    [Public Papers of the Presidents of the United States: William J. Clinton (1993, Book II)]
    [September 27, 1993]
    [Pages 1612-1618]
    [From the U.S. Government Publishing Office www.gpo.gov]

    Remarks to the 48th Session of the United Nations General Assembly in
    New York City
    September 27, 1993

        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 effort 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. The start of this General Assembly offers us an
    opportunity to take stock of where we

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    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 nonracial 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 welcome 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 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 forever.
        It is a new era in this hall as well. The superpower standoff 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 towards 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 only 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 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, 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 fathers 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 do 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 to honestly 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 farsighted generation of
    leaders from the United States and elsewhere rallied the world. Their
    efforts built the institutions of postwar 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 our
    domestic needs and problems, and we must. But putting each of our
    economic houses

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    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 our 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
    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.
        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 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
    democracies and to support liberalization of nondemocratic 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 goal of reducing suffering, fostering
    sustainable development, and improving the health and living conditions,
    particularly for our world's children.
        On efforts from export control to trade agreements to peacekeeping,
    we will often work in

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    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 expanded 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. In 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 toward this vision we must confront the storm clouds
    that may overwhelm our work and darken the march toward 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 conflict 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: nonproliferation, 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. 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 consequence if
    they had carried nuclear weapons. And we know that many nations still
    believe it is in their interest 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 nonproliferation 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 pressures for nonproliferation 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 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. We will also seek to strengthen the
    biological weapons convention by making every nation's biological
    activities and facilities open to more international students.
        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

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    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 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
    conflict, 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. And 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 scourge of bitter conflict has placed high demands on United
    Nations peacekeeping forces. Frequently the blue helmets have worked
    wonders. In Namibia, El Salvador, the Golan Heights, and elsewhere, U.N.
    peacekeepers have helped to stop the 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 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 the conditions of security
    for almost the entire 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 through 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 costs 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
    6 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, you 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. 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

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    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 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 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 rates 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 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 improve it. As our
    Ambassador Madeleine Albright has suggested, the United States has
    always 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,
    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. 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 wise to recall that the first words of the U.N. Charter are
    not ``We, the government,'' but, ``We, the people 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
    generations.
        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, founded 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.
        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 calamity 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

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    promising work of the U.N.'s 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 expansion. And
    we seek to strengthen the World's Health Organization's efforts to
    combat the plague of AIDS, which is not only killing millions but also
    exhausting the resources of nations that can least afford it.
        Let us make a new commitment to the world's children. It is tragic
    enough that 1.5 million children died as a result of wars over the past
    decade. But it is far more unforgivable that during that same period, 40
    million children died from diseases completely preventable with simply
    vaccines or medicine. Every day, this day, as we meet here, over 30,000
    of the world's children will die of malnutrition and 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 treatment 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 waste doubled 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 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 foundation 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 work and new wonders.
        Thank you very much.

    Note: The President spoke at 11 a.m. in the General Assembly Hall.