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PM Netanyahu Meets with Kazakhstan President Nazarbayev
Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu Meets with Kazakhstan President Nursultan
Nazarbayev
(Communicated by the Prime Minister’s Media Adviser)
Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, today (Wednesday, 14 December 2016), was
welcomed at the Presidential palace in Astana by an honor guard and the
national anthems of both countries. This is the first visit to Kazakhstan by
an Israeli Prime Minister. Prime Minister Netanyahu held a private meeting
with Kazakh President Nursultan Nazarbayev, followed by an expanded meeting.
The two countries signed agreements on research and development, aviation,
civil service commissions and agricultural cooperation, as well as a
declaration on establishing an agricultural consortium. It was also agreed
that teams would be established to study high-tech and security development.
Prime Minister Netanyahu made the following remarks at the joint statements
with Kazakh President Nazarbayev:
“Mr. President, thank you very much for these warm words. I’m privileged to
have the opportunity to be the first Israeli Prime Minister to visit
Kazakhstan. It coincides with your 25 years of independence. We congratulate
you on your stunning achievements. Look around and you see a new nation
rising from the soil and I appreciate and applaud your view into the future.
You say, correctly, that the important thing is to take a raw material
economy and to move it up. And we believe that this is a task in which we
could join hands and do many things together. We did not have, until
recently actually, the blessings of raw material. We just found gas in the
see. I have a problem, Mr. President, of thinking about Israel as an energy
exporting country but it’s a fact. But until then, before then we had to
export other things and so we are now in the happy position of having both
natural resources and man-made resources which I think allows for a perfect
marriage between what you’re trying to do here and what we’ve been doing
there.
This is expressed first in our commitment to EXPO. We came here, it was an
easy decision. We want to be here, we want to be partners with you in all
the things that you said, specifically three areas: one, agriculture;
second, science and technology; third, security and anti-terror. We formed
working groups and we are going to have a follow-up meeting in Israel. This
will be the President’s, I think, fourth visit to Israel so I still have to
come back here but we would like to have there these groups meet in Israel
with concrete programs so that we can move forward on this very ambitious
plan. One of the things that we need to do, and you mentioned it just now,
is to have direct flights because the people have to interact, have to be
able to fly easily, comfortably between our two countries and the more they
do it – the more the economy will grow and the more people will want to do
it and vice versa. So this is one of the practical things that I think we
should work on as soon as possible because it will enhance all the others.
I want to commend you for your attitude of tolerance towards Jews. This is
something that is Jews who are here feel and Jews who came from Kazakhstan
to Israel value deeply. You’re right, they’re a human bridge, but they’re
also your best ambassadors. They speak very warmly of Kazakhstan and of the
attitude towards all religions here.
This is something that I thing is important today for the world. What you
see today are the leaders of a Muslim state and the leader of a Jewish state
shaking hands, working to cooperate to create a better future for the
citizens of our countries. But I think that this example of Muslim-Jewish
cooperation is something that reverberates throughout the world. I said to
you as we were walking in here that our relations with our Muslim Arab
neighbors are changing dramatically. Not all of is public, some of it is,
but it’s changing dramatically. And I view the relations with Kazakhstan as
being part of this great change that the world is waiting for. They want to
see not the forces of intolerance, the forces of tyranny, the forces of
terror. They want to see the forces of progress and of amicability and of
friendship and this is what this meeting represents. So I’m very grateful to
have this opportunity. I must tell you that I said that my hope is, and I
say this to all our friends, that the great partnership that we are building
here will also be reflected in international forums like the UN. That’s
beginning to happen. This ship doesn’t move over night, we understand that.
It’s a big ship but it’s going to change. It’s changing already.
And in this context, I asked President Nazarbayev to support the Israeli bid
for the Security Council seat. You know that we supported Kazakhstan’s
successful bid to be in the Security Council. Now if you want a real change
in the world, imagine the State of Israel on the Security Council of the
United Nations – that’s a change. And it’s supposed to be in 2019, and I
think it’s possible. And with your help, it will be realized.
So I thank you for your friendship and I look forward and I’m very excited
to our cooperation. And I thank you for your warm hospitality here.”
Minister Zeev Elkin told a meeting of the mixed economic commission: “This
is the historic first visit by an Israeli Prime Minister to Kazakhstan.
Today we signed important cooperation agreements in the areas of
agriculture, in novation and aviation and we decided to start negotiations
on a visa waiver. There is great potential for economic cooperation between
Israel and Kazakhstan and we decided on a tangible action plan to put it
into effect.”
Source: http://www.imra.org.il/story.php3?id=71894
