    [Public Papers of the Presidents of the United States: William J. Clinton (1993, Book I)]
    [April 1, 1993]
    [Pages 379-383]
    [From the U.S. Government Publishing Office www.gpo.gov]

    Question-and-Answer Session With the American Society of Newspaper
    Editors in Annapolis
    April 1, 1993

    Bosnia

        Q. Mr. President, I support your vision and am grateful to be here
    for this historic speech. As a journalist and a citizen I am deeply
    anguished over the reports from Bosnia: deliberate, premeditated rape,
    the shelling of innocent civilians, families forced from their homes,
    children crushed to death in desperate attempts to escape. I'd like to
    ask two brief questions. Do we have a national interest in checking the
    spread of greater Serbian ethnic cleansing in the Balkans? And are we
    losing our credibility as a nation as this horrifying aggression in a
    sovereign state continues without your unrestrained, forceful, and
    public condemnation of it?
        The President. Yes, we have a national interest in limiting ethnic
    cleansing. I disagree with you that I have not given a forceful and
    public condemnation of it. I think the issue is whether you think the
    United States is capable of doing what Europe has not in somehow forcing
    its will upon Bosnia and the former Yugoslavia. Since I have become
    President we have dramatically stiffened the embargo on Serbia. We have
    hurt them very badly economically, but the war continues. We do not have
    the votes in the United Nations at the present time to lift the embargo
    on arms to the Bosnians. If we did, it would endanger the humanitarian
    mission there carried on by the French and British, who oppose lifting
    the embargo, and they have kept many people alive.
        I decided that I would support the Vance-Owen peace process when it
    was clear that that was what our European allies wanted to do and that
    that was the best vehicle for a potential peace. Now, the Bosnians and
    the Croats have signed on to that, the Muslims and the Croats in Bosnia.
    We are waiting to see whether the Serbs will. If they do not, we will
    then have to contemplate where we go from there. But I would remind you
    that when I became President the situation there was already grave. We
    had a policy through the United Nations which I think was of limited
    effectiveness, which I have tried to stiffen as well as I could.
        But the United States has many commitments and many interests, and I
    would just remember that the thing that I have not been willing to do is
    to immediately take action the end of which I could not see. Whatever I
    want to do, I want to do it with vigor and wholeheartedly. I want it to
    have a reasonable prospect of success. And I have done the best I could
    with the cards that I found on the table when I became President. If you
    have other ideas about what you think I ought to do that would minimize
    the loss of life, I would be glad to have them.
        Q. Sir, do you condemn it here today?
        The President. Absolutely. I condemn it, and

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    I have condemned it repeatedly and thoroughly. And I have done
    everything I could to increase the pressure of the international
    community on the outrages perpetrated in Bosnia by the aggressors and to
    get people to stand up against ethnic cleansing. The question is what
    are we capable of doing about it from the United States. If you look at
    the responses that have been mustered so far from the European states
    that are even closer and that have a memory of what happened when
    Hitler, who was not shy about using his power, had hundreds of thousands
    of people in the former Yugoslavia and even then was unable to subdue it
    entirely.
        I think you have to look at what our realistic options are for
    action. The question is not whether we condemn what's going on. Ethnic
    cleansing is an outrage, and it is an idea which should die, which
    should not be able to be expanded. The question is, what can we do?
        Now, I have said that the United States would be prepared to join
    with a United Nations effort in supporting a peacekeeping process that
    was entered into in good faith. If the Serbs refuse to do that, then we
    will all have to reassess our position. But we must be careful not to
    use words that will outstrip our capacity to back them up. That is a
    grave error for any great nation, and one I will try not to commit.

