    [Public Papers of the Presidents of the United States: William J. Clinton (1997, Book II)]
    [December 5, 1997]
    [Pages 1718-1719]
    [From the U.S. Government Publishing Office www.gpo.gov]

    Remarks Prior to Discussions With European Union Leaders and an Exchange
    With Reporters
    December 5, 1997

        The President. Let me say very briefly that we are delighted to have
    another one of our EU summits, and it's particularly interesting because
    we now have two Luxembourgers here instead of one, which gives them, I
    think, the highest percentage of world leadership compared to population
    of any country in the world by a good long ways. [Laughter] And we have

    [[Page 1719]]

    a lot to discuss, but I just want to thank President Santer and Prime
    Minister Juncker for the work that we have done together with the EU in
    the last 6 months under the presidency of Luxembourg, and I look forward
    to the discussions today.

    International Agreement on Greenhouse Gas Emissions

        Q. Are you changing your position, softening on global warming?
        The President. Softening or toughening?
        Q. Whichever. You tell us.
        The President. Well, we're working in Kyoto to try to get an
    agreement, and we'll see if we can. We hope we can.
        Q. Is a compromise impossible considering the distance between the
    two positions, the EU on one side, the U.S. on the other side?
        The President. Not if everybody wants an agreement. Our position is
    that it's a global issue, we want to get global involvement, and we want
    this to be the beginning of a process which eventually will have
    everyone in the world involved in dealing with this issue. And I think
    that the chances that we can get an agreement are reasonably good if
    everybody there really wants an agreement and we want to see countries
    bound to targets which will lead us to reduced greenhouse gas emissions.
    That's the real test.

    Middle East Peace Process

        Q. Did you give Secretary Albright any new marching orders on the
    Middle East?
        The President. Well, we had a good meeting on things that we think
    will move the ball forward. And she's going with the instructions that I
    gave her to talk to Prime Minister Netanyahu and Chairman Arafat, and
    I'm very hopeful. I think it's in the nature of this process that the
    less I say, the better chance we have of making progress, so I don't
    think I want to talk about it too much.
        Q. But these are new ideas?
        The President. Oh, yes, we have some new ideas at least about the
    process, about where to go from here, or at least the different
    approaches. And we hope that it will move the ball forward. I think that
    they both understand that this is a time when something needs to be done
    to show concrete progress. I'm encouraged by that. We'll just have to
    see what happens.

    Assistant Attorney General Nominee

        Q. Are you planning to make a recess appointment of Bill Lee?
        The President. I don't have anything to say about that now.

    Minority Leader Richard A. Gephardt

        Q. How about your conversation with Gephardt? Did you fight?
        The President. I had a good talk with him, and we had a good visit.
    We agreed that we needed to focus on 1998, not only in terms of the
    politics of '98 but also in terms of the substance of what we can do to
    serve the people here. It was a very satisfactory talk.

    Note: The President spoke at 10:56 a.m. in the Oval Office at the White
    House. The President met with Prime Minister Jean-Claude Juncker of
    Luxembourg in his capacity as President of the European Council and
    President Jacques Santer of the European Commission. In his remarks, he
    referred to Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu of Israel and Chairman
    Yasser Arafat of the Palestinian Authority. A tape was not available for
    verification of the content of these remarks.