McCain Campaign Press Release - "In Case You Missed It": McCain Campaign Conference Call On Obama Adviser Holding Meetings In Syria

"I think it is a major issue when you combine it with the other significant mistakes that Senator Obama has indicated either in the way he talks about foreign policy or in the way that he apparently now seems to think as a candidate he can conduct foreign policy with his 300 or so advisers." -- Mayor Rudy Giuliani

ARLINGTON, VA -- Today, U.S. Senator John McCain's presidential campaign held a press conference call with Mayor Rudy Giuliani and Randy Scheunemann, McCain Campaign Senior Foreign Policy Adviser, on an Obama adviser holding meetings with Syria's leadership:

Mayor Rudy Giuliani: "If Senator Obama is truly going to bring transparency to Washington, this is surely no way to do it. And maybe this is a playing-out of his negotiating with dictators and people like that without preconditions. The adviser said something to the effect of, 'we have to see if this does any good or what the repercussions of this were or whether they were being used.' That is surely not the way to be conducting foreign policy: to engage in missions whether you're not certain whether you're being used or not. It would seem to me the American people are entitled to more than that. They are entitled to a president who understands how to conduct foreign policy, which means having passed a course in 'Negotiation 101,' which is you negotiate when there are preconditions. You negotiate when you have confidence that you're not being used. You don't do it under a cloud of whether you're going to be used or not used and then, of course, you have the confidence you are doing the right thing. So therefore you disclose it, and you don't have it come out second-hand a month later, which undercuts, to a great extent, what you're trying to do.

"This is no different from something that happened earlier with Hamas. I think it is a major issue when you combine it with the other significant mistakes that Senator Obama has indicated either in the way he talks about foreign policy or in the way that he apparently now seems to think as a candidate he can conduct foreign policy with his 300 or so advisers. I think the American people are entitled to know what the other 300 advisers are doing: who they're meeting with, are they going to have meetings before the election with foreign leaders, are they going to have meetings with foreign leaders who are antagonistic toward the United States, are they going to have meetings with foreign leaders who are in one stage or another engaged in either negotiations with the United States or may be engaged in negotiations with the United States?

"These are all things that I think an experienced person in foreign policy would have thought their way through, and you wouldn't find as many mistakes being made as are being made here. And I think it illustrates one of the major reasons why John McCain is doing so well and I believe will ultimately win the election. The American people want someone who is tried and tested in the conduct of foreign policy and negotiation. We live with many, many challenges foreign and domestic. We need an experienced person. Not someone like Senator Obama, who is one of the least experienced candidates for president in the last 100 years, if not the least experienced. Beyond that, his actions as a candidate seem to demonstrate that."

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Randy Scheunemann: "Just to clarify the news report indicates that Ambassador Kurtzer met with the Syrian Foreign Minister and this gives you a real insight into one of the core problems with Senator Obama's stated preference for diplomacy consisting of unconditional summit meetings with state sponsors of terrorism and some of the world's worst dictators. The differences, as the Mayor pointed out, there's no disclosure with this. The news report indicated that the meeting was arranged by Assad's father-in-law, that the costs were underwritten by unnamed Syrian corporations, also apparently another foreign oil company.

"Ambassador Kurtzer himself raised the question, none of us thought we were being used and abused, but we will see over time. I guess if these news reports are accurate, and Assad's father-in-law set the thing up, and Syrian corporations paid for it, these aren't exactly impartial entities to organize a conference. Let's not forget the country that this conference will be in. Syria has not cooperated with the International Atomic Energy Agency, in providing flight access. They are sponsors of some of the worst terrorist organizations in the world, in Hezbollah. They stand credibly charged with being behind the assassination of a number of Lebanese officials, including former Prime Minister Hariri. A conference in Syria and financed by the Syrians and organized by relatives of the President and talking about the rule of law is a little bit like sitting down with Hamas and talking about their peace plan, except another Obama adviser already did that, and I guess he's since been dismissed by the campaign.

"It's also interesting that this is revealed that Syrian President Assad is in Moscow shopping for arms, talking about giving the Russians access to some of their Mediterranean ports, talking about the acquisition of surface to air missiles, the kind of system that might have gravely complicated the apparently successful raid that the Israelis launched defensively and appropriately against the suspected Syrian nuclear facility last fall.

"Finally, let me just talk about experience a little bit. Ambassador Kurtzer, you know it wasn't too long ago that he tried to explain Senator Obama's misstep in calling for Jerusalem to remain the undivided capital of Israel. He said, 'Well, he misused the code word. He didn't realize at the time what it meant. That doesn't mean he's nave.' That's a Reuters report on Kurtzer explaining Obama's use of Jerusalem should be the undivided capital of Israel and the next day have to correct that. Kurtzer went on to say that he made that mistake because Senator Obama had a picture in his mind of Jerusalem before 1967 with barbed wire, mind fields and demilitarized zones so he used that word to represent what he didn't want to see again, and realized after that that is a code word in the Middle East. If I'm doing my math correctly Senator Obama was six years old in 1967, so the picture in his mind was one that was formed at a relatively early age."

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