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Tillerson Meets Russian Leaders In Moscow As Tensions Continue Between US & Russia
Topic Started: Apr 12 2017, 02:47 PM (61 Views)
Webster
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(Daily Telegraph) Vladimir Putin hosts US Secretary of State in the Kremlin
--Rex Tillerson's motorcade arrived at the Kremlin around 4 PM London time, and he has been speaking to Mr Putin for nearly an hour. The meeting follows a day of talks between Mr Tillerson and his Russian counterpart, foreign minister Sergei Lavrov, as Washington and Moscow seek to defuse a simmering confrontation over the Syrian government's use of chemical weapons.

Top of the agenda will be US demands that Mr Putin ditch his ally Bashar al-Assad, the Syrian president who the US have accused of using chemical weapons on civilians in a horrific attack last week.

Mr Putin is unlikely to bow to those demands - and will likely demand assurances that there will be no repeat of the US missile strikes on a Syrian airbase on April 7.

Mr Tillerson is the first official from Donald Trump's administration to meet Mr Putin face to face. So no pressure.
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Webster
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(Daily Telegraph) Three main Syria demands
--A quick summary so far from Matthew Bodner in Moscow:

Mr Lavrov said: "We in the context of fighting terrorism we discussed the situation in Syria, and discussed what happened on April 4th...as we have said before we think this was illegal."

Mr Lavrov also said Russia also said it wants a full investigation into the CW attack, and added: "We also discussed the airspace safety memorandum, today our president confirmed his willingness to restore it"
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Webster
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(Daily Telegraph) Tillerson: "productive meeting" with Mr Putin
"I expressed the view our relations are at a low point," he begins with understatement. "There is a low level of trust between our countries."
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Webster
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(Daily Telegraph) Russia's position in stark divergence with the US
--Ruth Sherlock in Washington writes: Mr Lavrov has said Russia has agreed there should be an investigation into the chemical weapons strike in Idlib last week, but has not accepted, at this stage, that it was perpetrated by the regime.

He said Russian wanted the Organisation for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons to travel to Syria and investigate the strike. He agreed the UN should enforce a ban on chemical weapons. But he said they wanted an "honest" investigation to "identify the culprits". This is in stark divergence with the US position, which has already laid the blame at the door of the Assad regime.
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Webster
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(Daily Telegraph) Rex Tillerson: "The world's foremost nuclear powers cannot have this relationship."
--"We agreed to establish a working group to address small issues to stabilize the relationship and work on long term issues," Mr Tillerson added.

He adds that the situation in Ukraine will remain a serious problem for relations between the US and Russia until the war there is ended. "Russia can de-escalate violence and take measures to withdraw separatist armed forces so OSCE monitors can do their jobs," says Mr Tillerson. Interestingly he does not mention Russian armed forces explicitly - a softening of language from the Obama administration.
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(Daily Telegraph) Disagreement remains on the April 4 gas massacre
Rex Tillerson reiterates the US view that Bashar al-Assad is responsible for the April 4 gas attack. "I think the perspective from the US is supported by the facts we have, which are conclusive: the recent attack was executed and planned by Syrian regime forces. I think the characterization is one that Assad has brought upon himself [the US strikes]" he says. He also said the US believed the Assad regime had used chlorine gas on civilian populations on "more than 50 occasions".

Mr Lavrov follows up "with a couple of comments of my own" - those comments are to the effect that the rebels are responsible for the gas attack, and that Russia requires a proper UN investigation to establish the truth of the attack. "I am not trying to level accusations at anyone or exonerate anyone. I am just saying that we should have an investigation to establish what happened on April 4," he said.
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(Daily telegraph) Russia repeats US strike was unjustified
Lavrov: "There are no signs to support the allegation that chemical agents were stored at the Shayrat airbase [which was struck by US missiles on April 7]. "
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(Daily Telegraph) Tillerson and Putin 'discussed Assad's future'
"We discussed at length the future role for Assad, whether it is in a future political process or not," Mr Tillerson says about his meeting with Mr Putin.

The US view, he adds is "that the reign of the Assad family is coming to an end they have brought that upon them selves." "We put forward the view that Russia is perhaps in a position to help Mr Assad recognize that. We believe Mr Assad should leave in an orderly way," he added.

Mr Tillerson said the US is open minded about how the transition comes about, but that "the final outcome in our view does not provide for a role of Mr Assad or his family in Syria."
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(Daily Telegraph) Tillerson: Bashar al-Assad 'could face war crimes charges'
"It is possible that the threshold necessary to charge Assad will be achieved. I will not suggest all of that evidence is in place, but it is possible that as time goes by we can make that case, and there are individuals working on that case," Mr Tillerson said.
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--Doesn't seem any great bridges gapped on Syria (surprise). Tillerson insists sarin was Assad, Lavrov repeating over & over need for invest. (Matthew Bodner, Moscow Times - 12 April 2017)
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(Daily Telegraph) Russia will not back regime change in Syria
"This fixation on trying to oust this or that leader, an authoritarian leader or a dictator, is familiar to us and we know how it ends," says Mr Lavrov, as he reiterates Moscow's longstanding opposition to regime change.

"Are you aware how the country must be built? It must be secular and it (must be) democratic. All ethnic groups must be represented," Mr Lavrov says, counting off the challenges that will be faced by negotiators in Geneva trying to find a transition in Syria. It is a firm rejection of Mr Tillerson's suggestion that Moscow explain to Mr Assad that it is time to go.
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(Daily Telegraph) Cyber Attacks
--"We touched only briefly on the topic of cyber security..." said Mr Tillerson, asked about the hacking scandal by Russia's Kommersant newspaper.

Challenged about the US use of cyber warfare (American programmers are believed to have launched a massive cyber attack against the Iranian nuclear program), he said: "I do make the distinction between the use of cyber tools to influence the internal decisions of countries and cyber tools against weapons programs. It is on the agenda to have further discussions in the future."
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(Daily Telegraph) Our US Editor Ruth Sherlock has this analysis: Mr Tillerson said there may come a time when enough evidence of war crimes and other human rights violations has been collected to prosecute Bashar al-Assad. But top prosecutors who have sent past dictators to jail have long said they believe enough such proof has already been gathered.

The Commission for International Justice and Accountability, an independent investigative body founded in 2012 has received more than six hundred thousand government documents, that were smuggled out of Syria in recent years. A study of these culminated in a 400 page legal brief that connected the murder and torture of tens of thousands of Syrians at the hands of the country's security forces to a written policy approved by Assad himself. Stephen Rapp, who led prosecution teams at the international criminal tribunals in Rwanda and Sierra Leone before serving for six years as the United States Ambassador-at-Large for War Crimes Issues, told the New Yorker last year that this documentation “is much richer than anything I’ve seen, and anything I’ve prosecuted in this area".
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--Is there anything uglier than the American pronunciation of the surname “Lavrov”? (Kevin Rothrock, Moscow Times - 12 April 2017)
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(Daily Telegraph) Vladimir Putin did not raise the question of dropping US sanctions
"We discussed no change in the status of sanctions," said Mr Tillerson. "The issue of the election interference is a serious issue, one that could attract additional sanctions. Mindful of that interference, sure Russia is as well."
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(Daily telegraph) Russia says it has not been shown evidence that Assad regime perpetrated chemical attacks
The White House has said that it has collected videos, survivor testimony, physiological samples from he victims of the attack, which it says clearly shows the attack was sarin and that it was perpetrated by the Assad regime. Mr Lavrov though said Russia has not been presented with compelling evidence to show that the attack was perpetrated by Damascus. "I want to deal with facts," he said.
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