USA

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. 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. 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. 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. 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. 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. 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. 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. 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. 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. 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. 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. 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. 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. 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. 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. 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. 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. 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. 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. 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. 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. 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. 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. 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.