Putin-Trump meeting possible only after work done at expert level brings results - Peskov

ST. PETERSBURG. June 20 (Interfax) - A meeting of Russian President Vladimir Putin with his U.S. counterpart Donald Trump will be possible only after experts do their homework, Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov said.

"The presidents regularly speak on the phone, and this is truly substantive and constructive communication," Peskov told journalists.

"Yet again, the settlement process is so complex and has so many nuances that homework must be done first at the expert level. Once the results of this homework are formalized, we will be able to speak about a summit," he said.

Peskov said that the Kremlin sees nothing dramatic about the U.S. decision to delay consultations on eradicating irritants in bilateral relations.

"No coherent explanations have been given but there are lots of reasons to wish [to delay the consultations]. We do not view this as something odd or dramatic," Peskov told the press on Friday in response to a question on whether Washington had said why the meeting was delayed.

"We are hoping to agree on the new dates of the meeting in the foreseeable future because it is necessary," Peskov said.

Moscow and Washington have different approaches to the sequence of actions in normalizing bilateral relations and resolving the Ukraine conflict, he said.

"Some U.S. diplomats believe that the process of cleaning up the pile of irritants and the Ukrainian settlement process should be linked directly. In turn, we believe that normalizing relations and getting rid of the irritants would help the soonest settlement," Peskov said.