[Weekly Compilation of Presidential Documents Volume 35, Number 18 (Monday, May 10, 1999)]
[Pages 819-821]
[Online from the Government Publishing Office, www.gpo.gov]

<R04>
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 Kosovar refugees began their remarks. One of the 
refugees asked what NATO was doing to help people left behind in Kosovo, 
with supplies and materials.]

    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 air drops, 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

[[Page 820]]

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?

[A 22-year-old refugee agreed that Serbian hatred for the Albanians is 
traditional. A student from Pristina added that Serbs do whatever they 
can to keep Albanians from being free, including closure of schools, 
imprisonment, murder, and rape. The discussion then 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 described how as a child it was possible to play with Serb 
children, but later, it was difficult to be friends. Several refugees 
then described their difficult experiences with Serbs.]

    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. 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

[[Page 821]]

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 President spoke at 12:24 p.m. at the Refugee Reception Center. 
In his remarks, he referred to President Slobodan Milosevic of the 
Federal Republic of Yugoslavia (Serbia and Montenegro). The transcript 
made available 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.