State Department

President Obama entered office vowing to fully pay U.S. dues to international organizations, but his administration's efforts to do so have hit a snag: Tom Coburn.

Today comes word that the State Department is circulating a memo on Capitol Hill opposing a measure by the Oklahoma Senator that would shift funds currently designated for U.S. contributions to the United Nations for new benefits for American veterans.

The document points out that the U.S. has just finally paid its back bill owed to the U.N. after 10 years of being in arrears.

"The full payment of assessed contributions affects the standing and influence that the U.S. has at these organizations," the State Department memo reads. "As we call upon others to help reform and strengthen the UN, the United States must do its part -- and pay its bills."

Foggy Bottom is just the latest actor to be roped into Coburn's ongoing feud with Veterans' Affairs Committee Chairman Daniel Akaka, D-HI, over Akaka's bill to authorize money for family caregivers tending to injured soldiers returning home from Iraq and Afghanistan and other new benefits that the Congressional Budget Office estimates will cost $3.7 billion. Akaka's bill has wide support, but Coburn has been holding it up as part of his promise to oppose any bill that isn't specifically paid for in advance.

The fight got dramatic last week when Akaka held a press conference to criticize Coburn's intransigence and Coburn showed up and sat in the front row. Coburn waved smugly at Akaka during the event and then got up and held his own impromptu presser to defend his position. Senate Democrats were not amused.

Late Tuesday, the Democrats and Republicans came to an agreement to vote on the bill, including a separate vote on Coburn's amendment.

"Paying for veterans' benefits is a cost of war; this is not the appropriate place or time for a debate about the United Nations," Akaka's spokesman Jesse Broder Van Dyke told The Cable. "Diplomacy can prevent wars so we shouldn't shortchange that. Our veterans shouldn't be used as pawns in that debate."

Coburn spokesman John Hart disagreed. "Dr. Coburn hopes his colleagues will put the needs of our wounded veterans ahead of the wishes of corrupt bureaucrats at the United Nations," he told The Cable.

The vote on Coburn's amendment will probably come tomorrow.

For the protocol-obsessed Japanese, scheduling a cabinet-level meeting and then canceling it is a rare occurrence. But that's exactly what happened today when the State Department had to withdraw its announcement that Secretary of State Hillary Clinton would meet Friday with Japanese Foreign Minister Katusya Okada.

The diplomatic SNAFU is emblematic of the shifting ground underneath the U.S.-Japan alliance. The Democratic Party of Japan (DPJ), which took over the government in September, campaigned on a pledge to reform relations with the U.S., but now in power, they are battling internally to determine how far and wide those changes should go. The latest twist certainly won't dampen the view of those who've proclaimed a "crisis" in the U.S. relationship with Japan since the elections; a State Department official told The Cable that Clinton was still holding time in her Friday schedule, just in case Okada is able to make the trip.

Reports out of Japan suggest that Okada wanted to secure a deal on his pet issue, the Futenma air base in Okinawa, ahead of President Obama's trip to Tokyo next week. But Okada is being reined in by Japanese Prime Minister Yukio Hatoyama, who doesn't want Okada gallivanting around making policy while the issue is still a matter of intense internal discussion within the Japanese government.

And both sides are trying to recover from a tumultuous couple of weeks in the relationship following the Tokyo visit of Defense Secretary Robert Gates, who was seen as focusing too much on Futenma, a minor issue for the U.S. but a major emotional hot button for the Japanese.

More broadly, the center of gravity in the U.S.-Japan relationship may be shifting from the Defense Department to the State Department. While Okada might have wanted to focus on Futenma, administration sources said that Clinton's goal was much broader. She wanted to start engaging the new Japanese leadership on a larger set of strategic issues, from Afghanistan to China and everything in between.

The agenda shows the Obama administration's desire to focus less on incremental military issues such as military basing and start bringing the discussion with the new Japanese government around to larger strategic issues. But the Obama administration is unable to advance the conversation due to the ongoing foreign policy fight within the Japanese cabinet.

Hatoyama is refereeing a complex battle between various elements of his party and his cabinet over the direction of Japanese foreign policy, especially with regard to the U.S.-Japan alliance. Okada's interests may lie in making things for Hatoyama as difficult as possible, hence the (maybe) cancelled trip.

Inside the Japan policy infrastructure in Washington, the officials in charge of managing the relationship are taking a two pronged-approach. The first element of their strategy is "wait and see," letting the new DPJ government settle internal disputes and then come to the U.S. side with policy positions, negotiating stances, and the like.

