Bill Clinton

Article Outline

Introduction; Early Life; Early Public Career; President of the United States; Life After the Presidency

The Middle East

Clinton also worked in the Middle East to negotiate peace agreements between Arabs, including Palestinians, and Israelis. Secret negotiations between the nation of Israel and the Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO) led to a historic declaration of peace in September 1993. Clinton arranged for the peace accord to be signed at the White House. This agreement paved the way for limited Palestinian self-rule in the Israeli-occupied West Bank and Gaza Strip. In July 1994 Clinton helped orchestrate a historic agreement between longtime enemies Israel and Jordan to end their state of war. The leaders of the countries also signed their pact at the White House.

However, the 1993 peace agreement between Israel and the Palestine Liberation Organization and a second one in 1995 did not end the strife. After the peace process stalled, Clinton brought Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu of Israel and Yasir Arafat, the Palestinian leader, together for talks in October 1998 at a resort on the Wye River in Maryland. The leaders signed an agreement under which Israel would transfer more territory in the West Bank to the Palestinian National Authority, the Palestinian administrative body in the West Bank and the Gaza Strip, in exchange for Palestinian steps to curb terrorism. They also adopted a timetable to negotiate a final resolution of the Palestinian fight for an independent state.

After an outbreak of violence, however, Netanyahu refused to give up the West Bank territory and placed new demands upon the Palestinians. This led to the collapse of Netanyahu’s government. In May 1999 elections Ehud Barak, the leader of a political coalition that favored resuming the peace process, defeated Netanyahu to become prime minister. Clinton continued to support negotiations between Israel and the Palestinians. Throughout his last year in office, Clinton sought to arrange a final peace settlement but failed.

Clinton frequently faced trouble with Iraq. In 1991, before Clinton became president, the United States participated in the Persian Gulf War to liberate Kuwait from Iraqi occupation. In 1991 a cease-fire agreement was signed that required Iraq to eliminate its weapons of mass destruction and allow inspectors from the United Nations Special Commission (UNSCOM) to monitor the country’s compliance.

Korea

Tensions on the Korean peninsula increased in 1994 when North Korea, a signatory of the Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty, refused to allow international inspectors to look at two nuclear waste sites. The inspectors wanted to see if North Korea was reprocessing spent fuel into plutonium, which could be used to manufacture nuclear weapons in violation of the treaty. Despite international concerns and repeated warnings by Clinton, North Korea refused to allow the inspections and raised the prospect of war with South Korea, an ally of the United States.

After private diplomacy by former president Jimmy Carter, the Clinton administration reached an agreement with North Korea in October 1994. North Korea would shut down the nuclear plants that could produce the bomb material, and the United States would help North Korea build plants that generated electricity with light-water nuclear reactors. These reactors would be more efficient, and the waste they produced could not be easily extracted for use in nuclear weapons. The United States promised to supply fuel oil to operate electric plants until the new plants were built, and North Korea agreed to allow inspection of the old waste sites when construction started on the new plants.

Mexico

Another foreign crisis occurred in early 1995, when the value of the peso, the currency of Mexico, began to fall sharply, threatening the collapse of the Mexican economy. Clinton said the collapse of Mexico’s economy would have a harsh effect on the United States because of the economic ties between the two countries. He submitted a plan to Congress to help Mexico ease its financial crisis. Fearing that voters would not favor giving money to Mexico, Congress refused to approve the plan. Clinton then devised a $20 billion loan package for Mexico to restore confidence of investors around the world in the Mexican economy. In January 1997 Mexico announced that it had completed its loan payments to the United States, three years ahead of schedule. However, issues such as drug smuggling and U.S. immigration policies strained relations between the United States and Mexico.

Cuba

Following talks with representatives of the Cuban government, Clinton announced in May 1995 a controversial decision to reverse a decades-old policy of automatically granting asylum to Cuban refugees. Some 20,000 refugees detained at Guantánamo Bay Naval Station in Cuba were to be admitted to the United States over a period of about three months; to prevent a mass exodus of refugees to the United States, all future refugees would be returned to Cuba. While some political figures praised the decision, such as the governor of Florida (where refugees were expected to settle), others in the Clinton administration voiced their opposition.

Relations between the United States and Cuba worsened in February 1996 when Cuba shot down two American civilian planes without warning. Cuba claimed that the planes had been in Cuban airspace. Clinton tightened sanctions against Cuba, including the suspension of charter flights from the United States to Cuba. The president hoped this suspension would hurt Cuba’s tourist industry.

Also in response to the incident, the U.S. Congress passed the Helms-Burton Act in March 1996. Parts of the bill strengthened an embargo against imports of Cuban products. However, another part, Title III, allowed American citizens whose property was seized during and after the 1959 Cuban Revolution to file suit in U.S. courts against foreign companies that later invested in those properties. Title III produced an immediate uproar from countries such as Mexico, Canada, and members of the European Union (EU) because they believed that the United States could not penalize them for doing business with Cuba. In response, Clinton repeatedly suspended Title III of the legislation (the Helms-Burton Act gave the president the right to exercise this option every six months).

Clinton softened U.S. policy toward Cuba in 1998 and 1999. In March 1998, at the urging of Pope John Paul II, Clinton eased restrictions and allowed humanitarian charter flights to resume. He also took steps to increase educational, religious, and humanitarian contacts with the country. The U.S. government decided to allow Cuban citizens to receive more money from American friends and family members and to buy more American food and medicine.

Northern Ireland

Clinton worked for much of his presidency to end the conflict in Northern Ireland by arranging a peace agreement between the Catholic and Protestant factions. In 1998 George Mitchell, a former United States senator, brokered an accord that became known as the Good Friday agreement. It called for the British Parliament to relinquish administration of the province to a new Northern Ireland assembly that would include members of both religious communities. But months of stalemate followed, partly over the refusal of the Irish Republican Army (IRA), a largely Catholic paramilitary group, to surrender its weapons. Mitchell returned and worked out the blueprint for a further agreement that resulted in December 1999 in the formation of a power-sharing government, which was to be followed by steps toward the IRA’s disarmament. That agreement faltered as well, although Clinton continued to talk to leaders of the factions and British leaders to keep the peace process from collapsing.

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The Middle East

Korea

Mexico

Cuba

Northern Ireland