THE WHITE HOUSE

                    Office of the Press Secretary
______________________________________________________________
For Immediate Release                             April 23, 1993     

	     
                  PRESS CONFERENCE BY THE PRESIDENT
	     
	     
                            The East Room 


1:00 P.M. EDT
	     
	     
	     THE PRESIDENT:  Terry, do you have a question?
	     
	     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 three 
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 Advisor 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 three 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 everybody 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 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.
	     
	     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?  (Laughter.)
	     
	     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 three 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 two years, and we've still had 16 months of seven-
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 four 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.
	     
	     Q	  Waco --
	     
	     THE PRESIDENT:  Well, with regard to Waco I don't have 
much to add to what I've already said.  I think it is a -- 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.
	     
	     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 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.

	     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 into 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?
	     
	     Q	  Mr. President, several of the leading lights in 
your administration, ranging from your FBI Director to your U.N. 
Ambassador, 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 memo -- 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 Miss 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.  I took no -- that wasn't taking a 
line against an administration policy.
	     
	     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?
	     
	     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.
	     
	     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.  There 
are -- 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 super power.  
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.

	     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. 

	     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 
answered, 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.
	     
	     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.
	     
	     Q	  Mr. President, since you said that one side in 
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 incident so --
series of incidents -- so perplexing.  But we have -- as I say, we've 
got all of our options under review.
	     
	     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 civilized society.  But I believe we're going to prevail 
there.
	     
	     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.
	     
	     Q	  Sir, a follow-up.  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 the Soviet -- 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, 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.

	     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 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.

	     Q	  Mr. President, to back to Russia for just a minute.  
The latest poll 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 -- (laughter) -- 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.

	     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 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.
	     
	     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 POWs.  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.
	     
	     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 initiative 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 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."  
	     
	     And 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 on -- 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 three 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.
	     
	     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 don't really think -- 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.
	     
	     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.
	     
	     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.
	     
	     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.