Turkish Foreign Minister Mevlut Cavusoglu announced Wednesday that the United States had offered to set up what he described as a joint working group on US sanctions on Turkey over its acquisition of a Russian-made missile battery system, the state-run Anadolu news agency reported.

Speaking a day after his meeting with Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov in Sochi, Cavusoglu said the initial proposal had come from Ankara. “Now the proposal came from the United States. As we naturally favor dialogue, we said yes, and negotiations began at the level of experts,” he said, according to Anadolu. Cavusoglu did not specify when the group first met, nor who was participating in it.

A State Department spokesperson, however, denied the existence of any new working group, telling Al-Monitor in reference to the Countering America’s Adversaries Through Sanctions Act, “We understand that the Turkish Ministry of Foreign Affairs has clarified the minister's remarks. There is no working group regarding CAATSA sanctions or to ‘study’ the threat posed by the S-400 system to the F-35. There are routine working-level consultations regarding the impact of the sanctions on existing military-to-military cooperation.”

The spokesperson poured more cold water by saying, “We remain committed to the full implementation of sanctions as announced by Secretary [of State Mike] Pompeo.”