FROM: U.S. STATE DEPARTMENT
Remarks With UK Foreign Secretary Philip Hammond Before Their Meeting
Remarks
John Kerry
Secretary of State
Waldorf Astoria
New York City
September 22, 2014
SECRETARY KERRY: Thank you. Good morning. I’m very happy to meet the foreign secretary of the United Kingdom. And we’re going to focus today, obviously, on ISIL, where we have continuing efforts to organize the coalition and plan the road ahead. But we’ll also talk about Ukraine and the challenges there with respect to the winter coming and the gas needs and other needs. And finally, of course, we’ll be very focused on Ebola and on the global reaction there.
So those are the three principal concerns. And I congratulate our friend from Great Britain that the United Kingdom is still united. We are happy with the outcome of the Scottish referendum. Congratulations.
FOREIGN SECRETARY HAMMOND: We’re very happy with it, too.
SECRETARY KERRY: I know you are happy. (Laughter.)
FOREIGN SECRETARY HAMMOND: Thank you. Well, it’s a great pleasure to be here. We’ve had a lot of opportunities to meet over the last few weeks and a lot of problems to discuss during those meetings. And as Secretary Kerry says, ISIL is top of the agenda. But we shouldn’t forget the continuing challenges in Ukraine and the new and rapidly developing challenge of combating the Ebola virus. We’re going to discuss together and with – over the next few days with many of our colleagues how best to take those agendas forward, working together, cooperating closely to make sure that we tackle all of them and show that we have, frankly, the bandwidth to deal with all of these problems at the same time.
SECRETARY KERRY: Thank you very much. Thank you.
