State Department confirms Kerry to meet with Lavrov next week

The State Department confirmed Thursday that John Kerry will meet with his Russian counterpart during his first trip as secretary of State next week after failing to reach him by phone for several days.

Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov is scheduled to meet Kerry on Tuesday in Berlin, the secretary's second stop on his nine-nation tour. The news comes after Kerry's relations with Russia got off to a rough start when Lavrov failed to call him back for five days following North Korea's nuclear test, which Russia blamed on Lavrov's travel to Africa.

The two top diplomats have different priorities for their conversation. 

Kerry is likely to bring up Russia's continued support for Syrian President Bashar Assad and probe Russia's appetite for further cuts in the two countries' nuclear arsenals. Russia however wants their talk to focus on the rights of adopted Russian children, Russia Today reports, following the death of another adopted Russian child, in New Mexico, last month; Russia recently banned further adoptions by American couples, sparking outrage on Capitol Hill.

“I spoke with Sergei Lavrov just before coming here, and he asked me to stress that this issue, primarily the death of Maxim Kuzmin, will be among the key issues on the agenda of his negotiations with Kerry scheduled for next week,” Russian Human Rights Commissioner Konstantin Dolgov told Russian lawmakers on Thursday.

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