September 18, 1998

PRESS BRIEFING BY NATIONAL SECURITY ADVISOR SANDY BERGER

                                THE WHITE HOUSE

                         Office of the Press Secretary
________________________________________________________________
For Immediate Release                          September 18, 1998     


                               PRESS BRIEFING BY
                     NATIONAL SECURITY ADVISOR SANDY BERGER

                               The Briefing Room

9:59 A.M. EDT

	
..........

MR. BERGER:

	     Then the President will address the U.N. General 
Assembly.  As usual, the President of the United States is the first 
speaker to the General Assembly, after the President of the UNGA.  
This is the ninth time the President will have addressed the United 
Nations -- sixth in terms of the annual meetings, but also in special 
sessions that they have held on drugs, environment, and on the 
occasion of the U.N.'s 50th anniversary.

	     And the President will talk about terrorism and the 
common obligations of the international community to fight it.  In 
recent months, as you know, for example at the Naval Academy, and in 
recent weeks in the wake of the bombings of our embassies in Africa 
and our strikes in Sudan and in Afghanistan, the President has spoken 
about this issue quite frequently.  But he has done so often, 
particularly, for example, in the Naval Academy speech, in 
programmatic terms: here's what the international community must do 
together to fight terrorism.  We have to have better money-laundering 
legislation.  We have to have better cooperative mechanisms.

	     I expect in this speech for him to address the question 
more broadly and speak to the international community about why the 
fight against terrorism has become one that has to be at or near the 
top of our world agenda.  He will point out that with the spread of 
information technology and the potential spread of weapons of mass 
destruction, the technology of terror has become more lethal and more 
available, and therefore there is a greater degree of common 
responsibility to deal with this issue together.  

	     He wants to make it clear to the international community 
that the fight against terrorism is not a clash of civilizations or 
cultures.  The dividing line is between those who practice, support, 
and tolerate terror, and those who understand that terrorism is plain 
and simple murder.  And he wants to press his case that the only way 
to succeed in the combat against terrorism is working together and 
understanding our common obligations to deal with this increasingly 
serious problem.