[Congressional Record Volume 141, Number 193 (Wednesday, December 6, 1995)]
[Senate]
[Pages S18088-S18090]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




  PRESIDENT CLINTON'S VISIT TO ENGLAND, NORTHERN IRELAND, AND IRELAND

  Mr. KENNEDY. Mr. President, last week, President Clinton became the 
first United States President to visit Northern Ireland. The 
extraordinarily enthusiastic welcome he received from the people was an 
impressive demonstration of their desire for peace and their gratitude 
for President Clinton's and America's commitment to that great goal.
  Large crowds of both Protestants and Catholics welcomed the President 
on the Peace Line in Belfast and again at the City Hall for the 
lighting of the Christmas tree. In addition, the President was also 
cheered by a large crowd in Dublin when he spoke at College Green 
during his visit the next day to Ireland.
  Just before the President left for his trip, the Irish Prime 
Minister, John Bruton and the British Prime Minister, John Major, 
announced the launching of the twin-track process of an international 
commission on arms, to be led by our former colleague Senator George 
Mitchell, and talks leading to all-party negotiations by the end of 
February. The two Prime Ministers credited President Clinton with 
helping to bring about this significant development. President 
Clinton's commitment to peace in Northern Ireland has had a profound 
and positive impact on the efforts of all sides to achieve a lasting 
peace.
  President Kennedy always remembered his 1963 trip to Ireland as among 
the happiest days of his presidency. I have no doubt that President 
Clinton will remember his trip with the same fondness.
  President Clinton spoke eloquently throughout his visit to England, 
Northern Ireland, and Ireland and I congratulate him on the remarkable 
success of his visit. I know several of my colleagues would like to 
join me in placing the President's statements in the Record. I 
therefore will begin with his first speech which was given to the 
British Parliament in London. I ask unanimous consent that it may be 
printed in the Record.
  There being no objection, the speech was ordered to be printed in the 
Record, as follows:

Remarks by the President to the Houses of Parliament, Royal Gallery of 
     the Palace of Westminster, London, England, November 29, 1995

       My Lord Chancellor, Madam Speaker, Lord Privy Seal, the 
     Lord President of the Council, Mr. Prime Minister, my lords 
     and members of the House of Commons: To the Lord Chancellor, 
     the longer I hear you talk the more I wish we had an 
     institution like this in American government. I look out and 
     see so many of your distinguished leaders in the House of 
     Lords, and I think it might not be a bad place to be after a 
     long and troublesome political career. (Laughter.) My wife 

