[Congressional Record Volume 140, Number 76 (Thursday, June 16, 1994)]
[House]
[Page H]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]


[Congressional Record: June 16, 1994]
From the Congressional Record Online via GPO Access [wais.access.gpo.gov]


                              {time}  1020
 
            ADMINISTRATION POLICIES ON HAITI AND NORTH KOREA

  (Mr. SOLOMON asked and was given permission to address the House for 
1 minute and to revise and extend his remarks and include extraneous 
matter.)
  Mr. SOLOMON. Mr. Speaker, listen to these headlines from yesterday's 
news reports.
  The first one says, ``South Korea and U.S. lack strength to repel 
initial strike by North.''
  Then right below, we have, and listen carefully, ``U.S. poised for 
invasion of Haiti within 2 months.''
  Mr. Speaker, this is scandalous.
  This administration has got its priorities way out of whack.
  We have vital national interests in Korea. We have none in Haiti.
  We face a major military threat in Korea. We face none from Haiti.
  Yet the administration appeases North Korea repeatedly, while 
readying to send boys to die in Haiti.
  They have it absolutely backward.
  We desperately need to build up our forces in Korea, now.
  And that means we simply cannot afford to have our resources diverted 
to a place like Haiti.
  When it comes to foreign policy, this administration seems to have a 
learning disability.
  What will it take for this administration to come up with a foreign 
policy that makes sense?

               [From the Washington Times, June 15, 1994]

     S. Korea, U.S. Lack Strength to Repel Initial Strike by North

                 (By Rowan Scarborough and Bill Gertz)

