12 September 2001
Transcript: State Dept. Spokesman Boucher Briefs Reporters Sept. 12
(Powell continues to make phone calls to world leaders, Boucher says)
(2220)
State Department Spokesman Richard Boucher briefed reporters early
September 12.
Following is the State Department transcript:
(begin transcript)
U.S. DEPARTMENT OF STATE
Office of the Spokesman
September 12, 2001
ON-THE-RECORD BRIEFING
INTERIM PRESS BRIEFING BY SPOKESMAN RICHARD BOUCHER
September 12, 2001
Washington, D.C.
MR. BOUCHER: Ladies and gentlemen, I am sorry to disappoint you. The
Secretary is not going to make it at this time. He is over at a
meeting at the White House that ran longer than anyone expected, and
now he has got another meeting at the White House so he is going to
stay over there. So we are going to have to wait. The Secretary will
talk to you today. We are going to have to find a time, probably early
to mid-afternoon, when it will work. And we'll get back to you more
precisely with that.
What he has been doing today since early in the morning is, first of
all, meeting with his team over here and talking to the staff here.
Second of all, he has been making a variety of international phone
calls. He has talked to Lord Robertson, the Secretary General of NATO.
He has talked to Javier Solana, the European High Representative. He
has talked to Foreign Minister Peres twice. He has talked to Jack
Straw, the Foreign Secretary of Great Britain. And he has talked to
Kofi Annan. And he will continue to make phone calls with foreign
leaders throughout the day.
QUESTION: Could you just describe for us --
MR. BOUCHER: And third of all, he has been obviously meeting with the
White House and national security team over there.
QUESTION: Could you explain what the Secretary was saying this morning
about 25 percent of the embassies. Did he mean closed or reducing
their services? Is he talking about both embassies and missions?
MR. BOUCHER: Yes, he's talking about missions -- embassies and
consulates. There are 40 -- no, there are 50-some. We don't have an
exact count for you, but 50-some of our embassies or consulates
overseas that have felt it necessary to close.
As you know, we told embassies, told ambassadors, to make these
decisions based on their own local security requirements. There is no
particular threats, specific threats or warnings that we have for
individual embassies or embassies as a whole, but in this heightened
security environment we wanted everybody to look at their own
procedures, decide if they were safe, and take appropriate
precautions.
So there have been closings in various places. We are sure that
everybody will reopen as soon as they think it's safe. And all these
people maintain a way of doing emergency services for Americans, even
when they're closed.
QUESTION: You said he spoke to Lord Robertson. In that conversation or
otherwise, did he encourage the movement toward Article V adoption by
the ambassadors as a way of solidarity -- not necessarily committing
force -- but showing solidarity, with the US in this terrible time?
MR. BOUCHER: Has NATO issued a statement?
QUESTION: Not yet. There are some people who have to know, some
reporters have --
MR. BOUCHER: Some reporters have reported about it?
QUESTION: That it's under consideration.
MR. BOUCHER: I'll leave it for NATO to do this. We have been in touch
with our mission at NATO and the Secretary has been in touch with Lord
Robertson indeed about the question of working together with our NATO
allies and coordinating with our NATO allies on these matters.
QUESTION: The notion that the United States will hold countries that
harbor those involved or that have harbored those involved in this act
will now be held responsible has been described in media as a major
policy shift for the United States, a major sort of upping of the
ante, if you will.
How do you see it?
MR. BOUCHER: I see it the way the Secretary of State will see it when
he meets with you. I really just came down here to disappoint you all.
I didn't mean to try to take broad and expansive and extended
questioning. I think that's a good question to ask the Secretary when
he comes down. Clearly the fight against terrorism is one that is
going to have to be carried on in a very serious manner.
QUESTION: There is talk about a G-8 meeting, which Prime Minister
Blair is pushing hard for, and within Russia, and to build a consensus
if the United States should decide to take action. And is that
correct, and do you have a view of that?
MR. BOUCHER: I hadn't seen the talk about the G-8 meeting. That's
something we can check on before we come back again. We have indeed
been in touch with the Russians, and I think we received a message
from President Putin that was quite strong in terms of support and
sympathy.
QUESTION: Can you give us a list of some of the embassies that you
know are closed today, even if it's a partial list.
MR. BOUCHER: We have tried to avoid highlighting the security
circumstances in particular places, so I think what I'd like to do is,
give me a chance to go back and check which are closed and which have
made public announcements. Because obviously those are things we can
collect and get to you. But I'll try to do that for you and get you
some kind of list.
QUESTION: You said that the Secretary spoke twice with Foreign
Minister Peres. What did they talk about?
MR. BOUCHER: I would leave that to him, I think later.
QUESTION: Is there still a potential for an Arafat-Peres meeting? Is
that something the Secretary is pushing for right now?
MR. BOUCHER: We are obviously still .... There is one dominant subject
of all our conversations these days, but clearly we are still doing
the nation's diplomatic business as well. And I think that's a good
question you can ask the Secretary later if you wish.
QUESTION: There are reports out of Islamabad that US officials
contacted the Musharraf government last night, and they now are
sending a military delegation to Kabul. Can you confirm any of this?
MR. BOUCHER: I can confirm that we have been in contact with the
Pakistani Government at various levels, but I don't think I can go
into anything more specific than that. I hadn't heard about this
report that we were sending a delegation. I'll have to check on that.