[[Page S 18089]]
     and I are honored to be here today, and I thank you for inviting me to 
     address you.
       I have been here to Westminster many times before. As a 
     student, I visited often, and over the last 20 years I have 
     often returned. Always I have felt the power of this place, 
     where the voices of free people who love liberty, believe in 
     reason, and struggle for truth have for centuries kept your 
     great nation a beacon of hope for all the world, and a very 
     special model for your former colonies which became the 
     United States of America.
       Here, where the voices of Pitt and Burke, Disraeli and 
     Gladstone rang out; here where the rights of English men and 
     women were secured and enlarged; here where the British 
     people's determination to stand against the tyrannies of this 
     century were shouted to the entire world, here is a monument 
     to liberty to which every free person owes honor and 
     gratitude.
       As one whose ancestors came from these isles, I cherish 
     this opportunity. Since I entered public life I have often 
     thought of the words of Prime Minister Churchill when he 
     spoke to our Congress in 1941. He said that if his father had 
     been American and his mother British, instead of the other 
     way around, he might have gotten there on his own. 
     (Laughter.) Well, for a long time I thought that if my 
     forebears had not left this country perhaps I might have 
     gotten here on my own--at least to the House of Commons.
       But I have to tell you, now our American television carries 
     your Question Time. And I have seen Prime Minister Major and 
     Mr. Blair and the other members slicing each other up, face-
     to-face--(Laughter)--with such great wit and skill, against 
     the din of cheers and jeers. I am now convinced my forebears 
     did me a great favor by coming to America. (Laughter.)
       Today the United States and the United Kingdom glory in an 
     extraordinary relationship that unites us in a way never 
     before seen in the ties between two such great nations. It is 
     perhaps all the more remarkable because of our history.
       First, the war we waged for our independence; and then 
     barely three decades later, another war we waged in which 
     your able forces laid siege to our Capitol. Indeed, the White 
     House still bears the burn marks of that earlier stage in our 
     relationship. And now, whenever we have even the most minor 
     disagreement I walk out on the Truman Balcony and I look at 
     those burn marks, just to remind myself that I dare not let 
     this relationship get out of hand again. (Laughter.)
       In this century we overcame the legacy of our differences. 
     We discovered our common heritage again, and even more 
     important, we rediscovered our shared values. This November, 
     we are reminded of how exactly the bonds that now join us 
     grew--of the three great trials our nations have faced 
     together in this century.
       A few weeks ago we marked the anniversary of that day in 
     1918 when the guns fell silent in World War I, a war we 
     fought side by side to defend democracy against militarism 
     and reaction. On this Veterans Day for us and Remembrance Day 
     for you, we both paid special tribute to the British and 
     American generation that, 50 years ago now, in the skies over 
     the Channel, on the craggy hills of Italy, in the jungles of 
     Burma, in the flights over the Hump did not fail or falter. 
     In the greatest struggle for freedom in all of history, they 
     saved the world.
       Our nations emerged from that war with the resolve to 
     prevent another like it. We bound ourselves together with 
     other democracies in the West and with Japan, and we stood 
     firm throughout the long twilight struggle of the Cold War--
     from the Berlin Airlift of 1948, to the fall of the Berlin 
     Wall on another November day just six years ago.
       In the years since, we have also stood together--fighting 
     together for victory in the Persian Gulf, standing together 
     against terrorism, working together to remove the nuclear 
     cloud from our children's bright future; and together, 
     preparing the way for peace in Bosnia, where your 
     peacekeepers have performed heroically and saved the lives of 
     so many innocent people. I thank the British nation for its 
     strength and its sacrifice through all these struggles. And I 
     am proud to stand here on behalf of the American people to 
     salute you.
       Ladies and gentlemen, in this century, democracy has not 
     merely endured, it has prevailed. Now it falls to us to 
     advance the cause that so many fought and sacrificed and died 
     for. In this new era, we must rise not in a call to arms, but 
     in a call to peace.
       The great American philosopher, John Dewey, once said, 
     ``The only way to abolish war is to make peace heroic.'' 
     Well, we know we will never abolish war or all the forces 
     that cause it because we cannot abolish human nature or the 
     certainty of human error. But we can make peace heroic. And 
     in so doing, we can create a future even more true to our 
     ideals than all our glorious past. To do so, we must maintain 
     the resolve and peace we shared in war when everything was at 
     stake.
       In this new world our lives are not so very much at risk, 
     but much of what makes life worth living is still very much 
     at stake. We have fought our wars. Now let us wage our peace.
       This time is full of possibility. The chasm of ideology has 
     disappeared. Around the world, the ideals we defended and 
     advanced are now shared by more people than ever before. In 
     Europe and many other nations long-suffering peoples at last 
     control their own destinies. And as the Cold War gives way to 
     the global village, economic freedom is spreading alongside 
