[Congressional Record Volume 140, Number 145 (Friday, October 7, 1994)]
[Senate]
[Page S]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Printing Office [www.gpo.gov]


[Congressional Record: October 7, 1994]
From the Congressional Record Online via GPO Access [wais.access.gpo.gov]

 
     AMBASSADOR ALBRIGHT'S REMARKS ON RUSSIA'S ROLE IN PEACEKEEPING

  Mr. LEAHY. Mr. President, yesterday, during our debate on Haiti, my 
colleague Senator McConnell argued that there is a hidden cost to the 
U.S. military operation there. He expressed concern that, in order to 
win Russia's abstention on the U.N. Security Council resolution 
authorizing this action, the administration told the Russians, and I 
quote Senator McConnell, ``you go ahead and do what you will in Ukraine 
or Georgia or Armenia, and Azerbaijan, or anywhere else in the former 
Soviet Union and we will utter not a peep.''
  Such a statement by the administration would be a tragic mistake. 
Senator McConnell was not, however, actually quoting an administration 
official. He explained that this was the meaning of statements like one 
by Madeleine Albright, or Ambassador to the United Nations, when she 
was in Moscow on September 6. Senator McConnell quoted Ambassador 
Albright as saying that ``Russia is an empire where the mother country 
and the colonies are contiguous.''
  Mr. President, I was in Moscow on September 6. I was not present for 
Ambassador Albright's speech, but I did have the chance to meet with 
her there, and to hear from her personally about the grueling trip she 
had just made to Georgia, Armenia, and Azerbaijan to assess first-hand 
the conflicts in that region and the role that Russian forces are 
playing as peacekeepers there. And yesterday, as I listened to Senator 
McConnell, it struck me that his depiction of the thrust of her 
remarks--that we are telling Russia we do not care what they do with 
their neighbors--bore no resemblance to what I remembered Ambassador 
Albright having told me about Russia's actions in that region and the 
administration's position on those actions.
  Mr. President, I was concerned about this discrepancy. No one can 
predict the future, and I as much as anyone am concerned about the 
possibility that Russia could lapse back into the same kind of 
imperialistic habits relative to its neighbors that it exhibited during 
the cold war. Like most other Senators, I have supported President 
Clinton's efforts to build a new, more cooperative relationship with 
the Russian Government, but I have done so based on my understanding 
that Yeltsin Government has committed itself to renunciation of 
Russia's old ways and to accepting the principles of respect for the 
sovereignty and territorial integrity of its neighbors. I certainly 
would not support a United States policy towards Russia of the kind 
attributed to President Clinton by Senator McConnell.
  I therefore asked for and obtained a copy of the text of Ambassador 
Albright's remarks in Moscow, which number 11 single-spaced pages. And 
I am pleased to report that, although Ambassador Albright did make the 
statement attributed to her, her overall statement conveys clearly a 
message completely opposite to what the Senator form Kentucky inferred. 
Ambassador Albright in her speech repeatedly and emphatically put the 
Russian Government on notice that the world is watching closely 
Russia's actions in Georgia, Moldova, and elsewhere, and expects that 
it will act in full accordance with the accepted principles of 
international peacekeeping and national sovereignty.

  Let me provide a few quotes:
  First, the full comment from which the Senator from Kentucky quoted, 
and let me add that this particular comment was in answer to a 
question, was extemporaneous, and therefore was perhaps not as artfully 
worded as it might otherwise have been:

       The burden of proof is on Russia to abide by a variety of 
     international principles that have to do with peacekeeping 
     and neutrality. Russia has a very difficult task, and I think 
     everybody needs to appreciate the difficulty of it. It is an 
     empire that is, on its own, disassembling itself. That is 
     unusual. It is an empire where the mother country and the 
     colonies are contiguous. That is also unusual. It is taking 
     place at a time when there is a greater sense of nationalism, 
     I think, than at any time, and where we not only have nation 
     states that are trying to be formed, but ethnic subgroups 
     that believe that they need to have boundaries, flags, 
     currency, and their own airline. I think that it creates 
     incredible difficulties.
       So the United States' position has been in the United 
     Nations, as far as activities in the ``near abroad,'' that so 
     long as Russia abides by the international peacekeeping 
     principles, their mandates are created, and they follow 
     through on them, that it is an appropriate thing for them to 
     do, because in that way they are, in fact, part of the 
     responsible international community that is trying to 
     maintain stability. But--and it is a big but--they have to 
     abide by the international peacekeeping principles. And they 
     know, and we know, that the world is watching how it is done 
     and that people are suspicious because of their past history. 
     But that we should not just decide that they cannot do this 
     kind of business simply because of their history, because 
     something needs to be done to calm the forces. And when you 
     have a person that's as respected as Chairman Shevardnadze 
     asking for help, then I think it is legitimate to have a 
     response.

  Mr. President, I for one agree completely with this characterization 
of the issue and U.S. policy. Particularly, as Ambassador Albright had 
already stated it even more clearly:

       I think, however, and this is the message from my trip, 
     by virtue of history, there is a certain suspicion in 
     these NIS countries about Russia's intentions. The result 
     of the history and geography basically places a special 
     burden on Russia, and the burden of proof is on Russia to 
     prove its commitment to accepted international principles, 
     to the sovereignty of the newly independent states and to 
     adopting a neutral stance in the ethnic conflicts that 
     have exploded in Georgia, Nagorno-Karabakh and Moldova. 
     And I think that they know that the world is watching. On 
     the other hand, to a great extent, people in these 
     countries and people in other countries are grateful that 
     Russia is able to participate in these. So it's a very 
     mixed kind of situation and a mixed message and very much 
     a sign of the pragmatic approach that we have to take, in 
     this day and age, where there are eruptions of kinds that 
     are very different.

  A few minutes later, Ambassador Albright addressed directly Senator 
McConnell's concern about linkage between the Russian peacekeeping 
effort in Georgia and the United States intervention in Haiti. She 
said, and I quote, ``there is no moral equivalency and there is no 
analogy. * * * and, if I can say something just flat out, there is no 
analogy in history. None. The United States didn't have an empire. The 
United States never was totalitarian. And there is no analogy. The 
confluence or the coincidence is only one of time.''
  Mr. President, this is a strong assurance from the person best 
positioned to know, that there was no deal struck between the United 
States and Russia at the United Nations regarding United States support 
for Russian engagement in Georgia or anywhere else, in exchange for 
Russian assent to the Haiti resolution.
  This is not the time to debate the fundamentals of United States 
policy toward Russia. I do feel, however, that it is important that 
there be no misimpression left about the words of our Ambassador to the 
United Nations concerning this very sensitive issue. Ambassador 
Albright is a dedicated public servant committed to identifying and 
pursuing the foreign policies that she believes best serve the 
interests of the American people. She went to the former Soviet Union 
last month because she wanted to assess for herself what the situation 
in the Caucusus is, so she would be able to help decide what United 
States policy should be relative to that region. I think we should 
salute her for that. I would suggest that she speaks with an authority 
that not many can match.

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