Secretary Hillary Clinton attends White House Press Briefing... gives the rundown on U.S.-Afghanistan-Pakistan Trilateral

It was a great surprise to see the above images: Hillary Clinton in the White House Press Room. Due to the important trilateral meetings between Secretary Clinton and President Obama with Afghan Pres. Hamid Karzai & Pakistani Pres. Asif Ali Zardari Secretary Clinton joined White House Press Secretary Robert Gibbs in the briefing room to address the press on these issues.

Upon taking the podium, Hillary said, "Thank you, Robert. You know, I successfully avoided this room for eight years. But I'm very pleased to be here to discuss the series of meetings that we had this morning as part of our second trilateral with delegations from Afghanistan and Pakistan, and this time led by their respective Presidents."

She gave great opening remarks. This is the quick rundown of what happened in the earlier meetings:

"At the formal bilateral that I held with President Zardari at the State Department, I reaffirmed our government's strong support for him as the democratically elected President. Being able to say "democratically elected President of Pakistan" is not a common phrase, and I think it's imperative that we support President Zardari and work with him as he extends the reach of the government not only on security, as essential as that is, but also on the range of needs of the Pakistani people.

With President Karzai, it was a very future-oriented conversation. We talked about the necessity to take real, concrete actions to make the kind of progress that Afghanistan desperately needs to see to really deliver for the people of the country.

In both meetings, I thought each President was very forthcoming. We discussed a range of issues that are important going forward, but we kept the focus on what we're actually going to do. I told each that coming out of this trilateral meeting, we will basically have work plans. We're going to be very specific. We don't want any misunderstanding; we don't want any mixed signals; we want to know what we have agreed to, what they have agreed to, how we're going to proceed toward meeting those goals and objectives and timetables that will be utilized to keep all of us focused on the job ahead."

She ended her remarks by quoting an ancient Afghan proverb, "Patience is bitter, but it's fruit is sweet." She used this to explain the new stance that the Obama Adminstration is taking.

"...the kind of patient strategy that the President has adopted and the steps that we are all taking to implement this strategy is the only way forward. It may not give you a story every day, but hopefully it will give us all a better story next year and the years to come."

The questions that followed from the press were actually really interesting, and of course we saw a full display of the breadth of knowledge Secretary Clinton has as well as the amount of work that is being done and needs to be done on her bahalf.

I watched the entire briefing and I would recommend that others do as well! Watch the full press briefing including questions from the press with Hillary Clinton here!

Read her full opening remarks here or watch them below: