ACCESSION
NUMBER:333798
FILE ID:LEF218
DATE:03/22/94
TITLE:GORE, MENEM DISCUSS PRIVATIZATION AND DEREGULATION (03/22/94)
TEXT:*94032218.LEF GORE, MENEM DISCUSS PRIVATIZATION GARCIA 03/22/94
1LEF218 03/22/94*
GORE, MENEM DISCUSS PRIVATIZATION AND DEREGULATION
(Story based on 3/31 ITU meeting) mg (680)
(With Lsi204 of 03/22/94)
By Jaime Lopez Recalde
USIA Special Correspondent
BUENOS AIRES -- Argentine President Carlos Menem and U.S. Vice President Al
Gore hailed the excellent results obtained through privatization and
deregulation in the field of telecommunication.
They also urged world support for technological advances that benefit
mankind through improved education, more accesible health systems, and
protection of human rights through better reporting of violations.
The two spoke at the opening of the First World Telecommunications
Development Conference March 21. The conference was organized by the
International Telecommunication Union, a United Nations organization of 182
countries based in Geneva.
One of the objectives of the nine-day conference is to explore the expansion
of modern telecommunications to the most remote parts of the world,
especially the poorest countries.
Menem discussed his successful economic program based on privatization and
the free-market concept. He thanked the audience for the opportunity to
tell the world "of our accomplishments in transforming the state and
deregulating and privatizing the communications system." Now the state, he
said, can concentrate on its primary responsibility -- delivery of basic
services to the community: education, public health, and security.
"Public services in government hands were turned over to the private
sector," Menem said. "The first positive results came from the
telecommunications sector. This brought state-of-the-art technology, and
we have seen significant progress in the last three years. We have made
important progress in cellular telephony. We have set up an internal
satellite and taken the telephone to rural areas."
From a political point of view, Menem said, "no progress can be made without
a healthy economy and no nation is free if the right to communication is
not guaranteed.
"Freedom of communication makes it possible to defend human rights because
violations can be reported."
ITU Secretary General Pekka Tarjanne said the benefits of telecommunications
should be extended to all nations of the world "in order to defend human
rights, combat poverty, and further economic and social progress."
Gore described the "information superhighway," which is part of a program
called the Global Information Infrastructure (GII). "We now can at last
create a planetary information network that transmits messages and images
with the speed of light from the largest city to the smallest village on
every continent," he said.
"This GII will circle the globe with information superhighways on which all
people can travel. These highways -- or, more accurately, networks of
distributed intelligence -- will allow us to share information, to connect,
and to communicate as a global community.
"From these connections we will derive robust and sustainable economic
progress, strong democracies, better solutions to global and local
environmental challenges, improved health care, and -- ultimately -- a
greater sense of shared stewardship of our small planet."
He added that the GII "will greatly promote the ability of nations to
1ooperate with each other. I see an new Athenian Age of democracy forged
in the fora the GII will create."
Gore said the U.S. National Information Infrastructure "will be built and
maintained by the private sector. It will consist of hundreds of different
networks, run by different companies and using different technologies, all
connected together in a giant `network of networks,' providing telephone
and interactive digital video to almost every American."
The U.S. plan is based on five principles: encourage private investment;
promote competition; create a flexible regulatory framework that can keep
pace with rapid technological and market changes; provide open access to
the network for all information providers; and ensure universal service.
At the airport as he prepared to leave for Brazil, Gore praised Menem's
achievements in economics and foreign policy, especially the participation
of Argentine soldiers in United Nations missions in the former Yugoslavia,
Cyprus, Croatia, and other regions of the world.
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