Will the Forthcoming Meeting Between Tillerson and Lavrov Relieve the Existing Disagreements?
The US Secretary of State Rex Tillerson arrives on a two-day visit in Moscow on Tuesday, where he is going to have talks with Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov. This is his first trip to Russia since his appointment to the position of Secretary of State.
Tillerson's visit to Moscow this week will be an early test of whether the Trump administration can use any momentum generated by a missile attack on a Syrian air base to craft and execute a strategy to end the Syrian war.
The talks will also be a major test of Tillerson's diplomatic skills. As a former chief executive at Exxon Mobil, he has an experience doing business in Russia, but no background in the often public negotiations that international diplomacy requires.
Agenda of the meeting
The meeting between Lavrov and Tillerson is expected to discuss topical international security issues faced by the international community and requiring the joint efforts by two countries.
According to the Russian Foreign Ministry, agenda includes struggle against terrorism, in the first place, against the ISIL and other terrorist groupings that have seized a part of the Syrian territory, the settlement of the Syrian, Palestinian-Israeli, Yemeni, Libyan, Afghan and other conflicts and de-escalation of the situation on the Korean peninsula.
Attention will also be paid to the situation in Ukraine with the focus on the need for Kiev to fulfill its obligations under the Minsk accords. At a meeting with Tillerson, Lavrov will also raise the issues "of the need to remove numerous irritants in the bilateral sphere of relations, such as the arrests of Russian citizens by American special services in third countries, the violation of the rights of Russian adopted children in the United States, the creation of artificial difficulties for our diplomats to fulfil their service duties," the ministry said.
Due to the Russia’s Foreign Ministry’s statement, the expansion of trade and investment ties and the development of cultural, scientific, sports and other exchanges are also important.
It is also expected that the agenda will also include the Russian interference in the 2016 U.S. election, as Secretary of State Rex W. Tillerson on the eve of his first diplomatic trip to Moscow called the country "incompetent" for allowing Syria to hold on to chemical weapons and accusing Russia of trying to influence elections in Europe using the same methods it employed in the United States.
At the same time during the interview, Tillerson emphasized that he had not seen hard evidence that Russia knew ahead of time about the chemical weapons attack, which killed at least 70 people, but he planned to urge Moscow to rethink its support for Assad in the April 12 talks.
He hopes that it will be possible to have constructive talks with the Russian government, with Foreign Minister Lavrov, as a result of which Russia will support the process, leading to a stable Syria.
Expectations
Foreign actors are going to keep the spotlight on Tillerson’s meeting with Lavrov. As it was earlier mentioned, the day before Foreign ministers from the Group of Seven (G7) major industrialized nations met in Italy to put pressure on Russia to break its ties with Syrian President Bashar al-Assad.
Durng the G7 meeting, British Foreign Secretary Boris Johnson emphasized that support for the Syrian president "was toxifying the reputation of Russia" and suggested sanctions could be imposed on Moscow if it refused to change course. "What we're trying to do is to give Rex Tillerson the clearest possible mandate from us as the West, the U.K., all our allies here, to say to the Russians 'this is your choice: stick with that guy, stick with that tyrant, or work with us to find a better solution," Johnson said after meeting Tillerson.
In their turn UK Prime Minister Theresa May and US President Donald Trump, after phone talks, expressed hope on Monday that US State Secretary Rex Tillerson's visit to Russia will facilitate the peace process in war-plagued Syria.
The recent events has shown, that since the US Presidential election’s campaign till now, Trump has no supporters in the context of conducting more constructive dialogue with Russia. In the coming hours there will be an information about the results of the meeting between Lavrov and Tillerson. Unfortunately, the hopes that this meeting is going to be crucial in the Syrian conflict settlement process are in vain, as the main reason why the Syrian conflict still remains unresolved is because of contrasting and conflicting interests of foreign actors in the Middle East.
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