Putin, Tillerson meet as Russia bashes US foreign policy

Bloomberg

President Vladimir Putin began talks with US Secretary of State Rex Tillerson at the Kremlin after pushing back against demands that Russia abandon Syrian leader Bashar al-Assad over a chemical-weapons attack.
Putin is meeting with Tillerson and Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov at the Kremlin after the two top diplomats held talks on Wednesday in Moscow, presidential spokesman Dmitry Peskov said. The meeting is taking place after Putin complained that relations with the U.S. are now worse than under President Barack Obama, while Lavrov criticized the Trump administration’s “ambiguous and contradictory” foreign policy.
It’s “quite absurd” for the US to demand that Russia abandon Assad as this would mean ending support for his forces that are fighting against IS and other terrorist groups in Syria, Peskov earlier told reporters in a conference call.
The first visit to Moscow by a senior official of President Donald Trump’s administration is taking place amid heightened tensions after the US accused the Assad government of a chemical-weapons attack in Idlib province. Trump ordered an airstrike with 59 cruise missiles on a Syrian airbase last week in response, while the U.S. has accused Russia of covering up the atrocity. The U.S. and its allies are trying to increase pressure on Russia to end its support for Assad, which has been crucial in keeping the regime in power after six years of civil war.

‘Sharp Difference’
Lavrov began his talks with Tillerson, which lasted about three hours, with a barbed remark about prospects for improved ties. Russia’s “heard a lot of things from Washington regarding the current state and outlook” of relations, while it saw “some very troubling actions” in Syria, he said.
“It’s fundamentally important not to let these actions happen again in the future,” Lavrov said. Russia’s ready for dialogue with the U.S. on an “equal footing,” he said.
Tillerson told Lavrov that the talks will “further clarify areas of sharp difference so that we can better understand why these differences exist and what prospects for narrowing those differences may be.”
The Kremlin refused to confirm before the meeting, which began without apparent delay, that Putin would see Tillerson, who received Russia’s Order of Friendship in 2013 from the president for his “big contribution” to energy ties as head of Exxon Mobil Corp. Putin kept Tillerson’s predecessor, John Kerry, waiting three hours for talks when he first visited Russia as secretary of state in 2013.
Declining Trust
Putin complained that trust between Russia and the U.S. under Trump “at the working level, especially at the military level, hasn’t improved; rather it’s deteriorated,” according to a Kremlin transcript published on Wednesday of an interview with the Mir TV channel.
Russian relations with the U.S. all but broke down under the Obama administration amid friction over Syria and the conflict in Ukraine. While Russia had high hopes of a new era of cooperation after Trump repeatedly praised Putin during the campaign, tensions have spiralled over the Syrian crisis.
Tillerson said on Tuesday that Putin’s government has aligned itself with an “unreliable partner” in Assad, whose reign is coming to an end. The Syrian conflict has become enmeshed with the battle against IS and drawn in the US, Russia, Iran and Turkey, as well as multiple extremist groups and militias backed by regional powers such as Saudi Arabia.

‘Troubling Actions’
“Putin has built his reputation on never conceding to any public pressure,” said Gleb Kuznetsov, a political expert and consultant to the Kremlin on domestic policies. “An ultimatum will lead to Putin strengthening his support for Assad and this will intensify the Syrian conflict, turning it into a conflict between the West and Russia.”
Accusing Russia of spreading disinformation, officials in Washington on Tuesday published a four-page document that they said contained evidence of the chemical-weapons attack including satellite images, reports from the scene and details of exposure gathered from victims. The U.S. “is confident that the Syrian regime conducted a chemical weapons attack, using the nerve agent sarin, against its own people,” according to the document.

Russia says it will veto
new UN Syria resolution

BEIRUT / AP

A senior Russian diplomat says Moscow is opposing the latest version of a Western draft UN Security Council resolution on a chemical weapons attack in Syria.
Deputy Foreign Minister Gennady Gatilov told the Interfax news agency on Wednesday that the draft submitted by the US, Britain and France is “unacceptable to us in its current form.”
He added that “we will vote against it if our partners do not heed our calls and promote this draft artificially with the sole purpose of making the Russian Federation veto it again.”
The U.S. and its allies have held the Syrian government responsible for the chemical attack in northern Syria that killed more than 80. Russia has insisted that the victims were killed by toxic agents from a rebel chemical arsenal hit by Syrian warplanes.