No Breakthrough On Syria as Lavrov-Kerry Talks Conclude In Laos

Laos hosted a two-day series of ASEAN events, including ministerial meetings and bilateral talks. In the country’s capital Vientiane, officials from the association’s ten member states discussed joint projects with colleagues from Russia, China, Australia and the US.

The Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN), founded in 1967 as a purely regional association, has seen its influence travel far beyond the Asia Pacific regions. Russia, the EU and the US, which take part in ASEAN's numerous dialog formats, use the organization's meetings to hold bilateral and multilateral talks.

Foreign ministers of the East Asia Summit (EAS) member states, among them Australia, South Korea, India, China, New Zealand, Japan, the US and Russia are preparing for an upcoming September EAS summit in Laos. A series of agreements will be on the agenda, including cooperation on finance and energy, healthcare and education.

Besides EAS, Russia has a long-standing partnership with ASEAN itself. The 20th anniversary of cooperation between the two sides was marked by a May 19 leaders' meeting in the Southern Russian city of Sochi. ASEAN and Russia signed a partnership declaration to be implemented as a part of a four-year action plan, also on the agenda at Sochi.

On Tuesday, Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov met with US Secretary of State John Kerry. Their previous July 15 talks in Moscow concluded with the sides agreeing on specific steps to end fighting in Syria, the main topic for this week's bilateral talks.

Prior to the meeting, American journalists asked Lavrov for his opinion regarding accusations that Russia was behind the recent US Democratic Party email archive hack.

Lavrov on Russia being accused of Dem. party emails hack: "Well, I don't want to use four-letter words" @SputnikInt pic.twitter.com/ABzE4TTA17

— Denis Bolotsky (@BolotskySputnik) July 26, 2016

​Lavrov's reaction to the question may have been negative because many US mainstream media outlets are again searching for the influence of the Kremlin in the email scandal, as, without proof, the responsibility for the Democratic Party's public relations disaster has been placed on Russia. It's not hard to imagine the same type of media campaign being launched against the United States; for every single piece of computer malware that, along the way, picked up a Washington DC timestamp and a few English-language comments in the code.

The majority of the Lavrov-Kerry talks in Vientiane, as expected, concerned Syria. Even though both sides agree on several basic aspects of the Syrian peace process, the devil is in the details, and there are still disagreements on how to separate the warring sides, and how to tell the good guys from the bad among hundreds of armed groups in the war-torn country.

"So far we've been seeing that our US partners from the very beginning of this year were telling us, that they will be able to separate the opposition groups they are supporting from cells, but until now they have not been successful in doing so," Lavrov said.

The Russian foreign minister added that, in order to give a fresh start to talks on Syria, there should be a new round of negotiations, and it must be based on UN Security council principles.