Russia warned on election, Bolton says

GENEVA — President Donald Trump’s national security adviser said Thursday that he pressed top Russian officials about meddling in the U.S. election process, while saying Russians will face no new U.S. sanctions if they stop such interference.

John Bolton spoke to The Associated Press in an interview at the U.S. mission in Geneva between morning and afternoon meetings with his Russian counterpart, Nikolai Patrushev, a follow-up meeting to the summit between Trump and Russian President Vladimir Putin in Helsinki last month.

It marked the first top-level meeting in what could be a series between the two presidents’ national security teams, a result of what Bolton called the only “concrete” result from the summit in the Finnish capital. Such meetings were aimed toward “opening up channels” and breaking “through some of the difficulties we’ve had.”

Bolton wasted little time in mentioning he had brought up the election meddling.

“I raised that this morning,” he said, suggesting that the Russians reacted with stone faces: “They didn’t respond at all.”

“I’m going to make sure that they understand how strongly we feel about this,” he said, adding that he would “tell them how firm the position of the U.S. is that there is no election meddling.”

Bolton told reporters later: “I made it clear that we wouldn’t tolerate meddling in 2018, and we were prepared to take necessary steps to prevent it from happening.”

Asked if there would be consequences for Russians who might do so, Bolton demurred, saying the “focus” was “to make sure that’s no repetition of 2016.”

He said bilateral issues were on tap for his afternoon session.

But he appeared to offer a bit of an olive branch. “There won’t be any new sanctions if there’s no further interference,” he said, before specifying that “how we resolve the interference in the past remains to be seen.”

Bolton cautioned that “people who are accused of having violated the sanctions could be indicted,” alluding to a possible follow-up of the U.S. indictments of 12 Russian officials as part of an investigation by U.S. special counsel Robert Mueller.

Patrushev said after the meeting in remarks carried by Russian news agencies that he and Bolton didn’t agree on a joint statement because the U.S. wanted to mention the alleged Russian meddling in the U.S. election.

“The Americans wanted to mention what they see as our meddling in their elections, and we deny that,” he said.

He said the meeting was constructive, adding that Russia will look at the U.S. proposals made during the meeting and expects the U.S. to consider Russian initiatives.

Bolton said he and Patrushev had discussed nuclear nonproliferation, Iran, North Korea, arms control, and Middle East issues including Syria and Afghanistan.

He said he had expressed the U.S. “priority of getting all Iranian forces out of Syria,” and reiterated that Putin had told Bolton in a recent meeting that the Russians “would like to see the Iranians go home as well, we [the Russians] are just not sure we alone can accomplish it.”

In a new development, he also said the United States will cut funding for the U.N. human-rights office, where former Chilean President Michelle Bachelet is set to become the new high commissioner next month.

“We are going to de-fund the Human Rights Council,” Bolton said, while warning that other U.N. agencies also could be up for cuts in U.S. funding.