The meeting between Russian President Vladimir Putin and his US counterpart Donald Trump expected to be held on the sidelines of the G20 summit in Hamburg should clarify bilateral relations, Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov said at the Primakov Readings conference on Friday.
“Relations between Russia and the United States are particularly important in today’s world, as achieving many tasks at the global level, from ensuring strategic stability to resolving regional crises, depends on the two countries,” the Russian top diplomat said.
“We see that most countries are concerned over these abnormal relations [between Russia and the United States] that have become hostage to the domestic political struggle in the US,” Lavrov said. “We expect the Hamburg meeting between our presidents to clarify the prospects for Russian-US cooperation,” he added.
The Russian foreign minister expressed hope that “pragmatic approach aimed at ensuring national interests through most effective methods will prevail.”
“As we have been informed by Washington, the US legislators, including heads of the Congress Foreign Affairs Committees, decided to make a pause,” he said.
Both leaders are guided in their activity by the national interests of their countries, Lavrov said. “Probably they better than anyone else understand these interests,” he noted.
Speaking about a meeting between Putin and Trump on the sidelines of the next week’s G20 summit in Germany’s Hamburg, Lavrov said: “It is most important to overcome an abnormal stage in our relations when leaders of the two major powers communicated between each other only by phone and have not met each other personally.”
Lavrov recalled that he had a meeting in the White House with US Secretary of State Rex Tillerson and Donald Trump in May, but noted that a personal contact between the presidents in addition to their phone conversations is very important.
“Moreover, judging by the phone conversations, both of them have a wish to overcome the abnormal situation today and start agreeing on particular issues, on which bilateral relations depend, including interests of businesses of the two countries and solving international problems,” he said.