Middle East Digest - October 9, 2008The 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 October 9, 2008 MR. MCCORMACK: Libby. I didn’t recognize you all the way back there.QUESTION: I know. I decided to mix it up. What can you tell us about these American journalists that were detained in Syria? When were they detained, or when did the Syrians tell you they were detained – MR. MCCORMACK: Right. QUESTION: – and did they tell you why? MR. MCCORMACK: Right. I don’t have – well, to start off with, we don’t have a Privacy Act Waiver. I can, however, tell you that we were informed by the Syrian Government that they did have these two individuals in custody and that they were safe. We are seeking consular access to them and I would expect that in the very near future, we will have consular access to them. The Syrian Government told us they were detained trying to cross into Syria. Beyond that, I don’t have any more information that I can share with you. QUESTION: So you don’t know when they were detained? MR. MCCORMACK: I don’t. I don’t know that. QUESTION: Do you – MR. MCCORMACK: Yeah. QUESTION: So when you say they’re in custody, where are they, exactly? Are they in a Syrian jail somewhere or – MR. MCCORMACK: Sue, I don’t have any more information than that. QUESTION: Can you say when you were informed? QUESTION: So they were detained – they were detained because they were trying to cross what illegally – the Syrians believe they were trying to cross illegally, is what I’ve heard. MR. MCCORMACK: I don’t have a full set of facts here, and certainly I don’t have a Privacy Act waiver from these two individuals. The only way that I could characterize it at this point is to reflect back to you what we’ve been told by the Syrian Government, that they were detained trying to cross in. Now, I – QUESTION: But they didn’t tell you why they were detained? MR. MCCORMACK: That I don’t have a good read on, at least not something – I don’t have a full set of facts. So when I get the full set of facts, I’d be try to – I’d be happy to try to answer that question for you. QUESTION: But do you know, did they offer you an explanation, even if it’s imperfect or wherever it was? They’ve got an unsatisfactory explanation – MR. MCCORMACK: I don’t know the full content of the discussion, you know, the back and forth with the Syrian Government. All that was reflected back to me was that they were detained trying to cross over the border. QUESTION: Have the Syrians – MR. MCCORMACK: I’m not going to try to, at this point, make a value judgment about it. QUESTION: Have the Syrians informed you that they will face any charges? MR. MCCORMACK: We’re – as we would with any American citizen around the world, we’re seeking their release and we’re going to try to get them back to – either with their families or back to their home base as soon as possible. QUESTION: Is there anything that leads you to believe they may not be released fairly quickly and they could be detained -- MR. MCCORMACK: I don’t have anything that would – at this point, that would indicate that. QUESTION: But you did say that you expected to have consular access soon. Does that mean the Syrians have said okay, you can – MR. MCCORMACK: We expect to get consular access to them. Yeah, I – and, I mean, it – look, it’s one of those things where they – we could have already gotten consular access and it just hasn’t been reported back to me yet. QUESTION: Do you know when they informed you – the Syrians? MR. MCCORMACK: I think we heard about this yesterday. Yeah. QUESTION: Any idea when the P-5+1 are going to talk to – have a conference call to discuss the letter? MR. MCCORMACK: Nothing is scheduled at this point. QUESTION: Anything this week that you know of? MR. MCCORMACK: We’ll let you know when we have a call scheduled. QUESTION: And secondly, I mean, there was a resolution passed at the UN last week or the week before, but it was a fairly – well, repeated what you’d previously said in other resolutions, didn’t really cover any new ground. Is there – are there any moves to draw up a new sanctions resolution? Do you think there’s any support for that? MR. MCCORMACK: Well, that’s what – that would be the point of having the political directors continue discussions. You know, drawing up language on a specific resolution would come down the line. It would – the initial discussions would focus on what elements could possibly be included, and then you get to the point of actually putting that in the form of a resolution. So I would say that we are at the stage of having informal consultations with some of our partners in the P-5+1 process about what elements might be included in a resolution. We have not gotten to the point yet where we are prepared to schedule a P-5+1 political directors call, but I would anticipate at some point we will. QUESTION: So have these informal discussions been with the EU-3, not with China and Russia? MR. MCCORMACK: I’m not going to get into the details of it, but it hasn’t been with the full group. QUESTION: So does that mean it has not been with China and Russia? MR. MCCORMACK: It hasn’t been with the full group. QUESTION: Or maybe it has been with China and Russia then. MR. MCCORMACK: Kirit? QUESTION: I did have a question for you on Afghanistan. There’s reports out that at the NATO meetings that are taking place, that there is an expectation of a proposal to reach out to the Taliban and have more interaction with them. And that’s, I think, an idea that General Petraeus has supported as well. Is there anything you can say about that? MR. MCCORMACK: I’ll – let me look into it for you, Kirit. I don’t have a response for you right now. Yeah. QUESTION: Do you have any comment on the NIE estimate that’s apparently going to come out around the election? Secretary Rice referred to it a little bit this morning – MR. MCCORMACK: Yeah, you did that – right. I was there. She did. QUESTION: But do you have any further details? MR. MCCORMACK: I don’t, no. No, she talked about – just for everybody else’s information, she was asked a question about the NIE on Afghanistan. The story appeared in the – in a daily newspaper this morning. What she said, and I’ll be happy to repeat, is that the government asked for an assessment of the intelligence community’s views on Afghanistan. She has not yet seen it, and I don’t believe any of the policy makers