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Text of President Clinton's
address to the nation
Thursday night
June 10, 1999
Web posted at: 10:04 PM EDT (0204 GMT)
Text of President Clinton's address to the nation about the end of
NATO bombing in Yugoslavia, as transcribed by the Federal
Document Clearing House:
My fellow Americans, tonight, for the first time in 79 days, the skies
over Yugoslavia are silent. The Serb army and police are
withdrawing from Kosovo. The 1 million men, women and children
driven from their land are preparing to return home. The demands
of an outraged and united international community have been met.
I can report to the American people that we have achieved a
victory for a safer world, for our democratic values, and for a
stronger America.
Our pilots have returned to base. The airstrikes have been
suspended. Aggression against an innocent people has been
contained and is being turned back.
When I ordered our armed forces into combat, we had three clear
goals: to enable the Kosovar people, the victims of some of the
most vicious atrocities in Europe since the Second World War, to
return to their homes with safety and self-government; to require
Serbian forces responsible for those atrocities to leave Kosovo; and
to deploy an international security force, with NATO at its core, to
protect all the people of that troubled land, Serbs and Albanians
alike.
Those goals will be achieved. Unnecessary conflict has been brought
to a just and honorable conclusion.
The result will be security and dignity for the people of Kosovo,
achieved by an alliance that stood together in purpose and resolve,
assisted by the diplomatic efforts of Russia.
This victory brings a new hope that when a people are singled out
for destruction because of their heritage and religious faith and we
can do something about it, the world will not look the other way.
I want to express my profound gratitude to the men and women of
our armed forces and those of our allies. Day after day, night after
night, they flew, risking their lives to attack their targets and to
avoid civilian casualties when they were fired upon from populated
areas.
I ask every American to join me in saying to them, "Thank you.
You've made us very proud."
I'm also grateful to the American people for standing against the
awful ethnic cleansing, for sending generous assistance to the
refugees and for opening your hearts and your homes to the
innocent victims who came here.
I want to speak with you for a few moments tonight about why we
fought, what we achieved and what we have to do now to advance
the peace and, together with the people of the Balkans, forge a
future of freedom, progress and harmony.
We should remember that the violence we responded to in Kosovo
was the culmination of a 10-year campaign by Slobodan Milosevic,
the leader of Serbia, to exploit ethnic and religious difference in
order to impose his will on the lines of the former Yugoslavia.
That's what he tried to do in Croatia and Bosnia and now in Kosovo.
The world saw the terrifying consequences: five hundred villages
burned; men of all ages separated from their loved ones to be shot
and buried in mass graves; women raped; children made to watch
their parents die; a whole people forced to abandon in hours
communities their families had spent generations building.
For these atrocities, Mr. Milosevic and his top aides have been
indicted by the International War Crimes Tribunal for war crimes
and crimes against humanity.
I will never forget the Kosovar refugees I recently met. Some of
them could barely talk about what they had been through. All they
had left was hope that the world would not turn its back.
When our diplomatic efforts to avert this horror were rebuffed, and
the violence mounted, we and our allies chose to act. Mr. Milosevic
continued to do terrible things to the people of Kosovo. But we were
determined to turn him back. Our firmness finally has brought an
end to a vicious campaign of ethnic cleansing.
And we acted early enough to reverse it, to enable the Kosovars to
go home. When they do, they will be safe. They will be able to reopen
their schools, speak their language, practice their religion, choose
their leaders and shape their destiny.
There will be no more days of foraging for food in the cold
mountains and forests. No more nights of hiding in cellars, wondering
if the next day will bring death or deliverance. They will know that
Mr. Milosevic's army and paramilitary forces will be gone, his 10
years of repression, finished.
NATO has achieved this success as a united alliance, ably led by
Secretary General Solana and General Clark. Nineteen democracies
came together and stayed together through the stiffest military
challenge in NATO's 50-year history.
We also preserved our critically important partnership with Russia.
