U.S. Secretary of State Rex Tillerson spoke by phone with Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov on Wednesday about a poison gas attack in Syria that the United States has blamed on the Russia-backed Syrian government, a senior State Department official said on Thursday. 


The discussion came days before Tillerson goes to Moscow for talks with Russian officials expected to focus on the Syrian civil war and Russia's backing of Syrian President Bashar al-Assad. 


"We sought the Russian analysis or readout of what they thought had happened" in the poison gas attack, the official said on condition of anonymity

Source: NNA