USA: BILL CLINTON MIDDLE EAST PRESS CONFERENCE
(11 Oct 2000) English/Nat XFA U-S President Bill Clinton appears to be ruling out a quick Mideast summit, saying his most important priority is to stop the violence between Israelis and Palestinians and get the peace process back on track. "My goal is to stop people dying and then get them back together," Clinton said in a question-and-answer session with reporters in the White House Rose Garden. Clinton says he or Secretary of State Madeleine Albright might go to the region eventually if that would help. SOUNDBITE: (English) "I do not believe any of us should be saying or doing anything now except focusing on putting an end to the violence." SUPER CAPTION: Bill Clinton, President of the U-S SOUNDBITE: (English) "As always, I'm prepared to do whatever I can to help. But I think the most important thing is that we all keep working to calm things down. Keep them calm. And then find a way to get the peace process going again. I think secretary Albright might go, or I might go, maybe in time we'll both go." SUPER CAPTION: Bill Clinton, President of the U-S SOUNDBITE: (English) "First thing we've got to do is get this situation calmed down and figure out where to go from here. But I do believe where to go from here must include a resumption of the peace talks." SUPER CAPTION: Bill Clinton, President of the U-S SOUNDBITE: (English) "There's a lot of people dying out there, we need to stop people dying. And there's been enough people saying enough things that have contributed to that. And my goal is to stop people dying and get them back together." SUPER CAPTION: Bill Clinton, President of the U-S SOUNDBITE: (English) What I have noticed in these circumstances is if they do good things, there's enough credit to go around, and if the wheel runs off and people start to die, then there's enough blame going around. This is not the time to be assessing that, this is the time to make a primary first commitment to end violence, 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." SUPER CAPTION: Bill Clinton, President of the U-S SOUNDBITE: (English) We can't bring any of those kids back to life, we can't bring any of those young people back to life, we can't bring.. Lord knows how long it'll take to re-establish 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." SUPER CAPTION: Bill Clinton, President of the U-S Find out more about AP Archive: http://www.aparchive.com/HowWeWork Twitter: / ap_archive Facebook: / aparchives Instagram: / apnews You can license this story through AP Archive: http://www.aparchive.com/metadata/you...
