New York, Oct 17 (IANS) As he prepares to meet with Russia’s President Vladimir Putin with an aura of renewed optimism, US President Donald Trump says that he is asking Republican leaders to hold off on legislation to impose crippling penalties on countries buying oil from Moscow.

Trump said on Thursday after his conversation with Putin, “It may not be perfect timing” for the legislation with a 500 per cent punitive tariff that Senate Republican Party leader John Thune was planning to move.

“I’m going to speak to him and the [House] speaker, Mike Johnson”, he told reporters, “and I’ll tell them about this, and we’ll make the right determination” since they had not known about his diplomatic reboot with Putin to end the Ukraine War.

Earlier in the day, Thune said the “time has come” to move ahead with legislation that would put a 500 per cent tariff on countries buying Russian oil, exponentially higher than the 25 per cent tariff Trump has imposed on India.

He said that the legislation crafted with another Republican Senator, Lindsey Graham, had bipartisan support.

Graham has said that 84 other senators supported the bill, and a similar one in the House of Representatives was backed by 100 members.

While the proposed legislation would give Trump discretion on its implementation, it was meant to be applied across the board to all countries.

If that were done, it would severely impact Washington’s diplomacy as the European Union also imports energy from Russia, as do China and Turkiye.

Even the US had a $5.2 billion trade with Russia and ran up a $2.4 billion deficit.

“We’ll see what happens”, Trump said of the upcoming meeting with Putin in Budapest within the next two weeks.

“This may be such a productive call that we’re going to end up [with peace]. We want to get peace”, he said.

Trump sounded optimistic about the prospects of peace in Ukraine after his talk with Putin, during which they agreed to meet again after their August summit in Alaska did not make headway.

Trump has hit only India with the punitive Russian oil tariff, singling it out, sparing other Moscow customers.

He said on Wednesday that Prime Minister Narendra Modi had assured him that he would wind down Russian oil purchases.

“There will be no oil, he’s not buying his oil from Russia, it started — you know, you can’t do it immediately, it’s a little bit of a process, but the process is going to be over with soon,” Trump said.

India has not confirmed that such a conversation took place between Trump and PM Modi or that such an assurance was made. But the External Affairs Ministry said, “The current Administration has shown interest in deepening energy cooperation with India. Discussions are ongoing”.

–IANS

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