[Congressional Record Volume 141, Number 117 (Wednesday, July 19, 1995)]
[Senate]
[Pages S10270-S10299]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




            BOSNIA AND HERZEGOVINA SELF-DEFENSE ACT OF 1995

  The PRESIDING OFFICER. Under the previous order, the Senate will now 
resume consideration of S. 21, which the clerk will report.
  The assistant legislative clerk read as follows:

       A bill (S. 21) to terminate the United States arms embargo 
     applicable to the Government of Bosnia and Herzegovina.

  Mr. LIEBERMAN. Madam President, I rise to speak in favor of the 
proposal which I am privileged to cosponsor with the distinguished 
majority leader and many others of both parties, which would finally 
lift the arms embargo and do some justice in the former Yugoslavia, by 
replacing a policy of inaction or half actions that has failed to stem 
the conflict, has failed to stop aggression, and has failed to protect 
the victims of that aggression, whose pain we see each night on our 
television sets.
  Madam President, this is a genuinely bipartisan or nonpartisan 
effort, as it should be, as American foreign policy has traditionally 
been at its best--above party consideration.
  Senator Dole and I began this effort in 1992 when the incumbent in 
the White House happened to be a Republican, President Bush. We have 
continued in 1993, 1994, and 1995, with President Clinton in the White 
House.
  Sadly, each time that we have raised this question of lifting the 
arms embargo and using allied air power selectively, we have been met 
with different excuses. A defense, not even really so much a defense of 
the existing policy, but criticisms, complications, unintended results, 
that might occur if the arms embargo was lifted.
  In that, I think, and I will get to that in a moment or two, we have 
failed not only to see what was happening on the ground, but to listen 
to the victims of the aggression. The Bosnians have said repeatedly, 
over and over again, ``We don't want American soldiers on Bosnian soil. 
We don't need American soldiers on Bosnian soil. We have troops on 
Bosnian soil, they are Bosnians--in excess of 100,000. They are 
motivated, understandably, to fight to defend their country, their 
communities, their families, themselves. Just give us the weapons with 
which to defend ourselves.''
  Madam President, we rise again, a bipartisan group. Several tries at 
lifting the arms embargo having failed, this time we act with some 
sense of hope that we will be able to achieve, perhaps 

[[Page S 10271]]
later today, a strong bipartisan statement that it is time to change 
our policy. Give the Bosnians the weapons they deserve. Stop denying 
them their inherent right to defend themselves, a right we have as 
individuals, the right Bosnians have as a nation, under international 
law, under the charter of the United Nations.
  This is a bipartisan call. Let me read the names of some of the 
others who are cosponsoring S. 21: Senator Helms, Senator Thurmond, 
Senator Biden, Senator D'Amato, Senator McCain, Senator Feingold, 
Senator Warner, Senator Hatch, Senator Kyl, Senator Moynihan, Senator 
Stevens, Senator Cochran, the distinguished occupant of the chair, 
Senator Hutchison, Senator Mack, Senator Coverdell, Senator Packwood, 
Senator Murkowski, Senator Specter. And I am pleased now, Madam 
President, to ask unanimous consent that Senator Craig of Idaho be 
added as a cosponsor to amendment No. 1801, a substitute to S. 21.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. Without objection, it is so ordered.
  Mr. LIEBERMAN. Yesterday, Secretary Perry, the Secretary of Defense, 
and Secretary of State Christopher, visited with both Republican and 
Democratic Senators, to report on events that are going on in former 
Yugoslavia, to discuss some new options, for it sounds like a more 
vigorous policy, particularly the employment, more aggressively, of 
NATO air power, and to ask the Senate to delay taking this measure up 
and lifting the arms embargo, saying it is the wrong time to do it, 
with the discussions going on now.
  Madam President, I have the greatest respect for Secretary Perry and 
Secretary Christopher. They are distinguished public servants. They 
have served with extraordinary skill, I think, in their respective 
positions, but I respectfully disagree with them. I hope that my 
colleagues will reject this call, this latest call, to delay action on 
lifting the arms embargo.
  I particularly appeal to my democratic colleagues who may have some 
understandable reluctance to oppose the President. I strongly support 
the President in general. I just respectfully and sincerely and deeply 
disagree with the policy the administration has followed in regard to 
Bosnia.
  Madam President, President Clinton, in the campaign in 1992, 
advocated the policy that I thought then held the best hope of a 
reasonable solution in Bosnia, and I still think does, which is to lift 
the arms embargo and strike from the air at Serbian targets, on the 
basic premise that there is an aggressor here and a victim. The 
aggressor is Serbia, led by President Milosevic.
  As I recounted last night, history will show and the record shows 
that beginning in 1988, President Milosevic of Serbia took a series of 
steps--clear, concerted, intentional--to create a greater Serbia by 
taking advantage of the instability that existed in Europe as a result 
of the end of the cold war, the coming collapse that could be seen as 
the years went on. The entity of Yugoslavia began this concerted effort 
through aggression and other means, to move into Srebrenica, Croatia, 
to be more aggressive, and control the Albanian majority in Kosovo--
aggressive is a tame word; abusive is a correct word--and to move into 
Bosnia,
 using Serbian agents, as it were, that is to say Serbs who lived in 
Bosnia and Croatia, as a fighting force, augmented, supplied, and in 
some cases actually supported right there by members of the Serbian 
armed forces--a clear stream of aggression.

  President Clinton saw that, I think, in 1992, and brought the policy 
of lift and strike into office with him, understanding, making the 
point that if aggression is allowed to go unresponded to, there will be 
more aggression. History shows us that. Common sense shows us that. If 
you let common criminals on the streets of any city or town in America 
continue to hold people up, abuse them, commit acts of assault and 
battery, larceny, and murder against them without the law taking any 
stand against that, without threatening them, without forcing them to 
have any fear, they will continue to do it. And that is exactly what 
has happened in the last 3\1/2\ to 4 years in Bosnia.
  In the spring of 1993, Secretary Christopher went over to Europe to 
speak to our allies in Britain and France, advocating the policy of 
lift and strike. They refused to go along. And that was the end of that 
policy for this administration.
  So I say to my colleagues, as we listen to the appeals that will be 
made today by our friends and our leaders in this administration, that, 
really, what we are asking in putting forward S. 21 today is that the 
administration be given a chance to implement the policy that it 
brought into office with it and that was essentially blocked in 
implementation by some of our good friends and allies in Western Europe 
who had a different point of view.
  At every step, when we have raised the idea of lifting the arms 
embargo, there has been another reason why it was the wrong time. 
Earlier it was the wrong time because the United Nations had to be 
given an opportunity to work its will, or the Owens-Vance peace mission 
had to be given an opportunity to work its will, or the Serbs had to be 
given a chance with the Bosnians to accept the peace proposal. It was 
very detailed, very fair--not so good for the Bosnians, because it left 
them with about 20 percent of the land that they had before the Serbian 
aggression began--but give them a chance to accept it. The Bosnians 
accepted it. The Serbs did not. It was the wrong time to lift the arms 
embargo because if it was lifted, people said to us, U.N. personnel who 
are there will be seized as hostages.
  The arms embargo was not lifted. The Bosnians continue to be victims 
of aggression, torture, ethnic cleansing, rape, murder--and yet, as we 
have seen, tragically, the U.N. personnel were seized as hostages.
  Then it was said last year, when we brought up this proposal to lift 
the arms embargo, you cannot lift the arms embargo, this will anger the 
Serbs. They will have no reason not to go into the safe areas that the 
United Nations has created for a humanitarian purpose, to protect the 
Bosnian victims. We did not lift the arms embargo and what has happened 
in the last couple of weeks? The Serbs moved into these undefended safe 
areas like Srebrenica, forcing out thousands--older people. I hate to 
see those pictures of those old women and men, forced marches, dropped 
off in the middle of the night in a no-man's land between the Serb and 
Bosnian forces, forced to walk their way across difficult terrain to 
find their way to Bosnian territory to get some food and shelter. The 
harrowing stories of young women taken away by Serbian soldiers from 
their families for God knows what reason. Young men of military age 
removed on trumped up charges that they were going to be investigated 
as criminals or terrorists.
  We have seen it before in this conflict. We saw--most notably in 1992 
when British television crews found their way to what I would call 
concentration camps--what happens to these Bosnian men when they were 
taken away by Serbian forces: the emaciated bodies, the horrible echoes 
of the Second World War.
  They said, if we lifted the arms embargo, we would see this again, 
what we saw in 1992. We have not lifted the arms embargo, and the Serbs 
carried all of this out, all these atrocities again.
  Did you read the story of the 20-year-old woman, a Bosnian woman, 
found hanging from a tree at her own hand, blouse and skirt blowing in 
the wind? People could not really explain what had happened, except 
there were allegations that she had been taken away by the Serbs, 
perhaps raped, perhaps abused, perhaps separated. There was no family. 
No one knew who she belonged to. There were only rumors. Had her 
parents been separated from her? Did a husband get taken away as a 
person of military age? These are the consequences of Serbian 
aggression and the consequences of leaving a people undefended.
  Wrong time? Now the argument is that it is the wrong time to lift the 
arms embargo because of the horrific events in Bosnia in the last 
couple of weeks--the fall, the conquest of an undefended city. It was 
no act of bravery by the Serbian forces. There were 40,000 people there 
with an army whose weapons had been put into the U.N. compound, and 
U.N. soldiers, Dutch soldiers, brave Dutch soldiers, put into an 
impossible position with light arms 

