The announcement came after a two-hour meeting between Mr. Tillerson, Mr. Lavrov and Mr. Putin, as part of a bilateral security summit in Moscow.
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During his presidential election campaign, Trump said he would like the USA to have better relations with Russian Federation.
In the days since the attacks, U.S.
“We need to find out the facts, conduct a comprehensive investigation”, Russia’s Safronkov told the council.
In an interview with Fox News aired Wednesday, Trump said he broke the news of the US missile strike on Syria during a dinner with Xi and that the Chinese leader “was OK with it” because it was in response to the use of “gases” and victims had included young children and babies.
At an earlier session of the council Wednesday, also about Syria, Britain’s U.N. Ambassador Matthew Rycroft said his government shares the USA assessment that it is highly likely the Assad regime was responsible for a sarin attack on the town last week.
Even if the U.S. and Russian Federation were able to quell the festering antagonism over Syria, other issues are fraying relations.
“We have seen very alarming actions recently with an unlawful attack against Syria”, Lavrov said, referring to the 59 Tomahawk missiles Trump launched at an air base to punish Assad for using chemical weapons.
Lavrov retorted: “This is obviously the subject where our views differ”.
Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov agreed there were many problems, but stressed that Moscow was “open to dialogue with the USA in all different areas”. However, Putin appears to have found time to meet with the former recipient of Russia’s Order of Friendship, who reportedly ditched his press pool to catch up with Putin.
“I’ll be speaking with Rex Tillerson in a little while, calling in”. Tillerson has a meeting set later Wednesday in Moscow with Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov. “And that’s the reason that we are no longer doing readouts of what those discussions are, and we will not get back into that business”, he said. “This is simply counterproductive”, ministry spokeswoman Maria Zakharova said in remarks aired on the Internet news site TVDozhd.
But the two nations remain at odds over USA airstrikes on Syria – following last week’s chemical attack on Syrian civilians. Even President Obama gave it a shout out at his 2014 State of the Union, telling members of Congress “American diplomacy, backed by the threat of force, is why Syria’s chemical weapons are being eliminated”. Ten countries voted in favor of the text, while Bolivia joined Russian Federation in voting no.
A senior administration official who briefed reporters Wednesday said it is “very important for us to call out Russian Federation over their sponsorship of the Syrian regime”.
“In general, primitiveness and loutishness are very characteristic of the current rhetoric coming out of Washington”, Deputy Foreign Minister Sergei Ryabkov told Russia’s state-owned RIA news agency. “And we agree we want to deny a safe haven for terrorists who want to attack both of our countries”. Putin’s decision to host Tillerson signaled Moscow’s intent to maintain communication with the USA even as the countries bash each other publicly in louder and louder tones.
It is the first visit by a member of President Donald Trump’s administration to Russian Federation.
The decision by the United States to strike Assad’s air base broke with its stated mission under Operation Inherent Resolve that USA and coalition forces are only in Syria to defeat the Islamic State there.
But Ward insisted it was a deliberate attack that amounted to “a direct affront to the Chemical Weapons Convention and, indeed, a direct affront to human decency, carried out by a State Party” to the OPCW, according to the text of his speech that was posted on the organization’s website.
Meanwhile, the United Nations Security Council was set to vote yesterday on a resolution demanding the Syrian government cooperate with an investigation into the attack – a measure that Russian Federation will likely veto, diplomats said, reported Agence France-Presse. Earlier this week, forensic experts in Turkey said the banned nerve agent sarin was used.
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At the G7 meeting, British and USA officials were unable to persuade fellow members to adopt new sanctions against Russian Federation for the chemical attack.
