*EPF301 10/11/00
White House Report, Wednesday, October 11, 2000
(Middle East) (660)

CLINTON FOCUSES ON CALMING MIDDLE EAST SITUATION

Clinton says he is "focusing on putting an end to the violence" in the Middle East, "keeping people alive, calming things down," and getting the parties back to the negotiating table.

"Everything that the United States does should be designed toward, number one, trying to preserve the calm, and number two, trying to restore the peace process," Clinton told reporters in the Rose Garden October 11 as he was preparing to leave the White House on a domestic trip.

"A plan to get back to the negotiating table is an important part of ending the violence in a substantial way," he said. "And so for me, that's what we're doing. That's what I've been working on for several days now, almost a week."

Asked if he plans to travel to the Middle East or elsewhere to meet with Israeli and Palestinian leaders, Clinton said that he is prepared to do whatever he can to help.

"I think Secretary Albright or I might go; maybe in time we'll both go," he said.

"This is a time to make a primary first commitment to end violence, to keep calm, to start the peace process again, and then they can establish some mechanism to evaluate what happened and why, and how to keep it from ever happening again," Clinton said.

"Both of them have agreed to that. They haven't exactly agreed on the modalities, but they both agreed to that. So we can't lose sight of the fact that the most important thing right now is to stop people from getting shot and wounded and killed and to get the peace process back on track and to give a sense of safety and security back to all the people there."

Clinton noted that he can do a lot of work on the Middle East by phone. "I've been spending a lot of days and nights on the phone, and I hope that the United States is having a positive impact," he said.

He said he had had "a long talk" the morning of October 11 with United Nations Secretary General Kofi Annan. "We've been working together in an attempt to make sure we've got a substantial calm there," Clinton said.

He added that "We have to reach an agreement on this fact-finding effort to determine what happened and how to keep it from happening again, and I think we can do that. So we've just got to keep working on it."

Clinton said "we don't need just another meeting, we need to know what we're going to do and how we're going to do it."

He said no one should "over-read the fact that there won't be a big meeting imminently in Egypt. I don't think you should over-read that as a reflection that either the Israelis or the Palestinians do not want to continue the peace process.

"I think everybody is shocked at how quickly and how deeply it got out of hand. And I think the most important thing now is to restore calm.

"It's very important to us to keep all of our options open, it's important that you know that I'm willing to do whatever I can to help, but these things have to take place in a certain way in order for them to make sense, and I'm doing the very best I can," Clinton said.

"But we can't bring any of those kids back to life, we can't bring any of those young people back to life...Lord knows how long it will take to reestablish some of the relationships that have been severed there, and none of us need to do anything to make this worse. We need to calm this down."

(Distributed by the Office of International Information Programs, U.S. Department of State. Web site: http://usinfo.state.gov)
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