AKIPRESS.COM - U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry (JK) received the Mongolian Foreign Minister, Lundeg Purevsuren (LP) in Washington, D.C. Here are some remarks made during their meeting.

JK: I want to welcome my guest here. I’m delighted to welcome Foreign Minister Purevsuren, and just to affirm that the United States is really, first of all, happy to congratulate our friends in Mongolia on 25 years of democracy. And it’s really highlighted by the fact that they have taken leadership positions on democracy, democracy support. They’re very involved in supporting Burma, supporting Kyrgyzstan. They’ve got a very bold program to do that. They’re supportive of the United States in keeping troops in Afghanistan alongside us, being supportive of UN peacekeeping missions. And we just had a visit from the prime minister recently working on economic cooperation and other issues. So we’ll talk about that today and other issues, but I’m very happy to welcome you here. We want to be a good "third neighbor"... with Mongolia and we congratulate you on the path you’re on. It’s very exciting.

LP: Thank you, Mr. Secretary, really glad to see you here, and thank you for your time. And first of all, I would like to congratulate you on the historic deal with Iran, for your leadership, dedication, and then great diplomacy. I think the world need the peace and also in the region, where the Mongolian is also – we had some nuclear issues (inaudible). So the U.S. going to also show in the future also the – its leadership. Mongolia, we had declared our own territory as a nuclear-free zone, and therefore we would like to also contribute to the world peace... especially in the Northeast Asia region. And of course, Mongolia is celebrating with 25 years anniversary of the democratic revolution and then the first democratic, free election. And we would like to also thank you on behalf of the Mongolian Government for the U.S. support from the start of the democratic process in Mongolia, and then the U.S. is the leading – the "third neighbor" country, and we would like also extend our economic cooperation and then also globally to work also together with the U.S. for the world peace.