[Weekly Compilation of Presidential Documents Volume 29, Number 45 (Monday, November 15, 1993)]
[Pages 2313-2321]
[Online from the Government Publishing Office, www.gpo.gov]

<R04>
The President's News Conference

 November 10, 1993

    The President. Good afternoon, ladies and gentlemen. As we approach 
the end of this congressional session, just before Thanksgiving, it's 
important that our people know that here in Washington we are finally 
tackling issues that are central to the lives of all Americans, 
replacing gridlock and inaction with progress in the pursuit of the 
common good.
    In the last few months, we passed the largest deficit reduction 
package in history. Interest rates and inflation have remained at 
historic lows. Millions of Americans have been able to refinance their 
homes. Investment is up, and more new jobs have come into our economy in 
the last 10 months than in the previous 4 years. There's been a real 
effort to improve security for America's working families with the 
dramatic expansion in the earned-income tax credit, to help working 
Americans with children who live on modest incomes to do better through 
tax reductions. We've opened more of our products in high-tech areas to 
exports. We've passed the family leave law. We've expanded opportunities 
for people to invest in new businesses in this country. And we've 
presented a comprehensive plan that will put real health care security 
within reach of every American. We're working on reinventing our 
Government to do more with less, and I am proud to say that the Congress 
is clearly signaling today its determination to move on reforming 
campaign finance laws. A bill passed the Senate several months ago. 
Today the House committee is voting out a bill which I believe the House 
of Representatives will pass.
    This is a record of real achievement. But in the next few weeks 
before we go home, Congress will be challenged to take even greater 
strides in protecting the personal security of Americans and in creating 
more opportunities for us to compete and win in the global environment.
    The Senate is completing work now on our crime bill, legislation 
that will fulfill the campaign promise I made to put 100,000 additional 
police officers on the street, to keep

[[Page 2314]]

felons behind bars, to take criminals off the street, to provide boot 
camps and alternative service for first-time youthful offenders, and to 
remove guns from the hands of people who should not have them. We have a 
real shot now to pass the Brady bill. After years, 12 years, of heroic 
activism by Jim and Sarah Brady, Congress is finally determined, I 
believe, to stand up to the interests against the Brady bill and to take 
action on crime, which is the number one personal security issue for 
most Americans.
    A week from today, Congress will decide whether to expand exports 
and jobs by passing the North American Free Trade Agreement. The case 
for NAFTA could not have been made more forcefully or eloquently than it 
was by Vice President Gore last night in his debate with Mr. Perot. Last 
night the Vice President showed that just stating the facts about NAFTA 
and showing our concern for the interests of working Americans can 
overcome the fears, the distortions that have been leveled against this 
agreement. NAFTA means exports; exports means jobs. No wealthy country 
in the world is growing more jobs without expanding exports.
    When the American people hear that case, they showed last night they 
are willing to listen and willing to join not only millions of other 
Americans like those the Vice President called by name last night but 
every living former President, former Secretary of State, Nobel Prize-
winning economists, and over 80 percent of the sitting Governors.
    The contrast we saw last night was clear. Mr. Perot warned Members 
of the House of Representatives that they would face awful retaliation 
if they voted their conscience on NAFTA. The Vice President urged the 
Members of the House to vote for hope against fear; to vote for the 
proposition that Americans can compete and win in the global economy; to 
vote their conscience and tell the constituents back home why they were 
voting as they were. And if the preliminary results on the debate last 
night are any indication, the Members of the House of Representatives 
can trust the American people with the facts and with their own 
convictions.
    This vote comes at a defining moment for our Nation. We have been 
through a very tough period. For 20 years--20 years--60 percent of the 
American people have been working harder for the same or less wages. We 
have had great difficulty in increasing the productivity that is 
absolutely essential to creating jobs and raising incomes. But we have 
now done it. This country is now the most productive country in the 
world across a broad spectrum of manufacturing and service activities in 
this economy. We can win. And we have to decide, beginning next week, 
whether we're going to reach out to compete and win or try to withdraw.
    I will say again one point I want to make about NAFTA, before I open 
the floor to questions, that was not emphasized last night simply 
because it didn't come up as much. This agreement means more jobs, but 
the real job growth for America will come when two other steps are 
taken. It will come when all the other Latin democracies and free market 
economies also join in a great trade group with Mexico, Canada, and the 
United States. And it will come because once this happens, we will have 
enormously increased influence in the world community to argue that we 
ought to adopt a worldwide trade agreement before the end of the year, 
to get that new GATT agreement. That will influence Asia, it will 
influence Europe, if the House votes for NAFTA. The stakes for this 
country, therefore, are quite high. I believe the House will do the 
right thing.
    I want to say, too, that I am grateful that today Congressman 
Hoagland, Congressman Kreidler, Congressman Dicks, Congressman 
Valentine, and Senator Nunn announced their support for NAFTA. I think 
that we will see more coming in the days ahead, and I think by the time 
we get to vote counting, we'll have enough to win.
    Thank you.
    Helen [Helen Thomas, United Press International]?

