Conference on Security and Cooperation in Europe Remarks at a Ceremony Commemorating the Frith Anniversary of the Signing of the Final Act in Helsinki.

I know Griffin Bell, and I know what a taskmaster he is, so I'm sure you've had a full day already and also a very gratifying day with Secretary Muskie and with Arthur Goldberg, with the distinguished Members of Congress, and with Max Kampelman and your new Chairman, Judge Griffin Bell.

This event which will take place in Madrid is one of the most important of 1980. I'm very pleased that all of you could come to Washington today to meet with the leaders of the delegation. Our public members, about 30 of you, are here in the audience, and you've .had a chance to review both the purpose of the Helsinki accords and what we hope to accomplish, working with the other nations, in November of 1980. We will have to rely on you very heavily, not only to represent our Nation and the principles on which it's founded but also, in an evocative way, a clear way, to present our beliefs and our commitments, our principles and our ideals to the rest of the world.

There is opposition abroad, as you well know, to the pursuit of the principles espoused by the 35 nations at Helsinki, and there is some skepticism here at home from others who don't understand the fundamental truth that peace on the one hand and the pursuit of human rights on the other are irrevocably interrelated. Peace and the pursuit of human rights cannot be strengthened one without the other; they cannot be successfully advanced independently of one another. That belief, which we all share, is above party, as the history of the Helsinki process proves. A Republican administration signed the accords, and now a Democratic administration is deeply committed to carrying out those agreements.

The accords embody goals and values in which Americans believe, as human beings who are struggling to build a more decent and a more humane world. The pledges given by the 35 signatories at Helsinki 5 years ago were not lightly undertaken, and they cannot be lightly abandoned or ignored. The document that was signed there, even though it was called the Final Act, was not the end of our work. It was just a fresh start on work that commenced in this Nation more than 200 years ago.

The Madrid meeting this year is designed to assess what progress has been made and, if possible, to speed its pace and to widen the scope of that progress. Like the Belgrade meeting in 1977, attended by some of you, Madrid is an opportunity to look carefully backward and also to permit us to push forward vigorously.

Some have said that we should stay away from Madrid, that we ought to drop out of the Helsinki process. Such ideas spring from ignorance of the meaning of Madrid. Some have even compared the meeting in Madrid to the Moscow Olympics, suggesting that since American athletes chose not to go to Moscow, that American diplomats and citizens should not go to Madrid. This reasoning, of course, is very confused.

As host to the Olympics, the Soviet Union sought to enjoy both the fruits of aggression in Afghanistan and the prestige and the propaganda value of being the host of the Olympics at the same time. American athletes and those of 50 other nations rejected that equation as indecent and unacceptable. I commend them. They stayed at home, at great sacrifice to themselves, and without them, the Moscow spectacular has become a pathetic spectacle.

But Madrid will not be an aggressor's propaganda festival. The Spanish are the hosts, not the Soviets. The Soviet Union will be there, as the other 34 states will be there—to give an account of the manner in which the commitments at Helsinki have been fulfilled or not fulfilled is the undertaking of the meeting at Madrid. It would certainly please those who are most guilty of violation of the principles of Helsinki, including human rights, to be freed of their obligation to account for their actions before world opinion, which will be focused upon the meeting in Madrid.

There will be no medals awarded in Madrid. It's not a wrestling match or a gymnastic tournament among diplomats. What it will test is the progress made on the international agenda of security and cooperation and the firmness of the principles by which the 35 participants agreed to be bound.

In pursuing the cause of human rights, through the Helsinki accords, there are no shortcuts. The road that we're on is the right one. As the Belgrade meeting was ending, Dante Fascell, who was our congressional chairman at the time, said, and I quote from him: "Advocacy of human rights is not a quick fix. It holds no promise of easy victories." We know that all too well. But this advocacy of human rights, no matter how difficult it might be at times and how much it is scorned at times, must be pursued. And at Madrid it will be pursued, aggressively, persistently, and with the full focus on it of world opinion.

When I became President, as a matter of fact even in my acceptance speech almost exactly a year [4 years] ago, I emphasized our commitment as a nation to human rights as a fundamental tenet on which our foreign policy was based. That commitment of mine is as deep and as important to me today as it was then. It's as central to America's interests now as when our Nation was first born. Then, as now, our commitment to human rights persists in our own country and also worldwide. Beyond Europe, we've sought in Africa, Asia, Latin America to stand behind basic principles of respect for each individual person, for fair trials, for political liberty, and for economic and for social justice. We've made it clear that the United States believes that torture cannot be tolerated under any circumstances and that officially sanctioned, so-called "disappearances" are abhorrent in any society. As we've insisted on the right of free movement everywhere, so we've worked hard to give aid to the world's refugees, compelled to flee from oppression and hardship.

As we have maintained these policies as a government, sometimes they have not had the full support of American citizens. I have often had people come to me and say, "Drop this human rights posture. It's damaging our relationship with such-and-such a dictatorship, where people are being imprisoned and where they are being hidden or where they are being killed." We have maintained our position and will continue to do so.

We pursue these policies because we recognize that both our country and our world are more secure when basic human rights are respected internationally. In pursuing our values, we enhance our own security. Let no one doubt that our words and actions have left their mark on the rest of the world. Many governments have released their political prisoners. Others have lifted states of siege, curtailed indiscriminate arrests, and reduced the use of torture. We've seen several dictatorships, some of them in this hemisphere, change into democracies, where their present leaders were freely elected by people who did not fear any further political persecution because they expressed themselves as human beings.

