Bill Clinton: “Good afternoon, ladies and gentlemen. I want to formally welcome Prime Minister Major to the White House and to the…”

“Good afternoon, ladies and gentlemen. I want to formally welcome Prime Minister Major to the White House and to the United States. We are delighted to have him here. As I'm sure you know, he has already met earlier today with people on the Hill and with members of my Cabinet. We have just finished the first of two meetings. We talked for about an hour, and then this evening we'll have a working dinner. About the conversations we've had so far, I'd just like to make two points. First, we covered a wide range of topics. We talked about Bosnia, as you might imagine we would. We talked about the Middle East. And then the rest of our time was spent virtually exclusively talking about economic matters, about the upcoming meeting of the G-7; about the importance of trying to get an agreement under GATT and my commitment to that; about the absolute necessity of the United States, Europe, and Japan working together during this difficult time to try to prevent a contraction of the global economy and instead to hopefully promote growth, not only here at home but throughout the world. And we talked about that at some considerable detail. The Prime Minister, as you know, has been in office a lot longer than I have. And I asked him for his advice about a number of things and his opinion about others. And we had a very, very good meeting. And I'm looking forward to our dinner tonight. A second point I would like to make is to reaffirm something that some of you asked me during the photo op, and that is whether the United States will continue to have a very special relationship with Great Britain. The answer to that from my point of view is an unqualified yes. I think that only two Presidents ever lived in England. I think I'm one of only two. There may have been more somewhere in the past centuries. But this is a very important relationship to me, and I think it's off to a very good start. And I would like to say again how much I appreciate the candor with which the Prime Minister has approached the issues, with which we've discussed our mutual interests. Mr. Prime Minister. Prime Minister Major. Mr. President, firstly, thank you for your welcome today. And I've found our meeting extremely useful, and I look forward to continuing it this evening. And I certainly had some very useful meetings this morning on the Hill and with other members of your Cabinet earlier this morning, with Lloyd Bentsen, and of course over lunch as well with some of your colleagues. It's nice, having had a number of telephone conversations over the last few months, to actually see a face across the table rather than just hear a voice across the phone. And I look forward to continuing that dialog this evening. You set out some of the things that we were able to discuss over the last hour or so. I was particularly pleased we were able to reach such a meeting of minds on the importance of reaching an agreement to the Uruguay round as speedily as possible. I think we share the view that for a raft of reasons it's important to get a satisfactory and fair agreement to the GATT round, not just because of the impetus that will give to trade growth and hopefully to prosperity and job growth as well but also because of the very remarkable advantage that will give not just to the industrialized but to the nonindustrialized world with the many difficulties that are faced economically at the moment. So I was particularly pleased at our meeting of minds on that particular subject. We found also a complete agreement about the need for the Security Council resolutions that have been imposed in respect to Iraq to be fully met and to be fully honored in the future. I had the pleasure of being able to welcome the President's initiative, humanitarian airdrops in Bosnia. The United Kingdom--we've got a number of thousands of troops actually delivering humanitarian aid in central Bosnia. They've been doing that for some time. I think as a result of their activities, many people who otherwise might not have lived through this winter have done. And I think this new initiative by the President is thoroughly welcome. So it's been a very worthwhile and a very enjoyable meeting thus far, and I look forward to continuing it this evening.”