[Weekly Compilation of Presidential Documents Volume 29, Number 16 (Monday, April 26, 1993)]
[Pages 650-660]
[Online from the Government Publishing Office, www.gpo.gov]

<R04>
The President's News Conference

 April 23, 1993

    The President. Terry [Terence Hunt, Associated Press], do you have a 
question?

Bosnia

    Q. Mr. President, there's a growing feeling that the Western 
response to bloodshed in Bosnia has been woefully inadequate. Holocaust 
survivor Elie Wiesel asked you yesterday to do something, anything to 
stop the fighting. Is the United States considering taking unilateral 
action such as air strikes against Serb artillery sites?
    The President. Well, first let me say, as you know, for more than a 
week now we have been seriously reviewing our options for further 
action. And I want to say, too, let's look at the last 3 months. Since I 
became President, I have worked with our allies, and we have tried to 
move forward, first on the no-fly zone, on enforcement of it, on the 
humanitarian airdrops, on the war crimes investigation, on getting the 
Bosnian Muslims involved in the peace process. We have made some 
progress. And now we have a very much tougher sanctions resolution. And 
Leon Fuerth, who is the National Security Adviser to the Vice President, 
is in Europe now working on implementing that. That is going to make a 
big difference to Serbia.
    And we are reviewing other options. I think we should act. We should 
lead. The United States should lead. We have led for the last 3 months. 
We have moved the coalition. And to be fair, our allies in Europe have 
been willing to do their part. And they have troops on the ground there.
    But I do not think we should act alone, unilaterally, nor do I think 
we will have to. And in the next several days I think we will finalize 
the extensive review which has been going on and which has taken a lot 
of my time as well as the time of the administration, as it should have, 
over the last 10 days or so. I think we'll finish that in the near 
future, and then we'll have a policy, and we'll announce it and everyone 
can evaluate it.
    Q. Can I follow up?
    The President. Sure.
    Q. Do you see any parallel between the ethnic cleansing in Bosnia 
and the Holocaust?
    The President. I think the Holocaust is on a whole different level. 
I think it is without precedent or peer in human history. On the other 
hand, ethnic cleansing is the kind of inhumanity that the Holocaust took 
to the nth degree. The idea of moving people around and abusing them and 
often killing them solely because of their ethnicity is an abhorrent 
thing. And it is especially troublesome in that area where people of 
different ethnic groups live side by side for so long

[[Page 651]]

together. And I think you have to stand up against it. I think it's 
wrong.
    We were talking today about all of the other troubles in that 
region. I was happy to see the violence between the Croats and the 
Muslims in Bosnia subside this morning, and I think we're making 
progress on that front. But what's going on with the Serbians and the 
ethnic cleansing is qualitatively different than the other conflicts, 
both within the former Yugoslavia and in other parts of the region.

The First 100 Days

    The President. Helen [Helen Thomas, United Press International]?
    Q. Mr. President, by any count, you have not had a good week in your 
Presidency. The tragedy in Waco, the defeat of your stimulus bill, the 
standoff in Bosnia. What did you do wrong, and what are you going to do 
differently? How do you look at things? Are you reassessing?
    The President. I don't really believe that the situation in Bosnia--
it's not been a good week for the world, but I don't know that the 
administration could have made it different.
    On the stimulus package, I'd like to put it into the larger context 
and remind you that in this 100 days we have already fundamentally 
changed the direction of an American Government. We have abandoned 
trickle-down economics. We've abandoned the policies that brought the 
debt of this country from $1 trillion to $4 trillion in only a decade.
    The budget plan, which passed the Congress, which will reduce the 
deficit and increase investment, has led to a 20-year low in mortgage 
rates, dramatically lower interest rates. There are probably people in 
this room who have refinanced their home mortgages in the last 3 months 
or who have had access to cheaper credit. That's going to put tens of 
billion dollars coursing throughout this economy in ways that are very, 
very good for the country. And so we are moving in the right direction 
economically.
    I regret that the stimulus did not pass, and I have begun to ask, 
and will continue to ask, not only people in the administration but 
people in the Congress whether there is something I could have done 
differently to pass that. Part of the reason it didn't pass was 
politics; part of it was a difference in ideas. There are really people 
still who believe that it's not needed. I just disagree with that.
    I think the recovery--the economists say it's been underway for 
about 2 years, and we've still had 16 months of 7-percent unemployment, 
and all the wealthy countries are having trouble creating jobs. So I 
think there was an idea base, an argument there, that while we're 
waiting for the lower interest rates and the deficit reduction and the 
investments of the next 4 years to take effect, this sort of 
supplemental appropriation should go forward.
    Now, I have to tell you, I did misgauge that because a majority of 
the Republican Senators now sitting in the Senate voted for a similar 
stimulus when Ronald Reagan was President in 1983 and voted 28 times for 
regular supplemental appropriations like this. I just misgauged it. And 
I hope that I can learn something. I've just been here 90 days. And you 
know, I was a Governor working with a contentious legislature for 12 
years, and it took me a decade to get political reform there. So it 
takes time to change things. But I basically feel very good about what's 
happened in the first 100 days with regard to the Congress.

