[Weekly Compilation of Presidential Documents Volume 33, Number 18 (Monday, May 5, 1997)]
[Pages 621-624]
[Online from the Government Publishing Office, www.gpo.gov]

<R04>
Interview With Jacobo Goldstein of CNN Radio Noticias

May 1, 1997

Mexico and Drug Trafficking

    Mr. Goldstein. Mr. President, let's start with Mexico. You're going 
down there on Monday. The news today is that Mexico just dismantled its 
antidrug agency and has put a new agency in place with new trainees. 
Will this stop the corruption that has been so rampant?
    The President. Well, I think there's a good chance that it will 
improve things. Keep in mind the Mexicans have a big challenge. This is 
not just something they--this cooperation we're undertaking in the 
antidrug area from Mexico's point of view is not primarily for the 
United States. Of course, we want to reduce the number of illegal drugs 
coming into America. Primarily, it's for Mexico. It's to preserve the 
social, political, and economic integrity of the country.
    And I think this is a very good first step. I've had a good 
relationship with President Zedillo and with Mexico since I became 
President. I've done everything I could do to try to make sure America 
is a good neighbor and a good partner for the future. And I think this 
will enable us to work more closely together in that area.
    Mr. Goldstein. Mr. President, Mexico is going to have midterm 
elections that are going to be watched throughout the world. And I know 
President Zedillo has been trying to change some of old time and change 
the structure of his party. What are your expectations of these midterm 
elections? It's the first time the mayor of Mexico City is going to be 
elected.
    The President. I don't know. My only expectations are that they'll 
be free and fair and that they will express the will of the Mexican 
people and that we will support that, whatever that is.

NAFTA

    Mr. Goldstein. Mr. President, NAFTA, according to the numbers, seems 
to be working. Do you expect the U.S. Congress to help push NAFTA to 
Chile fast track? And you have spoken, and your people have spoken, how 
important Latin America is as far as a trading partner, but does 
Congress share your view, sir?
    The President. I believe a majority do. I am, frankly, disappointed 
and surprised that there is still so much opposition to expanding fast 
track. NAFTA has been a big success for us, with Canada and with Mexico. 
It has helped the Mexican economy to grow. It has brought our two 
countries closer together. When Mexico had a difficult time 
economically, the United States made the loan that--I made the decision 
to make a loan to Mexico, and they paid the loan back early with 
interest and a profit. And it's working well. It's creating more jobs 
for Mexico, more jobs for the United States.
    And I think we would be very, very, very shortsighted if we did not 
extend fast track, go down and involve Chile and then eventually 
complete the promise of the Summit of the Americas--involve the Andean 
nations, the MERCOSUR nations, all the nations, Latin America, Central 
America, Caribbean in the trade area of the Americas. That's what I want 
to do, and I'm going to keep pushing for it.

Mexico-U.S. Relations

    Mr. Goldstein. Mr. President, you placed great importance on the 
relations with Mexico, personal relation between you and President 
Zedillo. And now the word is out, you're going to be naming a very 
famous politician of the other party, the Governor of Massachusetts, 
Governor William Weld. How will this create better relations between you 
and Mexico?
    The President. Well, if Governor Weld's appointment goes through, I 
would expect it to greatly strengthen our relationships because I think 
that they will have a lot in common and that the three of us will all 
have a good relationship, which will facilitate our countries growing 
closer together and working better together.
    Mr. Goldstein. Will he have direct access to you and Madeleine 
Albright?
    The President. Oh, absolutely. I know him well. I mean, he is a 
member of the other party, and when he ran against Senator Kerry last 
year, I worked very hard for Senator Kerry. But we have a good personal 
relationship. He's a highly intelligent man, and

[[Page 622]]

he and I are clearly on the same wavelength in terms of what we believe 
our policy toward Mexico and, indeed, toward all Latin America should 
be.

The President's Meeting With President Zedillo

    Mr. Goldstein. Finally, Mr. President, I want to touch slightly the 
issue of human rights. There has been some criticism of violation of 
human rights in Mexico. Will the subject of human rights be broached 
during the bilateral meeting, or will you deal--with President Zedillo?
    The President. I expect we will discuss everything that is out there 
to be discussed in our relationship. We have a very open and candid 
relationship. If he has some problems with the United States, he feels 
free to raise them with me. And we'll talk through everything I think we 
should talk through.