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to defend themselves against a Serbian invasion with heavy weapons--
tanks, armored personnel carriers, sophisticated weapons. This was no 
brave military conquest.
  As a result of the horrors we are seeing, we are now seeing a pickup 
in the pace of Western concern, responding to the Western public, who 
are obviously, all of us, outraged by these atrocities being committed 
against the Bosnian people. President Chirac proposes that the United 
Nations should become more aggressive in defending the safe areas, or 
get out. He is right. The United Nations has become a cover for Serb 
aggression. Every time the Serbs strike, in fear of reprisal they grab 
some U.N. soldiers as hostages and frustrate, emasculate, nullify any 
Western will to take action against them.
  And what is the response from Britain and the United States to 
Chirac's proposal? Uncertain, although now there seems to be a genuine 
interest in the more aggressive use of NATO air power, at least to 
protect the safe havens, but also to put the Serbs on notice that other 
Serbian targets in Bosnia and beyond may be vulnerable.
  So we are now asked not to take action on lifting the arms embargo 
because it somehow may affect the pace of these negotiations about the 
use of air power. I do not get it. I do not understand that argument. 
First, I think it is wrong. I think it is wrong to give us yet another 
argument why we should not be lifting the arms embargo, particularly as 
every passing day brings more powerful, painful evidence of the failure 
of the current policy. But it does not make sense. If the United States 
now, our Government, wants to be part of a more aggressive use of NATO 
air power to protect and give some meaning to the safe havens, it seems 
to me if this Senate, in a strong bipartisan majority, rises up and 
adopts S. 21, we are saying not just to lift the arms embargo, we are 
crying out. We are saying, united as Americans, as leaders, 
representatives of the people of the greatest power in the world, a 
power that has built its strength not just on military might but on the 
might of its morality, that this policy that the West has been 
following in Bosnia is a failure.
  I think for that message to be in the air, if we can pass this 
overwhelmingly today on a bipartisan basis, that message in the air as 
the allies gather again in London on Friday to discuss what course to 
follow can only help. It can only strengthen the hand of our 
representatives there, Secretary Perry, Secretary Christopher, to say, 
look what the Senate of the United States has said now by an 
overwhelming majority, perhaps even a veto-proof majority: We must 
strengthen the U.N. posture or we must get out and lift the arms 
embargo.
  So, Mr. President, the time has come. It is long past due. The hour 
is late in Bosnia. The suffering has gone on there. There is no 
perfect, no guaranteed solution. But what we clearly know is that the 
current policy has failed. It has failed for the Bosnian people, it has 
failed for NATO, for the United Nations, and for the United States. It 
is time to try the alternative, and this is the alternative.
  I thank the Chair.
  I yield the floor.
  Mrs. HUTCHISON addressed the Chair.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from Texas is recognized.
  Mrs. HUTCHISON. Mr. President, thank you.
  Mr. President, I want to commend the Senator from Connecticut for his 
leadership in this area and for being the cosponsor with our majority 
leader on this very important resolution in a bipartisan effort. The 
Senator from Connecticut has been consistent. He has been there from 
the beginning, when we started talking about this issue over a year 
ago. I thank him once again, after what has happened in the last week, 
for coming forward and saying ``enough is enough.''
  Mr. President, it is time for the United States to end this failed 
policy of leaving the Bosnian Moslems defenseless. Time after time, Mr. 
President, we have returned to this debate, and we have watched more 
people ravaged in Bosnia as we ponder the issue. We cannot continue to 
wring our hands and withhold from the Bosnian people the means to fight 
for their own freedom. The time has come for us to end this debate and 
lift the arms embargo. If we have to do it unilaterally, we must, or in 
concert with our allies, if we can.
  An old adage says it is preferable to die fighting on your feet than 
to live begging on your knees. I doubt there is a Senator in this body 
who disagrees with that statement. But it is clear that the Bosnians 
have made their choice, and it is to fight on their feet.
  The Bosnians are not asking us to arm them. They are not asking for 
American troops to defend them. They are simply asking to be allowed to 
fight their own fight. It is unconscionable for us to continue to deny 
them that basic right for survival and liberty. What we have now is a 
bloodstained policy which denies them the means of defending 
themselves. And it is one that we should no longer countenance.
  Two months ago, Mr. President, I returned from visiting our forces in 
Macedonia and Croatia more concerned than ever that we are perilously 
close to direct involvement in this Eastern European conflict. Today, 
the administration is considering a request from our allies which will 
only draw the United States deeper and deeper into an implacable 
situation. The French Defense Minister recently called for the United 
Nations to expand its mission in Bosnia and to assume a more aggressive 
stance against the Bosnian Serbs, including more airstrikes and a 
larger U.N. ground force.
  I believe for us to participate in such a plan would be a grave 
mistake. I have been totally opposed to sending United States ground 
troops into Bosnia, and in the light of recent developments, my resolve 
is even stronger. Any decision to involve U.S. forces in additional air 
support roles would move us two steps closer to a United States ground 
presence in Bosnia.
  The shootdown of Capt. Scott O'Grady served to remind us that 
providing air support is not without cost. It has the real potential of 
mission creep--involving us deeper and deeper in this conflict. And 
make no mistake, we are on the brink.
  I have heard the discussions evolve about what is help for extraction 
of our troops. Is it reconfiguration of our troops anywhere within 
Bosnia? Is it an emergency? Now we are talking about using American 
helicopters. American helicopters are the beginning of ground 
involvement, and we cannot let this happen.
  It is clear that the United Nations is conducting a peacekeeping 
mission in a region where there is no peace. There is no peace in 
sight. The United Nations is paralyzed and unable to respond and 
unwilling to retreat.
  Last week the Bosnian Serbs attacked a U.N.-designated safe area of 
Srebrenica. They routed Dutch U.N. forces. They took U.N. forces 
hostage and drove the inhabitants of the so-called safe area out of 
their homes--the same inhabitants we have denied the ability to fight 
for their homes. Even as we debate this matter right this minute, the 
Serbs are overrunning U.N. outposts and assaulting another supposed 
safe area, Zepa, with artillery and armored vehicles.
  According to the administration, its reluctance to lift the arms 
embargo stems from the fear that if the embargo should be lifted, the 
Bosnian Serbs would only be encouraged to go on the offensive and press 
their attack on the Bosnian Moslems. Encouraged? What is happening now 
this very minute? I do not think you could say by any stretch of the 
imagination that anything we would do would change the encouragement 
that they are now receiving to do the atrocities that they are doing.
  This seems to me to be an empty excuse when they are already clearly 
on the attack. The refugees fleeing Srebrenica and Zepa provide ample 
evidence of the failure of this embargo where only one side of the 
conflict is disarmed.
  Secretary Christopher said yesterday that lifting the arms embargo 
unilaterally would force the withdrawal of U.N. troops. I am sorry to 
say, Mr. President, that would be a positive development. It is the 
status quo that represents failure. This resolution that we are 
debating is an acknowledgment that the U.N. can no longer function in 
Bosnia until both sides are ready to sit down at a table and negotiate 
peace.
  The United Nations is an effective peacekeeper when both sides are 
seeking peace. This is not the case in 

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Bosnia today. As Bosnian Foreign Minister Muhamed Sacribey said so 
eloquently just this week, ``The U.N. troops have become a hindrance * 
* * a clumsy reminder of the U.N.'s failure.''
  The Bosnians need more than bread flown in on a U.N. airlift. The 
Bosnians need to be able to defend themselves, to get their country 
back in order. The United Nations has shown that it cannot and will not 
perform that vital role. So it is time for the U.N. to step aside. 
Fleeing Bosnian Moslems reportedly have seized weapons from the 
Ukrainian U.N. forces. Ironically, those seized weapons may represent 
the most concrete peacekeeping effort yet provided by the U.N. forces 
to the Bosnians.
  I urge the President to turn away from this most recent in a long 
series of shifts in our American policy. Instead, he should be 
encouraging the United Nations and our allies to withdraw as swiftly as 
possible and then lift the arms embargo so the Bosnian Moslems can 
defend themselves.
  Last year when I met with Bosnian Vice President Ganic in the Senate 
Armed Services Committee, where the distinguished Presiding Officer 
also was present, he made a poignant appeal.
 And then he said apologetically, ``I realize I am emotional about this 
issue.''

  I thought to myself, this man is apologizing for being emotional when 
his people are unarmed and under assault, his families are being 
brutalized and murdered, and we in the West are the ones who should be 
apologizing for denying those people a basic right that we all 
acknowledge, the right to defend their country.
  We have a moral obligation to uphold a U.S. doctrine articulated by 
Presidents from John F. Kennedy to George Bush: We will lend our 
support to oppressed people who are willing to fight for their freedom.
  It is not always our responsibility to fight for those people, but we 
certainly ought to be willing to support them in the other ways that we 
can, and we certainly should not deny them the right to fight for 
themselves. This is an American principle that we must uphold.
  During his compelling testimony before the Armed Services Committee, 
Vice President Ganic talked of our sacrifices on D-day, but he warned 
us that 50 years after the defeat of fascism in Europe, it is once 
again there on the rise in the form of genocide and oppression against 
the non-Serbian populations of Bosnia.
  When a few of us visited with the Prime Minister of Bosnia just 3 
weeks ago, he said, ``I am puzzled by the U.N. which keeps saying there 
are two sides to this issue.'' He said, ``There are two sides. One side 
is shooting and the other side is dying.'' Not exactly, Mr. President, 
a level playing field.
  Bosnia's Foreign Minister told reporters yesterday, ``We are not 
waiting for anyone anymore. We are not asking for troops to be sent to 
Bosnia. We are only prepared to count on ourselves and no one else.''
  Mr. President, we can no longer continue to leave Bosnia defenseless 
against a well-armed Serbian aggression. The United States has acted 
unilaterally before, and we will again. We are the leader of the free 
world. We must lift the arms embargo. Vice President Ganic said, ``We 
are dying anyway. Let us die fighting, fighting for our country.''
  Mr. President, the time has come for the Senate to heed their pleas 
and set a date certain for lifting this arms embargo.
  I thank the leaders of this effort, Senator Dole, Senator Lieberman, 
and the other cosponsors of this very important resolution.
  We have talked about this enough. The time has come for us to act 
decisively as the leader of the free world.
  I thank the Chair. I yield the floor.
  Mr. LIEBERMAN addressed the Chair.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER (Mr. Kempthorne). The Senator from Connecticut 
is recognized.
  Mr. LIEBERMAN. Mr. President, first, I thank my distinguished 
colleague and friend from Texas not only for her support of this call 
for lifting of the arms embargo but for a powerful and eloquent 
statement of moral principle as well as strategic interest and just 
good common sense.
  Mr. President, I am very pleased at this time to ask unanimous 
consent that the distinguished occupant of the chair, the Senator from 
Idaho [Mr. Kempthorne], be added as an original cosponsor of this 
measure.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. Without objection, it is so ordered.
  Mr. LIEBERMAN. Mr. President, I say to my colleagues or any staff who 
are following the proceedings in the Chamber, that I am going to 
continue for a while to deal with some of the issues which I think are 
involved in this debate, but I am more than happy to yield the floor to 
any colleagues who wish to speak on this proposal as they come to the 
floor.
  Mr. President, let me focus for a few more moments on the appeal that 
will be made today again that this is the wrong time to lift the 
embargo, the wrong time for the Senate to speak out because of the 
increased pace of discussions between the United States and our allies 
in Europe about a more robust policy to follow against Serbian 
aggression or for implementation of the U.N. policy.
  I have said a short while ago here that on every occasion when we 
have proposed lifting the arms embargo, there has always been another 
reason why people have said to us this is the wrong time. I truly hope 
and pray that my colleagues will not listen to these entreaties and 
will join in the strong, bipartisan, nonpartisan outcry against the 
current policy and plea for implementation of the right of self-defense 
of the Bosnian people, to which Senator Hutchison has so eloquently 
spoken.
  The other fact, in addition to the one I cited earlier, about why I 
believe passing this proposal will in fact strengthen the 
administration's hand in discussions with our allies for a robust 
policy is that it shows not just the impatience but the growing 
opposition, the strong opposition, the nonpartisan opposition to the 
current policy. It cannot be sustained anymore. It is not being 
sustained on the ground in Bosnia, and it cannot be sustained in the 
political representative community that we are for the American people.
  It is in that sense simply unfair of the Europeans to continue to 
press this administration to follow a policy that is not the one of 
lift and strike that it brought into office.
  The other thing to say about the timing may be a sad fact, but it is 
true that there is a temporal discontinuity between what may happen in 
this Chamber today, hopefully, perhaps tomorrow, in adopting this 
proposal and what is happening on the ground and the suffering of the 
Bosnian people and continued aggression of the Bosnian Serbs, as Zepa, 
effectively undefended, is about to fall; which is to say that even if 
we adopt this proposal, hopefully by a strong, overwhelming majority, 
that does not mean it becomes law. Something has to be done by the 
House. Either this will go to the House or the House will take up a 
separate proposal. I gather the latter is the more likely course. Then, 
as this Government of ours works, it will go to a conference committee. 
That will take some time. And then it will go to the President, and he 
has some period of time to decide in the normal course whether to sign 
or veto the proposal.
  So do not worry. If I were a Bosnian on the ground suffering, 
watching my country being taken away from me, watching tens of 
thousands of my country men and women being forced out of their homes, 
watching people being raped and murdered, I would worry about the 
timing, but for those who counsel against action today because of what 
may happen in London on Friday, do not worry about it. Do not worry 
about it. Unfortunately, there will be plenty of time, even if we adopt 
this proposal today or tomorrow, before the arms embargo is actually 
lifted.
  Mr. President, let me now go on to talk about some of what happens on 
the ground today in Bosnia and what I think is the attitude we have 
allowed to develop among the leadership of the Serbs and the Bosnian 
Serbs, which is a wanton disrespect of international order and morality 
and law.
  A story on the radio today that I heard coming in is that as these 
discussions of a more aggressive Western NATO policy in Bosnia--not to 
try to turn back Serbian aggression, which has already taken well over 
70 percent of the country--but discussions are 

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going on about a more aggressive NATO policy to protect the safe areas, 
to give some meaning to the word ``safe" to make it other than 
ludicrous, which is truly what it was, ludicrous and horrific for the 
30,000 or 40,000 in Srebrenica who did not find that town to be a safe 
area. In other words, we are talking now about using Western air power 
and stronger defense forces to give some meaning to a resolution of the 
United Nations to create six safe areas in Bosnia, one of which has 
fallen, another of which is about to go, a resolution that I must say 
has the same source as the arms embargo,
 which we have painfully respected for so long and at such cost for 
everyone.

