Bush Text: ‘On Threshold of New World of Freedom’

The following are excerpts from President Bush’s speech to the U.N. General Assembly:

The United Nations was established 44 years ago, upon the ashes of war, and amidst great hopes, and the United Nations can do great things. No, the United Nations is not perfect, it’s not a panacea for the world’s problems, but it is a vital forum where the nations of the world seek to replace conflict with consensus, and it must remain a forum for peace.

The U.N. is moving closer to that ideal, and it has the support of the United States of America. In recent years, certainly since my time here, the war of words that is often echoed in this chamber is giving way to a new mood. We’ve seen a welcome shift from polemics to peacekeeping. U.N. peacekeeping forces are on duty right now, and over the years, more than 700 peacekeepers have given their lives in service to the United Nations.

Today, I want to remember one of those soldiers of peace, an American on a mission of peace under the United Nations’ flag, on a mission, really, for all the world. A man of unquestioned bravery, unswerving dedication to the United Nations’ ideal. Lt. Col. William Richard Higgins. And I call on the General Assembly to condemn the murder of this soldier of peace, and call on those responsible to have the decency to return his remains to his family.

And let us all right now, right here, rededicate ourselves and our nations to the cause that Col. Higgins served so selflessly. The founders of this historic institution believed that it was here that the nations of the world might come to agree that law, not force, shall govern, and the United Nations can play a fundamental role in the central issue of our time, for today, there’s an idea at work around the globe, an idea of undeniable force. And that idea is freedom.

Freedom’s advance is evident everywhere--Central Europe and Hungary, where state and society are now in the midst of a movement toward political pluralism and a free-market economy. Where the barrier that once enforced an unnatural division between Hungary and its neighbors to the West has been torn down. Torn down. Replaced by a new hope for the future. A new hope in freedom.

We see freedom at work in Poland, where, in deference to the will of the people, the Communist Party has relinquished its monopoly on power, and, indeed, in the Soviet Union, where the world hears the voices of people no longer afraid to speak out or to assert the right to rule themselves.

But freedom’s march is not confined to a single continent or to the developed world alone. We see the rise of freedom in Latin America, where one by one dictatorships are giving way to democracy. We see it on the continent of Africa, where more and more nations see in the system of free enterprise salvation for economies crippled by excessive state control. East and West, North and South, on every continent we can see the outlines of a new world of freedom.

Of course, freedom’s work remains unfinished . . . but now the power of prejudice and despotism is challenged. . . .

From where we stand on the threshold of this new world of freedom, the trend is clear enough. If, for those who write the history of our times, the 20th Century is remembered as the century of the state, the 21st Century must be an era of emancipation, the age of the individual. . . .

Our challenge is to strengthen the foundations of freedom, encourage its advance and face our most urgent challenges. The global challenges of the 21st Century: economic, health, environmental well-being, the great questions of war and peace. . . .

Global economic growth, the stewardship of our planet--both are critical issues. But, as always, questions of war and peace must be paramount to the United Nations. We must move forward to limit and eliminate weapons of mass destruction.

Five years ago, at the United Nations conference on disarmament in Geneva, I presented a United States draft treaty outlawing chemical weapons. Since then, progress has been made, but time is running out; the threat is growing. More than 20 nations now possess chemical weapons or the capability to produce them, and these horrible weapons are now finding their way into regional conflict. This is simply unacceptable.

For the sake of mankind, we must halt and reverse this threat. Today I want to announce steps that the United States is ready to take, steps to rid the world of these truly terrible weapons, toward a treaty that will ban, eliminate, all chemical weapons from the Earth 10 years from the day it is signed.

This initiative contains three major elements. First, in the first eight years of a chemical weapons treaty, the U.S. is ready to destroy nearly all, 98%, of our chemical weapons stockpile, provided the Soviet Union joins the ban--and I think they will.

Second, we are ready to destroy all of our chemical weapons, 100%, every one, within 10 years, once all nations capable of building chemical weapons sign that total ban treaty.

And, third, the United States is ready to begin now. We will eliminate more than 80% of our stockpile even as we work to complete a treaty, if the Soviet Union joins us in cutting chemical weapons to an equal level, and we agree on the conditions, including inspections, under which stockpiles are destroyed.

We know that monitoring a total ban on chemical weapons will be a challenge, but the knowledge we’ve gained from our recent arms control experience, and our accelerating research in this area, make me believe that we can achieve the level of verification that gives us confidence to go forward with the ban.

The world has lived too long in the shadow of chemical warfare. So let us act together, beginning today, to rid the Earth of this scourge.

We are serious about achieving conventional arms reductions as well, and that’s why we tabled new proposals just last Thursday at the conventional forces in Europe negotiations in Vienna, proposals that demonstrate our commitment to act rapidly to ease military tensions in Europe and move the nations of that continent one step closer to their common destiny, a Europe whole and free. And the United States is convinced that open and innovative measures can move disarmament forward, and also ease international tensions. And that’s the idea behind the open skies proposal, about which the Soviets have now expressed a positive attitude.

It’s the idea behind the open lands proposal, permitting, for the first time ever, free travel for all Soviet and American diplomats throughout each other’s countries. Openness is the enemy of mistrust, and every step toward a more open world is a step toward the new world we seek. . . .

Each of these achievements is important in its own right. But they are more important still as signs of a new attitude that prevails between the United States and the U.S.S.R. Serious differences remain. We know that. But the willingness to deal constructively and candidly with those differences is news that we and indeed the world must welcome.