Remarks With UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon After Their Meeting

Remarks
John Kerry
Secretary of State
Le Bourget
Paris, France
December 8, 2015

SECRETARY KERRY: Thank you very much, all. Let me just say, first of all, the secretary-general and I talked about where we are in the negotiations and the steps that we need to take in the next three days to be successful. He has been working diligently with a lot of the delegations, and we appreciate his leadership enormously, and he made some suggestions for some things that we are already focused on and trying to resolve.

Let me say also we talked about Syria and the need for the UN negotiations to be able to begin and hopefully for a ceasefire to be able to take effect when and if we can achieve that. We specifically talked about the process taking place now, and depending on the outcome of both the Saudi-led conference of the opposition that's taking place in the next days as well as a few other issues, it's our plan to try to attend and have a meeting in New York on the 18th of December. But again, it depends on the flow of events over the next week. But that's our current plan and we hope very much to be able to do that.

QUESTION: Mr. Secretary, any reaction to the --

STAFF: Sorry, we're not taking --

SECRETARY-GENERAL BAN: Thank you, Secretary Kerry. It's a great privilege to see you again in Paris. Thank you for your leadership. I have been highly commending leadership role for Secretary Kerry in addressing Syrian issues, in particular this Vienna 1 and Vienna 2 process in which we have been able to begin the preparations for eventual political process. And I warmly welcome your initiative again to hold a third meeting in New York on 18th of December. I, myself, and my Special Envoy Staffan de Mistura will, of course, participate and discuss with the other leaders.

It's absolutely necessary that, as was agreed in Vienna 2, there should be a nationwide ceasefire as soon as possible. I expect that all the parties will make their own contribution. The Syrian Government is going to have other groups – other groups of Syrians to gather in Syria. I hope they will have a good meeting and show their unity of purpose. And in New York, I'm hopeful we'll have a firm and solid basis so that the ceasefire will be launched as well as the political process can be developed.

Now, for this climate summit meeting, I again thank and commend the leadership of President Obama, who was here on November 30th and expressed his strong commitment and leadership and willingness to cooperate and coordinate with all member-state parties to the convention, then – the political momentum has been growing day by day. We have three and a half days to go now. I sincerely hope that the parties will accelerate the speed of their negotiation so that by Friday evening we'll have a universal and robust climate change agreement. We do not have any time to lose. This is what so many people around the world are expecting the world leaders to do. I am committed to do – to work with the United States, and we had very good discussions on this and I'm grateful for United States leadership over this matter. (Inaudible.)

SECRETARY KERRY: Thank you.

SECRETARY-GENERAL BAN: Thank you.