in the State Department have seen any drafts of this assessment. I would expect at some point that they will be briefed on it. Meantime, there is an ongoing review of the civilian efforts in Afghanistan, those which fall under the purview of the State Department. And the Secretary directed this to happen because she wanted to make sure that we were optimizing our efforts in Afghanistan, you know. We have a lot of inputs, a lot of resources devoted to Afghanistan, and she wanted to make sure we were getting the most of those resources and that we were – that we had the right structures and we had the right strategies in Afghanistan. She has mentioned specifically looking at PRT structures and making sure that those were being done right to optimize our resource inputs. As you know from the Iraq experience, the PRTs are really one of the main ways that the State Department and civilians on the ground can really effect change outside of the capital. So I don’t have a timeline for you on that. She wants the review to be done in a way that we put the appropriate amount of energy behind it, but she also wants it done in a thorough manner. QUESTION: But would you agree, though, with the assessment that Afghanistan is sort of spiraling into chaos and that President’s Karzai’s government is just not doing enough to counter the Taliban’s influence? MR. MCCORMACK: Well, again, the intelligence community will come up with their assessments, so I don’t want to try to – QUESTION: But regardless of that – MR. MCCORMACK: – color the views of that. QUESTION: – overall, would you – MR. MCCORMACK: Well, again, she talked a little bit about this upstairs. And you’ve heard me talk about this as well. Think about where Afghanistan was in 2001 and think about where they are today. They’ve come an extraordinary distance. Now, none of that is to say they don’t have a long way to go. Think about it this way. It – the question isn’t so much about reconstructing Afghanistan as it is about constructing a modern state. Afghanistan, for a variety of different reasons – you know, part of it was the neglect of the United States and the international community after the Russians got – you know, the Soviet Union got kicked out of Afghanistan in the ’80s. There has not been a great deal of development and integration – well, prior to 2001, development and integration into the rest of the international system. We aim to reverse that and we have come a long way. Think about how far the Afghan political system has come. Think about how far the infrastructure in Afghanistan has come. But it’s got a long way to go. And in order for that progress to continue, we, the international community, need to make sure that we get the security equation right, and the big input from that is going to be from Afghanistan. We need to make sure that we work with the Afghans on good governance, which means bringing an end to corruption. We need to make sure we get the counternarcotics question right. And we need to make sure that we get the regional question right. Because, quite clearly, there’s a security component along that border with Pakistan, which means working very closely with Pakistan and having Afghanistan and Pakistan work closely together. So it’s a – it’s an important issue for the security of the United States. It’s an important issue for global security that we see Afghanistan succeed. This is going to be a long-term project and commitment. But we and the international community are committed to working with Afghan partners who want to build that modern, democratic, more prosperous, Afghan state. QUESTION: But can you briefly, and by briefly I mean – MR. MCCORMACK: (Laughter.) QUESTION: – in as few words as possible, explain exactly what she meant and what you mean by PRT structure? MR. MCCORMACK: Briefly – I don’t know if I can do it briefly. But – QUESTION: Well, I mean is it – MR. MCCORMACK: – to make sure – the key is to make sure that you have the right capabilities in place, deployed in places where they are needed, that you have the right amount of resources, the appropriate level of resources. Some places you may need more. Some places you may need less. Are the PRTs in the right places geographically? And do we have a good civilian-military working relationship, the kind of partnership, for example, that we saw in Iraq, which was quite effective? So while the PRTs were – PRTs were actually developed in Afghanistan, the concept of them; they, in a sense, were perfected in Iraq. So you want to make sure that you take any lessons – they’re two different situations, but you want to make sure that you learn from your experiences there and see how those might apply, if at all, in Afghanistan. So I know it’s not the short answer you were looking for, but – QUESTION: I just want – when you say resources, do you mean people, money, the kind of people – MR. MCCORMACK: Expertise. It could be expertise. It could be the numbers of people. It could be their ability to spend money in the field. Again, all of these questions – and, you know, the answer may be different for each particular location in Afghanistan. QUESTION: But – and when you say people, when you’re looking at it, are you also looking at military personnel – I mean, that would – that accompany or that these people are embedded? I realize you’re separate from that. MR. MCCORMACK: Right. QUESTION: But I mean, does that go into it? Do we – perhaps you need – you think you need more troops to protect certain – or is it – MR. MCCORMACK: I’m not aware that that’s part of the equation. QUESTION: So when you’re talking about people as resources, you’re talking about civilian – purely the civilian side? MR. MCCORMACK: Yeah, yeah, that’s our purview. QUESTION: No, I understand that. But I mean, there could be – you could say, all right, well, we need, you know, another – MR. MCCORMACK: Right. No, I get you. QUESTION: – battalion or something. MR. MCCORMACK: No, no, no, I get you. And also, let me just make clear, I don’t want to in any way leave the implication that we’re not working well between the civilians and the military in Afghanistan. We are. But we just want to make sure that we’re – that we, the civilian side, have the proper structures to maximize that partnership. QUESTION: Thank you. MR. MCCORMACK: Thanks. |
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