U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry rejected widespread criticism of the Obama administration’s failure to send a high-ranking representative to Sunday’s massive anti-terrorism rally in Paris, calling the critiques “quibbling” despite the attendance of more than 40 world leaders.
British Prime Minister David Cameron, German Chancellor Angela Merkel, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, Palestinian Prime Minister Mahmoud Abbas, Ukrainian President Petro Poroshenko and Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov all marched arm-in-arm with French President Francois Hollande and dozens of other foreign leaders in response to last Wednesday’s massacre of Charlie Hebdo journalists and cartoonists by Islamic terrorists.
But the United States was represented only by ambassador Jane Hartley, who reportedly marched a few rows back from the line of global leaders. That lack of high-level U.S. leadership set off a firestorm of disapproval from across the political spectrum, with the NY Daily News saying the president “let the world down” and Democratic strategist Doug Schoen saying he “morally abdicated his place as leader of the free world.”
Asked about the absence during a press conference in India on Monday, Kerry rejected the criticism. “I really think this is sort of quibbling a little bit,” he told reporters, noting that the United States sent intelligence assets to help the French find the terrorists and that he already had a prior commitment to attend the event in India.
The secretary of state also stressed that he would be traveling to France on Thursday, “to make it crystal clear how passionately we feel about the events that have taken place there.”