YouSaid · the spoken record

Bill Clinton

lines on the record: 46
first: 1997-09-24
most recent: 1998-09-24
sittings or episodes: 2
sources: un-general-debate

Every line below is reproduced as it was said and linked to the record it came from. Nothing here is summarised or generated. Directory · Search · Corrections

“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.”
1998-09-24 · UN General Assembly · General Debate, Session 53 (1998)
“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 we affirm our belief in the primacy of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, and therefore that together we say that terror is not a way to tomorrow.”
1998-09-24 · UN General Assembly · General Debate, Session 53 (1998)
“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 as 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, between 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 of 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.”
1998-09-24 · UN General Assembly · General Debate, Session 53 (1998)
“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 and 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 will also 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 United Nations Development Programme, the Office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights and the Office of United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees, the United Nations Children’s Fund, the World Bank and the World Food Programme.”
1998-09-24 · UN General Assembly · General Debate, Session 53 (1998)
“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 Convention and 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.”
1998-09-24 · UN General Assembly · General Debate, Session 53 (1998)
“I agree very much with the spirit expressed by these words of Mohammed: “Rewards for prayers by people assembled together are twice those for prayers 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 practise, 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?”
1998-09-24 · UN General Assembly · General Debate, Session 53 (1998)
“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 to pass on brighter possibilities to our 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 11 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 with and respect for the Muslim world. We will continue to look for common values, common interests and common endeavours.”
1998-09-24 · UN General Assembly · General Debate, Session 53 (1998)
“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 licence to kill; but that is not our understanding of Islam. A quarter of the world’s population is Muslim, from Africa to the Middle East to Asia and to the United States, where Islam is one of our fastest growing faiths. There are over 1,200 mosques and Islamic centres in the United States, and that 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 honour Islam.”
1998-09-24 · UN General Assembly · General Debate, Session 53 (1998)
“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 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 believe that terrorism’s principal fault line centres on what they see as an inevitable clash of civilizations. This 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 values and Islamic civilization and values. I believe this view is terribly wrong.”
1998-09-24 · UN General Assembly · General Debate, Session 53 (1998)
“Poverty, inequality and 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 programme. Nevertheless, our resolute opposition to terrorism does not mean we can ever be indifferent to the conditions that foster it. The most recent United Nations 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, Jr., 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.”
1998-09-24 · UN General Assembly · General Debate, Session 53 (1998)
“Often in my own experience I have seen that 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 towards 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.”
1998-09-24 · UN General Assembly · General Debate, Session 53 (1998)
“We can measure each attack in 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.”
1998-09-24 · UN General Assembly · General Debate, Session 53 (1998)
“Every bomb, every bomb 10 threat, has an insidious effect on free and open institutions; the kinds of institutions everyone in this body is 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 United Nations agencies, people are struggling to build better futures based on bonds of trust connecting them with 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.”
1998-09-24 · UN General Assembly · General Debate, Session 53 (1998)
“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 1990s. Today, terrorists take advantage of greater openness and the explosion of information and weapons technology. The new technologies of terror 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.”
1998-09-24 · UN General Assembly · General Debate, Session 53 (1998)
“Not the Palestinians and Israelis, who still die year after year, for all their progress towards peace. Not the people of Algeria, enduring a 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. None of those victims were American. But every one was a son or 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.”
1998-09-24 · UN General Assembly · General Debate, Session 53 (1998)
“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, 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 destroyed a Jewish community centre in Buenos Aires. Not the people of Kashmir and Sri Lanka, killed by ancient animosities that cry out for resolution.”
1998-09-24 · UN General Assembly · General Debate, Session 53 (1998)
“But we know that 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 represented here, is immune.”
1998-09-24 · UN General Assembly · General Debate, Session 53 (1998)
“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; even here in New York, in one of our most public buildings; and most recently, on 7 August, in Nairobi and Dar-es-Salaam, where Americans who devoted their lives to building bridges between nations — people very much like all of those present — died in a campaign of hatred against the United States. Because we are blessed to be a wealthy nation, with a powerful military and a 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.”