       If North Korea and the United States go to war, it will 
     likely start with the North unleashing one of the heaviest 
     artillery barrages in the history of warfare, followed by a 
     mass invasion into South Korea and the quick capture of its 
     capital, Seoul, according to U.S. officials.
       Combined U.S. and South Korean ground and air forces are 
     incapable right now of stopping the initial thrust. The two 
     countries would eventually prevail, however, in a casualty-
     ridden conflict, relying on American troop reinforcements and 
     massive air strikes, said the officials, who are monitoring 
     the crisis over North Korea's defiant development of nuclear 
     weapons.
       Administration estimates just the number of dead and 
     wounded in the tens of thousands in the war's first day 
     alone.
       The prospect of a long, bloody conflict is prompting some 
     key members of Congress to urge President Clinton to act now 
     to beef up American forces in the region.
       They said adding to the 37,000 U.S. troops now would send 
     an unmistakable message that America is serious about 
     stopping the isolated Stalinist government from deploying 
     atomic weapons and invading the South.
       ``I would not hesitate'' to move more soldiers and ships 
     into the region, said Rep. Ike Skelton, Missouri Democrat and 
     a senior member of the House Armed Services Committee. ``They 
     have to put in some more ground troops,'' he said in an 
     interview yesterday. ``Power does carry with it a great deal 
     of deterrence.''
       ``I think we could stop a huge incursion, but I'm convinced 
     we would have huge casualties, principally from the 
     artillery,'' Mr. Skelton said.
       Sen. John McCain, Arizona Republican, is working on a 
     resolution that may be debated in the Senate today. It would 
     urge the administration to bolster defenses in the region in 
     addition to imposing economic sanctions.
       Mr. McCain is calling on Mr. Clinton to dispatch aircraft 
     carrier task forces, tactical fighter squadrons and more 
     attack helicopters to the region. He also wants B-52 bombers 
     posed on airfields in Guam.
       ``If the North Koreans are saying that economic sanctions 
     will be viewed as an act of war, then I think we at least 
     have to be prepared.'' Mr. McCain said yesterday.
       The senator plans to leave Friday for South Korea, where he 
     will visit officials in Seoul and U.S. commanders in the 
     field. Upon his return, he plans to offer an amendment to the 
     pending 1995 defense bill that incorporates the troops' 
     needs, if the Clinton administration has not acted by then.
       ``So far they have done very little in my view,'' he said.
       A Senate defense aide said promilitary lawmakers are 
     concerned that four years of cutting the defense budget may 
     have left the armed forces unable to quickly deploy the tens 
     of thousands of troops needed to augment South Korea's 
     636,000-man army.
       ``The fact of the matter is we couldn't do Desert Storm 
     again, so there is concern over whether we're prepared in 
     South Korea,'' said the aide, referring to the buildup of 
     550,000 American troops in the Gulf between August 1990 and 
     January 1991.
       U.S. forces would fight one of the world's largest armies, 
     a well-trained, disciplined force of over 1 million soldiers, 
     two-thirds of whom are dug in within 50 miles of the border 
     and within 100 miles of Seoul.
       The capital itself its within range of the North's 10,000-
     plus artillery arsenal. Many pieces are protected by hardened 
     shelters--able to pop out, fire and then roll back into 
     hiding.
       ``The way they train, there is no way we can get a clear 
     idea of whether they are planning an attack,'' said a senior 
     U.S. official. ``The key ingredient of their strategy is 
     surprise.''
       Robert Gaskin, who while an analyst at the Pentagon, 
     conducted a two-year study of conflict scenarios on the 
     Korean Peninsula, said war could break out ``with very little 
     warning.''
       Now an analyst at Business Executives for National 
     Security, Mr. Gaskin said a key problem of defending South 
     Korea is that its army has a strategy of forward defense that 
     ``is not suited to the attack they are likely to receive.''
       ``The ROKs [Republic of Korea] have to rethink their 
     strategy,'' he said. ``They have to face up to the question: 
     Are they willing to let Seoul fall in order to preserve their 
     army?''
       The current South Korean strategy is to ``stand and die'' 
     in defending Seoul, Mr. Gaskin said. ``If they do that, they 
     lose,'' he said.
       Not only are the South and its American allies outnumbered, 
     but it also would take months to get five U.S. divisions air- 
     and sea-lifted to Korea while war raged.
       Pentagon officials say resupplying U.S. and South Korean 
     forces would be a major wartime problem. South Korea weapons 
     stocks are dangerously low and could not sustain a major 
     conflict .
       Mr. Gaskin said he is convinced the North Koreans will not 
     attack unless they can mount a lightning attack that would 
     shatter South Korean forces strung out along the 150-mile 
     demilitarized zone separating the two countries.
       ``They would cause a tremendous amount of confusion, chaos 
     and loss of communications.''
       After artillery barrages, the North Koreans likely would 
     mass their forces in one spot for an assault.
       South Korean artillery would counter with heavy attacks and 
     encircling movements by ground forces, Mr. Gaskin said.
       The North Koreans would probably resort to unleashing 
     deadly chemical weapons--including nerve agents--in artillery 
     and missile attacks against the South, Mr. Gaskin said.
       U.S. and South Korean forces do have an advantage in air 
     power and could send hundreds of high-tech fighters and 
     attack jets against the North's advancing forces. The North 
     Koreans would reserve its most modern jets--Russian-designed 
     MiG-29s--to defend Pyongyang. As a result, U.S. advanced 
     fighters would quickly achieve air superiority, Mr. Gaskin 
     said.
       Pentagon spokeswoman Kathleen deLaski said yesterday that 
     the Pentagon is trying to interest the South Koreans in 
     counter-battery radar, which is used to locate and destroy 
     enemy artillery.
       Defense Secretary William Perry traveled to South Korea 
     recently and sought, unsuccessfully, to have the South Korean 
     government purchase more advanced U.S. weaponry.
                                  ____


               [From the Washington Times, June 15, 1994]

       United States Poised for Invasion of Haiti Within 2 Months

                            (By Bill Gertz)

