[Congressional Record Volume 140, Number 104 (Tuesday, August 2, 1994)]
[House]
[Page H]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Printing Office [www.gpo.gov]


[Congressional Record: August 2, 1994]
From the Congressional Record Online via GPO Access [wais.access.gpo.gov]

 
                      THE BILLION-DOLLAR QUESTION

  The SPEAKER pro tempore. Under a previous order of the House, the 
gentleman from Florida [Mr. Goss] is recognized for 5 minutes.
  Mr. GOSS. Mr. Speaker, I guess we are being asked to make a very big 
stretch these days in this country. The United Nations has just 
declared that Haiti is a threat to regional peace and security under 
Article 7 of the U.N. Charter. It is a little hard for me to imagine 
just how Haiti is going to be a threat to our peace and security, to 
our borders in any way, but nevertheless the administration has 
convinced through negotiations and wheeling and dealing in New York 
apparently other countries to declare now that Haiti is a threat to 
regional peace and security and, therefore, subject to some type of an 
invasion or any action it will take to bring that situation under 
control.
  I wonder if there is anybody in this country that actually believes 
that this friendly neighboring country which is very, very poor, has 
very, very few amenities to it, has trouble feeding itself, is really a 
threat to anybody except its own self? I wonder if there is anybody who 
really believes the postulate that has been put out there that Haiti is 
a central linchpin in the international drug cartel corridors.
  If Haiti is, I wonder, what does that say about our friends in 
Colombia and Ecuador and Peru and the Bahamas and other countries like 
Jamaica where we know we get cooperation in drug trafficking and drug 
interdiction efforts and it is a big, big problem that we have to keep 
working on.
  The question has been raised, are there United States citizens in 
danger in Haiti? Well, that is a very serious question and one we want 
to take a good, close look at. But the most recent information we have 
from our embassy in Port-Au-Prince, is that they acknowledge there is 
no clear indication of any threat to United States citizens presently 
in Haiti.
  The next question is, well, it must be then that the security 
question goes to the mass immigrant exodus. Why is this happening? When 
we look into the exodus, we discover that it has slowed down. There are 
not as many refugees leaving Haiti these days as there were. It turns 
out, the reason is that the Haitians who were leaving thought they were 
going to get to the United States to a better way of life. Now that 
that message has been sent that that is not going to happen, that they 
are going to put into a safe haven in Guantanamo or some other 
Caribbean country, the desire to leave Haiti has waned a little bit, 
even though the situation there is truly miserable and even though 
there is political persecution, human rights violations, and tremendous 
economic despair, no jobs, and all kinds of suffering and humanitarian 
problems going on with food and medicine and so forth.
  I guess the question then has to be, and it is a billion-dollar 
question: Why in the world is the United States of America talking 
about invading Haiti and going to the United Nations to go through all 
these machinations to declare that they are a danger to our national 
security and to the region's peace and security?
  I think that it is a billion-dollar question and perhaps several 
billion because we are told that if this thing works right, that the 
idea is that our troops will go in there, they will be there about 6 
months, and that is going to cost, well, just hundreds of millions, we 
do not know exactly how many, but they will be out in about 6 months. 
Then we are going to go and we will ratchet down from 12,000 to 15,000 
troops who are going to go through the countryside and assist in the 
disarming of the army and the people there. Then those people are going 
to leave and we are going to have 6,000 other troops, at least 30 
percent of them will be United States, and they are going to stay there 
until February or January 1996, something like that, and all this is 
going to be funded out of the DOD budget except the part that will be 
funded out of the State budget. When you add it all up, it comes to 
over $1 billion. Some of that money is needed for other higher 
priorities where there are some real problems and some real defense 
needs and some real State needs.

  I think what we have got now is some very poor explanations for some 
indefensible actions that are being taken to support a policy which is 
bankrupt and does not work.
  I am going now to a statement in the Washington Post of May 5, the 
statement of Larry Pezzullo who was previously the Special Adviser on 
Haitian affairs, and I want to quote a little bit if I can because it 
is so relevant. This is the solution, it is the solution we should be 
pursuing today and the only reason that Mr. Pezzullo is not there today 
pursuing this solution is because this is a politically incorrect 
solution:

       On the political front, Aristide's own prime minister and 
     political ally, Robert Malval, took the initiative, 
     convincing Aristide that his political alliance should be 
     broadened to include legitimate political parties represented 
     in the legitimate parliament. But Aristide soon reversed 
     himself, and rejected Malval's idea as power-sharing with the 
     military. Malval resigned in December.

  We will continue this, because the answer lies in a negotiated 
settlement around the people like Malval who want to solve the problem 
without warfare.

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