    [Public Papers of the Presidents of the United States: William J. Clinton (1999, Book I)]
    [March 9, 1999]
    [Pages 330-334]
    [From the U.S. Government Publishing Office www.gpo.gov]

    [[Page 330]]

    Remarks in a Roundtable Discussion on Hurricane Mitch Reconstruction
    Efforts in Tegucigalpa, Honduras
    March 9, 1999

        President Clinton. Thank you, Mr. President, for your remarks and for the extended visit we have
    already had today about these matters.
        I wanted to have the opportunity today to hear from a broad cross-
    section of citizens of this country, and so I will be extremely brief. I
    agree with the President that this
    period of reconstruction should be seen as the opportunity to build
    something even better than what was here before. And furthermore, I
    believe that if all elements of the society are properly involved and
    feel fairly treated, that the country's social fabric, sense of
    community will be stronger than it was before the disaster occurred.
        Many of you have paid a very high price for what has occurred, and
    the losses have been staggering. But I think the--I have been quite
    impressed by what has already been done and by the attitude of the
    people. What the United States is interested in is how we can best be an
    effective partner with you from here on in. And so I'm quite interested
    in your perspective on that, as well as anything you would like to tell
    me about your present activities.
        I'd also like to introduce--this is Congressman Xavier
    Becerra, who came here before with the First
    Lady and has just finished a term as the head of the Congressional
    Hispanic Caucus. He is from California. And I am delighted to have him
    back with me. And Congressman Reyes from
    Texas is also here with us.
        Moderator. We have our archbishop--perhaps he can kick off the
    discussion.

    [Archbishop Oscar Rodriguez began the
    discussion by thanking President Clinton, the people, and the churches
    in the U.S. for their assistance in the aftermath of Hurricane Mitch. He
    asked the President to support trade expansion and NAFTA parity, cease
    deportation of Hondurans, and support Central American efforts within
    the G-7 for multilateral debt relief.]

        Moderator. And this is the mayor of Tegucigalpa. I think you know
    about the accident she had in the helicopter. And after that, she took
    his job, and here we have her now.

    [Mayor Vilma de Castellanos stated that
    30 percent of Tegucigalpa was destroyed, mentioning the impact of loss
    of life and damage to the economic and social infrastructure of the
    city. She then presented the President with the key to the city.]

        Moderator. And now we have Mario Canawati, who is president of the Chamber of Commerce and
    Industry of San Pedro Sula and Cortes.

    [Mr. Canawati thanked the U.S. Government and
    people for support during the crisis and reconstruction. He noted that
    Central America was an important trade partner of the United States,
    which had been instrumental in Honduran economic and democratic
    development through the Caribbean Basin Initiative (CBI). He said the
    textile and apparel industry had been excluded from CBI and that
    Honduras was losing investment to Mexico as a result. He said that
    Honduran exports should compete under the same conditions as NAFTA
    products and called for a new version of CBI.]

        Moderator. And perhaps Jacqueline Foglia from the Honduran American Chamber of Commerce
    would like to speak.

    [Ms. Foglia stated that Hurricane Mitch
    affected agriculture more than other sectors of the economy. She noted
    that since the garment industry and tourism sectors were not highly
    affected, these might provide the motor for economic reconstruction. She
    outlined steps that the Honduran American Chamber of Commerce was taking
    to advance reconstruction efforts with the Association of American
    Chambers of Commerce of Latin America, in Washington, DC, such as
    working toward a U.S. legislative reconstruction package which would
    include greater access to U.S. markets, promoting faster economic
    recovery, job creation, and overall economic benefits for Honduras.]

        Moderator. And now, Jorge Quinones,
    director of the Vida Foundation.

    [Mr. Quinones thanked the President and the
    U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID) for its help in
    Honduran environmental projects. He stated that in the aftermath of the

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    hurricane, reforestation and sustainable management of water basins were
    the most formidable challenges in reconstruction. He added that
    environmental education needed to be a central part of the
    reconstruction agenda.]

        Moderator. And Mariano Flanos now, from
    Save the Children.

