Russia, US top diplomats to talk Palestine-Israel settlement, Ukraine, Syria

ROME, December 14. /TASS/. Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov and U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry will have a 17th meeting this year in the Italian capital on Sunday. Talks will be held at a residence of the U.S. ambassador in Italy. The Middle East settlement is high on the agenda of forthcoming talks, taking into account talks between Kerry and Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu planned in the Italian capital. Negotiators will focus on latest events on the West Bank, Jerusalem and plan to debate specific UN initiatives. “We think the situation is quite alarming again,” Deputy Foreign Minister Sergey Ryabkov told TASS on Saturday. “The surge of violence that took away hundreds of human lives this summer became a tragic reminder of the fact one should care for peace settlement all the time and intensively.” “Russia has never rejected fruitful participation in appropriate efforts,” he said. “We bear a due share of responsibility for furnishing the parties to that conflict with an acceptable solution.” He did not foretell which agreements may be reached in Rome, only noting that “there is a feeling of urgency and that’s why the meeting was coordinated literally over several hours.” Lavrov and Kerry discussed Palestinian-Israeli settlement in a telephone conversation on Friday. They stressed the importance of “coordinated measures for facilitation of an earliest possible resumption of peace talks that would rely on the commonly accepted norms of law.” The two top diplomats will also talk Syria and Ukraine, U.S. Department of State deputy spokesperson Marie Harf said. When asked by TASS which aspects on Ukraine’s agenda would be on the table of negotiations, Ryabkov replied, “Recently, new complicating moments have appeared in the situation, including the Ukraine Freedom Support Act, hastily adopted by the Senate and the House of Representatives in bypass of procedures stipulated in this situation, to my mind.” “We are studying the text,” he said adding that “it causes deep concern, in particular by further attempts of extraterritorial application of the U.S. sanctions and the focus on blacklisting those legal entities in third countries which will have absolutely lawful collaboration with our companies and businesses. But this is only one of the aspects.” “This bill is an inadmissible and scandalous document testifying to the fact that those who are behind it have not had any comprehension of what is going on in the world,” Ryabkov said. Spiraling ambitions of the United States to “impose its will on one and all, not only on us but on the whole world is outrageous.” “This policy will bump into a radical reaction from our side,” the diplomat said. Read more