Bill Clinton: “Well, first of all, I think that it did not diminish the summit. In fact, there was more done here and there was more…”

“Well, first of all, I think that it did not diminish the summit. In fact, there was more done here and there was more energy and more zip in it than I thought there would be. And I think part of it was, apparently, this summit is less bureaucratic than its predecessors. We ended two of our meetings an hour early, which I liked awful well. And there was an amazing amount of open, free flow of honest exchange. It was very, very good. I think that any time you have the major economies of the world in the doldrums, combined in some of these countries with a real impetus toward political reform and a felt need of the people to make their political systems work better, you can't expect to see high poll numbers. When people are having a tough time making ends meet, they don't tend to be very happy with their political leaders. So that is a given. Notwithstanding that, this summit produced real substantive benefits for the people who sent these leaders here. Now, there was a reaffirmation, a unanimous reaffirmation on the part of the heads of state in this meeting to make this process less bureaucratic, less expensive, and less cumbersome. And I think you will see an even more streamlined summit next year in Italy, one in which all the delegations are smaller and in which there is more flexibility. I hope that something was learned out of this summit, that if you focus on one or two objectives and really work at it and work at it, you can get something done. Wolf [Wolf Blitzer, Cable News Network] and then David [David Lauter, Los Angeles Times]. Iraq”