White House Press Secretary Jay Carney said he could not predict whether the United States would grant por-life Chinese dissident Chen Guangcheng political asylum.
“I am not in a position in any case to characterize or decide who would be able to ask for political asylum, that’s again, a question for the State Department,” Carney said today during the press briefing when asked about Chen Guangcheng.
Chen appealed directly to President Obama in a CNN interview. “I would like to say to President Obama: please do everything you can to get our family out,” he said.
He also said he was “very disappointed” in the United States government, claiming that they pressured him to leave the U.S. embassy in China, but Carney says Chen wanted his stay at the embassy “to be temporary.”
U.S. Ambassador Gary Locke dodged the question when asked if it was “realistic” to think that Chen might be permitted to fly out of China with Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, as he has requested.