     political freedom, bringing with it renewed hope for a better 
     life, rooted in the honorable and healthy competition of 
     effort and ideas.
       America is determined to maintain our alliance for freedom 
     and peace with you, and determined to seek the partnership of 
     all like-minded nations to confront the threats still before 
     us. We know the way. Together we have seen how we succeed 
     when we work together.
       When President Roosevelt and Prime Minister Churchill first 
     met on the Deck of the HMS Prince of Wales in 1941 at one of 
     the loneliest moments in your nation's history , they joined 
     in prayer, and the Prime Minister was filled with hope. 
     Afterwards, he said, ``The same language, the same hymns, 
     more or less the same ideals. Something big may be happening, 
     something very big.''
       Well, once again, he was right. Something really big 
     happened. On the basis of those ideals, Churchill and 
     Roosevelt and all of their successors built an enduring 
     alliance and a genuine friendship between our nations. Other 
     times in other places are littered with the vows of 
     friendship sworn during battle and then abandoned in 
     peacetime. This one stands alone, unbroken, above all the 
     rest; a model for the ties that should bind all democracies.
       To honor that alliance and the Prime Minister who worked so 
     mightily to create it, I am pleased to announce here, in the 
     home of British freedom, that the United States will name one 
     of the newest and most powerful of its surface ships, a 
     guided missile destroyer, the United States Ship Winston 
     Churchill. (Applause.)
       When that ship slips down the ways in the final year of 
     this century, its name will ride the seas as a reminder for 
     the coming century of an indomitable man who shaped our age, 
     who stood always for freedom, who showed anew the glorious 
     strength of the human spirit.
       I thank the members of the Churchill family who are here 
     today with us--Lady Soames, Nicholas Soames, Winston 
     Churchill--and I thank the British people for their 
     friendship and their strength over these many years.
       After so much success together we know that our 
     relationship with the United Kingdom must be at the heart of 
     our striving in this new era. Because of the history we have 
     lived, because of the power and prosperity we enjoy, because 
     of the accepted truth that you and we have no dark motives in 
     our dealings with other nations, we still bear a burden of 
     special responsibility.
       In these few years since the Cold War we have met that 
     burden by making gains for peace and security that ordinary 
     people feel every day. We have stepped back from the nuclear 
     precipice with the indefinite extension of the nuclear 
     Nonproliferation Treaty, and we hope next year a 
     comprehensive test ban treaty.
       For the first time in a generation parents in Los Angeles 
     and Manchester and, yes, in Moscow, can now turn out the 
     lights at night knowing there are no nuclear weapons pointed 
     at their children. Our nations are working together to lay 
     the foundation for lasting prosperity. We are bringing down 
     economic barriers between nations with the historic GATT 
     Agreement and other actions that are creating millions of 
     good jobs for our own people and for people throughout the 
     world. The United States and the United Kingdom are 
     supporting men and women who embrace freedom and democracy 
     the world over with good results, from South Africa to 
     Central Europe, from Haiti to the Middle East.
       In the United States, we feel a special gratitude for your 
     efforts in Northern Ireland. With every passing month, more 
     people walk the streets and live their lives safely--people 
     who otherwise would have been added to the toll of The 
     Troubles.
       Tomorrow I will have the privilege of being the first 
     American President to visit Northern Ireland--a Northern 
     Ireland where the guns are quiet and the children play 
     without fear. I applaud the efforts of Prime Minister Major 
     and Irish Prime Minister Bruton who announced yesterday their 
     new twin-track initiative to advance the peace process, an 
     initiative that provides an opportunity to begin a dialogue 
     in which all views are represented and all views can be 
     heard.
       This is a bold step forward for peace. I applaud the Prime 
     Minister for taking this risk for peace. It is always a hard 
     choice, the choice for peace, for success is far from 
     guaranteed, and even if you fail, there will be those who 
     resent you for trying. But it is the right thing to do. And 
     in the end, the right will win. (Applause.)
       Despite all of the progress we have made in all these 
     areas, and despite the problems clearly still out there, 
     there are those who say at this moment of hope we can afford 
     to relax now behind our secure borders. Now is the time, they 
     say, to let others worry about the world's troubles. These 
     are the siren songs of myth. They once lured the United 
     States into isolationism after World War I. They counseled 
     appeasement to Britain on the very brink of World War II. We 
     have gone down that road before. We must never go down that 
     road again. We will never go down that road again. 
     (Applause.)
       Though the Cold War is over, the forces of destruction 
     challenge us still. Today, they are armed with a full array 
     of threats, not just the single weapon of frontal war. We see 
     them at work in the spread of weapons of mass destruction, 
     from nuclear smuggling in Europe to a vial of sarin gas being 
     broken open in the Tokyo subway, to the bombing of the World 
     Trade Center in New York. 
     
