Software Vault: The Gold Collection/Software Vault - The Gold Collection (American Databankers) (1993).ISO/cdr11/wh930423.zip/4-23B.TXT

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From @lex-luthor.ai.mit.edu:[e-mail] Fri Apr 23 16:06:09 1993
Date: Fri, 23 Apr 1993 15:01-0400
From: The White House <[e-mail]>
Subject: President's Press Conference  4.23.93
To: [e-mail]



                           THE WHITE HOUSE

                    Office of the Press Secretary
______________________________________________________________
For Immediate Release                             April 23, 1993


                  PRESS CONFERENCE BY THE PRESIDENT

                            The East Room

1:00 P.M. EDT

         THE PRESIDENT:  Terry, do you have a question?

         Q      Mr. President, there's a growing feeling that the
Western response to bloodshed in Bosnia has been woefully inadequate.
Holocaust survivor Elie Wiesel asked you yesterday to do something,
anything to stop the fighting.  Is the United States considering
taking unilateral action such as air strikes against Serb artillery
sites?

         THE PRESIDENT:  Well, first let me say, as you know, for
more than a week now we have been seriously reviewing our options for
further action.  And I want to say, too, let's look at the last three
months.  Since I became President I have worked with our allies and
we have tried to move forward, first on the no-fly zone, on
enforcement of it, on the humanitarian airdrops, on the war crimes
investigation, on getting the Bosnian Muslims involved in the peace
process.  We have made some progress.  And now we have a very much
tougher sanctions resolution.  And Leon Fuerth, who is the National
Security Advisor to the Vice President, is in Europe now working on
implementing that.  That is going to make a big difference to Serbia.

         And we are reviewing other options.  I think we should
act.  We should lead -- the United States should lead.  We have led
for the last three months.  We have moved the coalition.  And to be
fair, our allies in Europe have been willing to do their part.  And
they have troops on the ground there.

         But I do not think we should act alone, unilaterally,
nor do I think we will have to.  And in the next several days I think
we will finalize the extensive review which has been going on and
which has taken a lot of my time, as well as the time of the
administration, as it should have, over the last 10 days or so.  I
think we'll finish that in the near future and then we'll have a
policy and we'll announce it and everybody can evaluate it.

         Q      Can I follow up?

         THE PRESIDENT:  Sure.

         Q      Do you see any parallel between the ethnic
cleansing in Bosnia and the Holocaust?

         THE PRESIDENT:  I think the Holocaust is on a whole
different level.  I think it is without precedent or peer in human
history.  On the other hand, ethnic cleansing is the kind of
inhumanity that the Holocaust took to the nth degree.  The idea of
moving people around and abusing them and often killing them solely
because of their ethnicity is an abhorrent thing.  And it is
especially troublesome in that area where people of different ethnic
groups live side by side for so long together.  And I think you have
to stand up against it.  I think it's wrong.

         We were talking today about all of the other troubles in
that region.  I was happy to see the violence between the Croats and
the Muslims in Bosnia subside this morning, and I think we're making
progress on that front.  But what's going on with the Serbians and
the ethnic cleansing is qualitatively different than the other
conflicts, both within the former Yugoslavia and in other parts of
the region.

         Q      Mr. President, by any count, you have not had a
good week in your presidency.  The tragedy in Waco, the defeat of
your stimulus bill, the standoff in Bosnia.  What did you do wrong
and what are you going to do differently?  How do you look at things?
Are you reassessing?  (Laughter.)

         THE PRESIDENT:  I don't really believe that the
situation in Bosnia -- it's not been a good week for the world, but I
don't know that the administration could have made it different.

         On the stimulus package, I'd like to put it into the
larger context and remind you that in this 100 days we have already
fundamentally changed the direction of an American government.  We
have abandoned trickle-down economics.  We've abandoned the policies
that brought the debt of this country from $1 trillion to $4 trillion
in only a decade.

         The budget plan, which passed the Congress, which will
reduce the deficit and increase investment, has led to a 20-year low
in mortgage rates, dramatically lower interest rates.  There are
probably people in this room who have refinanced their home mortgages
in the last three months, or who have had access to cheaper credit.
That's going to put tens of billion dollars coursing throughout this
economy in ways that are very, very good for the country.  And so we
are moving in the right direction economically.

