DRAFT II: 5/23/78 6:00 pm

RALPH BUNCHE

Mrs. Bunche, members of the Bunche family, Ambassador Young, excellencies, distinguished guests, ladies and gentlemen:

I must say I was looking forward with eager anticipation to Ambassador Young's remarks earlier this evening. It's always exciting when Ambassador Young speaks. . . . In fact, in the interests of saving time the White House had designated me to issue the "clarification" of anything controversial he said, so you wouldn't have to wait till the morning. In any case it did not prove necessary.

We meet here tonight to honor Ralph Bunche, one of our country's genuine heroes in this century.

Ralph Bunche embodied two of the great revolutions of America's modern history. His life, his career, his achievements represented a watershed in both our unending quest for equality at home, and our undertaking of responsibilities for global peace.

One of the greatest qualities of this nation has been
its capacity to grow, our constant dedication to making our
performance match our ideals. As at home our history has
been a continuing struggle to realize in life the justice
and liberty that have been our declared goals from our
beginning, so in the pursuit of peace we have grown from an
early faith in the virtues of isolation to an understanding
that we cannot truly fulfill our moral values if we do not
take on responsibilities for peace and human progress
commensurate with our capacities.

Throughout our history, for Americans, our country's
greatness has always rested not on its material strength but
on its moral purpose. For our first century and a half this
nation was an exemplar of freedom, a haven for the oppressed
from many lands. In this century as we took our first steps
toward world leadership, we became a bulwark of international
peace and security. Today the survival of the democratic

nations, and the hopes of all peoples, for independence,
security, economic progress and human rights rest to a great
extent upon the United States.

America's Founding Fathers knew that the noble experiment
they were launching had meaning not only for America but for
the world. The principles of freedom and justice in whose name
they created a nation were universal ideals. They wrote "all
<u>men</u> are created equal." (Of course, today they would have to
write "all <u>persons</u> are created equal.")

Thus I have always felt that our efforts to bring peace,
to improve the welfare of our fellow human beings around the
world, to promote liberty and security and justice, are not an
esoteric concern of foreign policy specialists but an expression
of our most deeply felt values.

Ralph Bunche's career was an expression of those values.
As an officer in the U.S. State Department he was one of the

founding fathers of the United Nations, whose service he
joined soon after the War. One of his concerns was the
process of decolonization, which the United States strongly
encouraged, and which has nearly tripled the number of
independent sovereign states in the world community. Then
in the Middle East, where his brilliant mediation of the 1949
Armistice agreements earned him the Nobel Peace Prize; and in
the Congo, and in Cyprus, his skill and tireless efforts were
pioneering steps in the development of the UN's capacity for
peacekeeping. This peacekeeping capability which he helped
build is seen to this day -- most recently in Lebanon, and on
the disengagement lines in the Sinai and on the Golan Heights
-- and is available as a vital instrument for the world
community.

As a United Nations diplomat, he was a citizen of the
world. But we Americans can be forgiven if we remain proudly
convinced that the confidence that other nations had in him,

through the many bitter conflicts which he helped mediate,
derived in great part from the fact that he so well embodied
the commitment of the American people to those goals which he
so ably served.

I have found in my own experience that other nations
have an extraordinary faith in America even when some of us
seem to have lost it; I have found that other nations and
peoples continue to believe that we embody the last best hope
of mankind, even when some in this country have been consumed
by self-hatred and obsession with our failings. Our heritage
and our example have meaning for the world even if some among
us disparage them. Indeed it may be that freedom and justice
are valued more highly where they are absent than where, as
here, they are often taken for granted.

There can be no doubt of this country's international
commitment to human rights and racial justice. This has been
a goal of many administrations. This is a dominant issue of

our age, within nations as well as among nations. We
Americans know from our own experience that the goal of
racial justice is both compelling and achievable. Our
nation's support for this principle in Southern Africa and
elsewhere is not simply a matter of foreign policy but an
imperative of our own moral heritage.

