The White House admitted Monday that it should have sent a higher profile official to Sunday's anti-terrorism march in Paris, and in an attempt to show its solidarity with France in the wake of the Charlie Hebdo attack, U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry announced he will visit the country on Thursday.
"I think it's fair to say that we should have sent someone with a higher profile to be there," White House Press Secretary Josh Earnest said Monday afternoon, reported CNN.
The marches against terrorism drew more than a million people, including 44 world leaders, but the only U.S. representatives to attend were U.S. Ambassador to France Jane Hartley and assistant Secretary of State Victoria Nuland, according to The New York Times.
To make up for the lack of senior U.S. officials at the march, Kerry announced on Monday from a news conference in India that he will be traveling to Paris on Thursday and will leave Friday.
"As soon as I heard about the plans for the march that took place yesterday, I asked my team to figure out what the earliest is that I could travel to Paris in order to show, once again, to reaffirm the connection between the United States and our oldest ally," Kerry told reporters in India.
"And so, I will be traveling there on Thursday, and be there Friday, part of Friday," Kerry said. "And I want to emphasize that the relationship with France is not about one day or one particular moment. It's an ongoing, longtime relationship that is deeply, deeply based in the shared values, and particularly the commitment that we share in freedom of expression."
When Kerry was asked if he thought it was a mistake not to send senior U.S. officials to the march, he said that he thinks it is "sort of quibbling a little bit, in the sense that our assistant secretary of state, Victoria Nuland, was there and marched."
"Our ambassador was there and marched. Many people from the embassy were there and marched. And I believe that, as everybody knows, I have been here in India for a prior planned event," Kerry added. "I would have personally very much wanted to have been there, but couldn't do so because of the commitment that I had here, and that's important to keep those kinds of commitments."
President Barack Obama said he would have liked to attend "had the circumstances been a little different." The administration said that a mere 36-hour notice prior to the event was not enough time to complete the security work necessary for a presidential visit, according to CNN.
As The Guardian noted, that reasoning is somewhat ironic considering one of the rallies main messages was to show that terrorists could not intimidate world governments.
World leaders who marched at the rally included French President Francois Hollande, German Chancellor Angela Merkel, Switzerland's President Simonetta Sommaruga, British Prime Minister David Cameron, Italian Prime Minister Matteo Renzi, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas, reported Reuters.
