Remarks at the Airport in Tunis Before Leaving for France

Mr. President, Ladies and Gentlemen:

This is the first time that I have been able to visit your beautiful country for 16 years. I left here 16 years ago this month, and we were in the midst of a war. We were fighting a war that we thought would bring permanent peace.

We have found that peace does not come just because the guns are stilled. We have to work for peace, we have to work with our hearts, with our substance, with our hands--we have to work all the time to maintain the peace and to make it more secure.

This cannot be done by any one man, by any one nation--we must all work together, each nation feeling the pride in itself, in its self-respect, with its heart and its soul must work with all other nations in friendship and in freedom, and in this way we will finally make the kind of peace that all of us want and in which all mankind, as brothers, can truly prosper.

So, as I see today, over these 16 years, the great transformations that have come about in your country--your independence, your new buildings, everything about your nation that means progress, I hope and trust that that kind of rate of progress will be sustained. And if I can come back within a few years, I will even see greater signs of prosperity and the advances of Tunisia than I have seen since these last 16 years.

Thank you very much for the great welcome that you and your people have given to my party and me. I assure you that we translate it into terms of friendship that your people feel to the American people--as I assure you that they feel friendship for your people.

Thank you again.