Middle East Digest - September 26Bureau of Public Affairs The Middle East Digest provides text and audio from the Daily Press Briefing. For the full briefings, please visit daily press briefings. From the Daily Press Briefing of September 26, 2008 MR. WOOD: Not that I’m aware of, at all. I’ll look into that to see if there’s anything new. But I haven’t heard anything about that. Is that a news report coming out of New York? QUESTION: Yes. QUESTION: Was there an impromptu -- do you know anything about an impromptu meeting after breakfast involving -- MR. WOOD: As far as I know, there was no P-5+1 meeting. I know there was the P-5 meeting, you know, the breakfast meeting. But I’m not aware of that, Charley. I’ll look into it to see if there’s anything and we’ll let you know. But I don’t think there was anything. QUESTION: Can you bring us up to date on deliberations about resuming consular activities in Pakistan? MR. WOOD: Yeah. My understanding is that consular services and American citizen services will resume in Islamabad on Monday. And so that’s the latest that I have. QUESTION: And can you say – speak to continuing security concerns in Pakistan? MR. WOOD: Yeah. Obviously, we are going to evaluate our security posture on a daily basis and take steps that we feel are prudent, if necessary. And – but I don’t have anything beyond what I said yesterday on that. Please. QUESTION: Any -- still on Pakistan, any response to the Pakistan Government spokesman saying that the – calling on U.S.-led forces not to violate Pakistan territory? MR. WOOD: Well, look, we’ve said over and again that we want to work with Pakistan on trying to improve the security situation on the border. We continue to want to do that. As I said the other day, that the attack on the Marriott Hotel is a prime example as to why we need to strengthen, redouble, deepen our cooperation on counterterrorism. It’s crucial to the United States, crucial to Pakistan and other countries in the region that we don’t allow al-Qaida and Taliban terrorists to continue to operate in that area. QUESTION: The Pakistan comments seem to be at variance with your comments wanting to work together. There seems to be a new butting of heads on just what the role of the military is along the border. Is that not correct? MR. WOOD: No, I don’t believe that we’re butting heads. I mean, it’s a difficult situation along the border. But both countries know that it’s in our interest to work together on this problem. There are some difficulties obviously in terms of how we deal with that border situation. But we think we’ve got very good, strong pledges of cooperation from the Government of Pakistan to deepening and redoubling our efforts to fight these terrorists on the border. QUESTION: And nothing specific about new meetings or new diplomatic efforts to work through this? MR. WOOD: No, but there are meetings going on. I mean, President Bush is going to host President Karzai today. The President, as you know, met with President Zardari yesterday, I believe, and the Secretary’s had conversations with President Zardari. So there’s a lot of diplomatic activity going on – will continue to go on, because we have to find a way, as I said, to resolve this issue on the Pakistan-Afghanistan border. QUESTION: The Palestinian President Abbas in an interview today on another TV channel, he was complaining why the U.S. didn’t publish the report on the implementation of the Roadmap. Is there an intention for the U.S. Government to publish this report? MR. WOOD: I’m not aware of the issue that was raised. I think what’s important here, Samir, is that both parties live up to the Roadmap obligations and that’s important in our efforts to try to move the two – the parties to a two-state solution, which is in the interest of everyone in the region – the United States and other countries around the world. So Roadmap obligations are something that we think are important. They need to be dealt with and we’ll continue to work with the parties, as we have been doing, to get them to meet their Roadmap obligations. QUESTION: Thank you. |
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