Icy reception for US envoy in Moscow Two powers at odds over Syria
TENSE comments and warnings from the Russian side marked the beginning of what was set to be a tough day for US Secretary of State Rex Tillerson as he attempts to persuade Moscow to abandon its support for Syrian leader Bashar al-Assad.
In the opening remarks of a meeting with Tillerson yesterday, Russian Foreign Minster Sergei Lavrov warned the US not to attempt another attack against Syria after last week’s missile strike plunged US-Russian relations to a new post-Cold War low.
“It is of paramount importance to avert risks and recurrences of such actions in the future,” Lavrov said.
Tillerson, looking directly at his counterpart while speaking, said he aimed to clear up some “sharp differences” and discuss ways to narrow them going forward.
He said he hoped their discussions would be candid, and that the two governments would maintain open lines of communication.
But Moscow appeared unwilling to budge on the primary goal of Tillerson’s mission – persuading Russia to help remove Assad from power.
In what was effectively an ultimatum, Tillerson on Tuesday said that Moscow must calculate the costs of remaining an ally of Assad, the Iranians and Lebanon’s Shia militia Hezbollah.
Russia’s foreign ministry dismissed those remarks yesterday.
“I believe everyone realised a long time ago that there is no use in giving us ultimatums. This is simply counter-productive,” said ministry spokeswoman Maria Zakharova in remarks aired on the Internet news site TVDozhd.
The Trump administration on Tuesday revealed intelligence that it said proved that Syrian forces had carried out the deadly chemical weapons attack that led to the US missile strike.
Russian President Vladimir Putin, in excerpts of an interview to be broadcast in full on Russian television last night, argued that there was no proof Assad’s forces had carried out the attack and called the US strikes a breach of international law.
Putin also said that confidence in an improvement in US-Russian relations was lower now than it had been under the Obama administration.
“The level of trust at the working level, especially at the military level, has not improved, but most likely has been degraded,” Putin said on the Mir television channel.
The US ambassador to Russia, John Tefft, said that Tillerson was expected to meet Putin yesterday.
Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov also suggested that such a meeting was possible.
“You know that negotiations between the foreign minister and the secretary of state are under way, and if it is found reasonable to report the outcome of the negotiations to the president today, we will inform you in due course,” the Interfax news agency quoted Peskov as saying.
Putin compared the current situation in Syria with the build-up to the war in Iraq in 2003, when US officials insisted that Saddam Hussein had weapons of mass destruction over the objections of international investigators.
Moscow wants the Organisation for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons to investigate the use of chemical weapons in Idlib last week.