Difficult talks await Tillerson in Moscow
The United States will "hold to account" any government that commits atrocities against innocent people, Secretary of State Rex Tillerson said Monday, as key US allies met to work out a common stance on Syria. Tillerson spoke at an Italian war memorial before a meeting of foreign ministers from the G7 industrialized nations, which was dominated by the diplomatic fallout from the unexpected US missile strike on a Syrian airbase last week. "We rededicate ourselves to holding to account any and all who commit crimes against the innocents anywhere in the world," Tillerson said in a short statement commemorating a 1944 German Nazi massacre in Sant'Anna di Stazzema. On Wednesday, the US Secretary of State will travel to Moscow to meet Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov. Tillerson said Russia should do more to meet commitments it made in 2013 to guarantee the destruction of Syria's chemical weapons. "That will part of the discussions when I visit Moscow next week is to call upon Foreign Minister Lavrov and the Russian government to fulfill the obligation it made to the international community when it agreed to be the guarantor of the elimination of the chemical weapons," he told ABC on Sunday. "And why Russia has not been able to achieve that is unclear to me. I don't draw conclusions of complicity at all, but clearly they've been incompetent and perhaps they've just simply been out-maneuvered by the Syrians." Russia has an enormous impact on Bashar al-Assad and should be able to force Assad to stop using such weapons. "I hope Russia is thinking carefully about its continued alliance with Bashar al-Assad, because every time one of these horrific attacks occurs, it draws Russia closer into some level of responsibility," Tillerson said. Analysts in Russia think that Moscow cannot stop its support to Assad’s regime. If the sides fail to reach an agreement, then the conflict in Syria might lead to clashes in Syria as a result of which Russian anti-aircraft missile systems will try to destroy US aircraft or missiles. And that will lead to a completely different situation.
