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Press Stakeout with
Israel Foreign Minister Shlomo Ben-Ami and
Turkish Foreign Minister Ismail Cem
following their meeting
Jerusalem, 22 November 2000
Photo: Flash-90 
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Turkish Foreign Minister Ismail Cem: My colleague, my friend
Ben-Ami, invited me to exchange some views on the present situation,
and we have had a very friendly talk, friendly discussions, and of
course, as everyone in the region, in the world, in fact, we try to
see if there is any modest contribution that we can have to
facilitate, to overcome this very difficult situation.
Israeli Foreign Minister Shlomo Ben-Ami: We indeed had a very
friendly review of the state of the question right now between Israel
and the Palestinians. We shared views, ideas, about the best possible
ways to improve the situation on the ground and create the conditions
for better days between Israel and the Palestinians. We value very
very much both the visit and the potential contribution of Minister
Ismail Cem, and indeed of the government of Turkey, and therefore
this visit has a special meaning, I expect not only for us but also
for our neighbors the Palestinians, and we look forward to further
talks with our friends. He will be seeing the President of the State
of Israel later on, he will be seeing the Prime Minister, and this
exchange of views that started between us will proceed. Thank you
very much.
To a question on the fact-finding commission, Minister Ben-Ami
replied:
No, we never asked for a delay. The only thing that we asked for is
implementation of the Sharm el-Sheikh agreement, and the fact-finding
commission is, as you may know, part and parcel of the Sharm
el-Sheikh agreement, it was not created out of the blue. We support
the creation of the commission, we expect the commission to put
together its working proceedures, and we obviously expect that it
will start operation in an atmosphere that is more susceptible to
allow the members of the commission to do their work, because as you
know the situation now is not very calm. I take notice of what the
National Security Adviser what said, that the positions of Israel, or
the consent of Israel will be taken into consideration...
We are here in the middle of a very difficult crisis. We went to Camp
David with the best of intentions. We - the Americans, Israelis,
Palestinians - made proposals on some issues that were considered and
contemplated, and we made progress. This is a government that came to
the Palestinians with an alternative to violence, that is a peace
package. And to an acceptable peace package, one normally expects
that the answer would be counter-proposals, rather than violence. So
if there are any counter-proposals to those ideas - framework of
ideas, some of them America's, not Israel's at all - then they can be
contemplated once we have violence subsiding.
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