Thursday, January 10, 2013

Hillary Clinton with Hamid Karzai

There were no public remarks scheduled to be delivered from the meetings with President Karzai this evening, but there are pictures and this raw video from AP.  Victoria Nuland delivered a summary at today's press briefing.

MS. NULAND: Well, this late afternoon, this evening, as you know, the Secretary will host President Karzai here in the Department. She’ll have her own meeting with him, and then she’s going to host a working dinner. Defense Secretary Panetta is going to be here, National Security Advisor Donilon, and she’s obviously very much looking forward to seeing President Karzai. And then as you know, he’ll be at the White House tomorrow, as Ben Rhodes outlined.
Here at the State Department, we think a full range of issues are going to be discussed. Obviously, aspects of the security transition, the elections in 2014 and preparing for them, the economic transition, regional integration, support for the Afghan reconciliation efforts. Those will all be central themes in the discussions this evening.
With regard to where we are precisely on reconciliation, I think we are looking forward to hearing from President Karzai how he sees things. As you know, we have had some modest steps forward in recent months, including a commitment by Pakistan to support Afghan-Afghan reconciliation, some of the work we’ve been doing in the Core Group U.S.-Afghanistan-Pakistan to pave the way and ease the conditions for those Taliban who might need safe passage to go have conversations. As we’ve discussed here, we also had some track two discussions, Afghans and Taliban in Paris about a month and a half ago that could potentially be built on.
So I think first and foremost, we want to hear from President Karzai what he sees as the next steps and take it from there. So we’ll probably have – I’m expecting you’ll hear more about that aspect after the discussions here, but as importantly, the discussions tomorrow at the White House with the President. And I think you know the two presidents will have a press conference tomorrow afternoon.
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