LAUSANNE: US Secretary of State John Kerry and Russia's foreign minister Sergei Lavrov held face-to-face talks Friday for the first time since Washington halted their bilateral push for peace in Syria.

The pair met in a Lausanne hotel shortly before they were to take part in a broader meeting with regional players to relaunch international efforts to end the Syrian war, officials said.

Copyright AFP (Agence France-Presse), 2016