Summary John Kerry will head to Moscow on a diplomatic mission to try to keep Syrian peace process on track.
PARIS (AFP) - US Secretary of State John Kerry will head to Moscow on Tuesday on a delicate diplomatic mission to try to keep the fragile Syrian peace process on track.
In a sign of the complexity of the US-Russian relationship, the State Department said Kerry would meet President Vladimir Putin but the Kremlin would not confirm this.
"They will discuss ongoing efforts to achieve a political transition in Syria," US spokesman Mark Toner said on Friday on the sidelines of the UN climate summit in Paris.
But Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov said a decision about whether the Russian leader would meet Kerry could wait until after his talks with Foreign Minster Sergei Lavrov.
"John Kerry is coming here on the invitation of the Russian Ministry of Foreign Affairs. His partner in the talks will be Russia s foreign minister," Peskov said.
"We do not exclude the possibility of such a meeting when Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov and Secretary of State Kerry inform President Putin about their talks," he added.
The Russian foreign ministry said it hoped the visit, Kerry s second this year, would improve what it said were the "complicated" relations between the rival capitals.
The talks will also cover differences in the parallel Russian and US approaches to the fight against IS.
Washington accuses Moscow of using the war against the IS group as cover for a campaign to shore up Bashar al-Assad s regime in Syria against legitimate opposition movements.
The Kremlin insists its ally in Damascus has the sole right to authorise foreign military intervention against the jihadists and US bombing violates Syrian sovereignty.
And the US envoy will also bring up the ongoing stand-off in eastern Ukraine, where Moscow stands accused of supporting pro-Russian separatist rebels, Toner said.
Russia will use the opportunity to protest the economic sanctions imposed on its economy by the United States and its allies after it annexed Ukraine s Crimea region.
"The series of confrontational steps taken by Washington under the guise of the Ukrainian crisis severely hit the cooperation between our countries," the ministry said.
According to US officials, Kerry will meet Lavrov, with whom he is in regular telephone contact over the Syrian peace process, first, then the pair will go to see Putin.
The United States and Russia are the key sponsors of the international bid to mediate an end to the Syrian civil war through the International Syrian Support Group.
This 17-nation contact group had been planning to meet in New York under United Nations auspices on December 18 to push forward plans for a negotiated ceasefire.
But Moscow and Washington were awaiting the results of a meeting between Syria s splintered opposition and rebel movements before confirming the date of meeting.
The rebels met on Thursday in the Saudi Arabian capital Riyadh and announced the composition of their team to open negotiations with Assad s government.
But they also insisted that Assad must step down immediately at the start of the political transition process, which has a January 1 target date.
This insistence may be a sticking point for Assad s allies in Moscow, and Kerry confirmed Friday he was working with the Saudis to iron out some problems with the rebel plan.
Kerry said he would talk with his Saudi counterpart Foreign Minister Adel al-Jubeir.
"There are some questions and obviously a couple of, in our judgement, kinks to be worked out," he told reporters at the US climate summit in Paris on Friday.
"And I m confident that they re going to be worked out so I ll be having conversations with them during the course of today."
Russia has made it clear that it regards many of the rebel groups brought together under the Saudi initiative -- some of them hardline Islamists -- as "terrorists."
But it has not broken off contact with the Americans nor threatened to pull out of the Syrian peace process
"We continue to work together with Washington in areas where cooperation corresponds to Russian interests and maintains international security," the ministry said.
"Issues of counter-terrorism are central in this dialogue."
Kerry will arrive in Moscow overnight from Paris for a day of high-level dialogue before flying back to Washington.
