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1st Ld: "No secrets were passed by Trump to me": Lavrov

Xinhua, May 18, 2017 Adjust font size:

Russia's Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov on Thursday dismissed United States media reports that U.S. President Donald Trump passed to him classified information when they met recently in the White House.

He said during a working visit to Cyprus that what Trump actually told him was that Islamic Sate terrorists were capable of staffing untraceable explosives into laptops.

"As far as I can recall, maybe one month or two months before, the Trump administration had an official ban on laptops on airlines from seven Middle Eastern countries... So if you are talking about that, I see no secret here," Lavrov told reporters in Nicosia during a joint news conference with Cypriot Foreign Minister Ioannis Kasoulides.

Lavrov's comments on the issue were the first since his meeting with Trump and after allegations were made by two U.S. officials on May 15 that the American President had divulged to Lavrov secrets about planned Islamic State operations.

Lavrov arrived in Nicosia on Thursday to attend a foreign ministers' meeting of the Council of Europe at the end of Cyprus's presidency this month. Endit