The Rt. Hon. Sir John Major KG CH

Tag: United States

  • Mr Major’s Joint Press Conference with Bill Clinton – 4 April 1995

    Below is the transcript of Mr Major’s joint press conference with President Bill Clinton, held in Washington on Tuesday 4th April 1995.

    PRESIDENT CLINTON:

    Good afternoon. Please be seated. I am delighted to welcome Prime Minister Major back to the White House. Throughout this century the United States and the United Kingdom have stood together on the great issues that have confronted our people. Our common cause has been at the heart of our success in two World Wars and of course in the Cold War. In just the last two years British/American cooperation has played an essential role in allowing us to reduce the threat of weapons of mass destruction, in promoting peace around the world and certainly in expanding free trade.

    Today we have continued working in that tradition. We have had excellent discussions, we have covered a broad range of issues, we have, as always, found much to agree about.

    On security issues we agree that the inevitable process of NATO expansion must proceed smoothly, gradually and openly, without any surprises. This is essential for extending stability, democracy and prosperity throughout Europe. We believe that in parallel with the enlargement of NATO the Alliance must develop and maintain close ties with Russia.

    We affirmed our shared commitment to a political settlement in Bosnia, based on the Contact group plan. The conflict is being prolonged because of Bosnian Serb intransigence. Renewed fighting will not end the conflict but only lead to more bloodshed and continued stalemate. The Prime Minister and I also vowed to continue working together to contain the Iraqi threat to stability in the Persian Gulf region. We are deeply concerned that Saddam Hussein could be regaining the ability to build weapons of mass destruction. We are determined that Iraq must meet all its United Nations obligations. This is no time to relax sanctions. The Iraqi people are suffering tremendously under Saddam’s tyranny and they do deserve the help of the international community. But easing up on a regime that oppresses people will not help them. So while there can be no compromise, the United States, the United Kingdom and Argentina have put forward new proposals at the United Nations to get food and medicine to the people of Iraq. We hope other nations will join these efforts and support our Security Council Resolution and pressure Saddam Hussein to stop the needless suffering of his innocent citizens.

    Prime Minister Major told me a great deal about his recent trip to the Middle East. We both strongly believe this is a hopeful moment for broadening the circle of peace. The United States and Europe must continue to fight the efforts to derail the peace process by those who prefer destruction to peace. It is clear that for peace to take root in the region more economic assistance is vital. Peace and prosperity depend upon one another. I applaud the United Kingdom’s investment programme in the West Bank in Gaza, as well as its debt relief measures for Jordan. We must all continue to support those who take risks for peace.

    Nowhere is this more true than in Northern Ireland. I salute the Prime Minister for the tremendous efforts he is making to bring an enduring peace to Northern Ireland. Today Northern Ireland is closer to a just and lasting settlement than at any time, in a generation, thanks in large measure to the vision and courage of John Major. He and Prime Minister Bruton of Ireland together introduced the joint framework which provides a landmark opportunity to move ahead towards a political settlement, one that will be backed by both of Northern Ireland’s communities. We also agreed that the paramilitaries of both sides must get rid of their weapons for good so that violence never returns to Northern Ireland. And we must work to increase economic opportunity in that area, their prospects have been blighted by bloodshed for too long.

    Next month our White House Conference on Trade and Investment in Ireland will help to expand the ties between the United States, Northern Ireland and Ireland’s border counties. Building those kinds of bonds will help to lead to a better life for all the people of the region. The Prime Minister and I discussed some other issues. We agreed on the need for an indefinite extension of the Non-Proliferation Treaty at the review conference that begins this month. To further the cause of non-proliferation the Prime Minister joins me in calling for full implementation of the framework agreement we negotiated with North Korea to end that country’s nuclear programme. And we discussed the need to adapt our international institutions to the challenges of the next century at the G7 Summit in Halifax. I was particularly impressed by the thinking that the Prime Minister has done on this profoundly important issue. The United States and the United Kingdom, after all, helped to shape those institutions, they have served our interests for the last half-century.

    With the extraordinary relationship between our countries as important as ever, I am confident that we can make the changes necessary and work together to advance our shared values and our common interests, to promote peace, democracy and prosperity in the years ahead and of course in the century ahead.

    Finally let me say that we discussed the ceremonies that will mark the 50th anniversary of the end of World War II. Because of my prior commitments I have asked the Vice President to represent me and all Americans in London on 8 May at services that will commemorate the great wartime bravery and sacrifice of so many Britons. And I look forward to seeing Prime Minister Major when we go together to Moscow on 9 May to pay our respect to the heroism of the Russian people in that conflict.

    Mr Prime Minister.

    PRIME MINISTER:

    Mr President, thank you very much.

    We have had the opportunity today for a good humoured, worthwhile, productive and very far-reaching series of exchanges on a whole range of matters. The President has set out much of the agenda we discussed and I will not reiterate what the President said except to say that in his remarks he spoke not just for the United States but for the United Kingdom as well. I share the views he expressed and I will not reiterate them.

    We spent some time looking forward at two separate matters which I think are of some importance to both our countries and of wider importance as well. The first of them the President just touched on, and that was the review of the Bretton Woods institutions and the United Nations that we agreed with the other G7 Heads of Government at Naples last year that we should undertake and return to at Halifax later this year. We have given a great deal of discussion to that and I think for a range of reasons the time is right to look at a fairly comprehensive reform of some of those institutions and we exchanged some ideas today on precisely how we might do that and agreed that we would exchange further ideas before we came to the G7 Summit. I think there is scope to rationalise some of the international financial institutions.

    We wish to look particularly, in addition to that, at the United Nations where there are a number of overlapping functions. I am a very strong supporter of the United Nations and I wish to see the United Nations a successful organisation for the year 2000. It does seem that looking at some of the areas of the UN could well do with up-dating, refreshing, to make sure that they are entirely applicable to the problems they will have to face in the late 1990s and beyond the turn of the century. And I hope very much that we will be able to get together with some more of our ideas and float those in greater detail when we get to the Halifax Summit later on this year.

    We also spent some time looking at the commonality of interest that exists between the United Kingdom and the United States. There are a huge range of areas where there is common interest, not just those that were discussed, the agreements that we have in terms of policy towards Russia, Iran, Iraq, the Middle East, Bosnia and a range of other areas. But beyond that I think there is a commonality of interest in the future security and prosperity of the Central and East European states, and also with two other matters. First, the further extension of free trade, to which I wish to return in just a second, and second with looking together and combatting together some of the problems of instability, extremism and terrorism that we can begin to see in parts of North Africa, parts of the Levant and parts of the Middle East, and we spent some time considering how we might address some of those problems in the future. It was necessarily a discussion that dealt with problems that may arise, and dealt in some cases frankly with generalities, but it was an opportunity to look forward rather than to just discuss the immediate topical problems that we face at the moment.

    One area of growing importance that we touched on was the possibility of seeing how we can build on the Uruguay Round agreement of a year or so ago, and see how we can move forward to deal with much freer trade in financial services, for example, removing many of the non-tariff barriers that still exist between western Europe and the United States, and seeing how, step by step, we can move forward to a much greater element of free trade between North America and the Western European nations. That is something that needs to be done, I think it is something that is of immense benefit, and I found our discussion on that immensely productive and it is one I know that we will both return to in the future.

    So I found the discussion, not just on contemporary matters of use, but I found the sharing of ideas about how we deal with the development of the transatlantic relationship to deal with the problems that are going to arise in the future, and also the examination of the common transatlantic view on many of the international problems around the world to be a very worthwhile and a very refreshing discussion and I am delighted we were able to have it.

    QUESTIONS AND ANSWERS

    QUESTION:

    Mr President, I would like to ask you about two tax matters at home. Congress has sent you a bill that would provide health and insurance tax reductions for self-employed people, but it also allows billionaires to avoid taxation by renouncing their citizenship. Will you sign or veto that measure? And secondly, the House tomorrow takes up the Republican tax bill that provides benefits for a range of businesses and also a 500 dollar child credit for families earning up to 200,000 dollars a year. I know you have your own approach but can you live with this Republican approach?

    PRESIDENT CLINTON:

    In answer to your first question, I strongly support restoring deductability to self-employed people for the cost of their health insurance, I think it is untenable to have a different standard for them than for corporations, and that was a big part of my Health Care Reform Bill last year. So I am on record strongly in favour of that, as a matter of fact I would like to see it expanded. I am deeply troubled that the Conference Committee took out a payment mechanism by simply asking billionaires who made their money as Americans, who largely made their money in the United States, to pay the taxes they owe and instead to let them evade American income taxes by giving up their citizenship now that they have it made. So I am going to have to look at that very closely and examine whether there might be some other opportunities to achieve that objective. But it is just wrong for us to walk away from that, that is just wrong.

    On the second matter, you know what my views are on that. We have two objectives here. I support the tax relief for the middle class, I support greater tax standards. I think it should be much more focused on things that will raise incomes in the short-term and in the long term, so I favour a sharp focus on educating people and raising children, on families and education, but we cannot afford a cut of that magnitude and do the right thing by the deficit. And we should not be cutting taxes in ways that benefit very wealthy Americans and require us in turn to cut education which will weaken our country as a whole. Education is the middle class social safety net, if you will, it is the key to our economic future as well. So I think that is a big mistake, I think it is too big, we need to focus on the deficit and we don’t need to be cutting education and investment in our future to give tax relief to people who don’t really need it.

    QUESTION (John McIntyre):

    Could I just ask the President whether he accepts the British Government’s analysis that Sinn Fein has not yet gone quite far enough on the decommissioning of arms to justify ministerial talks and also could I ask the Prime Minister whether he is satisfied with the backing he has got from the Administration on that issue?

    PRESIDENT CLINTON:

    I think it is a decision entirely for the British Government to make in negotiations with Sinn Fein when ministerial talks are appropriate.
    I will say this: I was very clear when the Adams visa was granted with permission to fund raise that there must be an agreement – a commitment — in good faith to seriously and quickly discuss arms decommissioning. Without a serious approach to arms decommissioning, there will never be a resolution of this conflict so I would hope there would be no difference in our position on that because I think the Prime Minister is right about that, we have to deal with this arms decommissioning issue and I know that there is an attempt by the Government to work with the paramilitaries on both sides to achieve that objective and that is what I think should be done.

