At least five U.S. embassies could begin the New Year without an official ambassador at the helm, due to the ongoing feud between the State Department and the Senate over several ambassadorial nominees and secret Senate holds.

As of Jan. 1, if Congress doesn't act by the end of the year, there will be no U.S. ambassador in Russia, India, the Czech Republic, El Salvador, and Azerbaijan. Three of the current ambassadors at those posts (Czech, El Salvador, and Azerbaijan) were placed there by President Barack Obama through recess appointments that expire at the end of this month, but face stiff opposition in the Senate and may not be confirmed for their posts. The nominee for the fourth (Russia) is being held up by GOP senators over issues not related to his qualifications for the job. The India ambassador slot is vacant now and nobody has been nominated to fill it.

U.S. ambassador to Moscow John Beyrle will leave Moscow this month and return to the United States, multiple administration officials confirmed. Obama has nominated National Security Council Senior Director for Russia Mike McFaul to replace him, but McFaul's nomination is being held up in the Senate by Sen. Mark Kirk (R-IL), who wants the administration to give Congress assurances that the United States will not share sensitive missile defense data with the Russian Federation. Several other senators may also emerge to oppose the McFaul nomination, several Hill sources report, not due to any personal objections to McFaul, but due to their unhappiness with Obama's reset policy with Russia.

Eight prominent conservative foreign policy experts wrote to Obama today to ask the administration to strike a deal with Kirk in order to facilitate McFaul's confirmation and avoid having a vacancy at the top of the Moscow embassy.

"Time is short if Dr. McFaul is to be in Moscow before the New Year. In the aftermath of the deeply flawed Duma election, it is imperative to have Dr. McFaul's voice heard in Russia as soon as possible. We urge you to work with Senator Kirk's office in order both to protect our national security and to expedite Ambassador-Designate McFaul's confirmation," wrote Eric Edelman, Jamie Fly, Bruce Jackson, Robert Kagan, David Kramer, David Merkel, Steve Rademaker and Randy Scheunemann.

The same group wrote a letter last month praising McFaul as a good choice for ambassador to Russia. Conservatives are torn between their desire to see Congress push back against Obama's Russia policies and their support for McFaul personally.

Another U.S. ambassador nominee that has a lot of conservative support is Norm Eisen, the current ambassador to the Czech Republic. Eisen was sent to the Prague as a recess appointment because of objections by Sen. Chuck Grassley (R-IO). Grassley is still upset over the June 2009 removal of Gerald Walpin as Inspector General for the Corporation for National and Community Service (CNCS), a position where he oversaw government programs such as AmeriCorps.

Eisen, the former White House ethic czar, was a key figure in the controversy and defended the White House's actions. He also made the case to Congress that Walpin was unfit for his position, writing in a letter to senators shortly after the sacking that Walpin "was confused, disoriented, unable to answer questions and exhibited other behavior that led the Board to question his capacity to serve." Walpin called those allegations "absolutely amazing."

Grassley, along with Rep. Darrel Issa (R-CA), has never dropped the issue of Walpin's firing. Grassley's shop contributed heavily to a joint House-Senate report released last November they say alleged not only that Walpin's firing was handled improperly, but also that Eisen misled Congress about the matter.

A slightly different group of conservative foreign policy hands wrote to Senate Foreign Relations Committee heads John Kerry (D-MA) and Richard Lugar (R-IN) today to urge them to push the Eisen confirmation process forward.

"Ambassador Eisen's appointment was already delayed after his initial nomination in 2010, leaving us without an ambassador in Prague at a key moment in U.S.-Czech relations. The absence of an ambassador in 2012 would again send the wrong message to our Czech allies," the experts wrote. "While we support the prerogative of senators to raise concerns about presidential nominees, we believe that in this case, the importance of having an ambassador in Prague as well as Ambassador Eisen's record over the last year should ensure his speedy confirmation."

That letter was signed by Fly, Jackson, Scheunemann, Rick Graber, Stuart Levey, Michael Makovsky, Clifford D. May, John O'Sullivan, Gary Schmitt, Kurt Volker, and Ken Weinstein.

The Cable reported last week that Mari Carmen Aponte, the currently serving U.S ambassador to El Salvador, might have to come back to Washington at the end of the year because her re-nomination process is facing a huge amount of pushback from Senate Republicans.

Aponte's initial nomination to be ambassador to El Salvador was held up last year in an effort led by Sen. Jim DeMint (R-SC), who was demanding more information about Aponte's long-ago romance with Roberto Tamayo, a Cuban-born insurance salesman who allegedly had ties to both the FBI and Castro's intelligence apparatus, according to a Senate Foreign Relations Committee investigation at the time. She wasn't confirmed, but Obama sent her to El Salvador via a recess appointment, which expires at the end of the year.

DeMint shows no signs of backing down and Aponte was barely approved by the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, with a 10-9 vote that fell along party lines.

Another U.S. ambassador who may have to pack his bags this month is Matthew Bryza, Obama's envoy to Azerbaijan. His nomination was being held up last year by two Democrats, Sens. Barbara Boxer (D-CA) and Robert Menendez (D-NJ), who are seen to be representing the Armenian voting constituencies unhappy with the administration's policy opposing a congressional resolution condemning the 1915 Armenian genocide.

The U.S. Azeris Network (USAN), an Azeri diaspora group, has started a public awareness campaign to push for Bryza's confirmation.

"Armenians are working to get Bryza [to] return to America in January 2012, seeking thereby to paralyze the mission of the US ambassador to Azerbaijan and to show that the Armenian lobby has a veto in relation to who will be the next U.S. ambassador to Baku," USAN said in a statement on Tuesday.

Former Ambassador to India Tim Roemer left his post in June for family reasons. The Obama has yet to nominate anyone to replace him in New Delhi.

Earlier this year, the self-immolation of one Tunisian fruit vendor sparked a region-wide series of revolutions that upended autocrats around the Middle East. Meanwhile, no less than 10 Tibetan monks have set themselves on fire this year to protest Chinese repression in their homeland, but the international community has yet to take notice.

Lobsang Sangay, the newly-elected prime minister of Tibet's government-in-exile, is in Washington this week to raise awareness of the dire human rights situation in Tibet and to call for U.S. support. He'll be meeting with senators, congressmen, and NGO leaders to educate them on the deteriorating situation in Tibet, but he has not been granted any meetings with senior Obama administration officials -- presumably due to their fear of creating friction in the relationship with China. He sat down Monday for a long, exclusive interview with The Cable.

"The urgent message is the ongoing self-immolations," Sangay said. "That reflects the desperate state that Tibetans are in. They are forced to take such drastic action, which is really sad. The motivation is that they want to highlight the oppressive policies of the Chinese government.... It's tragic."

