Middle East Digest: March 6, 2008

Bureau of Public Affairs
March 6, 2008

The Middle East Digest provides text and audio from the Daily Press Briefing. For the full briefings, please visit http://www.state.gov/r/pa/prs/dpb/.

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From the Daily Press Briefing of March 6, 2008:

QUESTION: Mr. Casey, do you have anything to say about Iraq President Talabani visit – starts tomorrow to Turkey?

MR. CASEY: Sorry, President Talabani’s visit to Turkey? Well, first of all, as you know, we encourage contacts, good neighborly relations between Iraq and Turkey. There are a lot of important issues on the agenda between the two countries, not only ensuring good cooperation in the fight against the PKK, but also a variety of things related to the economic relations between the countries as well as the very positive role that Turkey’s been playing in supporting the neighbors process between Iraq and the various other countries in the region. So we’re pleased to see that visit move forward, hope they have a good, productive set of discussions and I’m sure both parties will brief us about them after the fact.

Yeah, Samir.

QUESTION: Yes, the U.S. Coastal Guard announced measures today that will – need to discouraging international ships to visit Syria. Do you have anything on this?

MR. CASEY: A little bit, though you may, Samir, want to talk to my friends both at the Coast Guard and the Department of Homeland Security about this. But my understanding is that the Coast Guard has now placed Syria on something called the Port Security Advisory list. What this means is that because of concerns about the connections between Syria and international terrorist organizations, what this will allow is for the Coast Guard to impose some additional port security measures to ships traveling to or arriving in U.S. ports that have previously been either departing from Syria or have called on Syrian ports, as I understand it, within their last five ports of call.

QUESTION: I haven’t checked, so if I’m asking you something that’s already out, I apologize. On the business of setting a meeting with Iran in Baghdad; you remember there was --

MR. CASEY: Yeah.

QUESTION: There was a rumor that it was going to be today and you scotched that.

MR. CASEY: Right, yeah. We talked about it yesterday. I don’t have any – really anything new to offer you beyond what we said yesterday. We’re still willing to have such a meeting. We’ll be in conversations with the Iraqis about it, but there’s nothing scheduled as of yet.