FROM EIR DAILY ALERT

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Pompeo Says Bolton Russia Trip Should Set Up Trump-Putin Summit

June 23, 2018 (EIRNS)—U.S. Secretary of State Mike Pompeo told MSNBC reporter Hugh Hewitt on June 22 that National Security Advisor John Bolton is expected to leave for Moscow on June 24 or 25, and would be

“meeting with his counterpart [Nikolai Patrushev]. And I think it’s likely President Trump will be meeting with his counterpart [Russian President Vladimir Putin] in the not too distant future following that meeting,”

Pompeo said.

Pompeo said that when he was CIA director he had had “a chance” to work with Russia on common interests, such as in counterterrorism,

“where the two nations had shared interests. And so we are having conversations with our Russian counterparts, trying to find places where we have overlapping interests, but protecting American interests we do not.”

He said that in his conversations with Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov since he became Secretary of State, he expressed “our displeasures,” including allegations Russian interference in U.S. elections, and Russia’s “behaviors” in Ukraine and Syria. But, he concluded,

“we’ll continue to work to make sure they know our interests and our concerns, and then where there’s places we can find common ground, we’ll certainly try and do that.”