He met with Sen. Dianne Feinstein (D-CA), a long time supporter of the Tibetan cause, and plans to meet with Sens. John McCain (R-AZ), Joe Lieberman (I-CT), Patrick Leahy (D-VT), Rep. Steve Chabot (R-OH), and others. He will also speak on Wednesday at the National Press Club and testify before the Tom Lantos Human Rights Commission, led by Rep. Jim McGovern (D-MA).

Sangay is hoping Congress will pass a resolution expressing solidarity with the Tibetan people and criticizing the repressive Chinese policies. He is also building support for his effort to provide funding that will help young Tibetans in exile receive an education in India and Nepal. Overall, he is simply hoping to highlight to Washington the worsening plight of Tibetans inside China.

"Many people are giving up their lives thinking the international community will come and hear their voices and support them," he said. "A resolution from Congress will send a message to Tibetans that their sacrifice is not in vain."

He also wants the Obama administration to put pressure on the Chinese government to improve the situation in Tibet. Sangay said the administration has raised the issue "in general" with Chinese leaders, but that he's not aware of any formal, concrete action by the administration on this issue.

The list of Chinese aggressive policies in Tibet is long, Sangay said, including economic marginalization, cultural assimilation, environmental destruction, and political repression. The crackdown on dissent has been increased, particularly in monastic communities, since the Tibetan uprising of 2008.

"Inside Tibet, they are giving up their lives and saying ‘Hear us. We are in a terrible situation and it's not worth living. We want you to acknowledge that you see us and you hear us,'" Sangay said. "So to acknowledge their suffering and to raise their aspirations and concerns, also to the Chinese government, that would go a long way."

We pressed Sangay to comment on the perception that the Obama administration has mistreated the Tibetan government-in-exile -- for example, by downgrading the location and publicity of Obama's meetings with the Dalai Lama and, in one case in Feb. 2010, making the Dalai Lama leave through a back door of the White House and walk past garbage in order to avoid the press.

"If we could have a result-oriented action, that would be most welcome. But a public display of support [by the Obama administration] has a symbolic meaning because that would encourage other countries to follow suit," he said. "We welcome both public and private gestures and public gestures have added significance."

He said the Chinese government is moving thousands of ethnically Han Chinese into Tibet to change the demographics of the region, and is installing party apparatchiks inside Tibetan monasteries under the rubric of "democratic management committees." He also said that an undeclared martial law has resulted in scores of Tibetans being arbitrarily arrested under trumped-up charges and then often disappeared altogether.

"When you read accounts of Chinese action in Africa, it looks like a replication of what is happening in Tibet," Sangay said, alleging that Tibet's water and other natural resources are being diverted out of the region. "Ten major rivers of Asia, which feed about one-third or more of the world's population, flow through Tibet.... You can call water the ‘white gold of the 21st century' and the Chinese are controlling that. It's affecting millions of people in Asia and creating a lot of tension."

So why hasn't the Tibetan crisis gotten as much world attention as the Arab Spring? In short, Sangay said that Chinese censorship and the isolation of the Tibetan community has impaired its ability to broadcast news of its plight.

"That's why I'm here, to make sure that these sacrifices do not go in vain," Sangay said, emphasizing that his government does not encourage self-immolation but feels a duty to speak up for protesters once they have acted.

The Chinese government doesn't recognize Sangay's government and often accuses him of promoting "anti-China splittist activities."

The Chinese government has sought to nominate the next Dalai Lama, a selection that Tibet's spiritual leaders said on Sept. 24 belongs to the current Dalai Lama alone. Sangay denounced China's position as ironic, given its denunciation of the Dalai Lama.

"It's a declared communist party, which believes that religion is poison.... They call the Dalai Lama the devil and they ban his photograph. So they want to choose the devil's incarnate?" Sangay said.

Sangay is not your typical prime minister-in-exile because, following the Dalai Lama's decision to transfer all political authority to the prime minister, he won the first really competitive race for the post. Before that, he spent 15 years in the United States, including time as a fellow at Harvard Law School, where he organized several meetings between Tibetan and Chinese scholars.

Sangay is committed to what's known as the "Middle Way," which refers to a call for Tibet's political autonomy and religious freedom but not independence from China. He sees a model in the example of Hong Kong, which is part of China but operates in its own way.

"I have a track record of someone who invests and believes in dialogue and I've met with hundreds of Chinese scholars," he said. "Many Chinese scholars do believe the Tibet issue is solvable because our demands are quite reasonable. It's the hard liners at the leadership level that are yet to come around."

He also said that the Tibetan issue is a matter of ethnic tolerance in China.

"They are willing to grant autonomy to Hong Kong and Macau because they are Han Chinese ... why they are not granting Tibetans autonomy is because they are Tibetans," he said. "Unless the leadership believes in diversity, they will never understand democracy.... Once they grant autonomy to Tibet, they will come around to embrace diversity, which will be the beginning of the real democratization of China."

Hundreds of supporters of the Mujahedin-e-Khalq (MEK) movement converged on the State Department on Friday to hear former U.S. congressmen and senior officials call for the U.S. government to take the MEK off its list of foreign terrorist organizations.

Former Rep. Patrick Kennedy (D-RI) emceed the rally in front of the State Department headquarters. The event also featured speeches by former Gov. Ed Rendell (D-PA), former FBI Director Louis Freeh, former CIA Deputy Director of Clandestine Operations John Sano.

"One of the greatest moments was when my uncle, President [John F.] Kennedy, stood in Berlin and uttered the immortal words ‘Ich bin ein Berliner,'" Kennedy exclaimed. "Today, I'm honored to repeat my uncle's words, by saying [translated from Farsi] ‘I am an Iranian,' ‘I am an Ashrafi."

The crowd erupted in cheers and applause and began chanting, "MEK yes, mullahs no! They are terrorists, they must go!"

Kennedy advocated taking the MEK off the terrorist list, which it has been on since 1997, and accused the Iraqi government of committing war crimes by killing innocent members of the MEK at Camp Ashraf. 3,400 MEK members live in the desert camp in Iraq under restrictive conditions.

"To my friends in the State Department behind us, who continue to hold fast to an old policy that is supported by Tehran, you are on the wrong side of history," Kennedy shouted. "To [Iraqi Prime Minister] Nouri al-Maliki, your brutal and deadly assault on Camp Ashraf will land you in the International Criminal Court, where you will be held accountable."

"I love you," Kennedy told the crowd. "If you take the MEK off the list, you will unshackle a group that will help take out the mullahs in Iran."

