State Department Noon Briefing, October 27, 2000
U.S. DEPARTMENT OF STATE
Friday, October 27, 2000
BRIEFER: Richard Boucher, Spokesman
(ON THE RECORD UNLESS OTHERWISE NOTED)
Q: If I can come back to the Middle East. Since the White House is
playing down the possibility of a visit by Prime Minister Barak and
President Arafat, are there any plans for activity by people in this
building in this regard in the coming days?
MR. BOUCHER: Yes, there are plans for activity.
(Laughter.)
Q: Okay. Meetings? Is anybody going to travel to the region? Is
anybody going to come here and meet them? What about the meetings that
were planned for other negotiators to come to Washington within two or
three weeks of the Sharm el Sheikh discussions?
MR. BOUCHER: All right. There are no plans for travel at this point by
US officials. Acting Israeli Foreign Minister Shlomo Ben-Ami has asked
to come to Washington to meet with the Secretary and others. We have
agreed. We expect him here next week about mid-week.
We continue to discuss with both parties the efficacy of meetings at
various levels, both here and in the region. But I think I need, at
the same time, to say that we are also continuing to work with the
parties to encourage the implementation of their commitments at Sharm
el Sheikh, and we really think that that's very important to do. We
will continue to work on that, and we think that the imperative is to
carry out their obligations and to meet their commitments from Sharm
el Sheikh.
Q: How about any plans for visits by Palestinian officials?
MR. BOUCHER: I'm not aware of anything at this point.
Q: Have there been any requests?
MR. BOUCHER: Not that I'm aware of. I'd have to --
Q: Richard, what about the comments by Barak's Chief of Staff and the
Palestinians as well that the Oslo process of having the US be the
primary mediator is dead, and that the US can no longer be the sole
mediator?
MR. BOUCHER: I'm happy not to have seen those comments, and therefore
I won't say anything in response. But I think, in general, the United
States continues to play a central role. Obviously it's up to the
parties to reach agreement. And if they want to reach agreement in
some other way, then we'd have to see that. But obviously our role has
been to facilitate because the parties have asked us to, and they
continue to look to us for many aspects of this process.
Q: Is it clear to you that Ben-Ami is coming as Barak's person, or is
he coming to try and save what he sees might be left of the peace
process, or --
MR. BOUCHER: He is coming as the Acting Foreign Minister of Israel.
Q: Richard, what about the continued use of equipment such as the
Apache helicopters against civilian targets? Has there been any
discussion with Israel about the violations, pure violations of the
agreements between the United States and Israel on this point? And not
only the Apaches, but other things --
MR. BOUCHER: I'd have to say, once again, that it is not really a
question I can give you an answer to because it makes a lot of
assumptions that I'm not sure we've made. But the important thing is
for both sides to move quickly to implement these commitments from
Sharm el Sheikh. We continue to work with them. We think that's the
most expeditious means to reducing tensions, ending the violence,
restoring the calm, and finding their way back to the negotiating
table. So that is the agenda that we are working with, both sides
right now. We do know that their security people have had meetings,
and we continue to work with them to try to encourage implementation
of those commitments.
Q: The areas of the Sharm el Sheikh agreement that call on both
leaders to do what they can to try to contain the violence, have you
seen either or both leaders fulfill that part of the agreement?
MR. BOUCHER: I think early on we were quite clear about people who had
made statements, the meetings that had started, and some of the things
that had happened. But clearly they need to do more, and the President
was quite clear in saying that he thought Chairman Arafat can still do
more to dramatically reduce the level of violence. So I think we have
been fairly clear about where that stands, but I'm not going to try to
do a daily judgment or daily update.
Q: You have said that the United States is - or the general consensus
seems to be that the United States has to still play the central role
in peacemaking in the Middle East. But are there any steps by other
actors that you would like to see at this point or that you would
consider helpful - specific steps? I mean, by European officials or
UN officials?
MR. BOUCHER: I think if you look back to the Sharm el Sheikh meetings,
there were a number of people involved that were helpful in one way or
the other in helping calm the violence, keep in touch with the
parties, organize the fact-finding commission, which we are - get an
agreement on that, which we are again in the role of having to try to
put together in consultation with others, including the UN Secretary
General. We're working actively on that.
But the centrality of the US role was quite clear there. I think it
remains quite clear afterwards because that is what the parties want.
And one of the things the parties did make clear at Sharm el Sheikh,
given whatever the emotion of the moment, whatever the hostility and
the degree of conflict that had broken out, that they did want to get
back to the peace process and they did want to get back to a peace
process involving the United States as the honest broker and the
facilitator. And I don't see anything that has really changed in that
since then. Clearly there are a lot of international parties that can
help, that have a role, but they wanted us in the past to be at a
central focus of the peace process, and they appear to want us to be
there in the future.
Q: Can I follow up by asking about the 100,000 Americans, including
60,000 Jewish-Americans, and 30,000 Palestinian-Americans, who are
resident in Israel and the Occupied Territories. The Department issued
a warning about travel there. Are they issuing any warning to some of
these Americans to perhaps leave?
MR. BOUCHER: What we have issued is the cautions that we have issued
so far. We stand by those. Those apply to all Americans. We don't,
frankly, differentiate between different ones. Americans are Americans
are Americans. And I don't - if we have different advice, we'll give
it to everybody.
Q: Thank you.
(The briefing was concluded at 1:55 P.M.)
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