United States, 1997

Five years ago, when I first

addressed this Assembly, the cold war had only just

ended and the transition to a new era was beginning.

Now, together, we are making that historic transition.

Behind us, we leave a century full of humanity's capacity

for the worst and its genius for the best. Before us, at the

dawn of a new millennium, we can envision a new era

that escapes the twentieth century's darkest moments,

fulfils its most brilliant possibilities and crosses frontiers

yet unimagined.

We are off to a promising start. For the first time in

history, more than half the people represented in this

Assembly freely choose their own Governments. Free

markets are growing, spreading individual opportunity and

national well-being. Early in the twenty-first century,

more than 20 of this Assembly's members - home to

half the earth's population - will lift themselves from

the ranks of low-income nations.

Powerful forces are bringing us closer together,

profoundly changing the way we work, live and relate to

each other. Every day, millions of our citizens on every

continent use laptops and satellites to send information,

products and money across the planet in seconds. Bit by

bit, the information age is chipping away at barriers -

economic, political and social - that once kept people

locked in and ideas locked out. Science is unravelling

mysteries in the tiniest of human genes and in the vast

cosmos. Never in the course of human history have we

had a greater opportunity to make our people healthier

and wiser, to protect our planet from decay and abuse and

to reap the benefits of free markets without abandoning

the social contract and its concern for the common good.

Yet today's possibilities are not tomorrow's

guarantees. We have work to do.

7

The forces of global integration are a great tide,

inexorably wearing away the established order of things.

But we must decide what will be left in its wake. People

fear change when they feel its burdens but not its benefits.

They are susceptible to misguided protectionism and to the

poisoned appeals of extreme nationalism, and ethnic, racial

and religious hatreds. New global environmental challenges

require us to find ways to work together without damaging

legitimate aspirations for progress. We are all vulnerable to

the reckless acts of rogue States and to an unholy axis of

terrorists, drug traffickers and international criminals.

These twenty-first-century predators feed on the free

flow of information, ideas and people we cherish. They

abuse the vast power of technology to build black markets

for weapons, to compromise law enforcement with huge

bribes of illicit cash and to launder money with the

keystroke of a computer. These forces are our enemies. We

must face them together because no one can defeat them

alone.

To seize the opportunities and move against the threats

of this new global era, we need a new strategy of security.

Over the past five years, nations have begun to put that

strategy in place through a new network of institutions and

arrangements, with distinct missions, but a common

purpose: to secure and strengthen the gains of democracy

and free markets while turning back their enemies.

We see this strategy taking shape on every continent:

in expanded military alliances, such as the North Atlantic

Treaty Organization (NATO), its Partnership for Peace and

its partnerships with a democratic Russia and a democratic

Ukraine; in free trade arrangements, such as the World

Trade Organization and the global Information Technology

Agreement, and in the movement towards free-trade areas

by nations in the Americas, the Asia-Pacific region and

elsewhere around the world; in strong arms-control regimes,

such as the Chemical Weapons Convention and the Treaty

on the Non-Proliferation of Nuclear Weapons; in

multinational coalitions with zero tolerance for terrorism,

corruption, crime and drug trafficking; and in binding

international commitments to protect the environment and

safeguard human rights.

Through this web of institutions and arrangements,

nations are setting the international ground rules for the

twenty-first century, laying a foundation for security and

prosperity for those who live within them, while isolating

those who challenge them from the outside. This system

will develop and endure only if those who follow the rules

of peace and freedom fully reap their rewards. Only then

will our people believe that they have a stake in

supporting and shaping the emerging international system.

The United Nations must play a leading role in this

effort, filling in the fault lines of the new global era. The

core missions it has pursued during its first half century

will be just as relevant during the next half century: the

pursuit of peace and security, promoting human rights and

moving people from poverty to dignity and prosperity

through sustainable development.

Conceived in the cauldron of war, the United

Nations first task must remain the pursuit of peace and

security. For 50 years the United Nations has helped

prevent world war and nuclear holocaust. Unfortunately,

conflicts between nations, and within nations, have

endured. From 1945 until today, they have cost 20 million

lives. Just since the end of the cold war, each year there

have been more than 30 armed conflicts in which more

than 1,000 people have lost their lives - including, of

course, a quarter of a million killed in the former

Yugoslavia and more than half a million in Rwanda.

Millions of personal tragedies the world over are a

warning that we dare not be complacent or indifferent;

trouble in a far corner can become a plague on everyone's

house. People the world over cheer the hopeful

developments in Northern Ireland, grieve over the loss of

innocent lives and the stalling of the peace process in the

Middle East and long for a resolution of the differences

on the Korean peninsula, between Greece and Turkey or

between the great nations of India and Pakistan as they

celebrate the fiftieth anniversary of their birth.

