One of my trips was to meet with the Gulf Cooperation Council with all the Saudi foreign ministers, and when we started the meeting I said 'Perhaps you've noticed that I'm not dressed the same as my predecessors", but no-one had a problem and I was never treated with anything other than respect...So I did not have problems with that, interestingly enough.
From the end of 2006 until the end of 2008 I think I met with Abu Mazen more often than any Israeli leader has ever met any Arab leader. I met him more than 35 times. They were intense, serious negotiations.
I am in regular contact with Prime Minister [Shinzo] Abe. We have met several times this year [2016].
Today President Obama is in the Middle East. He met the new king of Saudi Arabia. Obama also met Saudi Arabia's first lady, the second lady, third lady, and fourth lady.
Listen, every time we're meeting with our counterparts in Israel, the state of Iran is always something that's at the top of the list and the things we discuss. And that's because the regime in Iran continually threatens Israel, threatens the United States.
Soviet foreign ministers would come in to see the president all the time, routinely. Jimmy Carter stopped that after the invasion of Afghanistan. Ronald Reagan resumed it in 1984, I think. And so the fact of a meeting like that I think is not that big a deal.
We've had some fairly intensive discussions leading up to these meetings between NATO and Russia, preparing for them, and it's going to be a very important six months for NATO.
President Obama is in China. Also in China is evil Russian dictator Vladimir Putin. They're both in China at the same time. It's like running into your ex-girlfriend on vacation.
One other thing: at the meeting in Canada, [there was] the coup in Fiji. This comes to an important part of the Commonwealth: the role of the Queen [Elizabeth II]. I had absolutely just enormous respect for her as leader of the Commonwealth. You could talk to her about any of the fifty-one countries of the Commonwealth and you could have an intelligent conversation with her about the economics, the politics. She really immersed herself in the Commonwealth.
By the way, if you do your job on behalf of your country, you have meetings where you put your position forward strongly, and the other side does the same thing. And I've had plenty of meetings in my career that really were heated, people yelling at each other.
Now an American president like [Ronald] Reagan wouldn't have a meeting, wouldn't have a summit. He'd give 'em a warning and then - or [Gerge W.] Bush would give 'em a warning and then - whatever would happen. Because you don't allow the murder of American citizens. You just don't permit it.
One of the features of the Commonwealth Heads of Government Meetings was [that] she [ Elizabeth II] would have a meeting with each of them. You'd have an allotted time.
And the annual meetings of the League's Assembly are in effect official peace congresses binding on the participating states to an extent that most statesmen a quarter of a century ago would have regarded as utopian.
It was an honor and a thrill to have the chance to meet His Holiness, Pope Benedict, and then to have lunch with Prime Minister Berlusconi.... I think Italy and the U. S. have a very strong friendship and relationship, and I'm proud of that.
Diplomats operate through deadlock, which is the way by which two sides can test each other's determination. Even if they have egos for it few heads of government have the time to resolve stalemates, their meetings are too short and the demands of protocol too heavy.
Another foreign-policy triumph for Reagan was his 1984 visit to China, where he met for more than three hours with Mao Zedong before realizing that Mao was dead.
Meetings between Presidents, as you know, are supposed to be privileged. They're supposed to be confidential. They're supposed to allow the president and other leaders to have frank exchanges.
I have no relationship with Putin. I don't think I've ever met him. I never met him. I don't think I've ever met him.
Senator Lugar will also travel to Libya for official meetings as a part of the president's initiative to move toward more normal relations reflecting that country's renunciation of terrorism and abandonment of its weapons of mass destruction and longer range missiles.
We've had great conversations with the United Kingdom and meetings, Israel, Mexico, Japan, China and Canada, really, really productive conversations.