         I regret that the stimulus did not pass, and I have
begun to ask -- and will continue to ask not only people in the
administration, but people in the Congress whether there is something
I could have done differently to pass that.  Part of the reason it
didn't pass was politics; part of it was a difference in ideas.
There are really people still who believe that it's not needed.  I
just disagree with that.

         I think the recovery -- the economists say it's been
underway for about two years, and we've still had 16 months of seven-
percent unemployment, and all the wealthy countries are having
trouble creating jobs.  So I think there was an idea base -- an
argument there, that while we're waiting for the lower interest rates
and the deficit reduction and the investments of the next four years
to take effect, this sort of supplemental appropriation should go
forward.

         Now, I have to tell you, I did misgauge that because a
majority of the Republican senators now sitting in the Senate voted
for a similar stimulus when Ronald Reagan was President in 1983, and
voted 28 times for regular supplemental appropriations like this.  I
just misgauged it.  And I hope that I can learn something.  I've just
been here 90 days.  And, you know, I was a Governor working with a
contentious legislature for 12 years, and it took me a decade to get
political reform there.  So it takes time  to change things.  But I
basically feel very good about what's happened in the first 100 days
with regard to the Congress.

         Q      Waco --

         THE PRESIDENT:  Well, with regard to Waco I don't have
much to add to what I've already said.  I think it is a -- I want the
situation looked into.  I want us to bring in people who have any
insights to bear on that.  I think it's very important that the whole
thing be thoroughly gone over.  But I still maintain what I said from
the beginning, that the offender there was David Koresh.  And I do
not think the United States government is responsible for the fact
that a bunch of fanatics decided to kill themselves.  And I'm sorry
that they killed their children.

         Q      Mr. President, to follow up partly on Helen on your
stimulus package and on your political approach to Capitol Hill, Ross
Perot said today that you're playing games with the American people
in your tax policy.  He was strongly critical of your stimulus
package.  He said he's going to launch an advertising campaign
against the North American Free Trade Agreement.  How are you going
to handle his political criticism?  Will it complicate your efforts
on the Hill with your economic plan?  And do you plan to repackage
some of the things that have been in your stimulus program and try to
resubmit them to the Hill?

         THE PRESIDENT:  Let me answer that question first.
We're going to revisit all of that over the next few days.  I'm going
to be talking to members of Congress and to others to see what we can
do about that.  With regard to the economic plan, I must say I found
that rather amazing.  I don't want to get into an argument with Mr.
Perot.  I'll be interested to hear what his specifics are, but I
would -- go back and read his book and his plan.  There's a
remarkable convergence except that we have more specific budget cuts,
we raise taxes less on the middle class and more on the wealthy.
But, otherwise, the plans are remarkably similar.

         So I think it would be -- I'll be interested to see if
maybe perhaps he's changed his position from his book last year and
he has some new ideas to bring to bear.  I'll be glad to hear them.

         Q      To follow up, sir, how do you plan to handle his
political criticism?  He's launched a campaign against you.  Do you
think you can sit back and just --

         THE PRESIDENT:  Well, first of all, I will ask you to
apply the same level of scrutiny to him as you do to me.  And if he's
changed his position from the positions he took in the campaign last
year, then we need to know why and what his ideas are.  Maybe he's
got some constructive ideas.

         I think the American people have shown that they're very
impatient with people who don't want to produce results.  And the one
thing I think that everybody has figured out about me in the last --
even if they don't agree with what I do -- is that I want to get
something done.  I just came here to try to change things.  I want to
do things.  And I want to do things that help people's lives.  So my
judgment is that if he makes a suggestion that is good, that is
constructive, that takes us beyond some idea I've proposed that will
change people's lives for the better, fine.  But I think that that
ought to be the test that we apply to everyone who weighs into this
debate and not just to the President.

         Q      Mr. President, to go back to Bosnia for a minute.
You continue to insist that this has to be multilateral action, a
criteria that seems to have hamstrung us when it comes to many
options thus far and makes it look as if this is a state of
paralysis.  The United States is the last remaining superpower.  Why
is it not appropriate in this situation for the United States to act
unilaterally?

         THE PRESIDENT:  Well, the United States -- surely you
would agree, that the United States, even as the last remaining
superpower, has to act consistent with international law under some
mandate of the United Nations.

