Sean Mccormack Holds State Department Regular News Briefing

Extract

---

Sean Mccormack Holds State Department Regular News Briefing

STATE DEPARTMENT REGULAR NEWS BRIEFING

OCTOBER 30, 2006

SPEAKER: SEAN MCCORMACK, ASSISTANT SECRETARY OF STATE FOR PUBLIC AFFAIRS

[*] MCCORMACK: Good afternoon, everybody. I don't have any opening statements, so we can get right into your questions.

QUESTION: The Lebanese leader, Walid Jumblatt, is in the building today, and he's supposed to meet with the secretary? MCCORMACK: Correct.

QUESTION: Why is it not on our public schedule?

MCCORMACK: I don't know. We don't control exactly what comes down from the secretary's office in terms of what's on the public schedule or not. She is meeting with him.

She's met with him before. They're going to talk about the situation in Lebanon, the current political situation. She wants to get a feel for the situation on the ground; reiterate our support for Prime Minister Siniora's effort at economic, as well as political reform, and our full support for implementation of 1701, and also for the Lebanese people in helping to rebuild some of the infrastructure that was damaged or destroyed during the course of the conflict.

We have extensive USAID operations there. Randy Tobias, who heads up our efforts on foreign assistance, was just there in Lebanon. We also have a U.S. public-private partnership that is deeply involved in getting together the funds to help out the Lebanese people for reconstruction.

So that's essentially what she's going to be talking about. Also, express our full support for implementation of U.N. Security Council resolutions looki...

See the full content of this document

---