Secretary of State John Kerry & Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu Remarks, September 15

Elanna Cahn — September 16, 2013 – 9:23 am | Foreign Policy | Iran | Israel Comments (0) Add a comment

On Sunday, Secretary of State John Kerry and Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu met in Jerusalem to discuss the situation in Syria, and impeding peace talks with the Palestinians.

Secretary of State John Kerry and

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu

Prime Minister’s Office, Jerusalem

September 15, 2013

PRIME MINISTER NETANYAHU:  Mr. Secretary, John, a pleasure to welcome you again in Jerusalem.  I very much appreciate the fact that you’re here today.  You’ve got a lot on your plate.  Despite that busy schedule of yours, you took the time to come to Jerusalem.  It’s deeply appreciated.  I appreciate the fact that you’re making a great personal effort on matters of vital strategic importance for all of us. 

We have been closely following and support your ongoing efforts to rid Syria of its chemical weapons.  The Syrian regime must be stripped all its chemical weapons, and that would make our entire region a lot safer.  The world needs to ensure that radical regimes don’t have weapons of mass destruction, because as we’ve learned once again in Syria, if rogue regimes have weapons of mass destruction, they will use them.  The determination the international community shows regarding Syria will have a direct impact on the Syrian regime’s patron, Iran. 

Iran must understand the consequences of its continual defiance of the international community by its pursuit towards nuclear weapons.  What the past few days have showed is something that I’ve been saying for quite some time, that if diplomacy has any chance to work, it must be coupled with a credible military threat.  What is true of Iran - or what is true of Syria is true of Iran, and by the way, vice versa.

John, I appreciate the opportunity we’ve had to discuss at some length our quest for peace with the Palestinians and the ongoing talks.  We both know that this road is not an easy one, but we’ve embarked on this effort with you in order to succeed, to bring about a historic reconciliation between Israelis and Palestinians that ends the conflict once and for all.  I want to welcome you once again to Jerusalem.  I want to promise all of those who are seeing us now that this will not be our last long meeting.

SECRETARY KERRY:  No.  (Laughter.)  Not by any means.

Mr. Prime Minister, my friend Bibi, thank you very much for one of your generous welcomes here again.  I’m very appreciative, very happy to be back here in Israel, and only sorry that it’s a short time and a short visit.  I thank you for your generous hospitality and I pick up on your comments that the road ahead is not easy.  If it were easy, peace would have been achieved a long time ago.  But what is clearer than ever today is that this is a road worth traveling.  And so I’m delighted to have spent a good period of time - (clears throat) - excuse me, folks, the benefits of a lot of travel.  (Laughter.) 

I’m really happy to have spent a serious amount of time with the Prime Minister this afternoon talking in some depth about the challenges of the particular road that we are on.  This is a follow-up to a very productive meeting that I had in London last week with President Abbas, so I am talking to both presidents directly as we agreed -

For the complete transcript, please click here

 

 

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