Foreign Policy Team

    Q. Mr. President, U.S. foreign policy endeavors have been less than 
successful in Somalia, Haiti, Bosnia. And on Sunday on ``Meet the 
Press'' you seemed to be lukewarm about your foreign policy team. Is 
Secretary Wharton being made your sacrificial lamb? And are you planning 
a shakeup of

[[Page 2315]]

your foreign policy team? I mean, is that the signal?
    The President. No to both questions. First of all, I did not mean to 
be lukewarm. I have always followed a policy as long as I've been a 
chief executive of not discussing a lot of personnel issues. But I will 
say again what I said on Sunday. This team has worked hard on a lot of 
difficult issues. I think they deserve high marks for dealing with the 
central, large, strategic issues of this time, dealing with the former 
Soviet Union, working on bringing down the nuclear threat, working on 
stemming nuclear proliferation, working on peace in the Middle East, 
working on putting economics at the forefront of our foreign policy.
    Secondly, Mr. Wharton is not being made a scapegoat in any way, 
shape, or form. What he worked on at the State Department, in my 
judgment, he did a good job on. He worked on reorganization; he worked 
on the aid programs; he worked on a number of issues that have nothing 
to do with the controversies which were thorny when I got here and are 
still thorny today in Somalia, Haiti, and Bosnia. It would be a great 
mistake for anyone to misinterpret what happened. I think you have to 
take his remarks on their own terms. But believe me, his departure has 
nothing to do with scapegoating. I have the highest regard for him. And 
I am grateful for the service he rendered.

Israel

    Q. Mr. President, there's a growing expectation that Israel and 
Jordan are going to sign a peace treaty when Prime Minister Rabin visits 
the White House on Friday. Could you tell us what's the likelihood of 
that? And also on Mr. Rabin, Israeli radio says that he's written you a 
letter asking you to cut the prison sentence of convicted spy Jonathan 
Pollard to 10 years. Are you going to do that?
    The President. First of all, I am delighted by the reports of 
progress in the relationships between Israel and Jordan. And as you 
know, we are talking with both of them. And we've been involved with 
that. But I don't think anything will happen Friday on that. I would be 
pleased if it did. But the truth is, we have no reason to believe that 
anything will be happening Friday.
    On the Pollard case, it is true that the Prime Minister has written 
me about Jonathan Pollard. I have asked the Justice Department to review 
his case, as I do in every request for executive clemency. I have not 
received a report from them yet. And I will not make a decision on the 
Pollard case until I get some sort of indication from them.
    Yes, Wolf [Wolf Blitzer, CNN]?

