The Donald Trump Administration is willing to work with Russia to establish no-fly zones, coordinate deliveries of humanitarian aid and take other measures to stabilise Syria, United States Secretary of State Rex Tillerson (pictured above) said on Wednesday, The Washington Post reported.
Russian President Vladimir Putin and US President Donald Trump will discuss the volatile situation in Syria, Tillerson said, before departing for the G20 Summit in Hamburg, Germany, which begins on Friday.
“The United States and Russia certainly have unresolved differences on a number of issues,” he said. “But if our two countries work together to establish stability on the ground, it will lay a foundation for progress on the settlement of Syria’s political future.”
“Russia, as a guarantor of the Assad regime and an early entrant into the Syrian conflict, has a responsibility to ensure that the needs of the Syrian people are met, and that no faction in Syria illegitimately re-takes or occupies areas liberated from ISIS or other terrorist groups’ control,” the US secretary of state said, while speaking to reporters at Joint Base Andrews outside Washington, reported NBC.
Tillerson agreed that the State Department had characterised the US-Russian relationship as “at a very low point”. However, he added that Washington and Moscow had been engaging “for some time now to identify areas [where] we should have mutual interest”.
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