Nicolae Ceausescu and Jimmy Carter Toast at the White House 1978

 

THE PRESIDENT: I think it is the guests that
we have, but I believe the Strolling Strings sounded
better tonight than any time I have ever heard them,
and I want to thank you for bringing out the best in
them. I thought it was very wonderful.
How many of you here either came from a foreign
country to our nation or had your parents or grandparents
come from a foreign country? Raise your hand, if you
would.
Mr. President, you can see more than half.
It is obviously more than half of the people here
have come to the United States from a foreign country,
most of you from Europe. And I think this in itself
demonstrates vividly to our distinguished guests how
close the ties are between our nation and his and those
nations that are neighbors of his.
We are indeed honored to have all of you
here tonight, and particularly honored to have President
Ceausescu and his wife, Elena, and the distinguished
Ministers of his Government come to visit the White House,
the First Family of our country, and the people of our
country.
Mr. President, you are w~lcome to our country.
We paid him a special honor today, perhaps
unprecedented in the history of our nation. We played
two different national anthems to Romania -- (laughter)
the incorrect one this morning and the correct one
tonight. (Applause) And I think this gives us an
excellent opportunity to judge the tremendous progress that
has been made in Romania -- (laughter) -- because I like
the one tonight much better, Mr. President.
It is always an exciting thing for us to have
distinguished leaders from other nations come to visit us,
and we always like to put our best foot forward and not
only entertain our guests, but let them know what a
great country we have.
I was particularly eager to impress the President's
wife tonight because she, on her own, is a distinguished
scientist, a chemist, has done great research work~ And
I was very careful to place on her left someone who could
speak her language about science and about whom I could
brag as a distinguished American to show how superior
our country was. As a matter of fact, Dr. Palade is
a Nobel laureate, and I wanted to let Mrs. Ceausescu
know how advanced we were in training Americans to win
the foremost price in all the world. So I was explaining
it to her very carefully and in the middle of my
dissertation he pointed out to me he was born, raised and
trained in Romania.
So we learned a lot about each other.
I have had a delightful day with the President
of this great country. I think it is accurate to point out that
as the leader of his great nation, he has not only brought
tremendous progress to Romania, but also has taken on a
role of leadership in the entire international community
that is notable.
He has been dedicated to the proposition that
a nation was sovereign, that its territorial integrity
should be honored, that its people should be independent,
and that in spite of this complete commitment to the pride
of one's own nation, that there should be bridges built,
not only to other countries from your own, but between other
countries who have difficulty in communicating because
of different political and economic organizations within
their own countries.
He was one of the first leaders, I think, who
saw the benefits, economically, politically, militarily,
in detente, and he has been a foremost proponent in trying
to bridge the gap between the Warsaw Pact nations and the
NATO countries. He has a unique ability to relate easily to
.leaders of nations, regardless of their political commitment or
orientation or background or history or conviction about the present
or future status of their countries.
He has been very helpful to me and my
predecessors in the White House in trying to bring
messages directly from leaders with whom we don't communicate
because of absence of diplomatic interrelationships;
and has provided a bridge for the easing of tensions and
the better understanding on a worldwide basis.
As a member of the developing nations of the
world, he has been able to be an evocative and a very
effective spokesman in acquainting:the industrial. nations
of the world with how we could interrelate more easily
and more effectively with a group of countries who
quite often are not well organized or not willing toI
sit down and calmly negotiate the way to alleviate the
wide disparity in economic benefits.
He is the leader of one of the few Eastern
European nations who is a member of the Group of 77, now
comprising about 95 countries, and I think this
shows the breadth of his vision and the commitment
he has to bridge those gaps that I have just described.
We have got an excellent relationship with
Romania. I think it has been growing steadily and on a
very sound basis for the last ten years or more.
This is the Pres~dent's fourth trip to our
country, and after he leaves Washington shortly, he will
be going to other places in the United States. He will
be going to Chattanooga, to Dallas, to Houston, to Orlando.
