Excerpt from State Department daily briefing, March 20, 2002

Excerpt from State Department daily briefing, March 20, 2002
Daily Press Briefing
Richard Boucher, Spokesman
Washington, DC
March 20, 2002

QUESTION: Change of subject? Colombia. Can you tell us, as the Secretary and the President leave tomorrow, where the legislation stands on budget requests on supplemental?

And also, in a House resolution that's admittedly non-binding, they suggested that the Department appoint someone, like a special envoy, on Colombia. Has there been any action on that yet?

MR. BOUCHER: I didn't see that recommendation. As you know, the Secretary of State's general practice has been to follow -- to handle these issues in the regional context through the assistant secretary for the region. In this case, we have an assistant secretary for the region in the person of Otto Reich, and he has been dealing with this, as well as these people who deal with counter-narcotics, Rand Beers, and others. Marc Grossman has played a very active role in coordinating this. It is a broad effort for Colombia. It's an even broader effort if you look at the Andean Regional Initiative, including the trade issues involved.

So there are a lot of people involved that comes together in the persons that the Secretary and -- and really under the guidance of Marc Grossman. So I don't think we've had any problem doing all this work.

The second -- the first part of that on where do we stand as regards to supplemental or making proposals to the Hill, I'm afraid that we're not the ones who put those forward so I'm not in a position to discuss that at this point.

QUESTION: So you're presuming that they won't be ready -- they won't be finished by tomorrow?

MR. BOUCHER: No, I'm not.

QUESTION: It could be? Hmm.

MR. BOUCHER: Well, we didn't say tomorrow. We said this week. Looking to do it this week.

QUESTION: It's the OMB who knows this, then?

MR. BOUCHER: OMB does this in the end, so they'll have to account for -- tell us when it's time to talk about it.

QUESTION: But you'll probably already -- I mean, you may already be gone, right? So you'll get some phone calls on the road what to tell Pastrana when you're down there?

MR. BOUCHER: I'm sure that the White House is working on it, and so I'll leave it to them for the moment.

As of March 21, 2002, this document was also available online at http://www.state.gov/r/pa/prs/dpb/2002/8856.htm