[Public Papers of the Presidents of the United States: William J. Clinton (1998, Book I)]
[April 19, 1998]
[Pages 589-590]
[From the U.S. Government Publishing Office www.gpo.gov]
Closing Remarks at the Summit of the Americas in Santiago
April 19, 1998
President Frei; fellow leaders of the
Americas; First Ladies; distinguished Presidents of Senate, Chamber of Deputies,
Supreme Court; members of the diplomatic
corps; ladies and gentlemen of the Americas; let me say first to you,
Mr. President--and I know I speak for all of us here--we thank you and
Mrs. Frei and your entire team for the warmth of
your welcome, the wonder of your country, and the genuine leadership you
have brought to this Summit of the Americas. Thank you very much.
At our first summit in 1994, we agreed on a common vision of a
democratic, prosperous, peaceful, united hemisphere for the 21st
century. We also formulated a comprehensive agenda to help us to realize
that vision, an agenda to strengthen our democracies, tear down trade
barriers, improve our people's quality of life.
Our journey from Miami to Santiago, as we have often said, was from
words to deeds. Still, for all our progress, we all admit that too many
of our citizens have not yet seen their own lives improved as a result
of our participation as free nations in the global economy. Therefore,
we have committed ourselves here to a second stage of reforms designed
to bring the benefits of freedom and free enterprise to ordinary
citizens throughout the Americas.
As was the truth in Miami, it is so here today: The real work of
Santiago begins as we leave. And until we meet again in Canada, we must
work every day to keep the commitments we have made to each other and to
our people.
First, we must continue to stand fast for democracy for our entire
hemisphere, with no holdouts and no backsliders. We must support the
integrity of the electoral process. We welcomed and participated in the
restoration of democracy in Haiti. We supported its preservation in
Paraguay. We now must support the OAS and CARICOM as they support the
people of Guyana in the integrity of their electoral process. We must
support our new special rapporteur on freedom of expression and work to
prevent violence against journalists; get our new hemispheric justice
system up and running; implement the OAS Illegal Firearms Convention to
help to stop firearms from falling into the wrong hands; adopt the laws
necessary to make our unprecedented anticorruption convention a reality.
And most important, we must move aggressively to establish our alliance
against drugs, so that we will have a more genuinely collective
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effort to protect our people against narcotrafficking and drug abuse,
violence and organized crime.
Second, we must continue to bring the free economies of the Americas
together. Today we launched comprehensive negotiations for a free-trade
area of the Americas and vowed to make concrete progress toward that
goal by the year 2000, including greater transparency in government
procurement and banking operations, a commitment to free trade in
cyberspace, and steps to facilitate business, such as customs
coordination.
And as we improve the climate for business contracts, we know we
must also strengthen the social contract. The civil society committee we
have established is designed to give all the voices of society the
opportunity to be heard in shaping the new free-trade area of the
Americas. We want more trade and better working conditions, more growth
and a cleaner environment.
The entrepreneurs of the information age can prosper in a way that
increases opportunities for all who are willing to work hard. And we can
reap the benefits of economic change and meet the challenge of climate
change.
Finally, we have made it our mission to give our people the tools
they must have to succeed in the new economy: opening the doors of
learning to all our children; doing more to lift our people out of
poverty, supported by billions of dollars in new lending commitments for
microenterprise and health care from the Inter-American Development Bank
and the World Bank.
By the time we meet again, we should resolve that all our small
entrepreneurs, especially our women, should have access to the loans
they need to get their businesses off the ground; that poor urban and
rural citizens should be able to gain titles to their property; that we
should eradicate measles from this hemisphere; and most important, that
millions more of our children will be in school, not on the streets. We
should achieve an 80-percent completion rate in primary school as we
work toward our goal of 100 percent by the year 2010. Our children,
after all, will have more to say about the future we are trying to
create than any of the rest of us.
The people of the Americas, as the President of Uruguay pointed out to us yesterday, have launched a
profound revolution in the last few years, a revolution of peace and
freedom and prosperity. Here in Santiago, we embrace our responsibility
to make these historic forces lift the lives of all our people. That is
the future we can forge together. It is a future worthy of the new
Americas in a new millennium.
Thank you very much.
Note: The President spoke at 1:54 p.m. in the Ministry of Foreign
Affairs Building. In his remarks, he referred to President of the Senate
Andres Zaldivar, President of the Chamber of Deputies Gutenberg
Martinez, and Justice Roberto Davila, President of the Supreme Court of
Chile; and President Julio Maria Sanguinetti of Uruguay.