Former British Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher, addressing an audience at the Weizmann Institute of Science, called on Western leaders this week not to disarm too rapidly in the wake of the fall of communism.
“We live still in a world full of uncertainty,” she said. “As I look around me now, I have one fear: It is that people will be taking down our defenses too quickly.”
Thatcher and her husband, Sir Denis, were due to leave Wednesday at the end of a three-day private visit as guests of the Weizmann Institute. The former prime minister of Britain was one of six honorees awarded doctorates at a special session Tuesday of the institute’s board of governors.
Another honoree was a longtime friend of Israel’s, U.S. Sen. Daniel Inouye (D- Hawaii), who was cited for “unflinching personal courage in the pursuit of dignity, justice and freedom, both at home and abroad.”
Thatcher was recognized for her “defense of freedom around the world, her valiant championing of human rights” and “her determined and enduring support for Israel and the Jewish people.”
In her address at the ceremony, Thatcher did not refer to U.S. President-elect Bill Clinton by name. But she pointedly noted that when Ronald Reagan, George Bush and she were in government in their respective countries, and had “to take the awful decision to send men into battle, we never had to ask ourselves: `Have we got the best weapons? Have we got the most advanced technology?'”
She said the three of them had learned the lesson of the earlier history of this century: If you want peace, prepare for war. That was why, she said, the West could act so decisively in response to the invasion of Kuwait by Saddam Hussein and the threat this posed to “60 percent of the world’s oil reserves.”
Thatcher, now a member of the House of Lords, earlier unveiled a plaque dedicating the Margaret Thatcher Interdepartmental Scientific Equipment Center in the chemistry department of the Hebrew University. The center was donated by the British Friends of the Hebrew University.
At a lunch in Thatcher’s honor Tuesday, Foreign Minister Shimon Peres declared: “We love you as much as you love this country — which is a very great deal.”
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