SECRETARY OF STATE KERRY'S REMARKS IN GENEVA, SWITZERLAND ON IRAN'S NUCLEAR PROGRAM

FROM:   U.S. STATE DEPARTMENT 
Press Availability
Remarks
John Kerry
Secretary of State
Geneva, Switzerland
November 10, 2013

SECRETARY KERRY: Thank you for hanging in here with all of us in what has obviously been a long and interesting process, but a very productive one if I can say so. I want to thank my colleagues from the United Kingdom, Turkey, France, Russia and China. And I particularly want to thank Lady Catherine Ashton for her leadership and for the European Union’s convening all of us here in order to perform this very important business of trying to deal with the question of a country’s potential move towards nuclear weapons. And obviously, the commitment by the President, by all of the member states of the P5+1 and others in the world makes certain that that doesn’t happen, that Iran does not get a nuclear weapon.

I want to say that the negotiations were conducted with mutual respect. They were very serious. But they were conducted in a very civil and appropriate way for a subject matter as serious as this one. And we came to Geneva determined. As President Obama has said, his goal is, since day one as President, to make certain that Iran does not acquire a nuclear weapon. That remains our goal because we remain committed to preventing the proliferation of weapons of mass destruction and we remain committed to protecting our allies, particularly our allies in that region where security is so critical. We also are committed to protecting our interests in the world from the consequences of the spread of these weapons.

We came to Geneva to narrow the differences. And I can tell you without any exaggeration we not only narrowed differences and clarified those that remain, but we made significant progress in working through the approaches to this question of how one brings in a program that guarantees this peaceful nature. There’s no question in my mind that we are closer now, as we leave Geneva, than we were when we came, and that with good work and good faith over the course of the next weeks, we can in fact secure our goal.

And over the last two days, a significant amount of progress was made. I am impressed and grateful for the way in which the P5[1] countries joined together and worked effectively together, the teams worked effectively together. And I think that tonight there was a unity in our position and a unity in the purpose as we leave here. We are committed to have our political directors – and I think Lady Catherine Ashton probably shared this with you – meet in the next days, and we are also committed to returning as necessary somewhere over the next weeks, hopefully, with the goal of either building on what was done today or completing the task.

Let me just say that for those who are wondering about this kind of process, it takes time to build confidence between countries that have really been at odds with each other for a long time now – in the case of Iran, since 1979. And so we are working hard to try to overcome mistrust, to try to build confidence, to try to find the ways that both the P5+1 and the united – and Iran have the ability to be able to achieve this goal of ascertaining for certain, without a doubt, that a program is a peaceful nuclear program.

Diplomacy takes time, and all the parties here need time to fully consider the issues – very complicated, technical, difficult issues that we discussed here in the last days. And I particularly am anxious to return to brief the President and to share with Congress and others what we’ve learned and what we are thinking as we look forward. We also understand there are very strong feelings about the consequences of the choices we face for our allies, and we respect that. Some of them are absolutely directly, immediately involved and we have enormous respect, needless to say, for those concerns.

I want to caution everyone from jumping to conclusions or believing premature reports or prejudging outcomes or, particularly, believing either rumors or other little parcels of information that somebody portends to know or that leak out. The fact is that the negotiations are actually taking place enormously privately, and that is a sign of the seriousness of what is taking place. We have been working on this for a long time. The P5+1 has been at this for something like four years or more. I know that I’ve been watching and engaged in this effort as a Senator and now as Secretary of State for some period of time, and so I am aware of the complicated nature of this particular challenge.

But we came to Geneva with the clear purpose of trying to advance the goal of preventing Iran from securing a nuclear weapon, and I believe we leave this round of talks not only committed, recommitted to that goal, but clearly further down the road in understanding what the remaining challenges are and clarifying the ways that we can actually do certain things together to reach that goal.

