Loading ...The one Washington dinner John Kerry was afraid to miss
By Roxanne Roberts
Washington Post
Globe-trotting Secretary of State John Kerry raced back to Washington from Saudi Arabia Sunday for a can’t-miss appearance: Dinner with Rima Al-Sabah and her husband, Kuwaiti ambassador Salem Al-Sabah.
“The greatest crisis of all, folks, would have been if I had not made it back tonight,” joked a croaky-voiced Kerry, who landed at 7 p.m. and arrived at the embassy 30 minutes later. He’s stared down Russian President Vladimir Putin and Syrian President Bashar al-Assad but didn’t dare say no to his hostess: “You are an organized, controlled and focused tornado. Amazing. Typhoon Rima.”
Kerry and his wife, Teresa Heinz Kerry, topped the list at the Kuwait-America Foundation fundraiser — the list of Washington A-listers that included White House Chief of Staff Denis McDonough, IMF head Christine Lagarde, emcee Wolf Blitzer, Queen Noor, Sens. Amy Klobuchar, Roy Blunt and Ed Markey and dozens of deep-pocket corporate donors.
Since Rima Al-Sabah was appointed a goodwill ambassador for the United Nations refugee agency earlier this year, the annual benefit raised more than $1 million to help Syrian refugees. An estimated four million Syrians have fled their country, numbers that Kerry believes threatens to destabilize Europe if the Islamic State is not stopped. This “nihilistic, extraordinary negative evil group” is the antithesis, said Kerry, “of everything we’ve fought for since World War II.”
U.N. Deputy Secretary General Jan Eliasson accepted the $1 million check, one day after celebrating the 70thanniversary of the United Nations. “I sometimes feel like I’m a fireman who comes in after the house has burned down,” said Eliasson, who served as Sweden’s ambassador to Washington several years ago. The challenge is remaining both pragmatic and positive: “The U.N. is a reflection of two things: We are a reflection of the world as it is, and it’s not a pretty place, but we’re also a mirror of the world as it should be. And our job is to try to diminish the gap.”