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

Briefing Skipper: Clinton, Karzai, Chile, Pakistan, China

In which we scour the transcript of the State Department’s daily presser so you don’t have to. These are the highlights of Tuesday’s briefing by spokesman P.J. Crowley: Secretary of State Hillary Clinton and Afghan President Hamid Karzai launched the U.S.-Afghan strategic dialogue Tuesday with a host of meetings at the State Department. After a ...

By Josh Rogin

May 12, 2010, 10:43 AM

In which we scour the transcript of the State Department’s daily presser so you don’t have to. These are the highlights of Tuesday’s briefing by spokesman P.J. Crowley:

Secretary of State Hillary Clinton and Afghan President Hamid Karzai launched the U.S.-Afghan strategic dialogue Tuesday with a host of meetings at the State Department. After a plenary session where officials made presentations to Clinton and Karzai, everybody split up into working groups, the subjects of which included: foreign policy and strategic issues, economic development, agriculture and rural development, human resource development, governance, social issues and women’s rights, and security.
"We have clear plans for reversing the momentum of the insurgency and transitioning to an Afghan lead," Crowley said, "The Afghans came here with clear plans to strengthen their institutions and make durable gains in security, economic progress and governance, including anticorruption efforts." Clinton and Karzai had a bilateral meeting at the end of the day to go over the day’s progress.
Pakistani citizen Muhammad Saif-ur-Rehman Khan was arrested at the U.S. embassy in Chile Tuesday after he tried to pass through security with explosives on his person. He was turned over to the Chilean authorities. "Obviously it demonstrates that our security in and around our embassies, you know, works very effectively," Crowley said. Apparently, he was applying for a visa and "we invited him to come to the embassy, to clarify the information that we had on him," Crowley said.
The State Department is considering designating the Pakistani Taliban as a foreign terrorist organization, Crowley said, in light of the Times Square bombing attempt and calls for such a designation by some Senators. "It is a group that we have been focused on or some time. But I think in light of the Times Square attempt, it’s something we’re looking at very closely," Crowley said.
USAID Administrator Rajiv Shah will travel to Kenya and Sudan this week for six days, his first trip to Africa. He will focus on the Global Health Initiative and the Food Security Initiative and meet with USAID staff on the ground to discuss Sudan’s humanitarian development and peace-building missions, Crowley said.
Assistant Secretary Kurt Campbell was in China Tuesday, meeting with Vice Foreign Minister Cui Tiankai and other senior Chinese officials to prepare for the upcoming second round of the U.S.-China Strategic and Economic Dialogue. Campbell also went to Burma on this trip. Assistant Secretary Phil Gordon arrived in Kosovo Tuesday to meet with senior officials there.

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