I would emphasize also that the window for diplomacy does not stay open indefinitely, and we will continue working to find a peaceful solution because we believe that forceful diplomacy is a powerful enough weapon to be able to actually defuse the world’s most threatening weapons of mass destruction. And that’s why we’ll continue to do this.

So with that, I’m happy to answer a couple of questions here, see where we are.

MS. PSAKI: The first question is going to be from Kim Ghattas of BBC.

QUESTION: Good evening, Mr. Secretary.

SECRETARY KERRY: Good evening – good morning.

QUESTION: Good morning.

SECRETARY KERRY: It’s all right.

QUESTION: I can only imagine how tired you are.

SECRETARY KERRY: (Inaudible.)

QUESTION: Mr. Secretary, two questions. How much coordination takes place between the members of the P5+1 ahead of a meeting like this? Were you blindsided by the French and their objections to the agreement? And a second question is, you don’t have a deal yet; you’re hoping to get one in the coming weeks with further negotiations. But that does give detractors of a deal with Iran time to derail your work. I’m thinking of Israel. I’m thinking of Saudi Arabia, but also of Congress in the U.S. Are you worried that Congress is going to push once again for further sanctions against Iran?

SECRETARY KERRY: Well, let me answer the second part of your question first, and just tell you point blank that this is an issue of such consequence that it really needs to rise or fall on the merits, not on politics. People need to stop and think about what happens each day now that you don’t have an agreement. Each day that you don’t have an agreement, Iran will continue to enrich, and Iran will continue to put centrifuges in, and Iran will continue its program. What we were looking to do here – and will do, I believe – is freeze that program in place so that it is not in a position to continue while the real negotiation goes on to figure out what the future final agreement would look like. And that takes time.

Now, it seems to me that the members of Congress and others in the world understand that you need to give diplomacy the chance to exhaust all the remedies available to it if you are ultimately going to exercise your ultimate option, which is the potential use of force. The world wants to know that it was a last resort, not a first resort. So I believe it is essential for Congress, essential for all of our countries – and I think we all share this – the P5+1 is absolutely united in the notion that we must pursue diplomacy as a means of trying to prevent Iran from acquiring a weapon. We know the clock is ticking. That is part of what makes this urgent. But I am convinced that over these next days, the reasonableness of what we were doing and the reality of what we achieve will be taken into account by those who need to know what that is, and that will be shared as appropriate as we get back.

With respect to the negotiation itself, we work very closely with the French. We agreed with the French that there were certain issues that we needed to work through. We came here with bracketed language. That’s the nature of a negotiation. And we knew that we were going to have to negotiate going forward, and we did. And I think we were unified in feeling we needed certain language here that clarified certain things. I certainly came in here intending to do that, and that’s what the President wanted me to do.

The President has repeatedly said we will not rush to an agreement. The President has made clear that no deal is better than a bad deal. And I think it’s good we’re going to take the time we’re taking to make certain that we are dotting the i’s and crossing the t’s and doing what is necessary to have an agreement – that we are assured we can look our allies and our friends in the face and say, “This gets the job done.” That’s the purpose of it.

So we thank the – we’re grateful to the French for the work that we did together, and we worked also – every member there made contributions in one way or another. That’s the nature of the P5[2]. These are sovereign nations. No one country is going to come rolling in here, one point of view or another. We have to work it together, and that is the nature of the process.

And this is something that I think over the next weeks, as the political directors work together, they’ll build on what was achieved here in the last hours, and I feel very confident that this can be done. Not going to tell you it will be, but I can tell you it absolutely can be with good effort over these next days ahead.

MODERATOR: The next question will be from Michael Gordon of The New York Times.

QUESTION: Mr. Secretary, the other day when you were in Israel, you said that the U.S. was asking Iran to agree, as you put it, to a complete freeze over where they are today. How important is it to impose constraints on the plutonium side of the Iranian program as part of a first-step agreement, say, precluding Iran from operating or putting fuel in the heavy water reactor that is being built in Iraq? Is that an important step to take as part of the complete freeze that you were talking about? And lastly, the next meeting, as you just pointed out, sir, is at the political director level, not at the foreign minister level. Doesn’t that suggest that there are significant differences that need to be narrowed before it makes sense to bring the foreign ministers back into the picture here in Geneva?

