MOSCOW (Pakistan Point News / Sputnik - 04th May, 2019) The possible meeting between Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov and US Secretary of State Mike Pompeo in Finland next week will be a good opportunity to discuss the most pressing issues, though hardly likely to entail significant improvements, while the two diplomats may also lay the ground for a summit between Russian President Vladimir Putin and his US counterpart Donald Trump, experts told Sputnik.
A senior State Department official said on Thursday that Pompeo and Lavrov may meet on the sidelines of the Arctic Council Ministerial Meeting on May 6 in the city of Rovaniemi. The two are likely to discuss the situation in Ukraine and Venezuela, according to the official. Russian Deputy Foreign Minister Sergey Ryabkov told Sputnik on Friday that, while focusing on the recent developments in Venezuela, Lavrov and Pompeo will also touch upon the situation in Syria.
Despite having frequent phone calls, the two top diplomats had a bilateral meeting only once, also in Finland � prior to the first summit between Putin and Trump in July last year.
The very fact of the meeting between the two top diplomats is rather positive given the very limited direct diplomatic contacts between the two countries, Earl Rasmussen, the executive vice president of the Eurasia Center, told Sputnik.
"Dialogue regardless of the outcome is good and provided a means to directly discuss perspectives and potentially arrive at a negotiated settlement ... Russia has repeatedly reached out to the US and has continued to be open for dialogue. However, the current US Foreign Policy team has their own, albeit misguided, objectives. Hence, the direct communications has likely been limited," Rasmussen noted.
Tiberio Graziani, the chairman of Vision & Global Trends, International Institute for Global Analyses, agreed in his comments to Sputnik, noting that it was in the interest of both Moscow and Washington to "restore a climate of mutual trust in diplomatic relations."
He noted that the meeting between Lavrov and Pompeo, despite numerous attempts to arrange it, had been repeatedly postponed due to "clash between the Trump Administration and the Deep State" and waiting for the release of the much-anticipated Special Counsel Robert Mueller's report on alleged Russian election interference.
"Most probably, the delay of this meeting is due, in my opinion, to the ongoing clash between the Trump Administration and the Deep State. In fact, the Mueller report was at stake," Graziani said.
The expert noted that the forthcoming meeting between the two top diplomats could pave the way for the second meeting between the Russian and US presidents.
"The meeting between Pompeo and Lavrov is also built to explore the opportunity of a new summit between the two Presidents," he said.
Rasmussen also expressed hope that the Lavrov-Pompeo talks may help facilitate the next summit between the Russian and US leaders, but noted that such efforts may face opposition in Washington.
"The political-media games being played in the US seem to hinder many options and delay progress that would otherwise occur," the expert said.
Lavrov and Pompeo are likely to have a rather "difficult" and heated discussions about Venezuela, which would be the main focus of their meeting, given their opposing views on whom to recognize as legitimate leader of the country and the US threats to go for a military option to address the crisis, according to Graziani.
The Latin American country has been in a turmoil since January, when Venezuelan opposition leader Juan Guaido declared himself Venezuela's interim president in a bid to challenge legitimate President Nicolas Maduro's reelection. Guaido's bid was immediately backed by the United States, which has long been strangling Caracas with economic sanctions. Russia, on the other hand, along with China and a number of other countries, has repeatedly voiced its support for Maduro as the only legitimate president of Venezuela.
The expert noted that even the news about the possible Lavrov-Pompeo meeting itself had a positive effect on the Venezuelan crisis.
"The meeting - if it is held - will be an opportunity to try to bring the serious institutional crisis that has been affecting the life of the Venezuelan people for too long now, within the political dialectic," Graziani said.
Rasmussen, however, gave a rather pessimistic forecast for the prospects of such discussions, noting that the US secretary of state was likely to reiterate the same demands for ousting Maduro.
"Mr. Pompeo will likely echo again, albeit in a more formal setting, the US objectives for yet another regime change, which from my perspective are against international law and norms of behavior. The US blatant and overt actions to overthrow an elected and internationally recognized government, have publicly put themselves in a diplomatically very embarrassing situation that leaves little room for compromise," he said.
Dwelling on possible ways to improve the situation in the crisis-hit Latin American country, the expert noted that direct military interference would be a "political suicide" for the US administration, adding there was room for a settlement through fresh elections.
"New elections may be a hard sell to the Venezuelans though, since despite much of the opposition boycotting the last Presidential Election, President Maduro gained a higher percentage support from Venezuelan voters than many of the current western world 'leaders,'" he said.
Tensions in Venezuela reached a new peak earlier this week after the Venezuelan opposition initiated a fresh coup attempt to ouster Maduro, which failed.
Ukraine has also been named by both sides as one of priority issues on the agenda of possible talks. According to Graziani, Russia and the United States may find common grounds toward solving the Ukrainian crisis, given the change of leadership in the Eastern European country after the presidential elections last months, which resulted in the landslide victory of Volodymyr Zelenskiy.
"I think that Pompeo and Lavrov are willing, even in this case, to find a point of agreement, taking advantage of the recent change of the presidency occurred in Kiev," the expert said.
Graziani noted, however, that the gap between the Kremlin and the White House on the Ukrainian question was "still very large."
"We will also have to wait for the outcome of the next European elections and, therefore, the orientation of the new EU Parliament," he added.
Rasmussen underlined the importance of ending the conflict in Ukraine and improving Ukraine-Russia relations for the regional stability and the Ukrainian economy, but was rather skeptical in his assessment of the potential of such endeavors.
"Currently, I do not see any immediate improvement. Ukraine is a mere chess piece, which is unfortunate for the Ukrainian people," he said.
According to Rasmussen, the two senior diplomats are also likely to address other issues of mutual interest, which include the situation on the Korean Peninsula, in particular in the light of the April 25 summit between Putin and North Korean leader Kim Jong Un that was also attended by Lavrov.
"I am sure there will be some positive movement in areas of mutual interest and perhaps doubling down or more heated discussions on others," he said.
Andrej Hunko, a member of the German Bundestag for The Left (Die Linke) party, told Sputnik that he expected the Nord Stream 2 gas pipeline and the US opposition to it also to be on the agenda of the Lavrov-Pompeo talks, especially in the light of the US ambassador to Germany's threats of sanctions against German companies participating in the project.
"I expect the Russian foreign minister to protest against the US sanctions threats," Hunko said.
The German lawmaker also expressed his strong dissatisfaction with the remarks made by US Ambassador Richard Grenell.
"For me, the threats of the American ambassador in Germany, Grenell, or those of his colleague in Brussels, [Gordon] Sondland, are unacceptable. The American government is not concerned with European economic security, but only with its own profits from the sale of liquefied gas. As is well known, LNG is a much worse alternative to Russian natural gas from a climate policy perspective. I see the American process simply as blackmail," Hunko stressed.
Nord Stream 2 is a joint venture of the Russian energy giant Gazprom and five European companies. The pipeline is projected to deliver 55 billion cubic meters (1.9 trillion cubic feet) of Russian natural gas annually to the countries in the European Union.
The United States has expressed opposition to the Nord Stream 2 project on numerous occasions, claiming the pipeline was Russia's means of exerting pressure on the European Union. The Russian authorities have said the US attitude toward the Nord Stream 2 project could be explained by the desire to promote Washington's economic and energy interests in Europe and rejected the idea that the project might be political in nature.
