President Donald Trump said Nov. 8 that he expects to meet Chinese President Xi Jinping and Russian President Vladimir Putin next week to discuss ending the US war with Iran and nuclear arms control. China’s foreign ministry said Nov. 9 that it is in contact with the other parties about the meeting but gave no details.Trump told reporters before flying from Florida to Washington that he will travel to the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation (APEC) summit in Shenzhen, set for Nov. 18 and 19. The Iran war began Feb. 28, and Washington and Tehran remain at odds over the Strait of Hormuz, a vital oil shipping lane.Trump has given no specifics on the nuclear agenda, the South China Morning Post (SCMP) reported. The Kremlin said Oct. 21 that a first-of-its-kind three-way meeting was being prepared. Putin has pitched using it to discuss Ukraine, the Wall Street Journal reported.What Washington and Beijing have saidTrump said he thinks one of his Shenzhen meetings will be with Xi and Putin. “We’re trying to end the war in Iran,” he said, according to a Reuters report. In a CNN phone interview the same day, he called renewed US strikes on Iran “highly unlikely” while talks on Tehran’s nuclear program and the Strait of Hormuz progress. The strait is the only sea route between the Persian Gulf and the Gulf of Oman.Foreign ministry spokesperson Guo Jiakun said Nov. 9 that China keeps communicating with the relevant parties on the meeting and had no further information. Asked about a report that Washington had sought Beijing’s help to end the war, he said prolonging the conflict serves no one’s shared interest and urged dialogue, per the ministry’s transcript.“Both sides now have a willingness to talk,” said Li Weijian, a Middle East researcher at the Shanghai Institutes for International Studies, per the newspaper. SCMP reported that Chinese observers see Beijing as a possible neutral host for talks.Why nuclear talks remain hardBeijing has resisted joining arms-control talks, which aim to cap weapons stockpiles, with Washington and Moscow, arguing its arsenal is much smaller, the newspaper reported. The Stockholm International Peace Research Institute estimated China held about 620 warheads in January. The last US-Russia arms treaty expired Feb. 5, leaving no binding limits on either side’s arsenal. Trump said in October he was open to three-way talks.China hasn’t confirmed the meeting, and Trump’s remarks and Putin’s reported pitch are the only public hints of its agenda. The report of a US request for Chinese help comes from a Washington Post columnist, as relayed in a question to the ministry, which didn’t confirm it. The analyst views come from researchers in China. No party has released a draft deal on Iran or arms control, so what an agreement would contain is unknown.Whether the three-way session happens, and what it covers, should become clear when the summit opens Nov. 18.