Your humble Cable guy is taking some time off, heading to the Pacific Northwest to get some well-earned rest and relaxation. I'll be back late next week, but in the meantime FP managing editor Blake Hounshell will be manning the store, and if the scoops find me in Seattle, I'll file stories from there as well.

So here's the last skipper for a little while, in which we scour the transcript of the State Department's daily presser so you don't have to. These are the highlights of Wednesday's briefing by spokesman P.J. Crowley:

• Secretary of State Hillary Clinton met Wednesday with IAEA Director-General Yukio Amano, who was in town for the Nuclear Security Summit, preparing for the Nuclear Non-proliferation Treaty review conference at the UN in New York next month.
• Clinton met Wednesday with Maite Nkoana-Mashabane, the minister of International Relations and Cooperation from South Africa, and they signed a memorandum of understanding that lays out the new U.S.-South Africa strategic dialogue.
• Next week, Clinton will travel to Finland and Estonia. In Estonia, she will participate in the NATO informal foreign ministerial on April 22 and 23, Crowley said.
• Deputy Secretary Jack Lew is in Afghanistan and visited Marja yesterday, along with Ambassador Karl Eikenberry. USAID administrator Rajiv Shah is also in the region.
• State Department is "concerned" about reports that Syria is sending Scud missiles into Lebanon. "We've raised the issue with the Syrian government and continue to study the issue," Crowley said, "Regardless of the issue of Scuds, we remain concerned about the provision of increasingly sophisticated weaponry to Hezbollah."
• Assistant Secretary Bob Blake is in Bishkek today and tomorrow. He met with Roza Otunbayeva, who Crowley called the "chairperson of the interim government." Blake said in a press conference there, "I feel optimistic about the steps that the provisional government already has taken and we look forward to helping to support that process as it moves forward."
• "We're not taking sides," Crowley said. "It sounds like you are," responded a press corps member with a grasp for the obvious. Crowley said the Manas airbase agreement is safe until July 2011.
• No Americans so far known to be killed or injured in the earthquake that hit China's Qinghai province. "Our thoughts and prayers are with those who have been injured and displaced and all the people of China on this difficult day," Crowley said, "And we stand ready to assist China with any needs that it might have."

One year after U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton traveled to Moscow to present the "reset" button to her Russian counterpart Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov, Under Secretary of State William J. Burns expressed some discomfort with how the publicity stunt has colored U.S.-Russia-relations ever since.

"The concept of ‘reset' carried with it the misleading notion that the slate could be wiped clean with the push of a button, starting anew unburdened by the past. Reality, of course, is a little more complicated," Burns told an audience at the Center for American Progress Wednesday. "But for the first time in a long time, the possibilities before us outnumber the problems."

Burns, who was U.S. ambassador to Moscow from 2005 until 2008, has traveled there several times in his new role, mainly as part of his efforts to broker a fourth U.N. Security Council resolution sanctioning Iran over its nuclear program.

The under secretary's remarks echoed the friendly tone struck by Russian President Dmitry Medvedev, who told a Brookings Institution crowd Tuesday, "I am glad that in the past year plus we have managed to change the atmosphere of Russian-American relations."

Medvedev also reiterated Russia's position that a new round of U.N. sanctions on Iran may be warranted, but expressed his opposition to "paralyzing, crippling sanctions" that would hurt Iran's people -- a likely reference to broad-based restrictions on Iran's ability to import refined petroleum products, which some on Capitol Hill are pushing.

Listing a number of areas where the United States and Russia have managed to work together over the past year, notably in agreeing to reduce their stockpiles of nuclear weapons, Burns identified economic cooperation as "one of the most underdeveloped areas of our relationship."

Russia's economic ties to the United States remain embryonic, and Moscow has long accused Washington of holding up its bid to join the World Trade Organization over political matters. The United States imported just $18 billion in goods from Russia in 2009 -- about what it imported from Canada each month -- and exported just over $5 billion last year.

