White House Press Secretary Jay Carney dodged several questions Monday on what types of military assistance the United States would provide the Syrian rebels:
Q: Can -- maybe just one question on Syria. Secretary Kerry spent all this time trying to announce that there's going to be talks -- about talks in the Middle East peace process in a period of relatively uneasy calm between the Palestinians and the Israelis, and yet there's not the same sense of urgency involved with what to do about Syria.
Are we missing something or is there a sense -- is there the same type of, you know, constant badgering that's taking place of Russia or others to try to get a sense -- I mean, what are --
MR. CARNEY: Well, I would say, one, obviously, many members of the president's national security team are focused on many challenges, including Syria. Secretary Kerry has been, Secretary Hagel is and has been, Susan Rice the national security adviser and others. And that'll continue to be the case, including, of course, the engagement of the president.
But what we can't do is focus on one foreign policy challenge to the exclusion of all else. And while a great deal of attention and resources have been devoted to the Syria challenge, and will continue to be, we need to continue to address other challenges, and that includes our efforts to rebalance towards Asia and our efforts that you saw the president engage in on his trip to Africa to assist the -- one of the fastest-growing regions of the world to continue to develop in a positive way, and our efforts to address this long-standing challenge in the Middle East, and that is the conflict between the Israelis and Palestinians.
Q: Where are we on arming the rebels --
MR. CARNEY: Well, you know, I can't catalogue all the specific forms of assistance we're providing to the Syrian opposition, but we are providing stepped-up assistance to them -- to the Syrian opposition, to the Syrian military council, and we'll continue to do that.
And we'll work with Congress as we do.