[Weekly Compilation of Presidential Documents Volume 29, Number 16 (Monday, April 26, 1993)]
[Pages 650-660]
[Online from the Government Publishing Office, www.gpo.gov]
<R04>
The President's News Conference
April 23, 1993
The President. Terry [Terence Hunt, Associated Press], do you have a
question?
Bosnia
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 3 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 Adviser 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 3 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 everyone
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
[[Page 651]]
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.
The First 100 Days
The President. Helen [Helen Thomas, United Press International]?
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?
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 3 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 2 years, and we've still had 16 months of 7-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 4 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.
Tragedy in Waco
Q. Waco--[inaudible]----
The President. Well, with regard to Waco I don't have much to add to
what I've already said. 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.
Ross Perot
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
[[Page 652]]
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.
Bosnia
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
in 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?
Conflicting Statements
Q. Mr. President, several of the leading lights in your
administration, ranging from your FBI Director to your U.N. Ambassador,
[[Page 653]]
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
memos--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 Ms. 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. That
wasn't taking a line against an administration policy.
Gay Rights
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?
[[Page 654]]
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.
Bosnia
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. 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 superpower. 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.
President Boris Yeltsin
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.
Tragedy in Waco
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 an-
[[Page 655]]
swered: 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.
FBI Director Sessions
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.
Bosnia
Q. Mr. President, since you said that one side in the 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 series of incidents so
perplexing. But we have--as I say, we've got all of our options under
review.
Haiti
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
[[Page 656]]
civilized society. But I believe we're going to prevail there.
The First 100 Days
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.
Aid to Russia
Q. Sir, a followup. 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 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 [Mary McGrory,
Washington Post], 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.
Tailhook Report
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
[[Page 657]]
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.
Russia
Q. Mr. President, to go back to Russia for just a minute. The latest
polls 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 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.
NAFTA
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
[[Page 658]]
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.
POW/MIA's
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 POW's. 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.
Legislative Plans
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
initiatives, 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
[[Page 659]]
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.''
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, 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 3
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.
Tailhook Report
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 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.
Bosnia
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.
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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.
Gay Rights
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.
Note: The President's 13th news conference began at 1 p.m. in the East
Room at the White House. In his remarks, he referred to Elie Wiesel,
Nobel laureate and concentration camp survivor; Dante Caputo, U.N./OAS
Special Envoy to Haiti; Lawrence Pezzullo, Special Assistant to the
Secretary of State on Haiti; and Adm. Frank B. Kelso II, USN, Chief of
Naval Operations.