"The United States strongly supports Russia's accession to the WTO," Burns said, in an apparent response to Medvedev's complaint that Moscow should be admitted "without humiliation or new demands."

"We should have been in the WTO a long time ago," Medvedev said.

"We ought to be able to build on shared interests while not pulling our punches on differences, and take steps that benefit both of us without grand bargains or tradeoffs that come at the expense of others," Burns said. "That is admittedly easier said than done."

Secretary of State Hillary Clinton had a busy couple of days Monday and Tuesday. As part of the leadership team hosting the 47-nation nuclear security summit, she and her staff certainly had their hands full.

And Clinton did her best to meet with as many of her foreign interlocutors as possible, in addition to the 12 bilateral meetings she participated in with President Obama. Some of the meetings were fully fledged discussions, some were quick chats the diplomats call "pull-asides," and for one meeting she even left the convention center and went a foreign leader's hotel.

Here are most, but not all, of the foreign officials Clinton met with this week who were not of the official schedule:

Prime Minister Lee Hsien Loong of Singapore, Foreign Minister Mourad Medelci of Algeria, Foreign Minister Ahmad Aboul Gheit of Egypt, Foreign Minister Ahmet Davutoglu of Turkey, Foreign Minister Taïb Fassi Fihri of Morocco, Foreign Minister Kasit Piromya of Thailand (pull aside), Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov of Russia (with whom she signed an agreement), Foreign Minister Mariano Fernandez Amunategui of Chile, Foreign MinisterCelso Luiz Nunes Amorim of Brazil, Prime Minister Nguyen Tan Dung of Vietnam, and Foreign Secretary David Miliband of Britain (pull aside).

So who was it that Clinton was willing to travel outside the convention center's military cordon to go see? Pakistani Prime Minister Syed Yousaf Raza Gilani, who was holding court at Georgetown's Four Seasons Hotel. Why the special trip? Gilani outranks her, so protocol dictated that Clinton do the traveling.

Deputy Secretary James Steinberg had a string of meetings this week as well. The most interesting one was an unannounced session with Israeli Deputy Prime Minister Dan Meridor. That was the only high-level meeting Israel's nuclear delegation had, State Department spokesman P.J. Crowley told The Cable.

Only one day after the close of President Obama's nuclear summit, Congress is demanding the administration refocus the nuclear discussion on Iran's nuclear program and is threatening to move sanctions legislation sooner rather than later.

Congress has been sitting on two Iran sanctions bills for most of this year, having passed them through both chambers but not yet convening a conference session to resolve the two versions. Lawmakers have been giving the administration time to work the U.N. track, while also lamenting that the expected deadline for getting a new U.N. Security Council resolution on Iran keeps slipping.

The pressure to take action may well increase after today's congressional testimony, in which Defense Intelligence Agency head Lt. Gen. Ronald L. Burgess, Jr. warned that Iran could have enough highly enriched uranium to build a nuclear bomb within a year. Joint Chiefs Vice Chairman Gen. James Cartwright was quick to clarify that Iran wouldn't have the capability to actually construct that bomb until three to five years' time.

Burgess also gave some details in his written remarks about Iran's capabilities that weren't previously well known in public.

"DIA assesses that, with sufficient foreign assistance, Iran could develop and test an intercontinental ballistic missile (ICBM) capable of reaching the United States," he wrote. "Iran displayed its next-generation SLV, the Simorgh, in February 2010. The Simorgh is much larger than the Safir and shows progress in booster design that could be applicable to an ICBM design."

(The relatively less revealing testimony of Under Secretary of State William J. Burns, who is in charge of America's contribution to the P5+1 process, can be found here.)

President Obama appears to feel the same sense of urgency. When he met Chinese President Hu Jintao at the summit, our sources report, he pressed Hu for some progress on U.N. sanctions by the end of April.

In response, the Chinese reaffirmed their willingness to participate in sanctions negotiations without making any concrete pledges. Although this was portrayed as a significant shift in some reports, the truth is that Chinese intentions are still unclear, as is the date by which the U.N. might take action.

