SECRETARY KERRY: Good afternoon, everybody. My pleasure to welcome the president of Burkina Faso, President Campaore. And I’m very happy to welcome him here, but I must do so first by expressing our condolences to him and to the families of the 28 Burkinabe citizens who were among the 116 passengers on the Air Algeire flight that crashed just the other day on July 24th. So Mr. President, we extend to you and your people our condolences, and obviously, we hope that those families can be eased in their burden of their loss and their sorrow.

Burkina Faso has made very significant contributions that we are very grateful for to advance regional peace and security. We are very appreciative for their contributions to the UN peacekeeping and regional mediation efforts, and we also particularly appreciate what they have done with respect to the negotiations taking place recently begun in Algiers, the negotiations regarding Mali. There are serious challenges in that region. Everybody knows this. We’ve been deeply engaged in trying to help in a number of different places to build stability. And every country that contributes to that is making an important contribution to the future stability and development of Africa itself.

So Mr. President, (in French).

PRESIDENT CAMPAORE: (Via interpreter) Mr. Secretary of State, of course, I would like to thank you, first of all, for this expression of compassion towards the victims of the air crash, and please convey our gratitude to President Obama for this invitation, this invitation sent to Africa to share with the United States, to talk about the issues of today, the development, the stability of the continent and our region. But also, we need to work together to see what we can do to contribute together to international peace.

We are delighted to be here to be able to take part in this major discussion which is organized around the great themes pertaining to the future, the consolidation between the African continent and the United States. Thank you very much.