    PRIME MINISTER:

    Let me just add to that point. We have already started discussions at ministerial level with the Loyalist paramilitaries on decommissioning and those discussions are proceeding. What we are seeking to do is to have exactly the same discussions on exactly the same terms with Sinn Fein. If Mr. Adams is serious about moving towards peace – and he has repeatedly spoken about it – then he needs to discuss with the British Government the question of the modalities of decommissioning the arms. We need to know how it can be done, when it can be done, what needs to be done, a whole series of details but that matter has to be discussed.

    I think it is right for that matter to be discussed at ministerial level with Sinn Fein and we have made it perfectly clear that providing they are prepared to discuss that matter – we have suggested what the agenda might be and we are in discussion with them about that – then I think it is right for us to move to ministerial discussion on the decommissioning of arms.

    What is absolutely clear is that unless we are able to make progress on decommissioning of arms, there will be no possibility of Sinn Fein sitting down with the other democratic political parties in Northern Ireland, they simply won’t be prepared to talk about reaching a settlement until there has been progress on decommissioning of arms so I very much hope Mr. Adams will embark upon those discussions speedily.

    QUESTION:

    Mr. President, could you elaborate on something you said in your opening remarks about your concerns with Iraq in their apparent ability to build weapons of mass destruction?

    PRESIDENT CLINTON:

    I didn’t say they had the apparent ability, I said they could be regaining it. I want to be very specific about it. What I mean by that is that unless Mr. Ekeus and the international inspectors can certify that they are in full compliance with all the relevant United Nations Resolutions, then we have no assurance that they are not regaining the capacity to move forward with weapons of mass destruction. That is what I mean but that is all I mean about it.

    QUESTION:

    Do you say you don’t have the evidence?

    PRESIDENT CLINTON:

    That they are doing that now, I do not and I want to make clear that is why I used the word “regaining”.

    The United States position, which the United Kingdom has supported and for which I am very grateful, is that we should not relax these sanctions until there is full compliance with the Resolutions. The Resolutions were not passed in a careless way; they are carefully worded Resolutions designed to assure the international community that this cannot happen and unless those, Resolutions are complied with, the international community cannot know that this cannot happen.

    QUESTION:

    Prime Minister, do you share that view?

    PRIME MINISTER:

    I share that view absolutely and I think we need to await Mr. Ekeus’s report; from all I hear, it is not going to be satisfactory about the way Iraq are behaving. We are concerned about the humanitarian aspect of people in Iraq; there is a Security Council Resolution which I trust is going to be passed which will open up a better possibility for Saddam Hussein to sell oil in order to feed people in Iraq; it is an option that will be there, I very much hope he will take that option but on the general relief of sanctions, until he has met the Security Council Resolutions in full and we have seen independent verification that he has met the Security Council Resolutions in full, then we entirely agree that there can be no relief whatsoever from the sanctions that have been imposed.

    QUESTION:

    Mr. President, having broken bread with Gerry Adams, could you person-to-person, man-to-man, recommend that he speak with Gerry Adams himself?

    PRESIDENT CLINTON:

    That is a decision for the Prime. Minister to make in the context of the peace process. I said on St. Patrick’s Day when I spoke then and I will say again that we are where are today because of the risks that John Major has been willing to take for peace and they have been considerable risks to himself, to his party, to his government because he knows that this matter must be resolved and I applaud that.

    The details of the decision-making must be made by the participants and that is a decision for him to make.

    QUESTION:

    Mr. President, with all due respect, your nuclear policy is filled with inconsistencies. You want to stop Russia from building a nuclear reactor in Iran; you want to ease sanctions against Pakistan which we believe is developing nuclear weapons; you want Egypt to sign the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty along with other states in the area and you never try to persuade Israel, which does have a nuclear arsenal, to sign the treaty. Can you explain?

    PRESIDENT CLINTON:

    First of all, the United States does not want Russia to give the capacity to Iran because we don’t want that to be the beginning of their increased capacity to develop nuclear fuel and technology for other purposes and given their conduct, I think that is the right policy and I don’t have any problem with it.

    With regard to Pakistan, the simple question there is whether the policy we have pursued in the last few years is achieving its objectives and whether we will be a stronger force for peace and reconciliation and ultimately for the defanging in terms of weapons of mass destruction in the area if we change our policy or if we stay with it. I think we should seriously review the policy. If you look at the number of people in those countries in South Asia, the potential they represent for the future and the powder keg on which they sit because of their problems, the United States it seems to me has an obligation to do the very best we can to bring about the best result and the most peaceful result and that is all we are doing.

    QUESTION:

    [Indistinct but about producing weapons]

    PRESIDENT CLINTON:

    We don’t support that. We want everybody to be a member of the Non-Proliferation regime; we want everybody to do that and that is why I said what I did to President Mubarak of Egypt. Our position is that we want the largest number of people possible to participate in the Non-Proliferation regime and to go forward with its requirements and we want to keep as many states non-nuclear as possible and we are doing our best to reduce the nuclear threat by reducing the number of nuclear weapons that we have in agreement with the Russians and the states of the former Soviet Union.

    I think that our policy is consistent if you look at what the objective is; the objective is to reduce the threat of nuclear war to the world in the future and to reduce the threat of other weapons of mass destruction. There still is no more significant obligation I have to future generations and that is the common thread running through all these policies.

    QUESTION (Adam Boulton):

    Given that the Tories [indistinct] ideologically and given that we understand that Tony Blair of Labour may be coming here soon I wonder if I could ask you how important you think your personal relations are for the relations between our two countries?

    PRESIDENT CLINTON:

    First of all, I think that in foreign policy the differences are not easily discernible by party. We have, as you heard today, a broad overlap and indeed in our country the differences among us here in America as Americans in foreign policy don’t tend to break down along party lines. For example, the Speaker of the House and the Senate Majority Leader supported the position I took on debt relief for Mexico which was opposed by a number of members of their party and a number of members of mine so I think that at the end of the Cold War in this country and I sense throughout Europe perhaps there are forces arguing for a kind of inward-looking approach, a little bit more if not more isolationist, a disengaged approach and there are others who believe we must still continue to broaden the frontiers of relationships, to expand trade in order to support democracy and prosperity. I am in that latter group, Prime Minister Major is in that latter group. Last year, at the G7 meeting, we were the two strongest proponents of expanding opportunities for economic integration of the countries there so I just don’t believe that there is a necessary partisan breakdown to our common objectives in the world community.

    Secondly, I think we have got a good personal relationship and I feel very comfortable about where it is; I think it is honest and open and it endures occasional disagreements but the agreements are far more numerous and over the long run should be the shaping factors of our relationship.

    PRIME MINISTER:

    The fact of the matter is that we know one another well enough and the relationship is good enough to have those disagreements and it doesn’t affect the broad swathe of agreement that exists between the two countries. I was fascinated to see that you referred to differences between parties, not within parties, and I think that is a great advance [Laughter]. I am delighted you put it that way!

    Let me just make a broader point really about the Anglo-American relationship.

    At almost any time, it would be astonishing if there wasn’t some measure of difference on an issue between two sovereign governments whether they happen to be Conservative or Labour in the United Kingdom, Democrat or Republican in the United States but against that, I think you have to look at the huge range of things in which the instinctive outlook between the United Kingdom Government and the United States Government is exactly the same.

    If you run down most of the great issues of the moment, relationship with Russia, relationship with the Middle East, relationship on terrorism, relationship with Iran, relationship with Iraq, present policy on Bosnia, you won’t find a scintilla of difference between the British Government and the United States Government. If you look at the two nations that were foremost in propounding a free trade agreement – the GATT Agreement – and taking that forward, you will find the same relationship between the British and American governments.

    As for looking forward, I spoke a few moments ago of two areas where we have actually been looking forward today together at what we might actually do in the future and as for whether the relationship is good enough, perhaps I can just give you a practical example.

    If you were to spend a weekend, Adam, on one of our nuclear submarines, you would find a Trident missile on it. I am not sure you could travel on anyone else’s submarine and find a Trident missile on it and I hope very soon in the future that you will be able to see Tomahawk Cruise missiles in the United Kingdom armoury and I am not sure anybody else will have those. They are practical illustrations of the extent of the closeness of the defence, security and other relationships between the United Kingdom and the United States and the fact of the matter is it is sufficiently close – and has been sufficiently close for a large number of years – to enable the President and I to have the occasional disagreement if we want without any harm coming of it.

    QUESTION:

    I would like to go back to the issue of Russia. You said that you do not want the Russians to go forward with their plans to sell nuclear plant to Iran. What, if anything, did you talk about in terms of putting some real pressure on them? Is there anything you can do at this point to stop it from going forward and if they do go forward, will this put a damper on the Western relationship with Russia?

    PRESIDENT CLINTON:

    We are continuing to have negotiations and discussions with them about it and I think that is all I can really say at this time because we are in the midst of our conversations.

    I thought Helen was going to ask me the question which I thought you asked me the last time which is are we trying to discourage Russia from selling to Iran the technology we are trying to finance in North Korea? The difference is that when I became President I found a full blown nuclear programme in North Korea which I am trying to take down and I don’t want to leave some future President of the United States and the people of Britain with a problem in Iran. If they have to try to take it down, I am going to do the best I can to deal with it.

    QUESTION:

    A lot of Americans are still questioning whether you can really rely on Russia in any way?

    PRESIDENT CLINTON:

    Let’s don’t jump the gun here. We are having these serious discussions, we are working it through. We have a lot of interests in a democratic and a reformist Russia and the Prime Minister and I talked about it at some length today and I think that they have done better economically than either the Prime Minister or I thought that they would a couple of years ago in terms of pursuing the path of reform. They have continued to honour their constitution and their electoral system and obligations to democracy and we are going to have differences from time to time but I wouldn’t assume we can’t work this one out; we are going to keep working hard on it.

    QUESTION:

    Prime Minister, the President mentioned your ideas on the Bretton Woods institutions and the UN. How much have you worked that up in detail and what would it actually involve?

    PRIME MINISTER:

    It is developing rather than been developed. We agreed last year that we needed to look at some of the overlap there was in the Bretton Woods institutions and see how we could look at bringing the United Nations a little more up-to-date.

    If I could just give you a couple of illustrations, if you mean have we yet got a detailed worked-out position between the United Kingdom and the United States, the answer is no, we haven’t. We have both been looking separately, as we agreed we would do at the G7 summit last year, at the sort of ideas we might bring forward for discussion with partners at Halifax later on this year and the sort of the things that we are looking at – by “we” I now mean the United Kingdom – in terms of the financial institutions, you will be of the idea we have had in the past of selling some IMF gold to help some of the poorer nations – that is still on the agenda as far as we are concerned.

