[Public Papers of the Presidents of the United States: WILLIAM J. CLINTON (2000, Book I)]
[March 22, 2000]
[Pages 513-518]
[From the U.S. Government Publishing Office www.gpo.gov]



Remarks to a Joint Session of Parliament in New Delhi
March 22, 2000

    Mr. Vice President, Mr. Prime 
Minister, Mr. Speaker, Members of the Lok Sabha and Rajya Sabha, I am 
privileged to speak to you and, through you, to the people of India. I 
am honored to be joined today by members of my Cabinet and staff at the 
White House, and a very large representation of Members of our United 
States Congress from both political parties. We're all honored to be 
here, and we thank you for your warm welcome.
    I would also like to thank the people of India for their kindness to 
my daughter and my mother-in-law 
and, on their previous trip, to my 
wife and my daughter.
    I have looked forward to this day with great anticipation. This 
whole trip has meant a great deal to me, especially to this point, the 
opportunity I had to visit the Gandhi Memorial, to express on behalf of 
all the people of the United States our gratitude for the life, the 
work, the thought of Gandhi, without which the great civil rights 
revolution in the United States would never have succeeded on a peaceful 
plane.
    As Prime Minister Vajpayee has said, India and America are natural 
allies, two nations conceived in liberty, each finding strength in its 
diversity, each seeing in the other a reflection of its own aspiration 
for a more humane and just world.
    A poet once said the world's inhabitants can be divided into, and I 
quote, ``those that have seen the Taj Mahal and those that have not.'' 
[Laughter] Well, in a few hours I will have a chance to cross over to 
the happier side of that divide. But I hope, in a larger sense, that my 
visit will help the American people to see the new India and to 
understand you better. And I hope that the visit will help India to 
understand America better and that by listening to each other we can 
build a true partnership of mutual respect and common endeavor.
    From a distance, India often appears as a kaleidoscope of competing, 
perhaps superficial images. Is it atomic weapons or ahimsa; a land 
struggling against poverty and inequality or the world's largest middle-
class society? Is it still simmering with communal tensions or history's 
most successful melting pot? Is it Bollywood or Satyajit Ray; Shweta 
Shetty or Alla Rakha? Is it the handloom or the hyperlink? The truth is, 
no single image can possibly do justice to your great nation. But beyond 
the complexities and the apparent contradictions, I believe India 
teaches us some very basic lessons.
    The first is about democracy. There are still those who deny that 
democracy is a universal aspiration, who say it works only for people of 
a certain culture or a certain degree of economic development. India has 
been proving them wrong for 52 years now. Here is a country where more 
than 2 million people hold elected office in local government, a country 
that shows at every election that those who possess the least cherish 
their vote the most. Far from washing away the uniqueness of your 
culture, your democracy has brought out the richness of its tapestry and 
given you the knot that holds it together.
    A second lesson India teaches is about diversity. You have already 
heard remarks about that this morning. But around the world there is a 
chorus of voices who say ethnic and religious diversity is a threat, who 
argue that the only way to keep different people from killing one 
another is to keep them as far apart as possible. But India has shown us 
a better way. For all the troubles you have seen, surely this 
subcontinent has seen more innocents hurt in the efforts to divide 
people by ethnicity and faith than by

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the efforts to bring them together in peace and harmony. Under trying 
circumstances, you have shown the world how to live with difference. You 
have shown that tolerance and mutual respect are in many ways the keys 
to our common survival. That is something the whole world needs to 
learn.
    A third lesson India teaches is about globalization and what may be 
the central debate of our time. Many people believe the forces of 
globalization are inherently divisive, that they can only widen the gap 
between rich and poor. That is a valid fear, but, I believe, wrong.
    As the distance between producers large and small and customers near 
and far becomes less relevant, developing countries will have 
opportunities not only to succeed but to lead in lifting more people out 
of poverty more quickly than at any time in human history. In the old 
economy, location was everything. In the new economy, information, 
education, and motivation are everything, and India is proving it.
    You liberated your markets, and now you have one of the 10 fastest 
growing economies in the world. At the rate of growth within your grasp, 
India's standard of living could rise by 500 percent in just 20 years. 
