Amid the growing diplomatic drift between the two nations over military conflict in Syria, speculations were rife that Secretary of State Rex Tillerson will not be meeting with Putin during a scheduled visit to Moscow, Wednesday.
Rex Tillerson and Sergei Lavrov had a tense meeting Wednesday.
Russian Federation and the United States disagree over Assad's fate.
President Donald Trump says his chief strategist Steve Bannon joined his campaign "very late", downplaying the notion that Bannon is an influential member of his team.
British Foreign Secretary Boris Johnson says there could still be new sanctions imposed on Russian military officers over their support for the Syrian government - even though G-7 allies ignored his call for new punitive measures against Moscow.
The meeting happened on the sidelines of the G7 Foreign Ministers' meeting taking place in the same city on April 10-11, and included diplomats from Turkey, the United Arab Emirates, Saudi Arabia, Jordan, and Qatar, the Italian Ministry of Foreign Affairs said.
He said the dictator had "done the wrong thing" by threatening to nuke the U.S. and boasted about having the "best military people on earth".
The official said the mass of data they have "in all the different vehicles we've gotten it is just too massive for any intelligence organisation to fabricate in that short a period of time".
Senior Abu Sayyaf Commander Killed in Philippine Gunbattle
The fierce firefight left 14 people dead, four of them government troops. "This is a major blow to the Abu Sayyaf", Ano said. Jaypee Orcullo, an officer of the Department of Tourism in Bohol province, says some tourists canceled hotel reservations.
The strikes, which saw 59 tomahawk missiles launched from ships in the eastern Mediterranean, hit the base used to launch the chemical attack.
Speaking to reporters before he left Italy for Moscow, Tillerson said: "Russia has really aligned itself with the Assad regime, the Iranians, and Hezbollah".
The G7 groups Britain, Canada, France, Germany, Italy, Japan and the US.
"It reminds me of the events in 2003 when US envoys to the Security Council were demonstrating what they said were chemical weapons found in Iraq", Putin told reporters on Tuesday.
"How is it possible that their forces were co-located with the Syrian forces that planned, prepared and carried out a chemical weapon attack from the same installation and did not have foreknowledge?" the senior White House official asked.
One of the White House officials said Assad used the attack as part of an "operational calculus" to slow rebel advances by attacking civilians.
But he also appeared to rule out deeper involvement, saying: "Are we going to get involved with Syria? No". The official added that there is no proof yet that Russia was directly involved, but that a Russian drone flew over a hospital that received victims of the attack.
The President said he would not commit troops to Syria, but claimed his predecessor Barack Obama should have taken a harder line on Syria.
Comments