    Looking at perhaps a greater degree of rationalisation of some of the activities of the IMF, OECD and the World Bank is an area we are looking at.

    We would like to look at the way in which poverty is dealt with through the UN; there seem to us to be a number of overlapping agencies, a certain amount of duplication, which could credibly be looked at. In terms of trade, we would like to see what can be done to bed down the World Trade Organisation satisfactorily. In terms of environment, I would suggest that there are some areas of overlap as well – in the UN Environment Programme and the Commission for Sustainable Development, there seem to be areas of overlap.

    They are just specimen samples of the sort of things we are looking at. I emphasise we are in the early stages of that examination. We haven’t reached any conclusions but I think those are matters we must examine.

    Other things I would like to see us examine at the summit would be to look more comprehensively at crime, drugs and money-laundering; we had a G7 task force on money-laundering some time ago, that has been successful, I think we should re-visit that given the nature of the problem and given the problem that exists internationally with crime and drugs and I think we would like to look a little more carefully at what might be done in terms of conflict prevention. Those are just broad headlines of some of the areas we are looking at; we shared them in general outline today; we will come to them in detail at the summit.

    PRESIDENT CLINTON:

    Thank you very much.

    PRIME MINISTER:

    Thank you.

  • Mr Major’s Doorstep Interview in Washington – 3 April 1995

    Below is the transcript of Mr Major’s doorstep interview following his meeting with Senator Dole in Washington on Monday 3rd April 1995.

    QUESTION:

    Prime Minister, did you gather from the Republicans whether they intend to lift the arms embargo now against the Bosnian Muslims?

    PRIME MINISTER:

    Let me just say I think that debate will come in May, probably not before May, and heaven alone knows what the outcome of that will be. I took the opportunity this morning when seeing the Majority and Minority leader of running through a whole range of topics. I was particularly pleased to thank Senator Dole for his activities over the Uruguay Round where we were very pleased to get a settlement and he played a very material part in that. We looked at Bosnia, Russia, NATO expansion and a number of related problems like that. I don’t know what the outcome will be on lifting the arms embargo, I think the British government’s position on that is very clear.

    QUESTION:

    But you have not been able to persuade Senator Dole to hold off on that one?

    PRIME MINISTER:

    I think that is a matter for Senator Dole at a later stage. I understand the very strong emotions that exist about that matter. We have a lot of troops on the ground in Bosnia and we don’t ourselves believe that that is the right way to proceed. But no doubt the House will debate that later in the year.

    QUESTION:

    Can I ask you why you feel you cannot help Mrs Ingram to save her son from the electric chair?

    PRIME MINISTER:

    I set out the position. I replied to Mrs Ingram’s letter. I gave it very long and careful thought before replying to it. Clearly I understand fully the very deep distress that she must feel. She has written to me again, I have replied today and I think my reply will be given to her very shortly.

    QUESTION:

    Are there no grounds for you to intervene?

    PRIME MINISTER:

    I don’t think there is anything further that we are in a position to do.

    QUESTION:

    What sort of practical help are you expecting from the US Administration on pressuring Sinn Fein into decommissioning of arms?

    PRIME MINISTER:

    I think there is no doubt that the American Administration are keen to see these talks continue and keen to see the decommissioning of arms, but I don’t wish to go further than that.

    QUESTION:

    Once this row over Ireland is finished, Prime Minister …

    PRIME MINISTER:

    I think that matter is behind us. We had a disagreement about that, I think it is well known we had a disagreement about that. In the best [indistinct] circles that sort of thing happens from time to time, but I think that is now behind us.

  • Mr Major’s Joint Doorstep Interview with Warren Christopher – 3 April 1995

    Below is the transcript of Mr Major’s joint doorstep interview with Warren Christopher in Washington on Monday 3rd April 1995.

    PRIME MINISTER:

    Can I just say I am delighted to have had the opportunity of talking to the Secretary this morning. We have been able to touch on a wide range of issues where there is very substantial agreement between the British and the United States Administrations. We have looked at the present situation in Bosnia and how that may turn out in the future, we have looked at Russia, Iraq, a number of NATO questions and some bilateral issues as well. We will take a couple of questions in a few moments. I will not traipse through all the detail of what we have discussed except to say I think it was an extremely worthwhile discussion and I am delighted that the Secretary was able to join me this morning.

    MR CHRISTOPHER:

    Thank you very much, Mr Prime Minister. I am honoured and pleased to be here this morning for breakfast on this gorgeous spring morning, and the presence of those wonderful trees. We did have a good discussion over about an hour. I think it shows the high degree of congruence on our policy on some of the most difficult issues we are facing. We are very good colleagues and friends on these issues and I think the Prime Minister and I were able to exhibit that, but also to wrestle with some of the difficult on-going questions we have over the next several weeks and months relating to NATO and Bosnia and so forth.

    QUESTION:

    Prime Minister, the special relationship – defunct, could be better, better than ever – which one of these best describes it?

    PRIME MINISTER:

    I have never referred to it as a special relationship. There is a relationship between the United Kingdom and the United States of shared interests, we have had that relationship of shared interests for very many years. We tend to look at the same problems in the same way. Occasionally there are spats, as there are in the best of families, but they are very rare.

    QUESTION:

    [Indistinct] no longer being a relationship, is it justified in your view?

    MR CHRISTOPHER:

    There will always be a relationship, as the Prime Minister said, based upon so many things – a common history, common language, common interests, issues such as NATO – and I see that relationship being a very strong one in which we look to our British colleagues, and they look to us, on so many issues for advice and counsel. So I think it is very strong relationship and it is in very excellent shape.

    QUESTION:

    What does the Administration think about a lifting of the arms embargo?

    MR CHRISTOPHER:

    We certainly are strongly opposed to a unilateral lifting of the arms embargo. That issue may arise again. I sense that there is a better understanding now in the Congress of the dangers of unilaterally lifting the arms embargo, both for the effect it would have on other UN resolutions but also on the effect if might have for involving the United States more deeply in that conflict.

    QUESTION:

    [Inaudible]

    PRIME MINISTER:

    There was a time a year or so ago, maybe 18 months ago, when there was some difference in Bosnian policy between the United States Administration and the British administration, that has substantially come together and I agree entirely with what the Secretary has just said.

    QUESTION:

    Mr Secretary, would you say that the US Administration was closer to Gerry Adams or John Major on Northern Ireland?

    MR CHRISTOPHER:

    John Major is the Prime Minister of the United Kingdom and a long-standing relationship. We have certainly had the relationship with him on a great range of issues where we have so much in common. As the Prime Minister has said about that particular issue, the issue that arose a few weeks ago is now ancient history and we are pulling together, as I say, on the broad range of issues we have here this morning. So we are really delighted and honoured to have the Prime Minister in our country as the leader of one of our most important allies, and that is a much different relationship than any other.

    QUESTION:

    [Inaudible]

    PRIME MINISTER:

    I am less concerned about Mr Adams’s opinion than I am about Sinn Fein deciding they will come and talk about decommissioning. The important thing now is that Sinn Fein honour what they have been implying for some time, that they decide that they mean what they say, that they come along, that they engage in constructive discussion that leads to the decommissioning of arms and taking them out of Northern Ireland politics. That is what concerns me and that is what I wish to hear from Mr Adams.

  • Mr Major’s Doorstep Interview at Chequers – 4 June 1994

    Below is Mr Major’s doorstep interview at Chequers with President Clinton, on Saturday 4th June 1994.

    PRIME MINISTER:

    I suppose I should begin by apologising to you for the D-Day weather, I am sorry about that. Could I also say at the outset that the President and I will be able to take a question or two afterwards but I need to be in Portsmouth fairly speedily and I know the President has a live broadcast so I am afraid the question time will be limited.

    We have had the opportunity this morning of discussions for nearly a couple of hours and we will take the opportunity over the next two days to pursue some other matters as well.

    We looked at a wide range of issues, we looked forward firstly to the Naples Summit, we anticipate the emphasis there will be on employment following the Detroit Jobs Conference, and we discussed some of the preliminary work that is now in the course of preparation for that conference. We will of course at Naples be welcoming President Yeltsin, we both agree that the more stable, economic and political situation in Russia at present, a better foreign policy partnership than perhaps there has been at any stage in recent years, and we had the opportunity of looking at the responsible handling we have seen thus far by both Russia and Ukraine of the problems that exist in the Crimea.

    Self-evidently today, we spent some time discussing our joint interests in Bosnia. We are at the middle in the midst of crucial negotiations in Geneva, the United Nations continues to seek a cessation of hostilities. At present, as you will know, the Contact Group is still meeting, pressing for settlement of territorial questions, and it is my view and that of the President as well that it is vital for all three parties in Bosnia to recognise that continued war will not advance their positions but would continue to strain international patience.

    Saying that, we must recognise what has already been achieved in Bosnia. Many feared the war would spread beyond those borders, it has not done so, and I think there is some satisfaction we can draw from the peaceful developments in much of central Bosnia as well. We have a ceasefire there, in Sarajevo, in Gorazde, and the conflict has been contained. So far that is good, we hope we can achieve more at the end of the Contact Group discussions. The joint initiative the President and I launched in Washington seems to be successful and the reconstruction of Sarajevo is now in the United Nations’s hands.

    We spent a while on looking at the hideous conflict in Rwanda. From our perspective we are looking to support with logistics the Secretary General’s proposals for an expanded United Nations force and of course the pre-eminent need for humanitarian aid.

    We spent some time expressing our joint concern about the nuclear programme in North Korea and looking at the scope for effective action by the United Nations. I took the opportunity of briefing the President on the present state of discussions in Northern Ireland.

    I also took the opportunity of thanking the President for his welcome decision on renewing MFN status for China, that is of course important for Hong Kong. But quite apart from that, I believe it is the best way to pursue a proper dialogue with the Chinese over human rights because it is more important to have a dialogue that will achieve results than simply to make gestures that may entrench the problem without satisfactorily advancing it. We have taken much the same view with human rights missions that have gone to China and I think there is a joint determination to continue the pressure on the Chinese in this respect. Nonetheless, I believe the decision on MFN was entirely right and I am extremely pleased that it was made.

