Top U.S. and Russian diplomats will attend French-sponsored talks on Lebanon in Paris on Wednesday in a bid to comprehensively discuss the spillover of the Syrian crisis, France said Monday.
However, the topic of Lebanon looks to be overshadowed by the ongoing crisis in Ukraine, Agence France Presse reported.
U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry is due to be in Paris for the meeting of the "International Support Group for Lebanon", and French Foreign Minister Laurent Fabius announced Monday that Russia's Sergei Lavrov, Kerry's counterpart, would also attend the conference.
Lavrov "will come here day after tomorrow as France is hosting a meeting on Lebanon," Fabius told RTL radio, according to AFP.
"I am meeting him on that day, the day after and possibly" for a bilateral meeting ahead of the Lebanon talks in Paris, Fabius added.
The French official's office said that he and Lavrov would also discuss the growing criss in Ukraine on the sidelines of the Lebanon meeting.
With Russia's G8 partners slamming Russia's moves in Ukraine and suspending preparations for the G8 summit in Sochi in June, the discussion of the Soviet Winter may well overshadow the discussion of Lebanon and the spillover of the Syrian crisis, according to AFP.
The "International Support Group for Lebanon" was established in 2013 with the idea it would provide financial, political and security support to the small nation as it dealt with the implications of nearly three-years-old conflict in Syria.
