[Public Papers of the Presidents of the United States: William J. Clinton (1998, Book II)]
[September 21, 1998]
[Pages 1629-1633]
[From the U.S. Government Publishing Office www.gpo.gov]



Remarks to the 53d Session of the United Nations General Assembly in New 
York City
September 21, 1998

    Thank you very much. Mr. President, Mr. Secretary-General, the 
delegates of this 53d session of the General Assembly, let me begin by 
thanking you for your very kind and generous welcome and by noting that 
at the opening of this General Assembly the world has much to celebrate.
    Peace has come to Northern Ireland after 29 long years. Bosnia has 
just held its freest elections ever. The United Nations is actively 
mediating crises before they explode into war all around the world. And 
today, more people determine their own destiny than at any previous 
moment in history.
    We celebrate the 50th anniversary of the Universal Declaration of 
Human Rights with those rights more widely embraced than ever before. On 
every continent, people are leading lives of integrity and self-respect, 
and a great deal of credit for that belongs to the United Nations.

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    Still, as every person in this room knows, the promise of our time 
is attended by perils. Global economic turmoil today threatens to 
undermine confidence in free markets and democracy. Those of us who 
benefit particularly from this economy have a special responsibility to 
do more to minimize the turmoil and extend the benefits of global 
markets to all citizens. And the United States is determined to do that.
    We still are bedeviled by ethnic, racial, religious, and tribal 
hatreds; by the spread of weapons of mass destruction; by the almost 
frantic effort of too many states to acquire such weapons. And despite 
all efforts to contain it, terrorism is not fading away with the end of 
the 20th century. It is a continuing defiance of Article 3 of the 
Universal Declaration of Human Rights, which says, and I quote, 
``Everyone has the right to life, liberty, and security of person.''
    Here at the U.N., at international summits around the world, and on 
many occasions in the United States, I have had the opportunity to 
address this subject in detail, to describe what we have done, what we 
are doing, and what we must yet do to combat terror. Today I would like 
to talk to you about why all nations must put the fight against 
terrorism at the top of our agenda.
    Obviously, this is a matter of profound concern to us. In the last 
15 years, our citizens have been targeted over and over again: in 
Beirut; over Lockerbie; in Saudi Arabia; at home in Oklahoma City, by 
one of our own citizens, and even here in New York, in one of our most 
public buildings; and most recently on August 7th in Nairobi and Dar es 
Salaam, where Americans who devoted their lives to building bridges 
between nations, people very much like all of you, died in a campaign of 
hatred against the United States.
    Because we are blessed to be a wealthy nation with a powerful 
military and worldwide presence active in promoting peace and security, 
we are often a target. We love our country for its dedication to 
political and religious freedom, to economic opportunity, to respect for 
the rights of the individual. But we know many people see us as a symbol 
of a system and values they reject, and often they find it expedient to 
blame us for problems with deep roots elsewhere.
    But we are no threat to any peaceful nation, and we believe the best 
way to disprove these claims is to continue our work for peace and 
prosperity around the world. For us to pull back from the world's 
trouble spots, to turn our backs on those taking risks for peace, to 
weaken our own opposition to terrorism, would hand the enemies of peace 
a victory they must never have.
    Still, it is a grave misconception to see terrorism as only, or even 
mostly, an American problem. Indeed, it is a clear and present danger to 
tolerant and open societies and innocent people everywhere. No one in 
this room, nor the people you represent, are immune.
    Certainly not the people of Nairobi and Dar es Salaam; for every 
American killed there, roughly 20 Africans were murdered and 500 more 
injured, innocent people going about their business on a busy morning. 
Not the people of Omagh, in Northern Ireland, where the wounded and 
killed were Catholics and Protestants alike, mostly children and women--
and two of them pregnant--people out shopping together, when their 
future was snuffed out by a fringe group clinging to the past. Not the 
people of Japan who were poisoned by sarin gas in the Tokyo subway. Not 
the people of Argentina who died when a car bomb decimated a Jewish 
community center in Buenos Aires. Not the people of Kashmir and Sri 
Lanka killed by ancient animosities that cry out for resolution. Not the 
Palestinians and Israelis who still die year after year, for all the 
progress toward peace. Not the people of Algeria, enduring the nightmare 
of unfathomable terror with still no end in sight. Not the people of 
Egypt, who nearly lost a second President to assassination. Not the 
people of Turkey, Colombia, Albania, Russia, Iran, Indonesia, and 
countless other nations where innocent people have been victimized by 
terror.
    Now, none of these victims are American, but every one was a son or 
a daughter, a husband or wife, a father or mother, a human life 
extinguished by someone else's hatred, leaving a circle of people whose 
lives will never be the same. Terror has become the world's problem. 
Some argue, of course, that the problem is overblown, saying that the 
number of deaths from terrorism is comparatively small, sometimes less 
than the number of people killed by lightning in a single year. I 
believe that misses the point in several ways.
    First, terrorism has a new face in the 1990's. Today, terrorists 
take advantage of greater openness and the explosion of information and 
weapons technology. The new technologies of terror

