Of poisonous substances. I do apologize for such a long commentary but id like to stress here that we are absolutely 100 convinced that this will mean they simply dont want to establish the truth and we will insist on it. Josh letterman with the associated press. Thank you. Secretary tillerson, i want to ask you about your conversations with president putin about syria. You have predicted that assad will leave power through a political transition. How will you compel assad to participate in a political transition that leads to his own ouster. Our war crimes charges on the table and how long will the United States meet for russia to come around . And foreign minister lavrov, if i may, your government and the United States government seem to be miles apart on the syria issue, on ukraine and other issues. Did you feel that you cleared up any of those issues you mentioned earlier today since youve had those discussions with secretary tillerson . We did discuss at length the future role for assad, whether it be a future political process or not. Clearly, our view is that the reign of the assad family is coming to an end. And they have, again, brought this on themselves with their conduct of the war these past few years. We discussed our view that russia is their closest ally in the conflict, perhaps has the best means of helping assad recognize this reality. We do think its important that assads departure is done in an orderly way. So that certain interests and constituencies that he represents feel they have been represented at the negotiating table for a political solution. How that occurs, we leave that to the process going forward. We do not think one has to occur before the other can begin. And it will take a pace of its own. But the final outcome, in our view, does not provide for a role for the assad for assad or for the assad family and the future governance of syria. We do not think the International Community will accept that. We do not think the world will accept that. [ inaudible ] . We discussed the issue that, as time goes by and more armnd more evidence is gathered, its possible that the threshold necessary to charge individuals, including Bashar Al Assad, may be achieved. As you know, this is a very high legal hurdle in order to bring such charges against an individual. So i would not suggest to you that all of that evidence is in place, but i think the longer time goes by, its possible that the case will be made and there are certain individuals who are working to make that case. Translator well, as far as im concerned, id just like to say that we do not consider that we are miles apart on many questions on the agenda. Syria and ukraine in our introduction, we talked about the accords and the opening of channels of communication, particularly about ukraine as far as syria is concerned and Bashar Al Assad, we talked today about the history and rex said that he was a new man and hes not interested so much in history. He wants to deal with todays problems but the world is s constructed in a way that if we dont look at the past, we cant deal with the present. And particularly in a situation where a group of countries, western countries, the nato countries were absolutely obsessed with eliminating a particular dictator or totalitarian leader. When it was a question of ousting milosevic, nato followed a huge campaign. It was very blatant and even bombed the place which is certainly a war crime, which ever way you interpret the geneva convention, and they bombed the headquarters. And there were also attacks on trains, the chinese embassy, bridges and so on and so forth that lasted some two months. And after all this, which was very near to weapons of dual purpose, then they ousted him. Then there was a question of Saddam Hussein after the invasion and then tony blair afterwards repented afterwards publicly that all of this was a fake and you all know about that more than we do. And then there was gadhafi. It was to create this dictator had no place in his country and this was second to democracy. We know what happened in libya. The Libyan Government is now under a huge question mark. We spoke about this, or president putin did speak about it yesterday with the italian president and we are both trying to stop the situation of the country slipping into full and legal immigration, gun running and so on. So, incidentally speaking, we have even more recent examples. President bashar was claimed to be under prosecution by the International Accord and president obama decided in order to settle this problem you had to divide the country up into two and the southern part very actively asked for our assistance in dealing with president bashar, that the americans want to see that he should be the head of the states. He kept his word. He divided the country into two parts, according to the american project of the administration of president obama. And that sanctions were introduced against their own on southern sudan. So this insistence on removing, ofteni ousting a totalitarian dictator, we already know what happens when you do that. I dont remember any case of a dictator being removed smoothly without violence. So in syria and i have stressed this on many times, we are not staking everything on a personality, on president assad, as is being done in libya at the moment. We are simply insisting that everybody sits around the table and talks about it and comes to an agreement, as has been enshrined in the Security Council resolution. We want to install dialogue with all the players concerned and we want the syrians themselves, without any kind of exclusion to be represented in this process and removing our ousting a particular personality is not on our agenda. Were talking about the whole of the syrian government. We want it to be