[Weekly Compilation of Presidential Documents Volume 31, Number 39 (Monday, October 2, 1995)]
[Pages 1684-1685]
[Online from the Government Publishing Office, www.gpo.gov]

<R04>
The President's Radio Address

September 23, 1995

    Good morning. I want to talk to you today about the prospects for 
peace in Bosnia. Over the past weeks, American leadership and the 
determination demonstrated by NATO and the United Nations have helped to 
bring Bosnia closer to peace than at any time since the war began there 
4 years ago. Let me be clear: There are many tough obstacles still to 
overcome, but we are determined to press forward for a lasting peaceful 
settlement.
    At the end of the cold war, Serbian nationalism forced the breakup 
of Yugoslavia. An ugly and dangerous war broke out in the heart of 
Europe, risking an even wider conflict in the Balkans which could have 
drawn the United States and many other countries in. Bosnia, a land in 
which Muslims, Serbs, and Croats had lived together peacefully for 
centuries, was literally torn apart.
    As President, I have worked to do everything in our power to support 
the search for peace in Bosnia, to stop the conflict from spreading 
beyond its borders, and to ease the terrible suffering of the Bosnian 
people. We can't force peace on the parties; only they themselves can 
make it. That's why I have refused to let American ground troops become 
combatants in Bosnia. But we can press the parties to resolve their 
differences at the bargaining table and not on the battlefield. We will 
spare no effort to find a peaceful solution, and we will work through 
NATO to implement a settlement once the parties reach it.
    Working closely with our partners from Europe and Russia, last year 
we proposed a peace plan that would preserve Bosnia as a state with 
Bosnia's Muslims and Croats holding 51 percent of the land and 49 
percent going to the Bosnian Serbs. The Muslims and the Croats accepted 
our plan. But the Bosnian Serbs did not. Instead, they laid siege to 
Sarajevo and the other U.N.-declared safe areas, denying food, denying 
medicine, denying supplies to innocent civilians. They continued to make 
war. They refused to make peace.
    This July, as the Serbs continue their assaults against the safe 
areas, America pressed NATO and the U.N. to take a tougher stand, and 
our allies agreed. When a Bosnian Serb shell slaughtered 38 people in 
Sarajevo just 3 weeks ago, we insisted that NATO and the U.N. make good 
on their commitment to protect Sarajevo and the other safe areas from 
further attacks. We demanded that the Serbs stop offensive actions 
against the safe areas, withdraw their heavy weapons from around 
Sarajevo, and allow road and air access to the city. When they refused, 
NATO began heavy and continuous air strikes against Bosnian Serb 
military targets.
    These NATO air strikes, many, many of them flown by courageous 
American pilots and crews, convinced the Bosnian Serbs to comply with 
our demands. They stopped shelling Sarajevo. They moved their heavy 
weapons away from Sarajevo. They opened the roads and the airports to 
convoys carrying food and medicine and other supplies.
    I salute our pilots and crews and their NATO colleagues. Because 
they did their job so well, today the people of Sarajevo can walk the 
streets of their city more free from fear than at any time in many 
months. And I want to make absolutely clear that if the Bosnian Serbs 
strike again at Sarajevo or the other safe areas, NATO's air strikes 
will resume.
    Over the past weeks I also ordered our negotiators to step up their 
efforts to get the parties back to the peace negotiating table and to 
respond to shifting military circumstances in Bosnia where Croatian and 
Bosnian Government forces have made significant gains. The negotiators 
shuttled throughout the region, and they brought forth the Foreign 
Ministers of Bosnia, Croatia, and Serbia together in Geneva. Their hard 
work got the Serbs to agree to the principles of our peace plan. Thanks 
to the combination of military muscle and diplomatic determination, 
there is now a real chance for peace in Bosnia. We must seize it.
    I have instructed our negotiating team to go to New York on Tuesday 
to meet with the Foreign Ministers of Bosnia, Croatia, and Serbia and 
our allies to push the peace process forward. Then I've asked them to 
return to the region to continue their intensive shuttle diplomacy and 
to keep the parties focused on an overall settlement. As I have said, 
there's no guarantee that we can reach a settlement. There are still 
deep, deep divisions

[[Page 1685]]

among the parties. But there has been genuine progress.
    What's happening today in Bosnia demonstrates once again the 
importance of American leadership around the world at the end of the 
cold war. Just think of the extraordinary achievements of the past year: 
democracy restored to Haiti, greater peace in the Middle East and in 
Northern Ireland, Russian nuclear weapons no longer aimed at our people, 
the indefinite extension of a nuclear nonproliferation treaty, real 
progress toward a comprehensive nuclear test ban treaty, North Korea's 
agreement to end its nuclear weapons program. Each one of these is a 
product of American leadership. In the new and changing world we live 
in, America is the one country that can nearly always make a difference.
    But if we want to continue to make a difference, if we want to 
continue to lead, we must have the resources that leadership requires. I 
intend to do everything in my power to make sure our military remains 
the best fighting force in the world and that our diplomats have the 
tools they need to help those who are taking risks for peace. We must 
not let our foreign policy and America's place in the world fall victim 
to partisan politics or petty fights. Every American, Democrats, 
Republicans, independents, all of us, should agree on the need for 
America to keep leading around the world.
    That is the lesson of the progress we're seeing in Bosnia. That's 
the lesson of the foreign policy actions we've taken over the last year, 
actions that have made the world a safer place and every American more 
secure.
    Thanks for listening.

Note. The address was recorded at 1:35 p.m. on September 22 at the 
Tustin Officers' Club in Tustin, CA, for broadcast at 10:06 a.m. on 
September 23.