NEWS
Excerpts from remarks by the President to the Naval War College
Q First of all, I want to thank you for the support you are giving our country. And you have -- we know that your main goal is to win the situation in Iraq. I want to ask you which is your assessment for the situation in South America?
THE PRESIDENT: Sí, thank you. First, I am a big admirer of mi amigo, Presidente Uribe. He's strong -- that's the President of Colombia. (Laughter and applause.) He's strong, he's courageous, and he believes in democracy. And he was -- he started off in a really very tough problem, and that is dealing with a very rich group of people who are violent, but didn't necessarily agree with democracy. And I admire the way he has led his nation.
A key moment in our relations with Colombia will be coming up pretty soon. And that is, we negotiated a free-trade agreement with your country. Why? Well, one, we did it because it's in our economic interests to open up markets for U.S. goods and services, just like it's in Colombia's interests to open up our markets for goods and services.
I believe in trade. I believe trade is in the interests of our workers. I think more markets -- listen, we're 5 percent of the people, that means 95 percent of the market should be available to our goods and services. When you're good at something, you ought to make it easier to sell it. We're good farmers, we ought to be selling our crops overseas to the extent they're not needed home. We're good manufacturers of a lot of products; we ought to be selling them.
I also believe that trade is the best way to lift people out of poverty. When there's commerce, when there's activity, when there's enterprise, a society has a better chance of enabling its people to realize dreams. So I'm a big trader -- a free-trader.
That's why we worked with the agreement with Colombia. Now the Congress is going to have an opportunity to determine whether or not they're going to be protectionist in nature and whether or not they'll turn -- this country will turn its back on our friend or not.
The free trade vote has a lot of strategic implications because in the neighborhood there is a person who is undermining a democracy, and therefore we need to be concerned about the loss of democracies in our neighborhood. Democracies yield peace. They don't war against each other. And when we see a democracy being undermined -- and I think it's going to be in the interests for the United States to work with friends in the neighborhood to promote the institutions necessary to prevent individuals from undermining a free society. What does that mean? Free media, the right to dissent, the capacity to have open elections.
…Anyway, thanks for the question. I think I am somewhat concerned by the fact that -- you know, a lot of rhetoric is geared toward the Middle East and Africa and that people in the neighborhood say, well, the United States is not paying attention, nor do they care about us. That's just simply not the case. In my recent trip down there, I did go to Brazil, Uruguay, Colombia and Central America, and emphasized our humanitarian programs, the health programs, the education programs. I wanted to make it clear to the people of South and Central America that the United States cares deeply about the human condition, and that we believe that on the one hand, our government aid ought to make sure that we battle corruption -- we just don't give money to corrupt societies, that we ought to say that in return for our aid, change your habits if you're corrupt, otherwise you're not going to get additional money.
And a the same time, we believe we ought to foster programs aimed at the individual. And we are. We're spending a lot of money in South America. Now, we're not doing a very good job with the propaganda battle around the world. We created it, and we're losing. And that's one thing we've got to spend a lot of time on, is to make sure that the image of the United States corresponds to the realities on the ground.
For all the text: http://www.whitehouse.gov/news/releases/2007/06/20070628-14.html