Kerry Pushes for Common Approach to Syria
U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry speaking on his cell phone on Red Square ahead of his meeting with Putin.
On his first official visit to Moscow as U.S. secretary of state, John Kerry told President Vladimir Putin on Tuesday that Russia and America had significant common interests in Syria and urged closer economic cooperation.
Opening talks in the Kremlin, Kerry said both Russia and the United States were interested in maintaining stability in the Middle East and combating the threat posed by extremists in the region. He then called on both sides to find common ground over Syria, where a two-year civil war has claimed over 70,000 lives.
Russia and the U.S. have long clashed over how to handle the crisis, with Russia shielding Syrian President Bashar Assad from UN Security Council sanctions with fellow veto-wielding power China.
A joint plan for a political solution to the crisis that was approved in Geneva last June has stalled, and an analyst interviewed by The Moscow Times expressed doubt that any breakthrough would be reached during Kerry's visit.
"The United States believes that we share some very significant common interests with respect to Syria — stability in the region, not having extremists creating problems," Kerry told Putin, according to Reuters.
Kerry arrived in Moscow on Tuesday for a two-day visit, during which he is set to hold wide-ranging talks with Putin, Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov and civil society representatives. His first official commitment was to lay a wreath by the Tomb of the Unknown Soldier in anticipation of Victory Day celebrations on Thursday.
The high-profile visit comes days after Israel — a key U.S. ally — launched a series of air strikes in southern Syria, prompting a harsh response from Russia's Foreign Ministry, which condemned the attacks as a threat to regional stability.
Putin discussed the Syrian crisis with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu in a telephone conversation Monday, although the Kremlin did not clarify whether the strikes were discussed.
In discussions over Syria, a sticking point between the U.S. and Russia remains the question of arming the rebels locked in fighting with troops loyal to Assad. Washington has so far only supplied the rebels with non-military equipment but has refused to rule out sending arms. Moscow — a major supplier of weapons to Assad's government — strongly opposes such a move.
Another bone of contention is the use of chemical weapons, an issue the Russian Foreign Ministry has accused the West of politicizing as a means of paving the way for military intervention.
U.S.-Russian relations have become noticeably strained over the past year, with both sides trading barbs over a perceived crackdown on civil society groups in Russia, U.S. sanctions against Russian officials implicated in human rights abuses and Russian legislation banning U.S. adoptions.
Last month, however, U.S. President Barack Obama sent a confidential letter to his Russian counterpart seeking to ease tensions, and Putin said Tuesday that he would respond in the near future, according to a Kremlin transcript of the meeting.
Putin and Obama are expected to meet at a G8 summit in Northern Ireland in June and again at a G20 meeting in St. Petersburg in September. Kerry said Obama was anxious to meet Putin next month and exchange views on the North Korean and Iranian nuclear programs as well as ways to boost U.S.-Russian trade.
In comments in front of journalists, Kerry made no explicit mention of U.S. plans to install a European missile shield, to which Russia is angrily opposed, but thanked Russian specialists for helping with the inquiry into the Boston Marathon bombing.
The two men suspected of carrying out the bombing, Tamerlan and Dzhokhar Tsarnaev, are ethnic Chechens who emigrated from Russia to the U.S. around 2002. Three were killed and more than 260 injured in the twin blasts in Boston on April 15.
Contacted by phone, Andrei Kortunov, president of the New Eurasia Foundation, a think tank, was optimistic that U.S.-Russian relations would warm under Kerry, whom he called "an experienced foreign-policy expert."
"Kerry has always been viewed as a balanced thinker in Moscow," Kortunov said. "His visit is a sign that dialogue between the two sides is entering a new stage, but it's too early to talk about a breakthrough in ties."
Read more: http://www.themoscowtimes.com/news/article/kerry-pushes-for-common-approach-to-syria/479720.html#ixzz2SdLSNx3a
The Moscow Times
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