Next up was Rendell, who called on the international community to militarily intervene in Camp Ashraf, comparing it to Muammar al-Qaddafi's assault on Benghazi earlier this year.

"The international community conducted a military intervention in Libya to protect innocent civilians. We should do the same thing to protect the innocent people in Camp Ashraf," Rendell said.

MEK leader Maryam Rajavi, who lives in Paris with her husband Massoud Rajavi (who hasn't been seen in public since 2003), is banned from traveling to the United States. But she spoke to the rally via a video message on a big screen, and accused the State Department of giving implicit permission to the Iranian and Iraqi governments to kill children.

"The terror listing in the U.S. is openly used as a justification to legitimize such bloodletting, by both the cruel mullahs as well as their proxy government in Iraqi," she said. "Therefore, the Iranian people are asking the United States, ‘Why are you not annulling the license to kill our children?'"

The Cable's informal headcount put the number of attendees at about 1,000 to 1,500, with long lines of young Iranian-Americans wearing shirts with photos of dead MEK members imprinted on them. Some attendees had photos of the Rajavis on their shirts. Add to that flags, confetti, and a full drum line.

We asked Kennedy if he had been paid for his appearance at the rally, but he refused to answer. Ali Safavi, president of a pro-MEK group Near East Policy Research, said the speakers were paid through a speakers bureau, which receives money from wealthy Iranian-Americans in the United States. He also said those Iranian-Americans work with the law firm DLA Piper, but he denied the allegation that DLA and these individuals help funnel money from the MEK to the former U.S. officials.

In a crowd made up of people who were mostly of Middle Eastern origin, a group of African-American attendees wearing MEK gear stood out. One man, who would only identify himself as "The Great Lonnell," was holding a "Delist the MEK" banner while wearing a shirt that said, "Behold the Great Beast."

"We are here representing on behalf of the Iranian community. This vicious dictator who is calling himself a president is murdering these people, he's slaying them, and nothing is getting done," the Great Lonnell said. "And they are here rallying to get the attention of a government that has deaf ears."

The Great Lonnell came to Washington from Staten Island, NY -- along with 200 people from a church he attends -- to support the MEK's struggle for human rights. He and his group have been attending MEK rallies for several months, he said.

The Great Lonnell then pulled your humble Cable guy aside and asked to pitch Foreign Policy another story.

"Do you want to write my own story?" he asked. "I am the Beast that will come to the earth, from Revelations in the Old Testament. I am that person."

The Cable was not able to confirm that The Great Lonnell was in fact the Beast from Revelations.

UPDATE: Zaid Jilani and Ali Gharib from ThinkProgress interviewed attendees at the rally, many who had tenuous if any links to the MEK and little understanding of why there were there. Many had traveled from far away on fully funded trips.  Some appeared to be homeless. Watch the video here:

Former U.S. Ambassador to Iraq Ryan Crocker is expected to be named Thursday as the new U.S. envoy in Afghanistan, replacing outgoing Ambassador Karl Eikenberry. Crocker has said the internal conflict in Afghanistan will probably go on indefinitely, but nevertheless advocated for "strategic patience" by the United States.

In a long article Crocker wrote for Newsweek in September 2009, Crocker talked about his previous stint as the top U.S. diplomat in Kabul in 2002, immediately following the fall of the Taliban. Then Deputy Secretary of State Richard Armitage called him and barked, "Crocker, we need you in Afghanistan now." Crocker embarked upon the task of reopening the U.S. embassy in Kabul that had been shuttered in 1989 and reestablishing cooperation with a range of actors, including the Iranians.

Now, nine years later, the United States is still mired in the Afghan war, having committed more troops than ever before, and with no solution in sight. Crocker will be tasked with repairing strained relations with Afghan President Hamid Karzai, and furthering a political process that will include some reconciliation talks with members of the Taliban.

In Iraq, Crocker oversaw the U.S. military surge, which was accompanied by an about-face from Iraqi insurgent groups toward cooperation with the United States, often referred to as the "Sunni awakening." But when Crocker was leaving Iraq, he warned against a similarly dramatic improvement in conditions in Afghanistan.

"Relentless internal conflict is not endemic in Iraq. In Afghanistan it is," he wrote. "For most Afghans an effective central government isn't even a distant memory. Tribal identity is everything. And Al Qaeda and the Taliban have learned from the mistakes of the insurgencies in Iraq. They have not forced the people to turn against them. They know the hills and valleys of the political terrain as well as they do the killing fields of Helmand province or the caves of Tora Bora. They have learned strategic patience."

The lesson Crocker took away from his time in Baghdad was that, although there is no way for the United States to impose a solution on a country, leaving before the problem is solved will only further damage the U.S. image in the region and therefore damage U.S. interests.

"Americans tend to want to identify a problem, fix it, and then move on. Sometimes this works. Often it does not," Croker wrote. "Of course, imposing ourselves on hostile or chaotic societies is no solution either. The perceived arrogance and ignorance of overbearing powers can create new narratives of humiliation that will feed calls for vengeance centuries from now. What's needed in dealing with this world is a combination of understanding, persistence, and strategic patience to a degree that Americans, traditionally, have found hard to muster."

So what does that mean for Crocker's view on the road forward for Afghanistan? While his essay doesn't place much emphasis on negotiating with the Taliban, which was the late Richard Holbrooke's prescription for ending the conflict, he does counsel that leaving Afghanistan before the job is done would be unwise.

"No one, least of all me, has an easy fix to propose. But over the last eight years I was intimately involved with our country's effort to manage its relationship with the Middle East and South Asia. I know that success only comes from a solid, sustained commitment of resources and attention," Crocker wrote.

The nation of Georgia is in a position to block Russia's accession to the World Trade Organization (WTO), a top goal of the U.S.-Russia reset policy. The Georgians say that they are willing to strike a deal with Russia but only if Moscow abides by WTO rules on trade and customs policy, a position that would require Russian concessions in its conflict over the occupied territories, according to the president of Georgia.

Mikheil Saakashvili, Georgia's president, sat down for an exclusive interview with The Cable during his recent visit to Washington. He said that after lot of stalling and hand wringing, negotiations between Tbilisi and Moscow over the latter's desire to join the WTO had begun. As a WTO member, Georgia has veto power over any new additions to the organizations. Saakashvili said it was too early to tell if the Russians were negotiating in good faith or willing to make real concessions.

The Russian government refused to talk directly with Georgia for a long time and expected the United States to deliver Georgia's support for Russia's WTO accession, Saakashvili said.

"They were telling the Americans that we will make a deal with you and Georgia comes as part of the package. I heard some Russians say that it just takes one call from Vice President [Joseph] Biden to Saakashvili to convince him and make him shut up,'" the president said.

