July 27, 2009

Cairo, Egypt

Good morning, ladies and gentlemen. Thank you very much for joining us today. It’s a great pleasure to be back in Egypt. I have just completed meetings with President Mubarak, Foreign Minister Aboul Gheit, and General Soliman. As usual, they were helpful, informative and constructive.

On behalf of President Obama, the government, and the people of the United States, I thank them for the leadership that Egypt has demonstrated in supporting and assisting our efforts to bring about a comprehensive peace in the Middle East. By comprehensive, I mean peace between Israel and Palestinians, between Israel and Syria, between Israel and Lebanon, and the full normalization of relations between Israel and all the countries in the region.

We believe that a full comprehensive peace represents the best way to help all the people of the region achieve the security, the peace and the prospect for prosperity for individual citizens that all deserve. To achieve this, we want to initiate prompt negotiations between the parties. To help set a meaningful context in which prompt and successful negotiations can be not only begun, but concluded, we have asked all of the states and parties in the region to take meaningful steps to create a positive context.

We’ve been in extensive discussions with the government of Israel regarding a range of actions that we think will help create that context. They’ve been widely reported on and they will continue tomorrow when I meet with Prime Minister Netanyahu.

At the same time, we’ve asked Palestinians to take meaningful steps to continue to expand and improve their efforts to achieve security, to take meaningful action against incitement, to refrain from any words or actions that might make meaningful and productive negotiation impossible. And we are also meeting with the leaders of many of the Arab nations in the region, to encourage them to take genuine steps toward normalization. We are not asking anyone to achieve full normalization at this time. We recognize that that will come further down the road in this process.

But we do think it important that everyone has a responsibility to make clear their participation in, and their support for, a process that will produce the comprehensive peace we seek. And that means that meaningful steps now toward normalization by individual states in the region represent an important part of the effort that we’ve undertaken.

I conclude by again thanking the leaders of the government of Egypt who I mentioned earlier, and the people of Egypt, and all of those in the region who have been so courteous and hospitable during my many visits here.

President Obama has a vision, which he set forth here in Cairo. It includes peace, prosperity, and opportunity for people throughout the region. When he assigned me this responsibility, less then 48 hours after he became President, he said that this would be one of his highest priorities, and it is. He made clear that our policy is based upon mutual respect, mutual interest and a desire to let people everywhere, have the same opportunities that we feel we have and that all are entitled to.

So I thank you all very much for your presence and for your attention. I’ll be leaving shortly for Israel to further my talks there, and then going on to Bahrain, before I return to the United States to report to the Secretary of State and the President. I hope to return often, and soon, and again I thank all of you for your presence and the people of Egypt for their hospitality and in particularly, on behalf of President Obama, for the tremendous courtesy and warmth with which he was received when he came here to make his historic speech just a few weeks ago. Thank you very much.