[Public Papers of the Presidents of the United States: William J. Clinton (1999, Book I)]
[May 6, 1999]
[Pages 706-708]
[From the U.S. Government Publishing Office www.gpo.gov]



Remarks in a Discussion With Kosovar Refugees in Ingelheim, Germany
May 6, 1999

    The President. First of all, let me say that I realize that all of 
you have been through incredible times and that it must be even harder 
to talk about. But I want to thank Chancellor Schroeder and the people of Germany for providing a place for 
you to be and for their support for our united action to reverse what 
has happened in Kosovo, so that you can go home again and be safe and 
free.
    Just today my wife met the first 
group of refugees from Kosovo coming to the United States. They will 
stay there, as you are staying in Germany, until we can provide the 
conditions that are necessary for people to go home.
    Most people in the world would have a hard time believing what has 
happened to you and that it has, in fact, happened. So far we have been 
very fortunate, Chancellor Schroeder and I 
and all of our Allies in NATO, in having our people, by and large, 
support what we are doing to try to stop what happened to you and to 
reverse the conditions so that you can go back.
    But it is very important that your stories be told. What Chancellor 
Schroeder said is right. In places where people who have different 
religions and different ethnic groups, different racial groups, where 
they get along together, where they work together, where they help each 
other, people find what has happened to you to be literally almost 
unbelievable. And so the world needs to know the truth of Kosovo. And we 
need to make sure that we are all strong enough to stay with you and to 
support you until you can go home.
    So again I say, I know this must be hard for you to be here talking 
to us and to all of us strangers here. But we appreciate it, and we 
would like to hear from you, to say whatever you wish to say to us about 
where you are now and what happened in Kosovo, any questions you wish to 
ask. We just want to be with you and to hear from you. And we thank you 
for taking the time to be with us.

[At this point, the discussion proceeded. Several of the Kosovar 
refugees described their experiences, and another asked what NATO was 
doing to help people left behind in Kosovo.]

    The President. It is a very hard problem, helping the people who are 
left behind, because if they send planes in there to drop supplies, they 
could be shot out of the sky. And it's also hard to drop the supplies 
and know that the Kosovar Albanians will get it, instead of having the 
Serb military or the paramilitary pick it up. So it's a problem.
    I can say that we have been working very hard to try to find some 
neutral country that we could get agreement to ship in food and medicine 
and tents, whatever is necessary for people to have some place safe to 
sleep. And we are exploring every conceivable alternative. We're even 
looking at whether we can do some

[[Page 707]]

airdrops, even though there may be some risk there, to try to get the 
food there. It is the biggest concern we have.
    Mr. Schroeder and I were just talking 
on the way in. For the refugees that are in Albania, we need to give 
them more money; we need to give the Albanian Government more money. The 
people are welcome there, but it's a poor country, so we have to help 
them. For the refugees in Macedonia, we have to have more money, but 
also we have to help more people get out of Macedonia because of the 
problems within Macedonia. There's a lot of tension there. And so 
there's only so many refugees that the country can take without having 
the democratic government of Macedonia threatened. So we have to work on 
that.
    So we have refugees coming to Germany and coming to the United 
States and elsewhere. But the ones that it's so hard for is the people 
who are still there. Now, in the last couple of days there's been a big 
increase again in the number of people coming out, so it may be that 
more people are more free to come out now. But we--I wish I could give 
you an easy, simple answer, but we are working very hard to get what 
supplies we can get into the country in way that is, A, as safe as 
possible for the people delivering the supplies and, B, is likely to be 
effective, instead of just taken over by the Serb military people on the 
ground there.
    I would like to ask a question. I would like to ask all of you in 
your lives to go back before these last terrible days, before the 
military and the paramilitary started to run you out of your homes and 
turn you out, when you were living before under the tensions and the 
prejudice of normal--more normal existence, but you were subject to this 
feeling that you would never be treated fairly. I would like to know 
more about that period.
    And when we walked in here today, I looked at all of you--there's a 
young woman back there with a shirt on from the Olympics in Atlanta in 
1996--and I could imagine that any of you could be my neighbors in 
America. Or if I visited a German city and I saw you, I would not know 
that you weren't German citizens. And I would like to know how you 
proceed with the prejudice or the hatred of the Serbs toward you. Do you 
think they hated you because you were Albanian? Do you think they hated 
you because you were Muslim, overwhelmingly? Do you think that they 
hated you because they were raised by their parents to hate you? Do you 
think they hated you because Mr. Milosevic was using that as an excuse for power? Do you 
believe what they really want is your land and your wealth, or do they 
really want the pleasure of persecuting you? How do you perceive this?
    This is very important for us because we--you have to understand, we 
spend all of our time fighting against much smaller versions of this in 
our own country. So it's important that we understand how you have 
received this in your life. Would anybody like to talk about this? Go 
ahead.