         Q      But you have a mandate and --

         THE PRESIDENT:  They do, and that is one of the things
that we have under review.  I haven't ruled out any option for
action.  I would remind all of you, I have not ruled out any option,
except that we have not discussed and we are not considering the
introduction of American forces into continuing hostilities there.
We are not.

         So we are reviewing other options.  But I also would
remind you that, to be fair, our allies have had -- the French, the
British and the Canadians -- have had troops on the ground there.
They have been justifiably worried about those.  But they have
supported the airdrops, the toughening of the sanctions.  They
welcomed the American delegation now in Europe, working on how to
make these sanctions really work and really bite against Serbia.  And
I can tell you that the other nations involved are also genuinely
reassessing their position, and I would not rule out the fact that we
can reach an agreement for a concerted action that goes beyond where
we have been.  I don't have any criticism of the British, the French
and others about that.

         Q      Would that be military action?

         Q      Mr. President, several of the leading lights in
your administration, ranging from your FBI Director to your U.N.
Ambassador, to your Deputy Budget Director to your Health Services
Secretary, have issued statements in the last couple of weeks which
are absolutely contradictory to some of the positions you've taken in
your administration.  Why is that?  Are you losing your political
grip?

         THE PRESIDENT:  Give me an example.

         Q      Example?  Judge Sessions said that there was no
child abuse in Waco.  Madeleine Albright has said in this morning's
newspapers, at least, that she favors air strikes in Bosnia.  All of
these are things you said that you didn't support.

         THE PRESIDENT:  First of all, I don't know what -- we
know that David Koresh had sex with children.  I think that is
undisputed, is it not?  Is it not?  Does anybody dispute that?  Where
I come from that qualifies as child abuse.  And we know that he had
people teaching these kids how to kill themselves.  I think that
qualifies as abuse.  And I'm not criticizing Judge Sessions because I
don't know exactly what he said.

         In terms of Madeleine Albright, Madeleine Albright has
made no public statement at all about air strikes.  There is a press
report that she wrote me a confidential letter in which she expressed
her -- or memo -- in which she expressed her views about the new
direction we should take in response to my request to all the senior
members of my administration to let me know what they thought we
ought to do next.  And I have heard from her and from others about
what they think we ought to do next.  And I'm not going to discuss
the recommendations they made to me, but in the next few days when I
make a decision about what to do, then I will announce what I'm going
to do.  So I wouldn't say that either one of those examples qualifies
speaking out of school.

         Q      How about the Value Added Tax, Mr. President?

         THE PRESIDENT:  What was that?

         Q      The Value Added Tax -- Mrs. Rivlin and Miss Shalala
both said that they thought that that was a good idea.

         THE PRESIDENT:  I don't mind them saying they think it's
a good idea.  There are all kinds of arguments for it on policy
grounds.  That does not mean that we have decided to incorporate it
in the health care debate.  No decision has been made on that.  And I
have no objection to their expressing their views on that.  We've had
a lot of people from business and labor come to us saying that they
thought that tax would help make their particular industries more
competitive in the global economy.  I took no -- that wasn't taking a
line against an administration policy.

         Q      Mr. President, a week ago a group of gay and
lesbian representatives came out of a meeting with you and expressed
in the most ringing terms, their confidence in your understanding of
them and their political aspirations, and their belief that you would
fulfill those aspirations.  Do you feel now that you will be able to
meet their now enhanced expectations?

         THE PRESIDENT:  Well, I don't know about that.  And I
don't know what their -- it depends on what the expectations are.
But I'll tell you this:  I believe that this country's policies
should be heavily biased in favor of nondiscrimination.  I believe
when you tell people they can't do certain things in this country
that other people can do, there ought to be an overwhelming and
compelling reason for it.  I believe we need the services of all of
our people, and I have said that consistently.  And not as a
political proposition.  The first time this issue came up was in 1991
when I was in Boston.  I was just asked the question about it.

         And I might add -- it's interesting that I have been
attacked -- obviously, those who disagree with me here are primarily
coming from the political right in America.  When I was Governor, I
was attacked from the other direction for sticking up for the rights
of religious fundamentalists to run their child care centers and to
practice home schooling under appropriate safeguards.  I just have
always had an almost libertarian view that we should try to protect
the rights of American individual citizens to live up to the fullest
of their capacities, and I'm going to stick right with that.

         Q      Are you concerned, sir, that you may have generated
expectations on their end and criticism among others that has
hamstrung your administration in the sense of far too great emphasis
on this issue?

