[Public Papers of the Presidents of the United States: WILLIAM J. CLINTON (2000, Book II)]
[September 7, 2000]
[Pages 1768-1770]
[From the U.S. Government Publishing Office www.gpo.gov]



Remarks to the United Nations Security Council in New York City
September 7, 2000

    Thank you very much, Mr. President, 
Mr. Secretary-General, members of the Security 
Council. We come together in this historic session to discuss the role 
of the United Nations in maintaining peace and security. I thank 
President Konare for the moment of silence for the U.N. workers who died 
in West Timor yesterday and ask the Indonesian authorities to bring 
those responsible to justice, to disarm and disband the militias, and to 
take all necessary steps to ensure the safety of those continuing to 
work on humanitarian goals there.
    Today I would like to focus my peacekeeping remarks on Africa, where 
prosperity and freedom have advanced but where conflict still holds back 
progress. I can't help noting that this historic meeting in this 
historic Chamber is led by a President 
and a Secretary-General who are both outstanding 
Africans. Africans' achievements and the United Nations' strengths are 
evident. Mozambique and Namibia are just two success stories.
    But we asked the United Nations to act under increasingly complex 
conditions. We see it in Sierra Leone, where U.N. actions saved lives 
but could not preserve the peace. Now we're working to strengthen the 
mission. In the Horn of Africa, U.N. peacekeepers will monitor the 
separation of forces so recently engaged in brutal combat. In Congo, 
civil strife still threatens the lives of thousands of people, and 
warring parties prevent the U.N. from implementing its mandate.
    We must do more to equip the United Nations to do what we ask it to 
do. They need to be able to be peacekeepers who can be rapidly deployed, 
properly trained and equipped, able to project credible force. That, of 
course, is the thrust of the Secretary-General's report on peacekeeping 
reform. The United States strongly supports that report. It should be 
the goal of our assistance for West African forces that are now going 
into Sierra Leone.
    Let me also say a word, however, beyond peacekeeping. It seems to me 
that both for Africa and the world, we will be forced increasingly to 
define security more broadly. The United Nations was created to save 
succeeding generations from the scourge of war. War kills massively, 
crosses borders, destabilizes whole regions. Today, we face other 
problems that kill massively, cross borders, and destabilize whole 
regions.

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    A quarter of all the deaths on the planet now are caused by 
infectious diseases like malaria, TB, and AIDS. Because of AIDS alone, 
life expectancy in some African nations is plummeting by as much as 30 
years. Without aggressive prevention, the epicenter of the epidemic 
likely will move to Asia by 2010, with very rapid growth rates also in 
the new independent states.
    The affected nations must do more on prevention, but the rest of us 
must do more, too, not just with AIDS but also with malaria and TB. We 
must invest in the basics, clean water, safe food, good sanitation, 
health education. We must make sure that the advances in science work 
for all people.
    The United States is investing $2 billion a year in AIDS research, 
including $210 million for an AIDS vaccine. And I have asked our 
Congress to give a tax credit of $1 billion to speed the development in 
the private sector of vaccines against AIDS, malaria, and TB. We have to 
give the tax credit because the people who need the medicine can't 
afford to pay for it as it is. We've worked to make drugs more 
affordable, and we will do more. And we have doubled our global 
assistance for AIDS prevention and care over the last 2 years.
    Unfortunately, the U.N. has estimated that to meet out goals, we 
will collectively need to provide an additional $4 billion a year. We 
must join together to help close that gap, and we must advance a larger 
agenda to fight the poverty that breeds conflict and war.
    I strongly support the goal of universal access to primary education 
by 2015. We are helping to move toward that goal, in part, with our 
effort to provide school lunches to 9 million boys and girls in 
developing nations. For about $3 billion a year, collectively, we could 
provide a nutritious meal to every child in every developing country in 
a school in the world. That would dramatically change the future for a 
lot of poor nations today.
    We have agreed to triple the scale of debt relief for the poorest 
countries, but we should do more. This idea of relieving debt, if the 
savings will be invested in the human needs of the people, is an idea 
whose time has long since come, and I hope we will do much more.
    Finally, Mr. Secretary-General, you have 
called on us to support the millennium ecosystem assessment. We have to 
meet the challenge of climate change. I predict that within a decade, or 
maybe even a little less, that will become as big an obstacle to the 
development of poor nations as disease is today.
    The United States will contribute the first complete set of detailed 
satellite images of the world's threatened forests to this project. We 
will continue to support aggressive efforts to implement the Kyoto 
Protocol and other objectives which will reduce the environmental 
threats we face.
    Now, let me just say in closing, Mr. President, some people will listen to this discussion and say, 
``Well, peacekeeping has something to do with security, but these other 
issues don't have anything to do with security and don't belong in the 
Security Council.'' This is my last meeting; I just have to say I 
respectfully disagree. These issues will be more and more and more in 
the Security Council. Until we confront the iron link between 
deprivation, disease, and war, we will never be able to create the peace 
that the founders of the United Nations dreamed of. I hope the United 
States will always be willing to do its part, and I hope the Security 
Council increasingly will have a 21st century vision of security that we 
can all embrace and pursue.
    Thank you very much.

Note: The President spoke at 2:08 p.m. in the Security Council Chamber 
at the United Nations. In his remarks, he referred to United Nations 
Secretary-General Kofi Annan; and President Alpha Oumar Konare of Mali, 
president, United Nations Security Council .

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