US to continue cooperating with Russia on Iran and Syria - State Department
29 April 2014, 22:50 -- Despite the US introducing sanctions against Russia, Washington will continue active cooperation with Moscow to resolve the Iranian nuclear issue and the elimination of chemical weapons in Syria. This was announced by Thomas Countryman, Assistant Secretary of State for International Security and Nonproliferation at a press conference in New York.
According to him, relations between the US and Russia have experienced many ups and downs over the last 23 years, TASS reports.
'Both sides have constantly kept determination to minimize the impact of difficulties in our relations on cooperation on major international security issues, including nuclear nonproliferation and disarmament', said Countryman.
He stressed that the US is determined to keep this at the moment. 'Even now, when our relationship is going through the most difficult moment for the last 23 years, we intend to continue to work on issues related to international security, including the conditions of the Treaty on Measures for the Further Reduction and Limitation of Strategic Offensive Arms, negotiations with Iran, the removal and destruction Syrian chemical weapons ', said assistant Secretary of State.
'In these and other areas, we will make every effort to work with our Russian partners,' he stated.
Russia, US anti-terrorism cooperation in deep freeze
Anti-terrorism cooperation between Russia and the United States is in 'a deep freeze,' director of the department for tackling new challenges and threats in the Russian Foreign Ministry Ilya Rogachev told the Russian news agency TASS on Thursday.
'You know that the United States have made claims without any link to the current Ukrainian situation that we had allegedly informed them badly about a threat that is coming from the Tsarnaevs. This is absolutely unacceptable,' Rogachev said.
'Therefore, in this atmosphere it is difficult to cooperate where interaction between law enforcement agencies and security services is needed," he noted, adding that "the level of mutual trust should be higher, maybe even in other spheres.'
As for anti-drug cooperation with Washington, the diplomat also noted that ties in this sphere are also frozen. 'A lot depends on Afghanistan and '2014 factor' (the year when the international coalition forces will be withdrawn from Afghanistan),' the Foreign Ministry's department director noted.
'The US actually shirk all their responsibility in the fight against drugs as they did not assume much responsibility on them in the country. We have consistently pointed to this for all these 13 years of their stay in Afghanistan,' he said.
'But now they just said, 'This is not our business, we go away and you - Afghans and their neighbors - do what you want'.'
In reply to a question about the current situation in Syria, Rogachev noted that Washington still accuses incumbent country's President Bashar Assad of everything.
'We cannot turn a blind eye at the presence of terrorists linked with al-Qaeda there,' the diplomat said.
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