Bill Clinton, President: Excerpts from Remarks, March 7, 2000

Bill Clinton, President: Excerpts from Remarks, March 7, 2000
THE WHITE HOUSE

Office of the Press Secretary

________________________________________________________________________

For Immediate Release March 7, 2000

REMARKS BY THE PRESIDENT ON GUN LEGISLATION

The James S. Brady Press Briefing Room

12:40 P.M. EST

Q Mr. President, aid to Colombia is facing problems in the Congress of the United States. There are some people who doubt -- they think it might be another Vietnam. Some people think that the military aid will end up in violation of human rights and talks of collusion between the military and paramilitary forces. What are you doing to try to get this aid passed that Colombia has been waiting for a long time and you've been pushing for a long time?

THE PRESIDENT: Well, I still believe the package will pass. I think the questions which are being asked are legitimate questions, and should be asked. If I were a member of Congress and I just heard the administration were to give this amount of money to Colombia and it was generally going to be used to fight drugs and do some other things, I would ask the same questions.

But all I can tell you is that it's not like Vietnam in the sense that we are not making a commitment to train soldiers in a way that we will then be called upon to come in and replace them or fight with them or work with them. This is to deal with a guerrilla war, which is what happened in Vietnam.

In this case, we will be using some of the funds to train soldiers to support police officers who will be doing antinarcotics work. And the units that will be involved in this will have to be particularly vetted to make sure that they don't have the pattern of abuse that you referred to.

So we have worked as hard as we could to do this. Now, can I tell you that there will never be a dollar of this that would be spent in a way that I wouldn't want. Nobody can say that. But I can say this: I think that we're a lot better off trying to help stabilize Colombia and save democracy there, and help them fight narcotics there and keep more drugs out of this country, than if we walk away from it. I think the consequences, if we walk away, are pretty clear. And if we help them, we just might make it and turn the situation around. That's what I think we ought to try to do.

As of April 1, 2000, this document was also available online at http://www.pub.whitehouse.gov/uri-res/I2R?urn:pdi://oma.eop.gov.us/2000/3/7/5.text.1