(Communicated by the Prime Minister's Media Adviser)
Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and Colombian President Juan Manuel Santos Calderon made the following statements at the start of their meeting (Tuesday, 11 June 2013):
Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu: "President Santos, Juan Manuel, welcome to Jerusalem. This is not your first visit here; it's your first visit as President, and I am delighted to welcome you here. You have been a great leader, and Colombia and Israel have had a tremendous relationship and it's getting warmer and I look forward to strengthening it even further.
You have refused to join the automatic anti-Israel majority in the United Nations. You are, like us, a democracy that fights terrorism. We want to assist you, in every way that we can, given our experience. We've had to fight terrorism through many years and through incessant challenges, including from this year we've had five attempted suicide bombings which we foiled and over 30 attempted kidnappings which we foiled and many many other terrorist attacks; our security services and our military have been successful in foiling these, and we'll gladly put our experience and our expertise at your disposal in our common battle against terrorism.
Equally, we'd like to sign a free trade agreement and other agreements between us, and most important of all, it's an opportunity to renew and strengthen a personal friendship."
President Juan Manuel Santos Calderon: "Thank you, Prime Minister, and thank you for your kind words. I come in the name of 47 million Colombians to express our friendship and our support to the people of Israel, to you.
We have always been proud of being your friends, your allies. We have many principles and values that we share, as you very well mentioned. Freedom, democracy – those are values that are very entrenched in both countries and that we should always defend together. There are many, many areas where we can cooperate. You mentioned a free-trade agreement, which fortunately, we ended our negotiations, we closed a deal and hopefully our two parliaments, our two congresses will approve it, and we'll start having free trade between our two countries.
There are many areas where we would like to learn from you. You are the champions of innovation, your capacity for research and development; there we can learn many things from you and we think we have areas we can work together, and of course our battle against terrorism. This is something that we also can share experiences. We have had a long struggle, more than fifty years also, and we have also learned how to defend ourselves and how to fight terrorism. There we must also stand together. As you know, we are right now in a peace process, we have been advancing, and if there is good will from the counterpart, I hope that we can strike a deal.
I hope that something similar happens here. As you know, we have always been for the idea of two states and for the idea of negotiating a deal for peace between the Palestinians and Israel and you can also count on our support to reach, hopefully, that ideal situation sometime soon, but I'm sure that in our conversations we can discuss and go deeper into areas that we can collaborate, both countries, so thank you very much for your welcome."