Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov on Wednesday warned the United States not to carry out another “illegal attack” on Syrian President Bashar Assad, as President Trump has warned will happen if the Assad’s regime uses chemical weapons again.
“President Vladimir Putin and other Russian leaders have expressed their principled position on this issue,” Lavrov said at the outset of his meeting with Secretary of State Rex Tillerson in Moscow. “We consider it crucially important to prevent a repetition of such actions in the future.”
Assad used sarin gas in rebel-held territory last week, according to western governments, just days after the Trump administration signaled a willingness to allow him to remain in power. That prompted Trump to order the first U.S. strike against the Assad regime, a bombing of the base that launched the attack, even as Putin’s government argued that the gas might have been used by rebels.
Lavrov threw a barb at Tillerson over the mixed messages, saying that Trump’s team has provided “confusing” foreign policy statements since his inauguration. “Many statements have been made in Washington regarding bilateral relations and their prospects, as well as key international issues,” Lavrov said. “Frankly, they have provoked many questions, considering Washington’s confusing and sometimes openly contradictory ideas on the entire range of bilateral and international issues.”
Tillerson, whom some U.S. senators had worried would be too willing to make policy concessions in order to expand cooperation with Russia, expressed modest ambitions for the meeting: “to further clarify areas of sharp difference, so we can better understand why these differences exist and what the prospects for narrowing those differences may be.”
