US Secretary of State Rex Tillerson
is to urge Russia to stop supporting Syrian President Bashar al-Assad
after last week's chemical weapons attack.
Mr Tillerson's visit
to Moscow comes amid mounting tensions. Russia has condemned a US air
strike on a Syrian air base which came in response to the attack.
However, President Trump said the US was "not going into Syria".
Proposals for more sanctions on Russia have been rejected by G7 nations.
Mr
Tillerson will hold talks with Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov after
warning that Russia risks becoming irrelevant in the Middle East because
of its support for Mr Assad.
He also insisted Syria's president can play no part in the country's future.
However,
the BBC's Steve Rosenberg in Moscow says President Assad is Russia's
key military ally in the Middle East and Mr Tillerson may need to
rethink his belief that he can weaken Moscow's support for him.
The White House also says Russia has been trying to deflect blame for the chemical attack that killed 89 people.
US
intelligence reports say the Syrian government used chemical weapons
during air strikes on the rebel-held Syrian town of Khan Sheikhoun that
left 89 people dead.
The Turkish health ministry on Tuesday confirmed
that the nerve agent Sarin had been used.
Syria denies this and Moscow has instead blamed rebel forces, which
it says were storing chemical weapons which were hit in the raids.
The
UN Security Council is to vote on Wednesday on a draft resolution by
the US, UK and France requiring the Syrian government to co-operate with
an investigation into the chemical attack.
President Putin has also called for an independent UN investigation.
On
Tuesday he said that "fake chemical attacks" were being prepared in
other regions, designed to be blamed on the Syrian government.
The
Russian president added that the Western response to Khan Sheikhoun
reminded him of 2003, "when US envoys to the UN Security Council were
demonstrating what they said were chemical weapons found in Iraq. We
have seen it all already".
Mr Tillerson had earlier attended a G7 meeting in the Italian town of
Lucca aimed at hammering out a unified approach to Syria before he
headed to Moscow.
But divisions arose as UK Foreign Secretary
Boris Johnson proposed sanctions against Syrian and Russian military
figures over the chemical attack.
Italian Foreign Minister Angelino Alfano said ministers wanted to engage with Russia and use its leverage over Mr Assad.
But
Mr Tillerson won support over the US retaliatory strike on Syria, which
he said was necessary to prevent chemical weapons falling into the
hands of jihadist groups.
Meanwhile in an interview with Fox
Business Network to be broadcast on Wednesday, President Trump said he
had no intention of going to war in Syria.
"We are not going into
Syria," he said, adding that he had felt the need to act after the
Syrian government violated an agreement made with the Obama
administration to remove its chemical weapons.
The Syrian and Iranian foreign ministers will travel to Moscow later in the week for talks, the Russian government said.
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