"But it's not like this and the Americans know it's not like this -- and they've done their best to clarify this to the Russians. Exactly because of that American position, finally the Russians came to the negotiating table. That's already great progress."

Obama administration officials have made it clear that Washington won't become involved in WTO negotiations between Russia and Georgia. The first round of those talks took place in the city of Bern with Swiss mediation earlier this month. The next round is scheduled to begin in May. Saakashvili said that Georgia was willing to be flexible but that the initial Russian proposals, which only dealt with Georgian exports to Russia, were not constructive.

"Some Russians were saying ‘we'll let back in your wine and you will change your position.'" Saakashvili said. "We don't have any wine left to sell to the Russians. That's not the bargaining chip. We need transparency of border transactions and customs issues. That's where we need to find mutually acceptable solutions with the Russians."

Of course, one huge problem is how to define the Georgian-Russian border. For Tbilisi, that includes the borders between Russia and the territories of Abkhazia and South Ossetia, which it considers breakaway republics. Russia has recognized the territories as independent states and has troops stationed in both regions.

"It's up to the Russians to show that they can go to flexible and compromise solutions," Saakashvili said. "Russians have said we can get [WTO membership] without Georgia. Good luck. Let them try. But Georgia is not going to compromise our principles."

Saakashvili also said that he is willing to limit the negotiations to the economic arena, leaving aside contentious political issues, such as Russia's failure to adhere to the terms of the ceasefire that ended the 2008 conflict. But he doubted the Russian government could keep the two issues separate.

"It would be counter-productive to go to political issues, but unfortunately [throughout the recent history of Russian-Georgia relations] Russians have turned every single economic issue into a political one. That's where we find ourselves," he said.

Saakashvili also talked about Georgia's desire to start buying defensive weapons from the United States. There has been an unofficial, unstated ban on selling heavy weapons to Georgia, a ban Senate Foreign Relations Committee ranking Republican Richard Lugar (R-IN) and Senate Armed Services Committee (SASC) ranking Republican John McCain (R-AZ) have often complained about.

"It's not in our interest to leave a stalwart partner, a NATO-aspirant country, without the needs to properly defend itself," McCain said at Tuesday's SASC hearing.

Saakashvili said he takes the administration at its word that there is no ban on weapons sales to Georgia and that some sales of small arms are "in the pipeline." But he added that Georgia really needs heavier weapons that could be used to defend the country in the case of another conflict with Russia.

"We don't' really need small arms, we have plenty of them and actually there are many alternative sources to shop for them," he said. "What Georgia really needs is something that it cannot get from anywhere else and that's anti-air and anti-tank [weapons] and that's completely obvious ... that's where should be the next stage of the cooperation."

Georgia has been striving to prove its value as a U.S. ally in a tumultuous region. Georgia has over 1,000 troops deployed in Afghanistan in some of the most dangerous areas in the South of Afghanistan and Saakashvili offered to send more troops in his March meeting with Gen. David Petraeus, he said.

The U.S. is also investing in Georgia. Saakashvili highlighted that the U.S. military is increasing its involvement on the ground in Georgia, for example by opening a $100 million U.S. Army Medical Research lab in Tbilisi as part of the Nunn-Lugar initiative.

Saakashvili said that the United States still must lead in supporting emerging democracies and use its moral authority and soft power to push for human rights and democratic change in countries with oppressive governments.

"This administration has been holding the line, at the U.N. Security Council, at the OSCE, at the arms control talks. American was the first major power to call a spade a spade, to call Russia's action in Georgia a military occupation. This moral support is paramount for any nation and these kind of things count," he said.

"This ultimately will make the whole process of advancing freedom irreversible."

Americans for Tax Reform President Grover Norquist said he wants to build a center-right coalition to advocate for considering pulling out of Afghanistan in order to save the hundreds of billions of taxpayer dollars being spent there.

As the United States grapples with the government's fiscal crisis, the huge investment in Afghanistan just isn't wise, Norquist argued at a private salon dinner in Washington on Tuesday evening to a group of foreign-policy minded academics and journalists. He also pointed to the opportunity cost of devoting so much national attention and resources to Afghanistan, which takes focus away from other international challenges.

Norquist teamed up with New America Foundation foreign policy chief Steve Clemons, who organized the dinner, to present his case. Clemons's own effort to publicize the costs of the war, as detailed in the report of the Afghanistan Study Group he helped to lead, dovetails nicely with Norquist's beliefs.

"The U.S. interests at stake in Afghanistan do not warrant this level of sacrifice," the report states, estimating the price tag of continuing the strategy put forth by President Barack Obama at about $100 billion per year.

Norquist, who said his career in politics began with an interest in foreign affairs, noted that $100 billion is exactly the amount some are calling for to be cut from the defense budget.

Clemons is set to release new polling data that he says shows conservatives around the United States support scaling back the Afghanistan mission. The poll, which is based on interviews with 1,000 conservative voters on Jan. 4-10, was conducted by Third Eye Strategies on behalf of the Afghanistan Study Group.

According to the poll, 57 percent of conservative respondents, including 55 percent of self-identified Tea Party members, agreed with the statement: "The United States can dramatically lower the number of troops and money spent in Afghanistan without putting America at risk."

71 percent of conservatives and 67 percent of Tea Partiers said they were "very worried" or "somewhat worried" that the costs of the war in Afghanistan will make it more difficult to reduce the deficit and balance the budget over the next decade.

Less than half of the respondents said that, all things considered, the war in Afghanistan has been worth fighting, and two-thirds said that the United States should either reduce the number of troops in Afghanistan or leave the country altogether.

"According to findings, conservative Americans worry that the substantial annual costs of the Afghanistan War will make it much more difficult for the U.S. to reduce the deficit and balance the federal budget by the end of this decade," a press release about the poll stated. "Also, more conservatives believe the war has been worth the costs sustained thus far than those who believe the war has not been worth it."

Throughout the dinner, Norquist repeatedly invoked former President Ronald Reagan, whom he said reacted appropriately to past terrorists attacks, such as the 1983 murder of 241 Marines in Beirut, but didn't commit the United States to a protracted occupation of that country.

"Reagan didn't decide that the U.S. should stay in Lebanon for 15 years. We left that country to have their civil war all by themselves," Norquist said.

Norquist also repeatedly referred to those on the right that have advocated for continued and increased investment in the Afghanistan mission, "such as Irving Kristol's son," a reference to Weekly Standard founder William Kristol. Norquist said that despite the fact these voices dominate the debate on the right about Afghanistan, their commitment to extending the war doesn't represent the true feelings of grassroots conservatives.

