G8: Barack Obama and Vladimir Putin grim-faced on Syria disagreements On Syria, the differences were clear. "Of course our opinions do not converge, but all of us have the intention to stop the violence in Syria and stop the growth in the number of victims," said Putin, who has scoffed at plans by the White House to begin arming selected rebel groups in Syria. He said he and Obama agreed that the vicious civil war that has killed at least 90,000 people must end "peacefully" and through talks. We agreed to push the parties to the negotiating table. Obama acknowledged that they had "different perspectives" - a formulation that vastly understates anger and mistrust between Moscow and Washington on the Syrian war. In a photo-op after talks there was no sign of the chumminess that characterised meetings between Obama and Medvedev, who once went for lunch at a burger joint outside Washington. But the session ended with a firm handshake, after Obama had made a gentle joke about the Russian leader's prowess in judo and his own declining skills in his favourite sport basketball. Putin had earlier faced a volley of criticism from other world leaders at the G8 summit. Washington and Moscow have agreed in principle to host a conference in Geneva on ending the violence in Syria, but the timetable for the meeting has continually slipped over disagreements on who should attend. Still, Obama said he and Putin would instruct their teams to find common ground. "We share an interest in reducing the violence, securing chemical weapons and ensuring that they are neither used nor are they subject to proliferation," Obama said at the luxury Lough Erne golf resort near Enniskillen. We want to try to resolve the issue through political means if possible, so we will instruct our teams to continue to work on the potential of a Geneva follow-up. Moscow and Washington are key players in the currently stalled P5+1 talks between Tehran and world powers designed to get Iran to stand down its nuclear programme, and both said they hoped Iran's election would unfreeze the process. Obama said he and Putin had expressed "cautious optimism" that the election of the next Iranian president Hassan Rowhani, who is seen as a comparative moderate, could change the dynamics of the effort. Putin said he hoped that the vote would reveal "new opportunities to solve the Iranian nuclear problem." Obama engineered a "reset" of relations with Russia under former president Dmitry Medvedev during his first term, but since Putinhas returned to the Kremlin relations have been increasingly frosty. Obama said that after the bombing of the Boston Marathon this year, blamed on two men hailing from the Russian Caucuses region, both sides had an interest in counter-terrorism cooperation. And the two sides announced in a communique that they will hold talks in Moscow on September 3-4, ahead of the G20 on September 5-6.