PRESIDENT BILL CLINTON ADDRESSES THE GENERAL ASSEMBLY OF THE UNITED NATIONS

• Document Type: CREST
• Collection: General CIA Records
• Document Number (FOIA) /ESDN (CREST): CIA-RDP99-01448R000402160001-5
• Release Decision: RIFPUB
• Original Classification: K
• Document Page Count: 19
• Document Creation Date: December 22, 2016
• Document Release Date: May 23, 2012
• Sequence Number: 1
• Publication Date: September 27, 1993
• Content Type: OPEN SOURCE

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PRESIDENT BILL CLINTON
ADDRESSES THE GENERAL ASSEMBLY OF THE UNITED NATIONS
THE UNITED NATIONS, NEW YORK
MONDAY, SEPTEMBER 27, 1993
TRANSCRIPT BY: FEDERAL NEWS SERVICE
620 NATIONAL PRESS BUILDING
WASHINGTON, DC 20045
FEDERAL NEWS SERVICE IS A PRIVATE FIRM AND IS NOT
AFFILIATED WITH THE FEDERAL GOVERNMENT.
COPYRIGHT 1993 BY FEDERAL INFORMATION SYSTEMS CORPORATION,
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PRESIDENT CLINTON: Thank you very much.
Mr. President, let me first congratulate you on your
election as president of this General Assembly.
Mr. Secretary General, distinguished delegates and guests,
it is a great honor for me to address you and to stand in this
great chamber which symbolizes so much of the 20th century: its
darkest crises and its brightest aspirations.
I come before you as the first American president born
after the founding of the United Nations. Like most of the
people in the world today, I was not even alive during the
convulsive world war that convinced humankind of the need for
this organization, nor during the San Francisco conference that
led to its birth. Yet I have followed the work of the United
Nations throughout my life with admiration for its
accomplishments, with sadness for its failures, and conviction
that through common efforts our generation can take the bold
steps needed to redeem the mission entrusted to the U.N. 48
years ago. I pledge to you that my nation remains committed to
helping make the U.N.'s vision a reality.
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The start of this general assembly offers us an opportunity
to take stock of where we are as common shareholders in the
progress of humankind and in the preservation of our planet. It
is clear that we live at a turning point in human history.
Immense and promising changes seem to wash over us every
day. The Cold War is over. The world is no longer divided into
two armed and angry camps. Dozens of new democracies have been
born.
It is a moment of miracles. We see Nelson Mandela stand
side by side with President de Klerk proclaiming a date for
South Africa's first non-racial election. We see Russia's first
popularly elected president, Boris Yeltsin, leading his nation
on its bold democratic journey. We have seen decades of deadlock
shattered in the Middle East as the prime minister of Israel and
the chairman of the Palestine Liberation Organization reached
past enmity and suspicion to shake each other's hands and
exhilarate the entire world with the hope of peace. We have
begun to see the doomsday weapon of nuclear annihilation
dismantled and destroyed.
Thirty-two years ago President Kennedy warned this chamber
that humanity lived under a nuclear sword of Damocles that hung
bx the slenderest of threads. Now the United States is working
with Russia, Ukraine, Belarus, and others to take that sword
down and lock it away in a secure vault where we hope and pray
it will remain forever.
It is a new era in this hall as well.
LLLEnglish
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The superpower stand-off that for so long stymied the United
Nations' work almost from its first day has now yielded to a new
promise of practical cooperation. Yet today, we must all admit
that there are two powerful tendencies working from opposite
directions to challenge the authority of nation states
everywhere and to undermine the authority of nation states to
work together.
From beyond nations, economic and technological forces all
over the globe-are compelling the world toward integration.
These forces are fueling a welcome explosion of entrepreneurship
and political liberalization, but they also threaten to destroy
the insularity and independence of national economies,
quickening the pace of change and making many of our people feel
more insecure. At the same time, from within nations, the
resurgent aspirations of ethnic and religious groups challenge
governments on terms that traditional nation states cannot
easily accommodate. These twin forces lie at the heart of the
challenges not onlx to our national government but also to all
our international institutions. They require all of us in this
room to find new ways to work together more effectively in
pursuit of our national interests and to speak anew about
whether our institutions of international cooperation are
adequate to this moment.
