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been discredited around the world.
Heartened by our progress toward peace and prosperity, we will
pursue the two remaining challenges in fulfilling the age-old vision of
a Europe peaceful, democratic, and undivided: bringing southeastern
Europe and the former states of the Soviet Union into the community of
democracies.
On this first Memorial Day of the 21st century, the eighth and last
Memorial Day I have had the honor to address the people of this country
in this place as President, I give thanks to all those who have stood
their ground to defend freedom and democracy and human dignity, and
especially to those and their families who made the ultimate sacrifice.
Americans never fought for empires, for territory, for dominance,
but many, many Americans gave their lives for freedom. As we stand at
the dawn of a new century they never saw but did so much to guarantee
for us, far from fading into the past, their sacrifice is paving the way
to our future.
Thirty, forty, fifty years after our fallen veterans have gone, we
can say, ``Glory! Hallelujah! Your truth is marching on.'' May God bless
you all, and God bless America.
Note: The President spoke at 11:30 a.m. in the Amphitheater at Arlington
National Cemetery. In his remarks, he referred to Maj. Gen. Robert R.
Ivany, USA, Commanding General, U.S. Army Military District of
Washington; John C. (Jack) Metzler, superintendent, Arlington National
Cemetery; and Col. Michael Durham, USA, Command Chaplain, Military
District of Washington; Carmella LaSpada, founder, No Greater Love, and
events coordinator for the National Moment of Remembrance; and Lt. Col.
Jeff Douglass, USMC, liaison, National Moment of Remembrance.
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Monday, June 5, 2000
Volume 36--Number 22
Pages 1241-1269
Week Ending Friday, June 2, 2000
Remarks at an Arrival Ceremony in Lisbon, Portugal
May 30, 2000
Mr. President, Mrs. Sampaio, Mr. Prime Minister, members of the
Portuguese Government, citizens of Portugal. Here at this historic point
of embarkation, from which Portuguese explorers led an entire continent
to see beyond the horizon, we find ourselves again, as you said, Mr.
President, on a new voyage of discovery.
And at the dawn of a new century, Portugal again is leading the way,
strengthening the European Union while preserving our transatlantic
partnership, building peace in the Balkans, supporting democracy in
Russia. Portugal has been a clear, strong voice for peace and stability
throughout the world, and we have been proud to stand with you in
responding to floods in Mozambique, in peacekeeping and humanitarian
operations from Kosovo to Africa to East Timor.
I thank Portugal, especially, for its constant commitment to East
Timor's freedom. Just before the ceremony began today, the President
told me that some of the troops who marched for us soon will be sent to
join the peacekeeping mission in East Timor. I know that this nation is
proud of those troops and their mission, and on behalf of the American
people, I thank you for it.
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The United States has always considered Portugal an especially good
neighbor, thanks in no small part to the shared pride we both feel in
the numbers, the character, and the accomplishment of Portuguese-
Americans who have done so much to shape our Nation.
I look forward to my meetings with the President and the Prime
Minister. I want to learn more about new Portuguese initiatives on
education, science, and technology. I applaud Portugal for the work it
is doing to give all its people the tools they need to succeed in this
global information age.
I also look forward to the U.S.-EU Summit. I hope we will use these
meetings not just to strengthen our own ties but to address challenges
beyond our borders. Mr. President, you mentioned many of them, the AIDS
epidemic in Africa and Asia, the economic gulfs separating the
wealthiest from the rest of the world. These problems require
innovation, imagination, and courage. Portugal's history is filled with
those qualities, and I believe Portugal again will lead the way.
When Vasco da Gama left here to explore Africa and India, he built
on the previous experiences of Portuguese explorers like Bartholomeu
Dias, the first European to go around the Cape of Good Hope. That
beautiful promontory briefly had a different name. It was called Cabo
das Tormentas, Stormy Cape, after the storms that gathered round it. But
after further reflection, its name was changed to Cabo da Boa Esperanca,
the Cape of Good Hope, to reflect the unbounded confidence with which
Portugal faced the future.
Well, we have a few stormy waters still to navigate. But we should
do it with good hope, and we should do it together.
Thank you very much.
Note: The President spoke at 11:10 a.m. at the Plaza of Torre de Belem.
