[Congressional Record Volume 141, Number 106 (Tuesday, June 27, 1995)]
[Extensions of Remarks]
[Page E1329]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]



[[Page E 1329]]


        THE UNITED NATIONS AT 50: BAD IN BOSNIA; TIME TO GROW UP

                                 ______


                       HON. GEORGE P. RADANOVICH

                             of california

                    in the house of representatives
                         Tuesday, June 27, 1995
  Mr. RADANOVICH. Mr. Speaker, I'm going to withhold wishing the United 
Nations a ``happy birthday'' until it grows up. My particular problem 
with this international organization--chartered for a mighty mission 
and with the best of intentions--comes into clear focus when you look 
at the sorry state of its performance in Bosnia.
  As so often is the case, the editors of the Wall Street Journal have 
offered their readers an insightful and incisive examination of current 
conditions. That is the case with today's editorial, ``Virtual United 
Nations,'' which I am pleased to draw to the attention of my colleagues 
in Congress.
             [From the Wall Street Journal, June 27, 1995]

                         Virtual United Nations

       Fifty years ago this week, representatives of 50 countries 
     gathered in San Francisco to sign the Charter of the United 
     Nations. It was probably both the novelty of peace in Europe 
     and the dream that it would spread and last that inspired the 
     U.N.'s signatories to pledge to ``save succeeding generations 
     from the scourge of war'' by practicing ``tolerance and 
     [living] together in peace,'' by uniting ``our strength to 
     maintain international peace and security'' and by accepting 
     ``principles and the institution of methods'' so that ``armed 
     force shall not be used, save in the common interest.''
       Fine as they are, it is difficult to imagine that these 
     words sounded any less like rules for a virtual reality world 
     then than they do today. Then as now, people like to believe 
     that having such intentions is important, no matter that war 
     is raging in Bosnia under the U.S.'s watchful eye.
       This 50th anniversary year of the U.N. features far more 
     debates about how the U.N. needs to be reformed than 
     recounting of its successes.
       But these ideas do not address the key failings of the U.N. 
     that are visible all around us. These are not just the 
     shortcomings that can be attributed to the dearth of 
     collective interest and political will. They are also 
     uniquely U.N.-inspired instances of failing to do what the 
     organization and its bodies say it is dedicated to doing.
       The failure of the U.N. in Bosnia is too grand to describe 
     exhaustively or even in thematic terms, so events of last 
     week will have to suffice. The refusal of the United Nations 
     to authorize a NATO request for an air strike on a U.N.-
     mandated target last week was merely the lastest in a series 
     of such vetoes.
       A new type of failure of the U.N. was also on display last 
     week in Belgrade. There, the office of the U.N. High 
     Commissioner for Refugees is complaining that it is besieged 
     by draft-age ethnic Serb men--mainly refugees from Bosnia and 
     Croatia--who are being rounded up for conscription into the 
     rump-Yugoslav army. Figures given by the office are
      that as many as 2,500 men have already been press-ganged, 
     and 70 ``begging for some sort of protection'' were turned 
     away by UNHCR on Thursday alone.
       Also last week was Le Monde's report that for a year the 
     United Nations has been sitting on a report written by its 
     own people that shows that the Serbs alone have pursued 
     ethnic cleansing as a planned and systematic government 
     policy and that they have been responsible for the vast 
     majority of the other war crimes and atrocities. The report 
     makes the explicit admission that it is not possible to treat 
     all of the parties in the Bosnian conflict on an equal basis.
       The U.N. not only made this pretense possible, but also 
     dressed it up with the mantle of the world's prominent 
     international mediating body. This farce of moral equivalence 
     continues despite the existence of the U.N.'s report and was 
     most recently on display on Friday when the Security Council 
     condemned Bosnian Muslim army efforts to block the movement 
     of Unprofor forces in its attempt to lift the siege of 
     Sarajevo.
       To be sure, many organizations and individual states have 
     failed Bosnia. But the U.N. is the body that purports to be 
     competent in such situations. Worse than inaction (which the 
     U.N. could then blame on member-state cowardice), the U.N.'s 
     actions have in many ways worsened the conflict.
       Those who talk of U.N. reform are therefore the most 
     optimistic of the pundits. Many believe the body is simply 
     unreformable because consensus of the type that existed in 
     1944 and 1945 would be impossible to find today. Presumably 
     there is a role for such an organization, though perhaps 
     confined to a talk shop. Yet as long as the U.N. undermines 
     its own goals, as it has in Bosnia by refusing to acknowledge 
     and condemn blatant aggression, any hope that it will somehow 
     develop into a useful forum for conflict resolution are 
     likely to be disappointed.
     

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