Sudan / George Clooney’s Visit to White House, Calling for Special Envoy to Darfur
WASHINGTON, February 26, 2009/African Press Organization (APO)/ — Daily Press Briefing Robert Wood Acting Department Spokesman
QUESTION: Can I talk about Sudan, the Clooney visit, this special envoy he’s pushing for? Is that in the works now?
MR. WOOD: I don’t know anything about it. I mean, I understand he was at the White House yesterday, but you might want to refer the questions to the White House. I haven’t had –
QUESTION: But as a what? A special – sorry.
QUESTION: The question was special – sorry, go ahead.
QUESTION: No, go ahead.
QUESTION: He’s pushing his – the idea of a special envoy along with other Darfur advocates, like Save Darfur – I mean, this has been a long, you know, kind of standing thing since – I think since the day the President was elected that Darfur advocates have been calling for a special envoy. So is Secretary Clinton considering something like that?
MR. WOOD: Well, look, the idea of an envoy for Sudan is something that the Administration will have to consider. No decisions have been made with regard to whether we want to go with that approach, so we’ll just have to wait and see.
QUESTION: Is there any reason to doubt that the Administration wouldn’t follow the lead of the Bush Administration, which appointed several envoys – special envoys, beginning with John Danforth, to – and then ending with Rich Williamson, who was in the job, apparently, you know, up until January 20th?
MR. WOOD: I’m not going to make comparisons here, but the Administration will make a decision at some point as to whether it wants to go that route or not. I’m not going to, you know, speculate on it, and I don’t think you should speculate about what it’s going to do or not going to do.
QUESTION: Well, I’m just curious as to why people think that this might be a big deal, when in fact, the last administration had special envoys.
MR. WOOD: I can’t speak for other people, Matt.
QUESTION: Do you have any detail about the schedule of Special Envoy Mitchell?
MR. WOOD: Yeah, I can –
Please.
QUESTION: Going back to Darfur, do you know if Hillary Clinton and Joe Biden discussed that matter this morning at breakfast? Because –
MR. WOOD: I don’t know. I saw her after the breakfast, but didn’t have a chance to raise the issue.
QUESTION: Well, what was on the agenda then, this morning? What was – what did they discuss?
MR. WOOD: Well, they talk about a wide range of foreign policy issues. As you know, Secretary Clinton and Vice President Biden have a longstanding relationship. They work very closely together. They have deep respect for each other, and they talk about a wide range of issues. I couldn’t tell you –
QUESTION: Not Darfur, though?
MR. WOOD: They may have. I just don’t know. I haven’t had a chance to talk to her about the discussion this morning.
Anything else? Okay, thank you all.
(The briefing was concluded at 11:56 a.m.)
SOURCE : US Department of State