  And what is the response of the Serbs to even the discussion of more 
forcefully enforcing an act of international law, of the international 
community, of the United Nations? Mr. Karadzic, the President of the 
Bosnian Serb nation, operating out of Pale, says he warns the Western 
Powers that Bosnian Serb forces will shoot down any Western planes or 
helicopters that come in to defend the safe areas. Can you imagine the 
outrage here, the outrage that we have created? If you again let an 
aggressor go on and do not make them pay for their aggression, if they 
are rewarded for their aggression, if they essentially laugh at the 
United Nations, NATO, the Western World, what is the hope for order, 
for morality in an international society, in the post-cold war? What is 
the next step?
  Basically the Chirac proposal to protect the safe zones is really 
like a local police force saying it is going to carry out the law in a 
local area, and the criminals saying, ``If you bring police cars into 
this area to carry out the law, we are going to throw hand grenades at 
the police cars.'' What would our reaction to that be? But that is what 
we have invited here by our inaction.
  We have allowed not a great army, we have allowed a second-rate army, 
to put it mildly, to hold at bay, to take aggressive action, to punish, 
not just the Bosnian people, but the greatest military alliance in the 
history of the world; namely, the North Atlantic Treaty Organization. 
We have sent in these courageous soldiers wearing the blue helmets of 
the United Nations saying they are not combatants, giving them light 
arms, refusing repeatedly under this bizarre, ridiculous dual-key 
approval approach where NATO troops under fire wearing the U.N. uniform 
have to get the approval of the U.N. political authorities; namely, Mr. 
Akashi, to fight back, to call in air power. Efforts to call for 
strikes have been repeatedly frustrated and turned down. So we send in 
the United Nations and basically give these heroic soldiers wearing the 
blue helmets a mission impossible. And what we have done is diminish 
the credibility of this great allied force, this NATO force which held 
the Soviet armies at bay for the duration of the cold war and now is 
being made a fool of by a second-rate military in Serbia, such that the 
political leader of those Serbs says this morning, has the nerve to 
warn the West, that his forces will shoot down Western helicopters if 
they dare to enforce the law, which is to say to protect civilians in 
safe areas. That is what we have come to.
  Uncertainty, irresoluteness, weakness in the face of aggression will 
always draw more aggression. There is no reason to stop.
  Others say that if we lift the arms embargo we will Americanize the 
war. My first answer to that is the answer that Prime Minister 
Silajdzic respectfully gave when he was here a while ago. The Prime 
Minister of Bosnia said in one sense the war has already been 
Americanized. It is a tragic sense. It is a painful sense, which is to 
say that the continued American support of the arms embargo, the 
continued refusal to allow not just that we supply the Bosnians with 
weapons to defend themselves but that we make it difficult for others 
to do so, we continue to support this policy in the world community 
that effectively is America taking a position in this war. Certainly it 
is so on a moral basis that we have by our continued support of the 
arms embargo had an effect. We have Americanized the conflict by 
denying weapons to one side. And of all the bizarre and crazy results, 
we are denying weapons to the victims of aggression.
  Mr. President, as I said last night and I repeat here briefly, there 
is a tragic history and story to be told here about the origins of this 
embargo. It began in 1991 when Yugoslavia had not quite broken apart. 
And it was requested by the Government in Belgrade, the same government 
of Milosevic that has carried out this policy of aggression for the 
purpose of creating a greater Serbia.
  Why was it requested? Well, with some naivete let me say why I think 
a lot of people voted for it. The theory that was being presented was 
that if we closed the flow of arms into the Balkans, we would stop the 
outbreak of war there. And in 1991 it was possible for people of good 
faith to accept this argument, which looking back today is 
preposterous.
  But what is even more infuriating is that this arms embargo was 
requested by the Government in Serbia. And why did they request it? 
Because they had all the arms they needed. History and fate made it 
such that the warmaking capacity, the munitions, the military equipment 
of the former Yugoslavia were almost totally in what became Serbia, 
operating out of Belgrade.
  So I have viewed the arms embargo and certainly the request to 
support for it by the Government in Belgrade in 1991 as a cynical act 
which was done with full knowledge of their own intentions, the 
intention of the Government in Belgrade to begin aggression to extend 
their domain as a way to prevent their soon-to-be victims from 
obtaining weapons.
  That is the sad and twisted history of this embargo, which some have 
now raised to the level of great international law. It was an act of 
politics, an act of policy for some, a well-intended attempt to stop 
war from breaking out once again in the Balkans.
  But how can we have sustained that policy when on the ground it was 
clear that war had broken out, and the impact of the embargo was to 
deny one side, the Bosnians, the means with which to defend themselves 
while the other had plenty? So in response to this argument that 
lifting the arms embargo Americanizes the war, I offer the statement of 
the premise that unfortunately America's enforcement of the arms 
embargo Americanizes the war. There is an extent to which we have blood 
on our hands here by our inaction, if you will, although it is action. 
And insofar as we have continued to support the arms embargo, second, 
in a more direct sense, the war has already been Americanized.
  As I have said here before, weakness in the face of aggression 
encourages more outrageous aggression. And the most powerful testimony 
to that could be offered by Captain O'Grady in his F-16, taking off on 
a flight as part of Operation Deny Flight which was the United Nation's 
effort to enforce the no-fly zone which also was an act of the U.N. 
Security Council.
  What is the no-fly zone? The no-fly zone was the attempt after the 
initial mistakes of the United Nations to try to tone down the conflict 
acknowledging that most of the planes in the region were from Serbia. 
To keep them on the ground or at least not give them that brutal 
advantage from the air. So Captain O'Grady leaves on this mission 
flying this American plane, this F-16. As I indicated last night--I 
will say this again briefly--I pursued this with some intensity and 
detail because I wanted to understand from a military point of view 
what did the Serbs on the ground who fired that missile at Captain 
O'Grady know about that plane he was flying? What was their knowledge 
and intention as they did that?
  And the answers I have received from sources that I trust and have 
high regard for are, one, that the Serbs in Bosnia on the ground were 
operating as part of a very sophisticated integrated air defense radar 
system which actually had been used before the conflict as an air 
traffic control system for commercial air traffic by the former 
Yugoslavia. It extends back to Belgrade, although its parts can stand 
on their own, now being used primarily for military purposes.
  The Bosnian Serbs on the ground saw that plane in the air, one of 
several sorties flown. A large number of sorties are flown everyday as 
part of Operation Deny Flight. They had the capacity. They knew that 
that was an American plane. They could identify it. That is how 
sophisticated their air defense system is and, by the nature of its 
flight 

[[Page S 10275]]
pattern, they also knew, because I asked, that it was part of Operation 
Deny Flight and not part of an airstrike mission. There have been 
airstrikes carried out by NATO. They have been very limited. They have 
been described as pin-prick airstrikes. They have had some partial 
success. But we never have, in any way, pulled the throttle on the air 
power capacity we have in that region.
  I asked those who know, ``Was it possible for the Serbs on the 
ground, seeing what they had identified as an American plane, an F-16, 
above to know whether that plane was on an aggressive mission to strike 
from the air or whether it was part of what I would call a 
nonaggressive patrol mission to see that Serbian planes had not left 
the airspace?''
  The clear response I received was that because of the patterns the F-
16 was flying, it was absolutely clear that this American plane was 
flying as part of Operation Deny Flight, not on an aggressive mission, 
on a patrol mission. Again, if I may use a domestic metaphor here, it 
is as if the police car was going through an area of a town enforcing 
the curfew and was not on an aggressive mission.
  Mr. President, I am very pleased to see the Senator from Delaware 
[Mr. Roth], here. I will finish this line of argument and yield to him.
  So the Serbs on the ground, with their fingers on the missiles, 
missiles that they received from the Russians, that the Serbs from 
Belgrade brought into Bosnia to be at the disposal of the Bosnian 
Serbs, they knew that that F-16 was not on a mission to do them any 
harm. It was patroling, and they intentionally shot that American plane 
down. It is only by the grace of God and, of course, his own 
extraordinary courage that Captain O'Grady is alive today, through his 
heroism and bravery and the extraordinary capacity of American 
equipment that we have supported in this Chamber--global positioning 
systems to locate a distress signal at critical moments--picked up by 
American planes, we send in the CH-53 Super Stallion helicopters to 
pick him up. They are noticed by Bosnian Serbs and they too are fired 
on. Again, an intentional attack on American planes, in this case 
helicopters.
  What did we do about it? We did not do anything. We did not do 
anything, I suppose, because the Serbian forces were holding U.N. 
personnel. I think we should have done something in spite of those 
hostages that were being held, because it seems to me when you allow 
people to take hostages and hold them and they render you impotent, 
then they will simply act more outrageously. But an American plane on a 
nonaggressive patrol mission was intentionally shot down by the Serbs.
  So I offer that as evidence that the war, indeed, has been 
Americanized. Our soldiers, our pilots flying those missions, the NATO 
soldiers in U.N. uniforms may think they are noncombatants, but the 
Serbs do not think they are noncombatants. The soldiers have paid the 
price.
  Lastly, let me talk about Americanizing the conflict. Let me say, it 
is up to us. We are not going to be drawn into a conflict we do not 
want to be drawn into. Lift and strike that President Clinton brought 
into office with him is just that. We have a strategic interest in 
stemming the conflict in Europe. We have a moral mission of protecting 
the victims from genocide, but we do not really have enough of an 
interest, nor does the strategic situation demand it or call for it, to 
send American troops on the ground.
  We do have enough of an interest in stopping this conflict by using 
allied air power to stem aggression and by giving these people, the 
Bosnians, the victims, the opportunity to defend themselves.
  We are not putting ourselves, if we adopt this, on a slippery slope. 
It is up to us to make policy. Nothing irretrievably Americanizes this 
conflict. In my opinion, it is a lame excuse and an insult to our 
capacity to control the course of our behavior to be in opposition to 
S. 21, as amended by amendment No. 1801.
  Mr. President, I am pleased to see three other distinguished 
colleagues on the floor. I welcome their entrance into this debate. I 
yield the floor at this time.
  Mr. ROTH addressed the Chair.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from Delaware is recognized.
  Mr. ROTH. Mr. President, I rise to express my support of S. 21, the 
Bosnia and Herzegovina Self-Defense Act of 1995. I do so because I 
regard it as a first step in a more effective strategy to enable the 
Bosnian people to exercise the right of self-defense to bring this 
horrible war and its atrocities to an end and to do so in a way that 
will, in the long term, reinforce the cohesion of the alliance.
  Those who argue against this legislation fear that it risks a crisis 
within the alliance. They fear it will escalate the conflict and its 
atrocities, as well as expand the war into the surrounding regions. The 
truth is, Mr. President, current policy has already made these fears 
today's realities, and with each passing hour, the situation only gets 
worse.
  First, because of the war, the alliance is already well into its 
worst crisis of cohesion. The current course of events in the Balkan 
war is only making this acrimony even sharper.
  Second, the war in Bosnia is escalating. The Serbs have initiated the 
largest offensive since the beginning of the conflict. Croatian Serbs 
and Serbian regulars have crossed over into Bosnia to support the 
Bosnia Serbs. They have declared the United Nation and NATO to be 
enemies. They continue to humiliate and attack U.N. and allied forces 
that are trying to bring peace and humanitarian assistance to that 
region.
  They have shot down an American F-16. We are all witnesses to the 
Serbs' attacks against the safe havens in Bosnia. We are all witnesses 
to the ethnic cleansing now underway, and we cannot dismiss new 
concentration camps the Serbs are establishing and the new waves of 
rapes and other crimes. Our fears have become reality, and it is now 
necessary for a new strategy to end this conflict.
  The emphasis of a new strategy should be to establish a military 
balance in former Yugoslavia that will induce and sustain a negotiated 
settlement. Toward this end, I believe the United States should take 
the following steps:
  First, the United States Government should notify the United Nation 
and our allies that it favors the withdrawal of the UNPROFOR from 
Bosnia, and if the Western alliance is to remain cohesive, we must 
honor the President's commitment to provide United States forces to 
facilitate the withdrawal of the UNPROFOR.
  Second, the United States should help the Bosnia Government attain 
the military equipment and supplies necessary to defend itself. The 
Serbian Army inherited from the former Yugoslavia a vast superiority in 
military equipment and infrastructure, including large numbers of 
tanks, armored personnel carriers, artillery, and aircraft. These 
advantages have been preserved by the current arms embargo against 
Bosnia,
 and the Serbs are brutally exploiting these advantages. Even with a 
more disciplined and larger army in terms of personnel, Sarajevo has 
not been able to overcome their weakness in equipment and supplies. 
Considering the Bosnian fighters' demonstrated courage and their will 
to fight, Sarajevo's access to modern arms will help significantly 
offset the Serb advantages in weaponry and logistical support.

