President Asks For Broader International Crime Powers
WASHINGTON (AllPolitics, May 12) -- President Bill Clinton asked Congress Tuesday for $280 million in the upcoming budget to fund the first comprehensive international crime control strategy, setting the stage for upcoming discussions at the Summit of Eight.
The money will be spent in hiring an additional 1,000 new border agents, upgrading technology for fighting crime, placing more U.S. law enforcement agents at embassies overseas to assist citizens living abroad and coordinating crime fighting efforts with other industrialized countries.
"We cannot, we must not, we will not accept a world in which American children and children abroad grow up paralyzed by crime and fear and violence," the president said. "Together, America and our allies can attack this scourge and bring a secure and prosperous future for all our people."
Clinton's crime strategy focuses on such post-Cold War threats as drug and people trafficking, terrorism, weapons sales, money-laundering and transfer of U.S. technology to hostile nations.
The president announced his plan at an event at the Old Executive Office
Building before his departure for Europe and the summit in Birmingham, England. The nations at the G-8 Summit will begin work on a plan to cooperate on the fight against international crime.
The first stop on the president's European trip will be Germany. There he will celebrate the 50th anniversary of the Berlin Airlift. The airlift delivered clothes, medicine, food and coal to the city when all ground access was cut off by the Soviets.
Thursday Clinton will fly to Birmingham where he will meet Russian President Boris Yeltsin and the leaders of Britain, France, Germany, Italy, Canada and Japan.
This will be the first meeting between Clinton and Yeltsin since their summit last June in Denver. Relations between Moscow and Washington have been strained since then due to divisions over Iraq and Kosovo, and the U. S. push for the expansion of NATO.
CNN's Eileen O'Connor and The Associated Press contributed to this report.
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