Some of Washington's allies had been wary of Trump, who spoke during his election campaign of seeking closer ties with Moscow and questioned the value of USA support for its traditional friends.
US President Donald Trump had previously appeared disinclined to intervene against the Syrian leader and the attack raised expectations that he might now be ready to adopt a tougher-than-expected stance with Russia, Assad's main backer. "We believe it is of principal importance to prevent risks of a repeat of such steps in the future".
For better or worse, Tillerson will have the opportunity to ask the Russians that question personally when he makes his first visit to Moscow as secretary of state Tuesday.
"We both have agreed our lines of communication shall always remain open", Mr Tillerson said. The former Cold War foes even worked together in 2013 to remove and destroy more than 1,300 tons of Syrian chemical weapons and agents. The strikes thrust Donald Trump, who came to power in January calling for warmer ties with Russian Federation, into a confrontation with Moscow.
But at the same briefing, Spicer drew criticism after he sought to underscore the ghastliness of the gas attack by saying, "You had someone as despicable as Hitler who didn't even sink to using chemical weapons".
Russian President Vladimir Putin has started a meeting in the Kremlin with U.S. Secretary of State Rex Tillerson, a spokeswoman for the U.S. embassy in Moscow said on Wednesday, citing Kremlin officials.
And Trump says in an interview with Fox Business News that solving the standoff with North Korea isn't "as simple as people would think".
"What I did should have been done by the Obama administration a long time before I did it", he said. "This is an animal", Trump continued.
DONALD Trump has claimed the USA will "not be going into Syria" just a week after ordering airstrikes on a military base in the war-torn country.
"One could say that the level of trust on a working level, especially on the military level, has not improved, but rather has deteriorated", he said during an interview Wednesday.
Xi and Trump discuss Korean Peninsula, Syria over phone
The unexpected phone call between the two came after Trump turned to Twitter to vent his frustrations over North Korea . U.S. officials said it would still take the strike group more than a week to arrive near the Korean peninsula.
G7 efforts to build a united front against Assad come just ahead of Tillerson's planned trip to Moscow, the first for a high-ranking Trump administration official.
The pair could meet with Putin later today, Tass reports, quoting Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov as saying there's a "certain possibility" that Putin might receive Tillerson and Lavrov.
Moscow has strenuously objected to Trump's decision to launch 59 U.S. Tomahawk missiles at a Syrian air base that the U.S. says was used to pummel civilians with nerve gas, killing more than 80 people. Washington blames Russia's ally, Syrian President Bashar Assad, while Moscow says Syrian rebels are responsible.
Intelligence services from several Western countries dispute that claim.
Analysis of the samples was carried out by chemical weapons scientists at Porton Down and tested positive for sarin "or a sarin-like substance".
Russian Federation has "absolute reliable information" that Syria's jets struck chemical weapons controlled by terrorists, Deputy Foreign Minister Sergei Ryabkov told reporters Wednesday. The U.S. also accused Russian Federation of mounting a disinformation campaign aimed at exonerating Assad.
Mr Trump came to the presidency promising to seek closer ties with Russian Federation and greater cooperation fighting against their common enemy in Syria, the Islamic State group.
Yet the ministers seemed aware of the risk of "isolating" Russian Federation, and their final statement made no mention of sanctions. Let me tell you.
Despite hopes of an improvement in Russia-US ties under Mr Trump, the Tillerson-Lavrov talks look set to be dominated by the split over Syria - where more than 320,000 people have died in six years of war. He was referring to widespread vacancies throughout the top State Department leadership that has fueled a perception in the USA that Tillerson and his agency are being sidelined by Trump.
"It's not easy to get clarifications on the current as well as prospective issues because of that", Lavrov said.
Comments