The second part of the approach is "Don't blink," meaning that the U.S. interlocutors are trying to avoid overreacting to what some see as antagonistic or contradictory statements on the alliance coming out of different DPJ leaders. Also, the U.S. managers are determined not to negotiate away any of their positions while the new Japanese government is going through its growing pains.

"We're waiting for them to give us some indication of where they see the path as leading from here," said one senior U.S. official dealing with the U.S.-Japan alliance.

There is also a feeling among Obama administration Japan managers that the reports about the "crisis" in U.S.-Japan relations have been way overblown and that while a number of issues in the alliance are now up for discussion, which is new, that is not necessarily a bad thing.

"You can take any of this stuff and make a story out of it, but none of these issues are unmanageable," the official said, "The U.S. and Japan still rely on each other in a lot of fundamental ways."

The official said that there is a pretty clear path out of the current tense situation, whenever the Japanese are ready to take it. For example, on the issue of the plan for the relocation of the Futenma air base, U.S. officials believe that ultimately there is no real alternative to the current plan. Okada's idea, to combine Futenma with the Kadena air base, is seen as a non-starter inside the Obama administration.

However, there are "sweeteners" that could alleviate some concerns of Okinawa residents and allow Hatoyama and Okada to save face by claiming they got concessions before ultimately accepting the bulk of the current plan as is.

But the talks between the United States and Japan haven't gotten to that stage and probably won't by the time Obama visits Tokyo next week. Obama himself is said to be too far above the issue to negotiate such details and is likely to simply affirm the strength of the alliance, mark its 50^th anniversary, and leave the negotiations for lower officials to resume after the trip.

Traditionally, the Japan relationship inside Washington more heavily managed by the Defense Department as compared to relations with other countries. There are historical and logistical explanations for this phenomenon, but with new administrations on both sides, a change might be in store.

At the National Security Council, the Japan policy is managed by Jeffrey Bader, a former Ambassador and senior State Department official and Daniel Russel, former State Department Japan office director.

At the State Department, Assistant Secretary Kurt Campbell is in charge of all things Japan, aided by Japan desk chief Kevin Maher. Campbell has been back and forth to Tokyo several times since assuming his post and is scheduled to stop in Tokyo on Thursday on his way home from Burma.

The Japan team at the Pentagon is centered around Assistant Secretary Gen. Chip Gregson, Principal Deputy Derek Mitchell, Deputy Michael Schiffer, and Japan desk officer Suzanne Bassala.

Photo: Pool/Getty Images

In which we scour the transcript of the State Department's daily presser so you don't have to. Here are the highlights of today's briefing by Department Spokesman Ian Kelly:

• The administration is reversing its policy of freezing out the de facto regime in Honduras. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton spoke with both current leader Roberto Micheletti and ousted President Manuel Zelaya and a full administration team will travel to Tegucigalpa next week.
• The State Department respects the right of employee and former Marine Corps Captain Mathew Hoh to resign in protest of the war in Afghanistan. Hoh was a political officer on a Provincial Reconstruction Team who signed on for a limited deployment in March. "I would draw a distinction between his situation and somebody who had been in the Foreign Service and had a stake in the Foreign Service for 20 years or more," Kelly said.
• The U.S. is still waiting for an official response from Iran on the agreement to transfer low enriched uranium to a third country, despite reports that Iran has agreed in principle to the deal but wants some changes, including shipping out the material in stages. No schedule on when the next P5+1 meeting will be.
• There has been "no formal bilateral meeting" between the U.S. and North Korea despite that representatives from both sides have "had plenty of opportunities to talk on the margins of it," Kelly said. No readout of the non-meeting meetings.
• Chinese General Xu Caihou met with Defense Secretary Robert M. Gates and Deputy Secretary of State James Steinberg today. No word on whether he showed them his new video.

After weeks of little progress, the State Department is reversing its policy of freezing out the de facto regime in Honduras. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton spoke with both current leader Roberto Micheletti and ousted President Manuel Zelaya over the weekend and a full administration team will travel to Tegucigalpa later this week.

The delegation will consist of Assistant Secretary for Western Hemisphere Affairs Tom Shannon, principal Deputy Assistant Secretary Craig Kelly, and National Security Council Senior Director for Western Hemisphere Affairs Dan Restrepo, State Department spokesman Ian Kelly said Tuesday.

The administration has been quietly communicating with the Micheletti regime recently, after initially siding with Zelaya, who has come under criticism for his increasing strange behavior since he returned to Honduras and decided to hide out in the Brazilian Embassy.

The new engagement comes as the two battling sides in the Honduran political dispute seem to be nearing an agreement after weeks of intense negotiations.

The delegation "will urge both sides to show flexibility and redouble their efforts to bring the crisis to an end," Kelly said, adding that progress was made as recently as this morning. Clinton decided to get involved after seeing what was then regarded as an impasse last Friday.

