Blinken Meets Rubio As Transition Inches Ahead

Outgoing U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken met Wednesday at the State Department with Marco Rubio, the Florida senator chosen by President-elect Donald Trump to succeed him as top U.S. diplomat, to discuss transition between the two administrations, TURAN's Washington correspondent reports.

"It was a good and constructive and substantive conversation," Principal Deputy Spokesman Vedant Patel told a daily briefing.  "As we have long said, we continue to stand ready to help support a seamless transition come January 20th," he added.

The meeting was a glimmer of normalcy in what so far has been a smooth transition from the Biden administration to the second Trump term.

While it wasn't immediately clear whether the pair discussed anything policy-focused at all, Blinken, speaking later at the Council on Foreign Relations, indirectly spoke about some of the Biden administration's objectives in the time that they have, saying for instance on Ukraine that they want "to make sure that we give the strongest possible hand to President Trump to play if there’s going to be a negotiation [with Russia], to get a good arrangement, to get something that will allow Ukraine to move forward as a strong, independent country and that will deter future Russian aggression."

Blinken also spoke about Syria and the continuation of U.S. policy under different administrations.  "One of the successes that President Trump had during his first administration was effectively completing the job that was started by the Obama administration in eliminating the territorial caliphate that ISIS was trying to establish. The final nail in the coffin was taking back Raqqa, and that happened under President Trump’s watch. So I think President Trump will have a strong incentive to want to make sure that we’re at least keeping a lid on ISIS re-emerging in Syria," he said.