Remarks on the Attack on the U.S. Consulate, IstanbulSecretary Condoleezza Rice
En Route to Tbilisi, Georgia
July 9, 2008SECRETARY RICE: I just wanted to take a moment to speak to the incident that took place outside of our Consulate in Istanbul. Obviously, first of all the United States deeply regrets the loss of life and our condolences go out to the families of those who were killed. I know that some policemen were among those who died. And we very much appreciate what was clearly a very rapid and proper response from the government to try to deal with the security situation in front of our Consulate. So I will be passing that message on to my counterpart, my colleague, but I just wanted to speak to that for you.
QUESTION: Do you have any indication that the Consulate itself was the target?
SECRETARY RICE: We don’t know. I haven’t been – I’ve been in Bulgaria, I haven’t had an opportunity to talk to the Ambassador about what happened there, so we don’t know about responsibility or what happened there, but I’ll get an update on that when we are on the ground.
QUESTION: Is there an increased threat level in the region for any reason?
SECRETARY RICE: Not that I know of. But we keep all of our facilities at pretty high states of alert these days and we try to do everything we can to protect them, but obviously this is an incident that was not avoided. But I just want to again say that I think the Turkish authorities reacted quickly and we really appreciate that.
2008/T20-9
Released on July 9, 2008
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