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Powell Busy at Phone Calls to Build Coalition
U.S. Secretary of State Colin Powell said on Friday that he was very busy at making phone calls to officials of some countries in a bid to build a global alliance against those who were involved in attacking the United States earlier this week.
"We continue to work hard to build the coalition that you heard me talking about for the last several days, and to get this campaign plan in place," Powell said at a briefing.
During the past 24 hours, he had talked by phone with foreign ministers of India, Portugal, Saudi Arabia, Tunisia, Morocco and Japan. He said he is going to call Israeli defense minister, Syrian foreign minister and officials from some other countries through the day.
Beyond that, the secretary said he had instructed U.S. ambassadors around the world "to go in and talk to their colleagues in those capitals to let them know how serious we are about this, and to begin to set the stage for any other request we might have for them with respect to what we do as we go forward."
In addition, regional assistant secretaries here in the State Department have been inviting in ambassadors resident here in Washington to discuss the situation with them, he said.
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