    [Public Papers of the Presidents of the United States: George W. Bush (2006, Book II)]
    [December 6, 2006]
    [Pages 2151-2152]
    [From the U.S. Government Publishing Office www.gpo.gov]

    Remarks Following Discussions With President Oscar Arias Sanchez of Costa Rica
    December 6, 2006

        President Bush. Mr. President, welcome. I'm glad to welcome you back
    to the White House. I appreciate the very important discussions we had.
    Our discussions started with the bilateral relationship between the
    United States and Costa Rica. It is an important relationship. It's an
    important relationship when it comes to trade; it's an important
    relationship when it comes to interchanges between our governments and
    our peoples.
        Mr. President, you spent a lot of time talking about the importance
    of education, and I respect you for that, and I appreciate your emphasis
    on education. And we will investigate ways to determine whether or not
    the United States can help, if you so desire, on matters of education.
    And I congratulate you on being very successful in educating the younger
    children of your country. And I, again, admire your focus on extending
    the education through all grades in Costa Rica.
        Secondly, we spent time on CAFTA. It's an important initiative for
    this administration. I appreciate your dedication to the issue of trade.
    The President understands full well that trade is the best way to help
    reduce poverty around the world, and so he made it clear to me his deep
    desire for the United States to take the lead on the Doha round of the
    trade discussions, which I assured him we would.
        I appreciated very much your advice, Mr. President, on the
    neighborhood in which we live. I thank you for your clear vision when it
    comes to forms of government. And I appreciate you sharing with me your
    insights as to the different countries and different leaders and how
    best that we can work together to achieve peace and stability.
        It's an honor to have you here, sir. You represent a fine country
    that a lot of Americans have had firsthand knowledge with. And I'm proud
    to welcome you.
        President Arias Sanchez. Well, thank you, Mr. President, for your
    time. This room is familiar to me. I visited the Oval Office in the
    past, during the Reagan years and when President Bush was President. I
    was telling President Bush that in the past, every time I came to the
    White House, it was not to talk about Costa Rica, but about Nicaragua,
    and I'm very happy that we had a chance to talk about Costa Rica this
    time.
        And as he just mentioned, my country is a small country. We produce
    what we do not consume, and we consume what

    [[Page 2152]]

    we do not produce. This is why trade is so important to us. Costa Rica
    is a very open economy, is the second-largest open economy in this
    hemisphere, after Chile. And this is why CAFTA is important to us, and
    this is why we're so determined to approve CAFTA, ratify CAFTA in our
    congress as soon as possible. And we are in the process of initiating
    negotiations with the European Union about free trade agreement with the
    whole of Europe, the European Union.
        Concerning education, this is my priority. Peace was my priority 20
    years ago; now it's education. I was asking President Bush that his
    program, No Child Left Behind, could be applied in many Latin American
    countries. You are all aware that what explains our failures, among
    other things, is the fact that average schooling in Latin American
    countries is only 6\1/2\ years, and that explains the social inequality
    and the poverty of our people.
        So at the beginning of the 21st century, we're going to spend more
    on education, which is my dream and my determination to spend as much as
    8 percent of GDP on education. We are simply condemning our children to
    remain poor as their grandfathers, and this is something that certainly
    the people of Latin America don't deserve.
        President Bush. Thank you, sir. Glad you're here. Good job.

    Note: The President spoke at 11:41 a.m. in the Oval Office at the White
    House. The Office of the Press Secretary also released a Spanish
    language transcript of these remarks.