And because of our leadership, the defense of human rights now has its rightful place on the world agenda for everyone to see. I doubt that there is a leader on Earth who is frequently not reminded of the human rights of the citizens of that particular country and of the human rights performance of that country's neighbors or others associated with it in other parts of the world. Those who seek to deny individual rights must now answer for their actions, at least among these 35 nations. Those brave men and women struggling for liberty, often against great odds, are no longer alone. In the past, because our Nation turned its head away, they were frequently alone.

In working with the 35 Helsinki states, in North America and in Eastern Europe and in Western Europe, we pursue the same values with great vigor. The Helsinki accords commit the signatories to ease military threats and to ease international tensions, to promote progress and to respect human rights, fundamental freedoms, and the self-determination of peoples. We have never expected an uninterrupted record of progress. The behavior of the Soviet Union, in particular, has dishonored the principles of the Helsinki accords, both inside and outside its own borders.

The Soviet invasion of Afghanistan and the increasingly brutal occupation of that once free nation can no more be reconciled with the Helsinki pledges than it can be reconciled with the Charter of the United Nations. For invading a neighbor, the Soviet Union already stands condemned before the world. A hundred and four members of the United Nations condemned the Soviet Union and demanded the immediate withdrawal of its occupying troops. If they are still there at the time of the Madrid conference, we will continue the pressure for the withdrawal of those Soviet troops.

As many of you know vividly, because of the experiences of your own family and those people whom you love, Soviet authorities have also intensified at home their repression of the freedoms which they pledged at Helsinki. To promote the banishment into internal exile of Andre Sakharov, a great scientist and a great humanist, is the best known, but sadly not the only instance of such violations of the Helsinki commitment made by the Soviet Union.

More than 40 courageous men and women are now in prison or in exile just because they worked in private groups to promote the Helsinki agreement and to encourage the Soviet Union to live up to its pledges. Now they are silenced, but in Madrid, no one can silence their cause. And we will make sure— [applause] .

Although I do have importunities from some of our own citizens to lessen our commitment and our public posture concerning human rights, I have had from those who are in exile or who are persecuted in foreign countries unanimous messages, sometimes of a highly secret nature: "Mr. President, do not abandon us; do not abandon the commitment of the United States to protect our rights."

Madrid will be a sober meeting. The talk will be frank and straightforward, but we hope without polemics. We will be seeking progress, not propaganda. There is some progress, of course, which we can welcome, and we will be glad to do so. Some confidence-building measures have been implemented.

The Helsinki accords have given some impetus to the long-term process of breaking down East-West barriers [relations] ¹ and easing the flow of people and the flow of ideas across frontiers that were once almost completely closed. For example, thousands of people emigrated to the West last year from East European countries, in accord with the Helsinki undertakings. There have been recent efforts by a number of states to resolve outstanding family reunification problems with us, and we welcome those also.

¹ White House correction.

The Helsinki provisions have also helped Soviet Jews to emigrate, although the encouraging record level set in 1979 is being reduced this year. At Madrid, we will seek an explanation for that decline and a commitment by the Soviet Union to reverse it.

I might say now, as I approach the close of my remarks to you, that on all these issues at Madrid we can count on the support of the great majority of participants. This is not always the United States position in international fora. The others share the basic philosophy of international relations that underlay the Helsinki accords. Indeed, the effort to negotiate the accords originally, and now to assure their implementation, has made Western Europe and the United States recognize all the more vividly how much we share political and moral values and interests, in a time when there is so much glib talk, most of it ill advised and erroneous, about Western disharmony. The Madrid meeting can give a clear expression to our unity on fundamental values and on fundamental goals, and with that support, we can continue at Madrid to pursue the aims to which we committed ourselves at Helsinki.

We want to encourage progress in human rights performance by the Soviet Union and its allies, and we have no hesitation about submitting our own record to examination by others at Madrid. We are not perfect; we don't claim that the United States is perfect. But we're making a strong and continuing effort to improve, because preserving and extending human rights is the heart and soul of our whole system in this country.

At Madrid, we will use the CSCE process to break down even more the barriers to human contacts between the East and the West, to help with the reunification of families, to help with the movement of people and ideas and the resolution of immigration issues.

We'll try, as part of a balanced result, to achieve practical progress in the military security field.

The Helsinki session should not become primarily an arms control forum at Madrid, but the United States is prepared to test the possibility of achieving significant, verifiable, and comprehensive confidence-building measures relating directly or indirectly to weaponry, which can help and to enhance mutual security desired in East and West Europe. Madrid gives us an important opportunity to restate both our genuine desire for better East-West relations and our firm belief that the principles of reciprocity and mutual restraint are there, on which workable ties can be built.

There will be sharp differences at Madrid between the values we espouse and those which the Communist nations will seek to advance, but we will not go to Madrid looking for conflict. We approach that meeting, instead, eager for progress, determined not to abandon our principles in any instance, determined to put our views forward in the most forceful possible manner, and committed to only one contest—the struggle to advance freedom and, through freedom, mutual security.

The Helsinki accords, to us, hold a promise of a freer, more humane, and thus a more secure Europe, based not just on superpower accommodation but on the fundamental principles of international conduct. These principles require that states earn the respect of their neighbors by treating their citizens with full respect for their rights and dignity as persons. My own faith in the ultimate outcome of this struggle is undimmed. Our Nation's role must never be in doubt.

One of the best ways to express this commitment, I'd like to say in closing, is to quote from the words of Archibald MacLeish: "There are those who will say that the liberation of humanity, the freedom of man and mind, is nothing but a dream. They are right. It is. It's the American dream."