In the summer of 1976 the United States Government
produced the first steps of progress toward a negotiated
settlement in both Rhodesia and Namibia. In Rhodesia the
white minority regime which had pledged never to accept
majority rule "in a thousand years" accepted the British-
American formula for a transition to majority rule in 18-24
months. In Namibia, the South African Government agreed
with us on a program which substantially met the existing
proposals of the United Nations for independence, majority
rule, and an end to racial discrimination in Namibia. We
urged the South African Government, as well, to heed the

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warning signals and bring a rapid end to the institutionalized
inequality and denial of basic human rights known as
apartheid.

Since that time the struggle in Southern Africa has
been at the forefront of global diplomacy. Vigorous efforts
have been made by the Carter Administration to bring the
Rhodesia and Namibia negotiations to a successful conclusion.
The negotiations have been complex; passions are high; the
situation has been made infinitely more difficult by the
unacceptable interference of outside expeditionary forces
escalating regional struggles into a dimension of global
ideological rivalry.

The President will have broad support in this country
for efforts to bring about a negotiated compromise furthering
majority rule and minority rights. And he will have broad
support for any measures taken to prevent disruption of the

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peace process by outside military forces who have no
legitimate business interfering in African conflicts.

In the best of circumstances, mediation is never an
easy task. Ralph Bunche once remarked of the Middle East
negotiation: "Every time you blew your nose, you'd offend
someone. There was a crisis every day." I am sure Andy
Young knows the feeling.

An Israeli participant in the Rhodes talks of 1949
remarked of Bunche: "He knew when to be persuasive and
gentle, when to be firm, and even when it paid to be sardonic
or gruff." This participant recalled a moment in 1949 when
both Arabs and Israelis seemed particularly recalcitrant.
Bunche had had the thoughtful notion to order from a local
manufacturer two sets of ceramic plates, inscribed "Rhodes
Armistice Talks 1949," which were intended by Bunche as
souvenirs for the delegations when the agreement was signed.
Bunche called the delegations into his room when the nego-

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tiation seemed hopelessly stalled. He showed them the plates, and said he had intended them to be a surprise. But if no agreement was reached, he could not give them out.

"I'll break them over your heads," he suggested.

Thus it may not be fully understood how one wins the Nobel Peace Prize!

As Ralph Bunche knew, successful mediation does not depend only on the self-evident virtue of our negotiators or the abstract desirability of our proposals. One has to have a sensitivity to the concerns of both sides, a willingness to use persuasion and leverage and a cold perception of how both sides can be brought to see a fair compromise as their own best interest. Sometimes both sides have to be brought to understand that partial measures can be a step toward ultimate achievement and that the best can be the enemy of the good. Both sides, no matter how valid their aims, have to accept the discipline of compromise if peaceful

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settlement is to be possible. And it may be the responsibility
of a mediator to slow down, rather than accelerate, the
pressures if peaceful change is to be encouraged. There must
be positive incentives as well as negative, if the parties
are to be encouraged to move voluntarily in the directions
desired. The role of the mediator, as Ralph Bunche under-
stood, involves a responsibility of detachment, impartiality,
steadiness, and the inner conviction to perservere in the
face of attacks, sometimes from both sides simultaneously.

In a true negotiation the goal is not the victory of
one side over the other but a blueprint for coexisting peace-
fully and ultimately moving from coexistence to cooperation.
Such are the goals in Southern Africa, in the Middle East,
in Cyprus -- in the many areas Ralph Bunche wrestled with and
whose conflicts tragically persist.

He knew that there would be no final end to man's
travails, that the task of peacemaker was a requirement of

devotion and faith. He knew the limits of man's goodness;
but he knew also that the wisest of realists are those who
seek to transform reality by acts of faith and courage. All
great human and moral achievements began as dreams before
they were made real. Our morality provides us the vision to
conceive great ends and the courage to persevere towards
their achievement.

Ralph Bunche set us our moral example. He marked the
way for those who have the fortitude to follow. He enriched
our lives. He taught us our responsibilities. He set a
standard of excellence, integrity, compassion, and commit-
ment. It remains to us to honor him not only by this memorial
but by rededication to his ideals.