THE WHITE HOUSE
Office of the Press Secretary
(Sharm el-Sheikh, Egypt)
________________________________________________________________________
For Immediate Release October 16, 2000
REMARKS BY THE PRESIDENT
AT OPENING OF PLENARY SESSION
Jolieville Golf Resort
Sharm el-Sheikh, Egypt
1:30 P.M. (L)
THE PRESIDENT: Well, first of all, I would like to thank you,
President Mubarak, for having us all here, for providing an opportunity
for the Palestinians and the Israelis to come together and to talk, and
for us all to try to save the peace process.
I thank His Majesty, the King of Jordan; and the Secretary General
of the United Nations, who has been working very hard out here and we're
grateful for him; and my good friend, Javiar Solana, from the European
Union -- for all being here.
I think it's very important that we all be quite honest and blunt
with each other, but we be sober and serious about this. We're here
because we would like to achieve three objectives. We want to end the
violence and restore security cooperation. We hope to achieve agreement
on an objective and fair, fact-finding process on what happened to bring
us to this sad point and how we can avoid having it ever happen again.
And we want to get the peace process going.
The future of the peoples involved here, the future of the peace
process and the stability of the region are at stake; we cannot afford
to fail here. In order to succeed, though once again we have a
situation piled high with grievance, we have got to move beyond blame.
We have got to focus on what we're going to do tomorrow and the next day
and the next day. We have to have a balanced, mutual disengagement and
we have to restore the security cooperation and have the confidence
building measures necessary for people to go about their business and
live in peace and begin to rebuild the bonds of trust.
The only other thing I want to ask you all is just to remember
before these terrible events how far we have come since September 19*,
1993, when the Palestinians and Israelis signed the agreement to find a
peaceful future together and resolve their differences peacefully, on
the lawn of the White House.
We shouldn't give it all up for what has happened in the last few
weeks. And what has happened in these last few weeks reminds us of the
terrible alternative to continuing to live in peace and to continuing
the peace process.
President Mubarak, I am grateful to you, again. We can -- if we
will look to the future and proceed in a fair and balanced way, we can
do what we have to do here and we must do that.
Thank you.
END 1:34 P.M. (L)
* September 13, 1993
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