1998-09-24 · UN General Assembly · General Debate, Session 53 (1998)
“It is a continuing defiance of article 3 of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, which says 9 “Everyone has the right to life, liberty and security of person.” Here at the United Nations, 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 the Assembly 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.”
1998-09-24 · UN General Assembly · General Debate, Session 53 (1998)
“Still, as every person in this Hall 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 bedevilled by ethnic, racial, religious and tribal hatreds, by the spread of weapons of mass destruction, by the almost frantic efforts 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 twentieth century.”
1998-09-24 · UN General Assembly · General Debate, Session 53 (1998)
“Let me begin by thanking the Assembly for its very kind and generous welcome and by noting that, at the opening of this fifty-third session of the 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 fiftieth 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 the credit for that belongs to the United Nations.”
1998-09-24 · UN General Assembly · General Debate, Session 53 (1998)
“We have the knowledge; we have the intelligence; we have the energy; we have the resources for the work before us. We are building the necessary networks of cooperation. The great question remaining is whether we have the vision and the heart necessary to imagine a future that is different from the past - necessary to free ourselves from destructive patterns of relations with each other and within our own nations and to live a future that is different. A new century in a new millennium is upon us. We are literally present at the future, and it is the great gift we are obligated to leave to our children.”
1997-09-24 · UN General Assembly · General Debate, Session 52 (1997)
“Let me say that we also strongly support expanding the Security Council to give more countries a voice in the most important work of the United Nations. 10 In more equitably sharing responsibility for its successes, we can make the United Nations stronger and more democratic than it is today. I ask the General Assembly to act on these proposals this year so that we can move forward together. At the dawn of a new century so full of hope but not free of peril, more than ever we need a United Nations where people of reason can work through shared problems and take action to combat them, where nations of goodwill can join in the struggle for freedom and prosperity and where we can shape a future of peace, progress and the preservation of our planet.”
1997-09-24 · UN General Assembly · General Debate, Session 52 (1997)
“We continue to be, as we have been, its largest contributor. We are committed to seeing the United Nations succeed in the twenty-first century. This year, for the first time since I have been President, we have an opportunity to put the question of debts and dues behind us once and for all and to put the United Nations on a sounder financial footing for the future. I have made it a priority to work with our Congress on comprehensive legislation that would allow us to pay off the bulk of our arrears and assure full financing of America's assessment in the years ahead. Our Congress's actions to solve this problem reflect a strong bipartisan commitment to the United Nations and to America's role within it. At the same time, we look to Member States to adopt a more equitable scale of assessments.”
1997-09-24 · UN General Assembly · General Debate, Session 52 (1997)
“His gesture highlights the potential for partnership between the United Nations and the private sector, in contributions of time, resources and expertise. I hope more will follow his lead. In this area and others, the Secretary-General is aggressively pursuing the most far-reaching reform of the United Nations in its history - not to make the United Nations smaller as an end in itself, but to make it better. The United States strongly supports his leadership. We should pass the Secretary-General's reform agenda at this session. On every previous occasion I have addressed this Assembly, the issue of our country's dues has brought the commitment of the United States to the United Nations into question. The United States was a founder of the United Nations. We are proud to be its host. We believe in its ideals.”
1997-09-24 · UN General Assembly · General Debate, Session 52 (1997)
“When the nations of the world gather again next December in Kyoto for the Conference of the Parties to the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change, all of us - developed and developing nations - must seize the opportunity to turn back the clock on greenhouse-gas emissions so that we can leave a healthy planet to our children. In these efforts, the United Nations no longer can, and no longer need, go it alone. Innovative partnerships with the private sector, non-governmental organizations and the international financial institutions can leverage its effectiveness many times over. Last week a truly visionary American, Ted Turner, made a remarkable donation to strengthen the United Nations development and humanitarian programmes.”