Tragedy in Waco

    Q. Waco--[inaudible]----
    The President. Well, with regard to Waco I don't have much to add to 
what I've already said. I want the situation looked into. I want us to 
bring in people who have any insights to bear on that. I think it's very 
important that the whole thing be thoroughly gone over. But I still 
maintain what I said from the beginning, that the offender there was 
David Koresh. And I do not think the United States Government is 
responsible for the fact that a bunch of fanatics decided to kill 
themselves. And I'm sorry that they killed their children.

Ross Perot

    Q. Mr. President, to follow up partly on Helen, on your stimulus 
package and on your political approach to Capitol Hill, Ross Perot said 
today that you're playing games with the American people in your tax 
policy. He was

[[Page 652]]

strongly critical of your stimulus package. He said he's going to launch 
an advertising campaign against the North American Free Trade Agreement. 
How are you going to handle his political criticism? Will it complicate 
your efforts on the Hill with your economic plan? And do you plan to 
repackage some of the things that have been in your stimulus program and 
try to resubmit them to the Hill?
    The President. Let me answer that question first. We're going to 
revisit all of that over the next few days. I'm going to be talking to 
Members of Congress and to others to see what we can do about that. With 
regard to the economic plan, I must say I found that rather amazing. I 
don't want to get into an argument with Mr. Perot. I'll be interested to 
hear what his specifics are, but I would--go back and read his book and 
his plan. There's a remarkable convergence except that we have more 
specific budget cuts. We raise taxes less on the middle class and more 
on the wealthy. But otherwise, the plans are remarkably similar.
    So I think it would be--I'll be interested to see if maybe perhaps 
he's changed his position from his book last year, and he has some new 
ideas to bring to bear. I'll be glad to hear them.
    Q. To follow up, sir, how do you plan to handle his political 
criticism? He's launched a campaign against you. Do you think you can 
sit back and just----
    The President. Well, first of all, I will ask you to apply the same 
level of scrutiny to him as you do to me. And if he's changed his 
position from the positions he took in the campaign last year, then we 
need to know why and what his ideas are. Maybe he's got some 
constructive ideas.
    I think the American people have shown that they're very impatient 
with people who don't want to produce results. And the one thing I think 
that everybody has figured out about me in the last--even if they don't 
agree with what I do--is that I want to get something done. I just came 
here to try to change things. I want to do things. And I want to do 
things that help people's lives. So my judgment is that if he makes a 
suggestion that is good, that is constructive, that takes us beyond some 
idea I've proposed that will change people's lives for the better, fine. 
But I think that that ought to be the test that we apply to everyone who 
weighs into this debate and not just to the President.

Bosnia

    Q. Mr. President, to go back to Bosnia for a minute. You continue to 
insist that this has to be multilateral action, a criteria that seems to 
have hamstrung us when it comes to many options thus far and makes it 
look as if this is a state of paralysis. The United States is the last 
remaining superpower. Why is it not appropriate in this situation for 
the United States to act unilaterally?
    The President. Well, the United States--surely you would agree, that 
the United States, even as the last remaining superpower, has to act 
consistent with international law under some mandate of the United 
Nations.
    Q. But you have a mandate and----
    The President. They do, and that is one of the things that we have 
under review. I haven't ruled out any option for action. I would remind 
all of you, I have not ruled out any option, except that we have not 
discussed and we are not considering the introduction of American forces 
in continuing hostilities there. We are not.
    So we are reviewing other options. But I also would remind you that, 
to be fair, our allies have had--the French, the British, and the 
Canadians--have had troops on the ground there. They have been 
justifiably worried about those. But they have supported the airdrops, 
the toughening of the sanctions. They welcomed the American delegation 
now in Europe, working on how to make these sanctions really work and 
really bite against Serbia. And I can tell you that the other nations 
involved are also genuinely reassessing their position, and I would not 
rule out the fact that we can reach an agreement for a concerted action 
that goes beyond where we have been. I don't have any criticism of the 
British, the French, and others about that.
    Q. Would that be military action?