Thus, as we marvel at this era's promise of new peace, we
must also recognize that serious threats remain. Bloody ethnic,
religious and civil wars rage, from Angola to the Caucasus to
Kashmir. As weapons of mass destruction fall into more hands,
even small conflicts can threaten to take on murderous
proportions. Hunger and disease continue to take a tragic toll,
especially among the world's children. The malignant neglect of
our global environment threatens our children's health and their
very security. The repression of conscience continues in too
many nations, and terrorism, which has taken so many innocent
lives, assumes a horrifying immediacy for us here, when militant
fanatics bombed the World Trade Center and planned to attack
even this very hall of peace. Let me assure you, whether the
plotters of those crimes or the mass murderers who bombed Pan Am
Flight 103, my government is determined to see that such
terrorists are brought to justice. (Applause.)
At this moment of panoramic change, of vast opportunities
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and troubling threats, we must all ask ourselves what we can do
and what we should do as a community of nations. We must once
again dare to dream of what might be so our dreams may be within
our reach. For that to happen, we must all be willing to
honestly confront the challenges of the broader world. That has
never been easy. When this
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organization was founded 48 years ago, the world's nations stood
devastated by war or exhausted by its expense. There was little
appetite for cooperative efforts among nations. Most people
simply wanted to get on with their lives. But the far-sighted
generations of leaders from the United States and elsewhere
rallied t'he world. Their efforts built the institutions of
post-war security and prosperity.
We are at a similar moment today.
LLLEnglish
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x x x today.
The momentum of the Cold War no longer propels us in our daily
actions. And with dawning economic and political pressures upon
almost every nation represented in this room, many of us are
turning to focus greater attention and energy on our domestic
needs and problems, and we must. But putting each of our
economic houses in order cannot mean that we shut our windows to
the world. The pursuit of self-renewal in many of the world's
largest and most powerful economies -- in Europe, in Japan, in
North America -- is absolutely crucial because, unless the great
industrial nations can recapture their robust economic growth,
the global economy will languish.
Yet, the industrial nations also need growth elsewhere in
order to lift their own. Indeed, prosperity in each of our
nations and regions also depends upon active and responsible
engagement in a host of shared concerns. For example, a thriving
and democratic Russia not only makes the world safer; it also
can help to expand the world's economy. A strong GATT agreement
will create millions of jobs worldwide. Peace in the Middle
East, buttressed as it should be by the repeal of outdated U.N.
resolutions, can help to unleash that region's great economic
potential and calm a perpetual source of tension in global
affairs. And the growing economic power of China, coupled with
greater political openness, could bring enormous benefits to all
of Asia and to the rest of the world.
We must help our publics to understand this distinction:
Domestic renewal is an overdue tonic, but isolationism and
protectionism are still poison. We must inspire people to look
beyond their immediate fears toward a broader horizon. Let me
start by being clear about where the United States stands.
The United States occupies a unique position in world
affairs today. We recognize that, and we welcome it. Yet, with
the Cold War over, I know many people ask whether the United
States plans to retreat or remain active in the world and, if
active, to what end. Many people are asking that in our own
country as well. Let me answer that question as clearly and
plainly as I can. The United States intends to remain engaged
and to lead. We cannot solve every problem, but we must and will
serve as a fulcrum for change and a pivot point for peace. In a
new era of peril and opportunity, our overriding purpose must be
to expand and strengthen the world's community of market-based
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democracies. During the Cold War, we sought to contain a threat
to the survival of free institutions. Now we seek to enlarge the
circle of nations that live under those free institutions.