On May 3, the U.N. begins the once-every-five-years Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty Review Conference in New York. It's unlikely the Security Council would tackle the Iran issue in the middle of that conference, risking a political fight in the midst of an already-complex set of negotiations -- and that NPT review lasts until May 28. So if the Obama administration can't it done in April, the sanctions will have to wait until June.

Speaking about the issue at the press conference closing the summit Tuesday, Obama promised to press for sanctions but said, "I'm not going to speculate beyond that in terms of where we are."

Congress, however, wants to the administration to know that any delay will bring further pressure from Capitol Hill.

"We urge you to join with those allies who are prepared for action to immediately impose crippling sanctions on Iran," reads a letter signed by more than 360 House lawmakers that will be released later today. "Only such action on our part offers the prospect of persuading Tehran to turn away from its dangerous course."

A nearly identical Senate letter is also in the works and has at least 75 signatures right now, our Hill sources report.

At 3 p.m. today, bipartisan House leaders will hold a press conference to push for action on Iran sanctions. Speaking will be Majority Leader Steny Hoyer, D-MD, Minority Whip Eric Cantor, R-VA, Rep. Jesse Jackson, Jr., D-IL, and Rep. Mike Pence, R-IN. Our Hill sources say that the press conference was rescheduled specifically to enable Hoyer to attend.

The Senate has already appointed conferees for the Iran sanctions bill, but the House has not. People on the Senate side continue to believe that House Foreign Affairs Chairman Howard Berman, D-CA, is holding up on appointing conferees to stall the conference as a favor to the administration, but Berman's office denies that.

The Washington press corps is complaining that President Obama didn't give good access to the media at the Nuclear Security Summit, which just wrapped up here in Washington. Yes, the media center was far away from the real action, but nobody forced reporters to stay there! There were plenty of chances to find good stories if you just roamed the halls a little.

The other way to find out what happened inside the summit sessions was to get a readout from one of the 46 other world leaders who were in attendance. The Cable sat down with Finnish President Tarja Halonen to hear her take on how the summit went and what went on behind the scenes.

Halonen is no novice when it comes to international diplomatic pow-wows. She served as foreign minister for five years before being elected president in 2000. So what was her take on how Obama handled his first big hosting gig?

"I have been at this 15 years and very seldom have I seen a chairperson that all the time is interacting and commenting and giving real answers," she said about Obama. "That had an influence among the participants, because they noticed that he was really listening and giving them substantive reactions, not just saying thanks and going on to the next one."

Halonen didn't get one of the coveted bilateral meetings with Obama, but she actually had several personal interactions with the U.S. president throughout the sessions.

She also had several interactions with a world leader she already knows well: Russian President Dmitry Medvedev.

"I've rarely seen him as happy as he was today together with President Obama, because the START treaty was a great achievement touted by the delegates here at this meeting," she said.

At one point, she introduced Medvedev to the new European Union President Herman Van Rompuy, which as it turns out was the first time the two leaders had ever met. (The exact moment of the introduction is pictured above.)

Overall, Halonen praised the summit as bringing consensus among the nations attending on the scope of the issue and steps needed to address is, such as instituting a permanent financing system for helping countries rid themselves of nuclear material.

"There is a need for such kind of clarity ... I hope that continues in the May," she said, referring to the NPT review conference next month in New York. "They are part of the same process."

The State Department has published a slew of documents related to the just-concluded Nuclear Security Summit. Enjoy.

• The U.S. national statement (pdf)
• The summit communiqué (pdf)
• The work plan (pdf) and a related reference document (pdf)
• A fact sheet about the summit (pdf)
• Highlights of the national commitments made at the summit (pdf)

The string of small deliverables coming out of the Nuclear Security Summit continues. These announcements, which were largely planned in advance but are being rolled out throughout the event are what American officials have taken to calling "house gifts" because they are seen as offerings by visiting dignitaries who want to get in good with their host.

