Tillerson offers rare glimpse into marathon Trump, Putin meeting

Tillerson added that the meeting was not about "litigating" the past.

ByABC News
July 7, 2017, 6:04 PM

— -- Secretary of State Rex Tillerson offered a rosy first hand account to reporters of the highly-anticipated first meeting between President Donald Trump and Russian President Vladimir Putin on Friday, saying the two "connected very quickly" and that there was "such a level of engagement that neither of them wanted to stop."

Tillerson, who has met with Putin in the past as the CEO of ExxonMobil, was one of just six people in the room for the meeting.

At one point, First Lady Melania Trump was sent into the room to ask Trump and Putin to end the meeting, but it continued on for another hour.

According to Tillerson, the president also repeatedly pressed Putin on the issue of Russian meddling in the 2016 election before eventually dropping the issue, instead electing to as, "how do we go forward?"

"There was not a lot of litigating the past," Tillerson told reporters following the meeting.

A follow-up meeting between the two leaders is not scheduled, but Tillerson added that there will be meetings at the diplomatic level about Russian interference in the 2016 U.S. election.

"It's not clear to me that we will ever come to an agreed upon resolution," Tillerson said. "The president made clear that the relationship is too important to not, in a way, move forward."

ABC News' Cecilia Vega, Jordyn Phelps and Karen Travers contributed to this report.

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