The White House issued a mea culpa Monday, admitting it should have sent a top official to an anti-terror march in Paris – as Secretary of State John Kerry said he will head to the French capital this week.
More than 40 world leaders attended the march Sunday to show solidarity with the mourning nation.
“It’s fair to say we should have sent someone with a higher profile,” White House spokesman Josh Earnest said.
The Obama administration was represented by the US ambassador to France, though Attorney General Eric Holder was in Paris for security meetings.
Earnest suggested the security arrangements required for presidential travel prohibited President Obama, as well as Vice President Joe Biden, from traveling to Paris on relatively short notice.
Kerry said earlier that US officials, including Obama, had been “deeply engaged” with French authorities after the terror attack at the satirical magazine Charlie Hebdo and had offered intelligence help.
He arrived in Pakistan on Monday to urge its leaders to ramp up the fight against extremists.
“This 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,” he said earlier at an entrepreneurship summit in India, CNN reported.
“I’ve been here in India for a prior planned event, would’ve personally very much wanted to have been there (in France) but couldn’t do so because of the commitment that I had here,” he said. “But that is why I am going there on the way home, to make it crystal clear how passionately we feel about the events that have taken place there.”
A senior official told CNN that Obama, who had visited the French Embassy in Washington, was one of the first leaders to call French President François Hollande last week.
Attorney General Eric Holder, who had planned to take part in the rally, was attending a security summit in Paris on combating terrorism but was not seen at the march.
“It is worth noting that the security requirements for both the president and (vice president) can be distracting from events like this — for once this event is not about us,” a White House official told CNN.
Among the world leaders who took part in the march were British Prime Minister David Cameron, German Chancellor Angela Merkel, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas and Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov.
Kerry plans to meet French Foreign Minister Laurent Fabius and honor the victims of the rampage by Cherif and Said Kouachi at Charlie Hebdo and Amedy Coulibaly’s attack at a Jewish market.
Meanwhile, France ordered 10,000 troops into the streets Monday as law enforcement authorities hunt for accomplices of the three terrorists who killed 17 people.
Prime Minister Manuel Valls said the search is urgent because “the threat is still present” after last week’s three attackers were killed Friday in two clashes with security forces.
Hayat Boumeddiene, the common-law wife of Coulibaly — who killed four hostages at the kosher store — crossed into Syria on Thursday, the same day her husband fatally shot a French policewoman.
French Defense Minister Jean-Yves Le Drian said the 10,000 troops will protect citizens and focus on the most sensitive locations. Interior Minister Bernard Cazeneuve said 4,700 security forces will be assigned to protect France’s 717 Jewish schools.