United States, 1993

Let me first congratulate you,

Sir, on your election as President of the General Assembly

for this session.

Mr. Secretary-General, distinguished representatives and

guests, it is a great honour for me to address you and to

stand in this great Hall, which symbolizes so much of the

twentieth 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, sadness for its failures

and the conviction that, through common effort, our

generation can take the bold steps needed to redeem the

mission entrusted to the United Nations 48 years ago. I

pledge to you that my nation remains committed to helping

make the United Nations vision a reality.

The start of this session of the General Assembly offers

us an opportunity to take stock of where we are as common

shareholders in the progress of humankind and 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 elections.

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 hand and

exhilarate the entire world with the hope of peace.

We have begun to see the doomsday weapons of

nuclear annihilation dismantled and destroyed. Thirty-two

years ago President Kennedy warned this Assembly that

humanity lived under a nuclear sword of Damocles that hung

by the slenderest of threads. Now the United States is

working with Russia, Ukraine, Belarus and others to take

that sword down, to lock it away in a secure vault, where we

hope and pray it will remain for ever.

It is a new era in this Hall as well. The super-Power

standoff that for so long stymied the work of the United

Nations, 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 towards integration.

These forces are fuelling 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 only to our

national Governments, but also to all our international

institutions. They require all of us in this Hall to find new

ways to work together more effectively in pursuit of our

national interests and to think 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, assumed 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 the Assembly that whether they be 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.

At this moment of panoramic change, of vast

opportunities and troubling threats, we must all ask ourselves

what we can and what we should do as a community of

nations. We must once again dare to dream of what might

be, for our dreams may be within our reach.

For that to happen, we must all be willing honestly to

confront the challenges of the broader world. That has never

been easy. When this 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 a far-sighted

generation of leaders from the United States and elsewhere

rallied the world. Their efforts built the institutions of post-

-war security and prosperity.

We are at a similar moment today. The momentum of

the cold war no longer propels us in our daily actions. And

with daunting economic and political pressures upon almost

every nation represented in this room, many of us are

turning to focus greater attention and energy on 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 on 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 (General

Agreement on Tariffs and Trade) agreement will create

millions of jobs world wide; peace in the Middle East,

buttressed as it should be by the repeal of outdated United

Nations 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 our peoples

to look beyond their immediate fears towards 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 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.

For 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 thriving democracies that cooperate

with each other and live in peace.

With this statement, I do not mean to announce some

crusade to force our way 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.

Forty-eighth session - 27 September l993 9

Today, there are still those who claim that 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."

We will work to strengthen the free market democracies

by revitalizing our economy at home, by opening world

trade through 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 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 health and living conditions, particularly for our

world’s children.

On efforts from export controls to trade agreements to

peace-keeping, 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 own people

and to the protection of human rights.

But as we work towards this vision, we must confront

the storm clouds that may overwhelm our work and darken

the march towards 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 within 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

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. All of us are still

haunted by the pictures of Kurdish women and children cut

down by poison gas. We saw SCUD missiles drop 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 International Atomic

Energy Agency and by taking other necessary measures.

10 General Assembly - Forty-eighth session

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 for ever.

As we reduce our nuclear stockpiles, the United States

has also begun negotiations towards a comprehensive ban on

nuclear testing. This summer I declared that to facilitate

those 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 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

13 January 1995. We will also seek to strengthen the

biological weapons Convention by making every nation’s

biological activities and facilities open to more international

scrutiny.

I am proposing 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

strengthen the principles of the Missile Technology Control

Regime by transforming it from an agreement on technology

transfer among just 23 nations into 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 as 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 strengthen 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 peace-keeping

forces. Frequently, the Blue Helmets have worked wonders.

In Namibia, El Salvador, the Golan Heights and elsewhere,

United Nations peace-keepers have helped to stop the

fighting, restore civil authority and enable free elections. In

Bosnia, United Nations peace-keepers, against the danger

and frustration of that continuing tragedy, have maintained

a valiant humanitarian effort. And if the parties to that

conflict take the hard steps needed to make a real peace, the

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 hundreds of thousands of lives and

restoring conditions of security to almost the entire country.