         THE PRESIDENT:  Yes, but I have not placed a great deal
of emphasis on it.  It's gotten a lot of emphasis in other quarters
and in the press.  I've just simply taken my position and tried to
see it through.  And that's what I do.  It doesn't take a lot of my
time as President to say what I believe in and what I intend to do,
and that's what I'll continue to do.

         Q      Mr. President, getting back to the situation in
Bosnia -- and we understand you haven't made any final decisions on
new options previously considered unacceptable.  But the two most
commonly heard options would be lifting the arms embargo to enable
the Bosnian Muslims to defend themselves and to initiate some limited
air strikes, perhaps, to cut off supply lines.  Without telling us
your decision -- presumably, you haven't made any final decisions on
those two options -- what are the pros and cons that are going
through your mind right now and will weigh heavily on your final
decision?

         THE PRESIDENT:  I'm reluctant to get into this.  There
are -- those are two of the options.  There are some other options
that have been considered.  All have pluses and minuses; all have
supporters and opponents within the administration and in the
Congress, where, I would remind you, heavy consultations will be
required to embark on any new policy.

         I do believe that on the air strike issue, the
pronouncements that General Powell has made generally about military
action, apply there.  If you take action, if the United States takes
action, we must have a clearly-defined objective that can be met.  We
must be able to understand it and its limitations must be clear.  The
United States is not, should not, become involved as a partisan in a
war.

         With regard to the lifting of the arms embargo, the
question obviously there is if you widen the capacity of people to
fight will that help to get a settlement and bring about peace?  Will
it lead to more bloodshed?  What kind of reaction can others have
that would undermine the effectiveness of the policy?

         But I think both of them deserve some serious
consideration, along with some other options we have.

         Q      Do you think that these people who are trying to
get us into war in Bosnia are really remembering that we haven't
taken care of hundreds of thousands of veterans from the last war and
we couldn't take care of our prisoners and get them all home from
Vietnam?   And now many of them are coming up with bills for
treatment of Agent Orange.  How can we afford to go to any more of
these wars?

         THE PRESIDENT:  Well, I think that's a good argument
against the United States itself becoming involved as a belligerent
in a war there.  But we are, after all, the world's only super power.
We do have to lead the world  and there is a very serious problem of
systematic ethnic cleansing in the former Yugoslavia, which could
have not only enormous further humanitarian consequences -- and
goodness knows there have been many -- but also could have other
practical consequences in other nearby regions where the same sorts
of ethnic tensions exist.

         Q      Did you make any kind of agreement with Boris
Yeltsin to hold off either on air strikes or any kind of aggressive
action against the Serbs until after Sunday?  And in general, how has
his political situation affected your deliberation on Bosnia?

         THE PRESIDENT:  No, I have not made any agreement, and
he did not ask for that.  We never even discussed that, interestingly
enough.  The Russians, I would remind you, in the middle of President
Yeltsin's campaign, abstained from our attempt to get tougher
sanctions through the United Nations in what I thought was the proper
decision for them and one that the United States and, I'm sure, the
rest of the free world very much appreciated.

         Q      Do you wish, Mr. President, that you'd become more
involved in the planning of the Waco operation?  And how would you
handle that situation differently now?

         THE PRESIDENT:  I don't think as a practical matter that
the President should become involved in the planning of those kinds
of things at that detail.  One of the things that I'm sure will come
out when we look into this is -- the questions will be asked and
answered, did all of us who up the line of command ask the questions
we should have asked and get the answers we should have gotten?  And
I look forward to that.  But at the time, I have to say, as I did
before, the first thing I did after the ATF agents were killed, once
we knew that the FBI was going to go in, was to ask that the military
be consulted because of the quasi, as least, military nature of the
conflict given the resources that Koresh had in his compound and
their obvious willingness to use them.  And then on the day before
the action, I asked the questions of the Attorney General which I
have reported to you previously, and which at the time I thought were
sufficient.  I have -- as I said, I'm sure -- I leave it to others to
make the suggestions about whether there are other questions I should
have asked.

         Q      Mr. President, what is your assessment of Director
Sessions' role in the Waco affair?  And have you made a decision on
his future?  And if you haven't, will you give him a personal hearing
before you do decide?

