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Home , North Atlantic Council

Administration of William J. Clinton, 1999 / Apr. 23

that is doing so much to reduce crime on our By taking actions to prevent future acts of streets to our schools. Today I’m pleased to violence in our schools, we can best honor the announce the first of the grants funding these memories of those who lost their lives. community police will be awarded to 336 Thank you very much. schools and communities to help hire more than 600 police officers. Like their counterparts on Legislative Initiatives/Kosovo the streets, these school officers will work close- Q. Mr. President, you didn’t mention gun ly with the citizens they serve, with students, control. Are you going to do more on gun con- teachers, and parents, to improve campus secu- trol? rity, to counsel troubled youth, to mediate con- Q. To be clear, sir, do all hostilities in Kosovo flicts before they escalate into violence. have to end before there can be consideration I want to thank Senator Chuck Robb for his of ground troops, sir? strong leadership on this issue. By the end of The President. First of all, I know you under- the year we hope to have 2,000 new officers stand I’ve got to run over there and meet all in our schools, and I encourage all communities the people who are coming. We will have more to apply for these grants. legislative initiatives to announce in the days I also want to take this opportunity to remind ahead. As I said a couple of days ago, we will communities that they have until June 1st to have some legislative responses and efforts we apply for the Federal Safe Schools-Healthy Stu- have been working on for some time, actually. dents funds, to help them put in place com- On the other, I think our conditions are clear. prehensive violence prevention programs. Those Thank you very much. of you who were with me yesterday in Alexan- dria at T.C. Williams High School know how important the students there believe such a pro- NOTE: The President spoke at 8:18 a.m. on the gram is. These funds can be used for everything South Lawn at the White House, prior to his de- from establishing conflict resolution groups to parture for the Ronald Reagan International hiring more mental health counselors, to estab- Trade Center. In his remarks, he referred to Jon lishing new mentoring programs, to installing DeStefano, president, board of education, Jeffer- metal detectors and other security equipment. son County, CO.

Remarks at the Opening of the North Meeting on Kosovo April 23, 1999

Thank you very much, Mr. Secretary General. with them for stability, democracy, and pros- Mr. Secretary General, fellow leaders, let me perity in southeastern Europe, so that when Mr. begin by welcoming you warmly to the United Milosevic’s vision for the future is defeated, a States. We are honored to host this 50th Anni- better one can rise in its place. versary Summit of NATO. We meet to honor We will seek to do this together with our NATO’s past, to chart its future, to reaffirm European partners, and with Ukraine and with our mission in Kosovo, where NATO is defend- Russia. We will make clear what is at stake. ing our values and our vision of a Europe free, Mr. Milosevic’s forces burn and loot homes and undivided, and at peace. murder innocent people; our forces deliver food Today we send a clear message of unity and and shelter and hope to the displaced. Mr. determination: to sustain our air campaign for Milosevic fans the flames of anger between na- as long as it takes; to stand firm in our condi- tions and peoples; we are an Alliance of 19 tions for ending it; to pursue diplomatic initia- nations, uniting 780 million people of many tives to meet those conditions; to increase polit- faiths and ethnic, racial, and religious back- ical and economic pressure against the regime grounds. Mr. Milosevic knows only one way to in Belgrade; to stand by the frontline nations achieve his aims, through force; we have done threatened by Belgrade’s actions; and to work

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everything we could to resolve this matter national Trade Center. In his remarks, he referred peacefully. to Secretary General of the North But when we fight, we fight to prevail—to Atlantic Treaty Organization; and President prevail in this conflict and to build the undi- Slobodan Milosevic of the Federal Republic of vided, democratic Europe that the founders of Yugoslavia (Serbia and ). The tran- NATO envisioned 50 years ago. script released by the Office of the Press Secretary Thank you, and welcome again. also included the remarks of Secretary General Solana. NOTE: The President spoke at approximately 9:25 a.m. in the pavilion at the Ronald Reagan Inter-

Remarks at a Organization Commemorative Ceremony April 23, 1999

Mr. Secretary General, leaders of NATO, economic strength, instead of pitting it against other distinguished foreign guests, my fellow their neighbors. Americans. It is a profound honor for the The Prime Minister of , Lester Pear- to welcome NATO back to Wash- son, predicted that the NATO Pact’s achieve- ington for its 50th anniversary, an occasion to ment would ‘‘extend beyond the time of emer- honor NATO’s past, to reaffirm its present mis- gency which gave it birth, or the geographical sion in Kosovo, to envision its future. area which it now includes.’’ And he, too, was In 1949, in his acceptance speech for the right. NATO gave hope to West and Nobel Prize, the American novelist William confidence to and . Ultimately, Faulkner acknowledged the fear of nuclear holo- NATO helped break the grip of the cold war. caust that then gripped the world. But he de- Yesterday, Europe divided by an arbitrary line: clared firmly that humanity will not merely en- on one side, free people living in fear of aggres- dure, it will prevail. In that same year, 12 na- sion; on the other, people living in tyranny who wanted to be free. Today, thanks in no small tions came here to pledge to vindicate that faith. measure to NATO, most of Europe is free and They were North Americans and Europeans de- at peace. termined to build a new Europe on the ruins Today we are joined by the leaders of , of the old through a mutual commitment to , and the , whose de- each other’s security and freedom. scent into darkness helped to spark NATO’s cre- In this auditorium, the French Foreign Min- ation. Today they are a part of NATO, pledged ister, Robert Schuman, said that NATO’s funda- to defend what was too long denied to them. mental aim was not to win a war that would, So we say to Prime Minister Orban, President after all, leave Europe ravaged but to avoid such Havel, President Kwasniewski: Welcome to a war, and I quote, ‘‘by becoming, together, NATO, welcome home to the community of strong enough to safeguard the peace.’’ He was freedom. right. No member of NATO has ever been As we look to the future, we know that for called upon to fire a shot in anger to defend the first time in history we have a chance to an ally from attack. build a Europe truly undivided, peaceful, and The American Secretary of State, Dean Ach- free. But we know there are challenges to that eson, said that NATO would ‘‘free the minds vision: in the fragility of new democracies; in of men in many nations from a haunting sense the proliferation of deadly weapons and ter- of insecurity and enable them to work and plan rorism; and surely, in the awful specter of ethnic with confidence in the future.’’ And he was cleansing in southeast Europe, where Mr. right. NATO bought time for the Marshall plan. Milosevic—first in and , then It encouraged allies to pool their military and in Bosnia, now in Kosovo—has inflamed ancient

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