1997-09-24 · UN General Assembly · General Debate, Session 52 (1997)
“We see it in nourished bodies of once-starving children, in the full lives of those immunized against disease, in the bright eyes of children exposed to education through the rich storehouse of human knowledge, in refugees cared for and returned to their homes and in the health of rivers and lakes restored. The United Nations must focus even more on shifting resources from handouts to "hand ups", on giving people the tools they need to make the most of their own destinies. Spreading ideas and education and technology - the true wealth of nations - is the best way to give the people the chance to succeed. The United Nations must continue to lead in ensuring that today's progress does not come at tomorrow's expense.”
1997-09-24 · UN General Assembly · General Debate, Session 52 (1997)
“Finally, the United Nations has a special responsibility to make sure that as the global economy creates greater wealth, it does not produce growing disparities between the haves and have-nots or threaten the global environment, our common home. Progress is not yet everyone's partner. More than half the world's people are two days' walk from a telephone, literally disconnected from the global economy. Tens of millions lack the education, the training and the skills they need to make the most of their God-given abilities. The men and women of the United Nations have expertise across the entire range of humanitarian and development activities. Every day they are making a difference.”
1997-09-24 · UN General Assembly · General Debate, Session 52 (1997)
“To strengthen democratic institutions - the best guarantors of human rights - we must pursue programmes to help new legal, parliamentary and electoral institutions get off the ground. To punish those responsible for crimes against humanity, and to promote justice so that peace endures, we must maintain our strong support for the United Nations war- crime tribunals and truth commissions. And before the century ends, we should establish a permanent international court to prosecute the most serious violations of humanitarian law. The United States welcomes the Secretary General's efforts to strengthen the role of human rights within the United Nations system and his splendid choice of Mary Robinson as the new High Commissioner for Human Rights. We will work hard to make sure that she has the support she needs to carry out her mandate.”
1997-09-24 · UN General Assembly · General Debate, Session 52 (1997)
“In a world that links rich and poor, North and South, city and countryside in an electronic network of shared images in real time, the more these universal rights take hold, the more people who do not enjoy them will demand them. Armed with photocopiers and fax machines, e-mail and the Internet; supported by an increasingly important community of non-governmental organizations, they will make their demands known, spreading the spirit of freedom - which, as the history of the last 10 years has shown us, ultimately will prevail. 9 The United Nations must be prepared to respond - not only by setting standards but by implementing them. To deter abuses, we should strengthen the United Nations field operations and early-warning systems.”
1997-09-24 · UN General Assembly · General Debate, Session 52 (1997)
“Our common goal should be for the CTBT to enter into force as soon as possible. I ask for of you to support that goal. The United Nations second core mission must be to defend and extend universal human rights and to help democracy's remarkable gains endure. Fifty years ago the United Nations Universal Declaration of Human Rights stated the international community's conviction that people everywhere have the right to be treated with dignity, to give voice to their opinions and to choose their leaders; that these rights are universal - not American rights, not Western rights, not rights for the developed world only, but rights inherent in the humanity of people everywhere. Over the past decades these rights have become a reality for more people than ever, from Asia to Africa, from Europe to the Americas.”
1997-09-24 · UN General Assembly · General Debate, Session 52 (1997)
“Here too, the United Nations must lead, and it has led - from the United Nations Special Commission in Iraq to the International Atomic Energy Agency, now the most expansive global inspection system ever devised to police arms-control agreements. When we met here last year, I was honoured to be the first of 146 leaders to sign the Comprehensive Nuclear-Test-Ban Treaty (CTBT), our commitment to end all nuclear tests for all time, the longest-sought, hardest- fought prize in the history of arms control. It will help prevent the nuclear Powers from developing more advanced and more dangerous weapons. It will limit the possibilities for other States to acquire such devices. I am pleased to announce that today I am sending this crucial Treaty to the United States Senate for ratification.”
1997-09-24 · UN General Assembly · General Debate, Session 52 (1997)
“I also applaud the steps that Members are taking to implement the Declaration on Crime and Public Security that the United States proposed two years ago, calling for increased cooperation to strengthen every citizen's right to basic safety, through cooperation on extradition and asset forfeiture, shutting down grey markets for guns and false documents, attacking corruption and bringing higher standards to law enforcement in new democracies. The spread of these global criminal syndicates also has made all the more urgent our common quest to eliminate weapons of mass destruction. We cannot allow them to fall into or remain in the wrong hands.”