You embraced information technology, and now, when Americans and other 
big software companies call for consumer and customer support, they're 
just as likely to find themselves talking to an expert in Bangalore as 
one in Seattle.
    You decentralized authority, giving more individuals and communities 
the freedom to succeed. In that way, you affirmed what every successful 
country is finding in its own way: Globalization does not favor nations 
with a licensing raj; it does favor nations with a panchayat raj. And 
the world has been beating a path to your door.
    In the new millennium, every great country must answer one 
overarching question: How shall we define our greatness? Every country, 
America included, is tempted to cling to yesterday's definition of 
economic and military might. But true leadership for the United States 
and India derives more from the power of our example and the potential 
of our people.
    I believe that the greatest of India's many gifts to the world is 
the example its people have set, ``From Midnight to Millennium.'' Think 
of it: Virtually every challenge humanity knows can be found here in 
India. And every solution to every challenge can be found here as well: 
confidence in democracy, tolerance for diversity, a willingness to 
embrace social change. That is why Americans admire India, why we 
welcome India's leadership in the region and the world, and why we want 
to take our partnership to a new level, to advance our common values and 
interests, and to resolve the differences that still remain.
    There were long periods when that would not have been possible. 
Though our democratic ideals gave us a starting point in common and our 
dreams of peace and prosperity gave us a common destination, there was 
for too long too little common ground between East and West, North and 
South. Now, thankfully, the old barriers between nations and people, 
economies and cultures, are being replaced by vast networks of 
cooperation and commerce. With our open, entrepreneurial societies, 
India and America are at the center of those networks. We must expand 
them and defeat the forces that threaten them.
    To succeed, I believe there are four large challenges India and the 
United States must meet together, challenges that should define our 
partnership in the years ahead.
    The first of these challenges is to get our own economic 
relationship right. Americans have applauded your efforts to open your 
economy, your commitment to a new wave of economic reform, your 
determination to bring the fruits of growth to all your people. We are 
proud to support India's growth as your largest partner in trade and 
investment. And we want to see more Indians and more Americans benefit 
from our economic ties, especially in the cutting-edge fields of 
information technology, biotechnology, and clean energy. The private 
sector will drive this progress, but our job as governments is to create 
the conditions that will allow them to succeed in doing so and to reduce 
the remaining impediments to trade and investment between us.
    Our second challenge is to sustain global economic growth in a way 
that lifts the lives of rich and poor alike, both across and within 
national borders. Part of the world today lives at the cutting edge of 
change, while a big part still exists at the bare edge of survival. Part 
of the world lives in the information age. Part of the world does not 
even reach the clean water age. And often the two live side by side. It 
is unacceptable. It is intolerable. Thankfully, it is unnecessary. And 
it is far more than a

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regional crisis. Whether around the corner or around the world, abject 
poverty in this new economy is an affront to our common humanity and a 
threat to our common prosperity.
    The problem is truly immense, as you know far better than I. But 
perhaps for the first time in all history, few would dispute that we 
know the solutions. We know we need to invest in education and literacy, 
so that children can have soaring dreams and the tools to realize them. 
We know we need to make a special commitment in developing nations to 
the education of young girls, as well as young boys. Everything we have 
learned about development tells us that when women have access to 
knowledge, to health, to economic opportunity, and to civil rights, 
children thrive, families succeed, and countries prosper.
    Here again, we see how a problem and its answers can be found side 
by side in India, for every economist who preaches the virtues of 
women's empowerment points at first to the achievements of India's State 
of Kerala--I knew there would be somebody here from Kerala. [Laughter 
and applause] Thank you.
    To promote development, we know we must conquer the diseases that 
kill people and progress. Last December India immunized 140 million 
children against polio, the biggest public health effort in human 
history. I congratulate you on that.
    I have launched an initiative in the United States to speed the 
development of vaccines for malaria, tuberculosis, and AIDS, the biggest 
infectious killers of our time. This July, when our partners in the G-8 
meet in Japan, I will urge them to join us.
