U.S. President Barack Obama said after a meeting with Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov that Moscow and Washington had a great chance to “reset” relations.
“We have an excellent opportunity to reset the relationship between the United States and Russia on a whole host of issues,” Obama said on Thursday after talks in Washington with Russia”s top diplomat.
Lavrov called the talks “productive,” noting their “constructive, business-like nature.” He also said that Russian-U.S. relations should be based on mutual respect.
Obama said that he had discussed a wide range of issues with Lavrov, including Iran, Pakistan and Afghanistan, nuclear proliferation, the financial crisis, and his upcoming visit to Moscow, scheduled for July.
After a meeting with U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, Lavrov said he hoped the work of the Russia-NATO Council would be resumed in the near future.
“We hope that in the near future the artificial obstacles in the way of the resumption of the Russia-NATO Council”s work will be fully overcome and this important body will resume its work based on the principles agreed on when it was created,” Lavrov told journalists.
Russia announced it was withdrawing from a planned Russia-NATO Council meeting later this month in response to the expulsion of two of its diplomats from Brussels. In response, Moscow announced the expulsion of two Canadian diplomats working in NATO”s Information Office in Moscow.
Lavrov said the expulsion was an attempt to disrupt the resumption of Russia-NATO ties, suspended after Russia fought a brief war with Georgia over South Ossetia last August. However, he also said that disagreements were “natural for relations between any two large states”.