Elections in Honduras are planned for Nov. 29 and the need to properly prepare is what's driving the timeline, according to Kelly.

"In order for it to be seen as legitimate and for the authorities down there to conduct a completely open and transparent electoral process, that there needs to be some time. And this is precisely why we see some urgency in this," he said.

The fate of Shannon's nomination to become ambassador to Brazil and Arturo Valenzuela's nomination to replace Shannon hang in the balance as well. Sen. Jim DeMint, R-SC, has said he would release his holds on the two after the administration comes out in support of the elections.

The two sides are working off the San Jose Accord document, but have been stuck on the issue of what Zelaya's role would be if and when the truce is signed.

In which we scour the transcript of the State Department's daily presser so you don't have to. Here are the highlights of today's briefing by Department Spokesman Ian Kelly:

• Fourteen Americans were killed in two helicopter crashes in Afghanistan today, neither of which was apparently the result of combat fire. "We wish for a speedy recovery of those injured today, and send our thoughts and sympathies to those families who lost loved ones," Kelly said.
• Undersecretary of State William Burns had a telephone conference with his P5+1 counterparts to discuss the road ahead in dealing with Iran, but no new meetings to announce, despite that the IAEA visited the Qom facility again today.
• Secretary of State Hillary Clinton supports the U.N. sending someone to investigate whether foreign countries had a hand in the "horrific" bombings in Iraq over the weekend. "The circumstances surrounding it need to be looked into," Kelly said.
• No comment on statements by Afghan president candidate Abdullah Abdullah's threats to pull out of the Nov. 7 runoff election if his demands over election staffing aren't met. "We don't really have a position on this," said Kelly, "We're not trying to encourage or discourage anybody from running or not running."
• Amb. Sung Kim and North Korean negotiator Ri Gun continued their flirtatious non-meeting meetings in San Diego today, after first talking in New York on Saturday. The State Department is still, for some reason, trying to say the meetings aren't official. "There are no plans for further bilateral meetings at this conference, but I don't exclude that there won't be some side meetings with Mr. Ri Gun," Kelly said. Everybody catch that?  
• State is "concerned" about the recent elections in Tunisia, where President Zine El Abidine won with 90 percent of the votes.
• No new strategy for Middle East peace in light of violent clashes in East Jerusalem. "I think that our energies and our focus right now are on just that, that we're going to vigorously pursue this goal, using all kinds of opportunities to do so, in the form of bilateral meetings," Kelly said. Special Envoy George Mitchell is headed back to the region soon.

When North Korea's lead nuclear negotiator Ri Gun (left) makes his tour of the United States next week, all eyes will be on the State Department, which is planning to make the first face-to-face, government-to-government contact with Kim Jong Il's regime in quite a long time.

Ri arrives in New York today and then will be in San Diego early next week to attend what's called the Northeast Asian Cooperation Dialogue. He will then come back to New York later in the week to hold "track two" (nonofficial) meetings organized by the National Committee on American Foreign Policy (NCAFP), a private insiders' policy group that has been key in organizing such meetings in the past.

The State Department issued the visa for Ri but has been extremely cagey about who will be going to meet with him. Spokesman Ian Kelly said today that State Department officials will probably meet with him in both cities, but no final decision has been made on who that would be.

The hands-on favorite among Korea watchers is Sung Kim, who is officially titled the "special envoy for the six-party talks." Those talks have been stalled since North Korea unilaterally withdrew in April. Kim was previously deputy to former lead negotiator Chris Hill, then assistant secretary of state for East Asia and Pacific affairs. He met with Ri in New York last November. Another leading contender is Korea desk chief Kurt Tong.

Conspicuously absent from the discussion over who will meet Ri is Stephen Bosworth, Obama's choice for special representative for North Korea policy. Bosworth has been handling the North Korea issue for State part time, maintaining his other full-time gig as dean of the Fletcher School at Tufts University.

The North Koreans have issued repeated invitations for Bosworth to visit Pyongyang, invitations that have gone completely unanswered. The choice of Bosworth, a sacred cow of the Asia policy community for decades, was seen by many as an effort to smooth out relations over the issue with allies Japan and South Korea, countries to which Bosworth has deep ties.

There is a long tradition of engaging the North Koreans through unofficial channels and by using experts that Pyongyang prefers as proxies, such as University of Georgia professor Han Park or journalist Selig Harrison. NCAFP has been at the center of what's called the "New York channel," which sometimes includes contact with North Korea's delegation at the United Nations. The key figure in NCAFP is professor and author Donald Zagoria.

