[Congressional Record Volume 140, Number 43 (Tuesday, April 19, 1994)]
[House]
[Page H]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Printing Office [www.gpo.gov]


[Congressional Record: April 19, 1994]
From the Congressional Record Online via GPO Access [wais.access.gpo.gov]

 
                           GENOCIDE IN BOSNIA

  The SPEAKER pro tempore. Under the Speaker's announced policy of 
February 11, 1994, the gentleman from Michigan [Mr. Bonior] is 
recognized for 60 minutes as the Majority Whip.
  Mr. BONIOR. Mr. Speaker, I thank you for the recognition this 
evening. I want to engage my friends and colleagues who have come to 
the floor this evening to talk about the situation in Bosnia.
  We intend to have a dialog on this issue. With me this evening are 
three distinguished Members of the House of Representatives who have 
been stalwarts, who have been passionate, who care about what is 
happening over there, and find it utterly objectionable, the loss of 
lives and the lack of attention that is being paid to those who are 
suffering so much in that war torn country.
  I am joined this evening by my good friend from Massachusetts [Mr. 
John Olver] who knows as much about this area as anybody in the House, 
I believe, and someone who has spent a good deal of time and passion 
and concern, and who has just recently come back from Bosnia, Frank 
McCloskey, a great Congressman from the State of Indiana, and Eliot 
Engel from New York, who has spent a good deal of time and concern 
about the situation in the Balkans and who has spoken up on numerous 
occasions and voiced his concern.
  Mr. Speaker, I would like to start this discussion this evening by 
posing a few questions, questions that I raised earlier on the House 
floor today.
  How many innocent people have to die in Bosnia before the world does 
something about it? How many innocent children have to be slaughtered 
in Gorazde before we respond? Are 200,000 dead Bosnians enough? Are 
16,000 slaughtered children enough? How many have died in Bosnia in 
less than 2 years? That is how many have died.
  The body count from 3 weeks of savage Serbian shelling of the Moslem 
enclave of Gorazde stands at 302, and is still mounting. Nearly 1,100 
men, women and children in Gorazde have been injured. Half the 
population has been rendered homeless.
  Mr. Speaker, this is not just a humanitarian disaster of epic 
proportions. It is one of the great mortal tragedies of our time. At 
times over the past 3 days bombs have been falling at the rate of 1 
every 20 seconds. Gorazde Hospital, which is trying to treat the sick 
and the injured, has been hit so many times it has been nearly 
destroyed. Serbian snipers randomly shoot at people as they walk the 
streets in search of shelter to get out of the line of fire. And every 
new village that Serbian troops capture on the way to Gorazde is 
another village that was burned to the ground.
  One U.N. plane has already been shot down, one British soldier has 
already been killed, and meanwhile the Moslem population in Gorazde 
continues to starve, to bleed and to die.
  Mr. Speaker, how can this happen? How can civilized nations have sat 
back silently and watched this situation unfold? 200,000 dead, 16,000 
children slaughtered. Tens of thousands of women raped. There is no 
question that the hottest places in hell are reserved tonight for the 
butchers of Belgrade, Slobodan Milosevic and the shameless leader of 
the Bosnians Serbs, Radovan Karadzic, and we cannot let them commit 
these atrocities any longer. This is nothing less than ethnic genocide, 
and we cannot be willing partners to a genocide any longer. We must 
take action.

                              {time}  2150

  We should have taken action long ago. We must take action now. The 
latest word from Bosnia is that for the third time in three days 
Bosnian Serbs have agreed to a cease-fire. But words are not what 
really matter now, Mr. Speaker. Only actions matter.
  It is clear that the Serbian words cannot be trusted. Time and again 
at the bargaining table they have lied to the United Nations. They have 
lied to the international community. They have lied to their allies, 
the Russians. And even though negotiations will and must continue, they 
have given us no reason at all to trust them now.
  The only thing that is going to stop Bosnian Serbs now is if their 
force is met by force and if they are made to realize that further 
force will get them nowhere.
  Mr. Speaker, it is incomprehensive to me that the combined powers of 
the United States of America, with a defense budget of over $270 
billion a year, and NATO, cannot stop the Bosnian Serbs.
  Some say air strikes have failed. But let us be honest. We really 
have not tried air strikes. We dropped a few bombs, then backed off 
when it got dangerous.
  It is time, Mr. Speaker, to use the full weight of United States and 
NATO warplanes in Bosnia. If the Bosnian Serbs continue to practice 
genocide and continue to dishonor the cease-fires, it is time to pound 
the Bosnian Serbs into submission. And if the Serbs continue to hit 
targets in Bosnia, then selected targets in Serbia itself ought to be 
hit in return.
  Even if the United Nations is unwilling to step in and defend the 
people of Bosnia with all guns ablazing, at the very least we must let 
the people of Bosnia defend themselves. To deny them both is 
unconscionable.
  For nearly 2 years now some of us have, including the gentleman from 
Indiana [Mr. McCloskey], and the gentleman from New York [Mr. Engel], 
the gentleman from Massachusetts [Mr. Olver], and myself, in calling 
for an end to the United States arms embargo in Bosnia, to let the 
people of Bosnia defend themselves from these brutal attacks. Picture 
yourself being subjected to bombs every 20 minutes, to your family 
being raped, to a wholesale slaughter of the children in your community 
and your family and not having the wherewithal to defend yourself 
because the international community has said no, you have an arms 
embargo on you. That is what the families in Bosnia are going through 
today. They cannot defend themselves from these brutal attacks.
  For 2 years the international community has just waited and watched 
and waited and watched and threatened and waited and then watched. Mr. 
Speaker, we have already waited far too long. We cannot wait any 
longer. Idle threats and tough talk will no longer do. It is time to 
lift the U.N. arms embargo on Bosnia today. To have imposed the arms 
embargo in the first place was incomprehensible. To have kept it in 
place so long after so much suffering is utterly shameful.
  We promised the Moslem people that Gorazde would be safe haven. We 
promised that their children and their families would be safe there. We 
promised that no harm would come to them if they trusted the United 
States.
  Well, they trusted us, Mr. Speaker. And now they are dying. Unless we 
act right now to let the Bosnian people defend themselves, unless we 
act right now to lift the arms embargo and to use the full force of the 
United States and NATO to increase air strikes, then the blood of 
Bosnia is not just on the hands of the Serbs, it is on the hands of all 
of us.

