Well, as you know, we are not introducing new weapons into the Middle East. F-15's are already being delivered into the Middle East. Also, I have ple… - Jimmy Carter

But we do have something we never had before: we have the added pressure of time. We can no longer wait around for the ideal opportunity. If we have not achieved our early dreams, we must either find new ones or see what we can salvage from the old. If we have accomplished what we set out to do in our youth, then we need not weep like Alexander the Great that we have no more worlds to conquer. There is clearly much left to be done, and whatever else we are going to do, we had better get on with it.

Yes, not with the PLO; we have no contact with the PLO. But with Jordan and with Syria, with Lebanon and, in a supportive role, with the Saudi Arabians and others, we have played, I think, an adequate role. At the time we discovered that President Sadat was going to make a proposal to go to Jerusalem, we immediately began to use whatever influence we had available to us to encourage the other nations not to condemn President Sadat. This particularly applied to Saudi Arabia, to Jordan, to the European countries, to the Soviet Union, and to Syria. In some instances, either they decided not to condemn him or our influence was successful. We would like very much to keep any of the nations involved in the immediate Middle Eastern discussions from rejecting an ultimate peace settlement and withdrawing from the prospect of going to Geneva. This includes, of course, Prime Minister Begin and President Sadat. They have not rejected the concept that there must be a comprehensive settlement. In the meantime, we don't see anything wrong; in fact, we look with great favor on the bilateral negotiations between Israel and Egypt. In the meantime, we are trying to induce the Syrians, the Lebanese, the Jordanians, and, as I say again, in a supporting role, the Saudis and others, to support both the ongoing negotiations that will continue from Jerusalem into Cairo and also to avoid any condemnation of Sadat that might disrupt his influence and put an obstacle to peace in the future. That's about all we can do. We have no control over any nation in the Middle East. When we find the progress in the Middle East being stopped, we use all the initiative that we can. When we see progress being made by the parties themselves, we support them to move on their own. I think it's much more important to have direct negotiations between Egypt and Israel than to have us acting as a constant, dominant intermediary. I think this is a major step in the right direction. We hope later that Jordan and Syria and Lebanon will join in these discussions, either individually or as a comprehensive group, dealing with Israel directly.

During our recent Human Rights Defenders Forum at The Carter Center, it was reported that between two hundred and three hundred children are sold in Atlanta alone each month! Our city is considered to be one of the preeminent human trafficking centers in the United States, perhaps because we have the busiest airport in the world and because, until recently, the penalty for someone convicted of selling another human being was only a $50 fine. A much heavier penalty of up to twenty years’ imprisonment can be imposed by the federal government, but only if there is proof that the trafficking took place across state lines. An analysis by Atlanta social workers found that 42 percent of the sexual exchanges they investigated were in brothels and hotel rooms in the most affluent areas of the city, while only 9 percent were in the poorer neighborhoods in the vicinity of the airport. Like Kara, they too conclude that the primary culprits are the men who buy sexual favors and the male pimps and brothel owners who control the women and garner most of the financial gains.