Middle East Digest: December 19, 2007

Bureau of Public Affairs
December 19, 2007

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/

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From the Daily Briefing of December 19, 2007:

MR. CASEY:Welcome to Wednesday. I don't have anything to start you guys out with. Sue.

QUESTION: Yeah. The Turkish Ambassador to the United States said that the U.S. provided direct information which led to the weekend raids. Do you have any -- can you confirm that?

MR. CASEY: No, I can't. First of all, in terms of any actions or cooperation between the U.S. military and the Turkish military, I'd refer you over to my colleagues at the Pentagon. In terms of, well, the general principle, again, the President said after his meeting with Prime Minister Erdogan that we intend to continue our close cooperation with the Government of Turkey in terms of combating the PKK, and that certainly includes intelligence sharing and other kinds of cooperation. But in terms of the specifics on anything, I'd refer you over to the U.S. military.

Yeah, Kirit.

QUESTION: Do you have anything more on that amendment that I asked you about this morning about the Iraqis?

MR. CASEY:Not much. We do and did oppose the amendment when it was first proposed. I think people are still studying the final language that's been included in this omnibus spending bill to see what the policy implications are. It's a fairly complex issue and I think we'll just have to take another look at it before we can come up with any sort of final policy conclusions or recommendations on it.

Sue.

QUESTION: On another subject, has the U.S. set up a specific system to monitor and judge whether the Israelis and the Palestinians are sticking to their commitments under the roadmap and various other --

MR. CASEY: Well, I think the roadmap is fairly self-explanatory. Certainly, we're going to be working with them closely. We have a number of people there working on various aspects related to that, from Tony Blair, who is of course working on Palestinian institution building, to General Jones who will be looking at some of the security structures. But I couldn't tell you, Sue, that there is someone sitting out there with a specific report card or check box that's --

QUESTION: Like a red, yellow and a green card?

MR. CASEY: Yeah, I don't think -- I don't think we have that kind of system in place.

QUESTION: Speaking of General Jones, what are his plans, you know, travel?

MR. CASEY: That's a good question, Matt. You know, I don't think we've ever gotten an update on him. We'll try and get something for you guys a little later.

QUESTION: He's still there, though, right?

MR. CASEY: As far as I know, yeah.

QUESTION: On the same subject, does the United States regard the Israeli military actions in Gaza as consistent with the spirit of and intent of Annapolis?

MR. CASEY: Well, again, James, I think we're all aware of the problems that exist in Gaza, particularly the continued rocket attacks on Israel. Certainly, Israel has a right to defend itself, but we also want to make sure that, as always, any actions Israel takes it's cognizant to the potential consequences of those actions.