*EPF403 05/09/2002
White House Report, May 9: South Africa, Afghanistan, Milton Friedman
(Press Secretary Ari Fleischer briefed morning and afternoon) (650)

White House Press Secretary Ari Fleischer briefed reporters at early morning and midday sessions May 9.

BUSH THANKS SOUTH AFRICA'S PRESIDENT FOR HOSTING CONGOLESE TALKS

President Bush, in an early morning phone call to South Africa's President Thabo Mbeki, thanked him for his leadership in hosting talks among the Congolese in Sun City, South Africa, Fleischer reported.

Bush "expressed his support for President Mbeki's continued efforts in Cape Town this week to help the Congolese reach an agreement on the composition of a transitional government. He noted South Africa can build on the progress made in Sun City between the Congo government and many of the other parties, and reaffirmed the need for an inclusive agreement," said Fleischer.

He added that President Bush also discussed the situation in the Middle East with President Mbeki.

U.S. POLICY IN AFGHANISTAN IS TO TARGET THOSE WHO POSE A THREAT TO ALLIED FORCES

Asked about a United States missile attack May 9 in Afghanistan reportedly aimed at an Afghan warlord there, Bush told reporters May 9 that "I can assure you when we go after individuals in the theater of war, it's because they intend to do some harm to America."

The warlord reportedly escaped the attack.

White House Press Secretary Fleischer, asked about the same incident earlier May 9, said, "without being specific to any one person or any one case, it is the United States' policy that, if we have any information or any evidence that there are people who pose a threat to United States or allied forces operating in Afghanistan, we will engage in action that is deemed necessary by the appropriate officials on the ground and in the region."

BUSH PAYS TRIBUTE TO ECONOMIST MILTON FRIEDMAN

President Bush honored Nobel Prize winning economist Milton Friedman at a White House event May 9 as Friedman prepares to celebrate his 90th birthday.

"He has taught us that a free market system's main justification is its moral strength," Bush said. "Human freedom serves the cause of human dignity. Freedom rewards creativity and work, and you cannot reduce freedom in our economy without reducing freedom in our lives."

Bush noted that when Friedman began his work, the conventional wisdom held that capitalism's days were numbered, and that free market systems were unsuited to modern problems. "Today we recognize that free markets are the great engines of economic development. They are the source of wealth, and the hope of a world weary of poverty and weary of oppression," the President said.

Attending the event was Friedman's wife, and prominent former and current government officials and economists including Federal Reserve Board Chairman Alan Greenspan and Nobel Prize economist and University of Chicago Professor Gary Becker.

Friedman is widely regarded as the leader of the "Chicago School" of monetary economics, which stresses the importance of the quantity of money as an instrument of government policy and as a determinant of business cycles and inflation.

He won the 1976 Nobel Prize for economic science, and has been a senior research fellow at the Hoover Institution since 1977.

He is also the Paul Snowden Russell Distinguished Service Professor Emeritus of Economics at the University of Chicago, where he taught from 1946 to 1976; and he was a member of the research staff of the National Bureau of Economic Research from 1937 to 1981.

Friedman was awarded the Presidential Medal of Freedom in 1988 and received the National Medal of Science the same year.

He has published many books and articles on economics, and has also written extensively on public policy, always with the primary emphasis on the preservation and extension of individual freedom.

Friedman received his B.A. in 1932 from Rutgers University, his M.A. in 1933 from the University of Chicago, and his Ph.D. in 1946 from Columbia University.

(Distributed by the Office of International Information Programs, U.S. Department of State. Web site: http://usinfo.state.gov)

Return to Public File Main Page

Return to Public Table of Contents