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and their increasing availability, along with the increasing mobility of 
terrorists, raise chilling prospects of vulnerability to chemical, 
biological, and other kinds of attacks, bringing each of us into the 
category of possible victim. This is a threat to all humankind.
    Beyond the physical damage of each attack, there is an even greater 
residue of psychological damage, hard to measure but slow to heal. Every 
bomb, every bomb threat has an insidious effect on free and open 
institutions, the kinds of institutions all of you in this body are 
working so hard to build.
    Each time an innocent man or woman or child is killed, it makes the 
future more hazardous for the rest of us, for each violent act saps the 
confidence that is so crucial to peace and prosperity. In every corner 
of the world, with the active support of U.N. agencies, people are 
struggling to build better futures, based on bonds of trust connecting 
them to their fellow citizens and with partners and investors from 
around the world.
    The glimpse of growing prosperity in Northern Ireland was a crucial 
factor in the Good Friday Agreement. But that took confidence--
confidence that cannot be bought in times of violence. We can measure 
each attack and the grisly statistics of dead and wounded, but what are 
the wounds we cannot measure?
    In the Middle East, in Asia, in South America, how many agreements 
have been thwarted after bombs blew up? How many businesses will never 
be created in places crying out for investments of time and money? How 
many talented young people in countries represented here have turned 
their backs on public service? The question is not only how many lives 
have been lost in each attack but how many futures were lost in their 
aftermath.
    There is no justification for killing innocents. Ideology, religion, 
and politics, even deprivation and righteous grievance, do not justify 
it. We must seek to understand the roiled waters in which terror occurs; 
of course, we must.
    Often, in my own experience, I have seen where peace is making 
progress, terror is a desperate act to turn back the tide of history. 
The Omagh bombing came as peace was succeeding in Northern Ireland. In 
the Middle East, whenever we get close to another step toward peace, its 
enemies respond with terror. We must not let this stall our momentum. 
The bridging of ancient hatreds is, after all, a leap of faith, a break 
with the past, and thus a frightening threat to those who cannot let go 
of their own hatred. Because they fear the future, in these cases, 
terrorists seek to blow the peacemakers back into the past.
    We must also acknowledge that there are economic sources of this 
rage as well. Poverty, inequality, masses of disenfranchised young 
people are fertile fields for the siren call of the terrorists and their 
claims of advancing social justice. But deprivation cannot justify 
destruction, nor can inequity ever atone for murder. The killing of 
innocents is not a social program.
    Nevertheless, our resolute opposition to terrorism does not mean we 
can ever be indifferent to the conditions that foster it. The most 
recent U.N. human development report suggests the gulf is widening 
between the world's haves and have-nots. We must work harder to treat 
the sources of despair before they turn into the poison of hatred. Dr. 
Martin Luther King once wrote that the only revolutionary is a man who 
has nothing to lose. We must show people they have everything to gain by 
embracing cooperation and renouncing violence. This is not simply an 
American or a Western responsibility; it is the world's responsibility.
    Developing nations have an obligation to spread new wealth fairly, 
to create new opportunities, to build new open economies. Developed 
nations have an obligation to help developing nations stay on the path 
of prosperity and--and--to spur global economic growth. A week ago I 
outlined ways we can build a stronger international economy to benefit 
not only all nations but all citizens within them.
    Some people believe that terrorism's principal fault line centers on 
what they see as an inevitable clash of civilizations. It is an issue 
that deserves a lot of debate in this great hall. Specifically, many 
believe there is an inevitable clash between Western civilization and 
Western values, and Islamic civilizations and values. I believe this 
view is terribly wrong. False prophets may use and abuse any religion to 
justify whatever political objectives they have, even cold-blooded 
murder. Some may have the world believe that Almighty God himself, the 
Merciful, grants a license to kill. But that is not our understanding of 
Islam.
    A quarter of the world's population is Muslim, from Africa to Middle 
East to Asia and to the United States, where Islam is one of our fastest 
growing faiths. There are over 1,200 mosques