Conflicting Statements

    Q. Mr. President, several of the leading lights in your 
administration, ranging from your FBI Director to your U.N. Ambassador,

[[Page 653]]

to your Deputy Budget Director, to your Health Services Secretary, have 
issued statements in the last couple of weeks which are absolutely 
contradictory to some of the positions you've taken in your 
administration. Why is that? Are you losing your political grip?
    The President. Give me an example.
    Q. Example? Judge Sessions said that there was no child abuse in 
Waco. Madeleine Albright has said in this morning's newspapers, at 
least, that she favors air strikes in Bosnia. All of these are things 
you said that you didn't support.
    The President. First of all, I don't know what--we know that David 
Koresh had sex with children. I think that is undisputed, is it not? Is 
it not? Does anybody dispute that? Where I come from that qualifies as 
child abuse. And we know that he had people teaching these kids how to 
kill themselves. I think that qualifies as abuse. And I'm not 
criticizing Judge Sessions because I don't know exactly what he said.
    In terms of Madeleine Albright, Madeleine Albright has made no 
public statement at all about air strikes. There is a press report that 
she wrote me a confidential letter in which she expressed her--or 
memos--in which she expressed her views about the new direction we 
should take in response to my request to all the senior members of my 
administration to let me know what they thought we ought to do next. And 
I have heard from her and from others about what they think we ought to 
do next. And I'm not going to discuss the recommendations they made to 
me, but in the next few days when I make a decision about what to do, 
then I will announce what I'm going to do. So I wouldn't say that either 
one of those examples qualifies speaking out of school.
    Q. How about the value-added tax, Mr. President?
    The President. What was that?
    Q. The value-added tax, Mrs. Rivlin and Ms. Shalala both said that 
they thought that that was a good idea.
    The President. I don't mind them saying they think it's a good idea. 
There are all kinds of arguments for it on policy grounds. That does not 
mean that we have decided to incorporate it in the health care debate. 
No decision has been made on that. And I have no objection to their 
expressing their views on that. We've had a lot of people from business 
and labor come to us saying that they thought that tax would help make 
their particular industries more competitive in the global economy. That 
wasn't taking a line against an administration policy.

Gay Rights

    Q. Mr. President, a week ago a group of gay and lesbian 
representatives came out of a meeting with you and expressed in the most 
ringing terms their confidence in your understanding of them and their 
political aspirations, and their belief that you would fulfill those 
aspirations. Do you feel now that you will be able to meet their now-
enhanced expectations?
    The President. Well, I don't know about that. And I don't know what 
their--it depends on what the expectations are. But I'll tell you this: 
I believe that this country's policies should be heavily biased in favor 
of nondiscrimination. I believe when you tell people they can't do 
certain things in this country that other people can do, there ought to 
be an overwhelming and compelling reason for it. I believe we need the 
services of all of our people, and I have said that consistently and not 
as a political proposition. The first time this issue came up was in 
1991 when I was in Boston. I was just asked the question about it.
    And I might add, it's interesting that I have been attacked. 
Obviously, those who disagree with me here are primarily coming from the 
political right in America. When I was Governor, I was attacked from the 
other direction for sticking up for the rights of religious 
fundamentalists to run their child care centers and to practice home 
schooling under appropriate safeguards. I just have always had an almost 
libertarian view that we should try to protect the rights of American 
individual citizens to live up to the fullest of their capacities, and 
I'm going to stick right with that.
    Q. Are you concerned, sir, that you may have generated expectations 
on their end and criticism among others that has hamstrung your 
administration in the sense of far too great emphasis on this issue?

[[Page 654]]

    The President. Yes, but I have not placed a great deal of emphasis 
on it. It's gotten a lot of emphasis in other quarters and in the press. 
I've just simply taken my position and tried to see it through. And 
that's what I do. It doesn't take a lot of my time as President to say 
what I believe in and what I intend to do, and that's what I'll continue 
to do.

