[Public Papers of the Presidents of the United States: William J. Clinton (1995, Book II)]
[October 22, 1995]
[Pages 1654-1657]
[From the U.S. Government Publishing Office www.gpo.gov]



Remarks to the United Nations General Assembly in New York City
October 22, 1995

    Mr. President, Mr. Secretary-General, Excellencies, distinguished 
guests. This week the United Nations is 50 years old. The dreams of its 
founders have not been fully realized, but its promise endures. The 
value of the United Nations can be seen the world over in the nourished 
bodies of once-starving children; in the full lives of those immunized 
against disease; in the eyes of students eager to learn; in the 
environment sustained, the refugees saved, the peace kept; and most 
recently, in standing up for the human rights and human possibilities of 
women and their children at the Beijing conference.
    The United Nations is the product of faith and knowledge: Faith that 
different peoples can work together for tolerance, decency, and peace; 
knowledge that this faith will be forever tested by the forces of 
intolerance, depravity, and aggression. Now we must summon that faith 
and act on that knowledge to meet the challenges of a new era.
    In the United States, some people ask, ``Why should we bother with 
the U.N.? America is strong; we can go it alone.'' Well, we will act, if 
we have to, alone. But my fellow Americans should not forget that our 
values and our interests are also served by working with the U.N.
    The U.N. helps the peacemakers, the care providers, the defenders of 
freedom and human rights, the architects of economic prosperity, and the 
protectors of our planet to spread the risk, share the burden, and 
increase the impact of our common efforts.
    Last year I pledged that the United States would continue to 
contribute substantially to the U.N.'s finances. Historically, the 
United States has been, and today it remains, the largest contributor to 
the United Nations. But I am determined that we must fully meet our 
obligations, and I am working with our Congress on a plan to do so.
    All who contribute to the U.N.'s work and care about its future must 
also be committed to reform, to ending bureaucratic inefficiencies

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and outdated priorities. The U.N. must be able to show that the money it 
receives supports saving and enriching people's lives, not unneeded 
overhead. Reform requires breaking up bureaucratic fiefdoms, eliminating 
obsolete agencies, and doing more with less. The U.N. must reform to 
remain relevant and to play a still stronger role in the march of 
freedom, peace, and prosperity.
    We see it around the world in the Middle East and Northern Ireland, 
people turning from a violent past to a future of peace. In South Africa 
and Haiti, long nights and fears have given way to new days of freedom. 
Throughout this hemisphere, every nation except one has chosen 
democracy, and the goal of an integrated, peaceful, and democratic 
Europe is now within our reach for the first time. In the Balkans, the 
international community's determination and NATO's resolve have made 
prospects for peace brighter than they have been for 4 long years.
    Let me salute the U.N.'s efforts on behalf of the people of Bosnia. 
The nations that took part in UNPROFOR kept the toll of this terrible 
war in lives lost, wounds left unhealed, children left unfed from being 
far graver still.
    Next week, the parties to the war in Bosnia will meet in Dayton, 
Ohio, under the auspices of the United States and our Contact Group 
partners, Russia, the United Kingdom, France, and Germany, to intensify 
the search for peace. Many fundamental differences remain. But I urge 
the parties to seize this chance for a settlement. If they achieve 
peace, the United States will be there with our friends and allies to 
help secure it.
    All over the world, people yearn to live in peace. And that dream is 
becoming a reality. But our time is not free of peril. As the cold war 
gives way to the global village, too many people remain vulnerable to 
poverty, disease, and underdevelopment. And all of us are exposed to 
ethnic and religious hatred, the reckless aggression of rogue states, 
terrorism, organized crime, drug trafficking, the proliferation of 
weapons of mass destruction.
    The emergence of the information and technology age has brought us 
all closer together and given us extraordinary opportunities to build a 
better future. But in our global village, progress can spread quickly, 
but trouble can, too. Trouble on the far end of town soon becomes a 
plague on everyone's house. We can't free our own neighborhoods from 
drug-related crime without the help of countries where the drugs are 
produced. We can't track down terrorists without assistance from other 
governments. We can't prosper or preserve our environment unless 
sustainable development is a reality for all nations. And our vigilance 
alone can't keep nuclear weapons stored half a world away from falling 
into the wrong hands.
    Nowhere is cooperation more vital than in fighting the increasingly 
interconnected groups that traffic in terror, organized crime, drug 
smuggling, and the spread of weapons of mass destruction. No one is 
immune: not the people of Japan, where terrorists unleash nerve gas in 
the subway and poison thousands; not the people of Latin America or 
Southeast Asia, where drug traffickers wielding imported weapons have 
murdered judges, journalists, police officers, and innocent passers-by; 
not the people of Israel and France where hatemongers have blown up 
buses and trains full of children with suitcase bombs made from smuggled 
explosives; not the people of the former Soviet Union and Central 
Europe, where organized criminals seek to weaken new democracies and 
prey on decent, hard-working men and women; and not the people of the 
United States, where homegrown terrorists blew up a Federal building in 
the heart of America and foreign terrorists tried to topple the World 
Trade Center and plotted to destroy the very hall we gather in today.
    These forces jeopardize the global trend toward peace and freedom, 
undermine fragile new democracies, sap the strength from developing 
countries, threaten our efforts to build a safer, more prosperous world.
    So today I call upon all nations to join us in the fight against 
them. Our common efforts can produce results. To reduce the threat of 
weapons of mass destruction, we are working with Russia to reduce our 
nuclear arsenals by two-thirds. We supported Ukraine, Kazakhstan, and 
Belarus in removing nuclear weapons from their soil. We worked with the 
states of the former Soviet Union to safeguard nuclear materials and 
convert them to peaceful use. North Korea has agreed to freeze its 
nuclear program under international monitoring. Many of the nations in 
this room succeeded in getting the indefinite extension of the Non-
Proliferation Treaty.
    To stem the flow of narcotics and stop the spread of organized 
crime, we are cooperating

