Russian, U.S. Diplomats Discuss Georgia

Grigory Karasin, Russia’s deputy foreign minister and Philip Gordon, the U.S. assistant secretary of state for European and Eurasian affairs, met in Moscow on March 17 and, among other issues, also discussed Georgia, the Russian Foreign Ministry said on Thursday.

Ukraine, Belarus and Moldova, as well as Nagorno-Karabakh conflict were other topics of discussions, it said.

Gordon accompanies U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton on her visit to Moscow. There was no mentioning of Georgia at a joint news conference after talks between Clinton and her Russian counterpart Sergey Lavrov on March 18, which was dominated by new nuclear disarmament deal, Middle East and Afghanistan.

In her opening remarks during the press conference, Clinton, however, said, without going into details, that there were differences in bilateral relations. "We know that. We’ve raised them and we have had very frank conversations about them. But they are raised within the context of an overall approach that looks for ways to narrow the areas of difference," she said.

The Secretary of State has stated for number of times previously that Georgia was among those issues on which the two countries had differences.

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