THE WHITE HOUSE

                     Office of the Press Secretary
                          (Helsinki, Finland)
________________________________________________________________________
For Immediate Release                                     March 21, 1997     

                      REMARKS BY PRESIDENT CLINTON
                   PRESIDENT AHTISAARI OF FINLAND AND                
              PRESIDENT YELTSIN OF THE RUSSIAN FEDERATION 
                          IN PHOTO OPPORTUNITY 

                 Residence of the President of Finland
                           Helsinki, Finland                         

9:38 A.M. (L)

Q Mr. President, do you expect to be able to find a way to agree to disagree with President Yeltsin on NATO expansion?

PRESIDENT CLINTON: I think we'll have a good meeting. And we'll have a press conference this afternoon to answer your questions.

Q Do you expect any surprises --

PRESIDENT YELTSIN: During the discussions there may be some surprises, but I'm confident that we'll be able to find a way out, a solution out of these surprises. We have a goodwill to try to accommodate each other and remove all the disagreements that we still have today. And we grew convinced that our most ardent desire -- and then we know that skeptics in the past have always proved that wrong, saying that it's not possible to reach agreement on an issue -- in the final analysis we did come to agreement on most thorny issues. And the two Presidents, heads of the two great powers, are duty bound to act in this way. And I think Bill would agree with me that each of us will be prepared to cover his own part of the way.

THE PRESS: Thank you.

END 9:40 A.M. (L)