pd05ap99 Executive Order 13117--Further Amendment to Executive Order 12981, as...

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Dear Mr. Speaker:  (Dear Mr. Chairman:)

    In accordance with Public Law 95-384 (22 U.S.C. 2373(c)), I submit 
to you this report on progress toward a negotiated settlement of the 
Cyprus question covering the period December 1, 1998, to January 31, 
1999.
    In an important step toward easing tensions on Cyprus, the 
Government of Cyprus announced on December 29 that the S-300 anti-
aircraft missiles that it had ordered from Russia would not be delivered 
to the island. This positive and welcome decision gave important new 
impetus to efforts to reduce tensions and promote a just and lasting 
settlement of the Cyprus dispute.
    The United Nations remained active during the reporting period in 
the effort to resolve the Cyprus dispute. In addition to renewing the 
mandate for the U.N. Forces in Cyprus (UNFICYP), the U.N. Security 
Council adopted Resolution 1218 that endorsed the Secretary General's 
September 30 initiative to reduce tensions and promote a just and 
lasting peace on Cyprus. In a December 23 statement, I wholeheartedly 
endorsed Resolution 1218 and directed that the United States take all 
necessary steps to support a sustained effort to implement it. As I said 
then and wish to emphasize now, the United States remains deeply 
committed to finding a viable solution to the Cyprus problem.
    Sincerely,
                                            William J. Clinton

Note: Identical letters were sent to J. Dennis Hastert, Speaker of the 
House of Representatives,

[[Page 539]]

and Jesse Helms, chairman, Senate Committee on Foreign Relations.


<DOC>
[Weekly Compilation of Presidential Documents]
 [frwais.access.gpo.gov]
                         

[Page 539-545]
 
Monday, April 5, 1999
 
Volume 35--Number 13
Pages 531-577
 
Week Ending Friday, April 2, 1999
 
Remarks at the Electronic Industries Alliance Dinner

March 30, 1999

    Thank you. First of all, I want to thank you all for giving me a 
chance to come tonight. I thank my longtime friend Dave McCurdy for his 
introduction and for his leadership of EIA. You made a good decision 
when you named him your president. And I know what you're laughing about 
out there. [Laughter] Two or 3 years from now, you'll think it's an even 
better decision. [Laughter]
    I want to also pay my respects to your vice president, John Kelly, 
who went to Georgetown with me, although he's a much younger man. 
[Laughter] John--when I was a senior, John was actually president of the 
freshman class. And I've been trying to think out of respect for the 
will of the people--the only people we knew back then--whether I should 
still address him as ``Mr. President.'' [Laughter] But then that would 
confuse the EIA, so I didn't do it.
    Mr. Major, thank you for your invitation. Mr. McGinn, thank you for 
your remarks. That was very impressive. I couldn't even keep up with all 
the new things you announced tonight.
    I'm glad that our FCC Chairman, Bill Kennard, is here, and I think 
Secretary of the Army Louis Caldera is also here. And General Jones, I 
thought you gave a terrific invocation. Thank you very much. I 
appreciate that.
    You know, I was trying to think tonight whether there was any way I 
could say what I originally wanted to come here and say, which is to 
talk about some of the technology policies that we're trying to pursue 
that I hope will help you, but in the process will strengthen our 
democracy and the sweep of opportunity and freedom around the world, and 
at the same time say a few words, as I feel I must, about our important 
mission in Kosovo.
    And before I came over here tonight, I had a long meeting, and I 
went and had what has now become almost my daily phone call with Prime 
Minister Blair. And I sat down and I thought about it. I thought about 
how grateful I am to the members of this organization for the phenomenal 
successes you have enjoyed in these last few years and the major 
contributions you have made to the economy of the United States, the 
opportunities you have given our people. And I thought about this 
terrible brutality that is going on in Kosovo, replaying what happened 
not so long ago in Bosnia, and in a way, replaying what we see around 
the world, the modern world, that seems to be troubled with ancient 
hatreds rooted in racial and ethnic and religious differences.
    If you think about the major forces alive in the world today, the 
move toward globalization and the explosion in technology, especially in 
information and communications, they really not only, as all of you know 
better than I, are dramatically changing the way we work and live and 
relate to each other and to the rest of the world. They represent both a 
pull toward integration and a dramatic force toward decentralization. 
And I would argue to you that both forces have within them the potential 
for enormous good and enormous trouble for the world of the 21st 
century.
    If you think about the forces toward integration of the global 
economy, for example, that's a wonderful thing. But it can be very 
destabilizing if we leave whole countries and vast populations within 
countries behind.
    If you think about the explosion in technology and how wonderful it 
is in empowering individuals and small firms and communities, and 
enabling communities--little schools I've seen in poor African and Latin 
American villages--to hook up to the Internet and have access to 
learning that would have taken them a whole generation, at least, to 
achieve through traditional economic development processes in their 
countries. It is breathtaking.
    But looked at another way, it also provides access to technology for 
every terrorist in the world to have their own website, and for 
independent operators to figure out how to make bombs and set up 
chemical and biological labs.
    And when married together with the most primitive hatreds, like 
those we see manifest in Kosovo today, the advent of technology

