Briefing skipper: Haiti, START, Mitchell, South Korea
In which we scour the transcript of the State Department’s daily presser so you don’t have to. Here are the highlights of Wednesday’s briefing by State Department spokesman P.J. Crowley: As of Wednesday afternoon, there 43 urban search and rescue teams in Haiti, 122 lives have been saved, 43 of them by the 6 U.S. ...
In which we scour the transcript of the State Department’s daily presser so you don’t have to. Here are the highlights of Wednesday’s briefing by State Department spokesman P.J. Crowley:
- As of Wednesday afternoon, there 43 urban search and rescue teams in Haiti, 122 lives have been saved, 43 of them by the 6 U.S. teams. Over 6,000 Americans have been evacuated from Haiti and the American death toll stands at 33, including State Department official Victoria DeLong. 146 orphaned children have come to the U.S.
- Of the 153 flights that landed in Haiti yesterday, 115 were non-military and 38 were from the Defense Department, Crowley said, pushing back against allegations that the military flights were crowding out humanitarian aid missions. A second airport at Jacmel could open shortly.
- The UN mission in Haiti is back to about 80 percent of its pre-earthquake strength and the Haitian police are at about 50 percent staffing, Crowley reported. 3 U.S. officials remain missing.
- Crowley said the U.S. and the Haitian government is working together to determine which planes get to land and when, based on whatever the most immediate needs are. "Once we set the priorities, then we apply those priorities to, you know, the array of people who are applying for slots to be able to fly in," he said.
- As National Security Advisor Jim Jones heads to Moscow, there are new reports that U.S. missile defense elements will be deployed just miles from the Russian border. But that won’t throw (another) wrench into the U.S.-Russian negotiations for a START follow on treaty, according to Crowley. "We believe it’s still being conducted in good faith, and I would not think that complication will come into it." Undersecretary Ellen Tauscher is also on the Moscow trip.
- Special Envoy George Mitchell is in Israel, having already stopped in Syria and Lebanon. Crowley seemed to endorse the call from Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas to have the U.S. be involved in determining permanent borders. "I think we want to get into the formal negotiation. I think it’s been suggested by a variety of parties that if we were to do so, establishing permanent borders might be the first thing at the top of the list," Crowley said.
- Clinton signed exemptions that will allow new visas for Tariq Ramadan and Adam Habib, two prominent Muslim scholars who have been accused of having links to terrorism. "We do not think that either one of them represents a threat to the United States," Crowley said.
- South Korean official Wi Sung-lac is visiting Washington, and he will be meeting with senior officials at the State Department, including Deputy Secretary James Steinberg, Assistant Secretary Kurt Campbell, Ambassador Steve Bosworth and Special Envoy Sung Kim.
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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