Russian President Vladimir Putin immediately showed that he wouldn't back down, saying Russia knew about planned "provocations" to blame Syria's government for using chemical weapons. The US blamed President Bashar Assad's government and launched almost 60 cruise missiles on Friday at the Shayrat air base in the central province of Homs, where it claims the attack originated.
The U.S. cruise missile strike on Thursday, meant to dissuade Assad from using chemical weapons again, gives Tillerson more credibility with Russian officials and will boost his efforts, observers and former officials said.
The OPCW announced in January previous year that it had destroyed Syria's chemical weapons arsenal per an agreement of the Syrian Government.
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.
The Trump administration says Syrian President Bashar al-Assad ordered the attack.
UK ambassador to the United Nations Matthew Rycroft said supporting the Assad regime would result in "shame" and "humiliation" for Russian Federation.
"I will be frank that we have a lot of questions regarding very ambiguous as well as contradictory ideas regarding a whole plethora of bilateral and worldwide agenda coming from Washington", Lavrov said.
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Tillerson says the USA sees no future role for Assad in Syria, but he says the US isn't pre-supposing how Assad's departure will occur.
His comments came after US President Donald Trump said Mr Putin was backing an "evil person" in Assad, as talks took place in Russian Federation between the countries' chief diplomats.
"The US will not passively stand by while Assad murders innocent people with chemical weapons, which are prohibited by global law and which were declared destroyed", Pentagon chief James Mattis said in a statement. It denied preferring Trump to his Democrat rival, Hillary Clinton, during the election campaign and said it would judge his administration by its actions rather than its words.
"It's very important that there is a full investigation so that everybody knows, everybody knows, so that the entire world knows how these disgusting chemical attacks occurred and where they come from", French Ambassador Francois Delattre said.
Putin said western and Turkish accusations that Syria's government dropped the nerve agent that killed dozens of civilians in Idlib earlier this month were comparable to the now-discredited claim that Saddam Hussein had stockpiled weapons of mass destruction in Iraq.
The council was meeting ahead of a vote later in the day on a draft resolution demanding that the Syrian government cooperate with an investigation of the suspected chemical attack in the rebel-held town of Khan Sheikhun. "With the exception of Russian Federation, they are all failed states", Spicer said.
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