race—and put aside some money for her and Chelsea. Then I wanted to devote the rest of my life to public service. Jimmy Carter had made a real difference in his post-presidential years, and I thought I could, too.
In mid-month, on the day I left for a ten-day trip to Turkey, Greece, Italy, Bulgaria, and Kosovo, I hailed Kofi Annan’s announcement that President Glafcos Clerides of Cyprus and Turkish Cypriot leader Rauf Denktash would begin “proximity talks” in New York in early December. Cyprus had received its independence from the UK in 1960. In 1974, the president of Cyprus, Archbishop Makarios, was deposed in a coup orchestrated by the Greek military regime. In response, the Turkish military sent troops to the island to protect the Turkish Cypriots, dividing the country and creating a de facto Turkish enclave of independence in the north. Many Greeks in the north of Cyprus left their homes and moved south. The island had been divided ever since, and tensions had remained high between Turkey and Greece. Greece wanted to end the Turkish military presence in Cyprus and find a resolution that would at least allow the Greeks the possibility of returning to the north. I had tried for years to solve the problem and hoped the secretary-general’s effort would succeed. It did not, and I would leave office disappointed that Cyprus remained an obstacle to Greek-Turkish reconciliation and to Turkey’s being fully embraced by Europe.
We also finally reached agreement with the Republican leadership on three of my important budget priorities: funding the 100,000 new teachers, doubling the number of children in after-school programs, and, at long last, paying our back dues to the United Nations. Somehow, Madeleine Albright and Dick Holbrooke had worked it out with Jesse Helms and the other UN skeptics. It took Dick longer than making peace in Bosnia, but I’m not sure anyone else could have done it. Hillary, Chelsea, and I arrived in Turkey for a five-day visit, an unusually long stay. I wanted to support the Turks in the aftermath of two devastating earthquakes, and to encourage them to continue to work with the United States and Europe. Turkey was a NATO ally and was hoping to be admitted to the European Union, a development I had been strongly supporting for years. It was one of a handful of countries whose future course would have a large impact on the twenty-first–century world. If it could resolve the Cyprus problem with Greece, reach an accommodation with its restive and sometimes repressed Kurdish minority, and maintain its identity as a secular Muslim democracy, Turkey could be the West’s gateway to a new Middle East. If peace in the Middle East fell victim to a rising tide of Islamic extremism, a stable, democratic Turkey could be a bulwark against its spread into Europe. I was glad to see President Demirel again. He was a large-minded man who wanted Turkey to be a bridge between East and West. I made my pitch for that vision to Prime Minister Bulent Ecevit and to the Turkish Grand National Assembly, urging them to reject isolationism and nationalism by resolving their problems with the Kurds and Greece and moving toward EU membership. The next day I made the same arguments to American and Turkish business leaders in Istanbul, after a stop at a tent city near Izmit to meet with earthquake victims. We visited with some of the families who had lost everything, and I thanked all the nations that had helped the victims, including Greece. Not long after the Turkish quakes, Greece had an earthquake of its own, and the Turks had returned the favor. If earthquakes could bring them together, they should be able to work together when the ground stopped moving.
My whole trip became defined for the Turks by the visit to the quake victims. When I held a young child in my arms, he reached up and grabbed my nose, just as Chelsea used to do when she was a toddler. A photographer got a shot of it, and the picture was in all the Turkish papers the next day. One of them carried it with the headline, “He’s a Turk!”
After my family visited the ruins of Ephesus, including one of the largest libraries in the Roman world and an open amphitheater where St. Paul had preached, I participated in a meeting of the fifty-four–nation Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe, which had been organized in 1973 to advance democracy, human rights, and the rule of law. We were there to support the Stability Pact for the Balkans and a resolution of the continuing crisis in Chechnya that would end the terrorism against Russia and the excessive use of force against noncombatant Chechens. I also signed an agreement with the leaders of Kazakhstan, Turkmenistan, Azerbaijan, and Georgia committing the United States to support the development of two pipelines that would carry oil from the Caspian Sea to the West without going through Iran. Depending on what kind of future Iran chose to pursue, the pipeline agreement could prove to be of enormous consequence to the future stability of both the producing and consuming countries.
