[Weekly Compilation of Presidential Documents Volume 33, Number 49 (Monday, December 8, 1997)]
[Pages 1984-1985]
[Online from the Government Publishing Office, www.gpo.gov]

<R04>
Remarks Prior to Discussions With European Union Leaders and an Exchange 
With Reporters

December 5, 1997

    The President. Let me say very briefly that we are delighted to have 
another one of our EU summits, and it's particularly interesting because 
we now have two Luxembourgers here instead of one, which gives them I 
think the highest percentage of world leadership compared to population 
of any country in the world by a good long ways. [Laughter] And we have 
a lot to discuss, but I just want to thank President Santer and Prime 
Minister Juncker for the work that we have done together with the EU in 
the last 6 months under the presidency of Luxembourg, and I look forward 
to the discussions today.

International Agreement on Greenhouse Gas Emissions

    Q. Are you changing your position, softening on global warming?
    The President. Softening or toughening?
    Q. Whichever. You tell us.
    The President. Well, we're working in Kyoto to try to get an 
agreement, and we'll see if we can. We hope we can.
    Q. Is a compromise impossible considering the distance between the 
two positions, the EU on one side, the U.S. on the other side?
    The President. Not if everybody wants an agreement. Our position is 
that it's a global issue, we want to get global involvement, and we want 
this to be the beginning of a process which eventually will have 
everyone in the world involved in dealing with this issue. And I think 
that the chances that we can get an agreement are reasonably good if 
everybody there really wants an agreement and we want to see countries 
bound to targets which will lead us to reduced greenhouse gas emissions. 
That's the real test.

Middle East Peace Process

    Q. Did you give Secretary Albright any new marching orders on the 
Middle East?
    The President. Well, we had a good meeting on things that we think 
will move the ball forward. And she's going with the instructions that I 
gave her to talk to Prime Minister Netanyahu and Chairman Arafat, and 
I'm very hopeful. I think it's in the nature of this process that the 
less I say, the better chance we have of making progress, so I don't 
think I want to talk about it too much.
    Q. But these are new ideas?
    The President. Oh, yes, we have some new ideas at least about the 
process, about where to go from here, or at least the different 
approaches. And we hope that it will move the ball forward. I think that 
they both understand that this is a time when something needs to be done 
to show concrete progress. I'm encouraged by that. We'll just have to 
see what happens.

Assistant Attorney General Nominee

    Q. Are you planning to make a recess appointment of Bill Lee?
    The President. I don't have anything to say about that now.

Minority Leader Richard A. Gephardt

    Q. How about your conversation with Gephardt? Did you fight?
    The President. I had a good talk with him, and we had a good visit. 
We agreed that we needed to focus on 1998, not only in terms of the 
politics of '98, but also in terms of

[[Page 1985]]

the substance of what we can do to serve the people here. It was a very 
satisfactory talk.

Note: The President spoke at 10:56 a.m. in the Oval Office at the White 
House. The President met with Prime Minister Jean-Claude Juncker of 
Luxembourg in his capacity as President of the European Council and 
President Jacques Santer of the European Commission. In his remarks, he 
referred to Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu of Israel and Chairman 
Yasser Arafat of the Palestinian Authority. A tape was not available for 
verification of the content of these remarks.