各国领导人能私下联络吗？Can leaders contact each other privately?

 

Presidents' phone calls with world leaders often involve considerable advance planning. State Department and National Security Council officials typically prepare scripted talking points and background on the leader on the other end of the line. Often an informal transcript of the call is made and circulated among a select group - sometimes a small clutch of aides, sometimes a broader group of foreign policy officials. Those records are preserved and archived.

 

The White House did not respond to questions on whether the president is keeping records of any less-formal calls with world leaders. Trump's White House is already facing scrutiny for apparent efforts to work outside usual diplomatic channels.

 

The administration has been fending off questions about a senior aide's attempt to set up a secret back channel of communication with Moscow in the weeks before Trump took office. White House adviser Jared Kushner, Trump's son-in-law, met in December with Russia's ambassador to the US and discussed whether a secret line of communication could be used to facilitate sensitive policy discussions about the conflict in Syria, according to a person familiar with the talks.

It was unclear whether an impromptu, informal call with a foreign leader would be logged and archived. The Presidential Records Act of 1981, passed in response to the Watergate scandal, requires that the president and his staff preserve all records related to the office. In 2014, the act was amended to include personal emails.

But the law contains "blind spots" — namely, record-keeping for direct cellphone communications, said Jonathan Turley, a professor at George Washington University Law School, who specializes in public interest and national security law.

中文译文如下：

在现代移动社会，世界各国领导人彼此拨打手机的想法似乎没什么大惊小怪的。但是在外交舞台上，领导人之间的通话是经过精心安排的，这是对官方渠道不信任的特朗普又一次公然违反外交礼节。

 

美国总统与世界领导人通话前要进行大量的前期安排。国务院和国家安全委员会官员通常会事先准备谈话要点，以及对方领导人的背景资料。通话过程会生成非正式文本并在选定的小组成员间传阅，小组成员有时是几个助手，有时还包含更多外交政策官员。这些记录都会被保存归档。

 

白宫没有回应特朗普是否保留了与世界领导人任意一通非正式通话的记录。特朗普白宫团队已经因为试图通过正常外交渠道以外的方式工作而面临审查。

 

在特朗普就职前几周，他的一名高级助手试图与莫斯科建立秘密沟通渠道，特朗普政府一直回避有关质疑。据一位知情人士称，白宫顾问贾瑞德•库什纳（特朗普的女婿）去年12月会见俄罗斯驻美大使，与其协商是否可以开通一条秘密通讯线路，以便于双方就有关叙利亚冲突的敏感政策进行讨论。

 

目前还不能明确与外国领导人即兴、非正式的通话是否将被记录存档。水门事件之后，美国通过了《1981年总统记录法案》，该法案要求总统及其属下保存所有与工作有关的记录。2014年，法案修正案将私人电子邮件纳入记录范畴。

 

乔治华盛顿大学法学院公共利益和国家安全法专业的教授乔纳森•特利表示，手机直接通讯的记录保存是该法案的“盲区”。