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Hamburg, Germany • Russian President Vladimir Putin on Saturday said he assured President Donald Trump that Moscow had not interfered in the 2016 presidential election, but the Kremlin leader stopped short of saying Trump had agreed with his assurances.

"He took it into account," Putin told reporters on the sidelines of the Group of 20 summit in Hamburg.

The Russian leader stopped short of repeating his foreign minister's account on Friday that Trump had "accepted" Putin's assurances that Moscow did not run a hacking and disinformation campaign to help Trump's campaign.

"I feel as though my answers satisfied him," Putin said, but adding, "you should ask him."

Trump "asked many questions" about Russian interference in the 2016 elections, Putin said, saying he had repeated his stance that "there was no basis to believe that Russia" interfered in the elections.

"What's important is that we agreed that there should not be a situation of uncertainty about this," Putin said, adding that the two sides had agreed to create a group to work on how to prevent interference in "the internal affairs of other countries."

Putin's response fell short of fully supporting Russia's top diplomat's account of Trump's closed-door discussion with the Russian leader.

After the two presidents met Friday, Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov told reporters that Trump, after listening to Putin's denial, accepted the Kremlin leader's assurances and dismissed the U.S. investigation into Russian interference.

But Secretary of State Rex Tillerson said at a separate news conference that Putin, along with the denials, had nonetheless agreed to bilateral talks to address preventing future interference in U.S. elections.

Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov, asked about the differing accounts Saturday, said only: "You should trust Lavrov. I don't work for Tillerson."

Peskov was otherwise tight-lipped in a conference call with reporters.

On Saturday, Putin reaffirmed Russia's commitment to the Paris climate agreement, which Trump pulled the United States out of earlier this year.

"You know our stance: We honor the Paris agreement," Putin said at a meeting with French President Emmanuel Macron on the sidelines of the G-20 summit in Hamburg.

The highly anticipated meeting of Trump and Putin during the G-20, eight months after a presidential election that U.S. intelligence agencies say Russia tried to sway, was unique in the annals of modern U.S. history. It pitted Trump, under fire at home for alleged collusion with Russia, against the man accused of overseeing that interference.

When Tillerson and Lavrov emerged with different accounts of how the meeting had gone, it caused a stir that overshadowed the other outcomes — a deal on a partial cease-fire in the Syrian war and an agreement to hold bilateral talks on a range of issues.

And the session offered little clarity on the question of Russian election interference, which had made this the most anticipated meeting between a U.S. president and his Russian counterpart in recent memory. Instead, both sides indicated that they wanted to move beyond the subject

Lavrov came away from the meeting saying Trump had heard out Putin's assurances that Moscow did not run a hacking and disinformation effort, and had dismissed the entire U.S. investigation into the Russian role.

"The U.S. president said that he heard clear statements from President Putin about this being untrue and that he accepted these statements," Lavrov told Russian reporters.

Secretary of State Rex Tillerson, who also attended the 2 hour 16 minute meeting, told reporters at a separate news conference that during the session, Trump pressed Putin "on more than one occasion" on Russia's interference.

Tillerson said that "President Putin denied such involvement," but he did not say whether Trump accepted that assertion. Rather, Tillerson said Trump decided to move on because Russia would not admit blame. Tillerson said, though, that the United States wasn't dismissing Russian responsibility and that the two sides had agreed to organize talks "regarding commitments of noninterference in the affairs of the United States and our democratic process."

U.S. intelligence agencies have concluded that Putin ordered a campaign of cyberattacks and propaganda last year aimed at undermining the presidential election and helping Trump by discrediting his Democratic opponent, Hillary Clinton. The Justice Department has named a special counsel to investigate possible coordination between Trump's associates and Russian officials during the campaign.

U.S. lawmakers from both parties had urged Trump to raise the election meddling with Putin when the leaders met on the sidelines of the G-20. Afterward, some worried whether Trump had confronted Putin firmly enough. Senate Minority Leader Charles Schumer, D-N.Y., dismissed the outcome as "disgraceful."

"President Trump had an obligation to bring up Russia's interference in our election with Putin, but he has an equal obligation to take the word of our Intelligence Community rather than that of the Russian President," Schumer said in a statement.

Before the meeting, analysts in both countries said any signal from Trump that Moscow and Washington could put aside past differences and forge a new relationship would be a victory for Putin. In Moscow, political leaders were celebrating Friday night.

Valentina Matviyenko, speaker of the upper house, issued a statement saying that "there is no doubt that this meeting may become a step toward the solution to the situation in which the relations between our states currently are."

The world had been waiting for the first in-person encounter between the president whose associates face an investigation into possible collusion with Russia and the Kremlin leader who allegedly intervened in Trump's favor. But the presidents seemed intent Friday on moving the relationship past that explosive issue.

Trump told Putin that members of Congress were pushing for additional sanctions against Russia over the election issue, Tillerson said. "But the two presidents, I think, rightly focused on: How do we move forward?" he added.

Trump and Putin designated top officials to collaborate on the creation of a framework that would prevent future political interference, Tillerson said, as part of a bilateral commission that would also discuss counterterrorism and the resolution of the conflict in Ukraine.

Tillerson said they also reached a "de-escalation agreement" regarding a section of Syria near the cities of Daraa and Quneitra. Jordan was also part of that agreement.

Syria's lengthy civil war has left more than 400,000 people dead and led to the exodus of hundreds of thousands more. The United States and Russia have supported opposite parties during the war. Russia has backed Syrian President Bashar Assad, while the United States has supported and trained groups that oppose him.

Past cease-fires in Syria have not lasted long. Tillerson suggested he was skeptical that this cease-fire would endure, saying, "We'll see what happens."

The meeting lasted much longer than expected. At one point, Trump's wife, Melania, entered the room to see if it could wrap up soon, but it continued.

"We went another hour [after] she came in to see us, so clearly she failed," Tillerson said.