Ross Perot

    Q. Mr. President, there are some who suggest that you deliberately 
wanted to have the Vice President debate Mr. Perot in order to elevate 
Mr. Perot as a potential threat to Republicans down the road more than 
Democrats. Did you have those kinds of interests in mind?
    The President. I wish I were that Machiavellian. It never occurred 
to me. I wanted the Vice President to debate Mr. Perot because I 
believed--and I know that the conventional wisdom around here was that 
it was a mistake--but first, I want to give credit where credit's due. 
The Vice President, not the President, the Vice President had the idea 
that maybe this was the time to have a debate and to do it on Larry 
King.
    My immediate response, however, was very positive, because I believe 
the American people--first of all, we know they're hungry for debate. 
They know we have to change, and they're deeply skeptical of people in 
politics. So the more direct access people have to this issue, one that 
affects their lives, the more feeling they get for the facts and the 
arguments as well as for the conviction of the parties involved, I just 
think it's better. So there was no ulterior motive in that whatever.
    Q. Mr. President, the polls indicate that Vice President Gore did do 
well in the debate last night and that Mr. Perot did not do so well. You 
clearly believe he was wounded on the issue of NAFTA. Do you think that 
carries over into his role in politics in general? Does it hurt his 
standing as a political force in this country in the future?
    The President. Well, I don't have any idea. I don't know about that. 
I will say this: I think there are a lot of people out there who are 
alienated from the political system for good reasons. One of the 
greatest frustra- 

[[Page 2316]]

tions I have as President is that it is often difficult for me to cut 
through the din of daily events here to keep speaking to those people 
and to try to keep them involved.
    I think that they will feel more supportive of not only this 
administration but of the American political system, if we can produce 
sustained economic growth, greater security for people who work hard and 
play by the rules; if we can produce a genuine effort to fight crime and 
to deal with the problems of the breakdown of the society and family in 
many of the troubled areas of our country; and if we can produce 
political reform, if we can produce campaign finance reform and lobby 
reform, and if the Congress sometime in the next few weeks passes a law 
that says they'll live under the laws that they pass and impose on the 
private sector.
    These are the things that you keep hearing from people who voted in 
the last election for Mr. Perot. I think what we should focus on, those 
of us who are here, is addressing the concerns, the hopes, and the fears 
of those people. And the rest of it will take care of itself. We'll just 
have to see what happens.

NAFTA

    Q. Mr. President, the White House has complained and Mr. Gore has 
scored some points about Mr. Perot's exaggerations and exaggerations of 
the anti-NAFTA forces. But last night the Vice President said that 22 
out of 23 studies have shown job increases. He cited a figure of 
400,000. The Joint Economic Committee, a bipartisan committee of 
Congress, said that's not true. Doesn't it hurt your arguments for NAFTA 
when----
    The President. What did they say was not true?
    Q. Well, they said that the studies were being double counted and 
that he did not cite the job losses so he wasn't giving a net figure and 
that actually in the overall size of the economy, that those really are 
not that significant, or can't be properly counted.
    The President. Let me just respond to that on the specific 
allegations--I have always tried to couch NAFTA as a job winner, a net 
job winner. That is, I think that the evidence is clear that not just in 
the long run but in the near run, we'll have more job gains than job 
losses out of this. There will plainly be some job losses. But the point 
I have tried to make always is, we have a lot of job losses every year 
in America we can't prevent. So when we have an opportunity to create 
more jobs, we are almost morally bound to do it, when we can have a net 
job gain.
    I don't think the Vice President willfully misstated that, because 
we've had this conversation a long time--many times. But a lot of the 
extreme claims on both sides ignore the fact that Mexico itself, on its 
own terms, only comprises 4 to 5 percent of the size of the American 
economy. The size of the Mexican economy today is about the size of 
California's economy from the Los Angeles County line, the north line, 
down to the Mexican border. And therefore, the ability of the Mexicans 
in the near term to hurt the American economy, or to totally inflate it, 
is somewhat limited.

    As you know, we said that we thought we would gain 200,000 jobs over 
the next 2 years. Well, last month our economy produced 177,000 jobs. 
Let me reiterate what I said in my opening remarks. The thing that's 
important about this is that it makes a statement that we're reaching 
out to expand trade. It really will; 200,000 jobs is nothing to sneeze 
at. And almost all of our people believe that the net will be well above 
150,000. That is, that's nothing to sneeze at in 2 years, especially 
since they will be higher paying jobs.