    But that is not enough, for at best, effective vaccines are years 
away. Especially for AIDS, we need a commitment today to prevention, and 
that means straight talk and an end to stigmatizing. As Prime Minister 
Vajpayee said, no one should ever speak of AIDS as someone else's 
problem. This has long been a big problem for the United States. It is 
now a big problem for you. I promise you America's partnership in the 
continued struggle.
    To promote development, we know we must also stand with those 
struggling for human rights and freedom around the world and in the 
region. For as the economist Amartya Sen has said, no system of 
government has done a better job in easing human want, in averting human 
catastrophes, than democracy. I am proud America and India will stand 
together on the right side of history when we launch the Community of 
Democracies in Warsaw this summer.
    All of these steps are essential to lifting people's lives. But 
there is yet another. With greater trade and the growth it brings, we 
can multiply the gains of education, better health, and democratic 
empowerment. That is why I hope we will work together to launch a new 
global trade round that will promote economic development for all.
    One of the benefits of the World Trade Organization is that it has 
given developing countries a bigger voice in global trade policy. 
Developing countries have used that voice to urge richer nations to open 
their markets further so that all can have a chance to grow. That is 
something the opponents of the WTO don't fully appreciate yet.
    We need to remind them that when Indians and Brazilians and 
Indonesians speak up for open trade, they were not speaking for some 
narrow corporate interest but for a huge part of humanity that has no 
interest in being saved from development. Of course, trade should not be 
a race to the bottom in environmental and labor standards, but neither 
should fears about trade keep part of our global community forever at 
the bottom.
    Yet we must also remember that those who are concerned about the 
impact of globalization in terms of inequality and environmental 
degradation do speak for a large part of humanity, those who believe 
that trade should contribute not just to the wealth but also to the 
fairness of societies, those who share Nehru's dream of a structure for 
living that fulfills our material needs and at the same time sustains 
our mind and spirit.
    We can advance these values without engaging in rich-country 
protectionism. Indeed, to sustain a consensus for open trade, we must 
find a way to advance these values as well. That is my motivation and my 
only motivation in seeking a dialog about the connections between labor, 
the environment, and trade and development.
    I would remind you--and I want to emphasize this--the United States 
has the most open markets of any wealthy country in the world. We have 
the largest trade deficit. We also have had a strong economy, because we 
have welcomed the products and the services from the labor of people 
throughout the world. I am for

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an open global trading system. But we must do it in a way that advances 
the cause of social justice around the world.
    The third challenge we face is to see that the prosperity and growth 
of the information age require us to abandon some of the outdated truths 
of the industrial age--as the economy grows faster today, for example, 
when children are kept in school, not put to work. Think about the 
industries that are driving our growth today in India and in America. 
Just as oil enriched the nations who had it in the 20th century, clearly 
knowledge is doing the same for the nations who have it in the 21st 
century. The difference is, knowledge can be tapped by all people 
everywhere, and it will never run out.
    We must also find ways to achieve robust growth while protecting the 
environment and reversing climate change. I'm convinced we can do that 
as well. We will see in the next few years, for example, automobiles 
that are 3, 4, perhaps 5 times as efficient as those being driven today. 
Soon, scientists will make alternative sources of energy more widely 
available and more affordable. Just for example, before long, chemists 
almost certainly will unlock the block that will allow us to produce 8 
or 9 gallons of fuel from biofuels, farm fuels, using only one gallon of 
gasoline.
    Indian scientists are at the forefront of this kind of research, 
pioneering the use of solar energy to power rural communities, 
developing electric cars for use in crowded cities, converting 
agricultural waste into electricity. If we can deepen our cooperation 
for clean energy, we will strengthen our economies, improve our people's 
health, and fight global warming. This should be a vital element of our 
new partnership.
    A fourth challenge we face is to protect the gains of democracy and 
development from the forces which threaten to undermine them. There is 
the danger of organized crime and drugs. There is the evil of 
trafficking in human beings, a modern form of slavery. And of course, 
there is the threat of terrorism. Both our nations know it all too well.
    Americans understood the pain and agony you went through during the 
Indian Airlines hijacking. And I saw that pain firsthand when I met with 
the parents and the widow of the young man who was killed on that 
airplane. We grieve with you for the Sikhs who were killed in Kashmir, 
and our heart goes out to their families. We will work with you to build 
a system of justice, to strengthen our cooperation against terror. We 
must never relax our vigilance or allow the perpetrators to intimidate 
us into retreating from our democratic ideals.
