returned to the presidency earlier this year.
"From my perspective we've been able to find many commonalities pertaining to all of those issues," Putin said, while Obama pointed to a "candid, thoughtful and thorough conversation."
In a joint statement that hit on a range of international issues, the pair called for a political transition in Syria and expressed support for a peace plan laid out by United Nations-Arab League envoy Kofi Annan.