U.S. and Hong Kong (2002)

State Department Noon Briefing Transcript

State Department Spokesman Richard Boucher briefed.

Following is the State Department transcript:

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U.S. Department of State
Daily Press Briefing
12:30 p.m. -- Friday, June 28, 2002

Briefer: Richard Boucher, Spokesman

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QUESTION: You have said earlier that you, presumably the State Department, has not sent any special team to India or Pakistan to discuss evacuation plans, but is there any -- perhaps another agency has sent -- does such a US --

MR. BOUCHER: I don't think that's exactly what the question I was asked, is that we sent a team out to help make this decision, which is not true.

On the evacuation question, let's get all this straight a little bit, okay?

QUESTION: I was just wondering whether there is a special group gone -- MR. BOUCHER: And there is not a special group gone. There may be in the future, in the near future, if we decide that that's appropriate.

But I have to remind everybody of the basic parameters of this, as it exists everywhere in the world. We have different levels for our own personnel, as well as different advice for the public. We look at authorized voluntary departure for some of our people; we look at ordered departure on occasion, where we feel we need to get the levels down beyond what people might voluntarily want to leave; and then in extremes, we may have evacuations. Every post in the world has plans and maintains up-to-date plans for any of those scenarios.

Our preference in any case, whichever it is, where we have to move people one way or the other, is to take commercial flights. As long as commercial flights are available, people book tickets and go. If commercial flights aren't available, we can bring in charter aircraft. That's what we did in many, many cases; for example, I remember when I was in Hong Kong we helped Indonesia set that up to book charters to go in. So as long as commercial aviation is still flying, that's the preferred route.

And when we make provisions for our own people, we make provisions for local American citizens as much as we can. So the possibility of using some military assets for evacuation is always -- is one we have to plan for, and we do have to have contingency planning for any of these possibilities. But it's not a preferred route if we find we have to change our advice to Americans.

If and when we make any decisions in this regard, we certainly keep the public informed.

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(The briefing was concluded at 2:20 p.m. EDT.)

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