  Third, the United States should declare that it will exercise the 
right to utilize its air power in a sustained and strategic manner 
against any Serb effort to exploit the UNPROFOR withdrawal and to 
assist the Bosnian military in defending against any Serb offensives. 
The commitment to employ air power is necessary to prevent further Serb 
aggression and massacres. However, the application of American air 
power is not to win the war for the Bosnians, nor should it be 
construed as a step toward a commitment of United States ground forces. 
The war must be fought and won by the Bosnians. The purpose of United 
States air power would be only to deter further Serb offenses and deny 
them the advantages they now exploit from their superiority in heavy 
tanks, artillery, and military equipment and infrastructure.
  These steps will help the Bosnian people to more effectively defend 
themselves on a strategic level. They would contribute to a more even 
distribution of military power in the region. That would help deny 
aggressors in the war 

[[Page S 10276]]
opportunities and incentives to continue their offenses. Indeed, it 
would help prompt them to recognize the imperative of achieving a 
negotiated and peaceful solution to the war.
  Mr. President, strong congressional support behind S. 21 is 
absolutely essential. Strong support will communicate to the world 
America's determination not to tolerate the aggression now underway in 
Bosnia. It will demonstrate to our European friends and allies that 
America is always ready to live up to its commitments, and that America 
is always prepared and willing to undertake what is necessary to 
establish and ensure enduring peace and stability in post-cold-war 
Europe.
  I yield the floor.
  Mr. SIMON addressed the Chair.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from Illinois is recognized.
  Mr. SIMON. Mr. President, I rise in support of the Dole-Lieberman 
legislation. It is an unhappy situation, and there are no good answers. 
Whatever course we take is going to be criticized. What we can do is 
learn from our mistakes.
  In 1991, when the aggression first took place, President Bush and the 
administration should have responded. When Bill Clinton took office, 
he, after criticizing George Bush during the campaign, should have 
responded. That is easy for us to say. But what we know is that the 
situation is deteriorating. If some action is not taken now, it is 
going to be worse in a month. And if some action is not taken in a 
month, it is going to be worse in 3 months.
  The great threat to the world today is not nuclear annihilation, as 
it was a decade ago; it is instability, and it is that tyrants 
somewhere in the world will get the message out of Bosnia that they can 
move against their neighbors and the community of nations will do 
nothing. The danger in Bosnia, if appropriate action is not taken, is 
that it is going to spread. It will spread to Macedonia, Bulgaria, 
Greece, and Turkey, and we will have a major problem on our hands. And 
here what the United States has to do is to show some backbone, some 
muscle.
  The community of nations do not question our technical competence. 
You know, we are increasing defense appropriations as a way to send a 
message to the world. That is not going to send a message to the world. 
What the world questions right now is our will, our muscle, our 
backbone. And when I say ``our,'' I am not talking about the members of 
the Armed Forces; I am talking about the administration, I am talking 
about the Senate, I am talking about the House.
  Let me just give an illustration. Suppose in the Chicago Police 
Department, or the Los Angeles Police Department, or the New Haven 
Police Department, people would enlist. But, tragically, as happens in 
every major city police department, there is a casualty. Would the city 
of Chicago, or Los Angeles, or New Haven announce: Sorry, we have some 
drug dealers here who killed a Chicago policeman, we are going to 
abandon that portion of Chicago, or Los Angeles, or New Haven because 
of a casualty. We would recognize that to do that invites more trouble, 
tragic as the casualty is.
  Yet, that is what we did in Somalia. I read in editorials about the 
disaster of Somalia. Real candidly, George Bush's finest hour was when 
he had the courage to send our troops there, and we saved hundreds of 
thousands of lives. And then a decision was made by a retired American 
admiral to go after General Aideed--frankly, a decision that should 
have been made--after consultation with Ambassador Oakley and others. 
But a mistake was made. Nineteen Americans lost their lives, including 
one who we saw on television being dragged around the streets, and that 
shocked and stunned all of us. Immediately, there were calls for the 
United States to get out of Somalia. And we understand that. We do not 
like casualties. But we have to recognize that if we are going to have 
stability in the world, those who enlist in armed forces, like those 
who enlist in the Chicago Police Department, are taking additional 
risks. And the risk we cannot take is having a world of instability.
  After the uproar here in Congress on Somalia, there was a meeting at 
the White House, about a 2-hour meeting, with about 20 of us, as I 
recall. A decision was made that by the following March 31, we would 
pull out all American troops. It was not an agreement I liked, but it 
was better than pulling out American troops immediately. And that was 
the sense of this body at that point. Shortly after that decision was 
made and announced, President Mubarak of Egypt visited the United 
States. He was in the Blair House. I, at that point, chaired the 
Subcommittee on Africa. I went down to visit President Mubarak, who was 
chairman of the Organization for African Unity at that point. Just 
before I went down, I received a call from someone in the White House--
not the President--saying, ``Could you ask President Mubarak to keep 
his troops there longer than March 31?'' I made the request--without 
disclosing a private conversation--and it would not surprise any of you 
to learn that President Mubarak was not impressed that the most 
powerful nation in the world and the richest nation in the world said 
we were getting out of Somalia, but we would like their troops to stay. 
We did not show determination or fortitude.
  Senator Nunn is going to have an amendment which will make clear, if 
it is adopted, that the U.S. Senate backs, if this amendment is adopted 
and troops are withdrawn, we have pledged we will use up to 25,000 
troops to pull the U.N. forces out.
  Frankly, I think if that happens and arms are supplied, there will 
have to be air cover for the Bosnian Government. This is not going to 
be a risk-free operation. There will be calls on this floor, once there 
are casualties, to pull out, to stop.
  I think here we have to show the determination and the muscle and the 
will that recognizes the great threat to the world through today's 
instability. Bosnia can be a spreading disease. We have to get a hold 
of this thing.
  I think the Dole-Lieberman proposal is a sensible proposal. It is not 
risk-free. There are no good answers. There are only two answers right 
here: One is to go in with substantial military muscle; or follow the 
Dole-Lieberman proposal and let the people of Bosnia defend themselves.
  I do not believe there is the will--not just on the part of the 
United States, but on the part of other governments--to take the first 
alternative. I do not know whether that would be a realistic 
alternative also.
  No one can guarantee that this is going to work, that this will 
preserve the Bosnian Government. We have to send a message to tyrants 
in Asia, Latin America, Europe, everywhere in the world, you cannot 
move against your neighbors and bring about world instability. The 
community of nations will respond. We have to respond.
  I think this is a well-crafted proposal. I intend to support it. I 
yield the floor.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER (Mr. Inhofe). The Senator from California.
  Mrs. FEINSTEIN. Mr. President, I thank the Chair. I thank the Senator 
from Illinois for some very thoughtful, and I believe, sound comments. 
I find myself in agreement, Senator, with virtually everything that the 
Senator said.
  I also thank the Senator from Connecticut for what has not been easy 
for someone on our side of the aisle, to take this level of leadership 
on the issue. I heard the Senator last night so eloquently put forward 
these facts.
  Perhaps, in 1878, Benjamin Disraeli said it best when he offered 
these words in the British House of Lords:

       No language can describe adequately the condition of that 
     large portion of the Balkan peninsula--Serbia, Bosnia and 
     Herzegovina and other provinces--[the] political intrigues, 
     constant rivalries, a total absence of all public spirit . . 
     . hatred of all races, animosities of rival religions and 
     absence of any controlling power . . . nothing short of an 
     army of 50,000 of the best troops would produce anything like 
     order in these parts.

  And that was said 117 years ago.
  We know that when Marshal Tito governed what was known as Yugoslavia, 
the strong central control kept down these 100-year-old animosities. 
Today, they have boiled to the point of no return.
  Many have characterized UNPROFOR as a complete failure. I believe 
that exaggerates the case. After all, there has been a dramatic 
decrease in civilian casualties in Bosnia--from 130,000 in 1992 down to 
3,000 in 1994. UNPROFOR deserves much of the credit for this decrease. 
However, it is undeniable that UNPROFOR has major shortcomings that 
have been exposed with increasing regularity. 