Immigration

    Mr. Goldstein. Migrations--the new migration laws have created a 
huge stir in Mexico and Central America, also--the issue, that will come 
up?
    The President.  It will come up, and it should. I would like to make 
three points. First of all, there were provisions dealing with legal 
immigrants tacked onto the welfare reform bill that had nothing to do 
with welfare reform that I strongly opposed and that will have to be 
significantly changed if we are going to get a budget agreement here 
with the Republican Congress. I have told them that, and we're working 
hard on it.
    Secondly, with regard to the law dealing with illegal immigration, I 
know that there are some questions about that law in Latin America. But 
let me point out, the main thing the law does is to give us extra tools 
to control our borders, to deal with illegal immigrants in our 
workplaces and who come into the criminal justice system.
    We are going to work very hard to avoid any draconian interpretation 
of the law that would lead to any kind of mass deportations or anything 
of that kind. But keep in mind, the United States admitted last year 
960,000 legal immigrants. We are now the fifth largest Hispanic country 
in the world, with 22 million Hispanic-Americans here. So we are 
committed to open immigration and to having more people here from the 
Americas, but we have to do it in a legal way that has some discipline 
and order and integrity to it. And we will try to do it in a fair and 
balanced way.

Mexico-U.S. Trade and NAFTA

    Mr. Goldstein. Mr. President, there was some concern in Mexico when 
Mexican trucks were not allowed--truckers to drive in this country. I'm 
sure that issue will also come up.
    The President. It will come up. President Zedillo would bring it up 
if I didn't. We will--we're trying to work that out. Our concerns here 
are basically safety concerns, and we have an obligation under NAFTA, 
the United States does, to permit Mexican truckers into the United 
States if they meet the standards that we apply to our people. And we're 
trying to work out exactly how we define that and resolve it with the 
Mexicans.
    There have been actually relatively few trade disputes. This is now 
a $130 billion trade relationship. It's a huge relationship. And we have 
two or three relatively minor matters--[inaudible]--all but one. And I 
think we have to work very hard to try to rectify the economic harm done 
to the Caribbean countries inadvertently by Congress when they adopted 
NAFTA but wouldn't go along with my suggestion to give the same 
treatment to the Caribbean countries.
    Mr. Goldstein. Excuse me, by Caribbean you mean Central America and 
the Caribbean Basin?
    The President. Caribbean Basin, absolutely. All the Caribbean Basin 
countries. We did not--I don't think the Congress meant to hurt them by 
passing NAFTA, but I told them what I was afraid would happen. I asked 
them to at least maintain the status quo, so that they wouldn't lose any 
ground compared to Mexico because Mexico's great gains have come from 
the labors of the Mexican people and from the transfer of some 
production from Asia back to Mexico. They never intended to take 
anything away from the Central America and Caribbean countries.
    So we have to rectify that because those countries have to have a 
chance to grow. Oth

[[Page 623]]

erwise, the more successful Mexico is in its antidrug efforts, the more 
vulnerable the Caribbean countries will be--especially the Caribbean, 
even more than Central America. They will become even more vulnerable to 
drug traffickers because they won't be able to make a living there. So 
we've got to rectify this, and I'm hoping to resolve it with this 
session of Congress.

Immigration

    Mr. Goldstein. Mr. President, the Central American countries will 
also bring up the immigration issue because El Salvador, Guatemala, 
Nicaragua, Honduras--they were all deeply affected in the eighties 
during the liberation or revolution, the civil wars of the eighties.
    The President. They--because of the unique status that they bore 
when they came into this country, they are in a position different from 
legal immigrants or plainly illegal immigrants. They are in a different 
position. And we've already had one discussion, interestingly enough, 
about that today. We're trying to work that out in a way that seems fair 
and humane and balanced, and I hope we can.

