Ambassador James Dobbins Named as Special Representative to the Afghan Opposition

MR. BOUCHER: Ladies and gentlemen, good afternoon. It's a pleasure to be here.

I have one brief announcement at the beginning, and that is to say the Secretary of State has decided to appoint Ambassador James Dobbins to be the US Representative to the Afghan opposition. In this capacity, Ambassador Dobbins will spend the bulk of his time in the region consulting with the Afghan opposition and with concerned governments. Ambassador Dobbins will work closely with Assistant Secretary of State for South Asian Affairs, Christina Rocca, and with Ambassador Richard Haass, who will continue to be the US Coordinator for Policy regarding the future of Afghanistan.

So Ambassador Dobbins will be working for us out in the field. As you know, we have always kept in touch with a variety of Afghan parties, factions, interests, leading figures, and Ambassador Dobbins would be doing that on a continuing basis, primarily overseas.

QUESTION: Is that going to be a (inaudible) assignment? I ask because --

MR. BOUCHER: It is an --

QUESTION: He has long been considered for all sorts of more permanent --

MR. BOUCHER: Oh, yes, he is one of our more prominent diplomats. He has done things like this in the past.

QUESTION: Exactly, yes.

MR. BOUCHER: And he will be doing this as long as it takes to complete the job, as he has done in past jobs.

QUESTION: But when you say he is going to be spending most of his -- spend the bulk of his time in the region, what region is that?

MR. BOUCHER: That is probably the region from Europe to South Asia and a few places in between and around elsewhere. As we know, the Afghan parties are in a variety of places. There are some people in Europe; there's a lot of people in Pakistan, South Asia, and the region. So he will be in a number of regions, I suppose.

QUESTION: Where is he going to be based?

MR. BOUCHER: He will be based in Washington, but he will be traveling a lot.

QUESTION: If you could sum it up, Richard, what would be his mission in one line or two?

MR. BOUCHER: His mission is to continue our work with the Afghan opposition groups, the Afghan parties, to try to help them form a future government for Afghanistan. And that will include working with Haass -- Ambassador Haass here -- but also obviously working with the Afghan parties themselves, and then we will be working with the United Nations as well.

QUESTION: With the overreaching understanding that this is under the United Nations? That the new government that we're working toward is a UN-led --

MR. BOUCHER: That's right. The UN Secretary General Special Representative, Mr. Brahimi, as you know, has just been out in the region. And so we are working closely with him, we are working closely with all the Afghans so that they can form a broad-based government for their country. It's up to them, as we have always said, in the end to do this, but we can certainly encourage them and help them.

QUESTION: Would you remind us what Mr. Dobbins is doing at the moment? And when do you expect him to leave on his first --

MR. BOUCHER: I will have to check on both those things.

QUESTION: I mean, so you basically have now two special envoys to the Afghan --

MR. BOUCHER: Well, we've got one person -- given the fact that the opposition groups, the Afghan leaders, the Afghan opposition parties are spread out in a number of places, the time constraints, the need to work with them, requires a lot of travel. So Mr. Haass will be sort of coordinating on the policy side and working with the United Nations and coordinating from Washington with a little bit of travel, you might say, and then Mr. Dobbins will be coordinating with the Afghan parties with a lot of travel and a little bit in Washington.

QUESTION: Ambassador Haass didn't have too much on his plate with the Northern Ireland portfolio as well?

MR. BOUCHER: Well, he is our policy planning chief. He has Northern Ireland and he is doing this work on Afghanistan. I wouldn't say --

QUESTION: So this takes some of the load off him?

MR. BOUCHER: I wouldn't say "too much" on his plate, but it gives us somebody else who can travel and who can work directly with all the parties and who has got a lot of experience in doing that sort of thing.

Okay, moving on?

QUESTION: Another one on this? Can you yet confirm a Six-Plus-Two meeting in New York?

MR. BOUCHER: That's not on this, but the answer is, no, not yet.

QUESTION: Sure it is, future government of Afghanistan.

QUESTION: Who is reporting to whom? Is Dobbins reporting to Haass?

MR. BOUCHER: I am not sure we specified that. I will have to check. He will work closely with Ambassador Haass.