  Mr. Speaker, about an hour ago this evening I got a call from the 
State Department. There will be an announcement tomorrow that has 
already hit the wires. The United States is presenting a proposal to 
the North Atlantic Council that will do the following things:
  It would step up air strikes. It would expand the territory of the 
air strikes to include all safe areas within Bosnia. It would tighten 
the economic sanctions on Serbia, and it would increase U.N. 
peacekeeping forces.
  While I applaud these steps, I must tell my colleagues, I think we 
need to go further. These still are basically defensive steps. We need 
to be aggressive. We need to go on the offensive here. This is the only 
language that the Serbs understand. They do not understand defensive 
tactics. They do not understand cease-fires. They do not understand 
talk. The only thing that they will understand is force.
  I thank my colleagues for joining me this evening to express their 
views on this issue. They have been passionate. They have been 
concerned as humanitarians, as people who care about their fellow human 
beings.
  Mr. Speaker, I yield to them right now to express their views and to 
engage in a dialog on this most important issue that faces our country 
and certainly the international community.
  I yield to the gentleman from Indiana [Mr. McCloskey], my friend from 
Bloomington, IN.
  Mr. McCLOSKEY. Home of Indiana University, Bobby Knight, some of the 
greatest people in the world, the great school of Eastern European and 
Balkan studies and so forth.
  Congressman Bonior, I would like to thank you for your leadership and 
your eloquent concern and the way you have a voice and a way of 
speaking to and about these issues in a way that, in areas of human 
rights and international concern, one area after another, you can 
hardly be exceeded anywhere in the House.
  I recall looking up the other night at special orders and the sound 
was not up. And I thought, good, David is speaking on the Balkans and 
Bosnia. I turned the sound up and you were speaking about the concerns 
as to the genocide and the ethnic cleansing going on in another but 
related area, the Kurds.
  I just cannot say enough what a treasure you are for me. I must 
honestly say that this is, without exaggeration, one of the saddest 
days and times that I have experienced in my public life on this 
beautiful day and evening in Washington, DC. Because as we talk, as we 
look at the reason you took out this special order, the people of 
Gorazde are being besieged despite all the talk as to cease-fire, our 
representations to them as to safe havens, the simple fact is that all 
reports are, and I have had reports from Bosnia, both from Gorazde and 
Sarajevo, in recent hours, are that the slaughter is going on, 
particularly 2 or 3 hours ago.
  About 6 p.m., I talked to Harris Silajdzic, the Bosnian Prime 
Minister. I hoped somehow there could be a misunderstanding or some 
confusion on this. But I really doubt that there is.
  Mr. Silajdzic has told me that some 13 minutes before, which would 
put it at between 5 and 6 our time, that he was on the phone with 
Secretary of State Warren Christopher who in essence told him that 
there is no, quoting Mr. Silajdzic now, that ``There is no way to act 
to save Gorazde or the Serbs will get more vindictive.''
  Assuming if that is true, that sort of reminds me of what Larry 
Eagleburger said in all his justifications as to an action. It is all 
horrible. We could and should do something. But believe me, you just do 
not know how mean the Serbs can be.
  I think such a sentiment represents a horrible and chilling 
regression. As you know, one of the concerns hanging over this is that 
the Serbs have in essence captured, taken into custody troops. Today or 
in the last 24 hours, they took back heavy weapons, equipment and 
artillery and so forth that were put into U.N. custody to lift the 
siege of Sarajevo. And we are in essence possibly, and I hope I am 
wrong, probably saying to the world that maybe for the first time in 
history that the United States, the Western Alliance, NATO cannot act 
because we are afraid of what very mean, vile and criminal people may 
do even worse.

                              {time}  2200

  What does that say to the people of Bosnia? What does that say to the 
people of this entire world?
  Mr. BONIOR. What does this say to the people of Korea? What does it 
say in terms of our message all over the world, that we are not willing 
actually to back up what we say?
  Mr. McCLOSKEY. The Milosovics, the Arkans, the Schessels, Zhirnovsky, 
the leadership of North Korea.
  I might say, they are all taking us in. I heard President Clinton or 
saw President Clinton on the television tonight saying that, and he did 
not say, ``As people are dying in Gorazde,'' but that was in essence 
the context of the question, but ``With this going on tonight, we 
cannot act until we have total support and agreement with all parties 
in the Western alliance.''
  I find that to be beyond problematic, maybe, tonight. I have been 
quoted much more extensively with that concern in recent days. I do not 
want to go on and on about it.
  Mr. Speaker, I might say before I yield and bring our distinguished 
colleagues in, if I could just briefly, Mr. Speaker, give in their own 
words, perhaps, the testimony as to Gorazde and Bosnia right now, today 
and even tonight's testimony, as to this terrible ongoing atrocity.
  Tonight my office had radio contact through the Bosnian Action 
Council, with my good friend, Marshall Haris, a relatively recent State 
Department resignee, taking notes, as to a ham radio-transmitted 
statement from a person who must be a hero, because after all, he is a 
mayor, and we all know mayors by definition are heroes. I have a 
preference for mayors all over the world, having been the mayor of 
beautiful Bloomington, IN for some 11 years.
  I will never forget my first experience in all of this with a mayor 
in Osijak back in December 1991, when the young mayor there who was 
being pounded with shells, the city hall area was being pounded with 
shells at that very time, told me in our conference, ``Please, 
Congressman, move to the other side of the room, because we are less 
likely to be shelled there.''
  Tonight, as all this is going on, I wish he and the people of Gorazde 
could hear your statement, Mr. Bonior, and hear our concerns and our 
hope. Basically, in his own words, this is what could reasonably be 
transmitted, a statement from Ismet Briga, the mayor of Gorazde, 
several hours ago. I do not quite know the full implications of the 
first sentence.
  To read it as it came in:

       There is not any reason to explain how the situation in 
     Gorazde. I want you who are listening tonight to be informed 
     about the fact that genocide and a total destruction of the 
     town is going on.
       In Gorazde it is not the question of the people fight and 
     how they fight and how long they can stand it. Now a mass 
     murdering of the civilians is taking place. From today on 
     they destroy systematically, house by house. Whole families 
     are extincted,'' are being extinguished. ``Children, women 
     and old people are dying.''
       They do no longer fight a war.

  And I guess he is referring to the Serbs.

       ``They do no longer fight a war. Cold-bloodedly they kill 
     the civil population. At the end I want tonight to appeal to 
     the conscience of mankind. These appeals are directed to 
     Ghali, the U.N. Security Council, and the superpowers. I 
     appeal to you to tell your children tonight that in Gorazde, 
     innocent people are dying only for one reason, because they 
     are Muslims.
       I beg you to forward this appeal to Clinton, Yeltsin, 
     Mitterand, Kohl, and others who could prevent that but didn't 
     want to do that--Ismet Briga, Mayor of Gorazde.

  Paraphrasing some comments about 3 hours ago from my good friend, and 
he is my good friend, Bosnian Prime Minister Haris Silajdzic, as to the 
ongoing siege and slaughter at Gorazde, he told me, ``Frankly, they 
have lost 100 people today.'' I guess there is still some significant 
resistance going on, because Haris said, ``If the line collapses, we 
will have terrible consequences.''
  As I have mentioned before, Silajdzic said he had spoken with 
Christopher tonight about a half hour before he talked to me. The 
Secretary told Silajdzic there is no way to act to save Gorazde or the 
Serbs will get vindictive. Again, I say, what a signal to the Serbs and 
the world. I hope the Secretary did not say that. Silajdzic also said 
he told General Rose that he understood the concern for UNPROFOR troops 
being harmed by the Serbs, obviously, particularly those who are in the 
custody of the Serbs. The Serbs have taken UNPROFOR troops as hostages.
  However, as Silajdzic said, if we follow that logic, the Serbs could 
do anything they want in Sarajevo and in Bosnia and elsewhere, and I 
might say, not from Mr. Silajdzic tonight, but Kosovo awaits ethnic 
cleansing, which has gone on in Kosovo, ethnic cleansing is going on, 
perpetrated by the Serbs in the Sanjac, in Montenegro, in Serbia.
  Mr. BONIOR. The gentleman is absolutely right on that point. To allow 
this to continue only encourages the suppression and the repression in 
Kosovo, Montenegro, and the other places that the gentleman is 
referring to. We are just encouraging more of the same. We have watched 
it incrementally increase over time, as the West has been impotent or 
unwilling to use its power to force a showdown with these butchers.
  Mr. McCLOSKEY. When I was in Sarajevo on Easter Sunday, I was 
informed by the one remaining free but exiled Bosnian democratic leader 
of the Sanjac that every one of his colleagues, some 30 to 40 people in 
Montenegro and in Serbia, were in Serbian prisons, and according to 
Amnesty International, they were being subject to torture, and 
according to their own lawyers, Mr. Speaker, are being subject to 
torture.
  I think most eloquently, Mr. Silajdzic pleaded to me that the people 
in Gorazde have nothing but us. Maybe that is not quite true, but I 
guess what Haris is saying is that perhaps if there is any hope 
anywhere as to your voice and Mr. Olver's voice and Mr. Engel's voice 
being listened to tonight, it is to appeal once more to the conscience 
of the West, the forces of democratic action and forces of democratic 
opinion, to somehow bring it upon our leadership to act now, not after 
a bunch of committees and reviews and clearances and what not, Mr. 
President, but Silajdzic says, ``Tonight 12,000 people are wandering 
around Gorazde with nowhere to go,'' and as we know, there are more or 
less 70,000 people in that town, and many died today, but all remaining 
alive are in mortal peril.
  I asked Haris what he thought would happen, given previous 
experiences, as to the Serbs coming in on these ethnic cleansing and 
genocidal binges.
  The Prime Minister speculates that the Serbs probably will kill all 
the male population and hopefully will leave an opening for ethnic 
cleansing, that is, a forced exit to take place, a corridor being open 
for women and children and whoever to leave and be gone.
  Mr. Silajdzic noted that for 4 weeks the United Nations watched the 
Serbs coming with artillery, in tanks and in buses, like they were 
picnicking. The United Nations looked away. Silajdzic said that he had 
written a letter today to Manfred Woerner, the NATO Secretary-General, 
asking him to act.
  He noted, among other things, that a NATO ultimatum has been 
violated, and that Sarajevo is not safe, that it does not beggar the 
imagination to realize that very soon Sarajevo could be being pounded 
by shells again, obviously driving a stake into the heart of President 
Clinton's success in bringing about the ceasefire in Sarajevo, and 
obviously this whole thing imperils our crowning diplomatic achievement 
so far, the Bosnian-Croatian alliance.
  Silajdzic said that he had asked Boutros-Ghali to resign. It is 
probably not a bad idea, along with, hopefully, many people in our 
State Department and elsewhere, but Boutros-Ghali asked NATO, as we may 
know, to authorize the NATO Southern Command to act at the United 
Nation's request. Again, Mr. Silajdzic bemoans that General Rose feels 
that he is in a difficult position because of UNPROFOR hostages.
  All our ability to act, the U.N. chain of command, and all positive 
actions that we could and should take somehow to a large degree seem to 
be hanging on the simple terrorist, brutal, criminal act of taking 
hostages, and more importantly, I think, for all of us colleagues, we 
seem to be taking in lying down.
  Mr. Speaker, I thank the gentleman again, and look forward to hearing 
from our two distinguished colleagues.
  Mr. BONIOR. I thank the gentleman for his comments and insight. My 
colleagues might note that the gentleman from Indiana [Mr. McCloskey] 
has just returned, as he indicated in his comments, from Bosnia, where 
he spent a week during the Easter recess and saw firsthand and talked 
firsthand with the victims and the would-be victims, as it so happens, 
in that tragic part of the world.
  I feel strongly, as the gentleman does, that we have to meet force 
with force. It is the only thing that they understand. Everything else 
has been tried. We have waited 2 years. So many people have died. Too 
many people are suffering. I thank you for constantly raising this 
issue time and time again to try to elicit the support of this Chamber 
and our State Department.