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and Islamic centers in the United States, and the number is rapidly 
increasing. The 6 million Americans who worship there will tell you 
there is no inherent clash between Islam and America. Americans respect 
and honor Islam.
    As I talk to Muslim leaders in my country and around the world, I 
see again that we share the same hopes and aspirations: to live in peace 
and security, to provide for our children, to follow the faith of our 
choosing, to build a better life than our parents knew, and pass on 
brighter possibilities to our own children. Of course, we are not 
identical. There are important differences that cross race and culture 
and religion which demand understanding and deserve respect.
    But every river has a crossing place. Even as we struggle here in 
America, like the United Nations, to reconcile all Americans to each 
other and to find greater unity in our increasing diversity, we will 
remain on a course of friendship and respect for the Muslim world. We 
will continue to look for common values, common interests, and common 
endeavors. I agree very much with the spirit expressed by these words of 
Mohammed: ``Rewards for prayers by people assembled together are twice 
those said at home.''
    When it comes to terrorism, there should be no dividing line between 
Muslims and Jews, Protestants and Catholics, Serbs and Albanians, 
developed societies and emerging countries. The only dividing line is 
between those who practice, support, or tolerate terror, and those who 
understand that it is murder, plain and simple.
    If terrorism is at the top of the American agenda--and should be at 
the top of the world's agenda--what, then, are the concrete steps we can 
take together to protect our common destiny? What are our common 
obligations? At least, I believe, they are these: to give terrorists no 
support, no sanctuary, no financial assistance; to bring pressure on 
states that do; to act together to step up extradition and prosecution; 
to sign the global anti-terror conventions; to strengthen the biological 
weapons and chemical conventions; to enforce the Chemical Weapons 
Convention; to promote stronger domestic laws and control the 
manufacture and export of explosives; to raise international standards 
for airport security; to combat the conditions that spread violence and 
despair.
    We are working to do our part. Our intelligence and law enforcement 
communities are tracking terrorist networks in cooperation with other 
governments. Some of those we believe responsible for the recent bombing 
of our Embassies have been brought to justice. Early this week I will 
ask our Congress to provide emergency funding to repair our Embassies, 
to improve security, to expand the worldwide fight against terrorism, to 
help our friends in Kenya and Tanzania with the wounds they have 
suffered.
    But no matter how much each of us does alone, our progress will be 
limited without our common efforts. We also will do our part to address 
the sources of despair and alienation through the Agency for 
International Development in Africa, in Asia, in Latin America, in 
Eastern Europe, in Haiti, and elsewhere. We will continue our strong 
support for the U.N. Development Program, the U.N. High Commissioners 
for Human Rights and Refugees, UNICEF, the World Bank, the World Food 
Program. We also recognize the critical role these agencies play and the 
importance of all countries, including the United States, in paying 
their fair share.
    In closing, let me urge all of us to think in new terms on 
terrorism, to see it not as a clash of cultures or political action by 
other means or a divine calling but a clash between the forces of the 
past and the forces of the future, between those who tear down and those 
who build up, between hope and fear, chaos and community.
    The fight will not be easy. But every nation will be strengthened in 
joining it, in working to give real meaning to the words of the 
Universal Declaration on Human Rights we signed 50 years ago. It is 
very, very important that we do this together.
    Eleanor Roosevelt was one of the authors of the Universal 
Declaration. She said in one of her many speeches in support of the 
United Nations, when it was just beginning, ``All agreements and all 
peace are built on confidence. You cannot have peace and you cannot get 
on with other people in the world unless you have confidence in them.''
    It is not necessary that we solve all the world's problems to have 
confidence in one another. It is not necessary that we agree on all the 
world's issues to have confidence in one another. It is not even 
necessary that we understand every single difference among us to have 
confidence in one another. But it is necessary that

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we affirm our belief in the primacy of the Universal Declaration on 
Human Rights, and therefore, that together we say terror is not a way to 
tomorrow; it is only a throwback to yesterday. And together--together--
we can meet it and overcome its threats, its injuries, and its fears 
with confidence.
    Thank you very much.

Note: The President spoke at 11:13 a.m. in the Assembly Hall at the 
United Nations. In his remarks, he referred to U.N. General Assembly 
President Didier Opertti and U.N. Secretary-General Kofi Annan.