Secretary Clinton's Remarks With Estonian President Toomas-Hendrik Ilves After Their Meeting

Remarks With Estonian President Toomas-Hendrik Ilves After Their Meeting

Hillary Rodham Clinton
Secretary of State

Kadriorg Palace

Tallinn, Estonia

April 23, 2010

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PRESIDENT ILVES: Okay, since there's so little time, I'll be very brief. I'm very pleased to welcome Madam Secretary, Mrs. Clinton, back to Kadriorg, where I had the honor and the privilege to bring her here to see my predecessor. So this is not the first time Mrs. Clinton is here, but the first time Madam Secretary is here. We had a very good meeting, as we have had always over the past 15 years, and we discussed all of the obvious things: NATO, Estonia and Afghanistan, the future of NATO, the strategic concept, relations with our neighbors, transatlantic relations and how we can work more in that direction, Iran, I think I've mentioned most of those things, but we're very glad to have you here and I'm glad that our relations are very close.

SECRETARY CLINTON: Well I'm delighted to be back and especially to have this time to discuss such important issues with the President. I've always appreciated the opportunity to exchange views and ideas and to hear his perspective on important matters. In addition to the issues, which already seems like a long list, that he mentioned we discussed, we also exchanged ideas on cyber security, an area that Estonia has taken a real leadership role in, on energy security, something that from our perspective in the United States we think is very important for Europe. But generally it was an extremely useful exchange between friends. As the president said, we have no complaints, we have no concerns about our relationship. We want it to become even better and better in the future. And I'm delighted to have this chance during the NATO Ministerial to pay a call on you, Mr. President. And I'm glad you're here, having made it home. Thank you again.

Thank you all.