palestinian authority and iraq, addressing the media in baghdad, along with iraq's prime minister, muhammad shia al sudani, the american secretary of state, had this to say: we're working very hard to make sure that the conflict in gaza does not escalate, does not spread to other places, whether it's here, whether it's elsewhere in the region, this is uh the... very vital and urgent work of american diplomacy, and that's what we've been engaged in as well throughout this trip. this is a process, israel's raised important questions about uh how humanitarian pauses would work, uh, we've got to answer those questions. we're working on exactly that. in fact, we agreed that our uh teams would get together, and they they're doing just that uh, including today to work through uh the specifics, the practicalities of um of these pauses. second, um, it's important that the pause uh advance uh number of things, one of them is hostages, uh, we are intensely focused, the united states, israel, every other country that has one of its citizens being held hostage by hamas, to uh, to bring them home, and now it's importan