On the recordMay 6, 1999
I would just like to say one thing before I close, because you all represent, well, a broad spectrum of European opinion, and I know this has been a frustrating and difficult thing for Europe, as well as agony for the people of southeastern Europe. But I think there are a lot of things to be hopeful about here. After all, this endeavor in which NATO has been involved, we never had to do anything like this before. We had to do something like this in Bosnia, but not so much was involved by the time we actually moved in '95. I think that all of us felt when the Kosovo situation came up, we had our nightmares of Bosnia. And we all wondered if we had moved more quickly, if we could have saved more lives and avoided more difficulty there. And so here you have this unusual situation where you're trying to get 19 countries, all with their own political situations, all with their own dynamics in the country, all with their history of relating to the various countries in the region, to get together and pursue a common policy consistent with the facts on the ground. And I don't think you should be discouraged by the fact that instant results were not obtained. But we are fighting for a very important principle. The 21st century world will either be dominated by greater economic and political cooperation and harmony among peoples of different backgrounds, or it will be dominated by a disintegrationist vision of religious and racial and ethnic exclusivity. And you see it in most of the conflicts in the world today. So this is a very important thing that is being done here. And we have to prevail because I would like the troubles of the Balkans to be viewed as the last typical conflict of the 20th century, rather than the first typical conflict of the 21st century. So we have to be patient and firm and understand that this is a highly unusual thing for 19 countries to be trying to work their way through this.
Source
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