    But the important thing is that by showing we can have this 
relationship with Mexico, we will rapidly be able to move to conclude 
similar agreements with other market-oriented democracies, with Chile, 
with Argentina, with a whole range of other countries in Latin America. 
And this then will give us the psychological leverage--just as for the 
anti-NAFTA people this has become the repository of all their 
resentments, for us that are for it it's become the symbol of where we 
want to go in the world. This will give me enormous leverage when I get 
on the airplane the day after the NAFTA vote and go out to meet with the 
General Secretary of the People's Republic of China, when I go out to 
meet with the Prime Minister of Japan and all the other leaders of Asia, 
when I try

[[Page 2317]]

to convince the Europeans that it's time for a worldwide trade 
agreement.

    And nearly everyone who has analyzed what we agreed to about the 
time of the G-7 on the GATT round, the new trade agreement, concludes 
that it will add hundreds of thousands of jobs, significant jobs near-
term, to the American economy. So I say that, on balance, this is a huge 
deal for America, but both sides need to be very careful not to make 
extreme claims. This is a job winner for our country, more jobs with 
Latin America, even more jobs when we have a new world trade agreement. 
It all begins with NAFTA.

Labor Movement Opposition

    Q. Mr. President, do you have any regrets about your comments about 
labor during the Sunday television interview, your comment about the 
naked pressure that they've exerted on Members of Congress on NAFTA? And 
what are you going to do to kiss and make up with them?
    The President. I sent a little note to Mr. Kirkland the other day 
and said I hoped my comments Sunday morning didn't ruin his Sunday 
afternoon. And I told him basically what I said before. I have enormous 
respect for many of the people who are fighting us on this. I just think 
they're wrong. But specifically, I don't think a Congressman who has 
been a friend of the labor movement for 20 years should be told that he 
or she will get an opponent in the next election or never get any more 
help on this one vote. I just disagree with that.
    If you go back and look at the interview, I was trying to make the 
point that I thought in the Congress the labor movement was a bigger 
force in keeping this from passing than the Perot folks were. I didn't 
mean to hurt their feelings, but I can't retract what I said because I 
don't think it's right for people to be told, ``If you vote your 
conscience on this vote we're through with you forever, no matter what 
you've done with us before.'' I think that's bad and it's not conducive 
to good government.

NAFTA

    Q. We seem to be heading for one of those cliffhangers next week in 
the House, kind of high political drama that Washington enjoys. I can't 
imagine, though, sir, that perhaps you enjoy it quite as much. And I 
wonder as you look back on this if you feel that this issue could 
perhaps have been managed differently, perhaps an earlier start that 
would have enabled you to make what you seem to feel is a very strong 
case a bit more easily?
    The President. I think the only way we could have started earlier is 
if we'd been able to conclude the side agreements sooner; because keep 
in mind, first of all, I ran for this job with a commitment to support 
NAFTA if I could get the right side agreements. This thing was dead in 
the water in January when I became President. It was gone. There was no 
support among the Democrats in the House. There were Republicans who 
thought they weren't going to be able to vote for it. Yes, the 
opposition then got geared up and made a lot of charges against it. But 
the only thing we had to hold out was the promise that we could conclude 
side agreements that would improve the environmental issues and that 
would deal with the labor issues and that would give us some leverage 
for people to move forward. If we had been able to conclude those 
agreements more quickly, then we could have started the campaign more 
quickly.
    Q. You don't think these side agreements added credence to the idea 
that it was a flawed agreement and perhaps hurt politically?
    The President. No, I don't think so. But I don't know. Anybody can 
always second-guess. But what I always tried to say about NAFTA was that 
the concept was sound and that we needed an agreement with Mexico. One 
of the things we haven't talked about very much is it means a lot to the 
United States to have a neighbor with 90 million people that is moving 
toward democracy, that is moving toward an open economy, and that is 
moving toward greater friendship with us. I mean, this is a big deal. If 
you want cooperation in the immigration problem, the drug problem, this 
means a lot to us.
    I always felt that we would get there, but in dealing with at least 
the people in our party, we had to be able to have something to show 
that would indicate we were making progress in these areas. So that's 
all I can

