09/03/2026 11:05

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Interestingly, I watched the Senate vote on television with Japanese prime minister Ryutaro Hashimoto, who was in town to meet All this may sound routine now, but at the time it represented a sea change in American policy, one the British government and many in our own State Department still opposed. I later apologized to Jim Guy Tucker when I saw him and will do the same to Webb one day. It worked: President Pierre Buyoya and thirteen of the nineteen warring parties signed the agreement.

I understood how it had happened. The last stop of the night was Sioux Falls, South Dakota, where Democratic congressman Tim Johnson had a real chance to unseat incumbent Republican Larry Pressler. Even though Helmut Kohl, François Mitterrand, John Major, Jiang Zemin, and other leaders were scheduled to be there, my decision was I had initiated the summit to promote a free trade area in all the Americas, from the Arctic Circle to Tierra del Fuego; to str