MOSCOW, April 13. /TASS/. Results of Wednesday’s negotiations with US Secretary of State Rex Tillerson are unlikely to materialize in the near future, but a number of issues raised at the meeting would be addressed in a routine manner, Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov said on Thursday.
"I like the way we held a meeting yesterday," the top Russian diplomat said. "First and foremost, there was an important conversation with President Vladimir Putin before that and it lasted for two hours almost."
"We also held talks before our meeting in the Kremlin," Lavrov said. "After the news conference we had an informal conversation for about an hour about the emerging opportunities."
"The results of the talks may take a while to manifest themselves," Lavrov said. "At least we agreed to establish day-to-day on-line dialog on a number of major issues, including the inventorying of the problems that were created by the previous administration in bilateral relations, as well as mechanisms on matters related with the implementation of the agreements we have in the military-political sphere and the mechanisms that are expected to narrow disagreements or improve the understanding of each other’s positions on various regional crises, first and foremost, the Syrian settlement."
"The agreements were reached on the whole and we will now begin a practical implementation of launching negotiating mechanisms of such nature," he said. "This is very important, because it is always better to talk face to face, instead of making loud statements over a microphone telling each other what you think about your opponent without looking in the eyes."
"Therefore, this is not a speedy process, but at least, if everything that we have agreed upon in such methodological sense would come in reality - it would be for the benefit," Lavrov added.
Tillerson rejects proposal to probe alleged chemical attack in Syria
Tillerson was not prepared to accept Russia’s proposal to make a joint initiative on setting up a special group to investigate the alleged chemical attack in Khan Shaykhun, in Syria’s Idlib, Lavrov said.
Moscow suggested that the group should consist of representatives of the Organization for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons (OPCW) and also experts of Russia, the United States and countries of the region.
"It seemed to me that Tillerson had a positive view on this idea and promised to work on it," Lavrov said. "We even said that Russia jointly with the US should put forward this initiative. But he was not ready for this."