[[Page 2318]]

say. We may be able to be second-guessed, but the thing simply wasn't 
ready, and I didn't have anything to argue with.
    Q. Mr. President, a moment ago you stated that your leverage would 
be increased in Seattle if you get a NAFTA victory. Could you come at it 
from the other side? If you have a NAFTA defeat on Wednesday, would that 
in any way diminish your prestige in Seattle or your ability to conduct 
foreign policy?
    The President. I don't think it would diminish my ability to conduct 
foreign policy except in the economic area. I think it would limit my 
ability to argue that the Asians should open their markets more. And 
after all, our trade problem, in terms of open markets--if you look at 
it, where is our trade deficit: $49 billion with Japan, $19 billion with 
China, $9 billion with Taiwan. We have a $5.4 billion trade surplus with 
Mexico. So I think my ability to argue that case forcefully that ``You 
ought to open your markets; look at what we're doing,'' will be 
undermined. And I think, more importantly, my ability to argue that the 
Asians and the Europeans should join with me and push hard, hard to get 
a world trade agreement through the GATT round by the end of the year 
will be more limited. There's no question about it.
    Look, the anxieties that we have here, the same thing is going on in 
Japan, where they're not generating jobs and they've got staggering 
income. Same thing in Europe; it's been years since the European economy 
as a whole has generated new jobs. So in each of these great power 
centers of the world there are these debates every day just like the one 
that went on last night between the Vice President and Mr. Perot. 
They're debating it: Are they going to be more open or more closed? 
Which way are they going to go? And so I think that my ability to tip 
the scales in that debate in the right direction for history and for the 
American people will be limited significantly in the short run if we 
lose NAFTA. It will not be good for the United States.

Crime

    Q. Mr. President, beyond signing a crime bill, if and when one hits 
your desk, what else can you do? What else will you do about crime and 
violence?
    The President. Well, I think that there's a lot more we have to do. 
I think the administration has got to examine everything we can do to 
try to put together an approach that will challenge every community in 
this country and every organization in this country and every individual 
in this country to make a contribution with us in restoring the 
conditions in which civilized life can go on.
    I think that the crime bill is very important. I don't want to 
minimize that. I know some disagree that it is. It really will make a 
difference if you put another 100,000 police out there. We're losing the 
ratio of police to crime. We have been for 30 years. This is an 
important issue. It matters whether we get these police out there, if 
they're properly trained and properly deployed in community policing.
    But we have to rebuild families and communities in this country. 
We've got to take more responsibility for these little kids before they 
grow up and start shooting each other. We have to find ways to offer 
hope and to reconnect people. When children start shooting children the 
way they're doing now, and little kids go around planning their own 
funerals, what that means is that there are a whole lot of people, 
millions of people in this country, who literally are not even playing 
by the same set of rules that all the rest of us take for granted. And 
we have learned in this country to accept many things that are 
unacceptable. And I think the President has a pulpit, Teddy Roosevelt's 
bully pulpit, that I have to use and work hard on and try to live by, to 
try to help rebuild the conditions of family and community and education 
and opportunity.
    And I'll just say one last thing about that. What a lot of these 
folks that are in such desperate trouble need is a unique combination of 
both structure and order and discipline on the one hand and genuine 
caring on the other. It is impossible to structure life in a society 
like ours where there is no family or at least no supervising, caring 
adult on the one hand, and on the other hand where there is no work. If 
you go generation after generation after generation and people don't get 
to work--you think about your lives, think about what you're going to do 
today, what you did this morning when you got up, what

[[Page 2319]]