Bosnia

    Q. Mr. President, getting back to the situation in Bosnia--and we 
understand you haven't made any final decisions on new options 
previously considered unacceptable. But the two most commonly heard 
options would be lifting the arms embargo to enable the Bosnian Muslims 
to defend themselves and to initiate some limited air strikes, perhaps, 
to cut off supply lines. Without telling us your decision--presumably, 
you haven't made any final decisions on those two options--what are the 
pros and cons that are going through your mind right now and will weigh 
heavily on your final decision?
    The President. I'm reluctant to get into this. Those are two of the 
options. There are some other options that have been considered. All 
have pluses and minuses; all have supporters and opponents within the 
administration and in the Congress, where, I would remind you, heavy 
consultations will be required to embark on any new policy.
    I do believe that on the air strike issue, the pronouncements that 
General Powell has made generally about military action apply there. If 
you take action, if the United States takes action, we must have a 
clearly defined objective that can be met. We must be able to understand 
it, and its limitations must be clear. The United States is not, should 
not, become involved as a partisan in a war.
    With regard to the lifting of the arms embargo, the question 
obviously there is if you widen the capacity of people to fight, will 
that help to get a settlement and bring about peace? Will it lead to 
more bloodshed? What kind of reaction can others have that would 
undermine the effectiveness of the policy?
    But I think both of them deserve some serious consideration, along 
with some other options we have.
    Q. Do you think that these people who are trying to get us into war 
in Bosnia are really remembering that we haven't taken care of hundreds 
of thousands of veterans from the last war and we couldn't take care of 
our prisoners and get them all home from Vietnam? And now many of them 
are coming up with bills for treatment of Agent Orange. How can we 
afford to go to any more of these wars?
    The President. Well, I think that's a good argument against the 
United States itself becoming involved as a belligerent in a war there. 
But we are, after all, the world's only superpower. We do have to lead 
the world, and there is a very serious problem of systematic ethnic 
cleansing in the former Yugoslavia, which could have not only enormous 
further humanitarian consequences, and goodness knows there have been 
many, but also could have other practical consequences in other nearby 
regions where the same sorts of ethnic tensions exist.

President Boris Yeltsin

    Q. Did you make any kind of agreement with Boris Yeltsin to hold off 
either on air strikes or any kind of aggressive action against the Serbs 
until after Sunday? And in general, how has his political situation 
affected your deliberation on Bosnia?
    The President. No, I have not made any agreement, and he did not ask 
for that. We never even discussed that, interestingly enough. The 
Russians, I would remind you, in the middle of President Yeltsin's 
campaign, abstained from our attempt to get tougher sanctions through 
the United Nations in what I thought was the proper decision for them 
and one that the United States and, I'm sure, the rest of the free world 
very much appreciated.

Tragedy in Waco

    Q. Do you wish, Mr. President, that you'd become more involved in 
the planning of the Waco operation? And how would you handle that 
situation differently now?
    The President. I don't think as a practical matter that the 
President should become involved in the planning of those kinds of 
things at that detail. One of the things that I'm sure will come out 
when we look into this is--the questions will be asked and an- 

[[Page 655]]

swered: Did all of us who up the line of command ask the questions we 
should have asked and get the answers we should have gotten? And I look 
forward to that. But at the time, I have to say as I did before, the 
first thing I did after the ATF agents were killed, once we knew that 
the FBI was going to go in, was to ask that the military be consulted 
because of the quasi-, as least, military nature of the conflict given 
the resources that Koresh had in his compound and their obvious 
willingness to use them. And then on the day before the action, I asked 
the questions of the Attorney General which I have reported to you 
previously and which at the time I thought were sufficient. I have, as I 
said, I'm sure. I leave it to others to make the suggestions about 
whether there are other questions I should have asked.

FBI Director Sessions

    Q. Mr. President, what is your assessment of Director Sessions' role 
in the Waco affair? And have you made a decision on his future? And if 
you haven't, will you give him a personal hearing before you do decide?
    The President. Well, first of all, I have no assessment of his role 
since I had no direct contact with him. And I mean no negative or 
positive inference. I have no assessment there. I stand by what I said 
before about my general high regard for the FBI. And I'm waiting for a 
recommendation from the Attorney General about what to do with the 
direction of the FBI.