                              {time}  2210

  Mr. McCLOSKEY. Mr. Speaker, I might just make a brief note, an 
insight from eastern Sarajevo, that some of the people there most in 
fear of Serb aggression and genocide, and this is not stressed in the 
Western press, which likes to label the governmental forces as Moslems, 
but some of the people living in fear the most, and appalled most by 
the Serb criminals are 40,000 peaceful, law-abiding democratic Serbs 
living in Sarajevo rather than under the auspices and the likes of 
Karadzic and Milosevic, and hundreds of thousands of other Serbs 
throughout Bosnia and the Bosnian-controlled areas who want nothing to 
do with these fascist thugs but they do not often get heard from, they 
are not represented in this process, indeed I think one of the real 
mistakes in this process was giving negotiational authority and 
governmental-like respect to the likes of Karadzic and company, and a 
major mistake that we spit on the sovereignty of Bosnia that I will 
never understand.
  Mr. BONIOR. These are war criminals of the highest order, these two 
especially, and people should remember the pictures of those 
concentration camps and the emaciated people that were behind bars 
there. Remember 1\1/2\, 2 years ago, and the rapes of the women that 
were perpetrated by the Serbs, 25,000, 30,000 of them. It is 
unconscionable what has happened. Yet we still coddle them. We still 
try to treat them as if they are people you can believe, who can be 
trusted, who can be negotiated with. They cannot be trusted. They have 
lied constantly. It is the constant in their behavior that we should 
recognize, the fact that they do not recognize truth and do not live by 
it.
  Mr. Speaker, I now yield to my friend, the gentleman from New York 
[Mr. Engel].
  Mr. ENGEL. Mr. Speaker, I thank the distinguished majority whip for 
yielding, and I thank him for the work that he has done, and thank my 
colleague, the gentleman from Indiana [Mr. McCloskey], for the work 
that he has done, and I just want to agree with everything that both of 
them have said.
  Shame on all of us in the West to allow this genocide to continue. 
Shame on all of us in the West for our inaction. And I think the point 
was made very clearly by both my colleagues that we have encouraged the 
Serbian aggression by our inaction.
  Mr. Speaker, much was made of the so-called new world order, and I 
think what is so shameful about this is that we are setting policy here 
for decades to come with the collapse of the Soviet Union and the 
United States remaining as the last superpower of the world, our 
generation has a chance to kind of set the agenda for the next several 
decades the way the generation right after the Second World War did, 
with the Marshal Plan and things like that which put everything in 
motion for the next 40 years, and what we are seeing here is that we 
are failing miserably to say that aggression does not pay and that the 
world in the so-called new world order will not tolerate aggression. We 
are showing the Serbs that aggression does pay and that brutality does 
pay and genocide does pay, and here it is 50 years after the Nazi era 
and we are seeing the same kinds of atrocities committed on civilian 
populations, and the world wrings its hands. Nobody can agree and so 
nobody does anything.
  Mr. Speaker, the gentleman from Indiana [Mr. McCloskey] mentioned a 
quote from Larry Eagleburger several years ago. I remember him saying 
that the Bush administration had no policy in Yugoslavia because, 
frankly, he said, ``We don't know what to do.''
  And I am sorry to say that little has changed during that time.
  Mr. Speaker, I am very glad that we are urging NATO to expand the 
scope of air strikes beyond the safe zone as designated by the United 
Nations. But for 2 years many of us have been saying the arms embargo 
ought to be lifted and that air strikes ought to be conducted, not to 
get us involved in a war, not to get us involved with our ground 
troops, but to show the Serb aggressors that we are just not going to 
sit idly by and let them slaughter innocent civilians, men, women, and 
children. We could have bombed bridges over the Drina River to prevent 
them from getting their supplies. We could have, at the very least, if 
the world would not defend the Moslems, let them defend themselves. 
That is what they have been asking for. And yet none of that was done.
  Mr. Speaker, it is not simply a matter of Monday morning 
quarterbacking or hindsight being 20/20, but all of us have said this 
for years and years.
  Last year when I was in Skopje in the former Yugoslav Republic of 
Macedonia, I interviewed refugees from Bosnia again and again who told 
me the most horrid stories about what had happened to them; people who 
were shell-shocked, they could not believe that this had happened to 
them. They had lived side by side in peacefulness for years, Moslems 
and Christians, Serbs, and everyone lived together. There was a great 
amount of intermarriage. There were neighborhoods where people 
interacted. And these people were shell-shocked. They could not believe 
that they were ethnically cleansed and driven from their homes and yet 
they felt they were the lucky ones because they at least got out with 
their lives when so many of their neighbors were slaughtered.
  Mr. Speaker, I remember one man telling me a story where he had to 
sign all his papers, his house, his business, and his cows over to his 
Serb neighbor for so-called protection in order to get out safely with 
his life, and he still, at that point, had not heard from his eldest 
son whom he was afraid was captured and killed, and he had to sign 
everything over supposedly for safekeeping so that when he returned 
back, his Serb neighbor would give it back to him, but he knew that he 
was never going back because that village, it was the village of Foje, 
had been ethnically cleansed and no more Moslems existed in the town 
and whatever property there was was either taken over or burned to the 
ground.
  Mr. Speaker, it is not going to stop here. That is the shame of it. 
We have 2 million ethnic Albanians in Kosovo. They are 90 percent of 
the population of Kosovo. Serbia occupies it, they claim it is theirs. 
The Albanians have no rights. The Albanians cannot even get jobs. They 
were purged from their jobs. They cannot teach the Albanian language. 
It is a horrid story.
  Mr. Speaker, I was there, as well, and I know that after they are 
successful, God forbid, with ethnic cleansing in Bosnia, they have the 
capacity to make Bosnia look like a tea party if they go down to Kosovo 
where there are 2 million ethnic Albanians and there are people in the 
Serb leadership that would like nothing more than to drive those 
Albanians into Albania or into Macedonia or kill them or whatever.
  Mr. Speaker, we cannot allow this to happen and we must not lift the 
economic sanctions on the Serbs. We must not dangle that in front of 
them in order for them to backtrack slightly. We must not lift any of 
the sanctions until there is a resolution not only of Bosnia but of 
Kosovo and other areas, as well, and I have legislation that would do 
that, would say that there would be no lifting of economic sanctions 
against Belgrade or against the Serbs.
  Mr. Speaker, what has been happening is criminal, as the 
distinguished majority whip has said. It is genocide and it is 
criminal, and we ought not to allow this to continue.
  Unfortunately, this debate should have been a couple of years ago 
when there was a chance to save these 200,000 people, when there was a 
chance to turn the tide, when the Serbs would have understood that the 
West would have not stayed idly by and it would have forced them to 
negotiate in good faith.
  Mr. Speaker, now they see that aggression is rewarded. Who would ever 
have believed, Mr. Majority Whip, that in 1994 we would be talking 
about genocide of this magnitude on the European Continent? It would 
have been unthinkable in 1994. And here we are, and there is no let-up 
in sight, and there are diplomatic niceties and everyone wants to agree 
before anything can happen, and meanwhile, innocent civilians are being 
killed.
  Again, shame on all of us.
  Mr. Speaker, I addressed the Inter-Parliamentary Union just several 
weeks ago where we had delegates from all over the world, as many as 
were in the United Nations were in the IPU, and I got up and said 
similar things to what I am saying now, and the indifference of the 
world community was just shocking.
  It was just absolutely shocking. We must do something.

