Rex Tillerson had built a rapport with President Putin over deals worth tens of billions of dollars when chief executive of the oil giant ExxonMobil Max Rossi/ReutersRex Tillerson, who travels to Moscow today for what promises to be a tense meeting, warned last night that the Trump administration would “hold to account” regimes that commit war crimes against civilians. The US secretary of state, speaking at a site in Tuscany where the Nazis murdered hundreds, vowed that “this place will be an inspiration for our action”. The remarks came as a senior US official said that Washington was increasingly confident that Russia knew in advance of Syria’s chemical weapons attack last week. In both Moscow and Washington analysts were scrambling to untangle the guiding principles of President Trump’s foreign policy after a US cruise missile strike against the Assad regime, an ally of the Kremlin, confounded expectations that the president would…

Source: The Times April 10, 2017 23:00 UTC