Turkey's Foreign Minister Ahmet Davutoglu pays a visit to US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton on Monday. No details here --- the meeting was overshadowed by the WikiLeaks affair, which took over Clinton's later statement (see separate entry). However, both officials were keen to show that the leak of the documents, in which US officials said some less than flattering things about Davutoglu.
And not hard to guess that talks with Iran, which begin on 5 December and in which Turkey is playing a key role as broker, were high on the agenda....
SECRETARY CLINTON: Well, I am delighted once again to welcome both a colleague and a friend here to the State Department. The foreign minister and I have worked closely together during the last, now, 22 months. And I am very pleased that he can be here once again for us to discuss a range of issues. Turkey and the United States have one of the most important bilateral relationships in the world. We are very committed to continuing to strengthen and deepen that relationship. And it is always very constructive for me to meet with the foreign minister because we have so much that needs to be done that only Turkey and the United States can do together.
FOREIGN MINISTER DAVUTOGLU: Thank you very much. Again, it’s a great pleasure and honor for me to be in the State Department and having a chance to discuss a variety of agenda items with my colleague and friend, Secretary Clinton.
Turkish-American relations is a relation of (inaudible) partnership and strategic partnership; therefore there’s a huge variety of agenda items today we will be sharing, including the leak documents. And I want – I would like to express our thanks because of the briefing in advance. Our Turkish (inaudible) foreign policy, the principled (inaudible), time-tested transparent foreign policy, including our relations with the U.S. And we will follow the same principled foreign policy to achieve regional and global peace in coordination with the American Administration.