    [Public Papers of the Presidents of the United States: William J. Clinton (1998, Book I)]
    [April 19, 1998]
    [Pages 589-590]
    [From the U.S. Government Publishing Office www.gpo.gov]

    Closing Remarks at the Summit of the Americas in Santiago
    April 19, 1998

        President Frei; fellow leaders of the
    Americas; First Ladies; distinguished Presidents of Senate, Chamber of Deputies,
    Supreme Court; members of the diplomatic
    corps; ladies and gentlemen of the Americas; let me say first to you,
    Mr. President--and I know I speak for all of us here--we thank you and
    Mrs. Frei and your entire team for the warmth of
    your welcome, the wonder of your country, and the genuine leadership you
    have brought to this Summit of the Americas. Thank you very much.
        At our first summit in 1994, we agreed on a common vision of a
    democratic, prosperous, peaceful, united hemisphere for the 21st
    century. We also formulated a comprehensive agenda to help us to realize
    that vision, an agenda to strengthen our democracies, tear down trade
    barriers, improve our people's quality of life.
        Our journey from Miami to Santiago, as we have often said, was from
    words to deeds. Still, for all our progress, we all admit that too many
    of our citizens have not yet seen their own lives improved as a result
    of our participation as free nations in the global economy. Therefore,
    we have committed ourselves here to a second stage of reforms designed
    to bring the benefits of freedom and free enterprise to ordinary
    citizens throughout the Americas.
        As was the truth in Miami, it is so here today: The real work of
    Santiago begins as we leave. And until we meet again in Canada, we must
    work every day to keep the commitments we have made to each other and to
    our people.
        First, we must continue to stand fast for democracy for our entire
    hemisphere, with no holdouts and no backsliders. We must support the
    integrity of the electoral process. We welcomed and participated in the
    restoration of democracy in Haiti. We supported its preservation in
    Paraguay. We now must support the OAS and CARICOM as they support the
    people of Guyana in the integrity of their electoral process. We must
    support our new special rapporteur on freedom of expression and work to
    prevent violence against journalists; get our new hemispheric justice
    system up and running; implement the OAS Illegal Firearms Convention to
    help to stop firearms from falling into the wrong hands; adopt the laws
    necessary to make our unprecedented anticorruption convention a reality.
    And most important, we must move aggressively to establish our alliance
    against drugs, so that we will have a more genuinely collective

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    effort to protect our people against narcotrafficking and drug abuse,
    violence and organized crime.
        Second, we must continue to bring the free economies of the Americas
    together. Today we launched comprehensive negotiations for a free-trade
    area of the Americas and vowed to make concrete progress toward that
    goal by the year 2000, including greater transparency in government
    procurement and banking operations, a commitment to free trade in
    cyberspace, and steps to facilitate business, such as customs
    coordination.
        And as we improve the climate for business contracts, we know we
    must also strengthen the social contract. The civil society committee we
    have established is designed to give all the voices of society the
    opportunity to be heard in shaping the new free-trade area of the
    Americas. We want more trade and better working conditions, more growth
    and a cleaner environment.
        The entrepreneurs of the information age can prosper in a way that
    increases opportunities for all who are willing to work hard. And we can
    reap the benefits of economic change and meet the challenge of climate
    change.
        Finally, we have made it our mission to give our people the tools
    they must have to succeed in the new economy: opening the doors of
    learning to all our children; doing more to lift our people out of
    poverty, supported by billions of dollars in new lending commitments for
    microenterprise and health care from the Inter-American Development Bank
    and the World Bank.
        By the time we meet again, we should resolve that all our small
    entrepreneurs, especially our women, should have access to the loans
    they need to get their businesses off the ground; that poor urban and
    rural citizens should be able to gain titles to their property; that we
    should eradicate measles from this hemisphere; and most important, that
    millions more of our children will be in school, not on the streets. We
    should achieve an 80-percent completion rate in primary school as we
    work toward our goal of 100 percent by the year 2010. Our children,
    after all, will have more to say about the future we are trying to
    create than any of the rest of us.
        The people of the Americas, as the President of Uruguay pointed out to us yesterday, have launched a
    profound revolution in the last few years, a revolution of peace and
    freedom and prosperity. Here in Santiago, we embrace our responsibility
    to make these historic forces lift the lives of all our people. That is
    the future we can forge together. It is a future worthy of the new
    Americas in a new millennium.
        Thank you very much.

    Note: The President spoke at 1:54 p.m. in the Ministry of Foreign
    Affairs Building. In his remarks, he referred to President of the Senate
    Andres Zaldivar, President of the Chamber of Deputies Gutenberg
    Martinez, and Justice Roberto Davila, President of the Supreme Court of
    Chile; and President Julio Maria Sanguinetti of Uruguay.