Russia: Relations with US poor over ‘Russo-phobic hysteria’

Russia’s foreign minister said Friday the downturn in relations with the United States began with the Obama administration’s “small-hearted” and “revengeful” actions and has plummeted further because of “Russo-phobic hysteria.”

Sergey Lavrov told a news conference there has been a lengthy campaign claiming Russia interfered in the U.S. election to ensure victory for President Donald Trump — “but we do not see any facts.”

When he asked U.S. Secretary of State Rex Tillerson how Russia could confirm his words that Moscow interfered in the American election process, Lavrov said Tillerson replied: “I cannot show you anything because this is confidential information.’”

Russia’s top diplomat said he can’t believe this because “first and foremost the United States has all the information leaking all the time.” And he said with so many people involved in hearings and investigations related to the alleged Russian meddling, “it cannot be that not a single fact has leaked. It would have leaked.”

Lavrov recalled World War II when the United States and Russia fought as allies against Nazi Germany.

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But he said relations are suffering because former president Barack Obama’s administration “put this time bomb in U.S.-Russian relations. “I did not expect that from a Nobel Peace Prize winner, but he did manifest himself and we can still see the ramifications,” he said.

Today, Lavrov said, “our relations are contracting due to Russo-phobic hysteria.”

As a result, “the immense potential of our bilateral relations” isn’t being realized and international issues aren’t being solved because the U.S. and Russia cannot co-ordinate, he said.

The U.S. and Russian militaries maintain contact to prevent accidents or confrontations between their forces fighting in Syria, but Lavrov said “in order to eliminate terrorists we need not only de-confliction, we need co-ordination.”

He said a lot of U.S. politicians say “Russia has to do this and that on Syria,” and Russia has to solve the North Korea nuclear problem, and other global crises.

But the U.S. military has “a ban on co-operating with Russia,” Lavrov said. “Why? Because legislators who find it important not to solve issues in different parts of the world, and not to develop beneficial relations with Russia. Such legislators need to have these political signals. They did it, and that’s the reality we live in.”

He was asked about Trump’s combative speech to the General Assembly on Tuesday in which the American president threatened “to totally destroy North Korea” if the U.S. is forced to defend itself or its allies and North Korean leader Kim Jong Un responded calling Trump “deranged” and saying he will “pay dearly” for his threats.

Calling the exchange of threats “quite bad,” Lavrov said “it is unacceptable to simply sit back and to look at the nuclear and military gambles of North Korea, but it is also unacceptable to start war on the peninsula.”

“We have to calm down the hotheads,” and this requires contacts between the Trump administration and Kim’s government, he said.

Lavrov said Russia would welcome any efforts at mediation, saying “the mediators could be one of the neutral European countries.” He added that U.N. Secretary-General Antonio Guterres has talked about mediation and said if he received such a request “he would try to fulfil that.”

The Russian minister said he had no new initiatives to bring the two sides together, explaining that he believes “the potential” for the Russian-Chinese freeze-for-freeze proposal “is not yet exhausted.” It would halt North Korean nuclear and missile tests in exchange for the U.S. and South Korea stopping their joint military exercises, but the Trump administration has rejected it.

Lavrov was asked whether he saw a link between the crisis in North Korea and Trump’s threat to pull out of the 2015 agreement to cap Iran’s nuclear program.

He stressed that all other parties to the deal, including Russia, support the agreement and don’t want it reopened.

“Right now, North Korea is being told, renounce nuclear weapons and we will lift the sanctions,” Lavrov said.

If the Iran nuclear deal falls apart, he said, “then North Korea would say, ‘why do I need to negotiate with you if you do not carry out your promises?’”

Edith M. Lederer, The Associated Press