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Castro stuck out his hand and I shook it, the...
Posted on 2010-Mar-18 at 11:14
Castro stuck out his hand and I shook it, the first President to do so in more than forty yearsHe said he didnt wish to cause me any trouble but wanted to pay his respects before I left officeI replied that I hoped that someday our nations would be reconciled
After the UN meetings, OPEC announced an increase in oil production of 800,000 barrels a day, Prime Minister Vajpayee of India came to Washington for a state visit, and on September 19, the Senate followed the House in approving the bill granting normal trade relations with China, thus clearing the way for its entry into the WTOI was convinced that in time it would prove to be one of the most important foreign policy developments of my eight years
Hillary had a good SeptemberShe won the primary on the twelfth and handily defeated Lazio in their debate moderated by Tim Russert in BuffaloLazio had three problems: he claimed that the still distressed economy of upstate New York had turned the corner; ran a misleading ad (for which he was called to account) that implied that Senator Moynihan was supporting him, not Hillary; and got in Hillarys face and tried to bully her into signing a pledge on campaign finance that was not credibleAll Hillary had to do was keep her composure and answer the ques-tions, which she did very wellA week later, a new poll showed her leading Lazio 4839 percent, with new strength among suburban women
On September 16, I bid an new prada replica handbags emotional farewell to a large, predominantly African-American crowd at the Congressional Black Caucus dinner, reviewing the record, making my case for Gore and Lieberman, and asking their support for well-qualified but still unconfirmed black judgesThen I threw away the script and closed with these words:
I thank you from the bottom of my heartToni Morrison once said I was the first black President this country ever hadAnd I would rather have that than a Nobel Prize, and Ill tell you whyBecause somewhere, in the deep and lost threads of my own memory, are the roots of understanding of what you have knownSomewhere, there was a deep longing to share the fate of the people who had been left out and left behind, sometimes brutalized, and too often ignored or forgotten
I dont exactly know who all I have to thank for thatBut Im quite sure I dont deserve any credit for it, because whatever I did, I really felt I had no other choice
I made the same points a few days later, on September 20, to the Congressional Hispanic Caucus dinner, and to the Bishops Conference of the Church of God in Christ, where I noted that there were only 120 days left in my presidency and that I would give them 120 hard days working with Congress and trying to make peace in the Middle EastI knew Id have an opportunity to win some more victories as Congress wound down, but I wasnt so sure about the Middle East
Several days later my economic cartier pasha team was with me as I announced that median income had risen by more than $1,000 in the last year, taking it above $40,000 for the first time in our history, and that the number of Americans without health insurance had dropped by 1 million the previous year, the first major decline in twelve years
On September 25, after weeks of efforts by our team to get peace talks back on track, Barak invited Arafat to his home for dinnerNear the end of the meal, I called and had a good talk with both of themThe next day both sides sent negotiators to Washington to take up where they had left off at Camp DavidOn the twenty-eighth, everything changed, as Ariel Sharon became the first leading Israeli politician to walk on the Temple Mount since Israel captured it in the 1967 warAt the time, Moshe Dayan had said that Muslim religious sites would be respected, and thereafter the mount was overseen by Muslims
Arafat said he had asked Barak to prevent Sharons stroll, which was clearly intended to affirm Israels sovereignty over the site and to strengthen his hand against a challenge to his leadership of the Likud Party from former prime minister Netanyahu, who was now sounding more hawkish than SharonI had also hoped Barak would prevent Sharons inflammatory escapade, but Barak told me he couldntInstead, Sharon was forbidden to enter the Dome of the Rock, or the Al-Aqsa Mosque, and was escorted to the Mount by a large number of mulberry style bags heavily armed police officers
I and others on our team had urged Arafat to prevent violenceIt was a great opportunity for the Palestinians, for once, to refuse to be provokedI thought Sharon should have been greeted with flowers by Palestinian children and told that when the Temple Mount was under Palestinian control, he would be welcome anytimeBut as Abba Eban had said long ago, the Palestinians never miss an opportunity to miss an opportunityThe next day there were large Palestinian demonstrations near the Western Wall, during which Israeli police opened fire with rubber bullets on stone throwers and othersAt least five people were killed and hundreds were woundedAs the violence persisted, two vivid images of its pain and futility emerged: a twelve-year-old Palestinian boy shot in the crossfire and dying in his fathers arms, and two Israeli soldiers pulled from a building and beaten to death, with their lifeless bodies dragged through the streets and one of their assailants proudly showing his bloodstained hands to the world on television
While the Middle East was exploding, the Balkans was getting betterIn the last week of September, Slobodan Milosevic was defeated for the presidency of Serbia by Vojislav Kostunica in a campaign in which we had helped ensure that the election could not be stolen and Kostunica could get his message outMilosevic tried to steal the election anyway, but massive demonstrations imitation gucci wallets convinced him he couldnt get away with it, and on October 6, the prime mover behind the Balkan slaughters admitted defeat
In early October, I hosted a meeting in the Cabinet Room for supporters of the debt-relief initiativeReverned Pat Robertson was thereHis strong support and that of the evangelical Christian community showed how broad and deep support for debt relief had becomeIn the House, the effort was being pushed by Maxine Waters, one of our most liberal members, and conservative Budget Committee chairman John KasichEven Jesse Helms was supporting it, thanks in no small measure to Bonos personal outreach to himThe early results were encouraging: Bolivia had spent $77 million on health and education; Uganda had doubled primary school enrollment; and Honduras was to go from six to nine years of mandatory schoolingI was aiming to get the rest of our contribution in the final budget agreement
In the second week of the month, Hillary did well in her second, more civilized debate with Rick LazioI signed the China trade bill and thanked Charlene Barshefsky and Gene Sperling for their arduous trek to China to hammer out our agreement at the eleventh hour; signed into law my Lands Legacy Initiative and the new investments for Native American communities; and on October 11, in Chappaqua, met Hillary to celebrate our twenty-fifth wedding anniversaryIt seemed like only yesterday when we were young and just cheap chanel purse beginni
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