"Maybe if you didn't bring anything this time, Obama won't invite you to the next one," one U.S. delegate joked.

And there are quite a few. We already knew about the Chilean and Ukrainian announcements that they would give up their last stores of highly enriched uranium. Ukraine also agreed to switch its reactor to use low-enriched uranium instead.

U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton and Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov signed a deal to destroy large amounts of weapons grade plutonium today. Now, the Russians have announced they will shut down the plutonium plant in Zheleznogorsk, a once-secret city in Siberia. (They actually agreed to do that two years ago, but nice to know they will actually follow through.)

And Canada announced today that the country will give up a lot of its nuclear material, while Mexico announced today that it will convert it research reactors from highly enriched uranium to low-enriched uranium.

All of this allowed Obama to announce in his speech Tuesday afternoon, "We are not just making pledges -- we are making real progress."

"The summit is a clever device for generating momentum," Joshua Pollack, a consultant to the U.S. government and a contributor to the Arms Control Wonk blog, told The Nelson Report, an insider Washington newsletter. "A lot of this stuff languishes because it costs money. But if everyone is expected to show up every couple of years and to be ashamed if they come empty-handed, well, it helps."

The final communiqué is below:

Read on

Among the more than a dozen meetings Hillary Clinton has had on the sidelines of the Nuclear Security Summit here in Washington, one stands out. The U.S. secretary of state had an intense 90-minute session with Egyptian Foreign Minister Ahmad Aboul Gheit.

Also in the meeting on the American side were two crucial officials: Under Secretary of State for Arms Control and International Security Ellen Tauscher and Special Envoy for the Middle East George Mitchell.

The main topics of the meeting? The Middle East peace process and the upcoming Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty review conference to be held at U.N. headquarters in New York in May.

The Cable caught up with State Department spokesman P.J. Crowley, who gave us an exclusive readout.

Clinton and Tauscher spoke at length with Aboul Gheit about the NPT review conference, as they are doing in a host of meetings yesterday and today. The Obama administration is using this week's summit to lay the groundwork for the May conference, which is sure to be more controversial and more heated than the sessions this week, which have focused on the need to keep nuclear materials out of the hands of terrorist groups.

On Monday, Aboul Gheit reiterated Egypt's call for a nuclear-free Middle East, urging that Israel's unacknowledged nuclear weapons be put on the table along with Iran's nuclear program. The possibility that Egypt, along with Turkey, might raise was the official reason for Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu's last-minute decision to skip the D.C. summit.

The State Department wants to head off any plans to disrupt the NPT conference and also start the discussions about what countries would be bringing what agendas to New York next month.

"We recognize that this is an issue that many countries are concerned about and we want to make sure we are prepared for that," Crowley said, no going so far as to say the U.S. is trying to dissuade Egypt from making the NPT review conference all about Israel.

"There clearly will be a subtext to the NPT Review Conference, just as there is here. We recognize that," Crowley said.

On Middle East peace, he said Egypt is "in tune with what the Arab league is thinking about things," and so the United States wanted to touch base.

Crowley said he wasn't aware of any meetings between Clinton, Deputy Secretary of State Jim Steinberg (who is also milling about) or Mitchell with the Israeli delegation led by Deputy Prime Minister Dan Meridor, but he didn't rule that out.

As for Turkey, Clinton met with Foreign Minister Ahmet Davutoglu. The substance of that conversation was on how to move forward with the Turkey-Armenia agreement that Clinton has been pushing for some time.

"The discussion was about how to take specific steps on progress on both sides," Crowley said.

Clinton will join President Obama's meeting with Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan and also his bilateral with Armenian President Serzh Sargsyan.

When asked what the Turkish foreign minister about the prospects for a breakthrough between the two historically estranged neighbors, Crowley said, "Anyone who knows Davutoglu knows that he is always optimistic."

What about Iran's nuclear program? Crowley said there wasn't enough time to discuss the issue in the meeting, but noted that Clinton and Davotoglu will meet again before he leaves for Ankara Thursday.