REMARKS BY THE PRESIDENT

TO THE UNITED NATIONS GENERAL ASSEMBLY

September 23, 2009

Excerpts with emphasis on words potentially applicable to US relations with Cuba.

We must embrace a new era of engagement based on mutual interest and mutual respect, and our work must begin now. We know the future will be forged by deeds and not simply words.

Consider the course that we're on if we fail to confront the status quo… The magnitude of our challenges has yet to be met by the measure of our actions.

Nothing is easier than blaming others for our troubles, and absolving ourselves of responsibility for our choices and our actions…

No one nation can or should try to dominate another nation. … The traditional divisions between nations of the South and the North make no sense in an interconnected world; nor do alignments of nations rooted in the cleavages of a long-gone Cold War.

The time has come to realize that the old habits, the old arguments, are irrelevant to the challenges faced by our people…They build up walls between us and the future that our people seek, and the time has come for those walls to come down…

The choice is ours. We can be remembered as a generation that chose to drag the arguments of the 20th century into the 21st; that put off hard choices, refused to look ahead, failed to keep pace because we defined ourselves by what we were against instead of what we were for...

Democracy cannot be imposed on any nation from the outside. Each society must search for its own path, and no path is perfect. Each country will pursue a path rooted in the culture of its people and in its past traditions. And I admit that America has too often been selective in its promotion of democracy. But that does not weaken our commitment; it only reinforces it. There are basic principles that are universal; there are certain truths which are self-evident -- and the United States of America will never waver in our efforts to stand up for the right of people everywhere to determine their own destiny.

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