When pressed, Norquist declined to call for a withdrawal from Afghanistan outright. Rather, he said, he wants to "start a discussion" about leaving Afghanistan among the "center-right," and educate the conservative masses about the costs of the war in the hopes of shifting conservative public opinion.

When Clemons was asked how he thought withdrawal advocates could convince those on the right who argue for continued war in Afghanistan on moral or ideological grounds, he said, "I don't want to convince them, I want to beat them -- or at least compete with them -- in the debate."

Attendees at the dinner included retired Maj. Gen. Paul Eaton, former Bush White House staffer and New America Fellow Jim Pinkerton, the Council on Foreign Relations' Charles Kupchan, the Nixon Center's Paul Saunders, the Atlantic Council's Ian Brzezinski, and many others.

The State Department has been stepping up both its rhetorical and punitive actions against Iran, but the question still remains whether the administration will go as far as to sanction companies based in countries where relations are delicate, especially China.

Last week, the United States announced two steps to increase pressure on Iran: President Obama signed an executive order on Sept. 29 targeting eight Iranian individuals for serious human rights abuses, and the State Department announced on Sept. 30 that it was imposing sanctions on the Switzerland-based Naftiran Intertrade Company (NICO) due to its involvement in the Iranian petroleum sector. These actions are based on the Iran sanctions legislation passed overwhelmingly by Congress and signed into law by President Obama last June.

On Monday, the Government Accountability Office (GAO) released a new report that identified 16 companies as having sold petroleum products to Iran between Jan. 1, 2009, and June 30, 2010. Of those 16, the GAO reported that five have shown no signs of curtailing business with Iran. Three of those companies are based in China, one in Singapore, and one in the UAE.

There are some positive signs, however, that international pressure is having an effect on companies' willingness to do business in Iran. Several firms -- hailing from Switzerland, the Netherlands, France, India, and the United Kingdom -- told the GAO that they are halting their refined petroleum business with Iran.

But leading senators aren't convinced that the holdouts are planning to follow suit. They are pressing the Obama administration to use the new sanctions law to punish those who won't go along -- especially if they are from China.

"The GAO report released today provides encouraging evidence that the comprehensive sanctions legislation passed by Congress earlier this year is indeed persuading many companies to stop selling gasoline and other refined petroleum products to Iran. We applaud those firms that have taken this responsible and important step," said Sens. Joseph Lieberman (I-CT), Susan Collins (R-ME), and Jon Kyl (R-AZ) joint statement. Lieberman and Collins had requested the GAO report in July.

However, the success of sanctions legislation has only made it "even more imperative" that the Obama administration pressure countries that have maintained their ties in Iran, the senators stated. "We are particularly concerned that the majority of the companies that GAO identifies as still selling gasoline to Iran are in China. We urge the Administration to complete its own investigations swiftly and enforce the sanctions law, comprehensively and aggressively, against any violators," the statement read.

Deputy Secretary of State Jim Steinberg told reporters last week that the State Department was looking at additional firms' business in Iran and would consider more direct sanctions through a two-step process that takes up to 180 days. But he added that the administration was first trying to negotiate with foreign governments to stop the companies' activities in advance of imposing penalties.

"We are following the process outlined in the statute," said Steinberg. "If we find credible evidence [of firms violating the sanctions], then we go to the next stage, which is to conduct an investigation ... and then we would make a decision," Steinberg said.

One of the main concerns on Capitol Hill is that, as countries pull out from Iran, other countries will take over contracts, thereby nullifying the effect of the sanctions and enriching themselves at other countries' expense -- a practice known as "backfilling."

The administration and Congress worked hard to convince Japan and South Korea to impose unilateral measures against Iran, which they did, but there's particular concern that China will simply come in and take over those contracts.

Kyl and Sen. Chuck Schumer (D-NY) sent a letter to Secretary of State Hillary Clinton last week on this very issue, pointing out reports that China National Petroleum Company (CNPC) replaced the Japanese firm Inpex and agreed to invest around $2 billion to develop Iran's South Azadegan oil fields last year.

"The Administration, by continuing to ignore blatant violations of our sanctions laws by Chinese companies, has undermined our sanctions regime on Iran.  It has sent the message to our friends and allies -- many of which have taken the difficult steps to reduce their economic ties with Iran -- that others will be let off the hook," Kyl said Sept. 30.

"If President Obama genuinely believes that a nuclear-armed Iran is not acceptable, he must stand by those words and apply the authority Congress has given him to punish all who are violating U.S. sanctions laws, particularly China," said Kyl. "Time is of the essence." 

Steinberg addressed the issue of backfilling in his briefing, saying that such activity would provoke actions under the sanctions legislation. "We've made clear to all our international partners that we are strongly discouraging substitution. And of course, were there to be substitution that came within the ambit of the act, it would raise questions under the act," he said.

Bob Einhorn¸ State's senior advisor on Iran and North Korea sanctions, is the man responsible for delivering that message and he traveled to Beijing last week to press the Chinese not to undermine the sanctions. It's not clear yet if he was successful. 

In a July 29 hearing, Einhorn referenced a previous GAO report that identified 41 foreign firms with a petroleum interest in Iran. "There are a number of entities that are very problematic. I have to say that a number of them have been engaged in sanctionable activity," he said in testimony to the House Oversight and Government Reform committee.

Complicating matters are the persistent rumors that China may have secured some type of immunity from additional sanctions as part of their agreement to support U.N. Security Council Resolution 1929, which established relatively benign sanctions against Iran as punishment for its continued pursuit of nuclear weapons capability.

Undersecretary of State William Burns said at an Oct. 1 hearing of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee that the State Department had competed an internal review of the companies noted in the GAO report and would make more determinations soon, but he cautioned not to expect too many companies to be singled out for punishment.

"There are probably -- there are a number of cases, less than 10, in which it appears that there may have been violations of the Iran Sanctions Act. Most of those appear to involve activities that have stopped, in other words, involving companies that have pulled out of business in Iran, but there are a couple that appear to be ongoing," he said.

Capitol Hill observers have been encouraged by the administration's recent moves -- but are still not convinced they constitute enough of a commitment to increasing pressure on Iran. Staffers say that the administration's new forceful tone and rhetoric are a marked improvement, even if they are only fulfilling the actions required by the sanctions legislation.

What's clear is that the administration is not yet finished implementing sanctions against firms doing business with Iran, and Congress will be pressing it not to back down from punishing companies from countries that may take retaliatory measures.

"Many in Congress are worried that the administration will fall for Iran's latest bid to buy a reprieve from sanctions by appearing interested in negotiations," said one senior GOP senate aide. "Congress will not let up on the pressure on the administration to go after Iran and those who are supporting it, namely, the Chinese."

