THE WHITE HOUSE
Office of the Press Secretary
________________________________________________________________________
For Immediate Release October 11, 2000
REMARKS BY THE PRESIDENT
ON SIGNING DEPARTMENT OF THE INTERIOR
AND RELATED AGENCIES APPROPRIATIONS ACT 2000
The Rose Garden
9:50 A.M. EDT
Q Mr. President, did your peace plan for the Middle East ever
contemplate sovereignty for the Palestinians in East Jerusalem?
THE PRESIDENT: Well, the last thing I think we need to be doing
now is talking about -- I think you know what we talked about at Camp
David and what we've talked about since has been fairly well publicized.
Q No, it hasn't. I don't know what your plan is.
THE PRESIDENT: But I do not believe that any of us should be
saying or doing anything now except focusing on putting an end to the
violence, keeping people alive, calming things down, and getting back to
the negotiating table.
And I do believe, by the way, that a plan to get back to the
negotiating table is an important part of ending the violence in a
substantial way. And so for me, that's what we're doing. That's what
I've been working on for several days now, almost a week.
Q Do you think you will be traveling to the Mideast or elsewhere
to meet with the leaders from -- Palestinians and the Israelis?
THE PRESIDENT: First of all, as always, I'm prepared to do
whatever I can to help. But I think the most important thing is that we
all keep working to calm things down, keep them calm, and then find a
way to get the peace process going again.
I think Secretary Albright or I might go; maybe in time we'll both
go. I had a long talk this morning with Secretary General Kofi Annan,
and we've been working together in an attempt to make sure we've got a
substantial calm there.
I can do a lot here on the phone. I've been spending a lot of days
and nights on the phone, and I hope that the United States is having a
positive impact. But the first thing we've got to do is to get this
situation calmed down and figure out where to go from here. But I do
believe where to go from here must include a resumption of the peace
talks because that's one of the reasons that we've had things so calm
for so long, that we've basically had these talks going along, moving in
the right direction.
We have to reach an agreement on this fact-finding effort to
determine what happened and how to keep it from happening again, and I
think we can do that. So we've just got to keep working on it.
Q Can I follow up on that for one second? A follow-up on that
for one second? This is sort of a pointed question about the Middle
East. At this point, if you're frustrated about possibly setting up a
summit over there, do not the Israelis and the Palestinians at least owe
you the courtesy of participating in such a summit, considering what you
have tried to do to bring peace to the region?
THE PRESIDENT: Oh, yes. I'm not worried about that. I think --
that's not what's at issue there. I think we can do that. But the main
thing we have to do is, we don't need just another meeting, we need to
know what we're going to do and how we're going to do it.
I wouldn't over-read the fact that there won't be a big meeting
imminently in Egypt. I don't think you should over-read that as a
reflection that either the Israelis or the Palestinians do not want to
continue the peace process. This is -- I think everybody is shocked at
how quickly and how deeply it got out of hand. And I think the most
important thing now is to restore calm.
We've had a couple of pretty good days, people are really trying,
and we're trying to put together a way forward, which will increase the
chances that things will stay calm and more peaceful. So that's what
we're working on. And I just have to tell you, it's very important to
us to keep all of our options open, it's important that you know that
I'm willing to do whatever I can to help, but these things have to take
place in a certain way in order for them to make sense, and I'm doing
the very best I can with it.
Q Some critics of the administration's policy blame some of the
--
Q -- spoke of fact-finding as an agreement to return to
negotiations, do you need to see those before you agree to go to the
Mideast or send a representative?
THE PRESIDENT: Well, no. First of all, I don't need to see
anything before I send representatives. We've been involved with them
too long, and we have been already -- keep in mind, we've had people
already in the region, and then Secretary Albright met with them in
Paris, and now lots of others coming in.