[[Page 540]]

and decentralized decisionmaking and access to information can be a very 
potent but destructive force.
    When I ran for President in 1992, what I was seeking to do was to 
articulate a vision to the American people of the way I wanted America 
to look in the 21st century, in a world I hope we would be living in 
then, and what I thought the President and the Government of the United 
States should do: to take advantage of the benefits of globalization and 
the explosion of technology and to provide those policies and bulwarks 
necessary to guard against the deepest problems of the modern world. 
There are so many things bringing us together and so many things 
breaking apart. We have to decide a lot of new questions.
    And if I could just say a word about what we tried to do--and Dave 
McCurdy and I have been working on this through the Democratic 
Leadership Council for more than 15 years--I believe that if we could 
create a country in which there was genuine opportunity for every 
responsible citizen, and in which we had a real sense of community, of 
belonging, of mutual responsibility, one to another, so we all felt we 
would be better off if everybody had a chance as well; and that if we 
could maintain America's sense of responsibility for leading the rest of 
the world toward peace and prosperity and harmony, both with the 
environment and with others across all the lines that divide us, that 
the best days for our country and the best days for humanity were still 
ahead. I still believe that.
    Every story you can tell about every company represented in this 
room reflects that. But we cannot forget that there will never be a time 
when life is free of difficulties and where the organized forces of 
destruction did not seek to move into the breaches of human conduct for 
their own advance.
    And that is what we see in Kosovo. It is a sad commentary, indeed, 
that on the edge of a new millennium there are still people who feel 
they must define their own self-worth and merit in terms of who they are 
not; and who believe that their lives only really count not when they 
are lifting themselves up but when they are holding someone else down; 
and sometimes who believe that it is literally legitimate not only to 
uproot totally innocent civilians from their homes and their villages 
but to kill them in large numbers.
    This is, of course, not confined to the Balkans; it is still at the 
root of the troubles in the Middle East; it is still at the root of the 
problems we are oh so close to getting finally resolved in Northern 
Ireland; it was at the root of an ancient tribal difference that led to 
the deaths of somewhere between 500,000 and 800,000 people in 100 days 
in Rwanda just a few years ago.
    We see it everywhere, the fear of the other. It led a couple of 
demented people in a little Texas town to dismember and drag an African-
American to death and a couple of other people in Wyoming to kill a 
young man at the dawn of his life, apparently because he was gay.
    We have to find a way to use all this technology in a way that 
celebrates our differences instead of uses them for destructive ends. 
And the only way to do that, I am convinced, is to somehow reaffirm that 
amidst all our differences, what it is we have in common as human beings 
is more important.
    And ultimately, that is the liberating logic of the 
telecommunications revolution, so much of you have powered. The idea 
that if we just gave everybody a chance, ordinary people would do 
extraordinary things, and so they have.
    And so I ask all of you tonight to support what the United States 
and our 18 other NATO allies are trying to do in the Balkans--first, 
because of all the little people who may never even see most of the 
things you invent and sell and market, but who could if they could live 
in peace. Second, because the problems could spread, and you see them 
beginning to spread with the outflow of refugees. And third, because the 
United States and our allies will always have to provide for some order 
in a world where you want to maximize freedom and individual initiative. 
There have to be some limits beyond which we collectively do not wish to 
see our country go, our world go.
    I know you had Congressman Davis and Governor Gilmore here today. 
The White House, as all of you know, is quite close to the Potomac 
River. Right across the river in Virginia--I used to run down there 
every day

[[Page 541]]