         THE PRESIDENT:  Well, first of all, I have no assessment
of his role since I had no direct contact with him.  And I mean no
negative or positive inference.  I have no assessment there.  I stand
by what I said before about my general high regard for the FBI.  And
I'm waiting for a recommendation from the Attorney General about what
to do with the direction of the FBI.

         Q      Mr. President, since you said that one side in
Bosnia conflict represents inhumanity that the Holocaust carried to
the nth degree, why do you then tell us that the United States cannot
take a partisan view in this war?

         THE PRESIDENT:  Well, I said that the principle of
ethnic cleansing is something we ought to stand up against.  That
does not mean that the United States or the United Nations can enter
a war, in effect, to redraw the lines, geographical lines of
republics within what was Yugoslavia, or that that would ultimately
be successful.

         I think what the United States has to do is to try to
figure out whether there is some way consistent with forcing the
people to resolve their own difficulties we can stand up to and stop
ethnic cleansing.  And that is obviously the difficulty we are
wrestling with.  This is clearly the most difficult foreign policy
problem we face, and that all of our allies face.  And if it were
easy, I suppose it would have been solved before.  We have tried to
do more in the last 90 days than was previously done.  It has clearly
not been enough to stop the Serbian aggression, and  we are now
looking at what else we can do.

         Q      Yesterday you specifically criticized the Roosevelt
administration for not having bombed the railroads to the
concentration camps and things that were near military targets.
Aren't there steps like that that would not involve conflict --direct
conflict or partisan belligerence that you might consider?

         THE PRESIDENT:  There may be.  I would remind you that
the circumstances were somewhat different.  We were then at war with
Germany at the time and that's what made that whole incident so --
series of incidents -- so perplexing.  But we have -- as I say, we've
got all of our options under review.

         Q      The diplomatic initiative on Haiti is on the verge
of collapse.  What can you do to salvage it short of a full-scale
military operation?

         THE PRESIDENT:  Well, you may know something I don't.
That's not what our people tell me.  I think Mr. Caputo and
Ambassador Pezzullo have done together a good job.  The thing keeps
going back and forth because of the people who are involved with the
de facto government there.  It's obvious what their concerns are.
They were the same concerns that led to the ouster of Aristide in the
first place, and President Aristide, we feel, should be restored to
power.  We're working toward that.  I get a report on that -- we
discuss it at least three times a week, and I'm convinced that we're
going to prevail there and be successful.

         I do believe that there's every reason to think that
there will have to be some sort of multilateral presence to try to
guarantee the security and the freedom from violence of people on
both sides of the ledger while we try to establish the conditions of
ongoing civilized society.  But I believe we're going to prevail
there.

         Q      Mr. President, would you care to make your
assessment of the first 100 days before we make one for you?
(Laughter.)

         THE PRESIDENT:  Well, I'll say if -- I believe, first of
all, we passed the budget resolution in record time.  That was the
biggest issue.  That confirmed the direction of the administration
and confirmed the commitments of the campaign that we could both
bring the deficit down and increase investment, and that we could do
it by specific spending cuts and by raising taxes, almost all of
which come from the highest income people in this society --reversing
a 12-year trend in which most of the tax burdens were borne by the
middle class, whose incomes were going down when their taxes were
going up, while the deficit went from $1 trillion to $4 trillion, the
total national debt, and the deficit continued to go up.

         We have a 20-year low in interest rates from mortgages.
We have lower interest rates across the board.  We have tens of
billions of dollars flooding back into this economy as people
refinance their debt.

         We have established a new environmental policy, which is
dramatically different.  The Secretary of Education has worked with
me and with others and with the governors to establish a new approach
in education that focuses on tough standards, as well as increasing
opportunity.  We have done an enormous amount of work on political
reform, on campaign finance and lobbying reform.  And I have imposed
tough ethics requirements on my own administration's officials.
These things are consistent with not only what I said I'd do in the
campaign, but with turning the country around.  The Vice President is
heading a task force which will literally change the way the federal
government operates and make it much more responsive to the citizens
of this country.

         We are working on a whole range of other things.  The
welfare reform initiative, to move people from welfare to work.  And,
of course, a massive amount of work has been done on the health care
issue, which is a huge economic and personal security problem for
millions of Americans.

         So I think it is amazing how much has been done.  More
will be done.  We also passed the Family Leave bill.  A version of
the motor voter bill -- that has not come out of conference back to
me yet.  And everything has been passed except the stimulus program.
So I think we're doing fine and we're moving in the right direction.
I feel good about it.