    Freedom of the Press

        Q. This is--[inaudible]--he is one of the leading editors at
    Izvestia, Moscow--[inaudible]--I hope you will take a question from him.
    My question, Mr. President: His newspaper in Russia has had deep trouble
    because of its criticisms of Parliament and Parliament's reaction to
    that. You in this country have taken some hits, some heavy hits in the
    campaign and as President from a critical, probative, intrusive, at
    times abusive press. I wonder if you could give us your feelings,
    perhaps, words of philosophy as to how you view press freedom given its
    critical and at times abusive nature?
        The President. If you have in a democratic society any freedom
    enshrined in the Constitution, it is as certain as the Sun rising in the
    morning that the freedom will be abused. Think of any freedom enshrined
    in the Constitution. They are all capable of abuse, some in different
    ways than others. The freedom of speech is abused every day in the
    country. The freedom of the press, of course, can be abused. Other
    freedoms can be. People can claim to be practicing religion when perhaps
    they aren't. That is the price we pay for freedom, and we are stronger
    because of it.
        I think that no one has done better for 200 years than Thomas
    Jefferson did when he said--and Thomas Jefferson got a pretty rough
    press, too, from time to time if you go back and read how people worked
    on him. My consolation is no one remembers the people who falsely
    blasphemed him in print. [Laughter] But Thomas Jefferson said that if he
    had to choose between maintaining the Government and the freedom of the
    press, he would choose the freedom of the press because democracy could
    not exist without it. And I agree with that. And Government restraint in
    the face of criticism is in some ways the most important test of a true
    democracy.

    Trade Negotiations and Russia

        Q. I wish to welcome you to the Free State of Maryland. Four times
    during the term of your predecessor the leaders of the Group of Seven
    industrial democracies assembled in early July, and each time they
    pledged their personal prestige to a GATT agreement, the new world
    reform of trade regulations. Each time they failed. My question is this:
    When you go to the Group of Seven summit in July, are you going to renew
    that pledge? And secondly, and this is pertinent to what you've been
    talking about, if we don't have a new GATT agreement, is there any way
    Russia will be able to enter the world trading system in a way that will
    lead to its evolution from its present situation?
        The President. Well, as you know--first let me answer the first
    question. Yes, I will renew the pledge, and I will hope to do it without
    having the international press corps laugh since they've now heard it
    four times. We got an agreement on agriculture, so-called Blair House
    accord, which I hope will stand up in the wake of the recent elections
    in Europe. If it does, I am frankly optimistic that we will be able to
    proceed to a GATT agreement. There are other outstanding issues, but on
    balance the United States would be much better off with it.
        We need to maintain a commitment to global economic growth in ways
    that are good for the wealthy countries of the world. As I said in my
    speech, one of the great challenges is for a wealthy country not only to
    maintain its technological lead and its capacity to generate

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    growth but also its capacity to generate jobs.
        In the 1980's Europe had at least two significant economic
    recoveries and generated no jobs. That's the thing that's bothering me
    now. This recovery allegedly started a long time ago, but the
    unemployment rate is higher than it was at the depth of the recession,
    and that's because we are now finding some of the same difficulties. So,
    I think the GATT agreement can help that, and I will do what I can to
    get it.
        The answer to your second question is not so simple. I believe
    Russia would be better off if it could be brought into the international
    trading system with a new GATT agreement, but the leaders of the G-7
    this year obviously are the Japanese. This is Japan's turn to lead, and
    the Government of Japan has issued an invitation to President Yeltsin to
    attend the G-7 meeting. And as you know, on April 14th and 15th the
    foreign ministers and finance ministers of the G-7 are meeting in Tokyo
    to talk about what we can do in multilateral ways to help the process of
    Russian reform.
        So, I believe a lot can be done even if there's no new GATT
    agreement. Indeed, I would argue that for the kinds of things which need
    to be worked out for Russia to really benefit from trade and for the
    rest of us to benefit from it, involve more either ad hoc relationships
    between businesses and governments dealing with Russia or changes within
    Russia itself relating to property rights, privatization, the
    reliability of contracts, the freeing up of the ability to contract in
    the energy area, and things of that kind.
        I should have let you answer that question.
        Q. Mr. President, I am absolutely sure that millions and millions of
    Russians would be really proud to listen to the words you have just said
    about my country. Unfortunately, we have not a lot of politicians who
    are able to do the same. Let me just add one thing. Russians are not
    just settling from new changes. There are millions and millions of young
    people who don't care about communism at all, and they enjoy new freedom
    and new situations. Many of them don't know who was Stalin or who was
    Lenin, but they do know who is William Clinton. And so here is my
    question: If a future friend shows once again that the great majority of
    Russians are committed to democracy and free market economy, can we
    expect this year your visit to Russia?
        The President. If I gave you the answer that I want to give you,
    half of my Cabinet would have a heart attack--[laughter]--simply because
    I haven't discussed it with anyone. Let me say that I think I should
    follow the same practice I always do. I can't commit to a specific date,
    but if the process of reform stays alive in Russia, I want very much to
    go back there.
        I had the honor to be in your country, briefly, 3 days before Boris
    Yeltsin was elected, as a completely anonymous citizen who was invited
    to come just for a few days. So I was able to walk the streets, to talk
    to people, to observe what was going on. I was immensely impressed. I
    had not been in Russia for over 20 years. Everybody in America now knows
    I went to Russia. We found that out in the Presidential campaign. I
    enjoyed that trip, too. [Laughter]
        I would very much like to go back, very much.

