Clinton Speaks Up For United Canada President Addresses Parliament, Tries To Build Opposition To Quebec Separatists

With voters in Quebec expected to vote this year on a referendum on sovereignty, President Clinton eased away on Thursday from a policy of American neutrality and sent an unambiguous signal that the United States would prefer that Canada remain intact.

That the administration would rather not contend with a separate Quebec was not a surprise. But in his address to the Canadian Parliament, Clinton injected a rare American appeal into the debate over whether Quebec should go its own way.

“In a world darkened by ethnic conflicts that tear nations apart, Canada stands as a model of how people of different cultures can live and work together in peace, prosperity, and mutual respect,” he said. The remark brought all but the 53 members of the Quebec separatist party to their feet.

As he began a two-day state visit in this wintry capital, the president won even more shouts of applause from Prime Minister Jean Chretien and others opposed to Quebec separatism as he quoted from a speech that President Truman delivered to the Parliament 48 years ago.

“Canada’s notable achievement of national unity and progress through accommodation, moderation, and forbearance can be studied with profit by sister nations,” Clinton said, adding: “Those words ring every bit as true today as they did then.”

In an effort to cushion the effect of his remarks, the president took pains to repeat that Canada’s political future was “for Canadians to decide,” which members of the Bloc Quebecois quickly greeted with their own loud round of applause.

Though Clinton’s words may have been oblique, Chretien made plain that he welcomed them as an encouragement to voters in the predominantly French-speaking province to question the wisdom of sovereignty. His Liberal Party government is preparing to wage a fierce campaign against the separatist referendum.

But on a day on which he met privately with both Chretien and with Lucien Bouchard, the leader of the Bloc Quebecois, Clinton was clearly charting a careful course.

Bouchard, who returned to work only this week after losing a leg to a flesh-eating bacteria, had glowered noticeably during parts of Clinton’s speech. After meeting with the president on Thursday night, he said he had tried to explain more about the Quebec separatist movement but made clear that he had not welcomed Clinton’s earlier remarks.

“He has the right to say what he said,” Bouchard told reporters. “There is nothing in the diplomatic code that obliges me to stand for something I don’t like to hear. It did not give me any enthusiasm.”

Clinton was the first American president to agree to talks with a Quebec separatist leader, but aides said his decision to do so was a reflection only of the bloc’s status as a fullfledged opposition party in Parliament.

The president did not disguise the intent of his speech, which White House officials said he had reviewed in advance with Chretien in a telephone conversation on Tuesday night. After the address, the president told reporters: “I think they got the message.”