[Congressional Record Volume 140, Number 137 (Tuesday, September 27, 1994)]
[Senate]
[Page S]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Printing Office [www.gpo.gov]


[Congressional Record: September 27, 1994]
From the Congressional Record Online via GPO Access [wais.access.gpo.gov]

 
                    SERBIA AND MONTENEGRO SANCTIONS

  Mr. DeCONCINI. Madam President, the announcement that the 
international community is easing sanctions on Serbia and Montenegro is 
absolutely appalling to this Senator. The stated intention of this 
move--to drive a wedge between Serbia and the Serb militants it has 
supported in Bosnia--is so incredibly naive that I must wonder if it is 
the real intention of the Contact Group countries, which I am sorry to 
say includes the United States, that suggested it.
  Let me put things into perspective. The Bosnians, who--I should 
remind everyone--are the victims of aggression--agreed unconditionally 
and by the two-week deadline to the Contact Group peace plan, which in 
part turns out to be rewarding that aggressor.
  The Bosnians approved of this because they realized this was the best 
they could get. They are giving up 49 percent of their country, and yet 
the group that had taken 49 percent--actually taken 70 percent is being 
rewarded. If the Bosnian Moslems had not done so, the contact group 
threatened to ease sanctions on Serbia and Montenegro. So they were 
pressured into it and they manufactured it that way. The Bosnian Serb 
militants, on the other hand, effectively said no because the plan did 
not reward them quite enough--only 75 percent of someone else's 
sovereignty and someone else's country. The consequences for them 
should have been the lifting of the arms embargo on the Bosnian forces, 
as this body has finally gone on record as has the House. But this did 
not happen. Instead, the deadline for the so-called peace plan has been 
extended indefinitely.
  Meanwhile, the Bosnian Serb militants have been allowed to cleanse 
northern Bosnian regions under their control of about 10,000 additional 
non-Serbs. They have been allowed to attack U.N. personnel and to hold 
hostage relief supplies needed for a third winter of war. They have 
very recently threatened to attack any incoming planes to Sarajevo, and 
so we halt the flights. Utilities have been cut off by the Serbs for 
almost 2 weeks in the Bosnian capital, with an occasional trickle of 
electricity and natural gas.

  Sanctions on Serbia and Montenegro were to be tightened for all of 
this, but Mr. Milosevic conveniently distanced himself from the Bosnian 
Serb position, thereby avoiding any consequences for the Serb rejection 
of the plan. This, in turn, conveniently provided the United States and 
its allies with some cover for the now all but overt support for 
Milosevic, the person most responsible for this conflict, in this part 
of the world.
  We, as Americans, must now ask our leaders: How have the Bosnians 
benefited from working with the contact groups these past 3 months? Are 
they better off as a result of this?
  We must now ask: Why continue to offer to the Bosnian Serb militants 
a plan for which there was a clearly stated, supposedly firm, deadline 
to take it or leave it, and they left it? There would be consequences.
  We must now ask: On what basis can we have trust in the words in 
Slobodan Milosevic? Is not his announced intent of cutting off military 
supplies to the Bosnian Serb militants confirmation that he has lied 
over these past 2 years in denying that he was giving them support? 
Everyone knows he was, but he said ``No, we are not.''
  Are his intentions to make peace in Bosnia and Herzegovina, or to 
derail the latest sanctions-tightening effort? I think it is clear it 
is the latter. Do we feel he has abandoned his hopes for a greater 
Serbia? Do we think he is going to let the Serb militants be defeated? 
No.
  We must now ask: If we cannot trust Mr. Milosevic, how will 135 
observers cover a 375-mile border with Bosnia and Herzegovina 24 hours 
a day? Why does NATO let helicopters, the new method for transporting 
support to the militants, fly into a no-fly zone it is mandated to 
enforce? What about reports of pontoon bridges over which supplies will 
also be delivered? Why do we not simply declare the border area a no-
supply zone, and bomb the bridges and Serb militant supply routes and 
depots?
  We must now ask: If countries bordering Serbia and Montenegro are, 
for whatever reasons, unable to fully enforce a complete blockade on 
these federated Republics, should we not expect that even the most 
gradual easement of sanctions will lead to the opening of the 
floodgates regarding items still prohibited by sanctions?
  We must now ask: In this effort to get border monitors in Serbia and 
Montenegro, did we demand as well the reestablishment of CSCE monitors 
in Kosovo, Sandzak, and Vojvodina? Did we get a commitment from 
Belgrade that there would be full cooperation in surrendering 
individuals indicted by the international tribunal for war crimes?
  We must now ask: Assuming that the easing of sanctions continues, 
will we forget that the international community first imposed sanctions 
on Serbia and Montenegro in light of their instigation of the war in 
Croatia? Will we forget that the United Nations has linked easing of 
subsequent, Bosnia-related sanctions to improvements in the situation 
in the Serb-occupied part of Croatia? Have Serb militants there 
complied with the Vance plan? The answer is clear they have not. Are 
they perhaps a new source of supply for their militant brethren in 
Bosnia? The answer is clearly yes. Have they not, in fact, recently 
joined them in attacking Bosnian forces in the northwestern Bosnia and 
Herzegovina?
  We must now ask: Assuming that the easing of sanctions continues, 
will we forget that some of the original U.S. sanctions were linked to 
Kosovo, where repression of the Albanian population continues with 
unabated severity?
  We must now ask: Where is the unity of our friends or allies 
regarding the defense of principles they together enshrined in the 
Helsinki Final Act--including human rights, the territorial integrity 
of States and the inviolability of their borders--which have been 
violated so severely and blatantly in the former Yugoslavia now Serbia? 
Where is the unity of U.N. members regarding the right, enshrined in 
the U.N. Charter, of a member State to its own self-defense? Where is 
the unity of the parties to genocide convention regarding their 
commitment to try to stop genocide where and when it is found to be 
taking place? And where is the leadership of the United States in 
creating this unity around principles which it has advocated so 
strongly? Why are we merely going along with the policy prescriptions 
of Russia, Britain, and France, even though we know they continually 
fail to work?
  Until these questions are satisfactorily answered, I cannot but call 
our current approach unacknowledged appeasement. Call it anything but 
appeasement, and I am disappointed to say that. As Bosnian Prime 
Minister Haris Silajdzic said in Washington last week, at least the 
Munich appeasement came before the genocide. Now, we not only ignore 
that lesson of history, we appease the aggressor after the genocide has 
already taken place and, in fact, as it resumes. The goal of this 
policy is simply to get the Bosnian conflict and the former Yugoslavia 
as a whole off the front pages and out of the nightly news. It is a 
policy without principle, one that history will judge us, and it will 
not be a good verdict.
  I urge the administrator to rethink its policy and to take stronger 
steps to see that we meet our obligations of human rights and our 
commitment to freedom.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from Iowa.

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