clear and direct contact was necessary to avoid accidents or misunderstandings. earlier, mr xi described china s relationship with the us as the most important in the world. president biden made his comments at a news conference that mr xi didn t attend. i welcome the positive . steps we ve taken today, and it s important for the world to see - that we re implementing the approach in the best traditions i of american diplomacy. we re talking - to our competitors and the key. and just talking, just - being blunt with one another, so there s no misunderstanding, |as a key element to maintainingj global stability and delivering for the american people. - and in the months ahead, we re going to continue to preserve i and pursue high level diplomacy | with the prc in both directionsl to keep the lines of communication open, including between president xi and me. he and i agreed that each one of us could pick up i the phone, call directly- and be heard immediately. i think i kno
hello, welcome to bbc news, i m mark lowen. we are live in southern israel. israel has promised to provide proof to back up its claim that hamas was using gaza s largest hospital as a command centre. hamas has repeatedly denied the allegations. president biden says the us has asked israel to be incredibly careful, as its military operation at al shifa hospital, which began yesterday, continues. the one thing that has been established is that hamas does have headquarters, weapons, material below this hospital and i suspect others. our correspondent lucy williamson has been with the idf at al shifa hospital where israel has promised to show proof of a hamas command centre at gaza s largest hospital. she spoke to us from jerusalem. israel is really coming under pressure to prove why it carried out the operation it is carrying out in gaza and driving into gaza last night it was clear the scale of its military operation there. parts of city looked as if it had been hit by an earth
his press conference. we can expect them to be on the most low hanging fruit, countering narcotics, if gets a couple americans home, that would be great too. so no doubt that there is an interest in preventing the relationship from getting worse than it is. but i think the problem really is that still the united states and china does not agree on why it is as ron said that relations have gotten so bad in the 20 years since we had great relationship with china. and i think that some would say that that is because of some sort of u.s. bipartisan hawkish consensus, but i think it is more that china went a different way. si since xi jinping took power, they decided engagement was not what they wanted and they amped up their aggression and started a genocide and menacing taiwan. and i don t think that we ll hear any overlap between blinken and his chinese counterparts on any of those issues. and that is why i think this is