    PRESIDENT CLINTON:

    I would like first to thank the Prime Minister for his hospitality, even though it is raining a little bit, Chequers is still a magnificent place, a welcome walk through history and a great opportunity for a good visit.

    In addition to the items mentioned by the Prime Minister, I would like to also say how much I appreciate the support the United Kingdom has given, through NATO, to the idea of the Partnership for Peace, we now have 19 nations signed up to be part of our Partnership for Peace with NATO, giving us the prospect of having a Europe that is not divided politically and military perhaps for the first time since nation states dotted the continent, so we are very encouraged by that.

    I would like to reaffirm what the Prime Minister said about Bosnia. We are heartened by the fact that the conflict has been limited, by the fact that the Croatians and the Bosnian government have worked out an accord, but we believe that we need to continue to push for an agreement here, I think it unlikely that either side in anywhere in the near term and with anything like acceptable losses can look forward to any kind of significant alteration in the parameters of the agreement that they were on the verge of making before the unfortunate incidents in Gorazde. So we are determined to redouble our efforts to try to achieve a settlement in whatever way we can.

    QUESTIONS AND ANSWERS

    QUESTION:

    How do you take the threat from North Korea that they would regard sanctions as an act of war and would this deter you in any way or is it even worth risking a war to pursue sanctions in the Security Council?

    PRESIDENT CLINTON:

    First of all, North Korea’s actions have in my view made it virtually imperative that the Security Council consider the question of sanctions. They did that, they freely undertook obligations as a part of the NPT, they repeatedly said that they did not wish to be a nuclear power and that they were committed to a non-nuclear Korean peninsular. We have offered any number of inducements or support to try to achieve that goal and nothing has been forthcoming, the IAEA inspections were not allowed to proceed, and so I think we have to proceed in the Security Council. There is still time for North Korea to avoid sanctions actually taking effect if we can work out something on the nuclear inspections, but this is in their hands. I think that clearly sanctions are not any sort of act of war and should not be seen as such.

    QUESTION:

    [Inaudible but asking about American military forces in South Korea].

    PRESIDENT CLINTON:

    As you know, we have taken some steps to support the capacity of our troops to fulfil their mission there already and I have had continuing talks, as you would expect I would have, with Secretary Perry and General Shalikashvili, and when we had the Commanders and Chiefs in recently General Lock and others talked with me extensively about this. We are prepared to do our duty, I do not want a lot of sabre rattling over this or war talk, this is a peace talk, this should be about peace. We are trying to enforce the requirements of the NPT, to which North Korea voluntarily pledged its allegiance, all we want them to do is to keep their word and we are going to try to give them the chance to do it.

    QUESTION:

    What is it like to be back in Britain after all this time?

    PRESIDENT CLINTON:

    Just like old times. Actually it is wonderful to be back. I have been back several times since I was a student here and I have come often but I never tire of coming and I always look forward to it. And today, having the opportunity to fly in the helicopter fairly low across the beautiful countryside was a very nostalgic trip for me, I was very grateful to have that chance.

    QUESTION:

    The Prime Minister was talking about employment, have you got any words of advice for the Prime Minister considering that your administration is presiding over one of the greatest falls in unemployment that we have seen for a long time?

    PRESIDENT CLINTON:

    Well we had a tough 1980s so we changed some policies, we changed our direction, and we have been bringing down our deficit, we have been increasing investment in areas critical to job growth, we have been trying to work on greater flexibility in our workforce. These things are not easy to do. I will say this, Great Britain is having a quite impressive run of growth and eventually the growth rates you have enjoyed in the last few months will bring low unemployment, there is no question about it. I think the question though that we all have to face is how low can we get it in a global economy and then how can we deal with those people who want to work but are isolated, either isolated in geographic areas where there has been disinvestment, in the United States that is mostly big inner city areas and rural areas, or they are isolated because they do not have sufficient skills to compete in a global economy in a wealthy country. Those are the challenges that we have to face.

    One of our big policies is how do we target the people that are left off? We have been very fortunate that our policies have paid off so handsomely, we have got about 3.3 million new jobs in the last 16 months but we too have a long way to go and I think we can all learn from each other. But I will say this, if your growth rates continue the way they have been you will have a drop in unemployment, it is unavoidable, you cannot absorb all this growth without hiring more people.

    PRIME MINISTER:

    We will have to stop there. I know he will be pleased to know our unemployment has been falling for 15 months and it will go on.

    PRESIDENT CLINTON:

    Thank you.

  • Mr Major’s Joint Speech with Bill Clinton – 4 June 1994

    Below is Mr Major’s joint speech with President Bill Clinton, held at the Cambridge American Military Cemetery in Madingley on Saturday 4th June 1994.

    PRIME MINISTER:

    We are here today to remember the Servicemen from America and Britain, from Canada and other Commonwealth and Allied countries who gave their lives for Europe’s freedom. As Winston Churchill reached the end of his own long life he encompassed their achievement with these words: “Our comradeship and brotherhood in war were unexampled, we stood together and because of that fact the free world stands”.

    Brotherhood was a word Churchill often used for friendship between the English-speaking peoples. On the very eve of D-Day he wrote to President Roosevelt of an absolute brotherhood between the forces. That spirit has served our countries valiantly over the intervening 50 years, in war and in peace. It is rooted in trust. And to quote Churchill again: “In common conceptions of what is right and decent, a marked regard for fair play, especially to the weak and poor, a stern sentiment of impartial justice, and above all the love of personal freedom.”

    It is especially the brotherhood of airmen to airmen, soldier to soldier and sailor to sailor that we commemorate at this time. Here in Britain 50 years ago approaching D-Day there were over 1.5 million Americans on active service under the command of General Eisenhower.

    For a while every 30th person in Britain was an American Serviceman. In the European theatre more than 150,000 Americans, including 57,000 airmen, lost their lives. Nearly 4,000 of them, mostly young men who flew extremely dangerous missions, lie here in this Garden of Remembrance in the midst of the English countryside. Over 5,000 more are commemorated in the Wall of the Missing. Among them are a few who achieved fame, some who surely, had they lived, would have been destined for fame, many who were less well known and some who are unknown warriors. All their lives were cruelly cut short and to them all of us owe a debt too deep to pay.

    Some of you here today will have come to Madingley to remember close relatives, you will have endured the life-long pain of losing those that you loved. Some here today will be honouring the memory of wartime comrades, you too ran the same risks, you too were ready to make the same sacrifice. To all of you I offer the very warmest of welcomes.

    We remember today why those lives were given. Those who came here from America were not as we were, protecting their homes and families, America was not under direct threat from Europe, they did not come here for national glory, not for profit, not for material gain, they came, many of you here today came, above all to defend the values which Britons and Americans hold sacred, to defend freedom and democracy, justice and human rights, to help liberate the people of Europe from tyranny and to seek to build a better world thereafter.

    President Franklin Roosevelt wrote out for Churchill some lines from Longfellow which summed this up: “Humanity with all its fears, with all its hopes of future years, is hanging breathless on my fate.”

    Throughout the joint efforts of all the allies, the fate of Western Europe was resolved for the better in 1944 and 1945. But that mission did not end in 1945, we have continued since to work together for our common values in the United Nations and in the Atlantic Alliance. We have had to make further sacrifices, some very recently. In the Gulf War, for example, among those buried here is an American Serviceman from that combined action; or in United Nations peace-keeping operations, in many parts of the world; and the courage and the selflessness which you and all of your wartime comrades showed half a century ago are still vital in today’s troubled world.

    Mr President, there could be no more fitting time, or I believe place or company for your first official visit to the United Kingdom. On behalf of all my fellow citizens I would like to thank you and your fellow Americans for your friendship and your unstinting support throughout the last 50 years and more.

    Whenever the going has been hardest, Britons and Americans have stood together in unity of belief. The peoples of Europe owe their freedom and their peace to those we honour this weekend, both the living and the fallen. Here today at this tranquil memorial and a thousand more generations to come will give thanks for all that they did to give us this peaceful today.

    PRESIDENT CLINTON:

    Mr Prime Minister, Mrs Major, Mr McLean, Chaplain, Secretary Bentsen, thank you for your fine remarks, to our British hosts and to all the distinguished Americans who are also here, members of the Congress, the administration, the armed forces, we have come here today, all of us, on a journey of remembrance.

    For some, as for Secretary Bentsen, it was a journey to replace time, to go back fifty summers and more, when they took to airfields like these. For others it is a journey to honour those who fought and those who died for the world in which we came of age.

    At this moment all of us are joined in a sense of pride, in a sense of indebtedness, a sense of wonder and a sense of determination to carry on that work and never to forget. On these ancient grounds 3,812 Americans are buried, airmen, soldiers and sailors. More than 5,000 others are remembered on the Wall of the Missing. The names of some we honour echo still in our nation’s memory, names like Joseph Kennedy Jr, the brother of our late President, a young man for whom a distinguished political career was predicted but who gave his life for our country. Or Glen Miller whose wonderful moonlight serenades soothe the savage world and still make us tap our feet.

    In death all these people on the wall and buried behind us were equal, they came from every state of the union, they were of many races and religions, they had names like Koreo, Kaufman and Wood, they were all of them American. They fought to defeat a great evil which threatened to destroy our very way of life, what Winston Churchill called the great principles of freedom in the rights of man which are the joint inheritance of the English speaking world. For long months Britain bravely carried that fight on alone. In the Battle of Britain, night after frightful night, the people of this besieged island withstood the fierce attacks of Nazi bombers, it was their finest hour.

    Amid the horror the British looked West for help. Then the Yanks came, deepening one of history’s profoundest bonds. Overnight it seemed tens of thousands of GIs filled the streets and cafes across southern England. All these years later we find the memories of many of them still very vivid – smiling GI’s tossing packs of spearmint gum to British schoolboys, new faces and funny accents at the corner pub, lindy hops in London, kids from Milwaukee invited in for high tea, allied uniforms filling the pews at British churches.

    America gave to England an infusion of arms and men and material. The British gave our troops the feeling that they were not so far from home after all. The British gave us inspiration, the Americans gave in return hope. At every level Yanks and Brits worked together like family.

    American intelligence services built on Britain’s brilliant successes which were here chronicled in breaking the German codes; General Eisenhower chose British Marshals to be his deputies, of course Montgomery and Ramsay and Tetter. Roosevelt and Churchill, even as they led the assault on tyranny and rallied their own people to support the crusade encouraged each other with personal notes. All shared a sense of kinship that sustained them through the darkest moments of the war, all shared a faith that our people, nurtured on freedom, would rise to the call of history.