                              {time}  2220

  Mr. BONIOR. You are absolutely right. Today it is Bosnia, tomorrow it 
is Kosovo, the next day Montenegro, and maybe the next day it starts to 
move and moves into Germany or moves into France. This has to be 
stopped now. And you are absolutely right, and until we and others 
awaken the conscience of the Western world to these atrocities, these 
unbelievable atrocities, this is going to continue.
  These people are mad. Karadzic and Milosevic are not good people.
  Mr. ENGEL. And, you know, I know you would agree with me, because I 
know of the great work that you have done in this Congress with regard 
to the Western Hemisphere, with Central America; we do not believe that 
the United States can or should be the policeman of the world or that 
we ought to involve ourselves in every conflict around the world, but I 
think there are times when morality becomes the issue, and as the last 
remaining superpower and as the champion of freedom and democracy 
throughout the world, I think we have a moral responsibility not to let 
this carnage continue.
  Mr. BONIOR. I am always reminded when we sit back and we watch these 
events unfold of Reinhold Niebuhr's great line and comment that he made 
with respect to sitting by during the Nazis' persecution of different 
ethnic groups in and around Germany and the different sexual 
orientation groups and the Catholics and eventually there was nobody 
left to defend against the onslaught of the Nazis, because everyone did 
not pay attention to anyone else's groups.
  I do not think I am overdrawing the picture or being melodramatic 
here. I think our inaction in terms of repositive response militarily 
to this issue over the last 2 years has emboldened them, has allowed 
them to continue these atrocities and these inhumanities towards our 
fellow human beings, and unless they are put to a stop, and as I said 
in my statement, it is incomprehensible to me that the Western powers, 
the United States and NATO, could not put an end to this.
  Unless it happens, it is going to keep continuing, and we will be 
here another year from now, and instead of talking about 200,000, we 
will be talking about 400,000 people being killed; instead of talking 
about 16,000 children slaughtered, we will be talking about 30,000 
children being slaughtered; instead of talking about 50,000 women being 
raped, we will be talking about 100,000 women being raped.
  If we have learned anything, it seems to me in the last 2 years, it 
should be that the defensive posture is not the right posture. The 
State Department people will tell you that we need to mix power with 
diplomacy. I do not argue with that. But in order for diplomacy to have 
some relevance, to have some strength, something behind it, you have to 
use your power.
  What in God's name are we spending $270 billion on defense for if we 
cannot use it to defend innocent people in a situation like this?
  Mr. ENGEL. And even if we are not willing to defend them, at least 
lift the arms embargo and let them defend themselves.
  Mr. BONIOR. Let them defend themselves. Exactly.
  Mr. ENGEL. Today we had a House-Senate conference on the State 
Department reauthorization, and the resolution was passed to call upon 
the President to lift the arms embargo so we finally have hopefully the 
weight of the House of Representatives and the Senate finally taking a 
stand and saying that the arms embargo ought to be lifted.
  Mr. BONIOR. I thank my colleague for his comments.
  I yield now to, I think, a gentleman who probably knows this area, 
along with the gentleman from Indiana [Mr. McCloskey], as well as 
anybody in the U.S. Congress, someone who has studied it, knows it in 
detail, and has been passionate in his concern for human rights, my 
friend, the gentleman from Massachusetts [Mr. Olver].
  Mr. OLVER. I thank the gentleman for yielding.
  I appreciate very much the enormously powerful statement that you 
have made tonight and the powerful leadership that you have provided on 
this issue over a period of time.
  I certainly want to thank the gentleman from Indiana for the 
passionate advocacy for action to stop the genocide in Bosnia that he 
has put forward over a long period of time. I am particularly humble 
that I have not actually visited the area of Macedonia and in Bosnia, 
and Croatia, a long time ago Croatia, but in this recent time, I have 
not visited there.
  Mr. McCLOSKEY. If the gentleman would yield, I might say, John, your 
learning on the area is so immense, both historically and currently, as 
the majority whip said, I do not think you can be surpassed for basic 
knowledge and brilliance in this area. But I thank you for your 
wonderful compliment.
  Mr. OLVER. That is enormously kind of you and probably totally 
undeserved.
  But I am struck by the irony that tonight, this very night, earlier 
tonight, there was a special order on a commemoration of the 79th 
anniversary of the genocide in Armenia perpetrated by the Ottoman 
Empire in this instance 79 years ago, 1915, and, of course, 50 years 
ago was the very height of the genocide in Europe which we know now as 
the Holocaust, and these really were questions about and the commented 
that never again shall these things happen.
  You know, over a 2-year period, over a 3-year period, at least, there 
have been hundreds of columns, syndicated by syndicated columnists in 
the major newspapers, the New York Times, the Washington Post in 
particular which I read quite steadily, and there have been thousands 
and thousands of column inches of reportage from the scene itself, and 
many, many editorials on the scene written in those papers.
  One of the most eloquent ones was the editorial in the Washington 
Post today. I had intended to read that editorial, ``The Bosnia 
Disaster,'' it is entitled, and I guess I will read just a little piece 
of it. It goes through an enumeration of the things that have happened, 
but it ends in the final paragraph:

       There's plenty Washington could do. It could summon this 
     country and others to a sense of the immense rolling costs of 
     international default on promises to support a victim state. 
     It could stand up to the Serbs and insist that NATO, to 
     counter the siege of ``safe areas,'' pick from a list of Serb 
     military targets extending well beyond Gorazde. It could 
     convey that Serbia's postwar place, including escape from 
     sanctions, hinges on its respect for international norms. 
     Only in such ways can President Clinton's foreign policy 
     approach and team gain the credibility they have dismally 
     lost.

  Well, that is only a part of an editorial, but it certainly gives the 
flavor of the editorial, and I would like to comment a little bit 
further.
  You have given some eloquent statements about the actual happenings 
in Gorazde and predictions about what is likely to happen that come 
from the history of what has already happened.
  The truth of the matter is that in 2 years, nearly 3 years, of 
actions by the United Nations in the former Yugoslavia, they have been 
a spectacular failure. In Croatia more than a quarter, almost a third, 
of that country is occupied by a Serbian minority which never included 
more than 15 percent of the population.
  Finally a cease-fire was reached, and the United Nations now helps 
the aggressors hold what they had conquered while those same Serb 
nationalists have reneged on every agreement to allow refugees to 
return to their homes, homes they have lived in for generations and 
hundreds of years and have reneged on their agreement to dismantle the 
militia.
  In Bosnia, more than two-thirds of the country is now occupied by the 
Serb minority that had never been more than a third of the population, 
not at least at the start of this war, and the genocide continues.

                              {time}  2230

  The measures of genocide in broad terms are well understood: 200,000 
people dead, 2 million people who have been disrupted, driven from 
their homes and are now refugees in various other parts of Bosnia and 
the former Yugoslavia and other parts of Europe; thousands, tens of 
thousands, as the gentleman from Michigan has said, our majority whip, 
of women who have been raped as a part of the terror involved there; 
Roman Catholic churches and Moslem mosques which have been destroyed by 
the hundreds in cities that have been ethnically cleansed. Cities and 
towns, dozens of cities and towns of 10,000 to 50,000 people which were 
80 or 90 percent Moslem, for instance, where not a single Moslem lives 
on, where the people have been driven out or slaughtered, one or the 
other. The measures of the genocide are legion.
  Interestinly, in all the cases of ethnic and religious or even tribal 
wars in countries around the world, look at Kurdistan, Cambodia, 
Liberia, the Untied Nations has at least acted honorably when it acted. 
I say that in Bosnia the United Nations has directly contributed to the 
genocide, contributed to the genocide by the arms embargo that was 
voted by the United Nations. The arms embargo on Bosnia, remember that 
Bosnia is a member of the United Nations, recognized by the world as a 
sovereign state, but that arms embargo made genocide possible. The Serb 
nationalists, that minority, never more than a third of the population, 
took complete advantage of that embargo. The arms embargo on the 
Bosnian Government, the legitimate United Nations member, the Bosnian 
Government, enforced by the United Nations, left the victims of the 
genocide unable to defend themselves. The same arms embargo essentially 
had no effect upon the ability of the Serb insurgents, the Serb 
nationalists, that minority, to get all the arms that they needed 
because those arms, the heavy weaponry, artillery, tanks, every form of 
heavy weaponry, that was available to the former Yugoslavian Army, was 
provided to the Serb nationalists and continues to be provided and 
resupplied continuously and totally across the borders from Serbia into 
Bosnia, so that the Bosnians, the legitimate Bosnian Government, the 
Government of the people, as my colleagues have pointed out, there are 
hundreds of thousands of loyal Serbs and Croats a part of the Bosnian 
entity, part of wanting to have a multi-ethnic society. And even in 
that community, in that country, something close to 20 percent of all 
families were intermarried across those religious gulfs that seemed to 
have been so dramatic.