In his remarks, he referred to President Jorge Sampaio and his wife,
Maria Jose Ritta, and Prime Minister Antonio Guterres of Portugal. The
transcript released by the Office of the Press Secretary also included
the remarks of President Sampaio. A tape was not available for
verification of the content of these remarks.
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Monday, June 5, 2000
Volume 36--Number 22
Pages 1241-1269
Week Ending Friday, June 2, 2000
Remarks to the Scientific Community in Lisbon
May 30, 2000
Good afternoon, Mr. Prime Minister, Professor Quintanilha, Minister
Gago, Dr. Vargas, ladies and gentlemen. I have just had a lot of fun
touring this science center, but the meaning here of what is being done
goes beyond the simple joy of learning. From the outermost reaches of
space to the darkest depths of the ocean, from the mysteries of
nanotechnology to the miracles of the human genome, men and women are
gathering knowledge at a faster pace than ever before that will have the
most profound impacts, especially on the way the young people in this
audience live.
Knowledge is being more widely applied and more quickly disseminated
than ever before, thanks in no small measure to the Internet. And
therefore, universal education and universal access to technology are
more important than ever before.
Today I applaud the scientific work being done in Portugal and the
efforts of Prime Minister Guterres and Minister Gago to train the next
generation of scientists, engineers, doctors, and astronauts, as well as
to close the digital divide to make sure all the children of this nation
have the tools they need to master the information age.
I am particularly impressed how much scientific research is being
done in partnership. In my tour of the science center and its exhibits,
I saw impressive examples of cutting-edge research across national
boundaries, Portuguese scientists in close cooperation with Americans,
Europeans, Africans, tackling some of the world's most critical health
problems.
In Africa, Asia, and many parts of the world, diseases like AIDS,
malaria, and tuberculosis are killing not only people but hope for
progress. In Africa, where 70 percent of all the world's AIDS cases
exist in sub-Saharan Africa, some countries are hiring two employees for
every job on the assumption that one of them will die of AIDS.
In other African countries, 30 percent of the teachers and 40
percent of the soldiers have the virus; millions suffer from strains of
malaria that are increasingly resistant to
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any drug; and a third of the world has actually been exposed to
tuberculosis. These diseases can ruin economies and threaten the very
survival of societies.
I was gratified to meet with some Portuguese scientists working on
state-of-the-art malaria research, together with the U.S. Public Health
Service, and to meet some of their students who were learning about it.
Other Portuguese and American teams are learning together, studying the
bacteria that caused TB, other new drug-resistant disease threats, and a
recently discovered pathogen that can strike down those already
suffering from AIDS.
I enjoyed meeting with the high school students who were using the
Internet to study infectious diseases and share information with other
students all across Europe. This kind of research and learning benefits
both our nations. It reaches across continents to benefit people who
really need it, especially in this case, in Africa.
Our challenge now is also to support prevention programs, to
accelerate the creation of affordable drugs and vaccines. We have made a
national commitment to do this in the United States. I've asked Congress
for over $325 million to increase our international efforts against
AIDS. I've asked for a billion-dollar tax credit and a global purchase
fund to speed the development by our pharmaceutical companies of
vaccines for AIDS, TB, and malaria. We have committed over $70 million
to fight TB, over $100 million to fight malaria.
And as the Prime Minister said, today we are announcing a new
partnership with Portugal and Sao Tome and Principe to study that
African country's unique malarial epidemic and to develop a strategy to
end it.
Tomorrow I am here also to meet with leaders of the European Union,
and your Prime Minister is the President in this period. I hope we'll
come out of that meeting with a common approach to the global health
crisis that will increase scientific research, increase the availability
of learning opportunities for our young people, and most importantly,
keep more people alive in the 21st century.
We have got to make sure that today's revolution in science and
technology serves all humanity, helps us to fight hunger, to mitigate
natural disasters, to reverse the tide of global warming, to grow our
economies without damaging the environment. This is profoundly important
and a very great challenge, indeed.
I couldn't help thinking today that intelligence is equally
distributed throughout the world, but not all the young people of the
world have a chance to come together as the Portuguese young people I
met today do, to study TB, to study malaria. Instead, many of them are
fighting for their lives because they have it.