    Nowhere was our bond more important than in the air war launched from the green fields like this one. The Royal Air Force and the Army Air Corps joined in countless sorties to cripple the Luftwaffe, to desolate the Nazi war machine, to soften the Atlantic wall. One British citizen remembered for 1,000 days the sky was never still.

    It was some of the most dangerous work of the war and the tales of valour still amaze us all. Pilots going down with burning flames to give all the rest of the crew just a few more seconds to get out, or the two crew members who shared the only parachute left on board as they jumped together from their burning plane over England. The Marauders, Liberators, Mustangs and Flying Fortresses, the Halifaxes and Mosquitos, they were all sturdy, but as one American remembered, the flack sometimes seemed so thick you could walk on it, the wild blue yonder above Europe could quickly turn cold and grey and lethal.

    In just the two months before D-Day the allied forces lost over 2,000 planes and over 12,000 men. Because of their sacrifice by 6 June 1944 the allies owned the air. Under the shield of that air supremacy our ships cross the channel, our men crossed the beaches. A few days after the Normandy landing General Eisenhower stood on the beaches of France with his young son, John, recently a graduate of West Point, and told him: “If I did not have the air supremacy, I would not be here.” After D-Day the Air Corps continued to fly towards freedom’s horizon until the entire continent was reclaimed and a world was set free.

    The victory of the generation we honour today came at a high cost, it took many lives and much perseverance. After D-Day it took freedom another year to reach the Elba, it took another 44 years to reach Warsaw and Prague and East Berlin. And now it has reached Kiev and Moscow and even beyond. The mission of this time to secure and expand its reach further.

    The airmen who flew these skies had a ritual, as Secretary Vincent mentioned, for signalling to their comrades on the ground at the end of a mission. If they were coming in for landing, if they fired off a red flare it meant there were casualties aboard, and if they fired off a green flare it meant some lucky pilot had just completed his last mission before shipping out. Well the generation that won the Second World War completed their mission, whether they walk among us or lie among us today. And after looking down in sorrow at those who paid the ultimate price, let us lift our eyes to the skies in which they flew, the ones they once commanded, and let us send to them a signal, a signal of our own, a signal that we do remember, that we do honour and that we shall always carry on the work of these nights born on wings. May God bless them and all our people.

  • Mr Major’s Joint Arrival Doorstep with President Clinton – 4 June 1994

    Below is Mr Major’s joint arrival doorstep with President Clinton on Saturday 4th June 1994.

    PRIME MINISTER:

    Mr President, Mrs Clinton. I would like firstly to welcome you here to the United Kingdom and to thank you for being here to commemorate the extraordinary operation of 50 years ago. Whatever the weather may turn out to be over this weekend I can promise you and Hillary and our very many other visitors from America the warmest of greetings throughout your stay, as warm and as friendly as the welcome that your Servicemen received in the dark days of the war.

    Just a few months ago I had the pleasure of being your guest at Pittsburgh, an area that has very strong links with my country. You fittingly this morning have landed in East Anglia, my home, and also a home to thousands of United States Servicemen for over half a century.

    In a short while, at a service near Cambridge, we will honour the memory of American Servicemen who fell in the Second World War, their courage will never be forgotten in this country by those they helped to protect and helped to liberate.

    Mr President, you arrive here this morning for your first official visit, but you arrive here as an old friend who has lived in Britain and who knows this country well. Over the next few days you and Hillary will see both the old and the new.

    At Chequers later today we will have the opportunity to renew our close dialogue that has taken place from the moment that you took office. During that period a number of international problems have consistently been with us, Bosnia being a prime example. Our negotiators are even today working intensively with the United Nations and the Contact Group to try and promote a settlement there. Some of the problems we faced have been resolved. Last year’s agreement in the world trade negotiations was an outstanding success and we are hoping to see it put in action as soon as possible. The remarkable progress in South Africa is another objective we have both strongly supported. But new problems inevitably arise and some of those we shall have the opportunity of discussing as well, North Korea this morning, for example, forces itself on the agenda.

    In all of this we know from long experience the immense value of working in close partnership as the United States and the United Kingdom have always done.

    Bill, this is a visit that we have been looking forward to for a very long time, you and Hillary are very welcome guests indeed and it is a very great pleasure to see you here.

    PRESIDENT CLINTON:

    Thank you very much, Mr Prime Minister, Hillary and I are delighted to be here. I remember well the first time I arrived in the United Kingdom, I am deeply honoured to be here today representing my nation.

    Fifty years ago our two nations joined forces on the beaches of Normandy to turn back the Nazi army that had over-run Europe. This week I have come across the Atlantic to commemorate D-Day and the many other battles of the Second World War and to honour the sacrifices borne by the war generation in all the nations.

    Freedom continues to require our sacrifice and persistence and I would like to say on behalf of all the American people how very sorry we are and how we offer our condolences to the loved ones of those who died in the tragic RAF helicopter accident on Thursday. Freedom continues to require effort.

    When he visited the United States after World War II, Winston Churchill spoke of our two nations’s role in forging the post-war world, he urged the United States and Britain to walk together in majesty and peace. For he said: “It is in the years of peace that wars are prevented and that those foundations are laid upon which the noble structures of the future can be built.”

    I look forward to working with the Prime Minister and the British people as we work together to meet those challenges. The Prime Minister has already mentioned the many things that we will be discussing today. I am glad to be back in Great Britain, glad to be honouring the sacrifices and the triumphs of the World War II generation, glad to be about the work of honouring what they have done for us by trying to preserve the peace in the future.

  • US Background Briefing on Meeting with John Major and President Clinton – 4 June 1994

    Below is the text of the US background briefing held at Hartwell House on 4th June 1994.

    SENIOR ADMINISTRATION OFFICIAL:

    Why don’t we begin by — we’ll talk about the meeting between the President and the Prime Minister and sort of divide up the main topics the President and the Prime Minister covered, a list of things they talked about.

    They first did a meeting that they held together before lunch with just a couple of advisors on each side. And then they extended the conversation over lunch for another 15 minutes or so with just the President and the Prime Minister and their wives. And then they came out and spoke with you.

    I guess just a couple of other issues mentioned — one is to come back to Haiti. The British government was very helpful in helping to kick off the process that led to our now having reached an agreement in principle with the Turks and Caicos to establish a migrant processing centre there. We hope within a very short time now to have worked out all of the final details on it.

    The local problem there I believe has proved — so we’re all ready to go. We would expect that it would be established by early July. We also, as I told a number of you on the plane, have reached an agreement with Jamaica for such a centre and it should be up and well started before early July.

    So we think we’re making a lot of progress there, and we are grateful to Her Majesty’s government for having supported it.

    Somebody asked me on the plane how many could be processed through, and in Jamaica, at least, we would expect it would be about 500 a day. We don’t know yet in Turks and Caicos. On Jamaica, as you’ll recall, it will be on ships. In Turks and Caicos it would be on shore.

    Ireland — the President praised the British government’s response to the questions that were put forward by Sinn Fein. The President said it remains our view that the IRA should put an end to violence and we hope that we can see progress towards a political settlement in Ireland.

    What else? On Bosnia, just one other detail. The President — there was a discussion of the role of UNPROFOR and the President expressed how important he thinks the work has been and will be in this continuing very difficult humanitarian as well as political and military crisis —

    QUESTION:

    Is it correct to construe from what the President told us earlier today that the United States government does not take the North Korean claim that sanctions would be deemed an act of war seriously? Is that correct, you do not take it seriously?

    SENIOR ADMINISTRATION OFFICIAL:

    No, I don’t think he put it quite that way.

    QUESTION:

    Well, that’s what I was asking you to —

    SENIOR ADMINISTRATION OFFICIAL:

    Right. This is not the first time that the North Koreans have made statements like this. And in a situation as potentially serious as Korea, of course, one does not take such statements lightly. At the same time, they have been made before and there is no question that statements like this will not deter, intimidate the international community from proceeding at the Security Council.

    And as the President said, sanctions are not an act of war and we do not consider them to be so.

    QUESTION:

    What is the current state of play on consultations that have been going forward? Yeltsin said is that they’ll go on, sanctions is a last resort, he’d like an international conference first. Are we amenable to that? And what about the Chinese veto — do we think that they’ll at least abstain from —

    SENIOR ADMINISTRATION OFFICIAL:

    Well, as you know, the President and Yeltsin did speak yesterday afternoon. Yeltsin laid out his ideas on an international meeting. They agreed that Secretary Christopher and Foreign Minister Kozyrev will now be in touch with each other to discuss the issues that are involved in holding such a meeting.

    The President said that we believe that such a meeting could be useful at some point, but that the first task before us is to pursue the issue of sanctions at the Security Council. And that is what we are doing.

    As I said the other night, the Chinese have been unenthusiastic about sanctions and have said so on a number of occasions. But to our knowledge, they have not said publicly or privately that they would veto sanctions at the Security Council. Last weekend when we consulted among the Permanent Five members on what to do about Korea, the Chinese joined the consensus behind the President’s statement. And in that resolution it said that the Security Council — and these aren’t the exact words, but the Security Council would remain engaged on the issue, which implied for the consideration of issues like sanctions. So I think it would be both premature and possibly wrong to assume that the Chinese would veto. We’ll simply have to work it through with them, and we’ll be doing that.

    QUESTION:

    The President said that this is not a subject – – the President said he didn’t want to sabre-rattle on this issue, but the strategic situation in Korea is such that there is no margin for error. Will the United States quietly be doing things to increase the capabilities there in terms of air power —

    SENIOR ADMINISTRATION OFFICIAL:

    I always love it when people ask me if we’re going to really do something from your side of the house. [Laughter]. No. We have been constantly reviewing what we should do prudently to make sure that we are doing everything necessary both to protect our forces in Korea and to help defend South Korea itself. And we have taken a number of measures, as you know, over the recent months, including the — most notably, the sending of the Patriots. And what I can tell you is that we will continue to review the issue as we go along.

    QUESTION:

    You were unable to or unwilling to say the other night what you thought might be or ought to be in the sanctions. Are you in anymore of a position now to say what sanctions ought to look like?