United Nations peace-keepers 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 that anarchy and starvation do not return

just as quickly as they were abolished.

Many still criticize United Nations peace-keeping, but

those who do should talk to the people of Cambodia, where

the United Nations operations helped 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.

United Nations peace-keeping holds the promise to

resolve many of this era’s conflicts. But 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, to protect our interests, and to

Forty-eighth session - 27 September l993 11

share among nations the costs and effort of pursuing peace.

Peace-keeping cannot be a substitute for our own national

defence efforts, but it can strongly supplement them.

Today there is wide recognition that the United Nations

peace-keeping ability has not kept pace with its rising

responsibilities and challenges. Just six years ago, about

10,000 United Nations peace-keepers were stationed around

the world. Today the United Nations has some 80,000

deployed in 17 operations on four continents. Yet until

recently, if a peace-keeping commander called in from

across the globe when it was night-time here in New York,

there was no one in the peace-keeping office even to answer

the call. When lives are on the line, we cannot let the reach

of the United Nations exceed its grasp.

As the Secretary-General and others have argued, if

United Nations peace-keeping is to be a sound security

investment for our nation and for other United Nations

Members, it must adapt to new times. Together, we must

prepare United Nations peace-keeping for the twenty-first

century. We need to begin by bringing the rigours of

military and political analysis to every United Nations peace

mission. In recent weeks in the Security Council, our nation

has begun asking harder questions about proposals for new

peace-keeping 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 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 United

Nations peace-keeping, the United Nations must know when

to say "No".

The United Nations also must have the technical means

to run a modern, world-class peace-keeping operation. We

support the creation of a genuine United Nations peace-

keeping headquarters with a planning staff; with access to

timely intelligence; with a logistics unit that can be deployed

on a moment’s notice; and with a modern operations centre

with global communications.

United Nations operations must not only be adequately

funded but also fairly funded. Within the next few weeks,

the United States will be current on our peace-keeping bills.

I have worked hard with the Congress to get this done. I

believe the United States should lead the way in being

timely in its payments, and I will work to ensure that we

continue to pay our peace-keeping bills in full. But I am

also committed to working 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 reduced 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

my country pays in a timely and full fashion.

Changes in the United Nations peace-keeping operations

must be part of an even broader programme of United

Nations reform. I say that, again, not to criticize the United

Nations but to help improve it. As our Ambassador,

Madeleine Albright, has suggested, the United States has

always played a twin role in regard to the United Nations:

"First friend and first critic."

Today, corporations around the world are finding ways

to move from the industrial age into the information age -

improving service, reducing bureaucracy and cutting costs.

Here in the United States, Vice President Al Gore and I have

launched an effort literally to 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 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. 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 for 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 United Nations 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

seem possible, let us focus on the lives of those people, and

especially on the children who will inherit this world. Let

12 General Assembly - Forty-eighth session

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 it will do this soon, and with

vigour and energy and conviction.

Let us also work far more ambitiously to fulfil our

obligations as custodians of this planet, not only to improve

the quality of life for our citizens and the quality of our air,

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 towards 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

United Nations Commission on Sustainable Development.

We are working to make sure that all nations meet their

commitments under the global climate Convention. We are

seeking to complete negotiations on an accord to prevent the

world’s deserts from further expanding. And we seek to

strengthen the World Health Organization’s efforts to combat

the plague of AIDS, which is not only killing millions, but

also exhausting the resources of the 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 have died as a result of wars over the past decade.

But it is far more unforgivable that during that same period

40 million children have 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. As the

Director of the United Nations Children’s Fund (UNICEF),

Jim Grant, has reminded me, "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

United Nations 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.

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 the world’s children. We can

do this.

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 firmament.

Now history has granted to us a moment of even

greater opportunity, when old dangers 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 hatred. Let

us ensure that the world’s most dangerous weapons are

safely reduced and denied 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.