As acting Head-of-State at UNGA, Hillary Clinton, in addition to her own scheduled events as Secretary of State, met with the following dignitaries today. President Obama was on ABC’s “The View” with Michelle. (Well, OK, he also spoke at CGI, but so did Hillary and so did Mitt. I saw that as more of a campaign appearance than a head-of-state function.)
FYI I am adding below a snip from a press briefing by a senior official on these meetings.
Arab League Secretary-General Nabil Al-Araby
U.N. Special Envoy to Syria Brahimi
Iraq’s Vice President Khudayr Musa Jafar Abbas al-Khuzai
Yemen’s President Hadi
Background Briefing on Secretary Clinton’s Meetings With Iraqi Vice President al-Khuzai, Arab League Secretary General Elaraby, and Yemeni President Hadi
Special Briefing
Senior Administration OfficialWaldorf Astoria HotelNew York CitySeptember 25, 2012
SENIOR ADMINISTRATION OFFICIAL: The Secretary has been going full steam all afternoon with a number of bilateral meetings, and we thought we maybe could squeeze a readout a little bit earlier, but we got caught up in them.
Just to go over what we’ll cover tonight, just a little bit of programming, we’ll provide you now, as a Senior Administration Official, background readouts of her meeting with the Iraqi Vice President al-Khuzai, followed by a brief readout as well of her meeting with Arab League Secretary General Elaraby, and as well as her meeting with Yemeni President Hadi.
SNIP
With that, let me just turn to the meeting that the Secretary had with Iraqi Vice President al-Khuzai. A good portion of the discussion focused on Syria, which you’ll see was a very common refrain in almost all of her bilats. The Secretary, as you heard earlier, had her meeting with Brahimi that was read out, and there’s a lot of work that’s being done consulting with key partners, allies in the region in terms of how best to achieve the goals that we all share. And this was certainly a focus of the discussion with the Iraqi Vice President. And it was a discussion of the shared goals of trying to achieve an inclusive, stable, and pluralistic democracy for the Syrian people, the need to bring about a political transition, clearly a need to stop the violence.And in that context, Secretary Clinton made very clear to the Iraqi Vice President the need – urgent need to ensure no passage of over-flights by Iran in supply of – military supply of the Assad regime. It was then a focus of discussion in terms of the urgency of continuing to provide humanitarian support. The Secretary urged the Iraqi Vice President to ensure that the borders remain open, allowing for refugees to come in as needed into Iraq, and to work with the UN to provide the support that is needed.
The Secretary also had the opportunity to thank the Iraqi Government, express appreciation for the way in which it has facilitated the peaceful relocation of the MEK from Camp Ashraf to Camp Hurriya. And then also the Vice President of Iraq took the opportunity to also express his sympathies to the United States in the wake of the tragic loss of Ambassador Stevens and the violence that has resulted from the video. And he also welcomed, very much so, and thanked the Secretary for getting – in working with the Senate to confirm Ambassador Beecroft, noting the importance for Iraq of having an American ambassador on the ground and doing his job.
Moving on to Elaraby, the meeting with the Secretary General of the Arab League, you have seen the Media Note that we released, so hopefully you have some sense for the importance of the cooperative MOU that was signed with the Arab League. There was a fair amount of discussion that you heard the Secretary talk about, as well as the Secretary General, of the importance of increased cooperation with the Arab League, the results that we saw achieved in Libya, the work that is ongoing on trying to resolve the situation in Syria, and other areas where we can be working more closely together, be it the Sudan or other areas of common interest, noting, as the Secretary did, that perhaps on occasion we will disagree, but that there has been great progress and advancement in terms of our relationship with the Arab League.
They spent the great majority of their meeting discussing the situation in Syria, as you might expect, talking about the role of the UN Representative Brahimi, and in preparation for what is expected in terms of the Ad Hoc Ministerial on Syria on Friday. I should note, just going back on the Iraqi meeting, that the Iraqis are going to be participating in that meeting with their Foreign Minister, so we welcome that as well.
Still4Hill 