Global report
1 DIPLOMACY
‘Useful’ US-Russia meeting opens crucial week of talks
US and Russian diplomats emerged on Monday from negotiations in Geneva over the fate of Ukraine, describing the talks as “useful” and “very professional” – but also stressing they had not made progress towards resolving fundamental disagreements.
The two sides largely spent the eight hours of talks presenting their points of view on the situation in Ukraine, currently hemmed in by some 100,000 Russian troops, and on European security in general.
Wendy Sherman, the deputy US secretary of state, said the issues of reciprocal limits on military exercises and missile deployments were discussed, but the US ruled out the idea of a guarantee that Ukraine would never join Nato, restating that it was the country’s sovereign right to decide.
Her Russian counterpart, Sergei Ryabkov, said the two sides had continued to clash over the agenda of future talks. While the US has sought to focus on technical arms control issues, Ryabkov described those as a secondary concern compared with the demand to limit Nato’s presence in central and eastern Europe.
Spotlight Page 17→
2 UNITED STATES
Blaze at apartment block in the Bronx leaves 1 7 dead
At least 17 people, including eight children, were killed in an apartment blaze in the Bronx in New York last Sunday, one of the worst fire disasters in