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So our dream is of a day when the opinions and energies of
every person in the world will be given full expression, in a
world of striving democracies that cooperate with each other and
live in peace. With this statement, I do not mean to announce
some crusade to force our wad of life and doing things on others
or to replicate our institutions. But we now know clearly that,
throughout the world, from Poland to Eritrea, from Guatemala to
South Korea, there is an enormous yearning among people who wish
to be the masters of their own economic and political lives.
Where it matters most and where we can make the greatest
difference, we will, therefore, patiently and firmly align
ourselves with that yearning.
Today there are -- (audio break) -- democracy is simply not
applicable to many cultures and that its recent expansion is an
aberration, an accident, in history that will soon fade away.
But I agree with President Roosevelt, who once said, "The
democratic aspiration is no mere recent phase of human history;
it is human history. "
LLLEnglish
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x x x history. "
We will work to strengthen the free-market democracies by
revitalizing our economy here at home, by opening world trade
through the GATT, the North American Free Trade Agreement and
other accords, and by updating our shared institutions, asking
with you and answering the hard questions about whether they are
adequate to the present challenges. We will support the
consolidation of market democracy where it is taking new root,
as in the states of the former Soviet Union and all over Latin
America. And we seek to foster the practices of good government
that distribute the benefits of democracy and economic growth
fairly to all people. We will work to reduce the threat from
regimes that are hostile to democracy and to support
liberalization of non-democratic states when they are willing to
live in peace with the rest of us.
As a country that has over 150 different racial, ethnic and
religious groups within our borders, our policy is and must be
rooted in a profound respect for all the world's religions and
cultures. But we must oppose everywhere extremism that produces
terrorism and hate. And we must pursue our humanitarian goals of
reducing suffering, fostering sustainable development, and
improving the health and living conditions, particularly for our
world's children.
On efforts from export controls to trade agreements to
peacekeeping, we will often work in partnership with others and
through multilateral institutions such as the United Nations. It
is in our national interest to do so. But we must not hesitate
to act unilaterally when there is a threat to our core interests
or to those of our allies.
The United States believes that an expanding community of
market democracies not only serves our own security interests,
it also advances the goals enshrined in this body's charter and
its universal declaration of human rights, for broadly-based
prosperity is clearly the strongest form of preventive
diplomacy, and the habits of democracy are the habits of peace.
Democracy is rooted in compromise not conquest. It rewards
tolerance not hatred. Democracies rarely wage war on one
another. They make more reliable partners in trade, in diplomacy
and in the stewardship of our global environment._And
democracies, with the rule of law and respect for political,
religious and cultural minorities are more responsive to their
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own people and to the protection of human rights.
But as we work toward this vision, we must confront the
storm clouds that may overwhelm our work and darken the march
toward
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freedom. If we do not stem the proliferation of the world's
deadliest weapons, no democracy can feel secure. If we do not
strengthen the capacity to resolve conflicts among and in
nations, those conflicts will smother the birth of free
institutions, threaten the development of entire regions and
continue to take innocent lives. If we do not nurture our people
and our planet through sustainable development, we will deepen
conflict and waste the very wonders that make our efforts worth
doing.
Let me talk more about what I believe we must do in each of
these three categories: non-proliferation, conflict resolution
and sustainable development.
One of our most urgent priorities must be attacking the
proliferation of weapons of mass destruction, whether they are
nuclear, chemical or biological, and the ballistic missiles that
can rain them down on populations hundreds of miles away. We
know this is not an idle problem.
LLLEnglish
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x x x problem.
All of us are still haunted by the pictures of Kurdish women and
children cut down by poison gas. We saw Scud missiles dropped
during the Gulf war that would have been far graver in their
consequences if they had carried nuclear weapons. And we know
that many nations still believe it is in their interests to
develop weapons of mass destruction or to sell them or the
necessary technologies to others for financial gain. More than a
score of nations likely possess such weapons, and their number
threatens to grow.
These weapons destabilize entire regions. They could turn a
local conflict into a global human and environmental
catastrophe. We simply have got to find ways to control these
weapons and to reduce the number of states that possess them by
supporting and strengthening the IAEA and by taking other
necessary measures.
