[Public Papers of the Presidents of the United States: William J. Clinton (1994, Book I)]
[April 8, 1994]
[Pages 643-645]
[From the U.S. Government Publishing Office www.gpo.gov]



Remarks and an Exchange With Reporters in Minneapolis
April 8, 1994

Japan and Rwanda

    The President. I wanted to mention a couple of things today. First, 
this morning, pretty early, I had a conversation with Prime Minister 
Hosokawa in which he told me that he was going to resign and that he 
hoped it would help the cause of political reform. He said he was very 
proud of the work that he had done in his term as Prime Minister in 
trying to promote reform within Japan and in trying to reform Japan's 
relationships with the United States and that he intended to keep 
working on that and that he hoped that I would continue to work on the 
Japanese-U.S. relationship with his successor.
    I told him that I was personally very sorry to see him step down, 
that I thought he had provided amazing leadership to the people of 
Japan, and that he had made them believe in the possibility of change 
and that it could help the people. And I thanked him specifically not 
only for his work in political reform but for opening the Japanese rice 
market for the first time in history and for engaging us on a lot of 
other issues and for his support in Korea and in a number of other 
areas. It was a good conversation, and I'm very grateful to him for 
that, for what he did.
    Let me just mention one other thing, if I might. I called today the 
Secretary of State, the Secretary of Defense, and my National Security 
Adviser and had extended conversations with all three of them about the 
situation in Rwanda. And I want to mention it only because there are a 
sizable number of Americans there, and it is a very tense situation. And 
I just want to assure the families of those who are there that we are 
doing everything we possibly can to be on top of the situation, to take 
all appropriate steps to try to assure the safety of our

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citizens there. But it is a difficult situation, and we should all know 
that.

Japan-U.S. Relations

    Q. Mr. President, there are some people, even within the 
administration, who feel that this really marks a very bad turn for 
U.S.-Japanese trade talks and economic policy. There's been little 
progress until now, and now there is even less hope that it can be 
concluded successfully.
    The President. I'm just not sure. We certainly don't intend to 
change our economic policy or our trade policy. But one of the problems 
that the Prime Minister had was that the coalition that he heads, as 
presently constituted, contains a small minority that can, in effect, 
veto what a majority of the coalition might want on economic reform. So 
while I think clearly he was as committed to the kinds of changes in the 
modernization of Japan's economic policy as any person who has ever 
headed that government, I think what he hopes is that in the end there 
will be a realization, without him, that there must be a majority 
coalition for change.
    So I think what we're going to have to do, frankly, is to stick with 
our policy and then see how it shakes out in Japan, how it works itself 
out. They're going to have to work that out.
    Q. But Mr. President, in the past we've been pretty hard on Japan. 
In the last year or so we've been very rough on them. When the talks 
broke down, you said you didn't want to paper over differences with 
rhetoric. Do you think there's a chance maybe we were a little too hard 
on Japan and it might be a time to kind of step back and let this kind 
of settle?
    The President. Well, I don't--those two things are not inconsistent. 
I think we should stick with our policy and be firm about it. We also 
tried to support Japan in many ways. And as I said on my trip there, I 
think that our policy is in the best interest of the Japanese. A more 
open Japanese market means that the Japanese citizens won't have to pay 
almost 40 percent more for their consumer goods than they otherwise 
would. And I think it means more jobs and a more prosperous economy in 
Japan, and I think we should keep pushing for that. But I think plainly 
the Japanese are going to need a little bit of time to constitute a new 
government.
    The United States-Japanese relationship is a complicated one in the 
sense that it has many legs. It has a security aspect, a political 
aspect, an economic aspect. But I do not expect there to be a marked 
deterioration in our relationships with that country. We're too 
important to each other and to the rest of the world.
    Q. With Prime Minister Hosokawa stepping down, is there a sense in 
your White House that the administration is going to have to start from 
scratch with Japan on trade? It's a whole new picture now.
    The President. I don't think so. I don't think so. We started, 
interestingly enough--it's easy to forget now, but the agreement itself, 
the framework agreement was negotiated with Mr. Miyazawa before he left 
office, with the concurrence of at least a sufficient number of the 
people in his government in the LDP, which would normally be thought of 
as more resistant to these sorts of changes. And we have kept up--we 
have had a good relationship, our administration has, with a number of 
the Japanese political leaders in this coalition. And we'll just have to 
see what comes out of it.
    But I would not assume that the cause of economic and political 
reform will suffer an irrevocable setback. If you listen to the Prime 
Minister carefully in his public statement, he made it clear that while 
there were these personal questions which were raised which he took, I 
think, to use his words, personal and moral responsibility for, he also 
talked about the importance of having an effective governing coalition 
and the need for the reform movement to come to grips with its internal 
contradictions.
    So I wouldn't write the epitaph of change too quickly here. I think 
Mr. Hosokawa believes that he may be able to continue to push for it and 
be a force for it, and I think he believes that we may wind up with a 
Japanese government with a little more capacity to change in some areas 
than perhaps the present coalition does. We'll just have to wait and 
see.
    Q. Might it complicate the situation with North Korea and with 
China? You've got some big decisions regarding Asia in the next 2 
months.
    The President. Well, we do. My belief is that any successor 
government will keep working closely with us on North Korea and keep in 
close touch with us on China and keep working with us with China on 
North Korea. I believe

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that will happen. I would be surprised if that did not happen.

Bosnia

    Q. Which way are we going on Bosnia right now?
    Q. The Perry way or the Christopher way?
    The President. We're going--no. Let me just say, I think that's a 
great overstatement. I talked to both of them in each of the last few 
days about a number of other issues. But I don't think that there ever 
was a real difference between them. And our Government position is 
clear, and we'll keep trying to work for peace in Bosnia. We'll make our 
air forces available as part of the NATO strategy, as part of the 
UNPROFOR strategy to protect the forces that are there.
    They were both trying to say in different ways that we might--we 
certainly wouldn't rule out the use of our efforts around Gorazde but 
that there is a process that triggers those efforts, which you know well 
and which has to be followed before we can bring our force into play. So 
I do not believe there is a difference between the two of them and I--
frankly, my instinct, having talked to both of them at some length, is 
that there never was a difference between the two of them. So we are 
together. We have the same policy we always had, and we're going to keep 
trying to make it work.

Note: The President spoke at 2:36 p.m. at the Marquette Hotel.