
                         Roanoke Times
                 Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.

DATE: SUNDAY, June 5, 1994                   TAG: 9406050076
SECTION: NATIONAL/INTERNATIONAL                    PAGE: A1   EDITION: METRO 
SOURCE: Newsday
DATELINE: PORTSMOUTH, ENGLAND                                LENGTH: Medium

CLINTON PRAISES D-DAY FIGHTERS SPEECH PAYS TRIBUTE TO SACRIFICE

Standing in a chill rain at a cemetery in the English countryside filled with the graves of fallen American airmen, President Clinton vowed Saturday that the political heirs of the D-Day generation would remember its sacrifices and carry on its work of expanding democracy.

"The victory of the generation we honor today came at a high cost," he said in a somber address at the Cambridge American Cemetery and Memorial. "After D-Day it took freedom another year to reach the Elbe; it took another 44 years to reach Warsaw and Prague and East Berlin. And now it has reached Kiev and Moscow and even beyond.

"The mission of this time is to secure and expand its reach further," he declared. Then, speaking of the 3,812 Americans buried in the cemetery and the 5,126 more missing in action who are memorialized on a long marble wall, he declared: "We shall always carry on the work of these knights borne on wings."

The speech sounded the theme Clinton is to strike again at Monday's climactic ceremonies in Normandy commemorating the 50th anniversary of the D-Day invasion, the massive amphibious assault that turned the tide in World War II. Clinton, born a year after the war ended, has begun to talk in broad terms about the continuing obligations facing a new generation that has benefited from the sacrifices of the generation that fought World War II.

But the difficulty of delivering on that powerful rhetoric was underscored a few hours later when Clinton met with British Prime Minister John Major at Chequers, the British leader's official country retreat. They spent most of the session discussing the escalating nuclear crisis with North Korea and the continuing bloodshed in Bosnia, where the West has failed to end a two-year campaign of "ethnic cleansing" and civil war.

Both men urged the Serbs, Muslims and Croats to accept a peace plan and end the fighting in the former Yugoslav republics. "Continued war will not advance their positions but would continue to strain international patience," Major said. And Queen Elizabeth II alluded to Bosnia in her toast at a spectacular state dinner here Saturday night for the 14 heads of state from the countries that participated in D-Day.

"We have seen that the peace which victory brought is a fragile thing," she said, glittering in a sapphire-encrusted crown and matching earrings and necklace at the black-tie dinner at Portsmouth Guildhall. "Events 'round the world, some of them close to home in Europe, prove that to us day after day. It is up to us to make sure that the prayers of 50 years ago are truly answered by rededicating ourselves to the creation of a world at peace."

by CNB