    [Mr. Flanos stated that Save the Children
    used financing from the people and Government of the United States,
    especially from USAID, to support over 50,000 people in such areas as
    home construction, rehabilitation of water systems and schools, and
    equipment for clinics and hospitals.]

        Moderator. And now, Ricardo Maduro, a businessman.

    [Mr. Maduro, president of a private education
    foundation, stated that Hurricane Mitch had substantially damaged the
    Honduran education infrastructure and reduced the public and private
    capacity to invest in education. He suggested using nontraditional
    methods such as radio and television to reach students and expressed the
    need for more computers in education and teaching English as a second
    language. A spokesman for the Flores administration said the Government
    was working with the International Monetary Fund for bilateral and
    multilateral debt relief, developing a reconstruction master plan with a
    consultative group in Sweden, and strengthening the mechanisms of
    financial transparency through international auditing. Representative
    Xavier Becerra commended the Hondurans for
    the improvements made since his visit in November 1998 and pledged to
    work hard in Congress to provide as much support for the region as
    possible.]

        President Clinton. First of all, I would like to thank you all for
    your presentations and for making them quite specific and to the point.
    I would like to respond to a number of the points that were made. First
    of all, I have sent legislation to the Congress, just last week before I
    came here, asking for greater liberalization of trade for the Central
    American and Caribbean nations to move closer toward parity with NAFTA
    in Mexico. I have--it does not go as far in everything that I'm sure a
    lot of you would do, but it does as much as we believe we can pass in
    the Congress.
        I was profoundly disappointed last year that we did not pass the
    trade-opening initiative. And of course, after the hurricane struck, I
    was even more disappointed. I think now, ironically because of the
    hurricane, we may have a better chance to pass a bill. And I will do
    everything I can to that end.
        With regard to debt relief, part of the package that I have proposed
    to the Congress in aid, as opposed to trade, about a $965 million
    package, a part of it involves the debt deferral and outright debt
    forgiveness, both of which would give very much needed debt relief not
    only to Honduras but to the other Central American nations. If the
    Congress will go along with me and pass this, it will give me the
    standing to argue more forcefully to the other nations and to the
    international organizations that they must follow suit.
        I think, clearly, Honduras should be given relief under the highly
    indebted countries initiative that the United States has done a lot to
    create. I believe we should do more. I think the fact that the Holy
    Father has made this a year in which he's
    calling for people to do more debt relief will, frankly, be enormously
    helpful, and I told him that when I was in St. Louis recently. And I
    would urge you to communicate this to the Vatican, that if there could
    be more of this, like sort of a constant reminder, it would be highly
    effective, even perhaps establishing some sort of priority saying you
    ought to do at least Central America and then something in Africa and
    something in Asia to give hope to the people on those continents,
    something like that.
        But I think on a thing like this it's not enough to say it one time.
    We have to keep working. But I think Central America has a special claim
    here, Honduras, Nicaragua, the other countries as well. Because one of
    the arguments I always hear, even in my own country, about debt
    forgiveness is, ``Well, look, you know if you''--and the former banker
    here understands this--``if you forgive it all, well, then nobody will
    want to loan any money tomorrow because they'll think all of that will
    be forgiven, too.'' Well, in the aftermath of the worst natural disaster
    in centuries here, it seems to me that argument just doesn't hold water
    here. It might be true in the case of an Asian country that had a bad
    banking system and got in an economic problem for local reasons; but it
    seems to me, insofar as the present predicament of Central America is a
    direct result of the hurricane, that argument has no standing.

