On Syria, Mr Johnson said a “clear plan” was in place but that the situation on the ground was “dire”.
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US Secretary of State John Kerry and British Foreign Secretary Boris Johnson held a joint press conference Tuesday after their first meeting in London.
The US, he added, needed Britain to be strong and united after leaving the EU.
Being called an “outrageous liar” was perhaps not the ideal start to Boris Johnson’s tenure as Britain’s Foreign Secretary.
Johnson will meet peers from Germany, France, Italy and the European Union in London to discuss Syria’s five-year conflict, which has spurred the rise of Islamic State, sucked in regional and major powers and created the world’s worst refugee crisis.
A seemingly chastened Johnson said: “We can spend an awfully long time going over lots of stuff that I’ve written over the last 30 years…all of which in my view have been taken out of context, through what alchemy I do not know – somehow misconstrued that it would really take me too long to engage in a full global itinerary of apology to all concerned”.
His bilateral meetings with the new British leaders were not just introductions but precursors to multilateral meetings with European Union ministers later in the day regarding the civil war in Syria, and a meeting with Arab leaders regarding the conflict in Yemen.
In 2007, he wrote that Mrs Clinton was “like a sadistic nurse in a mental hospital”.
Mr Johnson and Mr Kerry both emphasised that the “special relationship” between their countries remained strong.
“Winston Churchill told the US Congress there’s nearly nothing that can’t be achieved when Britain and America work heart in hand”, Kerry recalled.
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Peace talks on Syria, co-sponsored by the U.S. and Russian Federation, have not formally examined whether any deal could require President Assad’s departure from the country.