Bosnia

    Q. Mr. President, since you said that one side in the Bosnia 
conflict represents inhumanity that the Holocaust carried to the nth 
degree, why do you then tell us that the United States cannot take a 
partisan view in this war?
    The President. Well, I said that the principle of ethnic cleansing 
is something we ought to stand up against. That does not mean that the 
United States or the United Nations can enter a war, in effect, to 
redraw the lines, geographical lines of republics within what was 
Yugoslavia, or that that would ultimately be successful.
    I think what the United States has to do is to try to figure out 
whether there is some way consistent with forcing the people to resolve 
their own difficulties we can stand up to and stop ethnic cleansing. And 
that is obviously the difficulty we are wrestling with. This is clearly 
the most difficult foreign policy problem we face and that all of our 
allies face. And if it were easy, I suppose it would have been solved 
before. We have tried to do more in the last 90 days than was previously 
done. It has clearly not been enough to stop the Serbian aggression, and 
we are now looking at what else we can do.
    Q. Yesterday you specifically criticized the Roosevelt 
administration for not having bombed the railroads to the concentration 
camps and things that were near military targets. Aren't there steps 
like that that would not involve conflict, direct conflict or partisan 
belligerence, that you might consider?
    The President. There may be. I would remind you that the 
circumstances were somewhat different. We were then at war with Germany 
at the time, and that's what made that whole series of incidents so 
perplexing. But we have--as I say, we've got all of our options under 
review.

Haiti

    Q. The diplomatic initiative on Haiti is on the verge of collapse. 
What can you do to salvage it short of a full-scale military operation?
    The President. Well, you may know something I don't. That's not what 
our people tell me. I think Mr. Caputo and Ambassador Pezzullo have done 
together a good job. The thing keeps going back and forth because of the 
people who are involved with the de facto government there. It's obvious 
what their concerns are. They were the same concerns that led to the 
ouster of Aristide in the first place, and President Aristide, we feel, 
should be restored to power. We're working toward that. I get a report 
on that. We discuss it at least three times a week, and I'm convinced 
that we're going to prevail there and be successful.
    I do believe that there's every reason to think that there will have 
to be some sort of multilateral presence to try to guarantee the 
security and the freedom from violence of people on both sides of the 
ledger while we try to establish the conditions of ongoing

[[Page 656]]

civilized society. But I believe we're going to prevail there.

The First 100 Days

    Q. Mr. President, would you care to make your assessment of the 
first 100 days before we make one for you? [Laughter]
    The President. Well, I'll say if--I believe, first of all, we passed 
the budget resolution in record time. That was the biggest issue. That 
confirmed the direction of the administration and confirmed the 
commitments of the campaign that we could both bring the deficit down 
and increase investment, and that we could do it by specific spending 
cuts and by raising taxes, almost all of which come from the highest 
income people in this society, reversing a 12-year trend in which most 
of the tax burdens were borne by the middle class, whose incomes were 
going down when their taxes were going up, while the deficit went from 
$1 trillion to $4 trillion, the total national debt, and the deficit 
continued to go up.
    We have a 20-year low in interest rates from mortgages. We have 
lower interest rates across the board. We have tens of billions of 
dollars flooding back into this economy as people refinance their debt. 
We have established a new environmental policy, which is dramatically 
different. The Secretary of Education has worked with me and with others 
and with the Governors to establish a new approach in education that 
focuses on tough standards as well as increasing opportunity. We have 
done an enormous amount of work on political reform, on campaign 
finance, and lobbying reform. And I have imposed tough ethics 
requirements on my own administration's officials. These things are 
consistent with not only what I said I'd do in the campaign but with 
turning the country around. The Vice President is heading a task force 
which will literally change the way the Federal Government operates and 
make it much more responsive to the citizens of this country.
    We are working on a whole range of other things: the welfare reform 
initiative, to move people from welfare to work. And, of course, a 
massive amount of work has been done on the health care issue, which is 
a huge economic and personal security problem for millions of Americans.
    So I think it is amazing how much has been done. More will be done. 
We also passed the family leave bill, a version of the motor voter bill 
that has not come out of conference back to me yet. And everything has 
been passed except the stimulus program. So I think we're doing fine, 
and we're moving in the right direction. I feel good about it.

