MOSCOW, November 14. /TASS/. Russia’s Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov and US Secretary of State John Kerry agreed in a phone conversation held on Friday that the Contact Group on Ukraine should resume its work as soon as possible.

“Focusing on the situation in Ukraine’s south-east, Lavrov has stressed the importance of implementing the Minsk accords, in particular the ceasefire and streamlining the dialogue between Kiev and Donetsk and Luhansk,” says a statement posted on the Russian Foreign Ministry’s website.

“The Russian minister expressed his profound concern that the investigation in the Malaysian Boeing crash had been dragged out in violation of the UN Security Council’s Resolution 2166 and procedures of the International Civil Aviation Organization (ICAO),” it said.

Along with this, Lavrov and Kerry focused “on prospects for adopting an agreement on an inclusive settlement around Iran’s nuclear program.”

The officials pointed out that “maximum efforts should be exerted to reach this agreement in a forthcoming round of talks between Iran and P5+1 international mediators (China, France, Germany, Russia, the United Kingdom, and the United States),” the ministry said.

“The situation in the Middle East and North Africa” was on the table, "primarily in the context of tasks aimed at counteracting terrorists’ attempts to exercise authority over the region,” it said.

Lavrov and Kerry exchanged their views on steps needed to promote Syria’s political settlement.