SECRETARY KERRY: No, it really is a reflection of wanting to get language issues that came up absolutely resolved, so the ministers, when they come, have a sense that everybody is in agreement with respect to the particular language. And the schedules of the ministers – it is not possible for all the ministers. And I think everybody felt they wanted to go back to their capitals, work through a few of these issues that are technical, complicated, and see if we can find the ways to deal with that with the political directors and the appropriate people to work that language at that level. That’s what got us here. And we’ve made a lot of progress. Now we go to the next step and hopefully, when the ministers come back – two weeks or so, something like that – we’ll be in the position to move forward.

But with respect to the plutonium, absolutely. It’s a very central issue and it’s one we spent a significant amount of time on, and one we are absolutely adamant must be addressed in the context of any kind of agreement – among others, and there are a number of others.

MS. PSAKI: Thanks, everyone.

SECRETARY KERRY: Is that it?

MS. PSAKI: We have to finish, unfortunately.

SECRETARY KERRY: I apologize. Thanks.

SECRETARY OF STATE KERRY ARRIVES IN GENEVA, SWITZERLAND

FROM:  U.S. STATE DEPARTMENT 
Remarks to the Press Upon Arrival in Geneva
Remarks
John Kerry
Secretary of State
Geneva, Switzerland
November 8, 2013

Good afternoon, everybody. It’s great to be here. The P51 is doing some very important work right now, and I’m delighted to be here at the invitation of Cathy Ashton to try to work with our colleagues to see if we can narrow some differences. I want to emphasize there are still some very important issues on the table that are unresolved. It is important for those to be properly, thoroughly addressed.

I want to emphasize there is not an agreement at this point in time, but the P51 is working hard, and I look forward to the meetings that I’ll be having very shortly with Lady Cathy Ashton and with my fellow ministers in the P5, and then also I will be meeting with Minister Zarif. We hope to try to narrow those differences, but I don’t think anybody should mistake that there are some important gaps that have to be closed.

So thank you very much. Appreciate it. Thank you.

JOINT STATEMENT REGARDING SYRIAN TALKS FROM GENEVA, SWITZERLAND

FROM:  U.S. STATE DEPARTMENT 
Joint Statements After Trilat
Remarks
John Kerry
Secretary of State
Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov, and UN Special Envoy Lakhdar Brahimi
UN Offices
Geneva, Switzerland
September 13, 2013

SECRETARY KERRY: Let me just say to everybody that we will not – we will each make a very brief statement. We’ll not be taking questions at this time. And we apologize for that, but we need to get back to the conversations that we’re having on the issue of chemical weapons.

First of all, Foreign Minister Lavrov and I both want to thank Lakhdar Brahimi and the United Nations for their invitation to have a discussion today about the question of the Geneva 2 conference. As everybody knows, the principal reason that Foreign Minister Lavrov and I are here are to have discussions with respect to the initiative to gain control of and remove and destroy the chemical weapons in Syria. That is our principal mission here in Geneva. And I think we would both agree that we had constructive conversations regarding that, but those conversations are continuing and both of us want to get back to them now.

We came here this morning at the invitation of the Special Representative for the Geneva 2 and Syria negotiations in order to discuss where those negotiations are and how we can advance them. I will say on behalf of the United States that President Obama is deeply committed to a negotiated solution with respect to Syria, and we know that Russia is likewise. We are working hard to find the common ground to be able to make that happen and we discussed some of the homework that we both need to do. I’m not going to go into it in any detail today. We both agreed to do that homework and meet again in New York around the time of the UN General Assembly, around the 28th, in order to see if it is possible then to find a date for that conference, much of which will obviously depend on the capacity to have success here in the next day, hours, days, on the subject of the chemical weapons.

