No meeting, plenty of barbs traded by U.S., Russia

ADDIS ABABA, Ethiopia — They could have run into each other sipping coffee in the lobby at Ethiopia’s finest hotel. But Secretary of State Rex Tillerson and Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov don’t plan to meet, and both countries are trading accusations about who’s to blame.

The top American and Russian diplomats warily circled each other in Africa, where both are paying official visits this week. As their two countries trade accusations over Syria, Ukraine and even the Oscars, their governments are trolling each other with barbs on social media.

Russia said that both Tillerson and Lavrov were staying at the lush Sheraton Addis resort in Ethiopia.

Tillerson arrived Wednesday and planned to leave early Friday for Djibouti. Lavrov, speaking Thursday in Zimbabwe, said he would be in Addis Ababa “this evening.”

State Department spokeswoman Heather Nauert said this week that the U.S. had received no request from Russia for a meeting with Tillerson and had “no meeting to announce at this time.”

That prompted Lavrov to dispute her directly.

“I want to say that this is untrue,” Lavrov was quoted as saying by the Russian state news agency Tass.

Tillerson told reporters that he didn’t know Lavrov would be even be in Ethiopia until “a couple of days ago.”