Briefing Skipper: Ecuador, Sudan, Canada, Iran, Gaza
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 met Tuesday with Ecuadorian President Rafael Vicente Correa Delgado, the man who shut down the U.S. base that was a major drug ...
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 met Tuesday with Ecuadorian President Rafael Vicente Correa Delgado, the man who shut down the U.S. base that was a major drug interception hub there. In related regional news, Bolivian President Evo Morales is threatening to expel USAID from that country. Full text of Clinton’s "major speech" on Western Hemisphere relations is here. She goes to Bogota Wednesday, then Barbados.
- "The United States government expresses its concern over a pattern of increasing political repression and the deteriorating environment for civil and political rights in Khartoum, including the arrest of opposition leaders, journalists and peaceful demonstrators," Crowley said, reading a long statement with some of the harshest criticisms of the Sudanese regime to date. Does this statement represent the "disincentives" Clinton promised when she rolled out the new Sudan policy? Vice President Joseph Biden is meeting southern Sudanese President Salva Kiir in Kenya Wednesday.
- There are now as many as 20 Americans in police custody in Yemen, although not all are there for the same reason. "I can tell you that right now we are only aware of three American citizens in custody in Yemen on terrorism charges," Crowley said.
- 9,843 feet of Canadian boom arrived Tuesday in Alabama for the Gulf oil spill disaster, with more boom coming Wednesday and Thursday.
- Crowley gave some very specific denials of Iranian claims that the U.S. kidnapped their nuclear scientist Shahram Amiri, in light of new videos revealed this week. "If the question is, have we kidnapped an Iranian scientist, the answer is no," Crowley said, "I can tell you that — did the United States kidnap him from Saudi Arabia? The answer is no." The sharp press corps asked, "Did the U.S kidnap him at all?" That’s where Crowley clammed up. "I’m not going to comment further," he said, "I personally don’t know where he is."
- Iran can still engage even after the UN Security Council slaps new sanctions on them, said Crowley. "But in terms of mediation, we’re not ruling out mediation, but this is not a either/or situation. These two tracks work in parallel. We would like to see Iran come forward and engage constructively. And we happen to believe that putting additional pressure on Iran is the right step to take at this time."
- Interesting quote of the day from Crowley: "In virtually every conversation we have with a Middle East leader, you know, the situation of Gaza comes up."
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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