    SENIOR ADMINISTRATION OFFICIAL:

    Not yet. I think we have to do a little in the way of consulting — or a good bit more, perhaps, in consulting, especially with the Japanese, South Korea — they’re being allies; the Russians and others to see what form the sanctions can most usefully take.

    There are two issues here: One is how do you design sanctions that will bring — convey the maximum amount of leverage with the North Koreans. And the other is that we have to build a consensus behind the sanctions at the Security Council and we’ve got to negotiate both at once, and we will be.

    QUESTION:

    Why is the U.S. not as enthusiastic about a conference as Yeltsin seems to be?

    SENIOR ADMINISTRATION OFFICIAL:

    Clearly, the first focus has to be on the Security Council and the issue of sanctions. And it could well be that a meeting at some point can make a useful contribution there in pushing the North Koreans back towards the international community. But whether it’s a meeting like this or anything else, we want the focus to be right now on the Security Council and the pursuit of the issues.

    QUESTION:

    As a strategic matter or because of some principle having to do with not being willing to meet with them at this point?

    SENIOR ADMINISTRATION OFFICIAL:

    As a practical matter, seeking every — seeking the maximum leverage with the North Koreans that we can find to try to resolve the nuclear issue.

    QUESTION:

    So then you’d lose leverage through a conference? I mean, there’s the President stressing he wants to work this out, he wants diplomacy; and Yeltsin says there should be a conference — if that’s a good forum for that.

    SENIOR ADMINISTRATION OFFICIAL:

    I think the diplomacy could take many forms. But the first issue — and we’ve been pursuing the diplomacy for some weeks now. We think we pursued it consistently and with some skill even, but it hasn’t produced the results; yes, the North Koreans have made their decision. And what clearly is need now is to convey to the North Koreans the seriousness of the choice that they have made and the importance in terms of their interests to their moving away from the path of confrontation with the international community and back towards trying to work with them.

    QUESTION:

    How can the Security Council and the United States government be sure that it doesn’t provoke North Korea into doing something that nobody bargained for with sanctions?

    SENIOR ADMINISTRATION OFFICIAL:

    We will devise sanctions that we think are both effective and — well, that are effective.

    QUESTION:

    Let me ask the question another way.

    SENIOR ADMINISTRATION OFFICIAL:

    Yes, try again. [Laughter].

    QUESTION:

    Since the President began to convey the seriousness of the situation, have you seen anything in the last 48 or 72 hours to come from the North Koreans to suggest they’re getting the message?

    SENIOR ADMINISTRATION OFFICIAL:

    I don’t think we’ve seen from the North Koreans either that they’re getting the message or that they’re not. So we’ll have to see.

    QUESTION:

    The other question is, short of sanctions is there anything that can be done in terms of bilateral action among any of these countries?

    SENIOR ADMINISTRATION OFFICIAL:

    Well, we have been talking to the Chinese, for example, both over recent weeks and even over the past week, urging them to convey to the North Koreans the seriousness of the situation and the choice the North Koreans need to be making. We hope that other governments are doing the same thing.

    And the President and other American officials have been finding opportunities to speak on the public record on the issue to convey exactly the same message to the North Koreans.

    QUESTION:

    The Chinese haven’t come back to you and said I’m getting the message, or no response from the Chinese about whether they’re —

    SENIOR ADMINISTRATION OFFICIAL:

    The Chinese are very careful to — not to tell us exactly what it is that they say to the North Koreans. They do tell us that they have been in touch with the North Koreans. If you look at recent Chinese public statements, there is no question that they are very unhappy with the position that the North Koreans are taking.

    If I can go now just off the record, because I don’t want to speak for the Chinese — but I would assume that the reason the Chinese won’t tell us what exactly they’re saying to the North Koreans is that once they tell us that then we can keep going back to them and saying, no, adjust your message this way, that way, and they lose a lot of their flexibility.

    But we, to come back on to background, we are quite confident that the Chinese have been urging the North Koreans to adopt a more constructive attitude.

    QUESTION:

    But if that’s true, how come they’re so resistant or seem so resistant to sanctions? I mean, what is it that I’m missing here? Why are they reluctant to take the step that you’re willing to take?

    SENIOR ADMINISTRATION OFFICIAL:

    Well, because China — I think probably for two reasons: One, China is North Korea’s greatest trading power; and secondly, China has an historic relationship with North Korea that they probably find constrain them.

    I think the Chinese see here two basic interests. One is I am convinced that they do not want to see a nuclear North Korea; that they would prefer to see a denuclearized Korean Peninsula. And I think that is not only because North Korea is close to China, but also because if North Korea becomes an overt nuclear power, then the pressures in the region for other states to adopt nuclear weapons would increase. I am not — I repeat, not — saying the Japanese or others necessarily would develop nuclear weapons, but there would be that pressure. And that’s not in the interests of the Chinese.

    And the second major Chinese interest here is that they don’t want to see sanctions for the reasons I just stated.

    Therefore, it is and has been in the interest of the Chinese to try to persuade the North Koreans to abandon their nuclear program, thus avoiding sanctions and, thus, serving both of the Chinese interests at the same time.

    QUESTION:

    Quick one. How insistent was Yeltsin on this conference in his conversation with Clinton? Was it something that’s going to screw up his vote in the Security Council? I mean, is he looking at this as a diplomatic —

    SENIOR ADMINISTRATION OFFICIAL:

    No, he made the –I mean, clearly, he is very interested in the idea, but at the same time, if you look at the public statement he made three or four days ago, he has also been saying that in the end he believes sanctions are justified.

    QUESTION:

    Does it have to come after a conference like this?

    SENIOR ADMINISTRATION OFFICIAL:

    They would have to work out that timing. I don’t necessarily — I can’t speak for the Russian government.

    THE PRESS:

    Thank you.

    QUESTION:

    Does your Government [the British Government] favour sanctions?

    BRITISH ADMINISTRATION OFFICIAL:

    We believe that you can’t design an — to sanctions that would be effective in this case. And as my colleague says, it’s important to get the design right and consult on it. But we are very supportive; we’re working together with the United Nations on precisely that.

    You raised the question about provoking. If you’re worried about not provoking people, then you’d never do anything. But you’ve got to construct a path that gives them the maximum opportunity to move away from the policies and approach that they’re doing now. And we think that can be done, using all the — and we’re just available to the United Nations Security Council.

    THE PRESS:

    Thank you both.

  • PMQT – 1 March 1994

    Below is the text of Prime Minister’s Question Time from 1st March 1994. Tony Newton responded on behalf of John Major.

    PRIME MINISTER:

     

    Engagements

    Q1. Mr. Mudie : To ask the Prime Minister if he will list his official engagements for Tuesday 1 March.

    The Lord President of the Council and Leader of the House of Commons (Mr. Tony Newton) : I have been asked to reply.

    My right hon. Friend the Prime Minister is in the United States for a series of meetings, including some with President Clinton and the United Nations Secretary-General.

    Mr. Mudie : Is the Lord President aware that more than £1 billion of taxpayers’ money spent to persuade people to take out personal pensions ended up in the pockets of salesmen through commissions? Is he also aware that more than 300,000 men and women are losing benefit because of bad advice? Given that growing scandal, is not there a case for urgent Government action, or is this, once again, something for which the Government will take no responsibility?

    Mr. Newton : I do not regard the fact that some 5 million people have taken out personal pensions, which will significantly improve their prospects in retirement, as anything like a scandal. The hon. Gentleman will know that some of the advice that has been given is currently under examination, which is entirely right. I know of no reason to justify his accusation.

     

    Q2. Mr. Harry Greenway : To ask the Prime Minister if he will list his official engagements for Tuesday 1 March.

    Mr. Newton : I have been asked to reply.

    I refer my hon. Friend to the reply that I gave some moments ago.

    Mr. Greenway : Will my right hon. Friend join me in welcoming the obvious success of the Prime Minister’s visit to the United States? Does he recall that Sir Winston Churchill variously described the temperature of our special relationship with the United States as normal and blazing? What is the temperature now?

    Mr. Newton : I can best describe the relationship as very cordial indeed. It is a long-standing relationship based on shared interests, as has been confirmed at a joint press conference which my right hon. Friend and the President held within the past hour or so. Their discussions have covered a wide range of international issues, including Bosnia, Russia and the world economy. The President’s support for the joint declaration on Northern Ireland was particularly welcome. The visit is confirmation that we have a continuing, strong, all-round relationship with the United States.

    Mrs. Beckett : When the President of the Board of Trade has need of legal advice, to whom does the Leader of the House suggest he turns?

    Mr. Newton : My right hon. Friend the President of the Board of Trade has been advised, quite properly, by my right hon. and learned Friend the Attorney-General and made the position entirely clear in his evidence to the Scott inquiry yesterday.

    Mrs. Beckett : Is not the position of the Attorney-General as the Government’s chief legal adviser becoming increasingly untenable as Ministers seem to use him as a scapegoat to save their own skins?

    Mr. Newton : The concern of my right hon. Friend the President of the Board of Trade was clearly an anxiety that people might misrepresent him in exactly the way that the right hon. Lady is now seeking to do. My right hon. and learned Friend the Attorney-General’s advice on public interest immunity has remained consistent and, of course, he is due to give evidence to the inquiry.

    Mrs. Beckett : Does not the Leader of the House realise that what sticks in the throat of the British public is that, having secretly sold arms to Saddam Hussein, which were used against British troops, Ministers were prepared to see innocent men go to gaol to cover up their conspiracy and that is what people cannot stomach?

    Mr. Newton : Let me remind the right hon. Lady what was written in a letter to The Times as long ago as 12 November 1992 :

    “Public interest immunity cannot be waived by either the prosecution or the Ministers. It was for the judge to decide whether the interests of justice in ensuring a fair trial for the defendants outweighed those considerations of public interests referred to in the certificates. There was no question of anyone attempting to suppress evidence”.

    That letter was written by counsel for one of the accused.

    Mrs. Peacock : Will my right hon. Friend join me in welcoming the Department of Health action on safari holidays for young offenders?

    Mr. Newton : Yes, indeed I shall. There is a widespread view that those overseas trips were inappropriate. We are all concerned to see effective, proper treatment and deterrents for young offenders and the statement this afternoon will help bring that about.

     

    Q3. Mr. Janner : To ask the Prime Minister if he will list his official engagements for Tuesday 1 March.

    Mr. Newton : I have been asked to reply.

    I refer the hon. and learned Gentleman to the answer I gave some moments ago.

