Briefing Skipper: Honduras, Hoh, Iran, General Xu
In which we scour the transcript of the State Department’s daily presser so you don’t have to. Here are the highlights of today’s briefing by Department Spokesman Ian Kelly: The administration is reversing its policy of freezing out the de facto regime in Honduras. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton spoke with both current leader Roberto ...
In which we scour the transcript of the State Department’s daily presser so you don’t have to. Here are the highlights of today’s briefing by Department Spokesman Ian Kelly:
- The administration is reversing its policy of freezing out the de facto regime in Honduras. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton spoke with both current leader Roberto Micheletti and ousted President Manuel Zelaya and a full administration team will travel to Tegucigalpa next week.
- The State Department respects the right of employee and former Marine Corps Captain Mathew Hoh to resign in protest of the war in Afghanistan. Hoh was a political officer on a Provincial Reconstruction Team who signed on for a limited deployment in March. "I would draw a distinction between his situation and somebody who had been in the Foreign Service and had a stake in the Foreign Service for 20 years or more," Kelly said.
- The U.S. is still waiting for an official response from Iran on the agreement to transfer low enriched uranium to a third country, despite reports that Iran has agreed in principle to the deal but wants some changes, including shipping out the material in stages. No schedule on when the next P5+1 meeting will be.
- There has been "no formal bilateral meeting" between the U.S. and North Korea despite that representatives from both sides have "had plenty of opportunities to talk on the margins of it," Kelly said. No readout of the non-meeting meetings.
- Chinese General Xu Caihou met with Defense Secretary Robert M. Gates and Deputy Secretary of State James Steinberg today. No word on whether he showed them his new video.
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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