Paris rally: John Kerry defends absence of top US officials

http://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2015/jan/12/paris-rally-john-kerry-obama

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The US secretary of state, John Kerry, is to travel to Paris this week following sharp criticism of the Obama administration for not sending a senior official to Sunday’s rally in the French capital that was attended by about 40 world leaders.

Kerry, who will be in France on Thursday and Friday, dismissed the criticism as “quibbling”, and noted that the assistant secretary of state for Europe, Victoria Nuland, was in Paris at the march, as was the US ambassador to France and many embassy staffers. The US attorney general, Eric Holder, was also in Paris, but did not march.

Kerry, visiting India, said he “would have personally very much wanted to have been there but couldn’t do so because I had commitments here and it is important to keep these kinds of commitments”.

He said he was going to France to reaffirm US solidarity with America’s oldest ally. He said that as soon as he heard about the march, he asked his team about the earliest time that he could go.

While in Paris, Kerry will be meeting the French foreign minister, Laurent Fabius, and pay tribute to the victims of last week’s attacks in which 17 people died.

Kerry will arrive in Paris on Thursday after stops in Sofia and Geneva. Kerry will meet the Iranian foreign minister, Mohammad Javad Zarif, in Geneva on Wednesday to discuss the status of nuclear negotiations that are to resume the next day.

Kerry will be the highest-ranking US official to visit France since the terrorist attacks on a French newspaper and a kosher supermarket.

As well as the millions who demonstrated across France, rallies supporting the French were reported in major cities around the world.

Obama offered condolences last week at the French embassy in Washington. “We stand united with our French brothers to ensure that justice is done and our way of life is defended,” he said.