Thanks to President Yeltsin, who opposed our military effort, but
supported diplomacy to end the conflict on terms that met our
conditions. I'm grateful to Russian envoy Chernomyrdin and Finnish
President Ahtisaari for their work, and to Vice President Gore for
the key role he played in putting their partnership together.
Now, I hope Russian troops will join us in the force that will keep the
peace in Kosovo, just as they have in Bosnia.
Finally, we have averted the wider war this conflict might well have
sparked. The countries of Southeastern Europe backed the NATO
campaign, helped the refugees, and showed the world there is more
compassion than cruelty in this troubled region. This victory makes
it all the more likely that they will choose a future of democracy,
fair treatment of minorities, and peace.
There are formidable challenges.
First, we must be sure the Serbian authorities meet their
commitments. We are prepared to resume our military campaign,
should they fail to do so.
Next, we must get the Kosovar refugees home safely. Minefields will
have to be cleared. Homes destroyed by Serb forces will have to be
rebuilt. Homeless people in need of food and medicine will have to
get them. The fate of the missing will have to be determined. The
Kosovar Liberation Army will have to demilitarize as it has agreed to
do. And we in the peacekeeping force will have to ensure that
Kosovo is a safe place to live for all its citizens, ethnic Serbs as well
as ethnic Albanians.
For these things to happen, security must be established. To that
end, some 50,000 troops from almost 30 countries will deploy to
Kosovo. Our European allies will provide the vast majority of them.
America will contribute about 7,000.
We are grateful that during NATO's air campaign, we did not lose a
single serviceman in combat. But this next phase also will be
dangerous. Bitter memories will still be fresh, and there may well be
casualties.
So we have made sure that the force going into Kosovo will have
NATO command and control and rules of engagement set by NATO.
It will have the means and the mandate to protect itself while doing
its job.
In the meantime, the United Nations will organize a civilian
administration while preparing the Kosovars to govern and police
themselves. As local institutions take hold, NATO will be able to turn
over increasing responsibility to them and draw down its forces.
Our third challenge will be to put in place a plan for lasting peace
and stability in Kosovo and through all the Balkans. For that to
happen, the European Union and the United States must plan for
tomorrow, not just today.
We must help to give the democracies of Southeastern Europe a
path to a prosperous shared future, a unifying magnet more
powerful than the pull of hatred and destruction that has
threatened to tear them apart.
Our European partners must provide most of the resources for this
effort, but it is in America's interest to do our part as well.
A final challenge will be to encourage Serbia to join its neighbors in
this historic journey, to a peaceful democratic united Europe.
I want to say a few words to the Serbian people tonight. I know that
you too have suffered in Mr. Milosevic's war. You should know that
your leaders could have kept Kosovo as a part of your country
without driving a single Kosovar family from its home, without killing
a single adult or child, without inviting a single NATO bomb to fall on
your country.
You endured 79 days of bombing, not to keep Kosovo a province of
Serbia, but simply because Mr. Milosevic was determined to
eliminate Kosovar Albanians from Kosovo, dead or alive.
As long as he remains in power, as long as your nation is ruled by an
indicted war criminal, we will provide no support for the
reconstruction of Serbia. But we are ready to provide humanitarian
aid, and to help to build a better future for Serbia too, when its
government represents tolerance and freedom, not repression and
terror.
My fellow Americans, all these challenges are substantial, but they
are far preferable to the challenges of war and continued instability
in Europe. We have sent a message of determination and hope to all
the world. Think of all the millions of innocent people who died in this
bloody century because democracies reacted too late to evil and
aggression.
Because of our resolve, the 20th century is ending, not with helpless
indignation, but with a hopeful affirmation of human dignity and
human rights for the 21st century. In a world too divided by fear
among people of different racial, ethnic and religious groups, we have
given confidence to the friends of freedom and pause to those who
would exploit human difference for inhuman purposes.
America still faces great challenges in this world, but we look
forward to meeting them. So tonight I ask you to be proud of your
country and very proud of the men and women who serve it in
uniform. For in Kosovo we did the right thing. We did it the right way.
And we will finish the job.
Good night and may God bless our wonderful United States of
America.
Copyright 1999 The Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material
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