Both of us – Sergey Lavrov and I, our countries, our presidents – are deeply concerned about the death toll and destruction, the acts on both sides, all sides that are creating more and more refugees, more and more of the humanitarian catastrophe. And we are committed to try to work together, beginning with this initiative on the chemical weapons, in hopes that those efforts could pay off and bring peace and stability to a war-torn part of the world. And we’re very appreciative for Lakhdar Brahimi hosting us today in an effort to try to advance this initiative.

Sergey.

FOREIGN MINISTER LAVROV: Thank you very much. Ladies and gentlemen, we had a very useful meeting with Lakhdar Brahimi. As you know, as John said just now, we are here basically to discuss the issue of chemical weapons in Syria. Now that the Assad government joined the Chemical Weapons Convention, we have to engage our professionals together with the Chemical Weapons Prohibition Organization, as we agreed with the United Nations, to design a road which would make sure that this issue is resolved quickly, professionally, as soon as practical.

But we are very glad to Lakhdar Brahimi for inviting us on this occasion to discuss a longer-term goal for Syria, namely the preparation for the conference which is called Geneva 2. Russia, the Russian President from very beginning of the Syrian conflict, have been promoting a peaceful resolution. We have firmly supported the Arab League initiative, their being observers, and we supported Kofi Annan’s initiative, the UN observers, and we were one of the initiators of convening Geneva 1. Last year here, we adopted the Geneva communique, resolved major – almost all major players, including all P-5 countries for the region, Arab League, Turkey, European Union, United Nations. And it is very unfortunate that for a long period the Geneva communique was basically abandoned and we were not able to have endorsement of this very important document in the Security Council, as is as adopted.

Thanks to John, who after becoming Secretary of State in spite of his huge workload on Arab-Israeli conflict understood the importance of moving on Syria and doing something about this. And I am very grateful for him for coming to Moscow on May 7th this year when we launched the Russian-American initiative to convene a Geneva conference to implement fully the Geneva communique, which means that the Syrian parties must reach mutual consent on the transitional governing organ which would command full executive authority. And the communique also says that all groups of Syrian society must be represented.

And we discussed these aspects and other aspects of the preparatory work today with Lakhdar Brahimi and his team. We are very grateful to Lakhdar for his insight, for the suggestions which he made and which we will be entertaining as we move forward parallel with the work on chemical weapons. We agreed to meet in New York in the margins of the General Assembly and see where we are and what the Syrian parties think about it and do about it. And we hope that we will be able to be a bit more specific when we meet with you in New York.

SPECIAL ENVOY BRAHIMI: Thank you very much indeed, both of you, first of all, for coming to talk to us in the Palais de Nation in Geneva. We look forward to the work you are doing on chemical weapons in Syria. It is extremely important in itself and for itself, but it is also extremely important for us who are working with you on trying to bring together the Geneva 2 conference successfully.

Our discussions today, as you have both said now, have been useful. And we are not going to retain you much longer; you have other business to do. Thank you again very, very much indeed for being here.

SECRETARY KERRY: Thanks, Lakhdar.

FOREIGN MINISTER LAVROV: Thank you.

SECRETARY KERRY: Thank you, sir.

SPECIAL ENVOY BRAHIMI: Thank you very much.

EX-IM BANK APPROVES $350 MILLION LOAN GUARANTEE TO SUPPORT TEXTRON’S EXPORTS OF CESSNA AIRCRAFT AND BELL HELICOPTERS

FROM:  U.S. EXPORT-IMPORT BANK 

GENEVA, SWITZERLAND: The Export-Import Bank of the United States (Ex-Im Bank) has approved a guarantee of a $350 million loan facility to provide the funds to assist Textron Inc. in financing the exports by two of its companies, Cessna Aircraft Company and Bell Helicopter Textron. The guaranteed lender is PNC Bank in Pittsburgh, Pa.