[A refugee described the history of Serbian hatred of Albanians.]

    The President. Would you like to say something?
    Q. Mr. President, they were thinking of something else--Kosovo 
supplies Serbia with a lot of agricultural products. Serbia without 
Kosovo cannot exist. The natural resources of Kosovo are very precious, 
and that is the reason why they are trying to hold to Serbia, to Kosovo.
    The President. You think that they have treated you this way because 
they want the wealth of Kosovo?
    Q. Yes, of course. Naturally, yes.
    The President. Well, what about the younger people, how do you feel?

[Several young refugees commented on their experiences with Serbian 
hatred, and the discussion continued.]

    The President. The Chancellor is 
asking another question. In your whole life did you never have one good, 
positive encounter with a Serb, someone who treated you as a human 
being, someone who was decent to you? Has this ever happened to you?

[A refugee responded that as a young child it was possible to play with 
Serb children, but later it was difficult to be friends. Others then 
described the ordeal they had experienced in being forced to leave their 
country.]

    The President. I would like to, first of all, say again to 
Chancellor Schroeder how much I appreciate 
Germany's leadership in this whole endeavor and making this place for 
you to live.
    And I would like to again say to all of you, I am very grateful that 
you came here and said what you did today. I know it was hard. But I 
listened very carefully to every one of you.

[[Page 708]]

And I wish that I could hear from the small number who have not spoken 
yet. Even the young man here who said he couldn't talk, the way he said 
it spoke a lot, because we could tell when he couldn't talk.
    I think it is very important in these days for us to do everything 
we can to find out what happened to your relatives, if you don't know 
what's happened to other family members. And as you can imagine, this is 
difficult because the camps in Albania and in Macedonia, they're growing 
so fast, so it's very hard to keep up with everyone and then have a 
register. But we will get this done. Eventually, we will have records of 
everyone and where they are, and then we can check on these matters for 
you. And I know that's hard, and we will work on that.
    But I also think it's important for you to do everything you can to 
support each other and to give opportunities to get your feelings out, 
because it is easy for the spirit to be broken in an environment like 
this, after all you've been through. And then, even if you got to go 
home, you would never be the same again, and you would be giving the 
people who have oppressed you a victory.
    And I ask you not to give them that victory. Don't let yourself be 
broken by this. Find a way to be glad that the Sun comes up in the 
morning and that you have the people around you you do. And we'll look 
for your students, and we'll look for your family members. But remember, 
you cannot give a victory to the kind of oppression you have been 
subject to. We cannot see these children robbed of their childhood. And 
the adults, the older among you, you must not let the younger people 
lose heart. And we will stay at it until you can go home again.
    Thank you.

Note: The discussion began at approximately 12:24 p.m. at the Refugee 
Reception Center. In his remarks, the President referred to President 
Slobodan Milosevic of the Federal Republic of Yugoslavia (Serbia and 
Montenegro). The transcript released by the Office of the Press 
Secretary also included the remarks of Chancellor Gerhard Schroeder of 
Germany and the Kosovar refugees. A tape was not available for 
verification of the content of these remarks.