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        So I will do the best I can. But again, I would urge all of you to
    stay on that because relieving the government of the financial burden of
    the payments will free up a lot of money for education and other things
    as well.
        On the deportation, I think you know, Archbishop
    Rodriguez, because you spoke in a way that
    indicated you did, I have done what I could to minimize the impact of
    some of our immigration laws, not only on Hondurans but on all the
    people of Central America. I, frankly, believe I have done all I can do
    under the law. Now, because there was such hardship here, so much
    devastation, I was able to provide some greater consideration for the
    Hondurans that have come to the United States. But I think it would be a
    mistake to sort of openly encourage more people to come, in violation of
    our laws and quotas, because there is--I have gone to the limit of what
    I can now do. And I think it is far more important for us to concentrate
    on getting this aid package passed, getting the debt relief, getting the
    trade relief, getting the renewal of the economy here going.
        Let me just mention three other issues very quickly. One of you
    mentioned the need for more loans for small business and
    microbusinesses. We have our USAID Director here with me, Mr.
    Atwood. I think the United States funded 2
    million microenterprise loans last year through AID around the world. My
    wife is--probably talked about that
    when she was here. This is a passion of hers and has been for about 15
    years now.
        And we have found, in our own country, when we have a natural
    disaster--you know, we had a flood, a 500-year flood in the Mississippi
    River 5 years ago, and one of the most important funds that we have is
    the fund that provides for special credit for small businesses who
    otherwise could not get it.
        So I don't know whether there's anything special, Mr. President, we
    could do to help, for the small and micro-enterprises or to try to
    establish even a broader and more adequate international fund for such
    things in the face of disasters. But we always find, even in America,
    which has a very sophisticated banking system, that they are the first
    casualties of natural disasters that wreck the economies of whole
    communities. So if we could help you in that, I would be happy to.
        There are just two other things that were mentioned. With regard to
    the environment, I think that--you said, sir, that you felt that the
    disaster would have been even worse had it not been for some of the
    environmental practices here in Honduras. Yesterday, when I was in
    Nicaragua, there was no question that it was worse in the places where
    there had been vast deforestation and nothing to protect the people from
    the mudslides. And you have a lot of serious--the President was telling me today, you have a lot of
    serious decisions to make about, you know, how to replenish the soil
    which has been destroyed, where the topsoil has been carried away or
    perhaps the nutrients have been washed away and the crops won't grow
    anymore.
        I will do whatever I can. In this aid package, we have some
    significant amount of money for environmental investments. But I will do
    whatever I can to be particularly helpful there. I think it would be--
    not only with the United States but with others as well--I think the
    more we know about the specific plans and strategies, the better off we
    will be.
        But if you look at our hemisphere, our region here, it's perfectly
    obvious that the countries that have done the best job of preserving
    their natural environment are going to be the strongest economically,
    also, over the long run. And yet, one of the greatest battles we face in
    the world today, in this larger struggle over climate change, which may
    or may not have had anything to do with Hurricane Mitch--we don't know.
    No one knows for sure. But the larger battle is that in most countries,
    most decisionmakers do not believe you can grow an economy unless you
    continue to use its resources at an unsustainable rate--that is, at a
    greater rate than they can be replaced--and do not believe you can grow
    an economy unless you increase, year-in and year-out, the amount of fuel
    and energy you are using that contributes to greenhouse gases--coal and
    oil, for example.
        Now, all the evidence is against that proposition, but old ideas die
    hard. And I do believe that because of economies of scale, if for no
    other reason, and because of some of the stunning examples already set
    by the preservation of the biosphere or by the energy patterns adopted
    in Costa Rica, for example, that Central America may be in a unique
    position to get lots of investment to prove to the rest of the world
    that we don't have to destroy the environment to grow the economy. And
    so I would be happy to exert some extra efforts to help

