THE WHITE HOUSE
Office of the Press Secretary
________________________________________________________________________
For Immediate Release October 24, 2000
PRESS BRIEFING
BY
JAKE SIEWERT
The James S. Brady Briefing Room
12:27 P.M. EDT
Q Jake, what can you tell us about the President's meeting today
on the Middle East?
MR. SIEWERT: The President met with - is meeting, is in the
process of meeting with his advisers. As you know, the National
Security Council principals meet from time to time to discuss issues of
concern, and they met this morning on the Mideast and they're meeting
with the President now to give him an update on the situation. As you
know, he attended several meetings in the last couple of weeks with
those principals.
Q Does that cover the peace process and the Yemen bombing, or
just the peace process?
MR. SIEWERT: The meeting was focused on the Mideast peace process,
involved the people from State, like Dennis Ross and others who have
been integrally involved in the Sharm el-Sheikh summit.
Q Is this a decision-making meeting, or just --
MR. SIEWERT: I think it's meant to provide the President with an
update. Obviously, the President's been in touch with a number of the
parties in the last couple of days. He spoke to Prime Minister Barak
and Chairman Arafat over the last three or four days, and this is meant
to give him an assessment of where we are in the wake of the Arab
summit, where we are in the wake of Sharm el-Sheikh and assess where we
go from here.
Q Based on what the President has seen happen in the Middle East
over the past week, since it was a week ago today that he brokered this
agreement at Sharm el-Sheikh, does he think that Sharm el-Sheikh has now
proven to be a waste of time?
MR. SIEWERT: No, we think that Sharm el Sheikh, the agreements
that were reached there, particularly on security, offer the best
prospects for restoring calm in the region, and that implementing those
steps is still the best way to cool tensions in the area. And we remain
in touch with the parties, and are working to have them implement those
-- the agreement that was agreed upon in Sharm el-Sheikh. If they
implement those measures, we'll be in a better position to begin to
restore calm and eventually work our way back to the political process.
Q Well Jake, what remains of the Sharm el Sheikh agreement as
far as implementation? The airport has been closed, there's more
violence. There seems to be less and less of the things that they
agreed to actually being implemented as each and every day goes by.
MR. SIEWERT: Well, as you know, some of the steps were taken
immediately after Sharm el-Sheikh, and there have been some meetings,
trilateral meetings on security. We're going to continue to do
everything we can to urge them to work together on security, to take the
steps that were agreed upon in Sharm el- Sheikh, because in the long
run, there's no other way to begin to restore some calm in the streets
and reduce tension there.
Q Jake, just so that we understand, what are the specific steps
on security that you would like to see them take?
MR. SIEWERT: Well, they were outlined. I think the President ran
through them in Sharm el-Sheikh. We talked about re-arrest, we talked
about reducing points of friction. There were a number of different
steps. We talked about re-openings to restore some calm there.
But that was outlined for you at Sharm el-Sheikh. I'm not going to
try to itemize them all right now. And I think there were more - there
were very specific discussions on that, led by the DCI in Egypt, and I
think both parties understand what was discussed and what was agreed to,
and where we could take action to reduce tension in the area.
Q Jake, there's a Boston Globe story today which seemed to
suggest that the Palestinians were disagreeing that certain agreements
had been made in Sharm. Do you have any response to that?
MR. SIEWERT: There was a specific set of discussions on security
issues. It's true that no one signed anything at Sharm el-Sheikh, but
we expect the parties agreed to a statement that the President read
which outlined very specific measures that could be taken to restore
calm and to reduce tension there.
....
Q Does the White House have any reaction to Morocco severing
diplomatic ties with Israel today, and will the President be talking to
King Abdullah about that?
MR. SIEWERT: I don't know that he'll be talking to him
specifically about that. He'll certainly be talking to King Abdullah
about what we can do to restore calm in the region, to implement what
was agreed upon at Sharm el-Sheikh. And as you know, the King was an
important player, played an important role in Egypt at those
discussions. The President met with him a couple of times and he was
helpful in trying to forge some common ground between the Israelis and
Palestinians. So that's - the general topic of how to move forward and
how to restore calm will certainly come up in the discussions, but I'm
not certain that that's specific diplomatic --
Q Does the White House have any reaction?
MR. SIEWERT: I don't know. I'll check.
Q Oh, and one more thing. Yesterday you said you didn't know
anything about the potential summit in November. But wasn't that
discussed at Sharm el-Sheikh?
MR. SIEWERT: A potential --
Q Summit between --
MR. SIEWERT: We certainly talked, and in fact, the President said
that there would be some further consultations in the wake of Sharm
el-Sheikh, and I'll refer you to the State Department for how and where
those might happen. But the discussion - there were obviously a lot of
different discussions and options put on the table at Sharm el-Sheikh.
In the end, what we agreed to was that there would be some further
consultations at a time that seemed appropriate at a lower level between
negotiators from each side.
END 12:55 P.M. EDT
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