Middle East Digest: January 8, 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 8, 2008: QUESTION: And just one other one. Can you give us any kind of a readout on the Secretary's meeting with President Gul this morning? Did it touch on -- in particular, did the topic of Iran cutting off natural gas supplies to Turkey come up? And lastly, does the Iranian decision to cut off natural gas supplies to Turkey disturb you in any way, concern you? MR. MCCORMACK: Well, look, first of all, I did check on this particular question whether or not the Iran oil and gas issue came up in their meeting. It did not. On the agenda for us to talk about, although I'm not sure it came up during the Secretary's meeting, was to talk about diversification of supply as well as delivery routes for hydrocarbons. You know, Turkey is an important transit point from Asia to Europe of those hydrocarbons and *they're going to* play a key role in that. I'm not sure if that will come up during the White House meetings, but it was something that we were prepared to discuss. As for the Iranian specific action, it has more to do with Iran and Turkey. But certainly, you know, that sort of use of those commodities as a political tool is a real warning sign to the nature of this regime, a real warning sign to others about the nature of this regime and their willingness to do those sorts of things. Now, I saw some quotes from the Iranians saying that this was due to some technical difficulty or some sort of malfunction. I don't know. I can't speak to that. But those -- when you add that kind of behavior into the other kinds of behaviors that we have seen from this Iranian regime, I think it paints the kind of picture of a regime that is not reliable, that is certainly opaque in its decision-making process and is not interested in playing a positive role in the region or on the global stage. QUESTION: So for you, it's just another argument for more pipelines and -- MR. MCCORMACK: I'm not sure that particular action leads you to that discussion directly, but I think speaking very generally about the issue of transiting those hydrocarbon assets from Asia to other markets in Europe or elsewhere, it does -- it is an important argument in talking about diversification of supply as well as diversification of supply routes, which Turkey is very much involved in. QUESTION: Just on Iran, has there been any contact yet or will there be any with the Iranians about the incident in the Strait of Hormuz? MR. MCCORMACK: Nothing -- nothing as of yet. We'll let you know if we do pass along any sort of diplomatic protest. QUESTION: You're planning on -- MR. MCCORMACK: We'll let you know if there's anything. QUESTION: Well -- maybe you have something more to say about this today? MR. MCCORMACK: I don't expect that we'll have anything more to say about it today. QUESTION: Yesterday you gave us the impression that you thought it was unlikely that you would raise this -- MR. MCCORMACK: It's an open option. It's an open option. You know, we can use this channel of communication for a lot of different things. QUESTION: I'm sorry, this channel of communication, you meant -- MR. MCCORMACK: Swiss channel. QUESTION: The Swiss channel MR. MCCORMACK: Yeah. QUESTION: Okay. |
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