US President Donald Trump said Sunday he wanted to work «constructively» with Russia, including on cyber security, despite confronting Vladimir Putin over alleged meddling in last year’s American elections.<\/b>
\nWASHINGTON, United States \u2014 US President Donald Trump said Sunday he wanted to work \u201cconstructively\u201d with Russia, including on cyber security, despite confronting Vladimir Putin over alleged meddling in last year\u2019s American elections.
While ruling out easing sanctions so long as the two countries remain at odds over Syria and Ukraine, Trump said it was time for US-Russia relations to move forward, even though members of his own party said he should be mulling new punishments.
Two days after his first face-to-face talks with his Russian counterpart, Trump said he confronted Putin when they met in Germany over evidence from the intelligence agencies that Moscow meddled in the US elections.
\u201cI strongly pressed President Putin twice about Russian meddling in our election, \u201d he said of Friday\u2019s meeting on the sidelines of the G20 summit in Hamburg. \u201cHe vehemently denied it. I\u2019 ve already given my opinion\u2026\u201d
But after saying that he had called out Putin over the election, Trump said they could work together on some areas, including on Syria, where he said a ceasefire which began on Sunday would \u201csave lives.\u201d
\u201cNow it is time to move forward in working constructively with Russia!\u201d
In a series of early-morning tweets on his return from Europe, Trump said he and Putin had talked about the idea of setting up what he called \u201can impenetrable cyber security unit\u201d to prevent hacking in future elections.
But senior Republican senators, including former presidential candidate John McCain, poured scorn on the idea.
Lindsey Graham, a member of the Senate\u2019s armed services committee, said on NBC that the cyber idea was \u201cnot the dumbest idea I\u2019 ve ever heard, but it\u2019s pretty close.\u201d
Voice dripping with sarcasm, McCain told a CBS interviewer that he was \u201csure that Vladimir Putin could be of enormous assistance in that effort, since he\u2019s doing the hacking.\u201d
The US and Russian sides have issued sharply conflicting accounts of Friday\u2019s meeting, with Putin saying on Saturday that Trump had been \u201csatisfied\u201d by his denials of any Russian interference in the polls.
The US president has previously equivocated over whether Russia did try to tilt the outcome of last November\u2019s election contest against Hillary Clinton in his favor, amid an investigation into whether members of Trump\u2019s campaign team actively colluded with Moscow.
So his public assessment that Russia did meddle has triggered calls to bring in more sanctions.
\u201cSo far they have not paid a single price for that, \u201d McCain said.
Moscow has warned that a program of existing sanctions, which were mainly imposed over Russia\u2019s annexation of Crimea in Ukraine, threatens their whole relationship.
Asked on Sunday whether new sanctions were in the pipeline, US Treasury Secretary Steve Mnuchin told ABC television: \u201cWe have sanctions that are already on the table and we expect to enforce those sanctions.\u201d
Mnuchin also insisted that Russia and the US could work together on cyber security.
\u201cWhat we want to make sure is that we coordinate with Russia, that we\u2019 re focused on cyber security together, that we make sure that they never interfere in any democratic elections, \u201d he said.
\u201cThis is like any other strategic alliance, whether we\u2019 re doing military exercises with our allies or anything else. This is about having capabilities to make sure we both fight cyber (crime) together, which I think is a very significant accomplishment for President Trump.\u201d
Syria has been a particular source of friction between the two countries, as Russia is a close ally of President Bashar al-Assad.
Moscow was furious when the Trump administration launched a cruise missile strike against Syrian forces in April, in retaliation for what Washington said was a chemical weapons attack by Assad\u2019s regime against civilians.
While saying sanctions were not discussed at the meeting with Putin, Trump indicated that Moscow could not expect any relief \u201cuntil the Ukrainian & Syrian problems are solved.\u201d
But while the brokering of a Syria ceasefire by the two countries \u2014 along with Jordan \u2014 means that one area of friction could be eased, the differences over Ukraine remain stark.
Speaking on a visit to Ukraine, US Secretary of State Rex Tillerson urged Russia to take action to ease the bloody separatist conflict in the country\u2019s east, which Kiev and the West believe is being fueled by Moscow.
\u201cIt is necessary for Russia to take the first step to de-escalate the situation in eastern Ukraine, \u201d Tillerson said as he made his first visit as Washington\u2019s top diplomat to Kiev.
Meanwhile, investigators on Sunday were probing possible collusion between the Trump campaign and Russia according to The New York Times.
The daily reported that son Donald Trump Jr., son-in-law Jared Kushner and then-Trump campaign chairman Paul Manafort met in New York in June 2016 with a Russian lawyer with Kremlin connections, the earliest such contact yet reported.
The younger Trump said in a statement that the meeting was to discuss the adoption of Russian children by American couples under a program Putin had suspended. Trump said he had been asked to attend, \u201cand there was no follow-up.\u201d CBB<\/p>\n

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