[[Page S 10277]]

  We saw it on May 25, in Tuzla, a so-called U.N. safe-area, when 71 
young people, all under age 28, were killed by a single Serb shell--one 
of many instances when Serb forces have eroded safe areas with 
attacks--without any retaliation, despite a U.N. Security Council 
resolution authorizing such responses.
  We saw it when 377 U.N. troops were taken hostage in June after a 
NATO airstrike on a Serb ammunition dump.
  We saw it when Capt. Scott O'Grady's F-16 was shot down without a 
response, as scores of U.N. hostages were still held captive.
  We see it every day, as U.N. peacekeepers attempt to protect innocent 
civilians, sometimes successfully, but often not.
  And we saw it on June 10, when the U.N. mission in Sarajevo announced 
it would not respond to protect Moslem enclaves from attack without the 
consent of the Bosnian Serbs--the attackers.
  I believe it is fair to say that U.N. forces have neither the 
mandate, the training, the equipment, nor the rules of engagement, to 
allow them to respond sufficiently to attacks against them or against 
civilian populations. They are meant to be observers to keep corridors 
for humanitarian aid open--not fighters.
  These problems have taken their toll on public and congressional 
support for the present course. And they have taken their toll, I think 
unfairly, on support for UNPROFOR troops.
  In Congress, there has been continuing debate over whether a 
unilateral or a multilateral lifting of the arms embargo against 
Bosnia, or the withdrawal of UNPROFOR troops altogether is the humane 
or the inhumane action to take. And because the United States has no 
troops on the ground in Bosnia, we have less leverage in influencing 
nations that do have troops on the ground.
  But during the past week, events have reached a terrible watershed, 
and we have seen a startling and devastating turn: The three Eastern 
enclaves, Srebrenica, Zepa, and Gorazde, are falling to Serb 
aggression. Ethnic cleansing has taken a giant step forward.
  Mr. President, 42,000 civilians from this area of Srebrenica have 
been separated from their families, and many of them are at this moment 
still being held hostage in a stadium in nearby Bratunac up here. 
Literally, thousands of refugees from Srebrenica remain unaccounted 
for, perhaps up to 20,000. We have heard ominous stories of women being 
taken hostage and raped, of summary executions, and of bodies lining 
the nearby roads.
  A second safe area, Zepa, with some 16,000 Bosnian residents, is in 
the process of being overrun. Today, it is reported in the Los Angeles 
Times that Bosnian Government soldiers have said, they would use the 65 
Ukrainian peacekeepers in Zepa as human shields against Serb attacks 
unless the United Nations called in NATO air power. What we see is that 
now the Bosnian forces are beginning to use the Serb tactics of taking 
hostages.
  It has been shocking to see the ease with which these areas have and 
are falling. Dozens of U.N. observation posts have been abandoned, 
leaving unarmed Bosnian Moslems to try to defend themselves.
  The third area, Gorazde, will be next, unless there is a will to use 
major airstrikes. Airstrikes were successfully employed in April 1994, 
to prevent a Serb invasion of Gorazde. However, such airstrikes are now 
made unlikely by the fear that Bosnian Serb forces will retaliate by 
taking more U.N. troops hostage. UNPROFOR weapons and equipment in the 
safe areas are being taken by Bosnians and used to fight the Serbs 
since the world has decided that the Bosnians cannot arm themselves.
  This past weekend, I opened the New York Times, and saw photographs 
of elderly refugees in wheelbarrows, being wheeled over rough roads. I 
saw sobbing mothers and children. I also saw this picture. To me, it 
was a call for change.
  I do not know this 20-year-old woman's name. She was a refugee from 
Srebrenica, and as she neared Tuzla, where the first camp was set up, 
this young woman decided she could not go on. She climbed a tree, tied 
a rope around her neck, and jumped. A photographer captured the image 
of her lifeless body hanging from the tree.
  It is an image that haunts us. We do not know what humiliations and 
deprivations this woman suffered. Perhaps she saw a loved one killed. 
Perhaps she had been raped. Perhaps she simply could not bear the pain 
of being forced out of her home.
  We only know that she could take no more. We only know that finally, 
the pain was too great. We only know that she could not endure any more 
suffering, any more indignity, any more barbarism. This was the act of 
a defenseless, vulnerable, beaten person. It was not the act of someone 
who had the ability to fight in self-defense.
  Just as the anonymous white-shirted young man facing down a column of 
tanks in Tiananmen Square a few years ago conveyed the unspeakable 
message of oppression to the world, so did this photograph point 
eloquently to the world's failure in Bosnia.
  The conscience of Europe and America must examine and reverse this 
terrible downhill slide now.
  As the distinguished majority leader said yesterday at the beginning 
of this debate:

       This debate is not just about Bosnia. This is not just 
     about a small European country under attack. This debate is 
     about American leadership and American principles, about NATO 
     strength and credibility, and about our place in history.

  I have been a supporter of this administration's policy to this 
point, but recently certain things have been made clear:
  First, the involved allied powers have stood against ethnic 
cleansing, and yet ethnic cleansing is taking place unabated on a 
continuing basis, as an unrelenting Serb military is allowed to rape, 
maim, and kill innocent people who cannot defend themselves, and whose 
military the world's powers are preventing from gaining access to 
sufficient arms.
  Although the Bosnian Government forces have a significant manpower 
advantage over the Serbs, they face more than a 3-to-1 disadvantage in 
tanks, more than a 2-to-1 disadvantage in artillery, and a nearly 3-to-
1 disadvantage in fixed-wing aircraft and helicopters.
  Second, UNPROFOR's well-intentioned--and in some parts of the country 
successful--efforts have been shattered by a mandate that does not let 
them fight back, but has allowed them to be taken hostage, and allows 
their weaponry and equipment to be taken from them.
  Third, beginning this past weekend, we have seen the fall of one of 
so-called safe areas; this week--the likely fall of a second; and 
shortly--the probable loss of third. With 70 percent of Bosnia in Serb 
hands, we must conclude that the present course needs to be changed.
  I agree with those who have argued that the Dole-Lieberman resolution 
is not perfect. It probably will offend allies we do not want to, and 
should not, offend. It may contribute to an escalation of the war, and 
it may increase the likelihood that U.S. troops will be deployed to 
help UNPROFOR withdraw.
  But I believe this resolution, in the absence of any other viable 
course of action, has one overriding redeeming value: It will establish 
unequivocally that the U.S. Senate believes that an afflicted and 
decimated people should be able to defend themselves.
  Let me just give an example of the effects of the arms embargo. 
Earlier this week, I met with the Bosnian Foreign Minister in my 
office. He explained to me that despite their lack of heavy weapons, 
the Bosnian Government forces, who outnumber Bosnian Serb forces, have 
improved their battlefield performance in recent months. But, according 
to the Foreign Minister, the Bosnian troops still suffer a lot of 
casualties, the vast majority of which are fatal shrapnel wounds to the 
head.
  Why is this significant? Because the arms embargo prevents the 
Bosnian Government from buying helmets for its forces. Helmets--one of 
the most essential pieces of equipment a soldier can have. And without 
them, many Bosnian soldiers are dying from shrapnel wounds to the head.
  As a member of the Foreign Relations Committee, I have tried to learn 
as much as possible, to listen to and be advised by the experts. But I 
have not yet seen any viable plan to deal with and prevent the imminent 
taking of Gorazde.
  This weekend, the United States will confer with its NATO allies in 
Europe 

[[Page S 10278]]
on this situation. This meeting, in my view, is key and critical, and I 
hope that a course of action and a change of mandate will be presented. 
It is my hope that those attending these meetings will think about a 
scenario which could create an incentive for the parties to agree to a 
last cease-fire and cooling off period for a specific period of time, 
perhaps 3 to 6 months. The cease-fire would be enforced by three 
powers, using NATO troops under NATO command, employing aggressive air 
strikes to deter violations. The three powers would obviously be 
France, Britain, and the United States.
  During the cease-fire, UNPROFOR troops and Moslem civilians would be 
allowed to safely evacuate the remaining indefensible--termed by the 
experts, everyone I have talked to, as indefensible--eastern enclave 
without interference, and be relocated to safe areas of Bosnian 
Government territory in central Bosnia or elsewhere.
  At the same time, UNPROFOR troops could be reconfigured to only those 
areas where they can protect themselves and others, and carry out their 
mission of keeping open humanitarian aid corridors and facilitating the 
distribution of aid.
  But one thing is clear. If UNPROFOR is to remain in Bosnia at all, 
their mandate and their mission must be changed. They must be able to 
defend themselves and fight back under a clear, decisive and expedited 
field command.
  In return, during the cessation of hostilities, the Bosnian 
Government, the Bosnian Serbs, and the Croats must agree to one last 
effort to negotiate a fair apportionment of disputed lands.
  If an agreement on land apportionment is not reached by the end of 
the cease-fire period, Britain, France, and the United States would 
agree to lift the arms embargo multilaterally.
  Throughout this period, economic sanctions would be maintained and 
strengthened where possible against Serbia, with the understanding that 
they will not be lifted until a settlement in Bosnia is reached.
  Perhaps--I say ``perhaps''--a scenario like this could have merit. I 
presented it last Thursday night to the Secretary of State, I presented 
it to the minority leader, and I have discussed it with the majority 
leader. I do not know whether it has merit. But I do know that in the 
absence of any other course of action, people must be able to defend 
themselves. And in the absence of any other constructive, precise, and 
well-defined effort, it will be my intention to vote for the Lieberman-
Dole resolution.
  I thank the Chair. I yield the floor.
  Mr. President, I suggest the absence of a quorum.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The clerk will call the roll.
  The bill clerk proceeded to call the roll.
  Mr. LIEBERMAN. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the order 
for the quorum call be rescinded.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. Without objection, it is so ordered.
  Mr. LIEBERMAN. I thank the Chair.
  Mr. President, I want to respond to the very eloquent, very moving, 
and very strong remarks of my colleague and friend from California, 
Senator Feinstein. I appreciate very much the history that she told, 
the obvious concern and frustration that she expressed for the failure 
of the current policy, the haunting picture of a 20-year-old woman 
hanging from a tree, a victim of suicide for reasons that we do not 
know. But speaking for all of us of what happens when you leave a 
people defenseless, women defenseless, perhaps she was raped, perhaps 
she was separated from her family, or perhaps her husband or loved one 
was carted off with other young Bosnian males, young men; whatever. It 
is that picture, and so many others, that will haunt us as the 
indication and evidence and proof of the failure of the current policy 
and the effect of the current policy.
  I heard somebody speaking on one of the television programs today 
against lifting the arms embargo, a spokesperson for the 
administration, saying something that has been said over and over 
again, which is that, if we lift the arms embargo, it will lead to more 
bloodshed. How much more bloodshed could there be? Over 200,000 killed, 
2 million-plus refugees, and the conflict goes on; one side with arms 
willing to take whatever action is necessary, violating all rules of 
international morality, with its leaders today the subject of an 
international inquiry at The Hague as to whether they are war 
criminals--Milosevic, Karadzic, Mladic, the whole crew.
  So will lifting the arms embargo lead to more bloodshed? None of us 
can say it will not. It may lead to more bloodshed. It may lead to the 
shedding for the first time in any significant degree of Serbian blood. 
And until that happens, the Serbs, in by opinion, will not accept the 
peace at the peace table that the Bosnians could possibly accept. They 
will only seek unconditional surrender and the continuing death and 
torture of the Bosnian Moslems.
  I appreciate the sincerity of my colleague from California in 
suggesting the possibility of an alternate course here, a last chance, 
a 3- to 6-month period in which both sides, the Bosnian Serbs, Bosnia 
and Serbia, be given a chance to negotiate a peace, after which, if 
there is failure, the arms embargo will be lifted multilaterally.
  I appreciate the sincerity. I wish that such a policy had any chance 
of working. But I will offer this response to it. In the first place, 
insofar as part of it involves the movement of the remaining Bosnians 
who are in the east of Bosnia into the central area of Bosnia around 
Sarajevo, which is the relatively secure area, although Sarajevo 
continues to be shelled, unfortunately, it yields ground to the 
Serbians, which is exactly what they want. They want the greater 
Serbia, and eastern Bosnia.
  But more to the point, every peace offer that has been made by any 
credible authority, including most significantly the contact group, the 
international five-nation group that made the peace offer of 51 percent 
to the Serbs, the remainder to the Bosnians, 20 percent less than the 
Bosnians had at the beginning of the war before they were defenseless 
victims of aggression, the Bosnians accepted it; the Serbs did not. 
That has been the course of every peace offer made.
  The Serbs are not accepting terms of peace because they are running 
willfully, wantonly, brutally throughout the country and nobody is 
making them suffer. When outlaws are allowed to commit illegal acts, 
the worst illegal acts--theft of land, eviction of people, rape, 
murder, slaughter, separation of families--they will continue to do it 
because nobody stops them. We know that here in our own country. That 
is why we are all supportive of stronger law enforcement.
  So they continue to do that. They are not going to accept the peace. 
They have not accepted any peace. If I had one shred of hope that they 
would, I would say it was worth trying to pursue some opportunity to 
give them that.
  Let me add this, that any terms they would accept are unacceptable to 
the Bosnians, and none of us in the exercise of fairness would ask the 
Bosnians to accept. They have taken enough abuse. They have suffered 
enough. It is not for the international community at the point of a 
Serbian gun to force the Bosnians to accept the decimation of their 
country. They have already accepted every reasonable or not so 
reasonable peace plan they have been given.
  So I wish I could have some hope for the prospects of yet another 
cease-fire and a chance for negotiation. But at every turn the Serbs 
have not only rejected the suggestions; they have deceived us. They 
have tricked us. They have talked while preparing to attack. And the 
Bosnians and the United Nations and NATO and the United States have 
been the victims.
  And finally, so far as the suggestion made--and again I respect it 
and I know it is made in good faith and with a sense of hope--that at 
the end of the 6-month period Britain and France and the United States 
would multilaterally lift the arms embargo, I see no indication that 
our allies and friends in Europe are prepared to commit to that.
  So, Mr. President, again I note the presence in the Chamber of 
colleagues, and I yield the floor.
  Mr. KERRY. Mr. President, I ask my colleague if he would be 
interested in entering into a little bit of a colloquy maybe simply 
because we all come to the floor and the debate seems to pass by itself 
in a way. I think it would be helpful if we could talk through it a 
little bit. 