democratic and secular as well and we want to see all the ethnic confessional groups in the country to feel protected. Justly represented in all the granchs of government and power. And obviously for that you need a new constitution. We think that then the question the fate of individuals could be dealt with and without any kind of tragic consequences for the state as a whole. Translator thank you very much. I have a question to mr. Tillerson. Did you discuss in todays negotiations the intervention of russia in the u. S. Elections and could you tell us about how the presence of russian cybernauts differs and there was a question about the korean issue. Have you actually thought about setting up a group which would actually look at that kind of thing together . Is that question to both ministers, or what . We touched on it briefly on the issue of cybersecurity and, in particular, on the challenges that it is placing on everyone in terms of a new threat, an emerging threat. But i think i do make a distinction when cybertools are used with countries and how their elections are conducted. That is cybertools. To interrupt weapons programs, thats another use of the tools and i make a distinction between those two. Clearly this is an issue that has emerged in our time which we have yet to come to some conclusion on how we want to respond to that. And so there will be further discussions and it is on the agenda and it is in the agenda that foreign minister lavrov passed to me for us to have further discussions in the future. I can confirm that we are very interested in bilateral cooperation to combat crime in the cyberspace. We have heard about that 18 months ago. We actually proposed to Obamas Administration that we should do something about it. We voiced our concern about Russian Hackers hacking into the entire world and being illegitimate use of these tools and the possibility of prosecuting these people and we said then that we, too, are very interested in our citizens not being victims of cybercrimes and we proposed that we should have a special system of contacts, a special mechanism which would Exchange Information in realtime. And looking at how people are subverting into International Norms in their countries. The president spoke about it but didnt really react at all and then in november of last year it was suggested that we should meet about that and obviously our colleagues agreed but then at last moment Obamas Administration decided not to go ahead with it and to subvert u. S. Relations. I just want to confirm the fact that we are particularly interested in that. We still have that project on the table. We want to renew it. We want to resume contacts with special representatives in the administration of the u. S. And the Russian Federation president s office and engage and commit all the various authorities concerned there may be a result from all of these efforts and we hope that we will be able to close this matter. We have actually bridged this whole idea of a president ial commission. It was put in place by obama but when we looked at the problems dogging the bilateral relations, we thought of looking at the independence of the organization and who could overcome the difficulties and we are looking at how we can overcome these problems above all of the problems created artificially. Secretary tillerson, did you discuss today with president putin or foreign minister lavrov sanctions or other concessions the United States may make for a change in the behavior of the russian government . And also speaking about what you just answered previously, did you present to president putin or the foreign minister specific evidence that the russian government interfered in the u. S. Election . And foreign minister lavrov, if an independent investigation finds that assad attacked his own people with chemical weapons, what will russia do . President putin says theres an effort to blame assad and plant evidence. Did you present that evidence to secretary tillerson today and would russia refuse to consider to any circumstance that results in the ousting of Bashar Al Assad . We discussed no change in the status of sanctions that have been in place with russia as a result of certain actions taken in ukraine, as you know. I think as to the question of the interference with the election, that is fairly well established and i think that has been spoken to on the hill as well with the congress and it is a serious issue. Its one that we know is a serious enough to attract additional sanctions. And so we are mindful of the seriousness of that particular interference in our elections and im sure that russia is mindful of it as well. Well, the state secretary did not threaten me with sanctions, did not threaten me with anything. Frankly, we spoke about the items on our agenda, including whether problems and in fact on the majority of them there are problems and what will happen if the investigation will demonstrate the involvement of the syrian leadership and the chemical attacks. I believe that question is hypothetical. We dont want to try and guess because there has been a lot of historical looking at the tea leaves and coming to the conclusion that bombings should take place. And after the u. S. Missile strike, there was a lot of talk of that. We do not wish to speculate about these very serious matters, the use of chemical weapons, the use or attempts to orchestrate things. We want to establish the truth, the full truth in line with the principles of u. S. And russian laws, the laws of any normal civilized country, the presumption of innocence must reign supreme and i just told you, our instructions to the ocw in the hague, if people put the brakes on, we shall protest. As far as the argument that the u. S. Has inconvertible evidence that we