Exchange of Remarks on Signing Joint Statements With First Secretary Gierek of Poland.

MR. FIRST SECRETARY, we have just put our signatures on landmark documents.

The first, on principles of bilateral relations, recognizes the friendly state of those relations. It underlines our joint determination to not only continue this cooperation, but to further expand it for mutual benefit. We will make a joint contribution to peace and security throughout the world.

The second document is more specifically directed to economic, industrial, and technological cooperation. If it is to succeed, cooperation requires the careful and continuing attention of nations, as I am sure you will agree.

Over the past few years, we have made important advances in our economic and trade relations. We have now pledged our countries to even further advances toward realization of the full potential for cooperation that we both see and we desire. Our peoples will benefit and the economic international community will likewise benefit.

These documents should be reassuring to our friends and associates throughout the world. We discriminate against no one, nor do we prejudice any commitments we have already made to others. Indeed, the respect we show for each other and the cooperation that we seek is part of the international spirit we see emerging. This new spirit seeks to solve problems, not to make new tensions.

Mr. First Secretary, my signature on these documents is yet another expression of the deep interest of the people of the United States in the well-being of your nation and its deserved place in the international community. We welcome these documents for the contributions they will make to the spirit of cooperation and peaceful endeavor throughout the world.

THE FIRST SECRETARY.¹ Mr. President, ladies and gentlemen:

¹ First Secretary Gierek spoke in Polish and his remarks were translated by an interpreter.

I do share, Mr. President, your appraisal of the weight of the documents we have just signed, the fruitful nature of our talks, and the importance of the agreements we have concluded. I greatly appreciate what you have said and wish to express my profound satisfaction over the headway we made and results we achieved during my visit to Washington. I especially enjoyed meeting with you, Mr. President, which I shall cherish in my memories as an important, sincere, and friendly encounter.

We are opening together a new chapter in relations between the Polish People's Republic and the United States of America. As of now, these new annals will be recording the future of our relations as well as our broader, closer, and more extensive cooperation. We are opening up that new chapter aware of the entire tradition of the friendly mutual relations between the Polish and American peoples, in the desire of tightening the bonds which we have inherited from the past and continue to maintain at present.

In enhancing the progress made in our bilateral relations in recent years, we are likewise creating a groundwork for expanded economic, scientific, and technical cooperation, for cultural exchanges, and various contacts between our respective peoples. Particularly important in this regard is expansion of reciprocally beneficial economic ties, which form the most durable basis for all other mutual relationships.

I firmly believe that the inauguration of a future-oriented phase of Polish-American relations concurs with the interests and wishes of our two peoples. We are doing it in accordance both with the principles and the spirit of peaceful coexistence among states with different systems, for the United States and modern, Socialist Poland are precisely such states. Poland, for 30 years, has been shaping new conditions of life and development of her people. She remains faithful to her alliances, and in the best of her tradition, she is actively involved in the strife for progress and peace.

I trust, Mr. President, that the results of our meeting will also contribute to the strengthening of international detente. This latter process, in particular, fortified by the improvement of Soviet-American relations which are of exceptional significance to world peace, has already brought about many favorable changes in the international situation; it has reduced dangerous tensions and provided new vistas for constructive cooperation.

We can particularly sense this in Europe, where the process has been advanced most. Yet, even there, a great deal still remains to be done in order to ensure peace for the entire future to come. May we all move further along that road to free mankind completely from the nuclear threat, to give the world of today and all its nations a feeling of lasting security, and to resolve successfully the great socio-economic and civilization problems which confront us now and are likely to emerge in near future.

I am happy, Mr. President, that, as has been reflected in our joint statement, we are in agreement as to the need for further action at making irreversible the progress achieved in peaceful relations among states with different socioeconomic systems.

Mr. President, ladies and gentlemen, tomorrow I shall be leaving Washington to visit other centers of your great and beautiful country. On behalf of Mrs. Gierek and persons accompanying me, as well as in my own name, I wish to thank you, Mr. President, for the friendly reception and hospitality accorded to us. Permit me at the same time to reiterate my very cordial invitation for you and Mrs. Ford, whom we wish a very speedy recovery, to pay a visit to Poland. With the fresh memories of our Washington encounter, I shall be looking forward to meeting you again, this time in our capital, the city of Warsaw.

I would also like to say once more how happy I was to have met the prominent Representatives of the U.S. Congress. My meeting with them has reaffirmed me of the Congressional favorable attitude towards matters concerning further development of Polish-American cooperation.

I take this opportunity to thank the Secretary of State, as well as your other collaborators, for their contribution to the fruitful results of my visit to Washington. I thank all who helped make this visit a success.

Through you, Mr. President, I wish to convey to the American nation my heartfelt greetings and best wishes which I am bringing from the people of Poland.

THE PRESIDENT. Thank you very, very much, Mr. First Secretary. I have enjoyed meeting you, becoming well-acquainted with you, and I look forward to the opportunity of visiting Poland.

I told Mrs. Ford on the telephone today of your kind invitation, and she remembers vividly our visit to Poland some years ago. She, as well as I, are looking forward to a return to your nation and to meet again the wonderful Polish people.

I can assure you, Mr. First Secretary, that as you travel around the rest of the United States--and I wish you could stay longer and visit more places--that you will find a great warmth on the part of the American people for the people of Poland, and you will be welcome wherever you go. I know the warmth of the welcome here will be equal wherever you visit in our country.

We hope you will come back. I look forward to seeing you in the future.

THE FIRST SECRETARY. I wish to thank you most heartily, Mr. President, and we are expecting you in Warsaw, and Mrs. Ford. We shall be trying to greet you, Mr. President and Mrs. Ford, according to the Polish tradition and our saying, "My home is your home."

THE PRESIDENT. Thank you, sir.