and look at this and just be amazed--in the Fairfax County School 
District, there are children from 180 different racial, ethnic, and 
national groups. They speak about 100 different languages as their first 
language. It is the most diverse of all American school districts; but 
what they represent is happening everywhere.
    I went home a couple of weeks ago to the little town in Arkansas 
where I was born. There are about 9,700 people there now. It's a lot 
bigger than it was when I was born there. And there is a little grade 
school in this little town in southwest Arkansas named for me--which I 
appreciate; usually you have to die before they do that. [Laughter] And 
anyway, in this little grade school in my little hometown there are 27 
immigrant children, first generation immigrant children whose parents, 
by and large, were migrant farmworkers who settled there.
    This is an incredible asset for America. But we have to say to 
people, whatever your national background, whatever your racial 
background, whatever your religious convictions, you can have a home 
here in this country and you ought to be safe in the world if you are 
willing to abide by the norms of civilized conduct everywhere. We must 
not allow, if we have the ability to stop it, ethnic cleansing or 
genocide anywhere we can stop it, particularly at the edge of Europe.
    So I ask you to support our men and women in uniform, but to support 
the proposition that the 21st century world will be a case of--yes, 
there will be a lot more decentralization, there will be a lot more 
individual empowerment, but it will not be a time of chaos and madness. 
We will not let it descend into the vision of the darkest of the science 
fiction writers, because we believe our common humanity is better than 
that. Thank you. [Applause] Thank you; thank you.
    Now I want to say what I came to say. [Laughter] But it relates to 
what I just said. I believe in the information age the role of 
Government is to empower people with the tools to make the most of their 
own lives, to tear down the barriers to that objective, and to create 
the conditions within which we can go forward together.
    Now, the answers to all the questions will not always be easy. But 
at least I want you to know that's how I think about this. I see myself 
trying to help create the conditions of dynamic balance so we can get 
the maximum benefit from market economics without giving up the idea of 
community and without leaving anyone behind who's willing to try to do 
the right thing.
    And I see our environmental policy in the same way. I think we have 
to take on the challenge of climate change because I'm convinced the 
science is real; but I believe we can do it in a way that grows the 
economy, not undermines it. And all the big questions we're facing this 
year as a country require that sort of decisionmaking. You don't have to 
agree with the decision I make, but you ought to ask yourself what is 
the basis of your decision.
    We're dealing with the challenge, for example, of the aging of 
America. And the older I get, the better I like that challenge. 
[Laughter] I've never understood all this handwringing about Social 
Security and Medicare, this is a high-class problem. [Laughter] Some of 
you have helped to bring it about. [Laughter] We're living longer, and 
that's good, isn't it? And there's more medicine, and that's good, isn't 
it? But as a consequence, you know, the average age in America is 76.7 
years.
    Anybody in this room over 60 who still doesn't have any life-
threatening conditions has probably got a life expectancy well in excess 
of 80 years already. Any child born in America that's under the age of 
15 that's healthy and stays healthy has probably got a life expectancy 
of about 84. And with the baby boomers retiring, this is an issue we 
have to deal with.
    Now, I'll tell you how I think about this. I believe we should make 
maximum use of technology, maximum use of modern business organizations 
and competition. I think that we have to be willing to reform the 
Medicare system. But I don't believe we should turn the Medicare system 
into, in effect, a defined contribution, as opposed to a defined benefit 
plan, because health care is not like retirement, and it's a lifesaver 
for people.
    And I'm willing to work with Congress to save it. And we'll have 
some philosophical

[[Page 542]]

differences, but I'm trying to achieve the dynamic balance of maximizing 
the change while maximizing the sense of community and the fact that 
it's a lifesaver for so many people.
    Social Security--we're going to have an interesting debate. By 2030 
we'll only have two people working for every one person drawing Social 
Security. Now, by 2034, 35 years from now, the Social Security system is 
projected to run out of money, the Trust Fund, which means you only have 
three choices: You can raise revenues, reduce benefits, or increase the 
rate of return on what we're investing.
    And there are a lot of people who believe that we should, in effect, 
take this surplus and give it back to the American people as mandatory 
individual retirement accounts; let them invest it in the stock market, 
because the stock market always outperforms the Government bonds over 
any long period of time. And if you happen to be one of those 
unfortunate people who retire in a period like we had between--in the 
1960's and early seventies, where the value of the stock market is going 
down, then the Government would make up the difference between what you 
would have gotten under the old Social Security program and what you in 
fact get.
    The other way to do it is to do what Canada does, which is set up an 
independent board, like the Federal Reserve, and let the whole Trust 
Fund earn money. And then you'll know you'll always be able to have 
uniform, but higher, returns for people.
    None of us want--no Republican or Democrat I've talked to believes 
we should raise payroll taxes, because the tax is regressive. More than 
half the working people in the country already pay more in payroll taxes 
than they do in income taxes; and small businesses just getting started 
have to pay that, whether they make money or not, unlike the income tax. 
So we don't believe that's an acceptable thing.
    So when you hear this debate, think of the dynamic balance; think of 
how you can maximize the market forces that are good and still preserve 
a sense of community so--and maybe even improve it. For example, I want 
to lift the earnings limitations because people are living longer, and I 
think once you earn Social Security, you ought to be able to work. I 
want to do something about single women, because the poverty rate among 
elderly single women, if they're living alone, is about twice the 
poverty rate for other seniors in our country. That's the framework in 
which I hope this debate will play itself out and get resolved this 
year.

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