ACCESSION NUMBER:290766
FILE ID:LEF321
DATE:06/23/93
TITLE:MENEM TO MEET CLINTON JUNE 29 (06/23/93)
TEXT:*93062321.LEF
1LEF321 06/23/93
MENEM TO MEET CLINTON JUNE 29
(Visit is first by Latam president) jlr (540)
(With Lsi310 of 06/23/93)
By Jaime Lopez Recalde
USIA Special Correspondent
BUENOS AIRES -- Argentine President Carlos Menem will meet President Clinton
in the White House June 29, the first Latin American chief of state to do
so since Clinton took office in January.
The meeting with Clinton will be part of Menem's three-day official working
visit to Washington. He will be accompanied by four cabinet ministers and
a delegation that includes military leaders, diplomats, senators,
congressmen, and senior officials of his administration.
Although no official agenda has been announced for the presidents' meeting,
news reports and diplomats here anticipate they will discuss bilateral,
hemispheric, and multilateral issues.
The Foreign Ministry said the Menem-Clinton meeting would last from 11:25
a.m. to 2 p.m. and include a luncheon and joint news conference.
Argentine Economics Minister Domingo Cavallo, Foreign Minister Guido Di
Tella, Health and Social Services Alberto Mazza, and Defense Minister Oscar
Camilion will hold meetings with their American counterparts.
The meetings are sure to include issues of mutual U.S.-Argentine interest,
such as support for democratic governments, human rights, and the
maintenance of world peace.
Menem goes to Washington on his second official visit since taking office in
July 1989. He has an impressive record of achievements behind him. When
he assumed office, Argentina's monthly inflation rate stood at three
digits, a situation caused by, among other things, excessive public
spending on the deficit and the state-owned industries.
With Cavallo's designation as economics minister, the new administration
imposed a strict economic plan, known as convertibility, that fixed the
value of the dollar at one peso, a parity that has continued for more than
two years.
Privatization of many state-owned companies and industries, including the
national airline, Aerolineas Argentinas, and the telephone, gas and
electricity, railroad, and steel companies, was initiated at the same time.
Even more significantly, the Menem administration introduced changes in
foreign policy that took Argentina away from its traditional nationalism
and membership in the Non-Aligned Movement and toward a major association
with Western countries. The move included re-establishment of diplomatic
relations with Britain, with whom Argentina went to war over the Falkland
Islands in 1982.
Since then, the Argentine military has taken part in United Nations
peacekeeping operations in the former Yugoslavia, Angola and other places,
and participated in the Persian Gulf blockade imposed to reverse Iraq's
1990 invasion of Kuwait.
Menem has also paid close attention to the crisis in Haiti, where a former
Argentine foreign minister, Dante Caputo, serves a special envoy of both
the United Nations and Organization of American States. On Cuba, the
Argentine leader has called for a process of democratization on repeated
occasions.
On bilateral and international issues, Menem recently sent the Senate a
proposal for a patent law intended to guarantee intellectual property and
1rdered the dismantling of the Condor II missile program.
Argentine and U.S. officials have also announced the possibility of
Argentina and the United States signing an accord similar to the North
American Free Trade Agreement being negotiated by Canada, Mexico and the
United States.
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