No Formal Response Response to Zelaya's Letter to Clinton

It just wasn't Ian Kelly's day at the State Department daily press briefing today. The press asked him, in light of Zelaya's letter to Obama from over the weekend, if the State Department had ever responded to his first letter, the one to Secretary of State Clinton.

QUESTION: No, no, no. Did Zelaya ever get a response to the letter he sent to the Secretary?

MR. KELLY: We have not sent a formal response back to President Zelaya.

Lets see; its been two weeks since Zelaya sent the letter to Clinton, two weeks of a tense standoff in Honduras. You've sent Thomas Shannon, and Craig Kelly to the country, but haven't answered the letter from Zelaya? What's taking so long?

QUESTION: So you just – so what is – well, what is he supposed to think? I mean, you guys are – you’re ignoring him now.

MR. KELLY: No, we’re not ignoring him. In fact --

QUESTION: Yeah, you are. He sent --

MR. KELLY: No, we’re not ignoring him.

QUESTION: He sent a letter to Secretary Clinton asking what the U.S. position was and you just said – and that was like, two weeks ago.

MR. KELLY: Yeah. That doesn’t mean we’re ignoring him, though.

QUESTION: And he has not gotten a response.

MR. KELLY: I mean, we do talk to him. I know that senior American officials do talk to him. Just because we haven’t sent a formal response yet doesn’t mean we’re ignoring him.

QUESTION: Well, it seems – well, you know, talk is one thing, but something put down on paper is quite another. And it just seems to me that you’re kind of still floundering around for a policy here --

MR. KELLY: Well --

QUESTION: -- and you’re not willing to put anything down on paper.

MR. KELLY: I don’t agree.

QUESTION: You don’t?

MR. KELLY: I don’t agree we’re floundering. I mean, we haven’t changed our policy. We have senior officials still involved in trying to get the two sides to – not to agree, but to implement something they’ve already agreed to, all right? I think we’re very – we remain very much involved in the process.

QUESTION: Can you explain why you have not replied to a letter from someone you consider to be the democratic --

MR. KELLY: I don’t think I have to. I don’t think I have to respond, Matt. We haven’t respond --

QUESTION: Well, I guess you don’t, because your silence to him says it all.

At this point in the transcript, Ian Kelly took a question that changed the subject to North Korea, and never returned to the topic of Honduras. Mr. Kelly did not say the US State Department would not respond to the letter, just that they hadn't gotten around to it. Apparently the State Department moves with the speed of a slug in times of crisis.

The State Department has also been given Zelaya's letter to Obama to answer. If I were Manuel Zelaya, I wouldn't expect a reply any time soon, at least, not in writing.