If and when Kim or another U.S. official meets with Ri, the implication is that they would be setting the stage for a resumption of talks, even though the North Korean and U.S. positions on terms of discussion are still far apart. The Obama administration is insisting that any bilateral talks be in the context of the multilateral process and be based on the previous agreement North Korea signed promising to denuclearize.

The North Koreans, however, want direct talks with the U.S. without promising anything and without including regional powers. Kelly, the State Department spokesman, acknowledged that next week's meetings are essentially that.

"This is really kind of a hybrid," said Kelly, "It's not just track two. It's really a combination."

TEH ENG KOON/AFP/Getty Images

In which we scour the transcript of the State Department's daily presser so you don't have to. Here are the highlights of today's briefing by Department Spokesman Ian Kelly:

• Secretary of State Hillary Clinton climbed the Hill today to meet with Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid, Senate Armed Services Committee chairman Carl Levin, lunch with Democratic Policy Committee head Byron Dorgan, and have dinner with House Majority Leader Steny Hoyer. She also met with President Obama to give her report on the progress made toward relaunch of the Israeli-Palestinian talks (short meeting?).
• U.N. Amb. Susan Rice is still in the Middle East and met with Palestinian Prime Minister Salam Fayyad.
• The State Department is going to wait until tomorrow to get the official word from the Iranians on whether they will approve the draft agreement on transferring their low-enriched uranium abroad. Kelly wouldn't comment on reports that Iran is already backing out of the deal. "I'm sure there are a lot of voices in Tehran right now, but we're going to wait for that authoritative answer tomorrow," he said.
• Kelly rejected Sri Lanka's rejection of a new report recounting all the allegations of war crimes by both the government and the Tamil Tigers during violence earlier this year. The report doesn't attempt to verify all the claims, but we believe that the claims ... are credible," he said.
• The U.S. wants the Iraqi government to "move expeditiously" to settle their dispute over an election law to govern the January polls, Kelly said. Since the Council of Representatives (Iraq's lower house) couldn't agree on a text, the debate will move to their Council for National Security. There are concerns any delay in the election could cause a corresponding delay in U.S. plans to drawdown troops there.
• The 90-day congressional review period for the U.S.-UAE nuclear deal has expired, meaning there are no more obstacles on the American side for it to go into full force, Kelly said. "The next step is to talk to the government of the UAE to see what their own requirements are for us to enter into this formally."

The State Department is owed $134 million by a Kuwaiti firm that poorly and dangerously constructed the new U.S. Embassy in Baghdad, according to a newly released report by the Inspector General's Office.

The severe problems in the building of the compound, which opened last April almost one year late and more than $100 million over the $592 million budget, are so bad that the State Department will be paying for them in repairs and maintenance for years to come, the IG's office found.

Among the most shocking problems still present at the embassy: The walls are in danger of cracking; the "safe areas" for emergencies aren't safe; the fire protection systems might not protect from fires; and oh, by the way, the plumbing and electrical systems don't work.

This is only the latest piece of bad news for the lead contractor, First Kuwaiti Trading and Contracting, a firm the U.S. has used for hundreds of projects in Iraq but stands accused of shoddy work and widespread abuse of third-country workers it ships in from all over the world.

John Owens, one of the First Kuwaiti foremen on the project, quit in disgust after witnessing what he called labor trafficking and widespread worker abuse, including tricking migrant workers into going to Iraq, placing them in sub-human living conditions, and holding their passports so they couldn't escape.

"I've never seen a project more fucked up. Every U.S. labor law was broken," he said.

A House oversight committee held hearings on the mess in 2007, featuring testimony from Owens and Rory Mayberry, another First Kuwaiti employee who detailed the kidnapping practices of First Kuwaiti and accused the State Department of covering up the allegations.

Unfortunately, it was later discovered that Mayberry was basically a career felon who had been fired by First Kuwaiti for completely falsifying his credentials, casting doubt on his testimony.

Regardless, the new IG report confirms that severe safety problems at the embassy persist to this day and also lambasts State's Bureau for Overseas Building Operations (OBO) for its conduct throughout the affair.

The report criticizes the State Department for a total lack of oversight, mainly because OBO established something called the Emergency Project Coordination Office (EPCO) that didn't do its job in monitoring the construction when it was going on.

EPCO paid First Kuwaiti tens of millions of dollars not authorized by the contracts, didn't require proper documentation before paying invoices, and didn't enforce design and construction requirements, leading to a lot of the cost overruns and persistent problems, the IG found.

The OBO bureau responded to the IG by saying that "stand alone project offices [such as EPCO] are a mistake" and would not be used in the future. The Baghdad embassy did not respond with any comments to the IG report.

Photo by Iraqi President Office via Getty Images