Relations between the US and Russia are at a "low point" and need to be improved, Secretary of State Rex Tillerson said Wednesday during a joint news conference with Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov. Tillerson said that the two countries agreed to set up a working group to stabilize their relationship and solve smaller issues.
Adding:"The world's two foremost nuclear powers can not have this kind of relationship".
President Donald Trump said he thinks it's "unlikely" Russian Federation had no advance knowledge of Syrian President Bashar al-Assad's chemical weapons attack on civilians last week.
"The perspective of the United States is that the recent chemical weapons attack carried out by Syria was planned, directed and executed by Syrian regime forces".
After initially declining a meeting between Rex Tillerson and Vladimir Putin, the Kremlin agreed to it at the last minute.
During his presidential election campaign, Trump said he would like the U.S. to have better relations with Russian Federation.
But Tillerson is confident the attack was directed by the Assad regime.
Lavrov expressed doubt about this characterization.
He also rejected American claims of incontrovertible evidence that Assad ordered the chemical attack.
Lavrov said global experts should be sent to the place where the chemicals were used. "They were there. So we'll find out".
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Citing the countries' disagreements, Tillerson said, "We need to attempt to put an end to this steady degradation".
"Clearly, our view is that the reign of the Assad family is coming to an end", Tillerson said.
Mr Tillerson said it was the position of the United States that Mr Assad should go as part of a political solution to the Syrian conflict.
But Russia, an ally of Syria, blocked a draft UN Security Council resolution which would require President Assad to provide information about air operations and grant inspectors immediate access to air bases.
"So far we have not seen any facts". "So I felt we had to do something about it".
The UN motion also would have forced the Syrian Assad government to cooperate in an worldwide investigation into the incident.
Putin's spokesman Dmitry Peskov said the Russian leader on Wednesday gave Tillerson his view of the causes of the current "deadlock" in bilateral ties.
Their relations indeed became more adversarial this week.
Tillerson said last week the Russians were "complicit or simply incompetent".
While it's willing to respond to "specific proof", there are many people who are eager "to undermine our relations in order to promote their domestic political and maybe foreign policy ambitions", Lavrov said.
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