WASHINGTON - Foreign Minister and Deputy Prime Minister Abdullah Gul will hold high-ranking meetings with American officials in his second day in Washington.
Gul will meet with U.S. Secretary of State Colin Powell today. He will be then received by U.S. Vice President Dick Cheney in the White House and later he will proceed to Pentagon to meet with U.S. Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld. Iraq's U.S. civil governor Paul Bremer is expected to attend the meeting in Pentagon.
Gul will meet with the representatives of Jewish institutions and International Monetary Fund (IMF) Managing Director Horst Koehler on Friday. Following his speech in Washington Institute, a think-tank organization, Gul will meet with U.S. President George W. Bush's National Security Adviser Condoleezza Rice. He will meet with the officials of Assembly of Turkish-American Associations and then he will inform Turkish press members regarding his contacts.
A new meeting is added to Friday program of Gul. He will meet with Palestinian Prime Minister Mahmoud Abbas who is currently in Washington. The request for meeting was made by Abbas. Gul will depart for Turkey on July 26.
Meanwhile, all of the U.S. Congress members, with whom Gul met in the first day of his contacts, expressed their distress regarding Turkish soldiers' detention in Suleymaniyah.
The Congress members told Gul regarding the efforts of acceptation of Armenian genocide allegations in congress that they were doing their best to stop that law and they were aware of that it would harm Turkish-U.S. relations. Cyprus issue was not brought onto agenda during the meetings in Congress.
(GC-AÖ) 24.07.2003