He will also be visiting New York. Unfortunately he won't
get to Georgia --(laughter)-- on this trip. He is going
to save that for dessert when he comes back on his next
trip.
But he knows our country. He has studied it
with a great deal of interest, and he has been one of the
people who have made notable progress among other countries
that are in the most intense disputes at this point.
I would say more than any other leader, certainly
including myself, he was responsible for the historic visit
of President Sadat of Egypt to Jerusalem and Israel.
By the way, the capital of Israel is Tel Aviv
and not Jerusalem.
And we have seen that this ability of his has paid
rich dividends to us. Romania was ·one of those countries
instrumental in evolving the Conference on Security and
Cooperation in Europe that we refer to in our country most
often as the Helsinki Agreement. And at Belgrade, which he
described this morning as a disappointment, he was very
eager to try to move forward to a much more substantive
accomplishment that might be realized at the next
meeting scheduled to be in Madrid.
We are very proud that the Helsinki Conference
Agreement includes the Third Basket, which covers more
deeply than ever before the question that is of profound
importance to our country, that is, basic human rights.
And we have an ability, President Ceausescu and myself,
his Ministers and mine, to discuss ways by which we
might move, perhaps in different means and at different
rates of advance, to bring about those basic human rights
that our people so urgently need -- the reunification of
families and the basic freedoms that· are important to us.
I have enjoyed being with him. He is a very good
adviser. He is a man who in the past has suffered
greatly in prison, tortured, but because of his courage
and because of his belief in the future of his own country,
notable achievements have been brought to the people who
have confidence in him.
It is a great pleasure for me again to
express my welcome to him to our country, and I would
like to propose a toast to a great leader, President
Ceausescu, and to the brave and friendly people of
Romania.
Mr. President, to you and your people. (Applause)
PRESIDENT CEAUSESCU: Mr. President, Mrs.
Carter, ladies and gentlemen: It is for myself, for my
wife and for the members of my party a reason of
special pleasure to be your guests here tonight, to be
again here in the United States to meet again many
citizens of your lovely country.
Today we had the first round of talks on a rather
large sphere of problems, and we have also reached a number
of common conclusions. The first regards the need to
establish broader cooperation between our two countries
and to take more sustained efforts towards peace, towards
more democratic international relations, and towards
insuring to each and every nation the right to live in
freedom and to develop according to their own aspirations.
You said, Mr. President, that many people here
in the United States have come from Europe or other parts
of the world. I cannot boast that many Romanians have
come from other parts of the world, because for almost
2,050 years--because in 1980 we are going to celebrate
the 2050th Anniversary of the first centralized Nation State
of Romania--Romanians have been there, and they are going
to stay there. They fought to be free, and they want
to be always free.
In many ways the history of our two respective
countries are different, and the present is also different
from a number of viewpoints. The United States is a
developed country, and~ big country. Romania is a smaller
country and a still developing country. But it is our
wish by relying on the labors and efforts of our own
people to develop on broader lines to gain access to
modern science, to civilization and to live a life of
dignity, freedom and independence.
I think that despite all differences, including
differences in social systems, there are many things that
can be common to our two countries and to our two peoples,
and mainly our common wish for progress, our wish to see that
the accomplishments of human genius are put in the service
of happiness of all peoples. No doubt, also, we have a
common determination to do everything we can in order
to see to it the wonderful achieve~ents of science should
not serve destruction and war, but 'the progress, well-
being and happiness of each people and of all peoples.
I think' that that is precisely the supreme
rationale of human existence, and that is also
the fundamental problem, the core of human rights --
the right to be free, the right and the duty to respect
the freedom of others, and the duty ~o work in such a way
in order to enjoy himself or herself and let others
enjoy the benefits of civilization. (Applause)
Maybe on certain aspects of human rights we might have different
philosophical concepts, and there is nothing wrong in that.