    Mr. Janner : When the Prime Minister returns from his visit to the United States, will he be kind enough to look personally into the case of my constituent Paul Kenney, who did not return from his journey to Portugal, but was found dead on a beach? Will he please consult his colleague the Prime Minister of Portugal, who has not had the common decency to tell the parents, or me as their representative, why this lad died, how he died, whether he was murdered or why the parents could not find the body for a month? If the right hon. Gentleman agrees that it is the Government’s duty to look after ordinary citizens when they travel abroad, will he please start raising merry hell about this case?

    Mr. Newton : I am conscious of the hon. Gentleman’s understandable concern for his late constituent and I have of course looked at the Adjournment debate he had not long ago. I am happy to tell the hon. Gentleman that during his visit to Portugal on 24 and 25 February, my right hon. Friend the Foreign Secretary raised the case with the Portuguese Foreign Minister and I hope that that was helpful.

    Sir Roger Moate : Will my right hon. Friend and the Prime Minister, and the Foreign Secretary, personally do their utmost to ensure the success of the negotiations, which are at a critical point, on Norwegian entry into the European Community? Does my right hon. Friend agree that it would be quite outrageous if the unreasonable demand by the Spanish Government for a few thousand tonnes of Norwegian cod were to prevent the entry into the Community of one of our closest friends and a fine European country?

    Mr. Newton : My hon. Friend knows very well that it has been a prime objective of the British Government to bring about enlargement of the Community and the progress that has been made is one of our significant achievements over the past couple of years. On some reports I have seen today, progress has been rather greater so far in respect of Sweden and Finland ; apparently, there remains some way to go, but we shall wish to see negotiations with all four applicants successfully negotiated.

     

    Q4. Mr. Gunnell : To ask the Prime Minister if he will list his official engagements for Tuesday 1 March.

    Mr. Newton : I have been asked to reply.

    I refer the hon. Gentleman to the reply I gave some moments ago.

    Mr. Gunnell : The right hon. and noble Baroness Thatcher missed one Prime Minister’s Question Time in 12 ; the present Prime Minister has missed one in eight. Whatever the importance of the present visit, does not that frequent absence devalue his accountability to the House? Why is he more anxious to answer questions in Pittsburgh than in Parliament?

    Mr. Newton : I must say to the hon. Gentleman, whom I usually regard as among the more reasonable of those on the Opposition Benches, that I reject out of hand the suggestion that he has made. I think that my right hon. Friend’s achievement in various international negotiations both in Europe and on the wider scene are among the main achievements that he has put forward on behalf of the Government.

    Mr. Garnier : While my right hon. Friend is in the United States, will he be given an opportunity to tell the people, as opposed to the President of the United States, of the true nature, history and habits of the IRA?

    Mr. Newton : I have already referred to the very welcome support of the President for the joint declaration. I hope that that in itself will have an effect on some strands of opinion in the United States which may perhaps have failed to appreciate the true nature of the IRA.

     

    Q5. Mr. Mandelson : To ask the Prime Minister if he will list his official engagements for Tuesday 1 March.

    Mr. Newton : I have been asked to reply.

    I refer the hon. Gentleman to the reply I gave some moments ago.

    Mr. Mandelson : Does the Lord President of the Council agree that, with unemployment still up around the 3 million level, with many young and long-term unemployed in that number, jobs remain the biggest single issue facing the country? In the light of that, will the Lord President of the Council respond positively to the important initiative taken today by the Trades Union Congress to work in co-operation with all political parties on policies to get unemployment down?

    Mr. Newton : I welcome any kind of co-operation by the TUC or, indeed, anybody else, in the interests of maintaining the recovery from recession, which is the secure basis for the jobs that the hon. Gentleman wants to see. If I may say so, it will not be served by the Labour party’s support for a minimum wage, a 35-hour week and many new burdens on business.

     

    Q6. Lady Olga Maitland : To ask the Prime Minister if he will list his official engagements for Tuesday 1 March.

    Mr. Newton : I have been asked to reply.

    I refer my hon. Friend to the reply I gave some moments ago.

    Lady Olga Maitland : May I convey to my right hon. Friend the House’s full support for the Downing street declaration on Northern Ireland? Has my right hon. Friend been able to take note of the survey that took place over the weekend in the Irish Republic which showed that the vast majority of the people there call on the IRA-Sinn Fein to renounce violence?

    Mr. Newton : I do very much agree with my hon. Friend and am grateful for her words. As she knows, the Government are making every effort to seek peace in Northern Ireland. It is heartening to note that some 94 per cent. of people questioned in the Irish marketing survey agreed with calls on the IRA and Sinn Fein to renounce violence. I am sure that that corresponds with the overwhelming wish in this country and, indeed, many others. I hope that their leaders will take note.

     

    Q7. Mr. John Evans : To ask the Prime Minister if he will list his official engagements for Tuesday 1 March.

    Mr. Newton : I have been asked to reply.

    I refer the hon. Gentleman to the reply I gave some moments ago.

    Mr. Evans : Is the Lord President of the Council aware that if the highly efficient borough of St. Helens received the same level of revenue support grant as the boroughs of Wandsworth and Westminster it would not be required to charge its citizens one single penny in council tax? Does he feel that there might be a whiff of scandal and corruption in that?

    Mr. Newton : No, I do not.

    Mr. Fabricant : While condemning the appalling massacre in Hebron, does my right hon. Friend agree with me that that was the work of a lone madman and that, for the sake of the 300 million people who live in that area, it should not in any way impede the peace process?

    Mr. Newton : Like, I am sure, everyone on both sides of the House, I share the horror at the massacre of innocent Palestinians in Hebron on 25 February. I am sure that the whole House would once again want to send its condolences to those who were affected and their families. I accept entirely and agree with my hon. Friend that the massacre must not be allowed to jeopardise the peace process. The British Government will certainly do everything that they can to see that it does not.

     

    Q8. Mr. Jim Cunningham : To ask the Prime Minister if he will list his official engagements for Tuesday 1 March.

    Mr. Newton : I have been asked to reply.

    I refer the hon. Member to the answer I gave some moments ago.

    Mr. Cunningham : Does the Lord President recall that, referring to the setting up of the Scott inquiry, the Prime Minister said that no restrictions would be placed on its terms of reference? Does the right hon. Gentleman realise that ex-employees of Matrix Churchill and their representatives have been denied the right to give evidence to the inquiry, and that Lord Justice Scott has said that he will consider the matter if the Government and the Prime Minister agree? What is the Lord President going to do about it?

    Mr. Newton : I think that it is generally true to say that the procedures of the inquiry are for Lord Justice Scott to consider and operate. Obviously, if there were perceived to be problems and if representations were made to the Government about difficulties that they could do something about, those difficulties would be considered extremely carefully.

     

    Q9. Mr. Riddick : To ask the Prime Minister if he will list his official engagements for Tuesday 1 March.

    Mr. Newton : I have been asked to reply.

    I refer my hon. Friend to the answer I gave some moments ago.

    Mr. Riddick : Is my right hon. Friend aware of any Government Department that hands out special green forms to job applicants who are related to politicians–forms that receive preferential treatment–and pink forms to everyone else? Is he aware that that disgraceful form of nepotism is being practised by Labour-controlled Monklands council? Will he join me in urging condemnation of the practice by the local Member of Parliament–the Leader of the Opposition, who has been strangely silent on the subject?

    Mr. Newton : My hon. Friend may feel surprised that his question has been reached. He has raised a very interesting point; I might speculate that the absence of the right hon. and learned Member for Monklands, East (Mr. Smith) arose from nervousness that the question might be reached.

  • Mr Major’s Comments on the US/UK Relationship – 1 March 1994

    Below is the text of Mr Major’s comments on the relationship between the United States and the United Kingdom, made during an interview given in Washington on Tuesday 1st March 1994.

    QUESTION:

    [Mr Major was asked about the relationship between the US and the UK].

    PRIME MINISTER:

    There is a very close relationship, it is a very hard-edged relationship. It is based on shared instincts, it is based on shared interests. There is a tendency for Britain and America to see international problems in the same way. Occasionally there are different points of emphasis and they are highlighted but overwhelmingly we tend to see the same sort of problems and seek the same solutions for them.

    QUESTION:

    [Mr Major was asked if he felt President Clinton regretted his decision to give Gerry Adams a visa].

    PRIME MINISTER:

    I think he has given us very strong support for the Joint Declaration and I don’t propose to traipse over old ground. What is important I think is the very strong support we have had from the United States for the Joint Declaration and for both the peace process and the talks process that we have established in Northern Ireland. Upon that, the President has been very resolute.

    QUESTION:

    [Mr Major was asked whether the President would give another visa to Gerry Adams].

    PRIME MINISTER:

    I am not going into the details of that. I think people saw what happened when he came, they saw what happened when he went back. The President would like to see some progress under the Joint Declaration.

    QUESTION:

    [Mr Major was asked if he had asked the United States to send more troops to Bosnia].

    PRIME MINISTER:

    We looked at what happens in the short-term and that is of course why we turned particularly to the problems of Sarajevo and decided to send a team there to examine what is needed to correct the obvious deficiencies in life there; there is very little water, very little electricity, very little proper health care, not sufficient, and we are sending teams there. I think these must be dealt with on an incremental basis. The first thing to do is to deal with the civil problems in Sarajevo and we spent some time discussing that and deciding how to proceed.

    QUESTION:

    [Mr Major was asked about Russian’s involvement in the Partnership for Peace].

    PRIME MINISTER:

    We very much want them to join Partnership for Peace, I discussed this with President Yeltsin. Clearly, Russia is a very large and very important country but Partnership for Peace will vary with individual countries so clearly there would be a special position for Russia, we very much want them to take part.

    QUESTION:

    [Mr Major was asked how the relationship with the US would change given Britain’s integration within the European Union].

    PRIME MINISTER:

    I would replace the word “integration” with the word “influence”. It is certainly true that it is helpful that we have a greater degree of influence in Europe. I believe we do have a greater degree of influence in Europe. What we are seeing is that so much of the European debate is now turning towards matters that we have regarded as important for some time. I think that is self-evidently so both in terms of social on-costs, the widening of the European Community and a number of other illustrations I could give.

    QUESTION:

    [Mr Major was asked about the Scott Inquiry].

