State Department officials arae denying a claim by former Bush administration official Elliott Abrams that George Mitchell was thinking of retiring as Middle East envoy by the end of the year. From Laura Rozen at ForeignPolicy.com:
"Mitchell says [the claim] is an utter fabrication," a State Department official told Foreign Policy on behalf of Mitchell Monday. "Mitchell said, ‘I have never experienced the thought, let alone expressed it.’"
"There is no truth to the rumor," State Department spokesman P.J. Crowley said by e-mail.
Another Mitchell associate wrote to say he’d "never heard him speak of retirement."
