[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.