Clinton Contrite About Slavery

President Clinton sounded a measured note of contrition Tuesday for past "sins" in U.S. relations with Africa, including Cold War support for repressive regimes and participation by American forefathers in slavery.

Speaking at a village school outside the Ugandan capital of Kampala, Mr. Clinton stopped short of making an explicit apology for slavery -- a thorny issue in American racial politics.

Mr. Clinton proposed more than $180 million in new aid for a continent that he said had been subjected to American "neglect and ignorance."

"It is as well not to dwell too much in the past, but I think it is worth pointing out that the United States has not always done the right thing by Africa," he said.

The Cold War rivalry with the Soviet Union had led the United States to deal with countries in Africa and elsewhere based on their superpower allegiances rather than "how they stood in the struggle for their own people's aspirations to live up to the fullest of their God-given abilities," he said.

"And of course, going back to the time before we were even a nation, European Americans received the fruits of the slave trade, and we were wrong in that as well," Mr. Clinton said.

The president's 12-day journey through Africa is set to finish on April 2 at the Goree Island slave transshipment point in Senegal. The trip occurs in a year Mr. Clinton has sought to call attention to racial dialogue and healing. But his aides have said he would not issue a formal apology.

The president prefaced his speech by saying he listened "very carefully" to Ugandan President Yoweri Museveni earlier in the day when the two leaders met and Museveni discussed "the history of Africa, the history of Uganda, the future, what mistakes had been made in the past."

"Perhaps the worst sin America ever committed about Africa was the sin of neglect and ignorance," Mr. Clinton said. "We have never been as involved in working together for our mutual benefit, for your children and for ours as we should have been."

Mr. Clinton was speaking at the Mukono village school, nestled amid banana trees and coffee plants. The president and first lady Hillary Rodham Clinton, escorted by Museveni and his wife, Janet, were greeted by dozens of schoolchildren in pink uniforms, who clapped and sang a welcome.

Inside the school, the children demonstrated their learning by naming the U.S. president and pointing to the United States and Uganda on a map.

"Congratulations on your lessons, very impressive. Thank you for makng me feel so welcome," Mr. Clinton said. The Clintons and Musevenis later joined some of the children in a dance.

The president also used the occasion to announce proposals for $182 million in aid programs for education, health and improved food security for Africa.

The proposals included a $120 million assistance program for African schools and universities, a $61 million Africa-wide program aimed at improving the quality, safety and distribution of crops, and $1 million to fight malaria and other infectious diseases.

Earlier Tuesday, Clinton and Museveni met privately for about 30 minutes and then as part of larger bilateral delegations. Clinton said he spoke about trade and investment with Museveni, whose market-oriented economic reforms have won U.S. praise as a role model for Africa, and discussed "improving political conditions."

A U.S. official, speaking at the Nile Conference Center in Kampala where the traveling White House press corps was housed, said the United States would continue to press Uganda to open up its "no-party" political system.

Mr. Clinton also struggled to keep a messy sex scandal from intruding on his attempt to cast a statesman's image, telling inquiring reporters at a photo session that the issue should only be discussed "back home."

The president appeared on edge as reporters asked him before his meeting with Museveni about his assertion last week of executive privilege to limit the testimony of top aides in a federal grand jury inquiry. The jury is investigating an allegations, which Mr. Clinton has denied , of an affair between the president and former White House intern Monica Lewinsky.

"That's a question that's being asked and answered back home by the people with responsibility, I don't believe I should be discussing that here," he said.

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