At their meeting, the two discussed the strengthening of cooperation between Israel and the United States, and held an in-depth discussion concerning Middle Eastern events.
Deputy Prime Minister and Minister of Foreign Affairs Avigdor Liberman met on Monday morning (16 July 2012) with US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton at the Foreign Ministry in Jerusalem.
At their meeting, the two discussed the strengthening of cooperation between Israel and the United States. They also held an in-depth discussion concerning Middle Eastern events.
Secretary Clinton later met with President Shimon Peres at his residence in Jerusalem and with Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu.
At their meeting, President Peres said: "I want to thank you very much for the great efforts you have invested in trying to make peace between us and our neighbors.
I wish to thank President Obama and you for handling the most dangerous issue of our time - Iran. There is a world agreement that the Iranian government is after nuclear weapons and that its policy of terrorism is endangering everybody. There is a global understating that we must do everything we can to prevent Iran from endangering others.
The coalition you are building and the measures you are taking have an impact… You are making the Iranians understand that this is just the beginning and that all options are on the table. We appreciate your dedication and determination and we hope that one day Iran will return to its heritage and culture and be a nation among nations - No one will threaten her and she will not threaten anyone else."
Secretary Clinton: "I am very grateful to be back in Jerusalem and to have this chance to speak with the President about what we are doing to meet the challenges and pursue the opportunities presented at this historic time.
I look forward to my other meetings today, where we will continue our in-depth discussions on a broad range of matters, including Egypt and Syria, peace efforts, Iran, other regional and global issues. I’ve already had a chance to discuss those with Foreign Minister Liberman as well as President Peres. I will have more to say about them and all the work that Israel and the United States are doing together at a press conference this evening after I’ve had a chance to meet with Defense Minister Barak, Prime Minister Netanyahu, and members of his cabinet, along with Prime Minister Fayyad."
PM Benjamin Netanyahu: I want to welcome you, Secretary of State Clinton - Hillary - to Jerusalem once again, and we were just discussing how turbulent and how swiftly changing the world is, in our part of the world in particular. So I look forward to hearing of your impressions from Egypt. That has been an anchor of peace and maintaining the peace treaty between us, I think, is something that is uppermost in both our minds, and I appreciate the efforts that you're investing to this end.
We're going to talk about the Palestinians. That is also an anchor of peace, and we have to invest every effort to maintain it, to keep the tranquility and see if we can move the process forward, and third: we have our common effort to make sure that Iran not achieve its ambition of developing nuclear weapons.