The Ex-Im Bank-guaranteed loan facility will enable Textron’s Finance segment to provide financing to international customers that take delivery of new Cessna aircraft and Bell commercial helicopters. The facility will be guaranteed by Textron's captive finance company, Textron Financial Corporation (TFC). The repayment term is 12 years.

This is the second financing facility approved by the Bank to assist TFC in supporting Textron’s exports. In May 2009, Ex-Im Bank authorized a $500 million direct-loan facility that has helped to finance the export of over 100 Cessna business jets and six Bell helicopters.

The announcement of the new facility was made today by Ex-Im Bank Chairman and President Fred P. Hochberg at the 12^th annual European Business Aviation Convention and Exhibition (EBACE), being held in Geneva, Switzerland, May 14-16.

“Business aircraft and helicopters are an important part of America’s aerospace industry, which is helping to boost U.S. exports to all-time highs. Ex-Im Bank is pleased to approve a second financing facility to support Textron’s exports of Cessna aircraft and Bell helicopters. We anticipate that this facility will add to the success of the first such financing for Textron, which has helped to support hundreds of manufacturing jobs in Kansas, Georgia and Texas,” Chairman Hochberg said.
"This guaranteed loan facility for the export of Cessna and Bell aircraft is a wonderful example of Ex-Im Bank fulfilling its purpose – facilitating exports to foreign markets where financing isn't otherwise readily available and preserving American jobs. We greatly value our relationship with Ex-Im Bank, and we are proud of the work they do," said John Klopfer, president and CEO of Textron’s Aviation Finance Group.
 The Ex-Im Bank-guaranteed loan facility will enable Textron’s Finance segment to continue to finance exports of Cessna aircraft and Bell helicopters with competitive interest rates and repayment terms. TFC will be the ultimate source of repayment for the loan facility and will retain credit risk of the international buyers. The loan facility will be disbursed on a periodic basis, reimbursing Textron’s Finance segment for financings of eligible aircraft and helicopters that have been exported.

Textron is a multi-industry company with a global network of aircraft, defense, industrial and finance businesses. Cessna Aircraft Company currently employs more than 11,000 workers at its manufacturing plants in Wichita and Independence, Kan., and Columbus, Ga. Bell Helicopter Textron is headquartered in Fort Worth, Texas, and also has a manufacturing facility in Amarillo, Texas. Bell Helicopter has approximately 8,100 U.S. employees.

TFC is a commercial finance company that provides financing for products manufactured by its parent company, Textron Inc.

Hochberg also announced at EBACE in Geneva today that Ex-Im Bank has approved a new credit process to facilitate and expedite the Bank’s financing for business-aircraft and helicopter exports from other U.S. manufacturers that do not have a captive financing company. Under the new process, Ex-Im Bank will work with qualified industry experts to perform due diligence and credit analysis for these business-aircraft and helicopter transactions.

In FY 2011, Ex-Im Bank authorized more than $12.6 billion in financing to support the export of U.S.-manufactured aircraft of all types, including approximately $90 million for 10 business aircraft and helicopters exports to four countries – Brazil, Mexico, Panama and Switzerland.

About Ex-Im Bank:
Ex-Im Bank is an independent federal agency that helps create and maintain U.S. jobs by filling gaps in private export financing at no cost to American taxpayers. In the past five years, Ex-Im Bank has earned for U.S. taxpayers $1.9 billion above the cost of operations. The Bank provides a variety of financing mechanisms, including working capital guarantees, export-credit insurance and financing to help foreign buyers purchase U.S. goods and services.

Ex-Im Bank approved $32.7 billion in total authorizations in FY 2011 -- an all-time Ex-Im record. This total includes more than $6 billion directly supporting small-business export sales -- also an Ex-Im record. Ex-Im Bank's total authorizations are supporting an estimated $41 billion in U.S. export sales and approximately 290,000 American jobs in communities across the country. For more information, visit www.exim.gov.