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    you get some investments in that regard, but again, I think the
    specifics are important.
        For example, I'll just say one thing. The last time I was in Costa
    Rica, I noticed they were driving--the buses they were using, the school
    buses they were using, the transportation buses they were using, were
    powered by electricity or natural gas, and they were all made by a
    company in Vice President Gore's home State. And there are lots of
    things--if we knew what the strategy was here and what the priorities
    were, there might be a lot of things we could do to be helpful.
        The last thing I'd like to say is, I want to endorse what was said
    earlier by you, Mr. Maduro, about education.
    And I would be happy for us to have a long-term partnership on that, but
    again, I don't feel that I know enough to know what your immediate
    priorities are. The United States has had some success in working with
    countries in various parts of the world in helping to increase more
    rapidly the number of children going to school. And of course, as you
    pointed out, there's no point in increasing the number of children going
    to school unless you have a place for them to go to school, a teacher to
    teach them, and materials with which they learn. But I do not believe
    that you can come anywhere close to doing what you want to do in
    Honduras if it takes you a decade to add one more year to the average
    schooling.
        And there may be a way--I'm going to talk about this a little bit
    tomorrow--but this is a year in which a lot of countries are trying to
    pass this international convention against child labor, which the church
    has been strongly supportive of and which I strongly support. But I
    think it would be interesting to see whether we could marry the
    commitment of countries to support the convention against child labor
    with a commitment of the advanced countries that are pushing to help to
    dramatically increase investment in those countries in education, so
    that you're saying not just that you don't want the children in the
    factory but you do want them in the school. And there may be a way that
    we could dramatically accelerate the rate, the average schooling here.
        Now, I have all these people from my administration here, plus
    Lieutenant Governor MacKay, former Lieutenant
    Governor of Florida, who now will be my new Special Envoy to Latin
    America, and Mr. Atwood and the others are
    all here, so--and your Ambassadors. He's our Ambassador, but I think
    he's really your Ambassador. [Laughter] But we will follow up on this.
    On the environment and on education, the more specific you can be about
    what you want us to do, the more we can be helpful, I think. On all
    these areas, I will do my best.
        The last thing I'd like to say is, I'd like to thank the
    gentleman from Save the Children. My wife and
    I have been involved with Save the Children for more than 20 years, long
    before we ever thought we would be in national political life. And as
    soon as this hurricane occurred, she gave some money from her foundation
    to Save the Children through operations here. So I thank you for what
    you're doing. The organization has done great work in our home area as
    well, and I thank all of you.
        This was a very good set of presentations, and you gave me a lot to
    go home and work on.

    [President Carlos Roberto Flores of
    Honduras expressed his appreciation to President Clinton and noted the
    representation in the audience of nongovernmental organizations, labor
    unions, private enterprise, and religious groups. He said his government
    did not want to promote emigration to the United States, but asked that
    Hondurans already there receive the same treatment other Central
    American countries' nationals receive by law.]

        President Clinton. Well, I think you know that I strongly believe in
    that. I think that the present American immigration law and how it
    treats people that were in our country as of some time ago is an
    inexcusable remnant of the cold war and wrong. I haven't said anything
    to you I haven't said at home. I think that--people came to the United
    States because they felt oppressed and are entitled to stay in our
    country because they came here; it shouldn't matter whether they felt
    the oppression from the left or the right. I mean, if it's a rational
    category, people should be treated the same regardless of what the facts
    are. But the real issue is that all the countries in Central America
    should be treated the same insofar as whatever the objective facts were
    that brought the people to our country. So if people should come home,
    then they should be treated the same; if people should be able to stay,
    they should be treated the same. That's what I believe.

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    [President Flores said he was
    optimistic about Honduras' recuperation from Hurricane Mitch but
    expressed concern that the difficulties it presented could undermine the
    democracy his nation had fought so hard to attain. He said the challenge
    would be to show the Honduran people that the system would work for
    them. He concluded by thanking the President for coming.]

        President Clinton. Thank you. Let
    me just say one thing as we break up. I have heard this--and one of the
    reasons I am grateful that we have Members of our Congress here is that
    we have these bills up there; they can be addressed now. I think there
    is an overwhelming understanding in both parties in the Congress that we
    have to pass the aid bill. And I think the only thing that we have to do
    is to make sure that political considerations in America that have
    nothing to do with Central America, things that are back home don't in
    any way hold up the consideration of either piece of legislation, and so
    we will work hard on it.
        Thank you.
        Oh, I have to get my key to the city. If I wear this to dinner
    tonight, I'll get a discount. [Laughter]
        Thank you.

    Note: The discussion began at 2:52 p.m. in the conference room at the
    Central Bank. In his remarks, the President referred to Pope John Paul
    II. A portion of these remarks could not be verified because the tape
    was incomplete.