       Deputy Secretary of State Strobe Talbott has told the 
     United Nations the United States is set to invade Haiti 
     within the next two months to oust its military-installed 
     government, according to confidential U.N. documents.
       Mr. Talbott and other State Department officials said the 
     action would be the best method of restoring democracy and 
     returning to power the Caribbean country's elected president, 
     Jean-Bertrand Aristide.
       ``The U.S. administration considers that an invasion of 
     Haiti is its best option,'' Dante Caputo, the United Nations' 
     point man on Haiti, said in a May 23 memorandum to Secretary-
     General Boutros Boutros-Ghali.
       The Clinton administration favors military action as a way 
     of countering domestic critics of President Clinton's 
     wavering foreign policy on Haiti, according to the memorandum 
     drawn up after meetings with Mr. Talbott and other State 
     Department officials, who were not identified.
       In a separate transcript of a May 24 meeting of top U.S. 
     officials, Mr. Caputo said: ``The Americans will not be able 
     to stand for much longer, until August at the latest, the 
     criticism of their foreign policy on the domestic front. They 
     want to do something; they are going to try to intervene 
     militarily.''
       Mr. Boutros-Ghali then ``wonders if President Aristide 
     could invoke Article 51 of the [U.N.] Charter in order to 
     call for a military intervention,'' according to the 
     transcript.
       Mr. Casputo, special envoy of Mr. Boutros-Ghali and special 
     representative of the Organization of American States, then 
     asserts that military intervention will be a ``disaster''.
       ``With Aristide as president during two or three years, it 
     will be hell,'' Mr. Caputo said during the meeting at U.N. 
     headquarters in New York. ``It is not so much armed 
     intervention itself that we have to avoid. What we do not 
     want is to inherit a `baby'. For the Americans are fixing to 
     leave quickly. They would not intervene if they had to 
     remain.''
       Mr. Caputo said that U.S. forces would leave Haiti within a 
     month of intervention and U.N. troops would replace them. He 
     also notes that the United States has been ``a brake'' on 
     diplomacy, ``creating a situation where the intervention 
     became nearly inevitable.''
       Joe Sills, a U.N. spokesman, declined to confirm the 
     authenticity of the documents, citing a policy of not 
     commenting on internal matters.
       ``The U.N. position is that Mr. Talbott and State 
     Department officials did not discuss any plans for military 
     intervention, only in very general terms about possible 
     options,'' Mr. Sills said. He noted that the United States 
     has not ruled out military options for dealing with Haiti in 
     the future.
       State Department spokesman Michael McCurry said Monday that 
     the documents were ``greatly overblown.'' In a carefully 
     worded statement, he said that Mr. Talbott has had ``no 
     specific discussions of any plans for invasion with Mr. 
     Caputo,''
       But the documents clearly refer to the ``option'' of 
     military action by the United States.
       According to another document, dated May 19, Mr. Caputo 
     said that the United States and France are worried that 
     existing sanctions--designed to depose the military without 
     armed intervention--will not be effective unless Haiti's land 
     border with the Dominican Republic is ``hermetically 
     sealed.''
       A final option of the United States, if sanctions do not 
     succeed, is ``using unilateral force, multilateral force or a 
     combination of the two,'' Mr. Caputo said in the document. He 
     attributed the U.S. position to Mr. Talbott.
       Pentagon spokeswoman Kathleen deLaski said yesterday an 
     assessment team would send a report on what equipment is 
     needed to close the Dominican Republic borders with Haiti 
     ``any time.''
       ``We expect that there will be some equipment provided to 
     the Dominicans to ensure the embargo is adhered to along the 
     border between the Dominican Republic and Haiti,'' she said. 
     ``But we have not decided on the specifics of what equipment 
     that would be.''
       The Pentagon is expected to send helicopters and some 
     troops to help seal the border as part of an international 
     force.
       Enforcement ``would not be envisioned for their role,'' 
     Defense Department spokesman Dennis Boxx said last Wednesday.
       He said such troops would help maintain a small number of 
     U.S. military helicopters, rubber ``Zodiac'' boats, trucks 
     and communications gear being sought by the Dominican 
     Republic since it agreed to back the embargo.
       According to Mr. Caputo's May 23 memorandum, which was 
     first reported by ABC News correspondent John McWethy, the 
     Clinton administration's key concern about armed military 
     action is how to get U.S. forces out of Haiti once the 
     military rulers are ousted and Mr. Aristide is returned to 
     power.
       ``In order to resolve this dilemma, the U.S. administration 
     will seek to act in the following manner,'' Mr. Caputo said 
     in the memo. ``Set up a unilateral action, a surgical action, 
     with the eventual participation of several countries in the 
     region as to give it a certain legitimacy. . . . Put 
     President Aristide back in power.''
       The U.S. strategy then calls for ``quick replacement'' of 
     U.S. forces with U.N. troops after the initial strike.
       John R. Bolton, assistant secretary of state for 
     international affairs in the Bush administration, said the 
     documents appear to reflect accurately how the U.N. 
     secretariat understands the U.S. position on Haiti.
       Mr. Bolton, now an international affairs consultant, 
     criticized the position of intervention as ``a very foolish 
     option.''
       William Gray III, the special White House adviser on Haiti, 
     said Sunday that reports of the U.N. documents were ``not 
     accurate.'' But he said he planned to talk to Mr. Caputo 
     about the reports and also did not rule out future military 
     action in Haiti.
       ``We're hoping that these sanctions will work,'' Mr. Gray 
     said of the new, tougher sanctions that Mr. Clinton imposed 
     on Haiti last week.
       Meanwhile, more than 60 U.S. immigration officers, bracing 
     for a large-scale exodus from Haiti, have assembled in 
     Jamaica to begin implementing the new policy of offering a 
     haven to Haitians fleeing political persecution.

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