Middle East Digest: January 7, 2008Bureau of Public Affairs 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/ From the Daily Briefing of January 7, 2008: MR. MCCORMACK: Good afternoon. I don't have anything to start off with so we can get right to your questions. QUESTION: Do you have anything more to say about the Iran incident? MR. MCCORMACK: No, that's -- I think you've heard the same message from DOD and from the White House and from us. Hence specifically, we would urge Iran to refrain from any provocative actions that could lead to dangerous* incidents in the future. The Department of Defense can provide you with the details of this particular incident. The bottom line is our ship after the incident occurred moved along safely and continued on its mission. There are a number of military as well as commercial vessels that have legitimate passage through the Strait of Hormuz, we believe that should continue. And it's important to have that legitimate commerce continue through the Straits of Hormuz and through the Persian Gulf. QUESTION: This morning you used some really hard language, although you said it was not with -- you were careful to say not with specific relevance to this incident. MR. MCCORMACK: Right. I noticed it didn't quite turn up that way in the stories but -- QUESTION: Well, I noticed. MR. MCCORMACK: Okay. QUESTION: But this notion of confronting Iran wherever you can or wherever it threatens your interests or those of your allies, does the incident make you feel that that's even more important? MR. MCCORMACK: Well, I mean, it didn't begin with this incident. We've talked about this well into the past. And I -- specifically about a year ago or so when the President talked our strategy in Iraq, he made it very clear that we're going to confront Iran's negative behavior in Iraq, for example. We made it very clear we were going to confront Iran's behavior in the international financial system as they try to use that international financial system for illicit purposes. This is, you know, again, part of what we're trying to do is make sure that the Iranians don't have any easy pathway to engage in behaviors that are either illicit or antithetical to the interest of the region or the United States. And the idea behind this is that we are trying to get the reasonables, those reasonable people within the Iranian decision-making structure, to make a different set of calculations to play a positive role in Iraq's future, to play a positive role in the Middle East and to play a positive role on the global stage. The United States and our allies would like nothing better than to see Iran take its rightful place on the world's stage, but the Iranian many people are being held back by a regime that is now only further isolating Iran from the rest of the world. So the bottom line is, yes, we are going to confront Iran's behavior where it threatens us, where it threatens our allies, where it threatens the integrity of the international systems that have been set up to facilitate international commerce and finance. QUESTION: Have there been any communications with the Iranians on this incident? MR. MCCORMACK: Not that I'm aware. I think they usually tune into briefings and read your news stories, so I think they got the message. QUESTION: Sean, the Iranians apparently said it was an ordinary act. Is that something you're disagreeing with obviously? MR. MCCORMACK: Well, I think the Department of Defense is characterizing the incident as -- well, they can provide the details to you. I think from what I know of it -- and you can talk to the Department of Defense -- this is not something that our vessels encounter on a daily basis, so I'm not sure whether it was ordinary. But check with the Department of Defense about that. QUESTION: What are you reading into the timing and motivation? MR. MCCORMACK: I can't describe any particular motivation to this. Again, the decision-making processes within the Iranian Government and various parts of the Iranian Government are opaque -- they're opaque to us, they're opaque I think to virtually* every other outsider, so I can't tell you what might be motivating them in this -- QUESTION: So you're not turning this to a *vicious visit* at all? MR. MCCORMACK: You know, I wouldn't draw any particular connection. But then again, it's very difficult to see into what goes into their thought processes and their decision making. It's not as if that is an open and transparent process that they have undergoing. QUESTION: And can you say it was in the tanker lines or north of the tanker lines? MR. MCCORMACK: Talk to DOD. They can give you the specifics on it. Yeah, Matt. QUESTION: I'm sorry because I walked in -- were you quibbling with the way your comments this morning were characterized? MR. MCCORMACK: No, no, no. QUESTION: What was -- MR. MCCORMACK: Friendly banter, friendly banter. QUESTION: So not a statement of policy? I'm sorry, I think you said -- I just walked in and you said something about this not the way it was characterized. MR. MCCORMACK: No, Arshad referred to some of the comments that I made about confronting Iranian behavior, but noted that I had specifically said it wasn't with respect to this particular incident. QUESTION: Oh, okay. MR. MCCORMACK: And I said, well, that didn't necessarily come out in all the news stories that way, not pointing to any particular news story. I would characterize the entire exchange -- correct me if I'm wrong, Arshad -- as friendly banter. QUESTION: I'm deeply hurt and I'm -- MR. MCCORMACK: (Laughter.) Yeah, yeah. QUESTION: It was entirely friendly banter. MR. MCCORMACK: Yeah. QUESTION: Sean, as far as Iranian behavior