    Another danger we face is the spread of weapons of mass destruction 
to those who might have no reservations about using them. I still 
believe this is the greatest potential threat to the security we all 
face in the 21st century. It is why we must be vigilant in fighting the 
spread of chemical and biological weapons. And it is why we must both 
keep working closely to resolve our remaining differences on nuclear 
proliferation.
    I am aware that I speak to you on behalf of a nation that has 
possessed nuclear weapons for 55 years and more. But since 1988, the 
United States has dismantled more than 13,000 nuclear weapons. We have 
helped Russia to dismantle their nuclear weapons and to safeguard the 
material that remains. We have agreed to an outline of a treaty with 
Russia that will reduce our remaining nuclear arsenal by more than half. 
We are producing no more fissile material, developing no new land- or 
submarine-based missiles, engaging in no new nuclear testing.
    From South America to South Africa, nations are forswearing these 
weapons, realizing that a nuclear future is not a more secure future. 
Most of the world is moving toward the elimination of nuclear weapons. 
That goal is not advanced if any country, in any region, it moves in the 
other direction.
    I say this with great respect. Only India can determine its own 
interests. Only India can know if it truly is safer today than before 
the tests. Only India can determine if it will benefit from expanding 
its nuclear and missile capabilities, if its neighbors respond by doing 
the same thing. Only India knows if it can afford a sustained investment 
in both conventional and nuclear forces while meeting its goals for 
human development. These are questions others may ask, but only you can 
answer.
    I can only speak to you as a friend about America's own experience 
during the cold war. We were geographically distant from the Soviet 
Union. We were not engaged in direct armed combat. Through the years of 
direct dialog with our adversary, we each had a very good idea

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of the other's capabilities, doctrines, and intentions. We each spent 
billions of dollars on elaborate command and control systems, for 
nuclear weapons are not cheap.
    And yet, in spite of all of this--and as I sometimes say jokingly, 
in spite of the fact that both sides had very good spies, and that was a 
good thing--[laughter]--in spite of all of this, we came far too close 
to nuclear war. We learned that deterrence alone cannot be relied on to 
prevent accident or miscalculation. And in a nuclear standoff, there is 
nothing more dangerous than believing there is no danger.
    I can also repeat what I said at the outset: India is a leader, a 
great nation, which by virtue of its size, its achievements, and its 
example has the ability to shape the character of our time. For any of 
us, to claim that mantle and assert that status is to accept first and 
foremost that our actions have consequences for others beyond our 
borders. Great nations with broad horizons must consider whether actions 
advance or hinder what Nehru called the larger cause of humanity.
    So India's nuclear policies, inevitably, have consequences beyond 
your borders, eroding the barriers against the spread of nuclear 
weapons, discouraging nations that have chosen to forswear these 
weapons, encouraging others to keep their options open. But if India's 
nuclear test shook the world, India's leadership for nonproliferation 
can certainly move the world.
    India and the United States have reaffirmed our commitment to forgo 
nuclear testing. And for that I thank the Prime Minister, the Government, and the people of India. But in our 
own self-interest--and I say this again--in our own self-interest, we 
can do more. I believe both nations should join the Comprehensive 
Nuclear-Test-Ban Treaty, work to launch negotiations on a treaty to end 
the production of fissile materials for nuclear weapons, strengthen 
export controls. And India can pursue defense policies in keeping with 
its commitment not to seek a nuclear or missile arms race, which the 
Prime Minister has forcefully reaffirmed just in these last couple of 
days.
    Again, I do not presume to speak for you or to tell you what to 
decide. It is not my place. You are a great nation, and you must decide. 
But I ask you to continue our dialog on these issues, and let us turn 
our dialog into a genuine partnership against proliferation. If we make 
progress in narrowing our differences, we will be both more secure, and 
our relationship can reach its full potential.
