US is not giving up on settling the conflict in Ukraine, says Rubio

Washington, May 2 (IANS) Marco Rubio, US Secretary of State and acting National Security Advisor, said that the US does not give up on the matter of settling the conflict in Ukraine but acknowledges that there are plenty of more important problems across the globe.

“We're not going to give up on it. But there does come a point when the President of the US, Donald Trump has to decide how much more time at the highest levels of our government you dedicate to it.

"Even more important issues are going on around the world, not that a war in Ukraine is not important, but I would say what's happening with China is more important in the long term. Iran’s nuclear ambition and all these other things that we have going on,” he said in an interview with Fox News.

Rubio said that Washington understands the positions of Moscow and Kyiv. “They're closer, but they're still far apart. And it's going to take a real breakthrough here very soon to make this possible, or I think the President is going to have to make a decision about how much more time we're going to dedicate to this,” the official added.

Earlier this week, Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov held a telephone conversation with Rubio, highlighting the importance of strengthening conditions to launch talks on achieving peace in Ukraine, the Russian Foreign Ministry said in a statement.

“The focus was on the Ukraine crisis. As a follow-up to the April 25 conversation between Russian President Vladimir Putin and US Special Presidential Envoy Steve Witkoff, the foreign minister and the secretary of state emphasised the importance of consolidating the emerging prerequisites for launching talks in order to agree on a reliable path to long-term sustainable peace,” the statement read.

“The parties continued a fruitful exchange of views on the key aspects of Russia-US political dialogue, which has significantly intensified recently,” the statement added.

Kremlin Spokesman Dmitry Peskov said earlier that President Putin was ready to resume negotiations with Ukraine without preconditions.

Furthermore, according to Russian Presidential Aide Yury Ushakov, the conversation between Putin and Witkoff on April 25 which lasted three hours, was “constructive and quite useful.”

--IANS

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