U.S. Relations With the People's Republic of China (2008)

The White House

For Immediate Release
April 10, 2008

Press Gaggle by Dana Perino

James S. Brady Press Briefing Room

9:33 A.M. EDT

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Q: Dana, will the President and the envoy to Sudan make any kind of statement afterwards, or anything?

MS. PERINO: No, I don't believe so.

Q: Has the White House looked at the economic repercussions of all these airlines being grounded? What do you think the impact of that is?

MS. PERINO: I'm sure -- I don't have an update for you on that. I know that the Department of Transportation has been following it very closely, and we'll see if we can get you more. We'll work with Scott Stanzel on that. But obviously, people are very disgruntled, I am sure, by having their flights cancelled. So let's -- I'll look at the economic impact.

Q: Dana, can I double-check -- you are not billing this speech this morning as an address to the nation, right? It's a statement?

MS. PERINO: The President is giving a statement. But I don't know what your definition of it is in terms of address to the nation.

Q: Well, you guys -- you make the determination.

MS. PERINO: We're not asking for network time, no, but the President will give his speech at 11:30 a.m. And for those networks who want to cover it, then that will be great -- barring any sort of, you know, Hollywood scandal that pops up. (Laughter.) That was not a shot at you all.

Q: Dana, anything more -- anything you can say more about the Sudan envoy meeting? Is this a regular consultation?

MS. PERINO: He tries to get an update from Rich Williamson quite a bit. And I'll check, I don't know, I think Rich may have recently been in the region.

Q: Anything you find out. And would you expect China's role to come up during this meeting?

MS. PERINO: It certainly has in the past, so I'll see.

Q: Anything you can get.

MS. PERINO: I think I'll be there, so I'll -- Matt.

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Q: San Francisco yesterday, the torch situation there -- do you have any comment on the pictures that you and others in this building saw?

MS. PERINO: No, not really. I saw a few of them, in terms of the pictures. But this is what I would say: People around the world deserve the right to express themselves freely and peacefully. And the President also has an obligation, as he did yesterday, to speak privately -- I'm sorry, publicly -- on this matter, and to speak privately to the Chinese about human rights freedoms, political speech freedoms, and he's going to continue to do that before, during and after the Olympics.

And he can do that with the Chinese because he's established good relations with them. So that when the President told President Hu last year, last fall, that he would be meeting with the Dalai Lama -- the first President ever to do that in a public setting -- he said to President Hu, I know you're not going to like this. And President Hu said, no, we don't like it. But the President said, it's the right thing to do, I'm going to do it anyway, and I encourage you to reestablish a dialogue with the Dalai Lama, or with his representatives, as they used to have. And we're going to continue to press on that issue as we go forward.

Mark.

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Q: On North Korea, the Chinese foreign ministry has said that the current obstacles to the six-party talks probably won't be resolved until the fall. Would this be a major setback to the President's goal to complete --

MS. PERINO: I'm sorry, the Chinese said that?

Q: The Chinese foreign ministry.

MS. PERINO: I didn't see that. I would refer you to Ambassador Chris Hill's comments yesterday, in which he said, we have -- continue to have discussions with them; we feel like we're moving forward, but we're certainly not finished yet, and this deal is a package.

And I'll try to get you something on Sudan. Thanks.

Q: Thank you.

END

9:47 A.M. EDT