Middle East Digest: November 1, 2007

Bureau of Public Affairs
November 1, 2007

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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 November 1, 2007

MR. MCCORMACK: Well, that's going to be up to President Bush. I suspect from the Department we would suggest Deputy Secretary Negroponte attend that meeting. The Secretary is going to be traveling at that point in time. But she's going to have an opportunity to see Prime Minister Erdogan as well as President Gul while she's in Ankara -- we'll be leaving in just a few hours for that trip. I don't have anything new to report with respect to the PKK. You can bet that it's going to be a topic of conversation with Turkish leaders. It's of deep concern to them. It's of concern to us. So we're going to talk to them about ways that we can address the immediate problem of stopping these attacks. And then the longer term problem of dismantling and eliminating a terrorist organization operating on Iraqi soil.

Yeah.

QUESTION: On Iraq. And the refugee admission numbers came out yesterday.

MR. MCCORMACK: Yes.

QUESTION: Once again, a decline from the previous two months.

MR. MCCORMACK: Right.

QUESTION: Can you offer any explanation as to why that's happening, especially since you have this new effort in place to --

MR. MCCORMACK: Well, I -- we do have Jim Foley who is going out there to try to -- he's working with his DHS colleague to try to break through a lot of barriers. There are some behavioral as well as institutional barriers that we need to -- need to work on.

QUESTION: Behavioral?

MR. MCCORMACK: Well, in terms of Syrian -- the Syrian Government's refusal to allow in new refugees as well as allow DHS people to come in to Syria to do their work to vet folks. But the numbers I have, Matt, 450 Iraqi refugees arrived to be permanent -- permanently resettled in the United States in October 2007. Over the period from October 1st, 2007 to September 30th, 2008, our goal is to have 12,000 come in. Now, as you report --

QUESTION: (Off-mike.)

MR. MCCORMACK: 12,000. We expect to resettle 12,000 Iraqi refugees in the United States between October 2007, September 2008. Now, I anticipate your next question, which is to be, well, 450 in a month would not put you on a glide path to 12,000. Well, the numbers, they're --

QUESTION: Well, actually --

MR. MCCORMACK: The numbers you're going to see each month are going to fluctuate. I expect that, you know, on average, we would have to do a thousand a month. Sometimes you're going to be below that number, sometimes, obviously, you're going to have to be above that number.

This is a target. We're going to do everything we can to meet that target. 450 is not a thousand, but it is 450 people who have been resettled in the United States rightly as refugees.

QUESTION: So do you know when we can expect to see numbers higher than a thousand?

MR. MCCORMACK: Like I said --

QUESTION: (Inaudible) that you're on track --

MR. MCCORMACK: I'm not going to make -- I'm not going to make any promises about numbers from month to month, only to say that our -- our end target is 12,000 and the numbers are going to fluctuate each month.

QUESTION: Can we do one on Ankara? Could you just -- she's definitely going to meet Prime Minister Erdogan --

MR. MCCORMACK: Yeah.

QUESTION: -- in Ankara?

MR. MCCORMACK: Yes.

QUESTION: Okay, great.

MR. MCCORMACK: Yeah, it's on the books.

QUESTION: Did the Secretary speak this morning, as I think she did, to Foreign Minister Lavrov?

MR. MCCORMACK: She spoke yesterday with him.

QUESTION: Yesterday?

MR. MCCORMACK: Yesterday with Foreign Minister Lavrov.

QUESTION: Okay. He was in Tehran at the time?

MR. MCCORMACK: I think he had just returned from his trip to Tehran.

QUESTION: And her conversation?

MR. MCCORMACK: They had a -- they had a good conversation. I'll let Foreign Minister Lavrov talk about this.

QUESTION: Well, often, when people from this building describe the Rice-Lavrov conversations, they seem to be at distinct -- the descriptions seem to be at distinct odds with those that Mr. Lavrov himself likes to deliver.

MR. MCCORMACK: I know the incident that you're -- you know, look, they have -- they have a very good working relationship. And look, they -- Foreign Minister Lavrov is somebody who has spent a lot of time in the world of diplomacy and the UN. He is an excellent debater and -- as is Secretary Rice, and sometimes they do have good conversations. But look -- and sometimes they do debate points, important points, and rightly so, rightly so.

But in terms of -- in terms of Iran and where we -- where we are with respect to Iran, the U.S. -- the United States and Russia are on the same page with respect to our strategic objectives. Sometimes we differ on the tactics, but we are going to continue working on the Security Council track. Russia does not want to see Iran get a nuclear weapon and that, I think, manifests itself in a lot of different ways. One of those ways is we're going to have a Russian representative sitting down Friday with Nick Burns and his P-5+1 political director counterparts to talk about the language of a Security Council resolution.

QUESTION: Was Iran the main or sole --

MR. MCCORMACK: Yes.

QUESTION: -- topic of conversation?

MR. MCCORMACK: It wasn't the only topic, but it was -- was significant.

QUESTION: And did she ask him and did she receive any explanation for his -- his visit to Tehran?

MR. MCCORMACK: No, we knew -- we knew about his visit in advance.

QUESTION: Was she satisfied that he conveyed the message that you said yesterday you would expect that he would --

MR. MCCORMACK: Yes, yes.

QUESTION: Yes?

MR. MCCORMACK: Yes.

QUESTION: Can you tell us what else came up in the conversation and to what extent the conversation about Iran focused, if at all, on the work that the political directors are going to be doing tomorrow in London on a new resolution?

MR. MCCORMACK: They touched on it. They didn't get into the details. I'm not going to get into other topics that they discussed.

QUESTION: Why not? I mean --

MR. MCCORMACK: It's my prerogative. Sometimes I tell you what they talk about, sometimes I don't.

Yeah.

QUESTION: Pakistan. Hasn't Rice been trying to call Musharraf today and discouraging him from implementing emergency rule?

MR. MCCORMACK: Excuse me?

QUESTION: State of emergency -- isn't there a Pakistan story? The Secretary's been calling him today?

MR. MCCORMACK: Let me check for you on that.