[[Page S 10279]]

  I ask my colleague if it is his judgment that withdrawing UNPROFOR 
and lifting the embargo, which is essentially the heart of what is in 
the Senator's amendment, constitutes the policy of choice? Is that what 
we as a country and we as Senators want to put forward as our first 
choice policy here, to simply say that if the President of Bosnia says 
UNPROFOR get out, we lift the embargo, or if UNPROFOR is out, we lift 
the embargo?
  My question is, is there not really a precursor to that, which is in 
effect a policy that wants to prevent the safe areas from being 
overtaken, a policy that wants to prevent women from being raped as a 
matter of war strategy, a policy that wants to guarantee the delivery 
of humanitarian assistance? Is that not rather the policy of choice for 
a great nation and a Western civilization, a free people?
  Mr. LIEBERMAN. Mr. President, in responding to my friend and 
colleague from Massachusetts, this is not the first choice, but it is 
the choice that is offered in the context of the failure of the other 
choices that have been made, the other choices that have done damage 
and been inconsistent with the policy of a free people and a great 
nation and have done extraordinary damage not only to the Bosnian 
people but to the rule of law.
  The policy that this proposal advocates, lifting the embargo and 
striking from the air, is the policy that President Clinton brought 
into office with him in 1993, that our allies in Europe opposed, and 
then the policy was changed.
  So, of course, if the United Nations had played any role other than 
passing resolutions--and I say to my friend, it is my personal judgment 
that the United Nations has suffered terribly in this conflict because 
it has been misused and its soldiers, brave soldiers, have been 
misused.
  When did the United Nations go in? It went in after the aggression of 
the Serbs became clear and the first wave of terrible atrocities became 
visible to the world, when the concentration camps were seen by British 
television and sent around the world. Camps that were operated by the 
Serbs with the Moslems: the haunting pictures, the echoes of the Second 
World War, emaciated bodies, stories of mass slaughter, rape, all the 
rest.
  The Western Powers could not sit by when that happened, but instead 
of being forceful, lifting the arms embargo, striking from the air at 
minimal risk to Western personnel, they threw in the United Nations, on 
a presumably humanitarian mission, and gave them no weapons with which 
to defend themselves, and were not willing to stand by the resolutions 
that were adopted subsequently by the United Nations to deny flight, to 
protect safe areas.
  And what have we had? Sadly, we have had the United Nations serving 
not as a guarantor of peace and security for the Bosnian people but 
now, not for a day, not for a month, but for 3 years being a cover for 
Serbian aggression. And every time we have begun to get up some 
backbone here to strike back at the Serbs for killing people, for 
shooting down American planes, for taking U.N. personnel hostage, they 
have just taken more hostages and said if you strike back at us, we 
will kill your personnel, and we have walked away. We have moved to the 
back.
  So I say to my friend from Massachusetts, policy of choice? We are 
late in the game. We are late in the day in Bosnia. If in 1991 and 
1992, when the Serbs moved into Slovenia and then Croatia and Bosnia, 
the world had drawn a line and said: end of the cold war instability or 
not, do not think you can march now and not pay a price for it. We did 
not and as a result we have paid a price.
  I say to my friend, policy of choice? Let us listen to the victims. 
Let us listen to the people of Bosnia who have said through us, through 
their elected representatives over and over again, the United Nations 
is not helping us; it is hurting us. Get them out of here. Give us the 
weapons with which to defend ourselves. Please, help us from the air to 
strike at Serbian targets until we can make this a fair fight.
  Mr. KERRY. There is nothing in this amendment about strike.
  Mr. LIEBERMAN. No, there is not.
  Mr. KERRY. There is nothing in here about strike. This amendment is 
exclusively what you do if you withdraw. I respectfully suggest to my 
friend from Connecticut, I agree with everything he just said. 
Everything he just said is a wonderful statement of what is wrong with 
our current policy. The question is, is this a replacement for that 
policy? And I respectfully suggest to my friend this is not a policy. 
This is the last step. This is the last step. If the President of 
Bosnia says UNPROFOR out, under the law UNPROFOR has to get out. So 
absolutely, unequivocally, I suppose you have no choice morally but to 
lift the embargo then because you cannot keep an embargo against some 
people while the others have weapons to kill them.
  Mr. LIEBERMAN. That is just what we have done for 3 years.
  Mr. KERRY. But that does not mean we ought to continue to do that 
today. If the policy of choice as the Senator has acknowledged is to 
stand up, then I ask the question, why do we not stand up today?
 Sarajevo has not yet fallen. Gorazde has not yet fallen. Zepa may 
fall. It is in the process. Are we so weak, are we so without guts and 
policy that we are going to come in here and ratify an amendment that 
effectively says if the Bosnian President says, ``Get out,'' or 
UNPROFOR is out, is that all we have to offer in the United States 
Senate, an epitaph rather than a policy?

  Mr. LIEBERMAN. I answer my friend from Massachusetts, he asks, are we 
so weak? Do we so lack guts? Do we have no policy that this is the 
alternative? And I say to my friend, look at the history of the last 3 
years. And all you will see is weakness, lack of policy, and no guts. 
And who has paid for it?
  Mr. KERRY. I say to my friend, I am not the prisoner of the history 
of the last 3 years. I hope he is not. I do not think the U.S. Senate--
--
  Mr. LIEBERMAN. I must take into account the history of the last 3 
years. At every moment we have brought this proposal up again--Is this 
the first step? It was the first step that President Clinton brought 
into office with him and our allies with Europe frustrated with its 
implementation.
  So I say to my friend, obviously we have to look at the history. I 
say this with respect to my friend from Massachusetts. I know he speaks 
with sincerity. At every point that the option was given to the Senate, 
to the House, to the administration, to the Western allies to lift the 
embargo, stop this immoral refusal to let these people defend 
themselves, use air power to help them resist aggression, there has 
always been another excuse for delay.
  And so, respectfully, when my friend comes in today and says, is this 
the replacement for policy--this is what we have been crying out for 
for more than 3 years. And it is time to stop finding excuses for not 
at least giving these people the opportunity to defend themselves. If I 
had any confidence that there would be a stronger Western policy, I 
would listen--although I would still push forward--but, respectfully, 
the voices that I hear are not the voices telling me to delay. The 
voices I hear are the voices of the Bosnian people who have suffered as 
a result of just what you have used, the words you have used: weakness, 
lack of guts, and lack of policy.
  Mr. KERRY. Let me say to my friend----
  Mr. LIEBERMAN. Right now, all right in the newspapers, the British, 
the French, and our administration are not agreeing on an alternative 
policy.
  Mr. KERRY. I agree. But therein lies the question of leadership and 
of resolution, not, it seems to me, in a sort of final statement of 
what you do if nothing else can happen. It seems to me my friend--I 
think we are talking the same language but coming at it from a 
different point. My sense is that the problem has not been the defined 
goal of UNPROFOR. The problem has been the implementation of that goal, 
the dual-key requirements for airstrikes, the absolute ineffectiveness 
of the troops on the ground who are armed not to fight back or to 
enforce most anything but are really so lightly armed as to be 
invitations to be taken hostage.
  The question I think the U.S. Senate ought to be asking itself more 
appropriately is not what do we do to wash our hands of this situation, 
which, incidentally, is more complicated than that. And I think the 
Senator from Connecticut knows that. He is one of 

