The US and Russia both said on Thursday they had made progress towards normalising the work of their diplomatic missions, while the US said it was still concerned about a Russian policy prohibiting the employment of local staff, APA reports citing Reuters.
The meeting of the US and Russian delegations in Istanbul followed initial talks in February, after the war in Ukraine triggered the biggest confrontation between Moscow and the West since the depths of the Cold War.
The talks were led by Deputy Assistant Secretary of State for Russia and Central Europe Sonata Coulter and Russia's new ambassador to Washington, Alexander Darchiev.
The US delegation spent some six hours at the Russian consulate building in central Istanbul for the talks, a Reuters witness said. A State Department spokesperson had said on Tuesday that Ukraine was not on the agenda.
The State Department said Thursday's talks continued "the constructive approach" established in the February 27 meeting.
"The United States reiterated its concerns about the Russian Federation's policy prohibiting the employment of local staff," the statement said.
It said this was the key impediment to maintaining stable and sustainable staffing levels at the US Embassy in Moscow.
Russia's ambassador to the US said that the talks had made it possible to make progress in normalising the two countries' diplomatic missions, Russian state news agency TASS reported.
"The latest round of bilateral expert consultations on normalising the work of the diplomatic missions of Russia and the United States took place in a positive atmosphere and allowed us to move forward in resolving this task set by the presidents of the two countries," TASS cited Darchiev as saying.
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