London: Washington and the international community won`t recognize the outcome of Sunday`s referendum in Crimea on seceding from Ukraine, US Secretary of State John Kerry said on Friday after six hours of talks with Russia`s foreign minister.
His comments came after Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov acknowledged there was no "common vision" between the two nations over the crisis in Ukraine.
The vote in Crimea Ukraine`s strategic Black Sea peninsula of 2 million people is widely expected to back secession and possibly lead to annexation with Russia at some point. The new government in Kiev believes the vote is illegal, but Moscow says it does not recognize the new government as legitimate.
The US and the 28-nation European Union say the Crimean vote violates Ukraine`s constitution and international law. If Crimea votes to secede, the US and the EU plan to slap sanctions as early as Monday on Russian officials and businesses accused of escalating the crisis and undermining Ukraine`s new government.
Kerry said on Friday he had put forward several ideas on how to respect Ukraine`s sovereignty and address Russian concerns in the talks in London, but that Lavrov made clear that Russian President Vladimir Putin would not take any decisions until after Sunday`s vote.
Lavrov on Friday reaffirmed that Russia will "respect the results of the referendum" in Crimea and said sanctions would harm relations.
"Our partners also realize that sanctions are counterproductive," he said.
European and US leaders have repeatedly urged Moscow to pull back its troops in Crimea and stop encouraging local militias there who are hyping the vote as a choice between re-establishing generations of ties with Russia or returning to echoes of fascism from Ukraine`s World War II era, when some residents cooperated with Nazi occupiers.
The showdown between Russia and the West has been cast as a struggle for the future of Ukraine, a country with a size and population similar to France. Much of western Ukraine favors ties with the EU, while many in eastern Ukraine have closer economic and traditional ties to Russia. Putin has worked for months to press Ukraine back into Russia`s political and economic orbit.
While the Russian Foreign Ministry engaged in more sabre-rattling on Friday by warning that it reserves the right to intervene in eastern Ukraine in defense of ethnic Russians who it claims are under threat, Lavrov denied any plans to send troops there.
