President Putin: We hope Kerry’s visit would approximate stances between the US and Russia

Moscow, SANA-Russian President Vladimir Putin on Thursday hoped that the visit of US Secretary of State John Kerry to Moscow would help approximate stances between Moscow and Washington on the crises in Syria and Ukraine.

“The two countries can reach common points and go ahead in bilateral and international issues,” Russia Today TV quoted President Putin as saying during the meeting, adding that the Russian leadership recognizes the importance of the US role in reaching cessation of hostilities in Syria.

Kerry, for his part, said “I know that you have certain visions and ideas… and you have taken a serious decision to withdraw the largest part of your forces from Syria.”

He added “We also have certain ideas about how to run Geneva talks and time became ripe to start the serious work.”

Lavrov, Kerry hope to continue cooperation to resolve crisis in Syria and other int’l crises

Earlier, the Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov expressed hope that cooperation between Russia and the United States will continue for solving the crisis in Syria and other crises in the world.

Meeting Kerry in Moscow, Lavrov said “We will pay the most attention today to cooperate on the international arena, especially on Syrian settlement, but we will also discuss other problems, such as the situation in the Middle East and North Africa. We will exchange views on how the international community may contribute to settling them.”

“We have a lot of inquiries on the bilateral relations between Russia and US that must be discussed, “Lavrov said, adding “I expect that today’s talks will be useful, and that after they end, we will be able to report to President Putin during a meeting at the Kremlin how we see future cooperation on the international arena”.

Lavrov pointed out that the Russian-US cooperation to solve the crisis in Syria “achieved a success , where the work was on the equal basis,” affirming “we worked on forming a balance of interests not only between Moscow and Washington, but the entire international community.”

For his part, Kerry pointed to the success of the Russian-US cooperation with International Syria Support Group for helping Syria reach the cessation of hostilities agreement, saying that “The recent events in Brussels underscored for all of us the urgency, every country needs to make the efforts to end this evil scourge that comes from ISIS terrorist organization.”

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