The Cable

The Cable goes inside the foreign policy machine, from Foggy Bottom to Turtle Bay, the White House to Embassy Row.

Briefing Skipper: Marrakesh express

In which we scour the transcript of the State Department’s daily presser so you don’t have to. Here are the highlights of yesterday’s briefing by Department Spokesman Ian Kelly: Secretary of State Hillary Clinton will go to Marrakesh, Morocco, to attend the Forum for the Future on Nov. 2 and 3, apparently just before she ...

In which we scour the transcript of the State Department's daily presser so you don't have to. Here are the highlights of yesterday's briefing by Department Spokesman Ian Kelly:

In which we scour the transcript of the State Department’s daily presser so you don’t have to. Here are the highlights of yesterday’s briefing by Department Spokesman Ian Kelly:

  • Secretary of State Hillary Clinton will go to Marrakesh, Morocco, to attend the Forum for the Future on Nov. 2 and 3, apparently just before she travels to Berlin for the 20th anniversary of the fall of the Berlin Wall. She met Wednesday with British shadow secretary of State for Foreign and Commonwealth Affairs William Hague.
  • The U.S. will endorse the draft agreement on Iranian uranium transfers to third countries by Friday, said Kelly, after everybody in the U.S. government has had a chance to sign off.
  • American forces are committed to providing security for the Nov. 7 runoff presidential elections in Afghanistan, which the U.S. supports. No opinion on a potential power sharing agreement between Afghan President Hamid Karzai and challenger Abdullah Abdullah. And don’t worry, Richard Holbrooke is still hard at work in Washington leading the AfPak strategy review.
  • The State Department welcomes Turkish efforts to engage the Kurdish PKK, which the U.S. still considers a terrorist group. "Our Iraq policy is separate from this issue," Kelly said.
  • State fired civil service appointee Richard Lopez Razo, who was arrested this week for taking tens of thousands of dollars in bribes and kickbacks related to reconstruction projects in Iraq.

Josh Rogin covers national security and foreign policy and writes the daily Web column The Cable. His column appears bi-weekly in the print edition of The Washington Post. He can be reached for comments or tips at josh.rogin@foreignpolicy.com.

Previously, Josh covered defense and foreign policy as a staff writer for Congressional Quarterly, writing extensively on Iraq, Afghanistan, Guantánamo Bay, U.S.-Asia relations, defense budgeting and appropriations, and the defense lobbying and contracting industries. Prior to that, he covered military modernization, cyber warfare, space, and missile defense for Federal Computer Week Magazine. He has also served as Pentagon Staff Reporter for the Asahi Shimbun, Japan's leading daily newspaper, in its Washington, D.C., bureau, where he reported on U.S.-Japan relations, Chinese military modernization, the North Korean nuclear crisis, and more.

A graduate of George Washington University's Elliott School of International Affairs, Josh lived in Yokohama, Japan, and studied at Tokyo's Sophia University. He speaks conversational Japanese and has reported from the region. He has also worked at the House International Relations Committee, the Embassy of Japan, and the Brookings Institution.

Josh's reporting has been featured on CNN, MSNBC, C-Span, CBS, ABC, NPR, WTOP, and several other outlets. He was a 2008-2009 National Press Foundation's Paul Miller Washington Reporting Fellow, 2009 military reporting fellow with the Knight Center for Specialized Journalism and the 2011 recipient of the InterAction Award for Excellence in International Reporting. He hails from Philadelphia and lives in Washington, D.C. Twitter: @joshrogin

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