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 White House Press Briefing by Dana Perino 3/10/08 (Cheney's Trip to the Middle East) — Monday, March 10, 2008 — MS. PERINO: John. Q Has the President given the Vice President any specific benchmarks he's looking for from his trip to the Middle East? The President outlined a little bit, but you had made it clear earlier this morning that he wanted things to hurry up in the Middle East peace process. MS. PERINO: No, I wouldn't say that the President has to give the Vice President any benchmarks. The Vice President understands fully what we're trying to achieve there, and the President is grateful that he's agreed to go. He has an ambitious trip, starting this Sunday. He'll travel to several different countries, and he has many different topics that he will cover. One of the most important is certainly trying to help the Israelis and the Palestinians as they continue to talk with one another to get to a point where they could define what a state would look like. And in addition to that, he'll travel to Saudi Arabia; I'm sure that energy issues will come up there. He'll be talking about Iraq and the progress of the surge and the importance of making sure that the security gains that we've had do not reverse themselves. So he's got a wide range of topics that he'll cover on his trip. Q But not anything specific, like, let's have the settlement issue resolved by this date, for instance. MS. PERINO: If there is, I'm not aware of it and I don't -- they have private conversations. Q Will he repeat the request to the Saudis to ask OPEC to raise oil production, a request which was made by the President and turned down by our friends, the Saudis? MS. PERINO: I'll refer you to the Vice President's office for exactly what he will bring up. But certainly the position of the United States and the President is that we believe that more supplies should be out there on the market. And the President does want OPEC to take into consideration that its biggest customer, the United States, that our economy is weakened, and part of the reason is because of higher oil prices; we think that more supply would help. And I don't anticipate that the Vice President would have any other message than that one. Q So he will, obviously, then, have that message. MS. PERINO: I'm not -- I can't tell you exactly what the Vice President is going to say and I'm not going to -- I'll let him have his meetings and then they can read them for you while you guys are on the road. Dana Perino | Dick Cheney | Middle East | Press Briefing | Vice President | White House Press Corps Labels: Dana Perino, Dick Cheney, Middle East, Press Briefing, Vice President, White House Press Corps
Posted by White House Press Corps @ 6:48 PM
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