Remarks at the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe

I am by training and by profession an academic, and you may know that in the United States of America when you give a lecture, it's usually 50 minutes in length.  And so I'm quite aware that no one wants to listen to me for 50 minutes, so this will be just a few minutes and then we will turn to the floor.

Let me just say how delighted I am to be at this great organization.  The OSCE, of course, was born as the CSCE in the depths of the Cold War at a time when I think no one might have imagined that we would see the emergence of a Europe that is indeed whole, free and at peace, and a Europe that is well on its way to integrating in a way to -- that it can adopt an agenda for freedom and peace for the rest of the world as well.

But when I think of OSCE, I think of its bedrock commitment to human rights and democracy, to its values which believe, as the United States does -- and it's why it's such an important organization for us -- that one does not have to impose democracy in the world, one has to impose tyranny.  What you do is to give people the opportunity to live in democratic circumstances and that they will respond.

It is also an organization that embodies for me, having come as it has from the depths of the Cold War to where we are now, the bedrock principle that that which seemed at one time impossible is now – it seems, in retrospect, to have been potentially inevitable.  And so when I look at the countries that sit around this table and I think of the circumstances in which this organization was founded, and I think that there are any number of countries that would not have been at that table and were not at that table when this organization was founded, and I ask if anyone might have thought that this would all happen essentially through a process of peaceful change, I recognize that that which sometimes in the past had seemed impossible now we look back and we think why shouldn't it have been that way.  And that is for me a great benefit and a great inspiration as we look at world that is considerable turmoil now.

I know, too, that the OSCE has its past, it has its present, but it also has its future.  And if I look at the important work that is being done in the support of elections, in the support of peacekeeping, in the support of human rights, and in support of the security architecture that is the basis on which a Europe whole, free and at peace is emerging, I want to pledge to you that the United States will remain active with this organization, intending to continue to play a leadership role, and to use the good offices of this institution for the important tasks ahead.

And so it's really a pleasure to be here, to be with my good friend Julie Finley, our Ambassador to the OSCE.  But to an organization that was born of the Cold War and has not only survived the Cold War and helped to overcome it, but now has a bright future as a part of a world that will hopefully overcome its differences, overcome its examples and existence of tyranny, to one day be whole, free and at peace and democratic, as Europe now is.

Thank you very much.

2007/T9-6