Briefing Skipper: Hillary on the Hill, Rice in the Middle East, Iran deadline

Posted By Josh Rogin Thursday, October 22, 2009 - 11:11 PM Share

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."