I have made non-proliferation one of our nation's highest
priorities. We intend to weave it more deeply into the fabric of
all of our relationships with the world's nations and
institutions. We seek to build a world of increasing pressure
for non-proliferation, but increasingly open trade and
technology for those states that live by accepted international
rules. Today, let me describe several new policies that our
government will pursue to stem proliferation.
We will pursue new steps to control the materials for
nuclear weapons. Growing global stockpiles of plutonium and
highly enriched uranium are raising the danger of nuclear
terrorism for all nations. We will press for an international
agreement that would ban production of these materials for
weapons forever.
As we reduce our nuclear stockpiles, the United States has
also begun negotiations toward a comprehensive ban on nuclear
testing. This summer I declared that to facilitate these
negotiations our nation would suspend our testing if all other
nuclear states would do the same. Today in the face of
disturbing signs, I renew my call on the nuclear states to abide
by that moratorium as we negotiate to stop nuclear testing for
all time.
I am also proposing new efforts to fight the proliferation
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of biological and chemical weapons. Today only a handful of
nations has ratified the chemical weapons convention. I call on
all nations, including my own, to ratify this accord quickly so
that it may enter into force by January 13th, 1995.
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We will also seek to strength the Biological Weapons
Convention by making every nation's biological activities and
facilities open to more international scrutiny. I am ~ro~osing
as well new steps to thwart the proliferation of ballistic
missiles. Recently, working with Russia, Argentina, Hungary and
South Africa, we have made significant progress toward that
goal. Now we will seek to strength the principles of the Missile
Technology Control Regime by transforming it from an agreement
on technology transfer among just 23 nations to a set of rules
that can command universal adherence.
We will also reform our own system of export controls in
the United States to reflect the realities of the post-Cold War
world. Where we seek to enlist the support of our former
adversaries in the battle against proliferation at the same time
that we stop deadly technologies from falling into the wrong
hands, we will work with our partners to remove outdated
controls that unfairly burden legitimate commerce and unduly
restrain growth and opportunity all over the world.
As we work to keep the world's most destructive weapons out
of conflicts, we must also strength the international
community's ability to address those conflicts themselves. For,
as we all now know so painfully, the end of the Cold War did not
bring us to the millennium of peace. Indeed, it simply removed
the lid from many cauldrons of ethnic, religious and territorial
animosity. -
The philosopher Isaiah Berlin has said that a wounded
nationalism is like a bent twig, forced down so severely that,
when released, it lashes back with fury. The world today is
thick with both bent and recoiling twigs of wounded communal
identities. This surge of bitter conflicts has placed high
demands on the United Nations' peacekeeping forces. Frequently,
the blue helmets have worked wonders. In Namibia, E1 Salvador,
the Golan Heights and elsewhere, U.N. peacekeepers have helped
to stop fighting, restore civil authority and enable free
elections.
In Bosnia, U.N. peacekeepers, against the danger and
frustration of that continuing tragedy, have maintained a
valiant humanitarian effort. And if the parties of that conflict
take the hard steps needed to make a real peace, the
~~
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international community, including the United States, must be
ready to help in its effective implementation.
In Somalia, the United States and the United Nations have
worked together to achieve a stunning humanitarian rescue,
saving literally
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hundreds of thousands of lives and restoring the conditions of
security to almost the entire country.
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x x x country.
U.N. peacekeepers from over two dozen nations remain in Somalia
today, and some, including brave Americans, have lost their
lives to ensure that we complete our mission and to ensure that
anarchy and starvation do not return just as quickly as they
were abolished. Many still criticize U.N. peacekeeping, but
those who do should talk to the people of Cambodia where the
U.N.'s operations have helped to turn the killing fields into
fertile soil for reconciliation. Last May's elections in
Cambodia marked a proud accomplishment for that war-weary nation
and for the United Nations, and I am pleased to announce that
the United States has recognized Cambodia's new government.
