[Congressional Record Volume 141, Number 28 (Monday, February 13, 1995)]
[Extensions of Remarks]
[Pages E329-E330]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]


             SAN FRANCISCO CHRONICLE ON THE UNITED NATIONS

                                 ______


                            HON. TOM LANTOS

                             of california

                    in the house of representatives

                        Monday, February 13, 1995
  Mr. LANTOS. Mr. Speaker, I urge my collages to read an excellent 
editorial in the San Francisco Chronicle on the United Nations. The 
Chronicle and Ambassador Madeleine Albright, our permanent U.S. 
representative at the United Nations, are to be commended for their 
compelling argument for maintaining the integrity of the United 
Nations.
  We are in an era of opportunity--we have the extraordinary 
opportunity to create a more peaceful, more humane, and more orderly 
world now that we have entered the post-cold-war era. This is not the 
time for the United States to enter into a new era of isolationism.
  Mr. Speaker, I commend your attention and the attention of my 
colleagues to this excellent and timely editorial, and I ask that it be 
placed in the Record.

[[Page E330]]

                   [From the San Francisco Chronicle]

                U.N. Peacekeeping Is Worth Fighting For

       Madeleine Albright, the U.S. ambassador to the United 
     Nations, threw down a gauntlet two weeks ago: ``This 
     administration,'' she pledged, ``will not allow the 
     hullabaloo over (the GOP Contract with America) to cause the 
     Charter of the United Nations--the `contract' of Truman and 
     Vandenberg and Dulles and FDR and Eleanor Roosevelt and the 
     generation that triumphed over the Nazis--to be ripped to 
     shreds.''
       This week, President Clinton himself should publicly join 
     in that pledge with a veto vow when the House of 
     Representatives takes up passage of the misnamed National 
     Security Revitalization Act--a transparent effort to fatally 
     undermine the U.N.'s central security role: peacekeeping.
       Under the guise of making the U.S. rule in U.N. 
     peacekeeping more accountable to Congress, the bill would 
     dramatically cut U.S. financing, virtually prohibit the 
     deployment of U.S. forces under foreign command and require 
     congressional approval before a single American soldier is 
     sent into a U.N. peacekeeping operation--something Congress 
     has never before found the political courage to do.
       The financing restrictions are ludicrous in the extreme. By 
     requiring that all voluntary U.S. military contributions to 
     missions approved by the Security Council--such as logistics 
     and transport support--be deducted from the U.S. peacekeeping 
     assessment, the legislation could actually result in the U.N. 
     owing money to the United States.
       As Secretary of State Warren Christopher has testified: 
     ``Such a proposal would eliminate all U.S. payments for U.N. 
     peacekeeping. It would almost certainly lead our NATO allies 
     and Japan (which also make large voluntary contributions) to 
     follow suit. * * * It would threaten to end U.N. peacekeeping 
     overnight.''
       Certainly the explosion of U.N. peacekeeping demands in the 
     wake of the Cold War, their rising costs and the increasingly 
     complexity and danger of the missions require more critical 
     attention. But Washington has already unilaterally reduced 
     its peacekeeping assessments from 31 percent to 25 percent, 
     and the Clinton administration last May imposed strict new 
     standards for U.S. participation.
       Today, fewer than 1,000 Americans are wearing blue helmets, 
     and the U.S. financing contribution is less than 0.5 percent 
     of all foreign policy and national security spending. What we 
     get for that is enormous global leverage and burden sharing 
     in pursuit of direct and indirect U.S. interests--the 
     ability, in many cases, to achieve goals at a fraction of the 
     cost of unilateral action.
       Passage of this legislation would, in effect, turn this 
     50th anniversary year of the United Nations into a de facto 
     funeral. That must not be allowed to happen.
     

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