U.S.-RUSSIA DIALOGUE
Russia agrees to seek better ties with Washington
Russian President Vladimir Putin and U.S. Secretary of State Mike Pompeo greet each other prior to their talks in the Black Sea resort city of Sochi, southern Russia, Tuesday. Pompeo arrived in Russia for meetings that are expected to focus on an array of issues including arms control and Iran.
Russia and America on Tuesday agreed to seek better relations and ease tensions, even as they clashed on issues ranging from Iran and Venezuela to alleged Kremlin meddling in U.S. elections.
After talks in the Black Sea resort of Sochi on Tuesday, Secretary of State Mike Pompeo said the U.S. “fundamentally doesn’t want war with Iran” as Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov warned of the risk of being pulled into a spiralling crisis over the Islamic Republic.
Iran was one of the key items on the agenda because of tensions in the region rising.
Last week, the United States sent an aircraft carrier and B-52 bombers to the Middle East in response to intelligence that Iran was planning attacks on American interests.
On Sunday, two Saudi, one Norwegian and one Emirati oil tanker were “sabotaged,” according to Saudi reports, while off the coast of the United Arab Emirates
The U.S. had warned sailors of the potential for attacks on commercial sea traffic.
On Tuesday, Saudi Arabia said drones attacked one of its oil pipelines as other assaults targeted energy infrastructure elsewhere in the kingdom.
And in response to media reports that he was about to send 120,000 troops to the Middle East in the event of hostilities, U.S. President Donald Trump described it as “fake news” before adding, “If we did that, we’d send a hell of a lot more troops than that.”
In Sochi, Lavrov told Pompeo there may be hope for some agreement on Iran that would win backing by both Russia and the U.S. The two offered few details, however, about the areas where they could improve relations.
Later, Russian President Vladimir Putin met with Pompeo and said he was committed to improving ties with the U.S. now that Special Counsel Robert Mueller’s probe showed a “demonstrated absence of any kind of traces, of any kind of collusion” between Moscow and Trump’s presidential campaign.
“My impression is that the president is set to restore Russian-American relations, contacts, to jointly resolve issues that are of mutual interest to us,” Putin told Pompeo in front of reporters before a private meeting on Tuesday. “For our part, we have repeatedly said that we would also like to restore full-format relations.”
Earlier, Pompeo said he warned Russia against meddling in the 2020 U.S. presidential elections. Lavrov rejected accusations of interference as “complete fiction.’’
“We agreed on the importance of restoring channels of communications that had recently been frozen,’’ Lavrov said at their joint news conference.
The pair discussed a possible meeting between Trump and Putin at the Group of 20 summit in Japan next month, after the U.S. president said Monday that he would see the Kremlin leader. Putin’s willing to meet Trump, but here’s been no official invitation so far, Lavrov said.
The two sides described the talks as “frank,’’ saying that they wanted to improve relations strained for years over the conflicts in Syria and Ukraine and more recently over strategic arms control and U.S. efforts to oust Venezuelan leader Nicolas Maduro. Pompeo, on his first visit to Russia as the top U.S. diplomat, said the Trump administration is committed to improving ties and wants to work together where the two countries have what he called “overlapping interests.”
“I’m here today because President Trump is committed to improving this relationship,” he told Lavrov at the start of their meeting. “It’s not destined that we’re adversaries on every issue.”