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Press Availability in Amman, Jordan<\/strong><\/p><\/div>\n<\/p>\n
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Press Availability <\/p><\/div>\n
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John Kerry
\nSecretary of State<\/strong><\/p><\/div>\n\n
Amman, Jordan<\/p><\/div>\n
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July 19, 2013<\/p><\/div>\n
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SECRETARY KERRY:<\/strong> Good evening, everybody, thank you very much for your patience. I apologize for the delay. I’m just going to make a statement, and I’m not going to take any questions at this point in time.<\/p><\/div>\n\n
On behalf of President Obama, I am pleased to announce that we have reached an agreement that establishes a basis for resuming direct final status negotiations between the Palestinians and the Israelis. This is a significant and welcome step forward.<\/p><\/div>\n
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The agreement is still in the process of being formalized, so we are absolutely not going to talk about any of the elements now. Any speculation or reports you may read in the media or elsewhere or here in the press are conjecture. They are not based on fact because the people who know the facts are not talking about them. The parties have agreed that I will be the only one making further comments about this.<\/p><\/div>\n
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If everything goes as expected, Saeb Erekat and Tzipi Livni, Minister Livni, and Isaac Molho will be joining me in Washington to begin initial talks within the next week or so, and a further announcement will be made by all of us at that time.<\/p><\/div>\n
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I want to thank particularly His Majesty King Abdullah and the Hashemite Kingdom of Jordan, and the Foreign Minister Nasser Judeh, who has been really enormously helpful throughout this process. I want to thank all of them for their extraordinary hospitality to our team that has been camped here for several days, and they have helped with all of the logistics and been superb hosts and collaborators in this effort.<\/p><\/div>\n
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I also want to thank the Arab League and the committee, the joint committee – the committee with respect to the peace initiative follow-on — who traveled here during the week and who made an important difference with their statement of support.<\/p><\/div>\n
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And then there are many, many others who have contributed, many other leaders around the world, all of whom have visited here and pushed and advocated and encouraged the notion that these talks could take place. There are too many to list, but they know who they are and we are very, very grateful. It will take their ongoing effort in order to be able to have any chance of making these talks the kind of success they ought to be.<\/p><\/div>\n