I will have a very, very great relationship with Xi

The two leaders had a smile on their faces as they shook hands during their first face-to-face encounter.

President Donald Trump was meeting again with his Chinese counterpart Friday, with USA missile strikes on Syria adding weight to his threat to act unilaterally against the nuclear weapons program of China's ally, North Korea. The CRC meeting, conducted a day after the commission met at Florida International University in Miami, lasted four hours and drew ordinary. -China summit was upstaged by US missile strikes overnight against a Syrian air base from which Trump said a deadly chemical weapon attack had been launched.

US Pacific Command spokesman Dave Benham, in commenting on the repositioning of the carrier strike group to waters near North Korea, said, "The No 1 threat in the region continues to be North Korea, due to its reckless, irresponsible and destabilising program of missile tests and pursuit of a nuclear weapons capability".

Ahead of the two presidents' second round of talks, senior Chinese and US officials on Friday initiated the comprehensive economic dialogue, as well as the diplomatic and security dialogue, two of the four pillars of the newly established bilateral dialogue mechanism.

"They recognize that shows our clear determination to crack down on this sort of activity", Commerce Secretary Wilbur Ross told reporters.

The two leaders also agreed on the "urgency of the threat of North Korea's nuclear weapons program" and agreed to work together to resolve the issue "peacefully", Tillerson said.

Tensions between the USA and North Korea continue to escalate as United States officials consider the best way forward.

In a tweet last Saturday, Mr Trump wrote of the meeting that "goodwill and friendship was formed, but only time will tell on trade". Trump strongly criticized China's trade policies and trade surplus over the United States throughout the presidential campaign and into the early days of his presidency, going so far as to sign an executive order to investigate the trade deficit with China last month.

Xi's comments came after Trump tweeted that China should do more on an issue that Washington sees as an increasingly urgent threat, or else the US would go it alone. He did not elaborate.

The attack was made public on Thursday evening just moments after Mr Xi and his wife left the resort following dinner. -China relationship and burnishing his foreign policy credentials than achieving a breakthrough. Back in China, state media posted upbeat photos and video of Xi and his wife, Peng Liyuan, dining with Trump and his wife, Melania, at Mar-a-Lago.

The two countries did not announce any major deal or a joint initiative but White House officials said that there are shared economic interests and that China wants to tackle the $347 billion trade deficit with the US. "For the peace and stability of the world, we will also fulfill our historical responsibility".

"It's very hard to understand how a political solution could result from the continuation of the Assad regime", McMaster said.

United States security concerns with China also focus on Beijing's expansive territorial claims in the strategic South China Sea. "I think, long-term, we are going to have a very, very great relationship and I look very much forward to it".

"And I believe lots of very potentially bad problems will be going away", he added, without providing details.

Trump has accused China of "raping" the U.S. and argued that it has engaged in trade abuses to gain an advantage over the US.

Trump and Xi are spending part of Friday in talks at Trump's estate in Florida.

During their talks over the two days, Xi and Trump exchanged views on key areas of bilateral cooperation as well as global and regional issues of common concern, it said.

"We would be happy to work with them", Tillerson said of the Chinese leadership.