U.N. peacekeeping holds the promise to resolve many of this
era's conflicts. The reason we have supported such missions is
not, as some critics in the United States have charged, to
subcontract American foreign policy, but to strengthen our
security, protect our interests, and to share among nations the
cost and effort of pursuing peace. Peacekeeping cannot be a
substitute for our own national defense efforts, but it can
strongly supplement them.
Today there is wide recognition that the U.N. peacekeeping
ability has not kept pace with the rising responsibilities and
challenges. Just six years ago, about 10,000 U.N. peacekeepers
were stationed around the world. Today the U.N. has some 80,000
deployed in 17 operations on 4 continents. Yet, until recently,
if a peacekeeping commander called in from across the globe when
it was nighttime here in New York, there was no one in the
peacekeeping office even to answer the call. When lives are on
the line, we cannot let the reach of the U.N. exceed its grasp.
As the secretary-general and others have argued, if U.N.
peacekeeping is to be a sound, security investment for our
nation and for other U.N. members, it must adapt to new times.
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x x x times.
Together we must prepare U.N. peacekeeping for the 21st century.
We need to begin by bringing the rigors of military and
political analysis to every U.N. peace mission.
In recent weeks, in the Security Council, our nation has
begun asking harder questions about proposals for new
peacekeeping missions. Is there a real threat to international
peace? Does the proposed mission have clear objectives? Can an
end point be identified for those who will be asked to
participate? How much will the mission cost? From now on, the
United Nations should address these and other hard questions for
every proposed mission before we vote and before the mission
begins.
The United Nations simply cannot become engaged in every
one of the world's conflicts. If the American people are to say
yes to U.N. peacekeeping, the United Nations must know when to
say no. The United Nations must also have the technical means to
run a modern world class peacekeeping operation. We support the
creation of a genuine U.N. peacekeeping headquarters with a
planning staff, with access to timely intelligence, with a
logistics unit that can be deployed on a moment's notice, and a
modern operations center with global communications.
And the U.N.'s operations must not only be adequately
funded but also fairly funded. Within the next few weeks,, the
United States will be current in our peacekeeping bill. I have
worked hard with the Congress to get this done. I believe the
United States should lead the wax in being timely in its
payments and I will work to continue to see that we pay our
bills in full. But I am also committed to work with the United
Nations to reduce our nation's assessment for these missions.
The assessment system has not been changed since 1973, and
everyone in our country knows that our percentage of the world's
economic pie is not as great as it was then. Therefore, I
believe our rate should be reduce to reflect the rise of other
nations that can now bear more of the financial burden. That
will make it easier for me as president to make sure we pay in a
timely and full fashion.
Changes in the U.N.'s peacekeeping operations must be part
of an even broader program of United Nations reform. I say that,
again, not to criticize the United Nations but to help to
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improve it. As our Ambassador, Madeleine Albright, has
suggested, the United States has alwaxs played a twin role to
the U.N., first friend and first critic.
Today, corporations all around the world are finding ways
to move from the industrial age to the information age,
improving service,
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reducing bureaucracy, and cutting costs. Here in the United
States, our Vice President Al Gore and I have launched an effort
to literally reinvent how our government operates. We see this
going on in other governments around the world. Now the time has
come to reinvent the way the United Nations operates as well.
I applaud the initial steps the secretary-general has taken
to reduce and to reform the United Nations bureaucracy. Now we
must all do even more to root out waste. Before this General
Assembly is over, let us establish a strong mandate for an
office of inspector general so that it can attain a reputation
for toughness, for integrity, for effectiveness.
LLLEnglish
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Let us build new confidence among our people that the United
Nations is changing with the needs of our times.
Ultimately, the key for reforming the United Nations, as in
reforming our own government, is to remember why we are here and
whom we serve. It is well to recall that the first words of the
U.N. Charter are not " We, the governments, " but " We, the
peoples of the United Nations." That means in every country the
teachers, the workers, the farmers, the professionals, the
fathers, the mothers, the children from the most remote village
in the world to the largest metropolis, they are why we gather
in this great hall. It is their futures that are at risk when we
act or fail to act. And it is they who ultimately pay our bills.
