U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton on Friday met with Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov in Geneva and the two leaders held talks for over two hours, covering a number of issues of mutual concern, including Afghanistan, the Middle East and North Korea.
Ahead of their closed-door meeting, Secretary Clinton presented Lavrov with a restart button, which symbolized a fresh start to the U.S. relations with Russia. Lavrov accepted the gift and joined Clinton in pressing the symbolic restart button.
Clinton said after her meeting with Lavrov that the two countries have worked out a plan for the renewal of the Strategic Arms Reduction Treaty (START), which is due to expire on 31st December, 2009.
"We intend to have an agreement by the end of the year," she said at a news conference after her talks with Lavrov, who also expressed hopes that fresh deal to replace the current outdated one would be completed on time.
"We discussed a number of specific issues that we believe is important for us to work together to make progress. There is no time to waste on a number of these significant challenges so we will begin to work immediately to translate our words into deeds," she said.
Before her meeting with Lavrov, Clinton had said she was looking forward to a fresh start to the U.S.-Russia relations, despite differences between the two countries over NATO's expansion and Moscow's relations with its neighbors.
Clinton had said that she her talks with Lavrov would include "a wide range of critical matters where we can cooperate and those where we have differences."
"I think in some areas we're going to find there's a great potential for cooperation. In others, we're going to have differences and we will stand our ground and they will stand theirs and we'll hope to find some accommodation if possible." she told reporters ahead of the meeting.
The relations between the two countries have been strained in recent months over Russia's invasion of Georgia in August 2008 and the Russian opposition to the accession of Georgia and Ukraine into the NATO fold, along with the differences over the U.S. plans to deploy a missile shield in Eastern Europe.
In August 2008, Russia launched a massive counter-offensive to a Georgian move to bring about constitutional order in the breakaway region of South Ossetia by force, and took control of South Ossetia and another Georgian breakaway region of Abkhazia.
Moscow then formally recognized the independence of the two breakaway regions, in spite of objections from the United States and the other western powers.
Russia also opposes the possible accession of Ukraine and Georgia into the NATO fold and the proposed deployment of a missile shield system in Eastern Europe, saying that it considers both the moves as security threat.
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