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with many nations, sharing information, providing military support, 
initiating anticorruption efforts. And results are coming. With 
Colombian authorities, we have cracked down on the cartels that control 
the world's cocaine market. Two years ago, they lived as billionaires 
beyond the law; now many are living as prisoners behind bars.
    To take on terrorists, we maintain strong sanctions against states 
that sponsor terrorism and defy the rule of law, such as Iran, Iraq, 
Libya, and Sudan. We ask them today again to turn from that path. 
Meanwhile, we increase our own law enforcement efforts and our 
cooperation with other nations.
    Nothing we do will make us invulnerable, but we all can become less 
vulnerable if we work together. That is why today I am announcing new 
initiatives to fight international organized crime, drug trafficking, 
terrorism, and the spread of weapons of mass destruction, initiatives we 
can take on our own and others we hope we will take together in the form 
of an international declaration to promote the safety of the world's 
citizens.
    First, the steps we will take: Yesterday, I directed our Government 
to identify and put on notice nations that tolerate money laundering. 
Criminal enterprises are moving vast sums of ill-gotten gains through 
the international financial system with absolute impunity. We must not 
allow them to wash the blood off profits from the sale of drugs from 
terror or organized crimes. Nations should bring their banks and 
financial systems into conformity with the international anti-money-
laundering standards. We will work to help them to do so. And if they 
refuse, we will consider appropriate sanctions. Next, I directed our 
Government to identify the front companies and to freeze the assets of 
the largest drug ring in the world, the Cali cartel, to cut off its 
economic lifelines and to stop our own people from dealing unknowingly 
with its companies. Finally, I have instructed the Justice Department to 
prepare legislation to provide our other agencies with the tools they 
need to respond to organized criminal activity.
    But because we must win this battle together, I now invite every 
country to join in negotiating and endorsing a declaration on 
international crime and citizen safety, a declaration which would first 
include a no-sanctuary pledge, so that we could say together to 
organized criminals, terrorists, drug traffickers, and smugglers, ``You 
have nowhere to run and nowhere to hide.''
    Second, a counterterrorism pact, so that we would together urge more 
states to ratify existing antiterrorism treaties and work with us to 
shut down the gray markets that outfit terrorists and criminals with 
firearms and false documents.
    Third, an antinarcotics offensive. The international drug trade 
poisons people, breeds violence, tears at the moral fabric of our 
society. We must intensify action against the cartels and the 
destruction of drug crops. And we, in consumer nations like the United 
States, must decrease demand for drugs.
    Fourth, an effective police force partnership. International 
criminal organizations target nations whose law enforcement agencies 
lack the experience and capacity to stop them. To help police in the new 
democracies of Central Europe, Hungary and the United States established 
an international law enforcement academy in Budapest. Now we should 
consider a network of centers all around the world to share the latest 
crime-fighting techniques and technology.
    Fifth, we need an illegal arms and deadly materials control effort 
that we all participate in. A package the size of a child's lunch bag 
held the poison gas used to terrorize Tokyo. A lump of plutonium no 
bigger than a soda can is enough to make an atomic bomb. Building on 
efforts already underway with the states of the former Soviet Union and 
with our G-7 partners, we will seek to better account for, store, and 
safeguard materials with massive destructive power. We should strengthen 
the Biological Weapons Convention, pass the comprehensive test ban 
treaty next year, and ultimately eliminate the deadly scourge of 
landmines. We must press other countries and our own Congress to ratify 
the Chemical Weapons Convention and to intensify our efforts to combat 
the global illegal arms network that fuels terrorism, equips drug 
cartels, and prolongs deadly conflicts. This is a full and challenging 
agenda, but we must complete it, and we must do it together.
    Fifty years ago, as the conference that gave birth to the United 
Nations got underway in San Francisco, a young American war hero 
recorded his impressions of that event for a newspaper. ``The average GI 
in the street doesn't seem to have a very clear-cut conception of what 
this meeting's about,'' wrote the young John F. Kennedy. But one 
bemedaled Marine sergeant

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gave the general reaction when he said, ``I don't know much about what's 
going on, but if they just fix it so we don't have to fight anymore, 
they can count me in.''
    Well, the United Nations has not ended war, but it has made it less 
likely and helped many nations to turn from war to peace. The United 
Nations has not stopped human suffering, but it has healed the wounds 
and lengthened the lives of millions of human beings. The United Nations 
has not banished repression or poverty from the Earth, but it has 
advanced the cause of freedom and prosperity on every continent. The 
United Nations has not been all that we wished it would be, but it has 
been a force for good and a bulwark against evil.
    So at the dawn of a new century so full of promise, yet plagued by 
peril, we still need the United Nations. And so, for another 50 years 
and beyond, you can count the United States in.
    Thank you very much.

Note: The President spoke at 10:30 a.m. in the General Assembly Hall at 
United Nations Headquarters. In his remarks, he referred to United 
Nations General Assembly President Diogo Freitas do Amaral and United 
Nations Secretary-General Boutros Boutros-Ghali.