Aid to Russia

    Q. Sir, a followup. Wouldn't you say, though, that one of your 
biggest initiatives, aid to Soviet Russia, is now practically finished? 
If we can't pass a stimulus bill in our own country, how can we do it 
for them?
    The President. Let me recast the question a little bit. It's a good 
question. [Laughter] It's a good question, but to be fair we've got to 
recast it. We have already--the first round of aid to non-Soviet Russia, 
to a democratic Russia, is plainly going to go through, the first $1.6 
billion. The aid that we agreed with our partners in the G-7 to provide 
through the international financial institutions, which is a big dollar 
item, is plainly going to go through. The question is, can we get any 
more aid for Russia that requires a new appropriation by the United 
States Congress? And that is a question I think, Mary [Mary McGrory, 
Washington Post], that will be resolved in the weeks ahead, in part by 
what happens to the American workers and their jobs and their future. I 
think the two things will be tied by many Members of Congress.

Tailhook Report

    Q. The Tailhook report came out this morning, documenting horrendous 
and nearly criminal conduct on the part of the Navy. How much did you 
discuss the incident, and what might be done about it with your nominee 
to be the Secretary of the Navy?
    The President. First, let me comment a little on that. The Inspector 
General's report details conduct which is wrong and which has no place 
in the armed services. And I expect the report to be acted on in the 
appropriate way. I also want to say to the American people and to all of 
you that the report should be taken for what it is, a very disturbing 
list of allegations which will have to be thoroughly examined. It should 
not be taken as

[[Page 657]]

a general indictment of the United States Navy or of all the fine people 
who serve there. It is very specific in its allegations, and it will be 
pursued.
    The only thing I said to the Secretary-designate of the Navy and the 
only thing I should have said to him, I think, is that I expected him to 
take the report and to do his duty. And I believe he will do that.

Russia

    Q. Mr. President, to go back to Russia for just a minute. The latest 
polls show that Mr. Yeltsin will probably win his vote of confidence. 
But there seems to be a real toss-up on whether or not voters are going 
to endorse his economic reforms.
    The President. I understand that.
    Q. Can you live with a split decision, though, or do you need both 
passed in order to then build support for Russian aid?
    The President. I believe--the answer to your question is, for the 
United States, the key question should be that which is posed to any 
democracy, which is who wins the election? If he wins the election, if 
he is ratified by the Russian people to continue as their President, 
then I think we should do our best to work with him toward reform.
    You know, we had a lot of other countries here for the Holocaust 
Museum dedication; their leaders were here. Leaders from Eastern Europe, 
leaders from at least one republic of the former Soviet Union, all of 
them having terrible economic challenges as they convert from a 
Communist command-and-control economy to a market economy in a world 
where there's economic slowdown everywhere. And in a world in which 
there's economic slowdown and difficulty, all leaders will have trouble 
having their policies be popular in a poll because they haven't produced 
the results that the people so earnestly yearn for. You can understand 
that.
    But if they have confidence in the leadership, I think that's all we 
can ask. And the United States will, if the Russian people ratify him as 
their President and stick with him, then the United States will continue 
to work with him. I think he is a genuine democrat--small ``d''--and 
genuinely committed to reform. I think that we should support that.

NAFTA

    Q. Mr. President, Mr. Perot has come out strongly in what is 
perceived behind the line against a free trade agreement, NAFTA. How 
hard are you going to fight for this free trade agreement, and when do 
you expect to see it accomplished?
    The President. I think we'll have the agreement ready in the fairly 
near future. You know, our people are still working with the Mexican 
Government and with the Canadians on the side agreements. We're trying 
to work out what the environmental agreement will say, what the labor 
agreement will say, and then what the fairest way to deal with 
enforcement is.
    The Mexicans say, and there is some merit to their position, that 
they're worried about transferring their sovereignty in enforcement to a 
multilateral commission. Even in the United States, to be fair, we have 
some folks who are worried about that, about giving that up. On the 
other hand, if we're going to have an environmental agreement and a 
labor standards agreement that means something, then there has to be 
ultimately some consequences for violating them. So what we're trying to 
do is to agree on an approach which would say that if there is a pattern 
of violations, if you keep on violating it past a certain point--maybe 
not an isolated incident, but a pattern of violation--there is going to 
be some enforcement. There must be consequences. And we're working out 
the details of that.
    But I still feel quite good about it. And this is just an area where 
I disagree with Mr. Perot and with others. I think that we will win big 
if we have a fair agreement that integrates more closely the Mexican 
economy and the American economy and leads us from there to Chile to 
other market economies in Latin America and gives us a bigger world in 
which to trade. I think that's the only way a rich country can grow 
richer. If you look at what Japan and other countries in the Pacific are 
doing to reach out in their own region, it's a pretty good lesson to us 
that we had better worry about how to build those bridges in our own 
area.
    So this is an idea battle. You know, you've got a lot of questions, 
and I want to answer them all. But let me say not every one of