  In any case, the right of self-defense is guaranteed by the United 
Nations Charter to member states. The right of self-defense is a 
constitutional right that is cherished by every American, in individual 
ways, and in family ways, by our Nation. The denial of the right of 
self-defense to Bosnia seems to me is absolutely immoral. I have said 
that on many, many occasions.
  The disaster of Bosnia is overwhelming. It is not just the piece of 
land which is no larger than the State of Maine, that was a land where 
most Americans probably have their major images from the Winter 
Olympics from just 10 years ago, a land where Roman Catholics, Moslems, 
Orthodox, all Slavs, lived side by side, perhaps grudgingly, but 
peacefully along with many other ethnic groups as well, in smaller 
numbers, but those were the three major groups: Roman Catholic, Croat, 
perhaps the Serb Orthodox, Moslems, all of them Slavs, speaking the 
same language. In some communities it was the large majority of one or 
the other; in some communities it was two groups in equal numbers, and 
in some communities it was all three groups in virtually equal numbers. 
That was a kind of community it was, with that much intermarriage. It 
is not even the 200,000 who have died or the 2 million refugees; we 
have seen the heaps of bodies most recently in Rwanda and earlier in 
Cambodia, the pictures coming out of Liberia and other places, we have 
seen the refugees by the millions, and maybe we have seen so many that 
large numbers like this simply have made us so cynical and jaded that 
we do not even care any more about this sort of thing.
  But the ethnic cleansing went on. The bread lines that were 
bombarded, people trying to bury their dead that were being bombarded 
with artillery while they were trying to honor their dead and bury 
them; the concentration camps, the people, from babes in arms to 
octogenarians lined up and shot; 2 million refugees driven from 
centuries-old homes. Who can forget those concentration camps, the 
image of torture and starvation? The United Nations and the European 
community, and, yes, we the United States, have contributed within the 
United Nations to a lot of that to happen. Who can forget the children 
playing soccer in their playgrounds, being mortared and slaughtered; 
children, little boys, 8-year-old and 10-year-old kids being 
slaughtered? And, yes, the United Nations and the European community 
and, yes, we allowed that to happen.
  Who can forget the images of the hospitals being bombarded? The 
hospital in Gorazde being bombarded, virtually destroyed while people 
are being treated in the basement by those who are trying to save and 
make life, trying, still, to follow their Hippocratic Oath and provide 
health care to people who are being slaughtered at the same time?
  The shame in all these things is that it has happened in deliberate 
and calculated and open defiance of the United Nations. The United 
States, the greatest Nation in the history of the world, NATO, 
supposedly the greatest military alliance in the history of the world, 
the United Nations, the most universal legislative body in the history 
of the world, openly, deliberately defied in all their collective 
impotence, all their collective impotence, that this genocide was 
carried out in the very eyes of the world.
  Mr. BONIOR. If the gentleman will yield on that term, I think that is 
a very apt and proper description of what is happening here; it is 
collective impotence. That is the problem--one of the problems, many 
problems in this whole puzzle. It seems to me we need to assert our own 
independent leadership if the international community will not accept 
their responsibilities. We need to lead, we need to take this by the 
throat and lead. We cannot accede to the Brits and others who would not 
have us go further in our efforts to bring justice in this horrific 
situation.

  We have got to lead. That is what I think we are all saying tonight. 
We are calling upon the Administration to lead. These steps that they 
announced this evening are positive steps, no question about it; 
additional airstrikes, more peacekeeping troops, tightening the 
sanctions on the Serbs. But they are defensive in nature; we need to 
have a more positive aspect to this. Lifting the arms embargo is 
certainly one way to do it.
  Keeping the means and avenues of communication and diplomacy open are 
certainly a big part of it, but I think those avenues can only be 
enhanced by showing the Serbs that we are serious about our concern, 
about using our military might in this situation.
  Mr. OLVER. The point about leadership here: The United States Senate 
has passed a resolution recognizing the illegal nature of the arms 
embargo, in not allowing that sovereign nation to defend itself, to 
obtain the weapons to defend itself against that enormously well-armed, 
well-supplied insurgency. By a vote of 87 to 9 it is in the budget 
which we are working under this year that the United States should 
unilaterally, because of the illegal nature of that embargo, lift that 
embargo.

