U.S.-Syria talks chart way forward

[ProSense]

U.S.-Syria talks chart way forward

From Elise Labott
CNN State Department Producer

WASHINGTON (CNN) -- The State Department's top Middle East official met Thursday with the Syrian ambassador to the United States, marking a resumption of diplomatic dialogue after nearly five years.

Jeffrey Feltman, the acting assistant secretary for the Near East, met with Ambassador Imad Moustapha for two hours, acting State Department spokesman Robert Wood said.

The meeting was billed by the State Department as an opportunity for the United States to raise long-standing concerns about Syrian behavior

<...>

The United States withdrew its ambassador from Syria four years ago, in protest of the assassination of former Lebanese Prime Minister Rafik Hariri. Washington accuses Syria of being behind the killing of the popular statesman in a massive bombing that also left 22 others dead. Syria denies it, but an ongoing United Nations investigation found indications of Syrian involvement.

Two top-level U.S. congressional delegations also met with Syrian President Bashar al-Assad last week.

The Syrian leader hosted Sen. John Kerry, the Massachusetts Democrat who chairs the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, and Rep. Howard Berman, the California Democrat who leads the House Foreign Affairs Committee.

Kerry painted the meeting as a break with Bush administration policy.

"Now we have an opportunity with the new president, President Obama, a new administration and with a Democratic Congress, to put in place a different approach," he said.

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[karynnj]

1. Wow - after so little diplomacy happened - it is great that so much is now happening

Having Kerry meet the leaders last week and sound out what they could do is fantastic input to Obama's foreign policy team in advance of HRC meeting with them soon.

[ProSense]

2. It's great. n/t

[Life Long Dem]

3. Is CNN beating the war drums? Or is the Obama administration beating the war drums?

Time to find out.

But I should say this sentence wasn't what I was expecting to hear after five years of no talks with Syria.

"The meeting was billed by the State Department as an opportunity for the United States to raise long-standing concerns about Syrian behavior"

After 5 years I would think it would be based on greeting Syria with the new administration. What this is I don't know, but it doesn't sound right, and given it's CNN and have big doubts to the accuracy of this.

[ProSense]

4. "a resumption of diplomatic dialogue after nearly five years."

What war drum?

[Life Long Dem]

5. I edited my post. And I still don't like the way this seems to be going.

[ProSense]

6. It's going toward diplomacy. Kerry just met with

Assad.

[Life Long Dem]

8. Okay...

It's just easy to get carried away, initially, with pieces of the meeting, but I see that it was a diplomatic meeting.

[FrenchieCat]

7. Perhaps you don't like the way CNN skews what happens

in order to make the Obama Administration look bad.

I don't either!!

They really, really want to keep those tax breaks. Too bad for them!

[Life Long Dem]

10. Yeah, I know.

I see this a lot by CNN. They are pro's at word manipulation, and they try real hard to cast a negative light on anything positive relating to the President.

Forget quoting someone when you can skew what was said.

[karynnj]

9. Can you explain why?

It seems to me that they have made a major shift to trying to deal with that region diplomatically. The article has both the Syrian people and the Americans both stating with cautious optimism that they want to meet. Here is a link to a SFRC hearing today about outreach to the Muslim world. http://foreign.senate.gov/hearings/2009/hrg090226p.html

[Life Long Dem]

11. I think CNN should do the explaining.

[karynnj]

12. I didn't really see a problem with the sentence you spotlighted

That is where I would think the conversation would begin. They have funded Hezbollah and may have been behind an assassination of Lebanon's leader.

[Life Long Dem]

13. They sent the U.S. Ambassador to Lebanon?

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jeffrey_D._Feltman

They haven't even changed wiki?

Save page as... I'm just saying.

[karynnj]

14. That's not his current position

He is a career diplomat and he is now the acting assistant secretary for the Near East, reporting to HRC. As to saving the page, it is really not necessary. It is part of his biography and even when it is updated, that will be there. It also is not, in the least, negative or a disqualifier. It actually means that he was already up to date on the issues and the roles all the countries face. Also, as ambassador to a country he represented the US - not that country. (In the cold war, would you infer that a former ambassador to the USSR was on their side?)

disclaimer, I know nothing about Feltman. There are many things in the biography you linked to that make him sound very prepared for this job.
"He joined the U.S. Foreign Service in 1986, serving his first tour as consular officer in Port-au-Prince, Haiti. He has spent much of his career dealing with Eastern Europe and the Near East. He served in Embassy Tel Aviv as Ambassador Martin Indyk's Special Assistant on Peace Process issues (2000-2001). Before that, from 1998-2000, Feltman served as Chief of the Political and Economic Section at the U.S. Embassy in Tunisia. He served in the U.S. Embassy in Tel Aviv from 1995 to 1998, covering economic issues in the Gaza Strip.

Feltman studied Arabic at the University of Jordan in Amman from 1994 to 1995."

(As he is "acting", I don't know if that is because he has not been confirmed or that he is a hold over - though I would guess the first as they have given him a very important job here.)