[[Page S 10280]]
the clearest thinkers in the U.S. Senate. If the Bosnian President can 
effectively say, OK, I want UNPROFOR out, and the Senate now passes a 
resolution saying one of the circumstances under which we will lift the 
embargo will be if the President of Bosnia says, UNPROFOR, get out, 
well, the President is pledged to put 25,000 American troops on the 
ground in order to help UNPROFOR get out. If I were the President of 
Bosnia, and I were kind of backed up against the wall, I might just 
think of saying to myself, ``Boy, how do I get the United States over 
here?''
  So, he says, ``UNPROFOR get out.'' All of a sudden there are 25,000 
troops in Bosnia. And then you might just want to--I can remember, you 
know, from the days of being in Vietnam, when the North Vietnamese 
would dress up like South Vietnamese and attack other people. I can 
well imagine Moslems putting on the uniforms of the Serbs and attacking 
Americans and drawing the United States into retaliation against the 
Serbs, or making it extremely difficult for America to get out in a way 
that then entangles us. I mean, why give the President of Bosnia the 
choice of putting 25,000 American troops on the ground in Bosnia-
Herzegovina?
  Mr. LIEBERMAN. I ask----
  Mr. KERRY. Let me finish. It seems to me the Senator from Connecticut 
and all of us ought to be defining for the country and the world what 
is at stake here. Pope John Paul said it the other day, that the world 
is watching, you know, that civilization is standing by and 
experiencing a great defeat. To the best of my historical recollection, 
most of what World War II and World War I were about are principles 
that are fundamentally involved here.
  Now, I am not suggesting that they rise to the level of threat that 
we ought to put American troops on the ground. I have never said that. 
I believe this is fundamentally the backyard of Europe, with respect to 
a localized kind of action, and they have got to bear the brunt on the 
ground. And the French have indicated a willingness to do that. The 
British seem to be dragging. But one of the reasons they are dragging 
is that we are not indicating our willingness to be sufficiently 
supportive with respect to air power and other things.
  Now, I will tell you something. I think we ought to say that the 
United States of America is prepared to run the risk of putting 
American air people at risk, in harm's way, in the effort to back up 
our allies on the ground sufficiently to be guaranteeing only one 
thing--a minimalist capacity to deliver humanitarian assistance and 
guarantee safe areas.
  Now, if the Western World and civilization cannot come together 
around the notion that a safe area is a safe area and we ought to stand 
up for it, and if we cannot come up around the notion that the basic 
laws of warfare ought to be adhered to, and if we are going to walk 
away in the face of thugism, we will ignore the lessons of history and 
invite future confrontation and future questions about our leadership 
and so forth.
  I think the Senator agrees with that. So the issue here is, why not 
change the rules of engagement? Why not pull this away from the dual-
key of the United Nations? Why not create a structure where the United 
States can control its destiny with its allies and not be subject to 
the politics of Mr. Akashi and Mr. Boutros-Ghali? Why not do what we 
effectively did in Desert Storm, where we ran the show or undertook 
that responsibility, and stand up for something before we turn around 
and say that all we can do is wash our hands and allow people to get 
weapons several months from now, when in the intervening months the 
Serbs will very clearly use the time? And if you think you have seen 
bloodshed and refugees on CNN in the last few days, wait until you see 
what happens on that course of policy.
  Mr. LIEBERMAN. Mr. President, if there had been any indication over 
the last 3 years that there was the kind of resolve and willingness to 
stand up against aggression that the Senator from Massachusetts 
describes, my response would be more open than it is. The fact is that 
we have gone through more than 3 years in which the United Nations has 
acted with weakness and has been a cover for Serbian aggression against 
the Moslem people. We have acted for 3 years pursuant to a policy that 
has lacked purpose and force in such a way that we have demeaned the 
greatest military alliance in the history of the world, NATO, and 
raised questions about its continued viability. And we have diminished 
ourselves, the United States, the greatest power in the world.
  Mr. President, if I had any hope--and I would like to still have 
hope--that the United Nations' mission in the specific areas that the 
Senator from Massachusetts refers to, protecting the safe areas, 
getting the humanitarian assistance in, would be fortified, I would be 
glad to see that happen. I would be glad to see that happen. But it 
would not be for me an excuse not to end this immoral embargo.
  How can we justify that for more than 3 years now we have imposed an 
embargo that, incidentally, is Milosevic's embargo? He called for it in 
1991. Why? Because he knew he had plenty of tanks and personnel 
carriers and planes and weapons. And we went along in naive good faith 
that was somehow to stop the conflict from breaking out, and with every 
passing week and month as the conflict went on and the Serbs took more 
land and kicked more people out of their homes and killed and raped and 
tortured more people and put them in concentration camps, we continued 
to enforce that embargo.
  May I say, after those 3 years of history, it ill behooves us to 
raise any questions about the motivation of the leaders of Bosnia, to 
suggest that we not lift the arms embargo or not give them the right to 
have some say in determining when they think the U.N. mission has ended 
all purpose for them and impute that somehow this is their intent to 
trap us into this----
  Mr. KERRY. Why----
  Mr. LIEBERMAN. Excuse me. They have been asking for 3\1/2\ years that 
we give them weapons to defend themselves, long before there was ever 
any talk of American troops. As a matter of fact, at every point, the 
Bosnians have said, ``We don't want American soldiers on the ground. We 
have plenty of soldiers. We just don't have weapons.''
  So I say to the Senator from Massachusetts, respectfully, this is not 
the hour to speak against this proposal on the basis of either what the 
United Nations might do, after its sorry record of the last 3\1/2\ 
years, or to speak against it, because it finally gives one ear to the 
victims of this aggression, the direct victims, the Bosnians, or to 
impute cynical motives to them in this.
  Mr. KERRY. Let me say to my friend, if this is not the moment to talk 
about why this is an incomplete policy, then what is? I mean, the fact 
is that the President has not to this day asked UNPROFOR to leave. The 
President of Bosnia has not said, ``Get out of here.''
  So, of course, they are asking to lift the embargo. The best of all 
worlds is to keep UNPROFOR and have no embargo. I understand that, and 
so does the Senator. But the Senator also understands why he has not 
asked UNPROFOR to get out, because UNPROFOR has reduced the number of 
deaths, because UNPROFOR has provided some safety and succor. And the 
question is not whether we ought to now trigger the absolute certainty 
of UNPROFOR being withdrawn, the question is whether or not we ought to 
make it work.
  I totally agree with the Senator's complaints about the weakness and 
the unfairness and the total inconsistency of this equation of the last 
years. It has been horrendous.
  Mr. LIEBERMAN. Then why does the Senator not support the lifting of 
the arms embargo? How can the Senator justify that?
  Mr. KERRY. I say to my friend, because it is a half solution.
  Mr. LIEBERMAN. It has always been a half solution, but we have given 
them no hope, no solution.
  Mr. KERRY. I am prepared to suggest there is hope, and we should 
offer it. I am prepared to suggest there is a precursor policy to what 
the Senator is offering. The Senator is offering something I would vote 
for if it was the final step. I do not believe we have reached the 
final step, because I have not given up on the notion that Sarajevo and 
Gorazde and safe areas could 

[[Page S 10281]]
be preserved. I think that is a two-bit tinhorn bunch of thugs that 
make up an army, and the reason they have been able to kick people 
around that country is because the blue helmets have been lightly armed 
and have, basically, been targets for hostage taking and because we--
we--have been consistently trying to have a no-risk policy.
  There is no such thing as a no-risk policy in Bosnia or anywhere. 
When you put on the uniform of the United States military, you assume 
the possibility of going to fight. Ever since Vietnam, we have been a 
country that has been unwilling to understand that risk and scared to 
take it in certain situations. President Bush went through 
extraordinary hoops with the Joint Chiefs of Staff in a remarkable 
series of steps, and with great leadership, I will add, to put together 
a capacity for this country to recognize its interests and send people 
into harm's way.
  President Reagan did it in Grenada. President Bush did it again in 
Somalia. President Clinton did it in Haiti. You put on the uniform, 
there is a risk. I hate to say it, it is a tragedy, but we lose young 
people for merely the putting on of the uniform. Every month, every 
week in a training accident, in a catapult that does not work correctly 
on an aircraft. That is a risk.
  I believe that the defense of NATO, I believe that the principles 
that are at stake here have been, for the whole 3 years that the 
Senator has said, rightfully on the table and it has been too long in 
properly coming to this Chamber to be articulated.
  But my sense is that I think the Senator has a correct statement. If 
the President did say get out, of course you would lift the embargo. If 
UNPROFOR is out, of course you would lift the embargo, but that is not 
a policy. That is truly a final statement of where you are when all 
else is exhausted, and this Senator does not believe all else is 
exhausted, because UNPROFOR is still there, because we are still here, 
because the French are prepared to fight and because we should all 
stand up and offer the leadership that suggests that Pope John Paul is 
not going to be proven correct, that civilization is just going to 
stand aside and accept a defeat.
  I do not think we need to do that, I say to the Senator from 
Connecticut, and I think we ought to stand up and assert the rights--
look, if we cannot assert the notion that humanitarian aid is going to 
be delivered, and if we cannot assert the notion that women and 
children are not going to be blown up when they go to a water fountain 
to drink, and that men and women are not going to be blown away like 
clay pipes in a shooting gallery, if we cannot assert those notions, 
what are we doing? What are the millions of dollars of NATO for? Who 
are we? If we cannot remember the lessons of World War II only 45 years 
later, then something is wrong.
  I suggest, respectfully, that we have the ability to say to the 
Serbs, ``We're not here to mix in your war. If you want to go out there 
in the fields and fight, you go do it, and we're not going to get in 
your way. But you're not going to rape women and you're not going to 
break the laws of warfare and you're not going to kill innocent women 
and children and pick off people in areas that the United Nations and 
the world has called a safe area.''
  I agree with the Senator. There is ignominy in the last years. But 
the admission of that should not bring you to simply say we are going 
to go away and let you guys duke it out in the worst of circumstances.
  I believe there is a first policy, and the first policy is to try one 
last time to make this mission work. If it means take it away from the 
United Nations, take it away from the United Nations. If it means those 
countries willing to stand up do it together, then do it that way. But 
we cannot any longer--I agree with the Senator--we cannot any longer 
remain the prisoners of this extraordinary political, weak, haphazard, 
damaging policy that is destroying our capacity to control our own 
destiny and, most important, the destiny of innocent people.
  Mr. LIEBERMAN. Mr. President, this has been an important colloquy. I 
note that the Senator from Maine has been on the floor for some period 
of time. I want to yield to him in a moment--both Senators from Maine, 
as a matter of fact.
  I just want to say finally, in response to the Senator from 
Massachusetts, is this a policy, the lift and strike? You bet your life 
it is.
  Mr. KERRY. There is no strike. There is no strike.
  Mr. LIEBERMAN. Excuse me. We do not need in this resolution to order 
a strike. It is unfortunate enough we have to go to a point in a 
congressional action to try to urge the administration to lift this 
embargo which has put blood on our hands. We can determine--and these 
discussions are apparently finally going on with our allies to strike--
this is a policy. This is the best policy. In fact, if we had followed 
this policy of lifting the arms embargo and striking from the air, I am 
confident that the war would be over today. I am confident that the war 
would be over today, because the Serbs would have felt some pain, had 
some fear about what would happen if they continued their aggression, 
and that would have brought them to the peace table and we would have 
had an agreement.
  So I say to the Senator from Massachusetts, good luck in your attempt 
to fortify the United Nations and NATO. Good luck in your attempt--
finally, after 3 years of temporizing and irresoluteness and mixed 
messages and consequent suffering by people in Bosnia and for the rest 
of the world, good luck in trying to do that.
  But that is no excuse for voting against this policy of finally 
lifting the arms embargo, because regardless of what the effect or 
intention of the United Nations is, or NATO, this arms embargo is 
immoral. It strikes at the most fundamental right that we, as 
individuals, have, to defend ourselves and our families, as countries 
have under international law in the charter of the United Nations. It 
is an outrage. So, good luck in strengthening the U.N. mission, if 
there is any hope in doing that. But it is no excuse for not supporting 
this proposal, and, unfortunately, because I believe that, I must say 
this. I do not impugn the motives or the sincerity of the Senator from 
Massachusetts. It is just the latest in a line of arguments and excuses 
for not lifting the arms embargo.
  Mr. President, I thank my friends from Maine for their patience.
  I yield the floor.
  Mr. COHEN addressed the Chair.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from Maine [Mr. Cohen] is 
recognized.
  Mr. COHEN. Mr. President, earlier this year, I had a chance to 
address a conference in Munich, Germany, and it dealt principally with 
the issue that we are still struggling with here today. I will repeat 
some of the comments that I made during that conference because they 
bear repeating here.
  I said:

       We have entered a new world of disorder and our inability 
     to formulate coherent policies and strategies to deal with 
     ethnic conflicts and the expansion of NATO membership has led 
     to cross-Atlantic fear, confusion, incoherence and 
     recrimination--a state of affairs not unprecedented for the 
     NATO alliance.