As we dream new dreams in this age when miracles now seem
possible, let us focus on the lives of those people, and
especially on the children who will inherit this world. Let us
work with a new urgency and imagine what kind of world we could
create for them over the coming generation. Let us work with new
energy to protect the world's people from torture and
repression. As Secretary of State Christopher stressed at the
recent Vienna conference, human rights are not something
conditional, bounded by culture, but rather something universal
granted by God. This general assembly should create at long last
a high commissioner for human rights. I hope you will do it soon
and with vigor and energy and conviction. (Applause.)
Let us also work far more ambitiously to fulfill our
obligations as custodians of this planet not only to improve the
quality of life for our citizens and the quality of our air and
water and the earth itself, but also because the roots of
conflict are so often entangled with the roots of environmental
neglect and the calamities of famine and disease.
During the course of our campaign in the United States last
year Vice President Gore and I promised the American people
major changes in our nation's policy toward the global
environment. Those were promises to keep, and today the United
States is doing so.
Today we are working with other nations to build on the
promising work of the U.N.'s Commission of Sustainable
Development. We are working to make sure that all nations meet
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their commitments under the Global Climate convention. We are
seeking to complete negotiations on an accord to prevent the
world's deserts from further expansion. And we seek to
strengthen the World ~Iealth Organization's efforts to
CLINTON ADDRESSES UN PAGE 17 09/27/93
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combat the plague of AIDS, which is not killing millions, but
also exhausting the resources of nations that can least afford
it. And let us make a new commitment to the world's children.
It is tragic enough that one and a half million children
died as a result of wars over the past decade. But it is far
more unforgivable that during that same period, 4o million
children died from diseases completely preventable with simple
vaccines or medicines. Every day -- this day, as we meet here --
over 30,000 of the world's children will die of malnutrition and
disease.
LLLEnglish
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"BC-CLINTON-ADDRESSES-UN 9THADD@
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x x x disease.
Our UNICEF director, Jim Grant, has reminded me that each of
those children had a name and a nationality, a family, a
personality, and a potential. We are compelled to do better by
the world s children. Just as our own nation has launched new
reforms to ensure that every child has adequate health care, we
must do more to get basic vaccines and other treatments for
curable diseases to children all over the world. It's the best
investment we'll ever make. We can find new ways to ensure that
every child grows up with clean, drinkable water, that most
precious commodity of life itself. And the U.N. can work even
harder to ensure that each child has at least a full primary
education, and I mean that opportunity for girls as well as
boys.
And to ensure a healthier and more abundant world, we
simply must slow the world's explosive growth in population. We
cannot afford to see the human race double by the middle of the
next century. Our nation has at last renewed its commitment to
work with the United Nations to expand the availability of the
world's family planning education and services. We must ensure
that there is a place at the table for every one of our world's
children. And we can do it.
At the birth of this organization 48 years ago, another
time of both victory and danger, a generation of gifted leaders
from many nations stepped forward to_organize the world's
efforts on behalf of security and prosperity. One American
leader during that period said this: " It is time we steered by
the stars rather than by the light of each passing ship. " His
generation picked peace, human dignity and freedom. Those are
good stars. They should remain the highest in our own
firmament.
Now history has granted to us a moment of even greater
opportunity. When old dancers are ebbing and old walls are
crumbling, future generations will judge us, every one of us,
above all by what we make of this magic moment. Let us resolve
that we will dream larger, that we will work harder, so that
they can conclude that we did not merely turn walls to rubble,
but instead laid the foundations for great things to come. Let
us ensure that the tide of freedom and democracy is not pushed
back by the fierce winds of ethnic hatreds. Let us ensure that
the world's most dangerous weapons are safely reduced and denied
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to dangerous hands. Let us ensure that the world we pass to our
children is healthier, safer, and more abundant than the one we
inhabit today.
I believe, I know that together we can extend this moment
of miracles into an age of great works and new wonders.
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Thank you very much. (Applause.)
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