Bill Clinton: “My main objective is to reaffirm the strong ties between the United States and Poland and to reaffirm our commitment…”

“My main objective is to reaffirm the strong ties between the United States and Poland and to reaffirm our commitment here in the United States to helping Poland achieve a successful economic transition--the Polish economy, as you know, grew by 4 percent last year, more than any other economy in Europe--and to do so with some help with easing the social tensions caused by the transition. And I have some ideas and some suggestions that I wish to share with President Walesa and then perhaps in the Polish Parliament, too. You know I'm going to speak in the Polish Parliament. I must say I'm very excited about it. It's a great honor. I'm so excited; the idea that I will be able to address the Parliament, that I will be able to visit some monuments of places I've only read about or dreamed of, it's a great thing not only for me as President but just for me as a citizen and for my wife. We're very excited about that. We're also, I might say, very excited about going to the Baltics. I grew up in a little town in Arkansas that had a substantial Lithuanian population. So I grew up knowing about the problems of the Baltic nations. Interestingly enough, we had a lot of people from Central and Eastern Europe, a lot of people from the Czech Republic in my hometown in Arkansas who came down from Chicago, most of them came from Chicago, and moved to my State because it was a little warmer but still it had four seasons. So I'm very excited about it. Poland-U.S. Relations”