As the debate over the road ahead in Afghanistan heats up in Congress, Democrats are using the power of the purse to seek broad changes in the administration's policy and express their unhappiness with the Afghan government led by President Hamid Karzai.

In the latest move, a leading House appropriator promised Monday to remove all the Afghanistan foreign operations and aid money from next year's funding unless she can be assured none of the funds are being wasted due to corruption in the Afghanistan government.

"I do not intend to appropriate one more dime for assistance to Afghanistan until I have confidence that U.S. taxpayer money is not being abused to line the pockets of corrupt Afghan government officials, drug lords, and terrorists," foreign ops subcommittee chairwoman Nita Lowey, D-NY, said. "Furthermore, the government of Afghanistan must demonstrate that corruption is being aggressively investigated and prosecuted."

Her subcommittee will mark up the fiscal 2011 state and foreign ops appropriations bill Wednesday. When they do, billions of dollars the president requested for all sorts of non-military work in Afghanistan will not be in the bill.

A spokesperson for Lowey said she was responding, in part, to two articles published Monday that described some of the abuses of U.S. taxpayer funds going to Afghanistan. The Wall Street Journal reported that more than $3 billion of cash has been flown out of the Kabul airport over the last three years, packed in suitcases, and a joint U.S.-Afghan investigation is underway. The Washington Post reported Monday that Karzai is protecting high-level political officials from scrutiny related to the missing funds.

Lowey's spokesman told The Cable that the largest pots of money to be affected are about $3.3 billion in economic support funds and about $450 million requested for anti-narcotics and law enforcement aid to Afghanistan. Other accounts to be excluded include global health money, anti-terrorism funds, and military training funds for Afghanistan army officers. Humanitarian aid would not be affected.

Lowey also tied the issue to the still struggling U.S. economy, a theme that House Majority Leader Steny Hoyer, D-MD, focused on in a separate speech today. Democrats in Congress are preparing to go home to their districts after this week for a July 4 recess that will kick off the congressional campaign season. Accordingly, they are amplifying their rhetoric about deficit spending and expressing their unhappiness with the progress of the war in Afghanistan.

"Too many Americans are suffering in this economy for us to put their hard-earned tax dollars into the hands of criminals overseas," Lowey said.

It's unclear exactly how Lowey's bill will be treated after it passes out of her committee. There is not much chance the Congress will pass a full slate of funding bills this year at all. Hill sources said that the current thinking is to pass one bill that will keep the government running until after the elections, called a continuing resolution. In past years, those catch-all spending bills often have had big changes from what the committees put forth, so the money could be added back later on.

It's also unclear exactly how the Afghan government, much less the Obama administration, could actually assure Lowey that the billions of dollars being sent to Afghanistan are not being siphoned off by corrupt officials for illicit purposes.

The office of Kay Granger, R-TX, the ranking Republican on Lowey's committee, did not immediately respond to requests for comment.

UPDATE: Granger issued this statement late Monday afternoon:

"I share similar concerns with Chairwoman Nita Lowey about today's press reports alleging the shipment of billions of dollars in donor funds out of Afghanistan. However, I cannot support cancelling all FY2011 Afghanistan funding for the State Department and USAID until all the facts are clear and we know the impact this could have on our troops on the ground. When General Petraeus helped craft the current Afghan strategy last year it was not exclusively a military strategy - the State Department and USAID were intended to be key partners in the overall effort."

When Secretary of State Hillary Clinton visits Georgia next month, she'll be paying some overdue attention to a country that has felt somewhat neglected by the Obama administration.

Following the 2008 Russia-Georgia war, then-candidate Obama sent future Vice President Joe Biden to Tbilisi to express solidarity with his old friend Georgian President Mikheil Saakashvili. Candidate Obama was trying to match the fervor of John McCain, another one of Saakashvili's old friends, who criticized Obama for not immediately taking Georgia's side in the dispute.

After assuming office, the administration instituted a freeze of military assistance to Georgia, just as that country was getting ready to deploy a brigade of troops to Afghanistan. Meanwhile, Obama's outreach to Russia pressed forward while the Russians cemented their military presence in the disputed breakaway regions of Abkhazia and South Ossetia and neglected to fulfill their obligations under the agreement they signed at the end of the conflict.

The National Security Council's senior director for Russia, Michael McFaul, defended the Obama administration's Georgia policy this week at a meeting at the Peterson Institute for International Economics.

McFaul's main point was that the Obama administration had made a decision to de-link its drive to improve relations with Russia, the famous "reset button," from its Georgia policy. He said the administration wanted to pursue reset initiatives, like the civilian nuclear agreement that President Dmitry Medvedev is coming to Washington later this month in part to discuss, regardless of what was happening with the Russia-Georgia situation.

"It is a part of our strategy to deliberately avoid linkage between issue areas that have nothing to do with each other," McFaul said. "We don't think it's effective."

Specifically, McFaul said that the administration was not seeking to make the civil-nuclear deal contingent upon Russia ending what he described as its "occupation of Georgia," as some in Congress advocate. (Russia insists that its troops are protecting newly sovereign states, though few other countries recognize Abkhazia and South Ossetia as independent countries. Georgia claims the breakaway republics as sovereign territory.)

"That doesn't mean we're ignoring Georgia," McFaul said. "We're doing these things in parallel, but we're not linking them."

Nor, said McFaul, would the United States go along with Moscow's attempts to link Georgia to Russian cooperation on other issues, such as U.N. sanctions on Iran. "We're not throwing the Georgians under a bus in the name of a U.N. Security Council resolution. That was a proposition put to us a long time ago."

McFaul admitted, however, that there has been zero progress in advancing the objective of getting Russia to remove troops from Georgia.

"Is it a foreign policy objective of the Obama administration to help end Russia's occupation of Georgia in a peaceful manner and restore Georgia's territorial integrity? Absolutely yes," he said. "Have we made progress on the central objective? My answer is no. We haven't. That's the truth."

For the record, McFaul's portfolio at the NSC doesn't actually include Georgia. That falls to Elizabeth Sherwood-Randall, the senior director for Europe. Sources close to the issue say the Georgians deal mostly with McFaul anyway, but observers still wonder whether it wouldn't be better to join the two issues, as the Pentagon does.

Experts said the delinking of the issues in public is pragmatic, since there is little chance the U.S. would be able to move the Russians out of Georgia anyway.

"That's a wise way of doing it, because solving the Georgia problem within the context of arms control negotiations is just not realistic," said Alexandros Petersen, senior fellow at the Atlantic Council. "That's just the way it is. There's not much we can do on Georgia."

