EGYPT: Ambassador Susan Rice calls for ‘free and fair elections’ in Twitter town hall
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The U.S. ambassador to the United Nations hosted a virtual town hall at Twitter headquarters in San Francisco on Thursday morning to talk foreign policy with users of the online messaging service.
Ambassador Susan Rice fielded questions from around the world submitted via the Twitter hashtag AskAmbRice.
The town hall was broadcast live over the Internet on the video streaming service Ustream.
‘We support democracy and we look forward to its full realization in an orderly and prompt and meaningful way,’ Rice said of the situation in Egypt. ‘This means we see a process in which all elements of opposition negotiate to bring about free and fair elections that reflect the will of the people. That process needs to be irreversible. We’ve supported it, and we’ve called for it to be a peaceful process. What is clear is that the people of Egypt are asking for and demanding a different future, where they have real economic opportunities.’
View Rice’s latest tweets here. The meeting came amid worldwide discussion of the role of Twitter and Facebook in the uprisings in Egypt, Tunisia and elsewhere.
The U.S. State Department also has ramped up its use of social media in diplomacy, including the launch of an Arab language Twitter feed Wednesday called @USAbilAraby, or ‘USA in Arabic.’
-- Molly Hennessy-Fiske