         Q      Sir, a follow-up.  Wouldn't you say, though, that
one of your biggest initiatives, aid to Soviet Russia, is now
practically finished -- if we can't pass a stimulus bill in our own
country, how can we do it for them?

         THE PRESIDENT:  Let me recast the question a little bit.
It's a good question -- (laughter) -- it's a good question, but to be
fair we've got to recast it.  We have already -- the first round of
aid to the Soviet -- to non-Soviet Russia, to a democratic Russia, is
plainly going to go through, the first $1.6 billion.  The aid that we
agreed with our partners in the G-7 to provide through the
international financial institutions, which is a big dollar item, is
plainly going to go through.  The question is, can we get any more
aid for Russia that requires a new appropriation by the United States
Congress?  And that is a question I think, Mary, that will be
resolved in the weeks ahead, in part by what happens to the American
workers and their jobs and their future.  I think the two things will
be tied by many members of Congress.

         Q      The tailhook report came out this morning,
documenting horrendous and nearly-criminal conduct on the part of the
Navy.  How much did you discuss the incident and what might be done
about it with your nominee to be the Secretary of the Navy?

         THE PRESIDENT:  First, let me comment a little on that.
The Inspector General's report details conduct which is wrong and
which has no place in the armed services.  And I expect the report to
be acted on in the appropriate way.  I also want to say to the
American people and to all of you that the report should be taken for
what it is, a very disturbing list of allegations which will have to
be thoroughly examined.  It should not be taken as a general
indictment of the United States Navy or of all the fine people who
serve there.  It is very specific in its allegations, and it will be
pursued.

         The only thing I said to the Secretary-Designate of the
Navy and the only thing I should have said to him, I think, is that I
expected him to take the report and to do his duty.  And I believe he
will do that.

         Q      Mr. President, to back to Russia for just a minute.
The latest poll show that Mr. Yeltsin will probably win his vote of
confidence.  But there seems to be a real toss-up on whether or not
voters are going to endorse his economic reforms.

         THE PRESIDENT:  I understand that.

         Q      Can you live with a split -- (laughter) -- can you
live with a split decision, though, or do you need both passed in
order to then build support for Russian aid?

         THE PRESIDENT:  I believe -- the answer to your question
is, for the United States, the key question should be that which is
posed to any democracy, which is who wins the election.  If he wins
the election, if he is ratified by the Russian people to continue as
their President, then I think we should do our best to work with him
toward reform.

         You know, we had a lot of other countries here for the
Holocaust Museum dedication -- their leaders were here.  Leaders from
Eastern Europe, leaders from at least one republic of the former
Soviet Union; all of them having terrible economic challenges as they
convert from a communist command and control economy to a market
economy in a world where there's economic slowdown everywhere.  And
in a world in which there's economic slowdown and difficulty, all
leaders will have trouble having their policies be popular in a poll
because they haven't produced the results that the people so
earnestly yearn for.  You can understand that.

         But if they have confidence in the leadership, I think
that's all we can ask.  And the United States will -- if the Russian
people ratify him as their President and stick with him then the
United States will continue to work with him.  I think he is a
genuine democrat -- small d -- and genuinely committed to reform.  I
think that we should support that.

         Q      Mr. President, Mr. Perot has come out strongly in
what is perceived behind the line against a free trade agreement --
NAFTA.  How hard are you going to fight for this free trade agreement
and when do you expect to see it accomplished?

         THE PRESIDENT:  I think we'll have the agreement ready
in the fairly near future.  You know, our people are still working
with the Mexican government and with the Canadians on the side
agreements.  We're trying to work out what the environmental
agreement will say, what the labor agreement will say, and then what
the fairest way to deal with enforcement is.

         The Mexicans say, and there is some merit to their
position, that they're worried about transferring their sovereignty
in enforcement to a multilateral commission.  Even in the United
States, to be fair, we have some folks who are worried about that --
about giving that up.  On the other hand, if we're going to have an
environmental agreement and a labor standards agreement that means
something, then there has to be ultimately some consequences for
violating them.  So what we're trying to do is to agree on an
approach which would say that if there is a pattern of violations --
if you keep on violating it past a certain point -- maybe not an
isolated incident, but a pattern of violation -- there is going to be
some enforcement.  There must be consequences.  And we're working out
the details of that.