is concerned this incident and presidential and Secretary's trip in the Middle East, the very* timing of the global economy has been affected from this incident and also as far as oil prices are going up around the globe, including here in the U.S., what do you think the President and the Secretary are in the area, are they going to discuss as far as -- MR. MCCORMACK: A comment on your question. (Laughter.) QUESTION: This is the major issues -- MR. MCCORMACK: It was a signal, Goyal, that you *could make* the question shorter. Lights come down, question ends. QUESTION: Yes, sir. MR. MCCORMACK: Yeah. QUESTION: Do you think this will be the major issue of the discussion as far as involving commodity* oil prices and the Middle East conflict? MR. MCCORMACK: Well, Goyal, you can find somebody else other than me to talk about commodity prices. I'm not going to do it. Yeah. UESTION: Sean, in a New York Times story today about the detention facility in -- the U.S.-run detention facility in Afghanistan at Bagram -- MR. MCCORMACK: Right. QUESTION: -- it says that the International Red Cross last summer complained to the United States about -- MR. MCCORMACK: See you, guys. QUESTION: -- (inaudible) prisoners being held incommunicado for weeks, sometimes months, in a previously undisclosed or in isolation cells at Bagram. MR. MCCORMACK: Right. QUESTION: And it also says that the prisoners were kept from its inspectors and sometimes subjected to cruel treatment, in violation of the Geneva Conventions. MR. MCCORMACK: Right. QUESTION: The timing is hard to establish because I don't know when those -- this report of that complaint -- what it refers to exactly in terms of time. But one, has the U.S. Government taken any steps to try to address those complaints? Would you dispute that this report that some prisoners were, in fact, held incommunicado for weeks and months? And lastly, how does this square with the President's September '06 announcement with regard to Guantanamo Bay and I think his statement at the time that there were no more -- after the movement of a number of detainees to Guantanamo Bay that there were no other people in sort of in undisclosed, incommunicado detention? MR. MCCORMACK: Well, first of all, the Department of Defense is really the right address to answer these -- all of your specific questions. In general terms, we don't comment on communications with the ICRC. It's done privately. Those communications are kept confidential. And I know that we always take very seriously communications from the ICRC, and the Department of Defense is usually the lead agency in addressing any of the specific concerns expressed by the ICRC. QUESTION: Did the ICRC -- I mean, they have come here and, in fact, they've had meetings here -- MR. MCCORMACK: Right, right. QUESTION: -- on the Guantanamo issue. And you know, did they raise these concerns with the State Department? MR. MCCORMACK: I don't know. I don't know. I'll ask. I'll see if there's an answer we can provide you. QUESTION: Okay. And if they did, if you can try to address that specific -- MR. MCCORMACK: Those specific -- yeah. QUESTION: -- about people being held incommunicado for weeks and months. MR. MCCORMACK: If we can. If we can, I will do so. Yeah. Gollust. QUESTION: Sean, is there concern in the Administration that the new Polish Government may be fixing to pull out of the anti-missile agreement? MR. MCCORMACK: I saw that and I know the Polish Minister of Defense is going to be here for discussions in January. And we're still confident that we're going to be able to reach an agreement. This is in both of our interests. It's in the interest of Poland. It's in the interest of the United States. It's in the interest of other European countries. I saw the comments from the Polish Foreign Minister and we are going to negotiate and talk about this issue in good faith, try to address all of the Government of Poland's concerns and that's the process that is ongoing now, as evidenced by the fact that you have -- the Defense Minister is going to be here later this month. QUESTION: Probably the most interesting thing he said, I thought, was that -- essentially was a viewpoint that undercuts what is your central justification for those installations, which is -- he said, "We don't feel particularly threatened by Iran." Doesn't that suggest to you that they're really not -- MR. MCCORMACK: Well -- QUESTION: That with the change of government there is much less interest in this? MR. MCCORMACK: It's designed to protect against future threats as well as from current threats from Iran. You don't know what you don't know about Iranian missile capabilities, but certainly they are working towards long-range missile capability. We all know that. We've seen the tests. The Iranian Government has trumpeted the fact that they are working on that. So this is designed to address both current as well as future threats and I don't think that there's really any dispute about the kind of future threat that we face from Iran if it continues on the current pathway. QUESTION: -- Musharraf? What? No, what he said, Sean, was really many Pakistanis find very strange, even here, that he blames Benazir Bhutto for the murder and also, he said that she had -- lucky* enough to come alive to her car. MR. MCCORMACK: Goyal, look, you know, President Musharraf gave his interview. I think that there is an ongoing investigation as to who is responsible for Benazir Bhutto's death. And I look forward to the results of that investigation and bringing to justice those responsible. QUESTION: Thank you. (The briefing was concluded at 1:12 p.m.) |
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