[Congressional Record Volume 140, Number 2 (Wednesday, January 26, 1994)]
[Extensions of Remarks]
[Page E]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Printing Office [www.gpo.gov]


[Congressional Record: January 26, 1994]
From the Congressional Record Online via GPO Access [wais.access.gpo.gov]

 
                        PEACE POWERS ACT OF 1994

                                 ______


                           HON. HENRY J. HYDE

                              of illinois

                    in the house of representatives

                      Wednesday, January 26, 1994

  Mr. HYDE. Mr. Speaker, with the Clinton administration's active 
support, the United Nations has undertaken to expand traditional 
international peacekeeping in new and troubling ways. Under the rubric 
of ``assertive multilateralism''--and with little real consultation 
with Congress--the Clinton administration and the United Nations took a 
successful humanitarian operation in Somalia and expanded it into an 
ill-conceived nation-building experiment that has turned to disaster 
resulting in the loss of nearly 30 American lives.
  Taken alone, this policy failure would be bad enough. But, it is 
merely one example of a concerted U.S.-supported U.N. effort to stumble 
into deeply rooted civil conflicts across the globe. Meanwhile, the 
Clinton administration has made little effort to explain to the 
American people what U.S. interests are served by our involvement in 
these ventures. As the United Nations has broadened peacekeeping into 
peace enforcing and even peacemaking, Congress and the American people 
have been informed only belatedly of questionable decisions to place 
U.S. Armed Forces under foreign command and to provide large amounts of 
logistical materiel and substantial funding commitments to the U.N.
  In order to address these problems, I am today introducing the Peace 
Powers Act of 1944 which would amend the United Nations Participation 
Act of 1945 primarily in the area of peacekeeping and peacemaking 
authorities. This bill will also be introduced today in the other body 
by Senator Robert Dole. A summary of the bill follows. I am pleased to 
be joined in introducing this measure by Congressman Ben Gilman, the 
ranking Republican on the House Foreign Affairs Committee; Congressman 
Floyd Spence, ranking Republican member of the Armed Services 
Committee; Congressman Larry Combest, ranking Republican member of the 
Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence; Congresswoman Olympia 
Snowe, ranking Republican member of the International Operations 
Subcommittee of the Foreign Affairs Committee; and Congressman Hal 
Rogers, ranking Republican member of the Commerce, Justice, State and 
Judiciary Subcommittee of the Appropriations Committee.

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