    Ross Perot

        Q. I'd like to head back to the domestic front, if I could. Ross
    Perot spoke to us yesterday, and he said as he travels around the
    country he finds his supporters asking him about and upset about two
    recent events in Washington. I'd like to ask you about both of them. One
    is the dismissal of Jay Stephens as District attorney as he was pursuing
    the Rostenkowski case in the postage stamp for cash case. And the other
    was the story about the general who was supposedly told at the White
    House that he should leave quickly because the White House staff was not
    comfortable with uniformed military personnel. Could you comment on both
    of those?
        The President. I will, and then I want to ask you a question. First
    of all, the United States attorney in Washington, DC, was not dismissed.
    They were all replaced, and they will all be replaced just like the
    Republicans replaced them all when President Carter was defeated by
    President Reagan. And in fact, many of them got, including the United
    States attorney in Washington, DC, got to serve extra time because of
    the difficulty in getting a new Attorney General. We did not replace any
    of them until we had a new Attorney General.
        There is a provision now for appointing interim U.S. attorneys from
    people who are of long service within each office. There is no reason to
    believe that any particular case will be pursued in a different manner.
    But I think you could make a very compelling case that that

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    United States attorney and others served longer than they would have
    normally because there was not an Attorney General confirmed on the day
    I became President. Everybody else in my Cabinet was confirmed. So to
    say that that person was singled out is absurd.
        The real flip side is some of the people in the other party are
    saying, why didn't we leave him in there all by himself because this is
    the most important case in America and no one else can pursue it. I just
    dispute that. I just don't agree with that. There is no evidence to
    support that. We followed a uniform policy that was exactly like the one
    followed by previous administrations, except we started later in time.
        Secondly, the other story, like all those military stories, was an
    abject lie. And thank God some people in the press have finally started
    pointing it out and have even expressed some shame that they were guilty
    of printing those kinds of rumors. Some of the press have begun to print
    letters from people at the Pentagon who have been disputing some of
    these specific stories like the lieutenant general that was allegedly
    told by someone on the White House staff that she didn't speak to people
    in the military. Those kinds of stories, they are all just made up out
    of whole cloth. And people who run them based on gossip or people who
    talk about them from podiums ought to be ashamed of themselves, without
    knowing they're true.
        You know, Mr. Perot came to Washington the other day and attacked my
    Chief of Staff as not being a real business person, and he had to call
    him on the phone and personally apologize the next day. I mean, people
    can say anything from the podium. I'd be more interested in why my
    economic program, which is 85 percent what Ross Perot recommended in the
    campaign, except we raised taxes less on the middle class, more on the
    wealthy, and don't have unspecified health care savings, hasn't been
    endorsed since it's almost identical to the one he ran on.
        I don't think we ought to be out here rumormongering myself. I think
    it does very little to support the public interest.

