White House Press Corps.org: Press Briefing by Elliott Abrams on the President's Bilateral Meeting with President Abbas 09/20/06

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Press Briefing by Elliott Abrams on the President's Bilateral Meeting with President Abbas 09/20/06
— Wednesday, September 20, 2006 —

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Q -- basically said that any government that's formed will not necessarily recognize Israel, that it will say the resistance is legal. So am I right to assume that this is -- if there was any shot of the Quartet getting behind this unity plan, it's over now?

MR. ABRAMS: We're not presented with a national unity government or with an agreement to approve or not approve. As you know, President Abbas said that he had suspended those discussions for his trip to the General Assembly. So it isn't -- it isn't going to -- the Quartet is not going to approve or criticize anything.

I think it's fair to say that what the Quartet will do will be to commend and welcome his efforts to produce a government that would meet the criteria, and say, we all hope that those efforts succeed. But it is clear -- at least it is clear for the United States -- that if that does not happen, that is if the Palestinian government, Palestinian cabinet will not accept those criteria, then our relationship to it will not change -- or you might say our lack of a relationship with it will not change.

Q But earlier, when we first started hearing about these talks, there seemed to be an agreement that this new form -- newly formed government would recognize all previous agreements, which would have implicitly implied that there is a recognition of Israel. But that's still not good enough because we -- the U.S. would want a -- and the Quartet would want an outright statement that Israel exists?

MR. ABRAMS: I don't want to get into semantics over what the agreement among Palestinians says because there is no agreement as of yet. We have not been presented with an agreement by the Palestinians saying, here's the basis for a new national unity government. Our own view on that is clear. Obviously, as we try to understand any statements in an agreement, we would be hearing from President Abbas, but we would also be hearing from Hamas. And if a Hamas spokesman say, we know exactly what such a potential agreement means and it does not mean that we accept the right of Israel to exist, it does not mean that we abandon violence, well, it's hard to say then that they had, in fact, done that. But again, this is hypothetical because they've not concluded or abandoned negotiations yet, as far as we understand it.

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Posted by WhiteHousePressCorps.org @ 5:35:00 PM

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