UK and Russia hold first talks in over a year

LONDON: Junior foreign ministers from Britain and Russia met in Germany yesterday in the highest-level contact between the two countries since an alleged nerve agent attack in Britain last March froze diplomatic relations. Britain’s Minister for Europe Alan Duncan held talks with Russia’s First Deputy Foreign Minister Vladimir Titov on the margins of the Munich Security Conference, according to the foreign office in London.

“Alan underlined that we have deep differences, and the Russian state would need to choose a different path and act as a responsible international partner before there can be a change in our current relationship with Russia,” it said in a statement. The meeting is the first between ministers from the two countries following the poisoning of a former Russian spy in the English city of Salisbury on March 4 which Britain has blamed on Moscow.

The attempted assassination of Sergei Skripal, which Britain said was done using a Soviet era nerve agent Novichok, plunged relations to their lowest ebb in decades. The attack killed a British woman who came into contact with the Novichok, as well as injuring several others including a policeman. Among a raft of responses, London suspended all planned high-level bilateral contacts between the two countries, and cancelled ministers and members of the royal family attending last summer’s World Cup in Russia. —AFP