September 28, 2007
"I don't think we are excluding Syria. I think Syria's behavior is excluding Syria."
--Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice, January 18, 2007 
"[T]he Syrians are members of the Arab Follow-on Committee ... that the Arab League put together to have follow-on discussions about their peace initiative. And this initiative will be one of the pillars for the discussions in the meeting …so we faced a choice: Did you try and exclude a member of this committee, causing untold difficulty for others ... or did you just say the entire committee is invited and, by the way, if you come to this meeting you are in a sense accepting a certain responsibility that the Israeli-Palestinian issue is going to be resolved peacefully and a two-state solution and so forth? We decided on the latter, not one of the easier decisions we've ever had to make."
--Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice, September 25, 2007
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“We knew at the outset that the task would be difficult. We acknowledged that publicly and privately. We knew this would be a road with many bumps— and there have been many bumps—and that continues to this day. But we are not deterred. We are, to the contrary, determined more than ever to proceed to realize the common objective, which we all share, of a Middle East that is at peace with security and prosperity for the people of Israel, for Palestinians, and for all the people in the region. We will continue our efforts in that regard, undeterred and undaunted by the difficulties, the complexities or the bumps in the road.”
—George Mitchell, special envoy for Middle East peace, remarks with Prime Minister Netanyahu, September 29, 2010
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