intervened in the u. S. President ial campaign, then i have to say once again that not a single fact has been confirmed who saw those facts. We dont know. Nobody has shown us anything. And we have said to them, show us the evidence for these very slanderous attacks. I know that there are numerous c political or extra political ambitions. That is not the issue. Let us look at that, give us evidence and we will respond. Translator good evening. Id like to ask a question to both our ministers. The Korean Peninsula, the americans have sent a whole Naval Company did you talk about that in your negotiations and the dangers to the particular region . And does it mean that america has some kind of plans for a military Campaign Around the Korean Peninsula . The Carl Vinson Strike group is routinely in the Pacific Ocean and its movements in the pacific are made in a way that is planned by the military planners. There is no particular objective in its current course. The vinson sells up and down the pacific routinely. I would not read anything into the carl vinsons current locations. I would repeat that we, amongst other many questions that discuss the situation in the Korean Peninsula and as far as i remember, we covered all the substantive issues connected with it and we insisted that this situation would only be settled by peaceful means and the denuclearization in the peninsula and there are participants in what used to be called the process and we have a couple of ideas about that. Our trainees and colleagues and we have to unite together and apply exclusively peaceful means. And last question to the american side. Thank you very much. Mr. Secretary, before these meetings, you said you believed russia was either incompetent or complicit in these chemical weapons attacks. After your extensive meeting with both Vladimir Putin and Sergey Lavrov, do you know which one that is and what concrete thing can be done to rebuild that lack of trust . And minister lavrov, if i could indulge you to answer in english, if you would, sir, President Trump has called Bashar Al Assad an animal. This is the leader your government continues to back. Can you tell us how long russia will be willing to risk the lives of its soldiers and spend its money to protect him . With respect to russias complicity or knowledge of the chemical weapons attack, we have no Firm Information to indicate that there was any involvement by russia, Russian Forces into this attack. What we do know, and we have very firm and high confidence in our conclusions that the attack was planned and carried out by the Regime Forces at the direction of Bashar Al Assad. Translator i can repeat once again that as with the Russian Hackers, socalled, and the instance in syria, we would very much like, through some kind of proper arguments to receive evidence of hacks and so far we have none. Id like to say once again in syria we are working at the request of the legitimate government of a member country of the United Nations and we are against any kind of sanctions initiated by this council of the United Nations and we are combatting terrorism. We want to make sure that isil and the news al nusra forces do get ahold of and they did not actually deal with the mission and that was before the appearance of the Russian Air Force in the country. The American Coalition struck only certain positions of isil but al nusra was always spared and we have a very persistent suspicion that nusra is still being spared so to trigger plan b and try to overturn the regime of assad. I have already mentioned that we have noticed that in iraq and libya and this is due to the pref lens of people who somebody wanted to do that and as far as crimes committed in syria, we will be eager to sort that out and i think that there have to be priorities and the priorities from which youve heard from washington to the effect that the destruction of isil is priority number one. And john kerry and spicer have already said that it is possible to get rid of 50i67isil and kers said that its much more important to deal with isil than assads regime. So i think we think in very like manner here. The Common Threat is absolutely obvious. If it is possible to overcome isil without reversing the regime, then having reversed or turned the regime, it may well be that we will lose the fight against isil. So i think that what we need to do is to use commonsense and fewer emotions. On that, we complete this press conference. Thank you very much. The Russian Foreign minister Sergey Lavrov and secretary tillerson wrapping up their joint statements and News Conference underscoring the very, very serious differences between those two countries. Tillerson saying the u. S. russian relationship is at a low point, his words, at a low point. He adds there is a low level of trust between our two countries. He says this kind of situation should not continue given the fact these are the two Major Nuclear powers in the world. The u. S. Cannot have this kind of relationship. Lots to assess. Many issues came up. The differences very, very serious. I want to first bring in our chief International Correspondent christ yiane amanpour. Thats right, wolf. It was a farreaching press conference. But tillerson started talking about the distrust and low point in our relations. The good news, if you want to look at it like that, lavrov confirmed that president putin said that they would reestablish their deconfliction which allows operations in and over the skies of syria without running into each other deliberately, provocatively or anything such as that. That seems to be taken care of. Lau lavrov says we have instructed channels to have people who can talk to each other. He said without emotion. You know, to take care of any issues that arise before they become big and