By NNN-KUNA
Washington : US Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice will postpone her planned visits next week to Jerusalem and Ramallah in the wake of the announcement earlier in the day by President George W. Bush that she and Defence Secretary Robert Gates would go to the region in early August.
“Secretary Rice is going to be travelling to the region, as the president announced, in part with Secretary Gates,” said State Department spokesman Sean McCormack during a department briefing on Thursday. “So she decided that it was appropriate to postpone these two stops and combine it with that trip.”
McCormack said he expects Rice will depart on her trip toward the end of July, “then there would be some joint travel with Secretary Gates at the very beginning of August”.
Rice also will postpone her planned stop in the Democratic Republic of the Congo and reschedule that visit to some future date, McCormack said. However, she still plans to go to Accra, Ghana, for the AGOA (US-sub-Saharan Africa Trade and Economic Cooperation) Forum, then stop in Portugal, he said.
” … There is a lot of discussion going on concerning Iraq, there is certainly a lot of discussion policy-wise about the Middle East, and she thought it was appropriate to be back in Washington during this time,” McCormack said. “And from a logistical standpoint it just made sense.”