Kerry: Remarks With United Arab Emirates Foreign Minister

Remarks With United Arab Emirates Foreign Minister Abdullah bin Zayed Before Their Meeting

Remarks

John Kerry
Secretary of State

London, United Kingdom

August 2, 2013

SECRETARY KERRY: Welcome, everybody. I’ll say a couple – do you want to say anything? Let me just say it’s a great pleasure for me to meet with Sheikh Abdullah, the Foreign Minister of the Arab Emirates. And I’m really grateful for his enormous efforts over the last weeks to try to help resolve the crisis in Egypt.

Yesterday, I made a few comments about sort of the intent of the July 30th movement, and what I want to make clear – I think His Highness Sheikh Abdullah would join me in this – is that all of the parties involved have a responsibility to be inclusive, to work towards a peaceful resolution. The last thing that we want is more violence. The temporary government has a responsibility with respect to demonstrators to give them the space to be able to demonstrate in peace. But at the same time, the demonstrators have a responsibility not to stop everything from proceeding in Egypt.

Egypt needs to get back to a new normal. It needs to begin to restore stability to be able to attract business and good people to work. And that’s a high priority. And we will work very, very hard, together and with others, in order to bring parties together to find a peaceful resolution that grows the democracy and respects the rights of everybody. That’s what we’re engaged in and that’s part of what we will talk about – not all but part of what we’ll talk about today.

Your Highness.

FOREIGN MINISTER ABDULLAH: Well, first of all, Secretary, I have to thank you for meeting with me today. And I think it’s extremely important to see the U.S. leadership not only in helping calm the situation in Egypt, but also your efforts in putting new life in the peace process. We saw that huge effort that United States and yourself is doing at the moment. And of course, you’ll find all support from our end, from the Arab side.

But just to go back to Egypt for a second, Egypt is an extremely important country, not only for the Arab countries but for the region as well. And here we think we have to look forward. We have to make sure that this interim government can be successful, can be successful in leading Egypt to a better future. And the UAE, with the United States and others, is doing its very best to give this government the support it needs, but also to encourage all the other parties to reach to a position where it can negotiate with this government – here I’m talking about the previous government.

We’d like to see the situation go normal in Egypt, because normalcy is the only way for a successful Egypt. We don’t want to see anybody stopping Egypt from the way it should go, but that’s only going to happen by all parties being in an inclusive dialogue. And I think here the UAE and the United States do agree.

SECRETARY KERRY: Thank you all very much. Appreciate it.

ENDS

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