We have a solemn responsibility to take the benefits of the
information economy, of the explosion in biomedical discoveries, and use
them to give every young person in the world the chance to live up to
their God-given potential and to create a safer, better, stronger, more
prosperous world for us all. That, in the end, is how these discoveries
should be measured, by whether we did our part to spread them quickly to
benefit everyone.
Thank you very much.
Note: The President spoke at 4:56 p.m. at the Pavilion of Knowledge
Science Center. In his remarks, he referred to Prime Minister Antonio
Guterres and Minister of Science and Technology Jose Mariano Gago of
Portugal; Alexandre Quintanilha, professor, University of Porto, who
introduced the President; and Rosalia Vargas, director, Pavilion of
Knowledge Science Center. A tape was not available for verification of
the content of these remarks.
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Monday, June 5, 2000
Volume 36--Number 22
Pages 1241-1269
Week Ending Friday, June 2, 2000
Remarks at a State Dinner Hosted by President Jorge Sampaio of Portugal
in Lisbon
May 30, 2000
Mr. President, Mrs. Sampaio, Mr. Prime Minister, members of the
Government, members of the diplomatic corps. I would like to thank you,
Mr. President, the Government, and the people of Portugal, for the
welcome that I and my party have received. I'd like to thank you for the
meeting we had today. It has been a pleasure for me to spend time with
another President who likes to read detective novels, listen to good
music, and
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play golf. We could have had a 2-day summit on those three topics alone.
[Laughter] My staff suggested it so that they could go to the beaches.
Let me say that five centuries ago the vision and courage of
Portugal helped Europe to find its way across the Atlantic. You were the
first to set foot in South America, to sail down West Africa, to cross
the Equator, to round the Cape of Good Hope, to reach India by sea from
the west, to trade with China and Japan. It is little wonder then that
Portuguese is now spoken by more than 200 million people in countries
throughout the world. One of these nations, of course, is the United
States.
Two centuries ago Portugal was the very first neutral state to
recognize our independence. And as you noted yourself, Mr. President,
the United States has been strengthened by the contributions of
Portuguese-Americans, from John Philip Sousa, who wrote the music we use
to celebrate the Fourth of July, to John Dos Passos, whose voice helped
to define America in the 20th century. Today, we are proud to stand with
you as partners, allies, and friends.
Twenty-six years ago Portugal turned from dictatorship to democracy.
Ten years ago Eastern Europe followed your lead. Today, Eastern Europe
is still learning from your example. When finally we build a Europe that
is undivided, democratic, and at peace for the first time in history,
there will be a great debt owed by all freedom-loving people to
Portugal.
Today, this nation that once brought the four corners of the world
together is working with its EU allies and America to bring the world
together to advance democracy and human rights. Portugal has taken a
leading role in NATO and the EU. In Kosovo, nearly half the sorties that
led us to victory flew out of Lajes Air Base in the Azores. In East
Timor, Portugal's leadership rallied the international community. In
Mozambique, our two nations are working together to lead the relief
effort. From the Balkans to East Timor to Africa, our troops serve side
by side to keep the peace and build a better future.
Here in Portugal, Prime Minister Guterres has charted new ways to
solve old challenges and to make the global economy work for all your
people. I admire that as well.
Two years ago a Portuguese author was awarded the Nobel Prize for
Literature. A short time later, we in the United States had the honor of
hosting Jose Saramago as he received an honorary degree from the
University of Massachusetts. Looking out at generations of Portuguese
who had traveled to America to enrich our culture and our country, he
said that they are a part of an unremitting human chain that has always
been and will continue to be an example of living history. That living
history links not only past and present, but the people of our two
countries, from Lisbon and Porto to New Bedford, Fall River, Providence,
Newark, all the places Portuguese-Americans have made their own.
Today, we look ahead to a new century. We celebrate our friendship
and embrace common challenges. We hope that the values we share will
spread across the Earth and bear fruit in more places for more people
than ever before. We hope that we will always stand together as friends
in the defense of those values and in their advance.
I ask now that all of you join me in a toast to the President of
Portugal and Mrs. Sampaio, to the people of this great nation, and to
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