But the Clinton trip could go a long way in making the Georgians feel they are getting enough attention from the Obama administration. "They want to be seen as a loyal, Western-oriented outpost," he said.

Clinton should be ready to hear some uncomfortably harsh anti-Russian rhetoric when she gets to the podium next to Saakashvili, as former Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice discovered back in 2008.

"Any U.S. official who goes to Georgia should know that the Georgian leadership, particularly Saakashvili, is going to talk badly about Russia," Petersen warned.

What a difference six weeks can make in the U.S.-Afghanistan relationship. When Afghan President Hamid Karzai comes to Washington this week, White House officials will welcome him with open arms, quite different than the scolding tone they took with him when President Obama went to Kabul in March.

The White House knows it has to make nice with Karzai, who is crucial to the success of the Afghanistan mission. But the trip has also been set up to try to diversify ties with his government by welcoming a whole slew of Afghan cabinet ministers and officials and setting up meetings to cement connections outside the direct Obama-Karzai relationship.

"Next week is really the reciprocal visit for Obama's March visit to Kabul," said the NSC's Af-Pak special assistant Lt. Gen. Douglas Lute. But the difference in messaging between Obama's March trip to Kabul and Karzai's May trip to Washington is stark.

On Air Force One during Obama's trip to Kabul, National Security Advisor Jim Jones established the tough love message on corruption, saying that Obama wanted Karzai to "understand that in his second term, there are certain things that have not been paid attention to, almost since Day 1," and that Karzai "needs to be seized with how important" the issue of corruption is.

But following Obama's visit, Karzai lashed out at the Americans, accused the U.S. and the UN of engineering the massive fraud of his own election, and threatened to join the Taliban if the West didn't treat him nicely.

The Obama administration moved quickly to stem the bleeding and put the messaging about the relationship back on the right track.

"We believe that we are on a encouraging glide path in Afghanistan," Jones told reporters aboard Air Force One on the way back to Washington April 9, adding that Karzai "will prove himself over time as we tackle all of these important issues to be very reliable and is very appreciative of everything that we're doing."

Not many outside the administration are convinced Karzai is showing actual improvement.

"The problem is that we clearly have a flawed partner in Mr. Karzai and his government, and it's not at all clear that the situation's improving," said Council on Foreign Relations President Richard Haass. "To the contrary, it seems to be deteriorating."

Some argue that the administration should keep up its mix of carrots and sticks until Karzai is actually pressured enough to make reforms.

"Without a strong natural constituency or powerful military to call his own, President Karzai cannot afford to alienate many of his political partners," CNAS' Andrew Exum wrote in a new report last week. But Exum also pinpointed a problem with that strategy, namely that the U.S. has no choice but to stick with Karzai no matter what he does."The United States and its allies cannot hedge against Karzai by courting alternatives because no palatable alternatives exist," Exum wrote.

So the Obama team decided to invite Karzai's entire cabinet to Washington, to try to stem the volatility of a relationship based on interactions with one erratic man.

 "We want to underscore with this visit the development of a very broad strategic partnership," explained deputy national security advisor Ben Rhodes, adding that the broad participation "serves to underscore the breadth of the relationship."

Karzai will be bringing his ministers of defense, interior, agriculture, development, reconciliation, and others. After arriving on Washington on Monday, he'll kick off a set of State Department meetings with some public remarks with Secretary of State Hillary Clinton on Tuesday morning.

Wednesday will be the White House day, and Karzai will get significant time with President Obama in the Oval Office while his other ministers meet with their various interlocutors. On Thursday, Karzai goes to the think tanks, with one public event with Clinton at the U.S. Institute of Peace.

But while the Obama administration is clearly trying to establish ties with Karzai's ministers and associates, they are steering clear of his opponents. When Abdullah Abdullah, who ran against Karzai in the presidential election, comes to DC the week after Karzai, he will get no love from the administration at all.

"He's coming as a private citizen and being hosted by private organizations, not by the U.S. government," said Lute, "To my knowledge he is not meeting with any U.S government officials at an official capacity.

The State Department has cut off communications with semi-deposed Kyrgyzstan President Kurmanbek Bakiyev and is sending an envoy to meet with the new de facto leadership, but Foggy Bottom is not quite ready to say that a change of government has taken place.

Robert Blake, the assistant secretary of state for South and Central Asian affairs, leaves Wednesday morning for Bishkek with plans to meet with Roza Otunbayeva, the opposition leader who is now holding the reigns of Kyrgyzstan's government after bloody demonstrations drove Bakiyev to seek refuge in the country's southern region.

In a briefing before his departure, Blake described Otunbayeva as the head of Kyrgystan's "provisional government," but steered clear of either endorsing the overthrow of the Bakiyev regime or supporting Bakiyev in any way.

"My main goal will be to hear from the Kyrgyz administration about their assessment of the law and order situation, the steps that they plan to take during their six-month interim administration, to organize democratic elections and a return to democracy, and how we might be able to help them to restore democracy and economic growth in Kyrgyzstan," Blake said.

Blake will travel with Kurt Donnelly, the National Security Council's director for Central Asia, and Dan Rosenblum, his aide in charge of assistance programs.

Asked if the U.S. was abandoning Bakiyev, whom the United States has been courting and supporting for years, Blake said no. "The situation with Bakiyev remains I'd say unclear. ... The United States really hasn't taken a position in that. We think that this needs to be managed by the Kyrgyz themselves, in accordance with the Kyrgyz constitution."

That constitution, which can be found here, says nothing about chasing a sitting president from the capital city and then arresting him -- which the erstwhile opposition is now threatening to do.

"No change has yet taken place, so we can't make a judgment about Bakiyev," Blake said.

And what about the 81 people who reportedly died in the streets during last week's uprising?

The violence "was not by the current provisional government," Blake said. "Many of those were killed by supporters of [Bakiyev] ... according to the provisional government."

So was this a legal change of government or not?

"We do not see this as a coup," Blake said.

Does the State Department see a Russian hand in fomenting the violence that led to the change in government?

"That's probably a question best addressed to the Russians," Blake said.

Blake did confirm that there has been no U.S. government contact with Bakiyev, and a Kyrgyz delegation including his son Maxim arrived in Washington late last week as scheduled, but the U.S. side canceled all their official meetings and refused to speak with them.

Meanwhile, Secretary of State Hillary Clinton spoke over the weekend with Otunbayeva, offering U.S. assistance and pleading for the new leadership to honor Kyrgyzstan's agreement to lease the Manas airbase to the U.S. military, which needs it to transit vital supplies to the war in Afghanistan.

Blake said the new government will honor the existing Manas agreement, but admitted that the agreement was only for one year and ends this summer. At that time, the new leadership could reassert its longstanding opposition to the U.S. military's presence in Kyrgyzstan, creating problems for a renewal or renegotiation.

