27 January 2003: Hi Pakistan
WASHINGTON: Assistant to the US President for National Security Affairs Dr Condoleezza Rice on Thursday said President George Bush has committed America's influence "to alleviating -- and, where possible, ending -- destructive regional conflicts, from the Middle East, to Kashmir, to the Congo, and beyond."
In her remarks at the International Institute for Strategic Studies, she said two years ago, President Bush told a European audience: "We share more than an alliance. We share a civilisation. Its values are universal, and they pervade our history and our partnership in a unique way."
No less than Pearl Harbour, Dr Rice said September 11 forever changed the lives of every American and the strategic perspective of the United States. September 11 produced an acute sense of our vulnerability to attacks that come with no warning. In the terrifying hours and days following the attacks, we resolved that the only true defence against a threat of this kind is to root it out at its source and address it at its fundamental and ideological core.
"A great coalition of freedom loving nations works everyday in many different ways to detect and defeat this menace. As we have been reminded in recent days, victory comes at great sacrifice, as the British and the American soldiers gave their lives in defence of freedom." With the help of coalition partners, she said US has deposed "two of the cruellest regimes of this or any time." "The Al Qaeda network has been deprived of its chief sanctuary. Half its leadership has been captured or killed, and the rest is on the run -- permanently. "But these efforts will not succeed alone. To win the War on Terror, we must win also win a war of ideas by appealing to the decent hopes of people throughout the world giving them cause to hope for a better life and brighter future and reason to reject the false and destructive comforts of bitterness, grievance, and hate. Terror grows in the absence of progress and development. It thrives in the airless space where new ideas, new hopes and new aspirations are forbidden. Terror lives when freedom dies."
"That is why we are committed to building a global trading system that is more and more free, to expand the circle of prosperity into the Americas, Africa, and the Middle East." That is why, she said President Bush has proposed a 50 per cent increase in the US development assistance, with new funding going to countries that govern justly, invest in the health and education of their people, and encourage economic liberty. "That is why the President has announced -- and Congress has approved --a $ 15 billion commitment to fight AIDS, a disease that threatens whole societies and challenges our humanity."
"And that is why the President has committed America's influence to alleviating -- and, where possible, ending -- destructive regional conflicts, from the Middle East, to Kashmir, to the Congo, and beyond." Increasingly, she said this civilisation is shared by countries throughout the world. The bankruptcy of fascism, Nazism, and imperial communism has given way to a paradigm of progress, founded on political and economic liberty. The United States, our Nato allies, our neighbours in the Western Hemisphere, Japan, and our other friends and allies in Asia and Africa all share a broad commitment to democracy, the rule of law, a market- based economy, and open trade. And since September 11th, the world's great powers see themselves as falling on the same side of a profound divide between the forces of chaos and order. "This historic change is vividly reflected in the experience of Europe. We are rapidly closing the book on centuries of European conflict, and opening a new, more hopeful chapter in which Europe is whole, free, and at peace for the first time in its history. Next year, ten European nations will join the European Union; seven will join Nato. Russia is our partner. Lingering conflicts, such as those in the Balkans, are being put to rest," she added.
