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Kenyan President Uhuru Kenyatta on Tuesday 29 Sivan, made the following remarks at a joint press conference with Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu. Following are his remarks.

Good afternoon, everybody.

Let me begin by welcoming our dear friend Prime Minister Netanyahu and his team to Kenya and indeed to the African continent. This is a very historic trip for him but also for us. It’s the first time in over two decades that an Israeli Premier has set foot on African soil and it is remarkable on that account alone.

We are honored that one of the countries that he has chosen to visit is Kenya, which attests to the strong and enduring relations between our two nations. As I’m sure most of you are aware, this trip holds even greater significance for the Prime Minister because on this day 40 years ago, just across in Uganda, we had a hundred Israeli commandos who risked their lives to liberate hostages from the death grip of terrorists.

As a country, we stood with Israel both in practice and in principle, as they carried out the operation in Entebbe in 1976. And indeed, as a country we also paid the price for many of our people who were subsequently killed in Uganda by Idi Amin as a result of the support that we gave.

With the large-scale success of Operation Entebbe, goodwill eventually prevailed over evil, right over wrong, and today indeed as we remember that heroic undertaking and the valiant efforts of those including the Prime Minister’s own brother, it should be a source of incredible encouragement and hope to a world that is increasingly standing together to counter the callousness and cruelty of terrorism, something Kenya and Israel have always done together.

So indeed on that account, I thank the Prime Minister for honoring our country with a historic visit at a very significant time, and indeed, it is fitting that the historic security cooperation between our two countries, which is a priority concern for both of us, and as they have done for years, the Prime Minister and the Israeli people continue to extend invaluable support to Kenya, helping us build capacity and to bolster internal as well as regional security.

We are in ongoing talks about how to strengthen and expand that cooperation so that we can gain from Israel’s expertise in cyber security, amongst other things that we also discussed.

Prime Minister Netanyahu and I also discussed other areas of mutual interest – agriculture and water and its related elements, health, and these projects and these are areas that we wish to continue to benefit from the indispensable technical support that Israel continues to give, and indeed, Israel earlier this year agreed to increase the number of students that they will train, especially in the agricultural and irrigation initiative, from 30 to 45. We’ll be flying off a number of those students today.

And we will continue engaging to ensure that cooperation in these developmental areas continues in a sustainable manner.

We also had the opportunity to discuss the issues of Israel and the region as well, and we as a country continue to encourage peace talks to be held between both the Israelis and the Palestinians and I believe in the spirit of friendship. We ourselves, with our own limited experience of a crisis in 2007-2008 demonstrated the importance of dialogue amongst leaders, especially when the lives of their people are at stake.

And I believe that that same dialogue can help us get a way forward in resolving that particular issue. Kenya, without doubt, is committed to supporting a peace process in whatever way she can and we continue to see Israel as a critical partner, a friend, an ally, which is all the more reason we desire peace in that region and in that part of the world.

Finally, we have just also witnessed, as we concluded our official engagement, we’re witnessing the signing of a couple of agreements that will see us cooperating more closely in areas of health and immigration. The agreements will allow us to build the capacity of our health systems and professionals in the area of emergency preparedness and resource, as well as specialized medical services.

Our immigration agreement will see the abolition of visas for holders of diplomatic passports in our two countries, and these agreements build on 50 years of cooperation, and I am confident that with their implementation we will find more ways of collaborating, and the relationship between Israel and Kenya can only grow stronger.

We also discussed ways and we agreed that there is need also to see how we can get to have Israel re-establish her relations with Africa and we think this is important. We think that the world has changed. The nature of the global problems that we now share are different from what they were some 30 years ago.

And we need to partner with each other, we need to be able to deal with the security threats that we have together and we believe that there is need for us as a continent to once again begin re-engaging Israel on a more positive basis, with an understanding that our partnership can help make this world that much more secure.

And this is something that Kenya will continue to push, to see how Israel can regain her observer position at the African Union and I believe that this is not just good for Kenya. It is good for Africa, it is good for global peace, it is good for partnership.

And we can together, as I have just said, resolve issues through dialogue. You cannot resolve issues unless you have the capacity to talk to one another. We must be in a position where we can engage because it is through engagement that we find solutions, and this is something that Kenya is very keen to see.

So as I conclude, Prime Minister, mine is once again to say that we are truly happy to have you here. We look forward to our continued partnership and we look forward to even further engagement as we move forward for the mutual interests of our two nations and for the prosperity of our two peoples. Welcome, Prime Minister. ”

(YWN – Israel Desk, Jerusalem)