[[Page S 18090]]

       We see it in the growth of ethnic hatred, extreme 
     nationalism and religious fanaticism, which most recently 
     took the life of one of the greatest champions of peace in 
     the entire world, the Prime Minister of Israel.
       We see it in the terrorism that just in recent months has 
     murdered innocent people from Islamabad to Paris, from Riyadh 
     to Oklahoma City. And we see it in the international 
     organized crime and drug trade that poisons our children and 
     our communities.
       In their variety these forces of disintegration are waging 
     guerrilla wars against humanity. Like communism and fascism, 
     they spread darkness over light, barbarism over civilization. 
     And like communism and fascism, they will be defeated only 
     because free nations join against them in common cause.
       We will prevail again if, and only if, our people support 
     the mission. We are, after all, democracies. And they are the 
     ultimate bosses of our fate. I believe the people will 
     support this. I believe free people, given the information, 
     will make the decisions that will make it possible for their 
     leaders to stand against the new threat to security and 
     freedom, to peace and prosperity.
       I believe they will see that this hopeful moment cannot be 
     lost without grave consequences to the future. We must go out 
     to meet the challenges before they come to threaten us. 
     Today, for the United States and for Great Britain, that 
     means we must make the difference between peace and war in 
     Bosnia.
       For nearly four years a terrible war has torn Bosnia apart, 
     bringing horrors we prayed had vanished from the face of 
     Europe forever--the mass killings, the endless columns of 
     refugees, the campaigns of deliberate rape, the skeletal 
     persons imprisoned in concentration camps.
       These crimes did violence to the conscience of Britons and 
     Americans. Now we have a chance to make sure they don't 
     return. And we must seize it.
       We must help peace to take hold in Bosnia because so long 
     as that fire rages at the heart of the European Continent, so 
     long as the emerging democracies and our allies are 
     threatened by fighting in Bosnia there will be no stable, 
     undivided, free Europe. There will be no realization of our 
     greatest hopes for Europe. But most important of all, 
     innocent people will continue to suffer and die.
       America fought two world wars and stood with you in the 
     Cold War because of our vital stake in a Europe that is 
     stable, strong and free. With the end of the Cold War all of 
     Europe has a chance to be stable, strong and free for the 
     very first time since nation states appeared on the European 
     Continent.
       Now the warring parties in Bosnia have committed themselves 
     to peace, and they have asked us to help them make it hold--
     not by fighting a war, but by implementing their own peace 
     agreement. Our nations have a responsibility to answer the 
     request of those people to secure their peace. Without our 
     leadership and without the presence of NATO there will be no 
     peace in Bosnia.
       I thank the United Kingdom that has already sacrificed so 
     much for its swift agreement to play a central role in the 
     peace implementation. With this act, Britain holds true to 
     its history and to its values. And I pledge to you that 
     America will live up to its history and its ideals as well.
       We know that if we do not participate in Bosnia our 
     leadership will be questioned and our partnerships will be 
     weakened--partnerships we must have if we are to help each 
     other in the fight against the common threats we face. We can 
     help the people of Bosnia as they seek a way back from 
     savagery to civility. And we can build a peaceful, undivided 
     Europe.
       Today I reaffirm to you that the United States, as it did 
     during the defense of democracy during the Cold War, will 
     help lead in building this Europe by working for a broader 
     and more lasting peace, and by supporting a Europe bound 
     together in a woven fabric of vital democracies, market 
     economies and security cooperation.
       Our cooperation with you through NATO, the sword and shield 
     of democracy, can help the nations that once lay behind the 
     Iron Curtain to become a part of the new Europe. In the Cold 
     War the alliance kept our nation secure, and bound the 
     Western democracies together in common cause. It brought 
     former adversaries together and gave them the confidence to 
     look past ancient enmities. Now, NATO will grow and expand 
     the circle of common purpose, first through its Partnership 
     for Peace, which is already having a remarkable impact on the 
     member countries; and then, as we agree, with the admissions 
     of new democratic members. It will threaten no one. But it 
     will give its new allies the confidence they need to 
     consolidate their freedoms, build their economies, strengthen 
     peace and become your partners for tomorrow.
       Members of the House of Commons and Noble Lords, long 
     before there was a United States, one of your most powerful 
     champions of liberty and one of the greatest poets of our 
     shared language wrote: ``Peace hath her victories, no less 
     renowned then war.'' In our time, at last, we can prove the 
     truth of John Milton's words.
       As this month of remembrance passes and the holidays 
     approach, I leave you with the words Winston Churchill spoke 
     to America during America's darkest holiday season of the 
     century. As he lit the White House Christmas Tree in 1941, he 
     said, ``Let the children have their night of fun and 
     laughter. Let us share to the full in their unstinted 
     pleasure before we turn again to the stern tasks in the year 
     that lies before us. But now, by our sacrifice and bearing, 
     these same children shall not be robbed of their inheritance 
     or denied their right to live in a free and decent world.''
       My friends, we have stood together in the darkest moments 
     of our century. Let us now resolve to stand together for the 
     bright and shining prospect of the next century. It can be 
     the age of possibility and the age of peace. Our forebears 
     won the war. Let us now win the peace.
       May God bless the United Kingdom, the United States and our 
     solemn alliance. Thank you very much. (Applause.)

                          ____________________