you'll do tonight when you go home. If you think about the extent to 
which work organizes life in America and reinforces our values, our 
rules, and the way we relate to one another and the way we raise our 
children, and then you imagine what it must be like where there is no 
work--I know the budget is tight. I know there are all kinds of tough 
problems. I know that people with private capital, even with our 
empowerment zones, may not want to invest in inner cities and decimated 
rural areas, but I'm telling you, we have to deal with family, 
community, education, and you have to have work; there has to be work 
there.
    Q. Mr. President, on the issue of crime, could you explain a little 
bit more about how the White House, how your administration is going to 
accomplish some of those things?
    The President. Yes. First of all, the Attorney General and Secretary 
Cisneros and a number of other people are now working in our 
administration on how we can develop a comprehensive approach to the 
whole issue of violence in our society and how we can merge that with 
what we want to do in terms of community empowerment and how it will fit 
with all the things that we are now doing. And I think what you will see 
from us over the next several months is a sustained, organized, 
disciplined approach so that we don't just respond to the horror we all 
feel when a little kid gets shot after being picked up off the street, 
like happened here last weekend, or when these children plan their 
funerals. I want to put this right at the center of what we're doing.
    I have spent years going to neighborhoods and talking to people and 
dealing with issues that most politicians in National Government have 
not talked a lot about. I care a great deal about this. There is a lot 
of knowledge in this town about it. Senator Moynihan wrote a very 
powerful article just a couple of weeks ago on how we have defined 
deviancy down. I think there's an enormous bipartisan willingness to 
face this. What I think I have to do is to mobilize every person in my 
Government to do what can be done to address these problems. And you 
will see that coming out after the Congress goes home and in my address 
to the people next year when the Congress begins.
    Q. Mr. President, you mentioned Senator Moynihan. He's proposed a 
Federal tax on bullets that would make certain kind of bullets, 
particularly cop-killer bullets, prohibitively expensive. Do you support 
the general idea of an ammunition tax? And would you like to see it to 
be part of the financing for your health care package, as Senator 
Moynihan has proposed?
    The President. Well, Senator Moynihan has been very candid in saying 
that what he really wants to do is to try to use this to deal with the 
problem of gun violence in America. I think the health care plan that I 
put forward will finance itself in the way that we have, and I think we 
should proceed with that. I think that this idea of his, however, 
deserves a lot of consideration.
    But one of the things that I question in my own mind is if some of 
these bullets are being manufactured solely for the purpose of having a 
devastating effect on someone's body if they hit someone's body, whether 
we ought not just to get rid of those bullets. Because if you look at 
the money that can be raised as a practical matter, in the context of 
this Federal budget or the health care budget, it's limited. I agree 
with the Treasury Secretary. Secretary Bentsen stated our position. We 
think the Senator has given us an interesting idea. We're looking at it. 
We're seeing what the objectives are. But some of that ammunition, it 
would seem to me, there might be a consensus that we ought not to make 
it at all in this country.

New Jersey Election

    Q. Mr. President, it turns out that your friend Jim Florio in New 
Jersey may have lost the election by a narrow margin because of an 
approach dreamed up by the Republican strategists which depressed the 
black voter turnout. What do you think about that tactic?
    The President. First, I think we should all acknowledge that people 
have died in this country, given their lives to give other Americans, 
especially African-Americans, the right to vote. And this allegation, if 
it is true--and I say if it is true--I don't know what the facts are, 
but if it is true, then it was terribly wrong for anyone to give money 
to anybody else not to vote or to depress voter

[[Page 2320]]

turnout. And it was terribly wrong for anyone to accept that money to 
render that nonservice to this country.

NAFTA

    Q. Can you give us a count right now of how many votes you have in 
the House on NAFTA?
    The President. No, because it's changing every day. But we're 
getting a lot closer. I honestly believe we're going to win it now, and 
that's not just political puff. I think we'll make it. I'll be surprised 
if we don't win now.
    Q. [Inaudible]--what is going to happen to Latin America if NAFTA is 
not passed. What would be the impact in the United States, not in you 
but in the people of the United States if NAFTA is not approved?
    The President. Well, if it's not passed, we'll lose a lot of 
opportunities to sell our products. We will not do one single thing to 
discourage people from moving to Mexico to set up plants to get low 
wages to sell back in here. We will depress the environmental and labor 
costs more than they otherwise would be depressed in Mexico, which will 
make it harder for us to compete. It'll be bad for America if we do it.

