Snow Day Briefing Skipper

Posted By Josh Rogin Friday, February 5, 2010 - 3:00 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 Friday's briefing by spokesman P.J. Crowley:

"As we all know, Washington, D.C., does not do snow well," Crowley told the 30 or so brave attendees at Friday's earlier-than-usual press briefing. So true.

National Security Advisor Jim Jones will lead the U.S. delegation to the Munich Conference next week. From the State Department, Deputy Secretary Jim Steinberg and Special Representative Richard Holbrooke will also attend. Steinberg was also in Yereven, where he met with Armenian President Serzh Sargsyan and Foreign Minister Edward Nalbandian, Crowley said, adding that Steinberg plans to meet with Turkish Foreign Minister Ahmet Davutoglu and also President Ilham Aliyev of Azerbaijan.
Steinberg also stopped in Georgia and met with President Mikheil Saakashvili as well as opposition leaders, according to several reports. Steinberg also told the Georgian press that Holbrooke will visit Tbilisi "shorty."
Undersecretary William Burns had a 90-minute conference call with all of his counterparts from the P5+1 countries regarding Iran. They discussed the engagement and pressure tracks, but it was not "the intent of the call" to decide on any particular pressures. Have the Iranians followed through by formally submitting their new openness to fuel transfers? "No - there's been no change in the position as stated by the Iranian representative at the IAEA," Crowley said.
The State Department welcomes the pending release of Robert Park, the American missionary who deliberately crossed into North Korea and said that he did not want to be released. The U.S. will help facilitate his travel home. Following several questions asking if the U.S. had given North Korea any assurances or made any deals related to Park's release, Crowley finally said, "There was no deal involved here."
On the 10 American missionaries arrested in Haiti, Crowley said, "We have not had any discussions with Haitian officials about shifting prosecution to the United States. This is a Haitian legal process."