Under US instruction, UK foreign secretary abandons visit to Russia
By
Chris Marsden
10 April 2017
Foreign Secretary Boris Johnson was instructed by Washington to cancel a scheduled trip to Moscow Monday, to meet with his counterpart, Sergei Lavrov.
Instead, he was tasked by US Secretary of State Rex Tillerson in a phone call Saturday with securing a “clear and co-ordinated message to the Russians” over Syria. This message, dictated by the Trump administration, is to be given at today and Tuesday’s G7 Foreign Ministers meeting in Lucca, Italy of Canada, France, Germany, Italy, Japan, Britain and the US.
Johnson was left embarrassed for a second time in as many days, after publicly admitting that Tillerson had told him not to go for talks in Moscow that would have coincided with the Secretary of State’s own visit later this week.
Johnson wrote in a statement that he had discussed “in detail” his plans with Tillerson and they had agreed the American should go to Moscow first so that he would “deliver [a] clear and coordinated message to the Russians.”
Johnson will instead attend the G7 foreign ministers meeting in Italy Monday and Tuesday, where he will try to build a consensus for demands to Russian President Vladimir Putin to pull his troops out of Syria and end his support for President Bashar al-Assad.
Johnson justified the cancellation of what would have been the first trip to Russia by a UK foreign secretary in five years by declaring that “Developments in Syria”—the April 4 chemical attack on the rebel-held town of Khan Sheikhoun—“have changed the situation fundamentally.”
This is bluster on Johnson’s part. What changed the situation fundamentally is the Conservative government’s desire to be on message with the Trump administration, as…