    Public-Private Partnership

        Q. Mr. President, in your speech you alluded to a global economy and
    also to the Marshall plan in the days in which this country stood alone
    as an economic power without competition. What, sir, do you feel is your
    responsibility and that of the Federal Government in assuring that this
    country's industrial might remains competitive in an intensely
    competitive environment in which competitors enjoy a different and more
    supportive relationship with their government?
        The President. Well, I'm trying to change that in this country, as
    you know, by changing the whole nature of the relationship between
    Government and business. I want to have a Tax Code which rewards
    investment more. I want to have a strategy of partnership in the new
    technologies which will produce the lion's share of the jobs for the
    21st century.
        I think that it is imperative. If you look at what works, if you
    look at the high-wage, high-growth economies, Government must be a
    partner with the private sector. There should be limitations on the
    partnership. The Government can't pick winners and losers, but there are
    plainly some functions that if not embraced by Government will not be
    done properly.
        And I might point out that most of the countries of the world with
    advanced economies are governed by what would be called their Republican
    Parties, if we used the Democratic-Republican parlance in other
    countries. And yet, every one of them has a more aggressive public-
    private partnership than we do when it comes to educating and training
    the work force, when it comes to investing in civilian technologies for
    jobs for the 21st century, when it comes to maintaining competitive
    policies that will guarantee at least that they'll have a chance to
    generate high-wage, high-growth jobs. And I think my responsibility is
    to try to implement an American version of that kind of policy.

    Media Coverage

        Q. Mr. President, how would you assess the coverage of your
    administration by the Nation's news media, particularly newspapers?
        The President. Good. [Laughter]
        Q. It doesn't have to be that short an answer. [Laughter]
        The President. Well, first of all, it's different in different
    places, but let me say on balance I think it's been remarkably fair and
    thorough. The only frustrations that I feel since I've been President
    relate far more to what I would call almost the commercial imperatives
    that are on the press that have nothing to do with anybody trying to be
    unfair in their coverage. If I might, let me just give you one example.
        I saw a survey recently that was reported

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    somewhere, I'm embarrassed I don't remember where. They were asking the
    American people, this survey, is the President spending enough time on
    the economy, is the President spending enough time on health care, and a
    bunch of other questions. Only half the people said I was spending
    enough time on the economy even though that's what I spend all my time
    on. By two to one the people said I was spending enough time on health
    care. Why is that? Because the effort of the health care task force,
    chaired by my wife, to come up with a health care program is the subject
    of intense speculation because it hasn't been presented yet. So, given
    the propensity of people in Washington to leak, there's a new story
    every day about some little paper or another that's come out and all
    that. And then they have these public hearings, so there's a lot of
    anticipation.
        The economic program was announced one month into my Presidency, and
    then I went to work on it in Congress. And what really is news is sort
    of around the edges; is he losing this or winning that or whatever. It
    becomes a process debate, and the American people tend to lose sight of
    what is the major focus of my every day, which is how to pass that jobs
    program and the economic program. That is simply a function of the way
    the news works.
        The other thing I think is different about the news today than maybe
    20 years ago, particularly for the coverage around Washington, is this:
    Because of CNN and others who now give virtually continuous direct
    access to the facts of whatever is going on to wide numbers of people,
    there is even more pressure than there used to be on everybody in the
    media to find an angle to the story, a unique angle, an insight, you
    know, a twist. And sometimes that's good, and sometimes it's not. But it
    always presents a different challenge to me than perhaps the President
    might have had 20 years ago in trying to keep the focus of the public on
    the big issues that I'm trying to deal with.
        But I say that not as a criticism but simply as an observation. That
    is simply the way things are. On balance we're better off. People are
    getting more information more quickly than ever before, but it's changed
    the dynamics of how we relate to each other.
        Thank you very much.

    Note: The President spoke at 2:07 p.m. in Dahlgren Hall at the U.S.
    Naval Academy.