         But I still feel quite good about it.  And this is just
an area where I disagree with Mr. Perot and with others.  I think
that we will win big if we have a fair agreement that integrates more
closely the Mexican economy and the American economy and leads us
from there to Chile to other market economies in Latin America, and
gives us a bigger world in which to trade.  I think that's the only
way a rich country can grow richer.  If you look at what Japan and
other countries in the Pacific are doing to reach out in their own
region, it's a pretty good lesson to us that we had better worry
about how to build those bridges in our own area.

         So this is an idea battle.  You know, you've got a lot
of questions and I want to answer them all, but let me say not every
one of these things can be distilled simply into politics -- you
know, who's for this and who's for that, and if this person is for
this, somebody else has got to be for that.  A lot of these things
honestly involved real debates over ideas, over who's right and wrong
about the world toward which we're moving.  And the answers are not
self-evident.  And one of the reasons that I wanted to run for
President is I wanted to sort of open the floodgates for debating
these ideas so that we could try to change in the appropriate way.
So I just have a difference of opinion.  I believe that the concept
of NAFTA is sound, even though, as you know, I thought that the
details needed to be improved.

         Q      Mr. President, there was a tremendous flurry of
interest earlier this month in the Russian document that purported to
show that the Vietnamese had held back American prisoners.  General
Vessey has now said publicly that while the document itself was
authentic, he believes that it was incorrect.  Do you have a personal
view at this point about that issue?  And more broadly, do you
believe that, in fact, the Vietnamese did return all the American
prisoners at the time of the Paris Peace Accord?

         THE PRESIDENT:  First let me say, I saw General Vessey
before he went to Vietnam and after he returned.  And I have a high
regard for him and I appreciate his willingness to serve his country
in this way.  As to whether the document had any basis in fact, let
me say that the government of Vietnam was more forthcoming than it
had been in the past and gave us some documents that would tend to
undermine the validity of the Russian documents claim.

         I do not know whether that is right or wrong.  We are
having it basically evaluated at this time, and when we complete the
evaluation, we'll tell you.  And, of course, we want to tell the
families of those who were missing in action or who were POWs.  I
think that we'll be able to make some progress in eliminating some of
the questions about the outstanding cases as a result of this last
interchange, but I cannot say that I'm fully satisfied that we know
all that we need to know.  There are still some cases that we don't
know the answer to.  But I do believe we're making some progress.  I
was encouraged by the last trip.

         Q      I'd like to follow up on that.  Before the U.S.
normalizes relations, allows trade to go forward, do you have to be
personally sure that every case has been resolved or would you be
willing to go forward on the basis that while it may take years to
resolve these cases, the Vietnamese have made sufficient offerings to
us to confirm good faith?

         THE PRESIDENT:  A lot of experts say you can never
resolve every case, every one, that we couldn't resolve all the cases
for them and that there are still some cases that have not been
factually resolved, going back to the Second World War.  But what I
would have to be convinced of is that we had gone a long way toward
resolving every case that could be resolved at this moment in time,
and that there was a complete, open and unrestricted commitment to
continue to do everything that could be done always to keep resolving
those cases.  And we're not there yet.

         Again, I have to be guided a little bit by people who
know a lot about this.  And I confess to being much more heavily
influenced by the families of the people whose lives were lost there,
or whose lives remain in question than by the commercial interest and
the other things which seem so compelling in this moment.  I just am
very influenced by how the families feel.

         Q         your economic stimulus package, are you doing
some kind of reality check now and scaling back some of your plans,
your legislative plans for the coming year, including the crime bill,
the health care initiative and other things?  Are there any plans to
do that?  And also, did you underestimate the power of Senator Bob
Dole?

         THE PRESIDENT:  No, what I underestimated was the extent
to which what I thought was a fairly self-evident case, particularly
after we stayed below the spending caps approved by this Congress,
including the Republicans who were in this Congress last year -- when
we had already passed a budget resolution which called for over $500
billion in deficit reduction.  When they had voted repeatedly for
supplemental appropriations to help foreign governments, I thought at
least four of them would vote to break cloture, and I underestimated
that.  I did not have an adequate strategy of dealing with that.