Hostage Situation in Peru

    Mr. Goldstein. Mr. President, I would like to ask you two questions 
as they're pushing me out. One has to do with Peru. You were very much 
involved, your country was, with Japan during the hostage crisis, which 
came to a conclusion a few days ago.
    The President. Yes.
    Mr. Goldstein. There seems to be some rumblings about some possible 
human rights violations when the army barged in and saved the hostages. 
Do you know anything about it or----
    The President. No.
    Mr. Goldstein. ----have you had any conversations with Mr. Fujimori?
    The President. I do not know what the facts are on that. I do know 
that the Government of Peru was very patient for a long time, that the 
people who took the hostages were terrorists who threatened their lives, 
and that it was a good thing and remarkable that only one of them was--
life was lost in the rescue attempt. But I do not know what the facts 
were about what happened on the compound.

Cuba

    Mr. Goldstein. Mr. President, finally, you know Cuba is an issue. 
Helms-Burton has created a rift--between Latin America and the United 
States because of Cuba and Helms-Burton. Do you visualize any 
circumstances under which Helms-Burton could be lifted? And do you feel 
this will not threaten your commercial relations and political relations 
with the Latin American nations?
    The President. Well, first of all, I think the biggest problem with 
Helms-Burton, vis-a-vis Latin America, may well have been solved by the 
resolution we made with the European Union about the interpretation of 
Helms-Burton. And I think if we look at what happened with

the European Union, what we want the other democracies of Central America 
and Caribbean and South America to do, is to work with us on promoting 
openness, human rights, and freedom in Cuba, and we need to do that every 
way we can.

    Now, under the statute, the Helms-Burton statute, about the only 
agreements I can work out are the ones that--like we worked out with 
Europe. That law supplanted a bill that I liked very much, the Cuba 
Democracy Act, which gave the United States the flexibility to be both 
more open and tougher with Cuba, depending on the facts. But that law 
was passed by Mr. Castro himself. He passed the law as surely as if he'd 
been here voting on it when he shot down those planes and killed those 
innocent people.
    So we're doing the best we can with the law we have, but we all need 
to keep working for greater openness in Cuba. I think the only prospects 
for a change in the law would be those that are, again, completely 
within the control of the Cuban Government and of Mr. Castro. I mean, if 
he were to evidence some changes, then he might get some changed 
attitudes here. But we've got to see what happens.

NAFTA

    Mr. Goldstein. Finally, Mr. President, you--during your first term, 
you fought very hard for NAFTA against your own party. You

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fought very hard to save Mexico--the economic bailout against people of 
your own party including. Will you fight as hard now that you don't need 
to run for reelection? Political considerations aside, will you fight 
just as hard to make sure that Latin America has a free trade agreement?
    The President. Oh, sure.
    Mr. Goldstein. It may take about a year or two. And are you 
optimistic you can do it by the year 2005, as they said in Miami at the 
Summit of the Americas?
    The President. Well, yes, I will fight just as hard. And I will 
certainly--there are no political considerations for me one way or the 
other now. I would like to point out we did get quite a large number of 
Democrats who supported NAFTA and that the leadership in both parties 
supported me with the Mexican loan.
    I'm quite concerned that there may have been an erosion of support 
for the free trade concept in the Americas, not just in the Democratic 
Party but in the Republican Party as well. And I find this surprising. 
Here we are now at the pinnacle of our economic success, political 
influence in the world, but the only way we can exercise our political 
influence for good is to become involved with other countries. And it 
disappoints me when I hear Americans who seemed to be reluctant to do 
that. I think that's a mistake. And so I'm going to try to persuade them 
to do the right thing from my point of view, and I believe we'll win.

Budget Agreement

    Mr. Goldstein. And will you get a budget agreement? Everybody in the 
basement asked me to ask you----
    The President. I don't know. I hope so.
    Mr. Goldstein. Thank you, sir.

Note: The interview began at 11:42 a.m. in the Oval Office at the White 
House. In his remarks, the President referred to President Ernesto 
Zedillo of Mexico; President Alberto Fujimori of Peru; and President 
Fidel Castro of Cuba. A tape was not available for verification of the 
content of this interview.