Clinton to Speak at Anaheim Conference

President Clinton is expected to end his four-day tour of impoverished areas Thursday at an Anaheim conference where he will address a group of national business executives that sponsors career academies for at-risk youth.

After attending programs at two schools in Los Angeles’ Watts district earlier in the morning, Clinton is scheduled to give a 50-minute talk before the National Academy Foundation at the Anaheim Hilton and Towers Hotel.

In touring communities in six states with a delegation of business executives, members of Congress and some of his cabinet appointees, the president hopes to promote his New Markets Initiative legislation to help bring corporate investment to poorer areas.

Clinton will speak at a luncheon honoring 11 graduates of the foundation’s career-preparation programs in finance and travel and tourism.

The foundation operates nearly 300 academies at schools in 33 states and the District of Columbia. The academies have enrolled more than 20,000 students since 1984, said foundation spokeswoman Robin Willig.

Graduates, about three-quarters of whom are minority students, go on to two- and four-year colleges.

Clinton will return to Washington Thursday afternoon from Los Alamitos Naval Reserve Center.

The visit will be Clinton’s first to Orange County since a campaign stop in Santa Ana in 1996. He has visited Southern California several times since then, most recently in May when he raised $2 million for the Democratic Party at a fund-raiser in Beverly Hills.

Vice President Al Gore was last in Orange County in March 1998 on behalf of Rep. Loretta Sanchez of Garden Grove. Sanchez will accompany Clinton in his Anaheim visit.

Willig said that Clinton’s appearance before the National Academy Foundation was arranged by the group’s chairman, Sanford I. Weill, chief executive of Citigroup, the giant New York banking concern.