[[Page 658]]

these things can be distilled simply into politics, you know, who's for 
this and who's for that, and if this person is for this, somebody else 
has got to be for that. A lot of these things honestly involved real 
debates over ideas, over who's right and wrong about the world toward 
which we're moving. And the answers are not self-evident. And one of the 
reasons that I wanted to run for President is I wanted to sort of open 
the floodgates for debating these ideas so that we could try to change 
in the appropriate way. So I just have a difference of opinion. I 
believe that the concept of NAFTA is sound, even though, as you know, I 
thought that the details needed to be improved.

POW/MIA's

    Q. Mr. President, there was a tremendous flurry of interest earlier 
this month in the Russian document that purported to show that the 
Vietnamese had held back American prisoners. General Vessey has now said 
publicly that while the document itself was authentic, he believes that 
it was incorrect. Do you have a personal view at this point about that 
issue? And more broadly, do you believe that, in fact, the Vietnamese 
did return all the American prisoners at the time of the Paris Peace 
Accord?
    The President. First let me say, I saw General Vessey before he went 
to Vietnam and after he returned. And I have a high regard for him, and 
I appreciate his willingness to serve his country in this way. As to 
whether the document had any basis in fact, let me say that the 
Government of Vietnam was more forthcoming than it had been in the past 
and gave us some documents that would tend to undermine the validity of 
the Russian documents claim.
    I do not know whether that is right or wrong. We are having it 
basically evaluated at this time, and when we complete the evaluation, 
we'll tell you. And of course, we want to tell the families of those who 
were missing in action or who were POW's. I think that we'll be able to 
make some progress in eliminating some of the questions about the 
outstanding cases as a result of this last interchange, but I cannot say 
that I'm fully satisfied that we know all that we need to know. There 
are still some cases that we don't know the answer to. But I do believe 
we're making some progress. I was encouraged by the last trip.
    Q. I'd like to follow up on that. Before the U.S. normalizes 
relations, allows trade to go forward, do you have to be personally sure 
that every case has been resolved or would you be willing to go forward 
on the basis that while it may take years to resolve these cases, the 
Vietnamese have made sufficient offerings to us to confirm good faith?
    The President. A lot of experts say you can never resolve every 
case, every one, that we couldn't resolve all the cases for them and 
that there are still some cases that have not been factually resolved, 
going back to the Second World War. But what I would have to be 
convinced of is that we had gone a long way toward resolving every case 
that could be resolved at this moment in time, and that there was a 
complete, open, and unrestricted commitment to continue to do everything 
that could be done always to keep resolving those cases. And we're not 
there yet.
    Again, I have to be guided a little bit by people who know a lot 
about this. And I confess to being much more heavily influenced by the 
families of the people whose lives were lost there or whose lives remain 
in question than by the commercial interest and the other things which 
seem so compelling in this moment. I just am very influenced by how the 
families feel.

Legislative Plans

    Q.----your economic stimulus package, are you doing some kind of 
reality check now and scaling back some of your plans, your legislative 
plans for the coming year, including the crime bill, the health care 
initiatives, and other things? Are there any plans to do that? And also, 
did you underestimate the power of Senator Bob Dole?
    The President. No, what I underestimated was the extent to which 
what I thought was a fairly self-evident case, particularly after we 
stayed below the spending caps approved by this Congress, including the 
Republicans who were in this Congress last year, when we had already 
passed a budget resolution which called for over $500 billion in deficit 
reduction. When they had voted

[[Page 659]]