I have been talking to them all for extended period of times,
really since the beginning of the difficulties. So that's not it. The
point is, everything that the United States does should be designed
toward, number one, trying to preserve the calm, and number two, trying
to restore the peace process. And so I will do whatever I think is
likely to advance those objectives. So that's the only thing I was
saying. We're in this for the long haul; we have been from the
beginning, and we'll stay.
Q Are you disappointed at Mr. Arafat, Mr. President? Are you
disappointed in Arafat's attitude?
Q Some of the administration's critics blame some of the
violence on the failed Camp David talks and charge that summit was
called too soon. Do you think that's unfair? What's your response to
that?
THE PRESIDENT: I think if there had been no talks at Camp David,
it would be worse now, because the pressure on the Palestinians to
unilaterally declare a state would have been far worse, because their
level of misunderstanding would have been even greater, because they had
never -- in all of these seven years, they had never talked about these
big, deep, underlying issues -- not in a serious, formal way.
So I think, certainly, the Israelis, I think, were disappointed
that they were as forthcoming as they were and they thought more
progress should have been made, but I think that everybody had a sense
-- I announced that at the time.
But then after that, they continued to talk and everybody had the
sense that they were moving forward. So I don't think that the evidence
will support that conclusion.
Keep in mind, we were running out of time and the Palestinians,
Chairman Arafat delayed the date that he had previously set for
unilateral declaration. So the facts on the ground and the behavior of
the parties do not support that conclusion.
The truth is, we got down to the tough issues where there were no
easy answers. And I think that what this tells everybody is that after
all these years of working together, there are still underlying
different perceptions that have to be worked on. And we slid off into a
sense where both sides felt as if they had been victimized and abused.
There is no alternative here but to get back together and to go
back to work.
Q How would you like to live under military occupation for 50
years?
Q What exactly are you recommending on how to calm things down?
THE PRESIDENT: Well, they're working on that. They have worked
together on that. They have common security understandings and a very
detailed set of things that both sides have been doing, and they're
talking about it some more. So I think first, you have to do that, and
then they have to figure out beyond the security operations how they're
going to get back together.
Q You are reportedly disappointed by Arafat and puzzled by his
attitude. Are those reports true?
THE PRESIDENT: I don't think that anything I say that stirs this
up is very helpful. I think that, look, there's a lot of people dying
over there. We need to stop people dying. And there's been enough
people saying enough things that have contributed to that.
My goal is to stop people dying and then get them back together.
We can all have our judgments -- you have yours; they're somehow
implicit in some of the questions you're asking -- but what I have
noticed in these circumstances is, if they do good things, there is
enough credit to go around, and if the wheel runs off and people start
to die, then there's enough blame to go around.
This is not the time to be assessing that. This is a time to make
a primary first commitment to end violence, to keep calm, to start the
peace process again, and then they can establish some mechanism to
evaluate what happened and why, and how to keep it from ever happening
again.
Both of them have agreed to that. They haven't exactly agreed on
the modalities, but they both agreed to that. So we can't lose sight of
the fact that the most important thing right not is to stop people from
getting shot and wounded and killed and to get the peace process back on
track and to give a sense of safety and security back to all the people
there.
When you get -- when things are most explosive in the Middle East,
when both sides feel victimized -- and we were slipping toward that at a
rapid pace over the last several days -- now both sides are feeling --
are taking responsibility here for moving out of this, and I think the
statement that Prime Minister Barak made in the middle of his night-long
cabinet meeting a couple of nights ago was very helpful in that regard,
and a wise thing to do. And then he and Chairman Arafat have been doing
some specific things here on this security front, and we need to support
that and not -- look, there will be plenty of time in a calmer
atmosphere for people to say whatever it is they've got to say in a
political nature.
But we can't bring any of those kids back to life, we can't bring
any of those young people back to life, we can't bring -- Lord knows how
long it will take to reestablish some of the relationships that have
been severed there, and none of us need to do anything to make this
worse. We need to calm this down.
Thank you.
END 10:08 A.M. EDT
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