Bill Clinton: “Let me say this. I think that the more we work with them and the more their scientists are working with us and the more…”

“Let me say this. I think that the more we work with them and the more their scientists are working with us and the more successful we are in building a common endeavor, the more it will be in their interest to comply. The real danger in Russia, I think--dangers--are two. One is--I'll take one that is outside the CBW area so it doesn't look like I'm waving the red flag here. When we started the space station--you know, John Glenn went up and then we sent the first two components of the space station up--it had been months since a lot of those Russian scientists had been paid. That's why it is very, very important, I think, to say we value this enormous infrastructure of scientific expertise they have in the space area, in the CBW area, and we want to work with them. This budget of mine would enable us to do joint work with 8,000 Russian scientists. Now, there are, I think, 40,000 total--we think. But that's important. That bothers me. The second thing that concerns me is that when Russia shed communism, they adopted a strategy which was widely lauded at the time in the United States and elsewhere, but they were actually--when I went to Russia, and you remember right after my mother died I got on the plane, and I went to the Czech Republic and Russia--that was, what, January of '94. Actually, at that time the Czech Republic was doing very well and was sort of the poster child of the new economy in the former Communist countries. But when I was there, Russia had actually privatized more property than the Czech Republic had. And this relates partly to the economic crisis, but when they did it, they did it without having had the benefit of an effective central bank, a securities and exchange commission, all these other things, so that you had money coming in and money flying out now. And one of the problems they have now is that it's not a totalitarian Government anymore; there are a lot of private companies-- all the private companies there by definition used to be part of the state, unless they're new businesses. And so one of the problems we're having is, even when they're trying to help us, is keeping up with what all these companies and their subsidiaries do. And that's been the tension that you've written a lot about and there's been a lot in the press about--was there missile cooperation with Iran or not, and does that violate our understanding, and does that call for some action vis-a-vis Russia? And part of the problem is just keeping up with this proliferation of companies and people that used to have some connection to the Soviet State, some connection to the defense apparatus. It's not a simple process, and it's not a perfect process, but I am absolutely convinced that this threat reduction initiative we've got can kind of intensify our efforts to work with them, as well as to really implement the Chemical Weapons Treaty and get some teeth in the Biological Weapons Convention. That's very, very important. I think that is the best strategy. It may not be perfect, but it is better than the alternative. Response to an Attack”