Tillerson Says U.S. Will Punish ‘Crimes Against the Innocents’ Anywhere

http://www.nytimes.com/2017/04/10/world/europe/rex-tillerson-russia-syria.html

Version 0 of 1.

LUCCA, Italy — Days after President Trump bombed Syria in response to a chemical attack that killed children, Secretary of State Rex W. Tillerson said on Monday that the United States would punish those “who commit crimes against the innocents anywhere in the world.”

The declaration, given at a memorial to a Nazi massacre that killed many children, was among the first efforts by a top official to describe what seems to be a new Trump administration doctrine that encompasses instinctual and emotional responses to catastrophic world events.

Mr. Tillerson’s statement also seemed bound to intensify a growing rift between the Trump administration and Russia, where Mr. Tillerson is headed on Tuesday to confront Russia’s foreign minister, Sergey V. Lavrov, over the countries’ differences in Syria.

There had been some hope that Mr. Tillerson would meet President Vladimir V. Putin. But Russia announced on Monday that Mr. Putin would be unavailable — more signs of the Kremlin’s growing displeasure. Hopes in Russia for an enduring thaw in relations between the two countries, fed by Mr. Trump’s oddly positive comments about Mr. Putin during the campaign, have largely ended.

European countries, which had been deeply uneasy with the Trump administration’s more transactional approach to foreign policy and its potential willingness to forgive Mr. Putin’s annexation of Crimea and continued meddling in Ukraine, welcomed the strike on Syria and Mr. Tillerson’s reference to humanitarian issues in guiding strategy.

“There is overwhelming support in what the U.S. did,” Britain’s foreign secretary, Boris Johnson, said on Monday, “signaling that we will not tolerate the barbaric use of chemical weapons.”

Foreign ministers from France and Italy have made similar remarks in recent days, with Angelino Alfano of Italy saying that last week’s American military strike contributed to a “renewed harmony” between the United States and Europe.

Still, over the weekend, Mr. Tillerson made clear that the United States’ strategic distancing in Syria, which largely involves staying out of the country’s civil war, remained in force.

“We’re asking and calling on Bashar al-Assad to cease the use of these weapons,” Mr. Tillerson said on ABC News’s “This Week,” referring to the Syrian president and his chemical weapons. “Other than that, there is no change to our military posture.”

Mr. Tillerson was in Italy on Monday for a Group of 7 meeting of foreign ministers. The gathering is intended to set the stage for the G-7 leaders’ summit meeting in Taormina, Italy, at the end of May, which Mr. Trump has announced he will attend in what is likely to be his first foreign trip as president.

As a candidate and private citizen, Mr. Trump espoused a transactional approach to foreign affairs that put the economic interests of the United States above all other considerations, including humanitarian ones.

“I’m not, and I don’t want to be, the president of the world,” Mr. Trump said last week just hours after the Syrian government dropped sarin gas on Khan Sheikhoun in the rebel-held territory of Idlib Province. “I’m the president of the United States. And from now on, it’s going to be America first.”

But days later, the pictures of women and children gasping for breath and foaming at the mouth as they fought the effects of the brutal nerve agent affected Mr. Trump deeply, leading him to order American warships to fire 59 cruise missiles at the Syrian air base from which United States military officials believe the chemical attack originated.

To emphasize the shift from Mr. Trump’s focus on economic nationalism to a foreign policy at least partly defined by humanitarian values, Mr. Tillerson belatedly decided to add to his itinerary here a visit to the memorial at Sant’Anna di Stazzema, a village near Lucca where 560 villagers, including children, were massacred by Nazis during World War II.

Joining Mr. Tillerson at the memorial were Mr. Alfano; Federica Mogherini, European Union foreign policy chief; and Susanne Wasum-Rainer, the German ambassador to Italy.

After the blaring of trumpets and the laying of a wreath at the memorial, Mr. Tillerson approached a small news media contingent to make a three-sentence declaration whose second sentence was: “We rededicate ourselves to holding to account any and all who commit crimes against the innocents anywhere in the world.”

Mr. Tillerson has said little publicly during his tenure as secretary of state so far, and even his counterparts at summit meetings have said that he was unusually silent. But since the weekend events in Syria, he has been uncharacteristically talkative and assertive. One possible reason for his increasing confidence is the rising influence within the White House of Jared Kushner, the president’s son-in-law and senior adviser, whom Mr. Tillerson has taken pains to charm.

On Sunday, Mr. Tillerson called Russia “incompetent” for allowing Syria to hold on to chemical weapons, and he accused Russia of trying to influence elections in Europe using the same methods it employed in the United States.

Mr. Johnson, the British foreign secretary, also said that Europe supported the Trump administration’s increasingly hard line on Russia, saying that Mr. Putin was “toxifying the reputation of Russia with his continuous association with a guy that has flagrantly poisoned his own people.”

One measure of how much Mr. Trump’s airstrike in Syria has upended things in Europe was an announcement on Monday morning by the Italians that they had added an “extraordinary meeting” early Tuesday about Syria that would include the foreign ministers from Turkey, Saudi Arabia, Jordan, Qatar and the United Arab Emirates — all countries deeply opposed to the Assad government and to Russia’s robust support of the Syrian leader.

The topic of defeating the Islamic State, which is largely based in Syria, was already on the agenda here.