[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.