QUESTION: Not we, but I'm saying that the Pakistanis are sending a
delegation at the US request.
MR. BOUCHER: Oh, that the Pakistanis -- I don't know about that. But
I'll tell you that we have indeed been in touch with the Pakistani
Government and we will stay in touch with them.
QUESTION: Any communication by anybody in the US Government with the
Taliban leadership?
MR. BOUCHER: Again, I'll have to check on that. Again, I have to
apologize a little bit. I just came down to give you the news that the
Secretary couldn't do this and so I'm not prepared on every single
question at this moment.
QUESTION: What was your interpretation of Saddam Hussein's comments
yesterday?
MR. BOUCHER: I don't have one for you at this point.
QUESTION: Has there been any particular communication with the
government at the United Arab Emirates?
MR. BOUCHER: We have been in touch with governments around the world.
I don't know what particularly we might have said to the United Arab
Emirates, but I'm sure we have been in touch.
QUESTION: (Inaudible) the embassies that have been closed are in
Islamic countries?
MR. BOUCHER: No, I wouldn't say that. There are posts throughout the
world. And it's not because of a particular sense of threat in a
particular place. We still do know that there is good cause for
vigilance, and our Worldwide Warnings still apply. But as each mission
looks at its security situation, where does it feel safe, where does
it feel its vulnerabilities are, are there vulnerabilities that we can
correct by local action and things like that.
And I would say the other thing is that around the world our missions
have been asking host governments for support and assistance in all
kinds of things: closing down streets, adding more guards, adding more
patrols, having visible police presence, things like that. And in
every single case, we have gotten the support that we have asked for.
QUESTION: Some countries have offered assistance to this country, and
teams of people to help in the rubble at the World Trade Center and
things like that.
Has the US responded to this? Have we accepted or rejected any offers
of help?
MR. BOUCHER: We have been passing on all that information to the
Federal Emergency Management Agency to make sure they know what is
available from overseas sources. There has indeed been an outpouring
of offers of specialized teams, bloods, just a whole lot of different
things -- equipment -- that people around the world have. I think we
leave it to the federal authorities to sort of sort it out, figure out
if there is stuff that we would find useful.
There has, also, as you know, been an outpouring of support and
assistance in the United States, among our own people, in terms of
giving blood or teams from the country coming up to help with the
search. So I'm not sure that will be necessary. But let the
appropriate federal authorities sort it out. I'm not aware that we
have asked for anything at this point.
QUESTION: This morning, the Secretary said that there is an
accumulating mound of evidence and that very soon the Government will
make a decision on what they should do.
Are you steering us away from the general assumption that this is bin
Laden-related? When he talks about the evidence, is that pointing in
any other direction that you can share with us?
MR. BOUCHER: I am not steering you in any direction whatsoever. I am
not steering you in circles, either. I am just not into this. We are
not pointing fingers, we are not saying whodunit. We are going to do
this carefully. We are going to maintain the ability to collect
information and not reveal the sources of it. And we are going to, I'm
sure, make the decisions in a careful manner at the right time. And I
am not intending to steer you towards, away, or in any direction
whatsoever. I am not driving that car.
QUESTION: Prior to this return to Washington, did the Secretary have
telephone contact with the President yesterday?
MR. BOUCHER: No, they didn't actually talk until he got back to
Washington. Rich Armitage, of course, the Deputy Secretary, was here,
was working with the entire national security team, and the Secretary
talked to Mr. Armitage numerous times throughout the day.
They can talk when they need to, and it works out for both of them. It
just didn't happen to be the case yesterday.
QUESTION: You said there were no warnings that led to the closing of
the 50 embassies and missions. But have there been --
MR. BOUCHER: No particular warnings. There's obviously worldwide
threats.
QUESTION: Well, that's what I wanted to know. Had there been any new
warnings that lead to new concern about subsequent actions?
MR. BOUCHER: I think the warnings that we have issued before, in terms
of the June 22nd warning, the update that we did last week, those all
still apply. I don't have any new information on that, though.
QUESTION: Richard, the King of Morocco canceled the trip to Mauritania
and returned home, and the King of Jordan was also on his way here and
also returned home. Is there any possible relationship between that
and this event in the sense that there is a dichotomy between -- these
governments have all condemned the attacks and the people in the
streets are all supporting it?
MR. BOUCHER: Once again, I am really down here to tell you that the
Secretary can't brief right now. I wasn't coming to deal with all the
dichotomies in the world. So I really don't feel I can do that right
now.
QUESTION: When is he briefing?
MR. BOUCHER: The two windows look like early afternoon or later in the
afternoon.
QUESTION: Probably between when and when?
MR. BOUCHER: Between now and the end of the day. I'm sorry. I don't
want to get us all out....
QUESTION: Some of us have to go back to offices and come back, so --
MR. BOUCHER: I know. I do not want to get us all back here at some
time because I speculate at this point. I've got to talk --
QUESTION: Like not before 1:00, not before 2:00?
QUESTION: Can you give us a half hour warning?
MR. BOUCHER: Yes, we will give you as much warning as possible. And a
half hour seems more than reasonable.
QUESTION: Okay, thank you.
(end State Department transcript)
(Distributed by the Office of International Information Programs, U.S.
Department of State. Web site: http://usinfo.state.gov)
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