Bill Clinton: “The communique that we issued today, which covers a wide range of economic and social issues, was fully participated in…”

“The communique that we issued today, which covers a wide range of economic and social issues, was fully participated in by Russia. The Russians had a full hand, along with all the rest of us, in developing this communique. And President Yeltsin was at the meeting today when the leaders went over the sections and, in effect, ratified and said we wanted it out there. So I think you can feel quite good about that and about the fact that there is a G-8 and Russia is a full member of it. Secondly, you ask about the future and whether we would pressure the IMF to help Russia. The answer is that we have always strongly, strongly supported IMF assistance to Russia. We also strongly, however, support the changes that the Duma has been asked to make in order to give Russia a competitive world economy. Because no matter how much the IMF tries to help Russia, unless your country has made the basic changes that every country must make to compete in the global economy, the private money will not flow into Russia that will really bring it back to the position that the Russian people deserve and that, frankly, the rest of the world needs. It's very much in the interest of the United States to have an economically successful, strong, prosperous Russia. And I will do everything I can to that end. And your third question was whether there were things apart from the IMF that we could do to help the Russian economy, and the answer to that is yes. And I discussed some of those with President Yeltsin today. I want you to understand that the United States believes that a strong and prosperous democratic Russia, actively involved with the rest of Europe, actively involved with the United States, actively working together in partnership to solve the world's problems, from terrorism to the threat of weapons of mass destruction to the need to stop ethnic cleansing--that this is in our interest. We do this because we genuinely want the Russian people to have a leading role in the world and to have personal prosperity, because we think it gives us a safer world and it's better for the American people. Mr. Kiselev. Mr. President, thank you for your time, thank you for your answers, and I wish you good luck.”