         I also thought that if I made a good-faith effort to
negotiate and to compromise, that it would not be rebuffed.  Instead,
every time I offered something they reduced the offer that they had
previously been talking to the Majority Leader about.  So it was a
strange set of events.  But I think what happened was what was a
significant part of our plan, but not the major part of it, acquired
a political connotation that got out of proportion to the merits, so
that a lot of Republicans were saying to me privately, "Mr.
President, I'd like to be for this, but I can't now.  And we're all
strung out and we're divided."

         And I think we need to do a reality check.  As I said,
what I want to know -- let me go back to what I said -- what I want
to know from our folks and from our friends in the Senate on -- and
Republicans or Democrats -- is what could I have done differently to
make it come out differently.  Because the real losers here were not
the President and the administration.  The real losers were the
hundreds of thousands of people who won't have jobs now.  We could
have put another 700,000 kids to work this summer.  I mean, we could
have done a lot of good things with that money.  And I think that is
very, very sad.  And it became more political than it should have.
But the underlying rationale I don't think holds a lot of water --
that it was deficit spending.  That just won't wash.

         Q         and redo --

         THE PRESIDENT:  No.  I mean, you know, for example --you
mentioned the crime bill.  I think it would be a real mistake not to
pass the crime bill.  I mean, the crime bill was almost on the point
of passage last year.  And they were all fighting over the Brady
Bill.  Surely, surely after what we have been through in this country
just in the last three months, with the kind of mindless violence we
have seen, we can pass a bill requiring people to go through a
waiting period before they buy a handgun.  And surely we can see that
we need more police officers on the street.

         That's another thing that -- I really believe that once
we move some of that money -- not all, but some of it up into this
jobs package to make some of the jobs rehiring police officers on the
street who'd been laid off, that would be a compelling case.  I mean
people are scared in this country and I think we need to go forward.
I feel very strongly that we need to go forward on the crime bill.

         Q      Mr. President, back to the tailhook report for a
second.  That report contained very strong criticism of the Navy's
senior leadership in general, but did not name any of the senior
officers.  Do you believe that the senior officers who are implicated
in this, including Admiral Kelso who was there one night in Las
Vegas, should they be disciplined and do you believe the public has a
right to know the names of the senior officers?

         THE PRESIDENT:  You should know that under the rules of
law which apply to this, I am in the chain of command.  There is now
an Inspector General's report and the law must take its course.  If I
were to answer that question I might prejudice any decisions which
might be later made in this case.  I don't really think -- I think
all I can tell you is what I have already said.  I was very disturbed
by the specific allegations in the Inspector General's report, and I
want appropriate action to be taken.

         Until the proper procedures have a chance to kick in and
appropriate action is taken, I have been advised that because I am
the Commander-in-Chief I have to be very careful about what I say so
as not to prejudice the rights of anybody against whom any action
might proceed or to prejudice the case in any other way either pro or
con.  So I can't say any more except to say that I want this thing
handled in an appropriate and thorough way.

         Q      Mr. President, could I ask you for a clarification
on Bosnia?  You said that you were not considering introduction of
American forces.  Does that include any air forces as well as ground
forces, sir?

         THE PRESIDENT:  I said ground forces.

         Q      You said ground forces.  Could I ask you, sir, if
you fear that using U.S. air strikes might  draw the United States
into a ground war there?

         THE PRESIDENT:  I just don't want to discuss our
evaluation of the options anymore.  I've told you that there's never
been a serious discussion in this country about the introduction of
ground forces into an ongoing conflict there.

         Q      With hundreds of thousands of gays in Washington
this weekend for the march, did you ever reconsider your decision to
leave town for this weekend?  Did you ever consider in any way
participating in some of the activities?

         THE PRESIDENT:  No.

         Q      Why not?

         THE PRESIDENT:  Because I -- and, basically, I wouldn't
participate in other marches.  I think once you become President, on
balance, except under unusual circumstances, that is not what should
be done.  But more importantly, I'm going to the American Society of
Newspaper Editors, a trip that presumably most of you would want me
to make, to try to focus anew on what I think are the fundamental
issues at stake for our country right now.  And I expect that I will
say something about the fact that a lot of Americans have come here,
asking for a climate that is free of discrimination; asking,
basically, to be able to work hard and live by the rules and be
treated like other American citizens if they do that, and just that.
And that's always been my position -- not only for the gays who will
be here, but for others as well.

         Thank you very much.

                                 END1:48 P.M. EDT