REX TILLERSON/RUSSIA/STATE: “U.S. Secretary of State Rex Tillerson told Russia’s foreign minister that the U.S. would respond to that country’s recent expulsion of American diplomats by Sept. 1 and that the nations must confront the distrust created by Moscow’s meddling in the U.S. presidential election.
Mr. Tillerson, speaking with journalists Monday at an Asian regional security conference in the Philippines, said that he told his Russian counterpart in a meeting a day earlier that he wanted Russia to ‘understand just how serious this incident had been and how seriously it had damaged the relationship between…the American people and the Russian people.’
He told Russia that ‘We simply have to find some way to deal with that,’ Mr. Tillerson said.
Mr. Tillerson and Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov got together Sunday for an hour in a much-anticipated meeting on the sidelines of the conference following a spell of increasing acrimony over sanctions against Russia adopted by the U.S. Congress and reluctantly signed into law by President Donald Trump.”
-Ben Otto, “U.S., Russia Must ‘Deal With’ Conflict, Tillerson Says,” The Wall Street Journal online, Aug. 7, 2017 05:09am