Kerry, Lavrov will meet to finalize Syria deal
US Secretary of State John Kerry will meet Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov in Geneva on Aug. 26 to try to finalize a deal on Syria that has been complicated by an escalation of fighting in Aleppo.
WASHINGTON — US Secretary of State John Kerry will meet with Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov in Geneva on Aug. 26 to try to finalize a deal on Syria, after an initial US-Russian understanding reached at meetings in Moscow on July 15 was upended by intensified fighting in Aleppo.
“We want to be very measured in our expectations as we go forward … but we believe this meeting is worth having,” State Department spokeswoman Elizabeth Trudeau told journalists at the State Department on Aug. 24 about the upcoming Kerry-Lavrov meeting in Geneva.
“I would not characterize it is as ‘the brink,’ I would say we have a ways to go,” Trudeau added, when asked if the scheduling of the meeting was a sign a deal was imminent. “We still have issues that need to be resolved. However, we are meeting. We are going to put Secretary Kerry and the foreign minister in a face-to-face [meeting] to try to resolve some of the issues that remain. I don’t know where we will be after this. … We are committed to this … advancing.”
Earlier, diplomatic sources in Geneva had said that a Kerry-Lavrov meeting was tentatively planned, but that whether one materialized depended on whether there was sufficient progress on Aleppo discussions.
