SPEECHES

Ambassador Edelman: Ambassador Tuygan, thank you for your remarks. Thank you for allowing me to join you today to formalize another achievement by our two countries to stem the proliferation of weapons of mass destruction and other weapons-related items in the global fight against terrorism and terrorist activities. I am particularly pleased, since I have said several times that I would be working right up until the day that I left Turkey, that you gave me an opportunity to come to your new facility here at the Foreign Ministry to have this event.

Last week in the Oval Office, President Bush and Prime Minister Erdogan talked about the threat of the spread of weapons of mass destruction, and agreed that the United States and Turkey had a common interest in seeing that traffic stemmed. The signing of this agreement is a concrete manifestation of that relationship between our two countries -- the strategic relationship -- and a significant step in our own two governments’ fight to stop the spread of dangerous weapons and sensitive materials and technology. Developments in the world at large, and in Turkey’s neighborhood, continue to demonstrate the urgency of preventing the spread of dangerous weapons and these technologies. The US Program of Export and Border Control Cooperation is designed to help stem the proliferation of weapons of mass destruction, their delivery systems, and the conventional weapons that go with them by assisting recipient countries to detect, to deter, to prevent, and to interdict illicit weapons trafficking. The EXBS Program is comprised of a wide range of nonproliferation assistance, from licensing and legal regulatory technical workshops to the provision of detection equipment and training for border control and enforcement agencies. We are already closely cooperating in numerous arms control and non-proliferation for a -- in the IAEA, in the Wassenauer Agreement, in the Proliferation Security Initiative and others. These groups and initiatives are part of an overall counter-proliferation effort intended to prevent the transfer of WMD-related items to countries and to entities of concern. This agreement today represents yet another example of the commitment of both the United States and the Republic of Turkey to assist each other in the fight against illegal proliferation of weapons technology and materials in the hope that we can make this both a safer neighborhood and a safer and better world.

So we look forward to working with our Turkish colleagues in the future on this and other endeavors in this important undertaking. Ambassador Tuygan, thank you very much for the work that your colleagues and you have done in this endeavor. I am very grateful.