1997-09-24 · UN General Assembly · General Debate, Session 52 (1997)
“Already, these international crime and drug syndicates drain up to $750 billion a year from legitimate economies. That sum that exceeds the combined gross national product of more than half the nations in this Hall. These groups threaten to undermine confidence in the fragile new democracies and market economies that so many of you are working so hard to see endure. Two years ago I called upon all the members of this Assembly to join in the fight against these forces. I applaud the recent United Nations resolution calling on its Members to join the major international anti-terrorism conventions, making clear the emerging international consensus that terrorism is always a crime and never a justifiable political act. As more countries sign on, terrorists will have fewer places to run or hide.”
1997-09-24 · UN General Assembly · General Debate, Session 52 (1997)
“The United Nations cannot build nations, but it can help nations build themselves by fostering legitimate institutions of government, monitoring elections and laying a strong foundation for economic reconstruction. This week the Security Council will hold an unprecedented ministerial meeting on African security, which our Secretary of State is proud to chair, and which President Mugabe, Chairman of the Organization of African Unity, will address. It will highlight the role the United Nations can and should play in preventing conflict on a continent where amazing progress towards democracy and development is occurring alongside still too much discord, disease and distress. In the twenty-first century our security will be challenged increasingly by interconnected groups that traffic in terror, organized crime and drug smuggling.”
1997-09-24 · UN General Assembly · General Debate, Session 52 (1997)
“At this very moment, the United Nations is keeping the peace in 16 countries, often in partnership with regional organizations such as NATO, the Organization of American States, the Association of South-East Asian 8 Nations and the Economic Community of West African States, avoiding wider conflicts and even greater suffering. Our shared commitment to more realistic peacekeeping training for United Nations troops, a stronger role for civilian police and better integration between military and civilian agencies - all these will help the United Nations fulfil these missions in the years ahead. At the same time, we must improve the United Nations capabilities after a conflict ends to help peace become self-sustaining.”
1997-09-24 · UN General Assembly · General Debate, Session 52 (1997)
“The United Nations continues to keep many nations away from bloodshed: in El Salvador and Mozambique; in Haiti and Namibia; in Cyprus; and in Bosnia, where so much remains to be done but can still be done because the bloodshed has ended. The United Nations record of service has left a legacy of sacrifice. Just last week we lost some of our finest sons and daughters in the crash of a United Nations helicopter in Bosnia. Five were American, five German, one Polish and one British - all citizens of the world we are trying to make, each a selfless servant of peace. The world is poorer for their passing.”
1997-09-24 · UN General Assembly · General Debate, Session 52 (1997)
“Just since the end of the cold war, each year there have been more than 30 armed conflicts in which more than 1,000 people have lost their lives - including, of course, a quarter of a million killed in the former Yugoslavia and more than half a million in Rwanda. Millions of personal tragedies the world over are a warning that we dare not be complacent or indifferent; trouble in a far corner can become a plague on everyone's house. People the world over cheer the hopeful developments in Northern Ireland, grieve over the loss of innocent lives and the stalling of the peace process in the Middle East and long for a resolution of the differences on the Korean peninsula, between Greece and Turkey or between the great nations of India and Pakistan as they celebrate the fiftieth anniversary of their birth.”
1997-09-24 · UN General Assembly · General Debate, Session 52 (1997)
“The core missions it has pursued during its first half century will be just as relevant during the next half century: the pursuit of peace and security, promoting human rights and moving people from poverty to dignity and prosperity through sustainable development. Conceived in the cauldron of war, the United Nations first task must remain the pursuit of peace and security. For 50 years the United Nations has helped prevent world war and nuclear holocaust. Unfortunately, conflicts between nations, and within nations, have endured. From 1945 until today, they have cost 20 million lives.”