I was fascinated by Istanbul and its rich history as the capital of both the Ottoman Empire and the Roman Empire in the East. In another attempt to promote reconciliation, I visited the ecumenical patriarch of all the Orthodox churches, Bartholomew of Constantinople, and asked the Turks to reopen the Orthodox monastery in Istanbul. The patriarch gave me a beautiful scroll inscribed with what he knew was one of my favorite scriptural passages, from the eleventh chapter of Hebrews. It begins, “Faith is the assurance of things hoped for, the conviction of things not seen.”
While I was in Turkey, the White House and Congress reached a budget agreement that, in addition to my education initiatives, provided funding for more police, the Lands Legacy initiative, our commitments under the Wye River accord, and the new debt-relief initiative for the poorest countries. The Republicans also agreed to give up their most damaging anti-environmental riders to the appropriation bills.
There was also good news in Northern Ireland, where George Mitchell had reached an agreement with the parties to proceed simultaneously with a new government and decommissioning with the support of Tony Blair and Bertie Ahern. Bertie was with me in Turkey when we heard the news. In Athens, after a thrilling early-morning tour of the Acropolis with Chelsea, and a public expression of regret over America’s support of the repressive anti- democratic regime that took control of Greece in 1967, I reaffirmed my commitment to a fair resolution to the Cyprus problem as a condition of Turkey’s EU membership and thanked Prime Minister Costas Simitis for staying with the allies in Kosovo. Because the Greeks and Serbs shared the Orthodox faith, it had been difficult for him. I left the meeting encouraged by the prime minister’s openness to reconciliation with Turkey and its entry into the EU if the Cyprus problem could be resolved, in part because the two countries’ foreign ministers, George Papandreou and Ismael Cem, were young, forward-looking leaders who were working together for a common future—the only course that made sense.
From Greece, I flew to Florence, where Prime Minister D’Alema hosted another of our Third Way conferences. This one had a distinctly Italian flavor, as Andrea Bocelli sang at the dinner and Academy Award–winning actor Roberto Benigni kept us in stitches. He and D’Alema were a well-matched pair—two lean, intense, passionate men who were always finding something to laugh about. When I met Benigni, he said, “I love you!” and jumped into my arms. I was thinking that maybe I should run for office in Italy; I had always loved it there.
This was by far our most substantive Third Way meeting. Tony Blair, EU president Romano Prodi, Gerhard Schroeder, Henrique Cardoso, and French prime minister Lionel Jospin were all there as we worked to articulate a progressive consensus for domestic and foreign policies in the twenty-first century, and for reforms in the international financial system to minimize financial crises and intensify our efforts to spread the benefits and reduce the burdens of globalization. On the twenty-second, Chelsea and I flew to Bulgaria, which I was the first American President to visit. In a speech to more than thirty thousand people in the shadow of the brightly lit Alexander Nevsky Cathedral, I pledged America’s support for their hard-won freedom, their economic aspirations, and their partnership with NATO.
My last stop before going home for Thanksgiving was in Kosovo, where Madeleine Albright, Wes Clark, and I got a roaring welcome. I spoke to a group of citizens who kept interrupting my speech by shouting my name. I hated to break the mood, but I tried to get them to listen to my plea not to take out resentment over past wrongs by retaliating against the Serb minority, a point I made privately to the leaders of various factions in Kosovar politics. Later that day I went to Camp Bondsteel to thank the troops and share an early Thanksgiving dinner with them. They were clearly proud of what they had done, but Chelsea was a bigger hit with the young soldiers than I was. While we were on the trip, I sent Charlene Barshefsky and Gene Sperling to China to try to close the deal for China’s entry into the WTO. The agreement had to be good enough to enable us to pass legislation establishing permanent normal trade relations with China. Gene’s presence would ensure that the Chinese knew that I was supporting the negotiations. The negotiations were difficult until the very end, when we got the protections against dumping and import surges and access to the automobile market that earned the support of Michigan Democratic congressman Sandy Levin. His support ensured congressional approval of permanent normal trade relations and thus China’s entry into the WTO. Gene and Charlene had done a great job.
Shortly after Thanksgiving, David Trimble’s Ulster Unionist Party approved the new peace agreement, and the new Northern Ireland government was formed with David Trimble as first minister and Seamus Mallon from John Hume’s SDLP as deputy first minister. Sinn Fein’s Martin McGuinness was named education minister. It would have been unthinkable not long before.