Haiti and Bosnia

    Q. Mr. President, so far you haven't talked about Haiti and Bosnia. 
The situation in those two countries seems to have gotten worse in the 
year since you've been elected. Right now, what can you tell us you're 
doing to reverse the situation in the short term, or do you fear that 
this is going to go on all winter long in Bosnia as well as in Haiti?
    The President. Well, the problem or the conditions in Bosnia at 
least seem to be that none of the parties now, including the government, 
at least at the moment we speak, based on what I knew this morning, are 
of a mind to make peace on any terms that the others will accept, 
because there are different military results being achieved on the 
ground there in different places in ways that make all the parties feel 
that they shouldn't agree now. Under those conditions, all we can do is 
to try to make sure that we minimize the human loss coming on for this 
winter, that we try to get the United Nations to agree to let the NATO 
position that the United States put together on the availability of air 
power in the event that Sarajevo is seriously shelled be an actual live 
option and not just something on the books, and that we make sure our 
humanitarian program works.
    I will say this--I want to emphasize this--the airlift to Bosnia, 
which this Nation has spearheaded, has now gone on longer than the 
Berlin airlift. And it's one of the most comprehensive humanitarian aid 
efforts in history. And we'll have to keep doing it.
    In Haiti, I'd like to say a word or two about that. First of all, 
it's important that the people of Haiti understand that the people who 
brought this embargo on were Mr. Francois and General Cedras, because 
they didn't go through with the Governors Island Agreement.
    Now, I believe that Mr. Malval and President Aristide are willing to 
talk in good faith and try to reach an accommodation that would enable 
us to get back on the path to democracy and to implementing that 
agreement. I grieve for the people of Haiti. We feed almost 700,000 
people a day in Haiti. We participate actively, the United States does. 
I don't want anybody else to be hurt down there. But I think it's very 
important that the people of Haiti understand that the people that 
brought this embargo on them were Francois and Cedras in breaking the 
agreement that was agreed to by all parties there. And we have to try to 
reach another agreement so that the country can go back to normal.

NAFTA

    Q. The financial community has been worried about Mexico's policy of 
gradually devaluing the peso and saying that this would underscore the 
low-wage environment there. What would you foresee under a NAFTA pact 
that was approved as far as the relationship between the dollar and the 
peso? And would we end up finding the Federal Reserve having to support 
the peso because of our tighter economic relationship?
    The President. Actually, I would think that--I want to be careful 
how I say this because I don't want anything I say now to have an impact 
in the Mexican financial markets today, but I believe that you have to 
just say that the peso would become stronger if NAFTA passes because it 
would strengthen

[[Page 2321]]

the Mexican economy. And normally, when you've got a strong economy 
that's growing, the value of the currency will rise.

Khanh Pham

    Let me say, I know we've got--no, no, no, I'm sorry. I want to 
introduce someone before we go, because I think I would be remiss here 
at a press conference with all of you not to do this. I'd like to ask 
Khanh Pham to stand. Would you stand up?
    I want to tell you a little bit about this young woman. She's here 
today with a program that puts role models and young people together. 
And she said that her role model was Dee Dee Myers; so she wanted to 
come here and be here. But let me tell you about her. Maybe she should 
be our role model.

    When she was 2\1/2\ years old, she was cradled in her 5-year-old 
brother's arms as her mother made a desperate run for freedom from 
Vietnam. They forced their way onto an overcrowded small wooden boat 
after giving away their life savings for those spots. They endured heavy 
seas, were separated on the boat for a period of time. They watched 
people die before being picked up by a U.S. naval ship, the U.S.S. 
Warden.

    After coming here, because of language barriers, her mother could 
only get jobs in manual labor. She also baked Vietnamese pastries to 
sell. She held two or three jobs at a time. Sometimes she didn't have 
enough money to wash the clothes so the family would have to wash them 
in their tub, while Khanh and her brother would try to teach their 
mother English.

    A couple of years ago, she missed several months of school while she 
single handedly worked with all the agencies and authorities here to get 
her two sisters back from Vietnam into the United States. Finally, they 
were reunited a year and a half ago, and they now live with Khanh and 
her mother. She is 17, a senior at Reston High School in Virginia. She 
holds an office with her student government, and she's a student 
representative elected to the board of governors, a city office in 
Reston.

    And as I said, she's spending the day here today. She's interested 
in being in the press today, but one day she hopes to be America's 
Ambassador to Vietnam.

    Thank you for coming here.

    Thank you, ladies and gentlemen.

Note: The President's 32d news conference began at 3:05 p.m. in the East 
Room at the White House. In his remarks, he referred to Col. Joseph 
Michel Francois, chief of the Haitian police; Lt. Gen. Raoul Cedras, 
commander of the Haitian armed forces; and Haitian Prime Minister Robert 
Malval.