    PRIME MINISTER:

    I am not going to anticipate the Scott Inquiry’s report. I set it up with very wide-ranging terms of reference, I told Lord Justice Scott if he found his terms of reference inadequate or found himself impeded he should say so and we would provide him with the assistance he needed. I think we must wait for his report. I have no judgements to make until then.

  • Mr Major’s Joint Doorstep Interview with President Clinton – 1 March 1994

    Below is the text of Mr Major’s joint doorstep interview with President Clinton, held in Washington on Tuesday 1st March 1994.

    PRESIDENT CLINTON:

    We’d like to just make a couple of brief remarks and then we’ll answer some questions.

    First of all, I want to again say how pleased I was at this visit that the Prime Minister made, we had a wonderful time yesterday in Pittsburgh and it turned out to be a pretty good idea that just sort of grew out of a conversation we had last summer in Tokyo, and I am glad that he came and I am glad we had a chance to go there and to do what was done there.

    We have had an opportunity to discuss, as you might imagine, a lot of issues, I might just mention a few. First of all, with regard to Bosnia, we are committed to continuing to work for a resolution of the crisis, we are encouraged by both the on-going negotiations between the Bosnian government and the Croats and the willingness of the Russians to work with us and others in trying to bring the Serbs into a final peace agreement. So we are quite hopeful about that.

    Secondly, I wanted to particularly emphasise the commitment that we share for strengthening and broadening NATO through the Partnership for Peace and to having tangible evidence of that partnership coming forward this summer.

    Thirdly, with regard to Northern Ireland I want to reaffirm the support of the United States for the joint declaration, for the process it envisions and for an end to the violence. I wish the Prime Minister and Prime Minister Reynolds well as they seek to carry this out.

    Let me just mention a couple of other things. You knew yesterday I think that we sent a joint message to Mr Mandela and Chief Butholezi, we are looking forward to their meeting today, we hope it will be successful and we want to strongly encourage all the parties in South Africa to responsibly participate in the election.

    The last thing I would like to say is that we join the United Kingdom in their position with regard to Hong Kong in supporting Governor Patten’s efforts to have a genuine long term strategy for economic and political success in Hong Kong and I have been very admiring of what he has done and what the Prime Minister has done.

    QUESTION:

    Are all your differences wiped out?

    PRESIDENT CLINTON:

    Well, let me give the Prime Minister a chance to make some remarks first.

    PRIME MINISTER:

    Can I firstly say how enjoyable this visit has been and thank the President for his hospitality and also the people of Pittsburgh, it was a memorable day and a memorable evening yesterday and I thoroughly enjoyed every moment of it.

    I do not want to add a great deal to what the President has had to say, perhaps a word or two about Bosnia in general and Sarajevo in particular. One of the things we have agreed over the last couple of days is to send a joint civil planning mission to Sarajevo, the ceasefire there is holding, that has been a very successful operation, I think it has been universally recognised as such, but the circumstances that exist within Sarajevo are still very serious, the utilities are not working, the electricity, the water, so we have agreed to send a joint civil planning mission there to have a look at what needs to be done and then to see to what extent we can contribute and can encourage other people to contribute to deal with the civil difficulties that are actually faced there in Sarajevo.

    The President mentioned the message we sent yesterday to Nelson Mandela and Chief Butholezi, they meet today at Yalundi and clearly that is an extremely important meeting, it is our wish that everyone participates in the South African elections, it is a remarkable event, the first multi-racial elections across South Africa, and we wish to see everyone take part. We very much hope as a result of the message and more relevantly perhaps the meeting between Mr Mandela and Chief Butholezi today that that will certainly happen.

    We spent some time discussing trade matters as well as foreign affairs. I think there are two areas of that that I would just briefly touch upon. We agreed that it would be desirable to see if we could bring forward the start date for implementation of the GATT agreement to 1 January 1995, we will need to consult with other people to see if that is practicable but if it is practicable clearly an agreement has been reached and the sooner that agreement can be implemented the better it will be.

    We spent some time also discussing open markets, we both share a wish to support the growing measure of opinion that exists in Japan, for example, for the further opening of Japanese markets, this is a matter of concern to the United States, it is a matter of concern throughout the European Union as well and we spent some time discussing that particular issue.

    There were one or two rather more technical issues we discussed, a replacement of CoCom, that old relic of the Cold War, that needs to be replaced, there are official discussions to do that and we spent some time just looking at that.

    Beyond that I think I would simply wish to endorse the points that the President made both about Bosnia and about Russia. I think there is no doubt that we see the problems of Bosnia very much in the same light, our policy is heading exactly in the same direction and I think we have had a very useful discussion on that particular issue. I do not think for the moment I wish to add any more.

    QUESTION:

    How would you describe your relationship now?

    PRIME MINISTER:

    I think it is a partnership of shared interests and shared instincts. If one looks at problems around the world overwhelmingly we are likely to take the same view of those, that has been the case in the past and is the case now, and I think it is those shared instincts and interests that actually underpin the long term relationship between the United Kingdom and the United States.

    PRESIDENT CLINTON:

    I agree with that, I think it is a great mistake to over-state the occasional disagreement and under-state the incredible depth and breadth of our shared interests and our shared values. It is still a profoundly important relationship I think to both countries and I also believe to the future of the world.

    QUESTION:

    Could you tell us a little bit, in this country today the Senate is beginning to pick up on budget amendments, what is your view on that and where do you think it is going?

    PRESIDENT CLINTON:

    I don’t know where it is going but I hope that it will not be passed because if it is passed it runs the risk of endangering our economic recovery by requiring excessive tax increases, of very damaging cuts in defence, our investments in technology and job training, in Medicare and social security. If it is disregarded, there is a provision in there to disregard it if 60 percent of both Houses want to do it, it amounts to turning the whole future of America over to 40 percent plus 1 of each House of Congress, in an intensely partisan atmosphere that is a recipe for total paralysis. Also, unlike all these state and local balance budget amendments, this one makes utterly no distinction between a long term investment and annual consumption. So for those reasons I hope it will not be adopted.

    Finally, we are proving you can bring the deficit down, the deficit is now going to be about half the percentage of our annual income that it was when I took office if this new budget is adopted, so we are going to keep bringing it down. I think the administration has credibility on cutting spending, we presented the first cuts in discretionary spending since 1969 in this budget. So I think we have got a record, I think we are on the right track and I think this remedy, while it is a very serious problem what has happened to the deficit, this remedy is the wrong one and I hope the Congress will reject it.

    QUESTION:

    You have agreed to send some civilians to help monitor the ceasefire and are you still adamant you will not send ground troops?

    PRESIDENT CLINTON:

    Our position has always been that we would prefer to help enforce an agreement if we could work out a peace agreement, that in the absence of the peace agreement we would confine our involvement to the support we are giving through NATO and our air power and to essentially the technical personnel who are there now and others who might be able to do that kind of work. That is still our position. But let me say that I think we have a terrific opportunity here to try to build on what happened in the situation involving Sarajevo, to try to keep the Russians involved in a very constructive leadership way and to try to work on these talks now under way here in Washington between the Bosnian government and the Croatians. To move to that kind of settlement, if we can get that, then I think all the responsible countries of the world have got to try to help to make it work.

    QUESTION:

    Could I ask the Prime Minister, has the President given you a promise about future conditions for the readmission of Gerry Adams? Will he have to renounce violence to get another visa to get into the United States?

    PRIME MINISTER:

    I think everyone has seen what has happened at the Ardfheis, I think the important issue is to look forward and see how we produce a solution to the Northern Ireland problem, I am not interested in looking back. And I think as one looks forward one only has to look at the very remarkable expression of opinion that we have seen over the last few days of support for the joint declaration. Now that joint declaration is there, it is now a living fact, it is a series of principles upon which we hope to base a solution to the problems that have bedevilled Northern Ireland for too long. Now that is the main issue that I want to address and those are the issues we have been discussing.

    QUESTION:

    Following on the progress that you have made in Bosnia, did you talk about any steps to end the fighting in other places beyond Sarajevo, perhaps extending the ultimatum to Tuzla or Srebrenica?

    PRESIDENT CLINTON:

    We feel pretty good about where things are in Srebrenica now, we think that the troop exchange will be able to occur between the Canadians and the Dutch and we are working on Tuzla, we do believe that we should keep working to fulfil the commitment that NATO made at its last meeting in January to try to see what can be done to open the Tuzla airport, but there are on-going negotiations there now. Again we have sought the involvement of the Russians in this regard and we think that there is a chance that we will be able to have some success in Tuzla, we discussed what our options are, I think you will see more about that in the days ahead.

    QUESTION:

    Are you concerned about the recent NATO air strikes that resulted in increased bombing of the Tuzla area, your message is that you are not going to tolerate violation of the No Fly Zone but how do you reinforce that?

    PRESIDENT CLINTON:

    Right now our authority, beyond what is going on in Sarajevo, is consigned to enforcing the No Fly Zone and we did that. But I want to say again what I said yesterday, it was based on the authority vested through the United Nations last April, it was something done in the course of business to do what we are required to do, that it should not be read in any way as a departure of strategy or tactics because of what is going on now generally. And I think it should only serve to make people want to resolve this more quickly, to go on with the negotiations now, that is what I am hopeful of.

    QUESTION:

    If there is the need for other bombing missions and the attacks step up on these other areas outside Sarajevo what can NATO do to prevent the spread of this violence?

    PRESIDENT CLINTON:

    Right now, I will say again, the authority we had with regard to artillery, that is on the ground attacks, is the authority to remove artillery from around the Sarajevo area, to create the safe zone, all other authorities related to stopping the war from spreading into the air, and we are talking about what we can do in Tuzla now, that is what you will see I hope unfolding in a very positive way over the next few days.

    PRIME MINISTER:

    I think what people have to realise is that what is developing is developing on a twin track, there is the track of seeking a political settlement and some progress has been made between the Muslims and the Croats here in Washington over the last couple of days. And then of course there is the second track of what is actually happening on the ground and I think one saw in Sarajevo a classic illustration of how an agreement can be reached on the ground that leads in due course to the corralling of weapons, so I think both those tracks will continue. But as far as the No Fly Zone is concerned, the incident that occurred yesterday, where I think it was entirely justifiable to shoot down the planes that were intruding in the No Fly Zone, could have happened at any stage in the last year, it certainly is not a departure from accepted policy, any time in the last 12 months that could have occurred.

    PRESIDENT CLINTON:

    Thank you very much.

    PRIME MINISTER:

    Thank you.