The United Nations continues to keep many nations

away from bloodshed: in El Salvador and Mozambique;

in Haiti and Namibia; in Cyprus; and in Bosnia, where so

much remains to be done but can still be done because

the bloodshed has ended.

The United Nations record of service has left a

legacy of sacrifice. Just last week we lost some of our

finest sons and daughters in the crash of a United Nations

helicopter in Bosnia. Five were American, five German,

one Polish and one British - all citizens of the world we

are trying to make, each a selfless servant of peace. The

world is poorer for their passing.

At this very moment, the United Nations is keeping

the peace in 16 countries, often in partnership with

regional organizations such as NATO, the Organization of

American States, the Association of South-East Asian

8

Nations and the Economic Community of West African

States, avoiding wider conflicts and even greater suffering.

Our shared commitment to more realistic peacekeeping

training for United Nations troops, a stronger role for

civilian police and better integration between military and

civilian agencies - all these will help the United Nations

fulfil these missions in the years ahead.

At the same time, we must improve the United

Nations capabilities after a conflict ends to help peace

become self-sustaining. The United Nations cannot build

nations, but it can help nations build themselves by

fostering legitimate institutions of government, monitoring

elections and laying a strong foundation for economic

reconstruction.

This week the Security Council will hold an

unprecedented ministerial meeting on African security,

which our Secretary of State is proud to chair, and which

President Mugabe, Chairman of the Organization of African

Unity, will address. It will highlight the role the United

Nations can and should play in preventing conflict on a

continent where amazing progress towards democracy and

development is occurring alongside still too much discord,

disease and distress.

In the twenty-first century our security will be

challenged increasingly by interconnected groups that traffic

in terror, organized crime and drug smuggling. Already,

these international crime and drug syndicates drain up to

$750 billion a year from legitimate economies. That sum

that exceeds the combined gross national product of more

than half the nations in this Hall. These groups threaten to

undermine confidence in the fragile new democracies and

market economies that so many of you are working so hard

to see endure.

Two years ago I called upon all the members of this

Assembly to join in the fight against these forces. I applaud

the recent United Nations resolution calling on its Members

to join the major international anti-terrorism conventions,

making clear the emerging international consensus that

terrorism is always a crime and never a justifiable political

act. As more countries sign on, terrorists will have fewer

places to run or hide. I also applaud the steps that Members

are taking to implement the Declaration on Crime and

Public Security that the United States proposed two years

ago, calling for increased cooperation to strengthen every

citizen's right to basic safety, through cooperation on

extradition and asset forfeiture, shutting down grey markets

for guns and false documents, attacking corruption and

bringing higher standards to law enforcement in new

democracies.

The spread of these global criminal syndicates also

has made all the more urgent our common quest to

eliminate weapons of mass destruction. We cannot allow

them to fall into or remain in the wrong hands. Here too,

the United Nations must lead, and it has led - from the

United Nations Special Commission in Iraq to the

International Atomic Energy Agency, now the most

expansive global inspection system ever devised to police

arms-control agreements.

When we met here last year, I was honoured to be

the first of 146 leaders to sign the Comprehensive

Nuclear-Test-Ban Treaty (CTBT), our commitment to end

all nuclear tests for all time, the longest-sought, hardest-

fought prize in the history of arms control. It will help

prevent the nuclear Powers from developing more

advanced and more dangerous weapons. It will limit the

possibilities for other States to acquire such devices. I am

pleased to announce that today I am sending this crucial

Treaty to the United States Senate for ratification. Our

common goal should be for the CTBT to enter into force

as soon as possible. I ask for of you to support that goal.

The United Nations second core mission must be to

defend and extend universal human rights and to help

democracy's remarkable gains endure. Fifty years ago the

United Nations Universal Declaration of Human Rights

stated the international community's conviction that

people everywhere have the right to be treated with

dignity, to give voice to their opinions and to choose their

leaders; that these rights are universal - not American

rights, not Western rights, not rights for the developed

world only, but rights inherent in the humanity of people

everywhere.

Over the past decades these rights have become a

reality for more people than ever, from Asia to Africa,

from Europe to the Americas. In a world that links rich

and poor, North and South, city and countryside in an

electronic network of shared images in real time, the

more these universal rights take hold, the more people

who do not enjoy them will demand them. Armed with

photocopiers and fax machines, e-mail and the Internet;

supported by an increasingly important community of

non-governmental organizations, they will make their

demands known, spreading the spirit of freedom -

which, as the history of the last 10 years has shown us,

ultimately will prevail.