The bottom line is that the State Department is taking a wait-and-see approach, perfectly happy to work with whichever group ends up on top in Bishkek, while realizing that the situation is still fluid.

"It is not for us to take sides or to choose among competing factions," said spokesman P.J. Crowley.

Despite a strongly worded statement issued Thursday, leading Republican senators have not yet decided to oppose ratification of the newly signed nuclear reductions treaty, multiple GOP aides told The Cable.

Republicans senators with a strong interest in arms control have been heavily involved in the debate over the new Strategic Arms Reductions Treaty with Russia, which U.S. President Barack Obama and Russian President Dmitry Medvedev signed in Prague Thursday. A tough statement issued Thursday evening by Senate Minority Whip Jon Kyl, R-AZ and Senate Armed Services Ranking Republican John McCain, R-AZ, led many in Washington to speculate that they were gearing up to oppose Senate ratification.

But that decision has not yet been made, GOP Senate aides close to the issue said. The offices of leading GOP lawmakers, not just Kyl and McCain, are still pouring over the treaty text and investigating whether or not what the treaty says about missile defense is really problematic for them.

"While we were initially advised that the only reference to missile defense was in the preamble to the treaty, we now find that there are other references to missile defense, some of which could limit U.S. actions," the senators wrote. "This has the potential to constrain improvements to U.S. missile defenses, if objected to by the Russians."

They added that it would be "difficult" to ratify START in the Senate if their demand for a "robust" nuclear modernization plan isn't fully met.

It's true that the administration said before the release that the text of the agreement would not include any references to missile defense and would in no way constrain U.S. missile-defense plans. It was always expected that the preamble would acknowledge the relationship between offensive and defensive systems and that the Russians would issue a unilateral statement acknowledging their right to withdraw from the treaty if they believe American missile defenses are upsetting "strategic stability."

But what surprised the GOP senators was this passage in the text of the treaty:

"Each party shall not convert and shall not use ICBM launchers and SLBM launchers for placement of missile defense interceptors therein. Each Party further shall not convert and shall not use launchers of missile defense interceptors for placement of ICBMs and SLBMs therein.  This provision shall not apply to ICBM launchers that were converted prior to signature of this Treaty for placement of missile defense interceptors therein."

In other words, the treaty prevents ICBMs and SLBMs from being used for missile defense, a Russian concern. But the existing systems in Alaska and California are grandfathered in and the administration has no current plans to convert other ICBMs for missile defense use, an official explained.

Whether that represents a red line for Republicans like McCain and Kyl is simply not decided yet, our Senate sources said. The strong statement could be intended to establish a negotiating position to ensure they get what they are really worried about: a nuclear modernization plan that they feel safeguards U.S. stockpiles going forward.

Obama's Nuclear Posture Review, also issued this week, ends the prospects of building a completely new warhead, but the State Department is preparing a "stockpile management plan" and a "life extension program" for the old warheads that could do almost all the things a new warhead program would do.

A Wednesday statement by Kyl and McCain commenting on the release of the NPR also indicated that the two lawmakers are still processing the documents and open to supporting them if their concerns are addressed.

"We will evaluate this [NPR] carefully in the coming weeks, including when we see the modernization plan required by law at the time the START follow-on treaty is submitted to the Senate," they wrote.

So when might a vote on START happen?

The latest speculation is that the Senate would be wise to do it during the lame-duck session in November and December. This way, the administration and its supporters on Capitol Hill could avoid a lengthy debate just prior to the midterm elections but also get it done before the new Congress takes its seats, probably with even more GOP senators.

Special Representative Richard Holbrooke has received a clean bill of health after having his heart valves checked today and will go with General David Petraeus to Afghanistan next week after all.

New America Foundation's Steve Clemons has the news on the Washington Note.

I have learned just an hour ago that the angiogram showed the best possible results. There was no significant obstruction that required intervention.

Richard Holbrooke has been cleared to travel with General Petraeus to Afghanistan.

In fact, Holbrooke spoke to Secretary of State Hillary Clinton directly and she cleared the trip.

I can also report that Holbrooke is in excellent spirits -- though he seemed in excellent spirits when he presided over an all staff meeting Tuesday this week and had not yet informed his team of this potential health challenge.

So good news on the Holbrooke health front.

After President Obama has rolled out his nuclear policy review Tuesday morning, he used his down time to turn his attention to another major nuclear initiative: the Nuclear Security Summit being held in Washington next week.

With 47 world leaders coming to town, Obama simply can't very well schedule one-on-one meetings with all of them -- lest international diplomacy turn into the equivalent of speed dating. Still, the least the president can do is give a phone call to the leaders he's rejecting, and that's what he was doing Tuesday afternoon.

So far, the world leaders Obama has granted an audience to are (in alphabetical order by country): President Serzh Sargsyan of Armenia, President Hu Jintao of China, Chancellor Angela Merkel of Germany, Prime Minister Manmohan Singh of India, King Abdullah II of Jordan, President Nursultan Nazarbayev of Kazakhstan, Prime Minister Najib Razak of Malaysia, Prime Minister Syed Yousuf Raza Gilani of Pakistan, and President Jacob Zuma of South Africa.

Russian President Dmitry Medvedev doesn't need a bilateral, because he will have lots of time to hang out with Obama Thursday in Prague when they meet there to sign the new START agreement. Obama just met with French President Nicolas Sarkozy last week. And British Prime Minister Gordon Brown is skipping the summit to gear up his campaign ahead of the May elections he announced this morning.

So who's not getting face time with Obama? One confirmed rejection is Georgian President Mikheil Saakashvili, who got the consolation phone call from Obama just a few hours ago.

"President Saakashvili thanked President Obama for his invitation to the Nuclear Security Summit in Washington," according to a readout of the call from the Georgian side. "President Obama thanked President Saakashvili for Georgia's exceptional commitment of troops to the international effort in Afghanistan."

What Obama didn't mention in the call Georgia's aspirations to join NATO or Georgia's concern about the French sale of a new assault ship to Russia.

Hey, maybe they'll run into each other at the buffet.

So, who are the other countries may be soon getting the rejection call? Looks like the leaders of Algeria, Argentina, Australia, Belgium, Brazil, Canada, Chile, the Czech Republic, Egypt, Finland, Indonesia, Israel, Italy, Japan, Mexico, Morocco, the Netherlands, New Zealand, Norway, the Philippines, Poland, the Republic of Korea, Saudi Arabia, Singapore, Switzerland, Spain, Sweden, Thailand, Turkey, the United Arab Emirates, Ukraine, and Vietnam.