Bill Clinton: “Independent States April 23, 1993 Since my summit in Vancouver with Russian President Boris Yeltsin, I have pursued a…”

“Independent States April 23, 1993 Since my summit in Vancouver with Russian President Boris Yeltsin, I have pursued a number of measures to implement our policy of economic and strategic partnership between our two countries. These reflect my conviction that the movement toward political and economic reform in Russia and the other new states of the former Soviet Union is the greatest security challenge of our day and can fuel our own future prosperity as well. It is time to put our relations with Russia and the other states on a new footing. As an important step in that process, we need to update the accumulated cold war vestiges that remain in U.S. laws and practices. Our statutes and regulations are filled with restrictions on a Communist Soviet Union, a nation that no longer exists. Many of those provisions needlessly impede our relations with the democratic states that replaced the Soviet Union. Many in Congress have already taken the lead on re-examining these provisions. Today I have asked Ambassador-at-Large Strobe Talbott to coordinate our Executive review of these laws and statutes on an expedited basis, with the goal of revising or removing them where appropriate and consistent with our security and other national interests. Related to this process, our administration will also begin a thorough review, working with our allies, of how to reorient export controls on sensitive technology.…”