1997-09-24 · UN General Assembly · General Debate, Session 52 (1997)
“Through this web of institutions and arrangements, nations are setting the international ground rules for the twenty-first century, laying a foundation for security and prosperity for those who live within them, while isolating those who challenge them from the outside. This system will develop and endure only if those who follow the rules of peace and freedom fully reap their rewards. Only then will our people believe that they have a stake in supporting and shaping the emerging international system. The United Nations must play a leading role in this effort, filling in the fault lines of the new global era.”
1997-09-24 · UN General Assembly · General Debate, Session 52 (1997)
“We see this strategy taking shape on every continent: in expanded military alliances, such as the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO), its Partnership for Peace and its partnerships with a democratic Russia and a democratic Ukraine; in free trade arrangements, such as the World Trade Organization and the global Information Technology Agreement, and in the movement towards free-trade areas by nations in the Americas, the Asia-Pacific region and elsewhere around the world; in strong arms-control regimes, such as the Chemical Weapons Convention and the Treaty on the Non-Proliferation of Nuclear Weapons; in multinational coalitions with zero tolerance for terrorism, corruption, crime and drug trafficking; and in binding international commitments to protect the environment and safeguard human rights.”
1997-09-24 · UN General Assembly · General Debate, Session 52 (1997)
“Over the past five years, nations have begun to put that strategy in place through a new network of institutions and arrangements, with distinct missions, but a common purpose: to secure and strengthen the gains of democracy and free markets while turning back their enemies.”
1997-09-24 · UN General Assembly · General Debate, Session 52 (1997)
“We are all vulnerable to the reckless acts of rogue States and to an unholy axis of terrorists, drug traffickers and international criminals. These twenty-first-century predators feed on the free flow of information, ideas and people we cherish. They abuse the vast power of technology to build black markets for weapons, to compromise law enforcement with huge bribes of illicit cash and to launder money with the keystroke of a computer. These forces are our enemies. We must face them together because no one can defeat them alone. To seize the opportunities and move against the threats of this new global era, we need a new strategy of security.”
1997-09-24 · UN General Assembly · General Debate, Session 52 (1997)
“Never in the course of human history have we had a greater opportunity to make our people healthier and wiser, to protect our planet from decay and abuse and to reap the benefits of free markets without abandoning the social contract and its concern for the common good. Yet today's possibilities are not tomorrow's guarantees. We have work to do. 7 The forces of global integration are a great tide, inexorably wearing away the established order of things. But we must decide what will be left in its wake. People fear change when they feel its burdens but not its benefits. They are susceptible to misguided protectionism and to the poisoned appeals of extreme nationalism, and ethnic, racial and religious hatreds. New global environmental challenges require us to find ways to work together without damaging legitimate aspirations for progress.”
1997-09-24 · UN General Assembly · General Debate, Session 52 (1997)
“Early in the twenty-first century, more than 20 of this Assembly's members - home to half the earth's population - will lift themselves from the ranks of low-income nations. Powerful forces are bringing us closer together, profoundly changing the way we work, live and relate to each other. Every day, millions of our citizens on every continent use laptops and satellites to send information, products and money across the planet in seconds. Bit by bit, the information age is chipping away at barriers - economic, political and social - that once kept people locked in and ideas locked out. Science is unravelling mysteries in the tiniest of human genes and in the vast cosmos.”
1997-09-24 · UN General Assembly · General Debate, Session 52 (1997)
“Five years ago, when I first addressed this Assembly, the cold war had only just ended and the transition to a new era was beginning. Now, together, we are making that historic transition. Behind us, we leave a century full of humanity's capacity for the worst and its genius for the best. Before us, at the dawn of a new millennium, we can envision a new era that escapes the twentieth century's darkest moments, fulfils its most brilliant possibilities and crosses frontiers yet unimagined. We are off to a promising start. For the first time in history, more than half the people represented in this Assembly freely choose their own Governments. Free markets are growing, spreading individual opportunity and national well-being.”
1997-09-24 · UN General Assembly · General Debate, Session 52 (1997)