repeatedly for supplemental appropriations to help foreign governments, 
I thought at least four of them would vote to break cloture, and I 
underestimated that. I did not have an adequate strategy of dealing with 
that.
    I also thought that if I made a good-faith effort to negotiate and 
to compromise, that it would not be rebuffed. Instead, every time I 
offered something they reduced the offer that they had previously been 
talking to the majority leader about. So it was a strange set of events. 
But I think what happened was what was a significant part of our plan, 
but not the major part of it, acquired a political connotation that got 
out of proportion to the merits, so that a lot of Republicans were 
saying to me privately, ``Mr. President, I'd like to be for this, but I 
can't now. And we're all strung out, and we're divided.''
    I think we need to do a reality check. As I said, what I want to 
know--let me go back to what I said--what I want to know from our folks 
and from our friends in the Senate, and Republicans or Democrats, is 
what could I have done differently to make it come out differently, 
because the real losers here were not the President and the 
administration. The real losers were the hundreds of thousands of people 
who won't have jobs now. We could have put another 700,000 kids to work 
this summer. I mean, we could have done a lot of good things with that 
money. And I think that is very, very sad. And it became more political 
than it should have. But the underlying rationale I don't think holds a 
lot of water, that it was deficit spending. That just won't wash.
    Q. ----and redo----
    The President. No. I mean, you know, for example, you mentioned the 
crime bill. I think it would be a real mistake not to pass the crime 
bill. I mean, the crime bill was almost on the point of passage last 
year. And they were all fighting over the Brady bill. Surely, surely 
after what we have been through in this country just in the last 3 
months, with the kind of mindless violence we have seen, we can pass a 
bill requiring people to go through a waiting period before they buy a 
handgun. And surely we can see that we need more police officers on the 
street.
    That's another thing that--I really believe that once we move some 
of that money, not all but some of it, up into this jobs package to make 
some of the jobs rehiring police officers on the street who'd been laid 
off, that would be a compelling case. I mean people are scared in this 
country, and I think we need to go forward. I feel very strongly that we 
need to go forward on the crime bill.

Tailhook Report

    Q. Mr. President, back to the Tailhook report for a second. That 
report contained very strong criticism of the Navy's senior leadership 
in general but did not name any of the senior officers. Do you believe 
that the senior officers who are implicated in this, including Admiral 
Kelso who was there one night in Las Vegas, should they be disciplined, 
and do you believe the public has a right to know the names of the 
senior officers?

    The President. You should know that under the rules of law which 
apply to this, I am in the chain of command. There is now an Inspector 
General's report, and the law must take its course. If I were to answer 
that question I might prejudice any decisions which might be later made 
in this case. I think all I can tell you is what I have already said. I 
was very disturbed by the specific allegations in the Inspector 
General's report, and I want appropriate action to be taken.

    Until the proper procedures have a chance to kick in and appropriate 
action is taken, I have been advised that because I am the Commander in 
Chief I have to be very careful about what I say so as not to prejudice 
the rights of anybody against whom any action might proceed or to 
prejudice the case in any other way either pro or con. So I can't say 
any more except to say that I want this thing handled in an appropriate 
and thorough way.

Bosnia

    Q. Mr. President, could I ask you for a clarification on Bosnia? You 
said that you were not considering introduction of American forces. Does 
that include any air forces as well as ground forces, sir?

    The President. I said ground forces.

[[Page 660]]

    Q. You said ground forces. Could I ask you, sir, if you fear that 
using U.S. air strikes might draw the United States into a ground war 
there?

    The President. I just don't want to discuss our evaluation of the 
options anymore. I've told you that there's never been a serious 
discussion in this country about the introduction of ground forces into 
an ongoing conflict there.

Gay Rights

    Q. With hundreds of thousands of gays in Washington this weekend for 
the march, did you ever reconsider your decision to leave town for this 
weekend? Did you ever consider in any way participating in some of the 
activities?

    The President. No.

    Q. Why not?

    The President. Because I--and, basically, I wouldn't participate in 
other marches. I think once you become President, on balance, except 
under unusual circumstances, that is not what should be done. But more 
importantly, I'm going to the American Society of Newspaper Editors, a 
trip that presumably most of you would want me to make, to try to focus 
anew on what I think are the fundamental issues at stake for our country 
right now. And I expect that I will say something about the fact that a 
lot of Americans have come here, asking for a climate that is free of 
discrimination, asking, basically, to be able to work hard and live by 
the rules and be treated like other American citizens if they do that, 
and just that. And that's always been my position, not only for the gays 
who will be here but for others as well.

    Thank you very much.

Note: The President's 13th news conference began at 1 p.m. in the East 
Room at the White House. In his remarks, he referred to Elie Wiesel, 
Nobel laureate and concentration camp survivor; Dante Caputo, U.N./OAS 
Special Envoy to Haiti; Lawrence Pezzullo, Special Assistant to the 
Secretary of State on Haiti; and Adm. Frank B. Kelso II, USN, Chief of 
Naval Operations.