    I hope progress can also be made in overcoming the source of tension 
in this region, including the tensions between India and Pakistan. I 
share many of your Government's concerns about the course Pakistan is 
taking, your disappointment that past overtures have not always met with 
success, your outrage over recent violence. I know it is difficult to be 
a democracy bordered by nations whose governments reject democracy.
    But I also believe--I also believe India has a special opportunity, 
as a democracy, to show its neighbors that democracy is about dialog. It 
does not have to be about friendship, but is it about building working 
relationships among people who differ.
    One of the wisest things anyone ever said to me is that you don't 
make peace with your friends. That is what the late Israeli Prime 
Minister Yitzhak Rabin told me before he signed the Oslo accords with 
the Palestinians, with whom he had been fighting for decades. It is well 
to remember--I remind myself of it all the time, even when I have 
arguments with members of the other party in my Congress--[laughter]--
you don't make peace with your friends.
    Engagement with adversaries is not the same thing as endorsement. It 
does not require setting aside legitimate grievances. Indeed, I strongly 
believe that what has happened since your Prime Minister made his courageous journey to Lahore only reinforces 
the need for dialog.
    I can think of no enduring solution to this problem that can be 
achieved in any other way. In the end, for the sake of the innocents who 
always suffer the most, someone must end the contest of inflicting and 
absorbing pain.
    Let me also make clear, as I have repeatedly: I have certainly not 
come to South Asia to mediate the dispute over Kashmir. Only India and 
Pakistan can work out the problems between them. And I will say the same 
thing to General Musharraf in Islamabad. 
But if outsiders cannot resolve this problem, I hope you will create the 
opportunity to do it yourselves, calling on the support of others who 
can help where possible, as American diplomacy did in urging the 
Pakistanis to go back behind the Line of Control in the Kargil crisis.

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    In the meantime, I will continue to stress that this should be a 
time for restraint, for respect for the Line of Control, for renewed 
lines of communication.
    Addressing this challenge and all the others I mentioned will 
require us to be closer partners and better friends and to remember that 
good friends, out of respect, are honest with one another. And even when 
they do not agree, they always try to find common ground.
    I have read that one of the unique qualities of Indian classical 
music is its elasticity. The composer lays down a foundation, a 
structure of melodic and rhythmic arrangements, but the player has to 
improvise within that structure to bring the raga to life.
    Our relationship is like that. The composers of our past have given 
us a foundation of shared democratic ideals. It is up to us to give life 
to those ideals in this time. The melodies do not have to be the same to 
be beautiful to both of us. But if we listen to each other and we strive 
to realize our vision together, we will write a symphony far greater 
than the sum of our individual notes.
    The key is to genuinely and respectfully listen to each other. If we 
do, Americans will better understand the scope of India's achievements 
and the dangers India still faces in this troubled part of the world. We 
will understand that India will not choose a particular course simply 
because others wish it to do so. It will choose only what it believes 
its interests clearly demand and what its people democratically embrace.
    If we listen to each other, I also believe Indians will understand 
better that America very much wants you to succeed. Time and again in my 
time as President, America has found that it is the weakness of great 
nations, not their strength, that threatens our vision for tomorrow. So 
we want India to be strong, to be secure, to be united, to be a force 
for a safer, more prosperous, more democratic world. Whatever we ask of 
you, we ask in that spirit alone.
    After too long a period of estrangement, India and the United States 
have learned that being natural allies is a wonderful thing, but it is 
not enough. Our task is to turn a common vision into common 
achievements, so that partners in spirit can be partners in fact. We 
have already come a long way to this day of new beginnings, but we still 
have promises to keep, challenges to meet, and hopes to redeem.
    So let us seize this moment with humility in the fragile and 
fleeting nature of this life, but absolute confidence in the power of 
the human spirit. Let us seize it for India, for America, for all those 
with whom we share this small planet, and for all the children that 
together we can give such bright tomorrows.
    Thank you very much.

Note: The President spoke at 11:10 a.m. at the Parliament Building. In 
his remarks, he referred to Vice President Krishnan Kant, Prime Minister 
Atal Behari Vajpayee, and Speaker of the Lok Sabha G.M.C. Balayogi of 
India; and Gen. Pervez Musharraf, army chief of staff, who led a coup 
d'etat in Pakistan on October 12, 1999.