Deputy Secretary Landau is Christopher Thomas Landau, an American lawyer and career diplomat. In this administration he serves as the 23rd U.S. Deputy Secretary of State (sworn in March 2025) and previously was U.S. ambassador to Mexico (2019–2021). The Deputy Secretary is the State Department’s second‑highest official and principal deputy to the Secretary of State, helping direct U.S. foreign policy and acting as the department’s chief operating officer (managing day‑to‑day operations and standing in when the Secretary is absent).
Al Khulaifi is His Excellency Dr. Mohammed bin Abdulaziz Al‑Khulaifi, a Qatari lawyer and diplomat. He was appointed Minister of State at Qatar’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs by Amiri Decree No. 5 of 2023. His portfolio focuses on mediation and peaceful dispute resolution: he oversees political, regional, and international files related to mediation, conflict resolution, and supporting Qatar’s role in settling disputes, drawing on his background as a legal scholar and former dean of Qatar University’s College of Law.
Yes. According to the official readout text as republished by several outlets, Deputy Secretary of State Christopher Landau met Qatari Minister of State Dr. Mohammed Al Khulaifi on December 17, 2025, in Washington, D.C. The meeting took place “on the sidelines of the seventh U.S.–Qatar Strategic Dialogue.”
The “Exception: forbidden” message on the State Department page indicates a server‑side 403 Forbidden error: the server understands the request but is refusing to complete it, often because of a technical configuration or access‑control rule (for example, a web‑application firewall or temporary misconfiguration), not because of anything the reader did. Since it is accompanied by the State Department’s own “Technical Difficulties” notice, it is best understood as a temporary technical problem rather than an intentional withholding of this specific readout. To access the statement while this error persists, you can use mirrored copies of the State Department readout—such as those on GlobalSecurity.org or other outlets that republish official U.S. government releases—or wait and retry the original State.gov URL later.
Because the original State.gov page is returning an error, the clearest publicly available versions of this meeting’s readout are mirrored copies of the State Department text. GlobalSecurity.org hosts the full readout as a U.S. Department of State document, and Federal Newswire reproduces the same language in a news story citing Principal Deputy Spokesperson Tommy Pigott. Other press‑release aggregators such as PublicNow or MirageNews also carry the text, but the GlobalSecurity and Federal Newswire versions are the most straightforward substitutes for the inaccessible State.gov page.
In this context, “forbidden” corresponds to the HTTP 403 Forbidden status: the server received and understood the browser’s request but is refusing to authorize it. That is an access‑control or configuration problem on the server side (for example, a rule blocking certain requests, a misconfigured origin server, or a temporary protection mechanism), not a normal “not found” (404) error and not something the user can fix locally. Because the message is wrapped in a general “technical difficulties” notice from State.gov, it is best interpreted as a server or configuration issue—an access restriction implemented by the server—rather than a deliberate, individualized denial of access.