But we in Romania set out from the premise that everything
we do should serve the well-being of the people, should
help all people live life with more dignity and more
freedom. And we have a saying in Romania that the
little we have, we should distribute fairly for all to
enjoy.
You told me tonight, Mr. President, about your
Presidential campaign in the early stages and how you really
got elected President. It is wonderful that you could
win over all obstacles, and now to have a farmer at the
head of the United States, and also a farmer's son, and that
I used to work in the field, I used to work in factories,
and we have there in Romania a farmer's son who has worked
all his life with his hands and he is now a President, too.
(Applause)
Maybe that helps our people also understand
that whatever we do is for the people to benefit and
for them to live life with more dignity.
As a matter of fact, if I remember right, either
the first or the second President of the United States
used to be a worker, and the founding father of scientific
socialism, Marx, used to say and to quote that as an example
of how a working man can rise to the highest dignity of
office.
Now when we talk about human rights, it is good
to remember all these things, because the rights of all
human beings begin with the right to work, with the right
to learn, with the right to have access to culture,
with the right to live in freedom and also with the
right to participate in the management of all national
affairs without discrimination.
And this also includes the right to have any
creed, either religious or philosophical.
We endeavor to respect such rights fully, and
we regard them as sacred. We think that everything
should be done and no effort should be spared in order to have
those rights asserted in all countries, so that they
become a basis for equal cooperation among all nations.
That is why we take a stand against all wars and for
disarmament, first of all for nuclear disarmament.
That is why we believe that the world should cease to be
divided into opposing military blocs and new relations
should be built in a world without military blocs.
That is why we stand for a political solution in the Middle
East. That is why we welcomed President Sadat's initiative
and now we are hopeful that his efforts will, and the others
wil~ lead to a just and lasting peace in the area.
That is also the reason why we wish to see new
relations in Europe arid the document signed in Helsinki
implemented in full.
As there are more baskets than one, we would
wish that all should be implemented and more progress
should be made in particular on the'.mii'itary side of it,
considering that in Europe, where many Americans of today
have come from, we have to deal with the highest
concentration of forces and modern armaments.
You know Europe. You know Europe is not such
a big place, and little place is now left for anything
but arms. So we shall have to remove them to make place
for people. That is why, while giving attention to
the Third Basket, we should also give more attention
to military disengagement and disarmament.
These are the same reasons why we support
the liberation movements in Rhodesia and Namibia and the
majority in South Africa, their right to be free, to
decide their own future, and to participate in the management
of their own affairs.
Finally, I shouldn't fail to mention the fact
that two-thirds of mankind is poor, and one-third
is relatively rich, because not all are rich in that one-third.
That makes it necessary, in our view, to join the efforts
with these people, with the developing nations, in order
to secure their more rapid economic and social
progress. Without this we can hardly say that all
nations can enjoy the fruits of modern civilization.
We would certainly welcome with great satisfaction
more active support from the United States to the solution
of these worldwide problems, if more is done for
these two-thirds of mankind that live in poverty.
Of course, I have in mind not only the United
States but all developed countries, all those who are
able to take action in order to bring new solutions to
the vital problems of mankind.
We know well that just a few countries, even if
they are as big as the United States, cannot solve all these
problems. What is needed is for all peoples, all
nations, to join their efforts in order to bring about
solutions that would be up to the expectations and aspirations
of all people.
I am convinced that despite the difficulties,
that all the nations of the world will be able to bring
about new solutions to the problems we are facing and
to build together a better world with more justice.
We wish that our visit here and our talks together
should help us identify new fields for cooperation
between Romania and the United States, but at the same time
should provide new opportunities for cooperation witp
a view to solving the problems that confront humanity
today.
I should like to propose this toast for better
cooperation between Romania and the United States, for
a more democratic international policy. I wish
the people of .America prosperity and peace for all.
To your health, President Carter, Mrs. Carter.
We are looking forwarq . t,o .· seeing you in Romania. To
your health, everybody. (Applause)