Thanks to Pelosi, Rice meeting with Syria

May 3, 2007

Washington, D.C. - After President Bush ripped Nancy Pelosi for going to Syria last month on a diplomatic mission, the State Department today quietly announced that Condoleezza Rice will meet with Syrian diplomats to discuss Iran.

After President Bush ripped Nancy Pelosi for going to Syria last month on a diplomatic mission, the State Department today quietly announced that Condoleezza Rice will meet with Syrian diplomats to discuss Iran.

U.S. Secretary of State Rice is expected to meet with Syrian Foreign Minister Walid Moualem Thursday afternoon, due in part to Nancy Pelosi's thawing of relations between the two countries.

The meeting will be a substantial bilateral discussion, but will only cover Iraqi security and broader issues related to Iran.

It will take place on the sidelines of two days of talks that began Thursday in the Egyptian resort city of Sharm El-Sheikh intended to boost international support for the Baghdad government of Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki.

Syria is on the State Department's list of state sponsors of terror. House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, a Democrat, was roundly criticized by the Bush administration for traveling to Damascus in early April to meet face-to-face with President Bashar al-Assad.

Rice said Wednesday she has no plans to meet with members of the Iranian delegation attending the meeting, but she would talk to them -- if they were to encounter each other -- about foreign fighters crossing the border, their alleged support to militias and the bomb-making technologies "that we believe have Iranian origins."