    [Public Papers of the Presidents of the United States: William J. Clinton (1994, Book II)]
    [December 5, 1994]
    [Pages 2146-2147]
    [From the U.S. Government Publishing Office www.gpo.gov]

    Remarks at the Denuclearization Agreements Signing Ceremony in Budapest
    December 5, 1994

        President Yeltsin, President Kuchma, President Lukashenko, President
    Nazarbayev, Prime Minister Major. Today we herald the arrival of a new
    and safer era. We have witnessed many signatures. Together they amount
    to one great stride to reduce the nuclear threat to ourselves and to our
    children. The path to this moment has been long and hard. More than a
    decade has passed since the first negotiations on the START I treaty.
    But perseverance, courage, and common sense have triumphed.
        Skeptics once claimed that the nuclear threat would actually grow
    after the Soviet Union dissolved. But because of the wisdom and
    statesmanship of the leaders who join me here, the skeptics have been
    proven wrong.
        Ukraine's accession to the Non-Proliferation Treaty completes a bold
    move away from the nuclear precipice. Ukraine has joined Belarus and
    Kazakhstan in ridding itself of the terrible weapons each inherited when
    the Soviet Union dissolved. Presidents Lukashenko, Nazarbayev, and
    Kuchma have done a very great service for their own people, their
    neighbors, and indeed all the peoples of the world.
        And there is no greater service that the rest of us could do for our
    nations, our neighbors, and the peoples of the world than to follow the
    advice already advanced here by President Yeltsin and Prime Minister
    Major and agree to the indefinite extension of NPT in 1995.
        Creating security in the post-cold-war era requires that we unite,
    not divide. The pledges on security assurances that Prime Minister
    Major, President Yeltsin, and I have given these three nations move us
    further in that direction. They underscore our independence, our
    commitment to the independence, the sovereignty, and the territorial
    integrity of these states.
        And today we have also reached a milestone in fulfilling the promise
    of this new era by putting the START I treaty into force, the first
    treaty that requires nuclear powers to actually reduce their strategic
    arsenals. It creates the most far-reaching verification system ever
    agreed upon and will eliminate over 9,000 warheads from our arsenals. It
    lays the foundations for even deeper arms reductions.
        President Yeltsin and I have vowed already to work to put the START
    treaty into force at our next summit in 1995. That will cut our arsenals
    by another 5,000 warheads. Together these treaties will leave the United
    States and the former Soviet Union with only a third of the warheads
    they possessed at the height of the cold war. They will help us to lead
    the future to a direction we have all dreamed of, one in which the
    nuclear threat that has hung over heads for almost a half century now is
    dramatically reduced.
        On this historic afternoon, we have shown that today's community of
    free nations can and will create a safer globe than did the divided
    world of yesterday. Together we have helped to beat back the threat of
    nuclear war and lighted the way to a more peaceful day when the shadow
    of that destruction is finally vanquished from the Earth.
        I thank you all. Thank you.

    Note: The President spoke at 11:41 a.m. in Patria Hall at the Budapest
    Convention Center, at a signing ceremony in which the parties to the
    START I treaty exchanged documents of ratification formally bringing
    START I into force. In his remarks, he referred to President Boris
    Yeltsin of Russia,

    [[Page 2147]]

    President Leonid Kuchma of Ukraine, President Aleksandr Lukashenko of
    Belarus, President Nursultan Nazarbayev of Kazakhstan, and Prime
    Minister John Major of the United Kingdom.