Europe must avoid being held prisoner by its history - Richard C. Holbrooke, Asst. Sec. for European and Canadian Affairs, May 29, 1995 - Transcript

US Department of State Dispatch, June 26, 1995

Recently, we have seen a major step forward under the leadership of Prime Minister Horn and Prime Minister Meciar. The recent agreement between Bratislava and Budapest is a step away from the vicious cycle of history--a step toward an integrated Europe. But a similar effort between Hungary and Romania has not yet succeeded.

The United States has been what I would call an "active observer" in the discussions Hungary undertook with Slovakia and Romania during the past three months. While we are delighted that the Hungarian and Slovakian Governments reached the agreement they did in March and look forward to its approval by the Parliaments, we are disappointed that Hungary and Romania have not yet reached an agreement and look forward to their doing so soon.

A host of outstanding issues remain, and the agreements that have been signed must now be implemented. We stand ready to provide our good offices as an honest broker committed to reconciliation on the basis of respect for individual human rights. But the West cannot do for Central Europeans what Central Europeans cannot--or will not--do for themselves.

We can note some other successes. We played a constructive broker role in the recent improvement of relations between Tirana and Athens and have been actively seeking to help bridge continuing differences between Rome and Ljubljana. Special Presidential emissaries are working on both the Cyprus issue and the dispute between Athens and Skopje over the name, flag, and relationship between Greece and the Former Yugoslav Republic of Macedonia.

The peace we seek in this region has deep roots. It was advanced decades ago by those Western and Central European historians who collaborated to publish the journal The New Europe during the years 1916-20. They offered a generous vision of liberal patriotism that contrasted sharply with the obsession with righting wrongs, real and imaginary, that have dominated--and damaged--Central Europe for much of this century. Their vision, rooted in shared European and American ideals, extended to the entire continent. "A new Europe," they insisted, "can only be one in which liberated nationalities consent to create, by cooperation and tolerance, a new type of federal community both large enough to secure freedom from all menace without, and large-minded enough to secure liberty for all races and sects within."

Although history took a different turn for this region, the vision remained. It animated the courageous writers and furnace-stokers of the Czech underground, the shipyard workers and intellectuals of Poland's Solidarity, the Hungarian journalist who telexed the world in the final moments of the 1956 Hungarian Revolution to say: "We are going to die for Hungary and for Europe."

Their vision, shared in the West by Monnet and Marshall, Schumann and Spaak, encompassed all of Europe; the reality of the times could not. It would be a tragedy of the highest order if now, in our time, when the vision of free nations in a broader European commonwealth is closest to reality, it were denied by divisions persisting within Central Europe itself.