[Congressional Record Volume 141, Number 110 (Monday, July 10, 1995)]
[Senate]
[Pages S9624-S9626]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]


                       FAILED APPROACH IN BOSNIA

  Mr. DOLE. Mr. President, as the Serbian advance on Srebrenica 
continues, the administration, the U.N. bureaucracy, and some of our 
allies are busy defending their failed approach in Bosnia. They argue 
that the Bosnians are better off if the U.N. forces stay in 

[[Page S 9625]]
Bosnia, that lifting sanctions on Serbia is the key to peace, that the 
Serb air defenses do not pose a threat to NATO air crews--the news from 
Bosnia notwithstanding.
  In his response to a letter from Speaker Gingrich and me, the 
President stated that he believed that the United States must support 
the U.N. protection forces' continued presence in Bosnia. He said that 
UNPROFOR had played and was playing a ``critical role'' in diminishing 
the conflict and was assisting the U.N. high commission on refugees in 
providing aid to the Bosnian population.
  In order to believe that the United States and European approach in 
Bosnia is working, one simply has to play a game I call ``let's 
pretend.'' The rules are simple. It goes like this:
  Pretend that the U.N. forces are delivering humanitarian aid to those 
in need;
  Pretend that the U.N. forces control Sarajevo airport;
  Pretend that the U.N. forces are protecting safe havens such as 
Sarajevo and Srebrenica and that no Bosnians are dying from artillery 
assaults and shelling;
  Pretend that there is a credible threat of serious NATO
   air strikes;

  Pretend that the no-fly zone is being enforced;
  Pretend that Serbian President Milosevic is not supporting Bosnian 
Serb forces;
  Pretend that Bosnian Serb air defenses are not deployed against NATO 
aircraft and are not integrated into Serbia's air defense system.
  Pretend that the rapid reaction force will react forcefully and 
rapidly under the same U.N. rules of engagement which have made 
UNPROFOR impotent;
  Pretend that U.N. forces can stay in Bosnia forever and that we will 
never have to contemplate U.N. withdrawal.
  Mr. President, if you can pretend all of the above, you can easily 
accept the administration's defense. On the other hand, if you react to 
reality and do not engage in multilateral make-believe, then you will 
not be persuaded by the administration's case. Without taking the time 
to review the last year or two or three in Bosnia, let us just look at 
the reports from the last week or so:
  In Srebrenica, a so-called U.N. designated safe area, Serb forces 
overran U.N. observation posts and Serb tanks are within a mile of the 
town center--in fact, we have just had a report that they are even 
closer than that;
  In Sarajevo, the hospital was shelled and more children were 
slaughtered;
  Information surfaced that Bosnian Serb air defenses are tied into 
Belgrade's air defense system;
  The no-fly zone was violated and NATO did not respond;
  U.N. envoy Akashi assured the Bosnian Serbs that the United Nations 
would continue business as usual in the wake of
 the downing of U.S. pilot O'Grady and the taking of U.N. hostages.

  Mr. President, these are only a few examples of the reality in 
Bosnia. It is this reality that should drive U.S. policy. It is this 
reality that has moved the Bosnian Government to reassess the U.N. 
presence in Bosnia. It is this reality that should prompt us to do the 
same.
  The fact is that despite the presence of over 25,000 U.N. 
peacekeepers and despite the impending arrival of the rapid reaction 
force, the Bosnians are still being slaughtered, safe areas are under 
siege, and the United Nations continues to accommodate Serb demands and 
veto even limited military action designed to protect United States air 
crews. The fact is that the United Nations has become one of the means 
of securing Serb gains made through brutal aggression and genocide.
  As Jim Hoagland aptly pointed out yesterday in the Washington Post, 
and I quote,

       The war has now reached a point where the U.N.'s value free 
     equation of Serbs who are willing to kill with Bosnians who 
     are willing to die cannot be sustained and cannot be allowed 
     to spread deeper into the Clinton administration which too 
     docilely accepted Akashi's veto on retaliation. Americans 
     will no long support humanitarianism based on self-serving 
     bureaucratic cynicism and fear.

  Not my quote but a quote in the Washington Post from Jim Hoagland, 
who, I must say, has had a shift in his thinking recently.
  The time for make-believe is over. The United Nations mission in 
Bosnia is a failure. The Bosnians deserve and are entitled to defend 
themselves. The United Nations must begin to withdraw and the arms 
embargo must be lifted. Therefore, I intend to take up a modified 
version of the Dole-Lieberman arms embargo bill following disposition 
of the regulatory reform bill.
  Mr. President, I think every day it is worse and worse, if it can 
become worse, in Bosnia, particularly for the Bosnians. It seems to me 
it is high time to act.
  I ask unanimous consent that the entire column in the Washington Post 
by Jim Hoagland be printed in the Record.
  There being no objection, the article was ordered to be printed in 
the Record, as follows:

                [From the Washington Post, July 9, 1995]

                      Bosnia: The U.N.'s Moral Rot

                           (By Jim Hoagland)

       The Serb missilemen who shot down Capt. Scott O'Grady's F-
     16 over Bosnia committed attempted murder and got away with 
     it. After a month, there has been no American retaliation for 
     an act of treachery that once would have brought the heavens 
     down on its perpetrators.
       Understand why the American government swallowed this 
     humiliation (without even a serious denunciation of the Serb 
     politicians in Belgrade who oversaw the shoot-down), and you 
     understand why the international effort in Bosnia has failed 
     so miserably--and why it should now be terminated.
       A line has been crossed in Bosnia, a line that separates 
     humanitarian impulse from moral rot; a line that divides 
     ineffectiveness from dishonor. The United Nations is now on 
     the wrong side of that line, protecting the Serbs (and the 
     status quo) from retaliation for having downed O'Grady and 
     for killing, wounding, imprisoning and harassing British, 
     French, Spanish, Danish and other soldiers operating in 
     Bosnia under the U.N. peacekeeping flag.
       This can only undermine U.S. and European support for 
     keeping those troops there and continuing an arms embargo 
     against Bosnia. It is now embarrassingly evident that in 
     Bosnia and elsewhere U.N. ``humanitarian'' operations are 
     guided by bureaucratic dedication to career and organization. 
     There is no room for justice, or for outrage over the Serbs' 
     long record of atrocity and betrayal, in the mandate of 
     Yasushi Akashi.
       These are the two straws that break the United Nations' 
     back in Bosnia:
       (1) Akashi, the Japanese diplomat who is Secretary General 
     Boutros Boutros-Ghali's representative in Bosnia, actively 
     blocked French and British efforts to form outside the U.N. 
     command a rapid reaction force to strike back at the Serbs 
     after hundreds of peacekeepers were taken hostage by the 
     Serbs and then released in June.
       The rapid reaction force will be under Akashi's control and 
     will observe the same peacekeeping rules imposed on the 
     22,500-man international army already there, Akashi promised 
     the Serbs in a secret letter disclosed to reporters by the 
     Bosnian government.
       The new troops, like the old troops, will not be permitted 
     to make distinctions between Serb aggressors, who have 
     ``ethnically cleansed'' Muslim territories and the forces of 
     the U.N.-recognized Bosnian government trying to regain its 
     lost lands. If Akashi has his way, the United Nations will go 
     on equating Serbs who blockade food shipments with Bosnians 
     who starve because those shipments do not get through.
       (2) Following O'Grady's escape, Akashi, with the backing of 
     France and Russia, vetoed any new bombing raids on the Serbs. 
     The U.S. Air Force was denied the chastising effect of 
     retaliation and the preemptive protection of taking out Serb 
     anti-aircraft missile batteries that are linked to computer 
     networks controlled from Belgrade.
       The chilling hostage-taking changes nothing, except to make 
     the United Nations command even more timid. The murder 
     attempt on O'Grady changes nothing except to end effective 
     enforcement of the no-fly zone over Bosnia. Score in this 
     exchange: Serbs everything, U.N. nothing.
       That is galling, but it is now probably too late to fix. 
     ``You have to respond immediately,'' Sen. John McCain (R-
     Ariz.), a fighter pilot in Vietnam and prisoner of war for 
     5\1/2\ years, told me. ``I don't think you can retaliate a 
     month or two later and expect to have any effect.''
       But McCain also made this telling point: ``We made a 
     mistake in not publicizing the fact that this shoot-down 
     could not have happened without the Belgrade computers the 
     missile batteries are hooked up to. Instead the 
     administration is constantly sending an envoy'' to negotiate 
     with Serb President Slobodan Miloseyic--suspected by some in 
     U.S. intelligence of having given the order both for the 
     downing of the F-16 and the grabbing of the U.N. soldiers.
       This is how moral rot spreads. The United Nations once 
     served as useful political cover for the major powers, who 
     wanted to limit their own involvement in the wars of ex-
     Yugoslavia. The administration was right to try to minimize 
     the dangers of rupture within NATO over a unilateral U.S. 
     lifting of the arms embargo against Bosnia.
       But the war has now reached a point where the U.N.'s value-
     free equation of Serbs who are willing to kill with Bosnians 
     who are 

[[Page S 9626]]
     willing to die cannot be sustained and cannot be allowed to spread 
     deeper into the Clinton administration, which too docilely 
     accepted Akashi's veto on retaliation.
       Americans will not long support humanitarianism based on 
     self-serving bureaucratic cynicism and fear. For better or 
     worse, American participation in the arms embargo will soon 
     come to an end and NATO member troops will come out. The war 
     is going to get bloodier. And the bureaucrats of the United 
     Nations, who now pursue policies that profoundly offend a 
     common sense of justice and decency, will not be blameless 
     for this happening.
     

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