                              {time}  2240

  Mr. BONIOR. I think it is time we go on record expressing our own 
views on this as well. I was hoping actually the other day on the 
conference, going to conference on the State Department authorization 
bill, we would have had that opportunity. It had not happen. But we 
ought to seek and find an opportunity to express ourselves in that 
issue as we move forward in these days.
  Mr. ENGEL. Mr. Speaker, today, as I mentioned before, there was a 
conference on the State Department reauthorization, and the House and 
Senate did put that in the bill and go on record.
  Mr. BONIOR. I am pleased to hear that.
  Mr. ENGEL. I hope we will have the opportunity in the very near 
future to vote on it, and at least it is some small positive step. The 
frustration, of course, now is that we are dealing with small steps 
that at this stage of the carnage does not have much--does not do that 
much. But if these things had been done a while back, it would have 
been different. But at least we can attempt to change it.
  And there is just one thing I want to say, that if we are not going 
to defend these people, then we ought to make sure that the civilian 
populations in Gorazde and other places are able to be safe supposedly 
with these safe havens. I mean the hypocrisy of designating safe zones 
and then not allowing them to be safe.
  Mr. BONIOR. They become killer zones.
  Mr. ENGEL. Exactly.
  Mr. OLVER. It is like shooting fish in a barrel. That is what it is 
in those safe zones, particularly in Gorazde, and prior to that in 
Srebrenica.
  In any case, yes, they are small steps, but important steps, because 
the tragedy of what has happened in Bosnia, the tragedy of this 
disaster in Bosnia, to take the title of that editorial in the 
Washington, Post, the tragedy for peace in this world, is overwhelming. 
One billion people live in the predominantly Moslem nations, and the 
specter of two million secular Moslems, Western Moslems, unable to get 
fair and humane treatment by any standard has struck a blow at the very 
foundations of the major secular Muslim nations, and Moslem 
fundamentalism will multiply because of the Bosnian experience and what 
has happened in that country, and many of those countries are our 
allies, like Egypt, and Pakistan, and Turkey.
  The shame is that all of our protestations of the Holocaust of 50 
years ago, or the Armenian genocide of 79 years ago, that it could not 
happen again, are simply--all of those protestations are hollow if we 
do not stop this one. It has happened before our very eyes daily on 
CNN.
  Mr. BONIOR. On television.
  Mr. OLVER. People see it on television all over the world in that 
technicolor, in all those newspapers that have seen this awful, dismal 
disaster of policy over the years. The tragedy is that the Presidents' 
words issued by both President Bush and then by President Clinton, 
repeated by President Clinton, to warn Serbia that they would not be 
allowed to extend their genocidal policy to Kosovo are proven silly if 
this is allowed to hold in Bosnia. Serbia has already reduced the 90 
percent Albanian population to servitude essentially, to involuntary 
servitude. They are second class citizens. They cannot hold jobs. They 
do not have their schools. Their language has been proscribed. Their 
colleges and schools have been closed. The shame is that the United 
Nations, the U.N. power enforced in Haiti, Burma, and 100 other places 
we can mention--the tragedy is that the Serbs, never greater than one-
third of the Bosnian population, can exterminate, or remove, eliminate, 
two-thirds of the population with impunity with the United States, and 
United Nations, and the European Community wringing their hands in 
shame and embarrassment. Any nation looking to scapegoat a minority 
could look at these results, and I say to my colleagues:

  Choose your location, whether it's in Asia, or the Middle East, or 
Eastern Europe or Africa. You can choose your place, and we could name 
50 other places where this could happen, and no one would have the 
moral authority to do anything about it.
  It is indeed a tragedy, and I do applaud the suggestion that we would 
step up air strikes and make all safe areas once and for all safe, 
tighten the sanctions. The sanctions ought to be tightened tight as a 
drum--economic sanctions on Serbia. The air strikes ought to go to the 
destruction of the weapon supplies, the weapon depots, the fuel depots, 
of insurgents in Bosnia and interdict the border so that resupply 
cannot occur. That is what it ought to include. But it also should 
include lifting this immoral, immoral arms embargo on the people of 
Bosnia.
  It is time to act. There is no longer time to talk about this. It is 
time to act.
  Mr. ENGEL. Mr. Speaker, there is one point that he made, I think it 
is also very appropriate to say, that the Moslems of Bosnia are secular 
Moslems, and what this dose is it just proves the point, unfortunately, 
of madmen like Saddam Hussein and others who say, ``Look at the West; 
they won't defend Moslems even when they're secular, when they're 
wronged,'' and the point that this ultimately leads to an increase in 
Moslem fundamentalism I think is a very, very important point because 
it sends the absolute wrong message that we ought to be sending to the 
Middle East and to the part of the world, and it again proves the point 
of all the people like Saddam Hussein, Iran and Iraq, who want to whip 
up hatred against the West, who say that the West by its very nature is 
anti-Moslem. This just to them proves their point.
  So again the implications are far broader than simply the 
implications in Bosnia, and I think that is a very excellent point to 
mention.
  Mr. BONIOR. Or Korea, as well, where we threaten and say that we will 
not allow certain----
  Mr. OLVER. Who would believe it?
  Mr. BONIOR. Why should they believe it? Exactly.
  I would just conclude by yielding to the gentleman from Indiana [Mr. 
McCloskey], my friend, and then let me say, ``Thank you,'' to my two 
friends from New York and Massachusetts for the contribution.
  Mr. McCLOSKEY. I say again to the distinguished majority whip, 
``Thank you again, Mr. Bonior, for this opportunity.'' Just one short 
observation:
  I know in many ways we know this from our basic knowledge and 
particularly garnered in travel, but I think particularly in Bosnia 
right now, if the American people, the Congress, the President, would 
realize the awesome, almost mystical respect and gratitude that the 
democratic peoples of Bosnia feel for American leadership and the 
American people, they would be impressed beyond belief. In many ways we 
are the only people in the world that they look to at this particularly 
dire point with trust, with gratitude, and with hope. That, along with 
our diplomatic and political achievements in the area, are on the verge 
of being squandered and destroyed. I hope everyone would reflect on 
that, and I guess in conclusion I would like to ask the majority whip a 
question.

  I say to the gentleman, ``I appreciate your eloquent assertions of 
need for air strikes, real air strikes worthy of the name, but if NATO 
means to discuss this possibility on a maybe basis, or whatever, on 
Friday, there may be no people left in Gorazde except Serb occupiers. 
Do you think that, if the President were to usurp leadership tomorrow 
or tonight, whatever, by conference call to tell our allies in Europe 
that we're going to do it, it's over for the Serbs, that with that 
leadership exerted it would get majority support on the House floor?''

                              {time}  2258

  Mr. BONIOR. I believe so. I think the people of this country and our 
colleagues have witnessed this tragedy long enough, and I think they 
would support the President in that action.

                          ____________________