THE WHITE HOUSE
Office of the Press Secretary
(Snowmass, Colorado)
______________________________________________________________
For Immediate Release July 26, 1998
REMARKS BY THE PRESIDENT
AT RECEPTION FOR
DEMOCRATIC NATIONAL CAMPAIGN SUPPORTERS
Private Residence
Aspen, Colorado
10:58 P.M. MDT
...................
Q Mr. President, I've got a question about
foreign policy. Do you have any concern about India and
Pakistan, South Asia, what's happening over there? And what kind
of leadership role you can take to bring peace over there, or
even float the idea of creating an independent country of
Kashmir, because that's the biggest problem there -- what can you
do about it?
THE PRESIDENT: Well, one of the problems we've had
-- I thought -- I actually feel bad about this because I had a
trip set up for the fall to India and Pakistan. And in 1993,
when I took office, I got all of our people -- actually, before I
took office -- and I said, let's look at the major foreign policy
challenges this country faces and figure out how we're going to
deal with them and in what order. And as you might imagine, we
went through the Middle East and Bosnia, and then we had Haiti on
the list. We went through the idea that we had to build a trade
alliance with Latin America; that we needed a systematic outreach
to Africa; that the big issues were how were Russia and China
going to define their future greatness and could we avoid a
destructive future. And we worked hard on that.
But I told everybody at the time, I said, one of the
things that never gets in the newspapers in America is the
relationship between India and Pakistan and what happens on the
Indian subcontinent, where they already -- India already has a
population of over 900 million, in 30 years it will be more
populous than China, it already has the world's biggest middle
class. And Pakistan has well over 100 million people and so does
Bangladesh. So it's an amazing place.
So I had planned to go there with plans to try to
help resolve the conflicts between the two countries. One big
problem is India steadfastly resists having any third party --
whether it's the United States or the United Nations or anybody
else -- try to mediate on Kashmir. It's not surprising. India
is bigger than Pakistan, but there are more Muslims than Hindus
in Kashmir. I mean, it's not -- the same reason that Pakistan,
on the flip side, is dying to have international mediation
because of the way the numbers work.
What I think we have to do is to go back to find a
series of confidence-building measures which will enable these
two nations to work together and trust each other more and to
move back from the brink of military confrontation and from
nuclear confrontation. And we have to find a way to involve the
Russians and the Chinese because the Indians always say they're
building nuclear power because of China being a nuclear power and
the border disputes they've had with China. And, oh, by the way,
we happen to have this Pakistani problem.
So I have spent a lot of time on that, even though
it hasn't achieved a lot of notoriety in the press. And I'm
still hopeful that before the year is over, we'll be able to put
them back on the right path toward more constructive relations.
I mean, India, interestingly enough, is a democracy just as
diverse, if not more diverse, than America. Almost no one knows
this. But most -- most, but not all -- the various minorities
groups in India live along the borders of India in the north.
And it's just -- it would be, I think, a terrible tragedy if
Hindu nationalism led to both estrangement with the Muslim
countries on the border and the minorities -- Muslim and
otherwise -- within the borders of India, when Ghandi basically
set the country up as a model of what we would all like to be,
and when India's democracy has survived for 50 years under the
most adverse circumstances conceivable and is now, I believe, in
a position to really build a level of prosperity that has not
been possible before.
I feel the same thing with the Pakistanis. I think
if they could somehow -- they're much more vulnerable to these
economic sanctions than the Indians are. If they could somehow
ease their concerns which are leading to such enormous military
expenditures and put it into people expenditures, we could build
a different future there. I don't know if I can do any good with
it, but I certainly intend to try because I think, whether we
like it or not, I think that the one good thing that the nuclear
tests have done is that they have awakened the West -- and
Americans, in particular -- to the idea that a lot of our
children's future will depend on what happens in the Indian
subcontinent.
Q How about if you called their prime ministers
here?
PRESIDENT CLINTON: Well, I can't force a settlement
on them, but I can -- that's why I say because of their
relationships with India and China, we need their help as well.
And so far -- excuse me -- with Russia and China. And so far,
the Russians and the Chinese have been very helpful to me in
trying to work out a policy that we can pursue. But I'm working
on it. Believe me, if I thought it would work, I would do it
tomorrow, and I will continue to explore every conceivable
option.
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