9

The United Nations must be prepared to respond -

not only by setting standards but by implementing them. To

deter abuses, we should strengthen the United Nations field

operations and early-warning systems. To strengthen

democratic institutions - the best guarantors of human

rights - we must pursue programmes to help new legal,

parliamentary and electoral institutions get off the ground.

To punish those responsible for crimes against humanity,

and to promote justice so that peace endures, we must

maintain our strong support for the United Nations war-

crime tribunals and truth commissions. And before the

century ends, we should establish a permanent international

court to prosecute the most serious violations of

humanitarian law.

The United States welcomes the Secretary General's

efforts to strengthen the role of human rights within the

United Nations system and his splendid choice of Mary

Robinson as the new High Commissioner for Human

Rights. We will work hard to make sure that she has the

support she needs to carry out her mandate.

Finally, the United Nations has a special responsibility

to make sure that as the global economy creates greater

wealth, it does not produce growing disparities between the

haves and have-nots or threaten the global environment, our

common home. Progress is not yet everyone's partner.

More than half the world's people are two days' walk from

a telephone, literally disconnected from the global economy.

Tens of millions lack the education, the training and the

skills they need to make the most of their God-given

abilities.

The men and women of the United Nations have

expertise across the entire range of humanitarian and

development activities. Every day they are making a

difference. We see it in nourished bodies of once-starving

children, in the full lives of those immunized against

disease, in the bright eyes of children exposed to education

through the rich storehouse of human knowledge, in

refugees cared for and returned to their homes and in the

health of rivers and lakes restored.

The United Nations must focus even more on shifting

resources from handouts to "hand ups", on giving people

the tools they need to make the most of their own destinies.

Spreading ideas and education and technology - the true

wealth of nations - is the best way to give the people the

chance to succeed.

The United Nations must continue to lead in ensuring

that today's progress does not come at tomorrow's expense.

When the nations of the world gather again next

December in Kyoto for the Conference of the Parties to

the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate

Change, all of us - developed and developing nations -

must seize the opportunity to turn back the clock on

greenhouse-gas emissions so that we can leave a healthy

planet to our children.

In these efforts, the United Nations no longer can,

and no longer need, go it alone. Innovative partnerships

with the private sector, non-governmental organizations

and the international financial institutions can leverage its

effectiveness many times over. Last week a truly

visionary American, Ted Turner, made a remarkable

donation to strengthen the United Nations development

and humanitarian programmes. His gesture highlights the

potential for partnership between the United Nations and

the private sector, in contributions of time, resources and

expertise. I hope more will follow his lead.

In this area and others, the Secretary-General is

aggressively pursuing the most far-reaching reform of the

United Nations in its history - not to make the United

Nations smaller as an end in itself, but to make it better.

The United States strongly supports his leadership. We

should pass the Secretary-General's reform agenda at this

session.

On every previous occasion I have addressed this

Assembly, the issue of our country's dues has brought the

commitment of the United States to the United Nations

into question. The United States was a founder of the

United Nations. We are proud to be its host. We believe

in its ideals. We continue to be, as we have been, its

largest contributor. We are committed to seeing the

United Nations succeed in the twenty-first century.

This year, for the first time since I have been

President, we have an opportunity to put the question of

debts and dues behind us once and for all and to put the

United Nations on a sounder financial footing for the

future. I have made it a priority to work with our

Congress on comprehensive legislation that would allow

us to pay off the bulk of our arrears and assure full

financing of America's assessment in the years ahead.

Our Congress's actions to solve this problem reflect a

strong bipartisan commitment to the United Nations and

to America's role within it. At the same time, we look to

Member States to adopt a more equitable scale of

assessments. Let me say that we also strongly support

expanding the Security Council to give more countries a

voice in the most important work of the United Nations.

10

In more equitably sharing responsibility for its successes,

we can make the United Nations stronger and more

democratic than it is today. I ask the General Assembly to

act on these proposals this year so that we can move

forward together.

At the dawn of a new century so full of hope but not

free of peril, more than ever we need a United Nations

where people of reason can work through shared problems

and take action to combat them, where nations of goodwill

can join in the struggle for freedom and prosperity and

where we can shape a future of peace, progress and the

preservation of our planet. We have the knowledge; we

have the intelligence; we have the energy; we have the

resources for the work before us. We are building the

necessary networks of cooperation. The great question

remaining is whether we have the vision and the heart

necessary to imagine a future that is different from the

past - necessary to free ourselves from destructive patterns

of relations with each other and within our own nations and

to live a future that is different.

A new century in a new millennium is upon us. We

are literally present at the future, and it is the great gift we

are obligated to leave to our children.