  With respect to Bosnia itself, I observed:

       NATO cannot act unless America leads.
       America will not lead unless it can persuade the American 
     people that it is imperative for us to do so.
       The conflict in Bosnia is not perceived to involve American 
     interests that are vital. Rather, it is a quagmire where its 
     inhabitants would rather dig fresh graves than bury old 
     hatreds.
       The European members of NATO were not willing to wade into 
     the quicksand of ancient rivalries and engage in peacemaking 
     operations so the responsibility was passed to the United 
     Nations, which has fewer divisions than the Pope and none of 
     his moral authority.
       As a result, we are all bearing witness to the decimation 
     of a nation that was guaranteed protection under the U.N. 
     Charter while the best we can offer is to seek to minimize 
     the bloodshed by denying arms to the victims of aggression.

  So we have a situation where our collective acquiescence to 
aggression may be the lesser of two evils. But it is nonetheless the 
participation in the evil of ethnic cleansing that we hoped would never 
again touch the European continent.
  Well, we are still hesitant to take more aggressive action even 
today. I spoke these words in February because the consequences of our 
actions cannot 

[[Page S 10282]]
be predicted. None of us can predict the full implications of what we 
are to do and not to do here today. But it was the absence of this 
predictability that prevented the development of a consensus.
  I suggested at that conference that a number of things had to be 
done--that new leadership is required at the United Nations, and that 
Mr. Akashi should be asked to resign immediately. I issued that 
statement in February. I believe it to be the case, even more so, 
today. I also suggested that when a no-fly zone or weapons-exclusion 
zone had been declared, it should be enforced and not allowed to be 
violated with impunity; no tribute or tolls should be paid by UNPROFOR 
forces to gain passage to help the victims of war; no tolerance should 
be granted for taking hostages or using them as human shields.
  If any harm were to come to UNPROFOR forces, we should take out every 
major target that allows the Serbs to continue to wage war. That power 
should be disproportionate to the transgression, and no area in Serbia 
ruled out of our bombsight.
  UNPROFOR should be given the heavy armor necessary to protect its 
forces and achieve its humanitarian mission.
  That is what I suggested at the time in early February. If we were 
unable to give UNPROFOR--whose troops were trapped in the layers of a 
disastrous dual-command structure--the authority and firepower to 
achieve these ends, then we should remove the forces before the United 
Nations political impotence is allowed to corrode any further the 
integrity and credibility of NATO.
  I think the time has long since passed for us to try to strengthen 
UNPROFOR. I might take issue with the statement that UNPROFOR has been 
responsible for significantly reducing the numbers of casualties. I 
think the UNPROFOR forces should be celebrated and heralded as the 
heroes that they are for wading into this quicksand, this quagmire of 
conflict--not a peacekeeping mission. There is no peace there. So they 
are truly courageous men and women who have sacrificed their lives in 
order to bring humanitarian relief to those suffering from war.
  But, Mr. President, it is too late at this point to say that UNPROFOR 
should be beefed up, should be given a military role that it has yet to 
be provided with. I think that time has long since passed.
  I was at the briefing yesterday, when Secretary Warren Christopher 
came before the Republican conference policy lunch, along with General 
Shalikashvili. I listened with care, because I have also had doubts in 
terms of the consequences of any action we might take. I listened to 
what they criticized would be the result of the Dole-Lieberman 
resolution. They said, First, it would cause the immediate withdrawal 
of UNPROFOR, with a huge flood of refugees; second, it would 
Americanize the war; third, the United States obviously has a lot at 
stake in U.N. resolutions; fourth, it would increase the expansion of 
the war. General Shalikashvili indicated that the passage of the Dole 
resolution would make life more difficult for UNPROFOR, and the 
withdrawal operation would also be made more difficult. I think those 
are fair observations.
  I asked the questions: What would the administration's policy now do? 
Who would be in control of this beefed-up UNPROFOR mission? Would it be 
General Boutros Boutros-Ghali? Would it be Mr. Akashi, whose 
leadership, I think, has been in doubt? Who would order the airstrikes? 
Who would pick the targets? Who would decide whether the sites were too 
dangerous to hit, and that it might provoke Serbian response? Who would 
transport the French troops to the regions they now seek to reinforce?
  What is the Russian role in all of this? We know that the Russians 
historically have been supportive of the Serbs. What has been their 
role to date? What would be their role in the future? What is the state 
of negotiations that have taken place behind closed doors at diplomatic 
levels between Russian negotiators or representatives and our own State 
Department?
  Frankly, Mr. President, I did not hear a satisfactory response. I 
heard statements of ambiguity, of doubt--no real clear direction of 
whether or not we would be in charge. I heard statements made like: 
Well, no longer will we have the disastrous dual-structure arrangement; 
that is something that would be under the control of the United States. 
I have not seen evidence of that before. When the forces on the ground 
have requested military assistance, they have been overruled. Each time 
we have promised to provide airstrikes, we have done so in the most 
minimalist of ways--creating a large 20-foot crater at an airstrip 
which could then be filled in within a matter of 20 or 30 minutes. The 
option of destroying aircraft on the ground was precluded because that 
might be too provocative.
  So I have yet to hear a clearly enunciated strategy coming from the 
administration on exactly what the proposal is. The administration has 
warned that Senator Dole's proposal would Americanize the war in 
Bosnia.
 This is the greatest fear of the administration, and the greatest hope 
on the part of some in Europe who are looking to shift the blame to the 
United States for failed policies.

  At the same time, I might point out that the administration is 
considering using U.S. forces to reinforce Gorazde--using helicopters 
to ferry French troops and provide air cover with attack helicopters 
and AC-130 gunships. This is a proposal that would immediately 
Americanize the war.
  The administration has also made it clear that it will move French 
troops to Gorazde only if the United States has a free hand to attack 
Bosnian Serb--and possibly the Serbian Serb--air defenses that could 
threaten United States aircraft. The United States would also, I am 
told--I have not seen it spelled out--insist on a free hand to bomb any 
other Serb forces that could possibly pose a threat to United States 
forces or that threaten the success of the mission.
  Now, the administration, I think, is absolutely right to insist on 
eliminating the dual-key arrangement with the United Nations if we are 
involved with reinforcing Gorazde. But it would make us responsible for 
the outcome. It would, in fact, Americanize the war.
  I believe we have to think very carefully before we decide to try to 
reinforce Gorazde, as the French have proposed. This would require 
significant American involvement, and I think the charge would be we 
are thereby contributing to the Americanization of the war itself.
  I think there is a very serious reason to question whether Gorazde 
can be saved from a determined Serb assault. Gen. John Galvin, who 
served as both the Supreme Allied Commander in Europe and as a military 
adviser to the Bosnian Government, came before the Senate Armed 
Services Committee and testified that the eastern enclaves in Bosnia 
are militarily indefensible. I think the events of the past 2 weeks 
only reinforce that assessment.
  I know that many American military officers have questioned the 
French proposal to reinforce Gorazde because of the great difficulty, 
not only in transporting the troops and equipment there, but also of 
resupplying them once they are deployed. Agreeing to the French 
proposal would mean that we are committing our forces to an ongoing 
mission in which the United States Army aviation troops would be 
operating in the midst of the Bosnian war.
  Even assuming the French proposal is completely successful in 
deterring a Serb attack on Gorazde, this very success would free up 
Serb forces who are now focused on the eastern enclaves to move to new 
targets: Tuzla, Sarajevo or the narrow swath of Moslem-held territory 
connecting these cities.
  If we are seriously going to consider the French proposal, we should 
not be naive about the implications. It would Americanize the conflict. 
It would result in ongoing United States Army combat missions in 
Bosnia. There should be no doubt about that.
  I also want to point out, Mr. President, that I believe the 
administration is refusing to engage in debate on this proposal in a 
serious way. The administration officials seem to be deliberately 
mischaracterizing--I was going to say ``misrepresenting''; perhaps that 
is too harsh a word--mischaracterizing 

[[Page S 10283]]

     what the Dole-Lieberman proposal says, because the 
     administration really does not have a credible argument 
     against it.
  During the daily press briefings yesterday, both the White House and 
the Defense Department spokesmen framed their case against this 
proposal by saying that by lifting the arms embargo, it would force 
UNPROFOR to leave Bosnia.
  I am going to quote here statements coming out of the administration:

       . . . lifting that arms embargo unilaterally as proposed . 
     . . would lead to an Americanization of the war . . . and 
     drive out UNPROFOR . . .

  Kenneth Bacon, a DOD spokesman.

       . . . that decision by the U.S. Congress (to lift the arms 
     embargo) would trigger a decision by UNPROFOR to withdraw 
     from Bosnia and then we would be in the position of having to 
     commit ground troops to extract U.N. personnel from Bosnia . 
     . .

  Michael McCurry, White House spokesman.

       [The Dole-Lieberman proposal] as we've said over and over 
     again . . . would draw the United Nations out of Bosnia.

  Again, Michael McCurry.
  These arguments really have very little to do with the legislation 
before the Senate. The Dole-Lieberman proposal would lift the arms 
embargo only if--let me repeat, only if--UNPROFOR withdraws and only 
after UNPROFOR withdraws.
  So it seems to me that the administration's core objection that it 
would force UNPROFOR to leave Bosnia is not, really, quite relevant.
  The administration's argument may be applicable to the original bill 
that Senators Dole and Lieberman introduced in January calling for the 
arms embargo to be lifted in May, even if UNPROFOR were still in place. 
I think that the sponsors of this resolution have recognized the 
legitimacy of the administration's argument, and they modified the 
proposal so it would not take effect unless and until UNPROFOR departs.
  I must say, the administration is still refusing to acknowledge the 
changes that we have in front of us, a different proposal, even though 
it has been circulating throughout Washington and, indeed, the world, 
for the past several weeks.
  I also think the administration is trying to confuse the issue of 
unilateral versus multilateral lifting of the arms embargo.
  There is a common misperception, spread by those who do not support 
the resolution, that the United States alone desires to lift the arms 
embargo in the Government of Bosnia.
  That is not the case, Mr. President. In fact, the U.N. General 
Assembly has called for the lifting of the embargo on Bosnia a number 
of times, most recently November 1994, in Resolution 49/10. This 
resolution was passed by the General Assembly without dissent. Close to 
100 nations voted in favor of the resolution. Not one voted in 
opposition.
  A similar resolution, No. 48/88, passed the assembly a year before, 
with 110 nations voting in favor and none voting against.
  I think it is simply inaccurate to assert that a lifting of the arms 
embargo by the United States would be unilateral. There are many other 
nations who would be eager to join the United States should that prove 
to be necessary.
  I would ask to have printed in the Record relevant portions of the 
two U.N. resolutions I mentioned, as well as a list of the many nations 
that have voted for them.
  There being no objection, the material was ordered to be printed in 
the Record, as follows:

   Resolution 49/10 Adopted by the General Assembly, November 8, 1994


                the situation in bosnia and herzegovina

       The General Assembly,
       22. Encourages the Security Council to give all due 
     consideration and exempt the Governments of the Republic and 
     of Federation of Bosnia and Herzegovina from the embargo on 
     deliveries of weapons and military equipment originally 
     imposed by the Council in resolution 713 (1991) of 25 
     September 1991 and as further outlined in the eighth 
     preambular paragraph of the present resolution;
       23. Urges Member States as well as other members of the 
     international community, from all regions, to extend their 
     cooperation to the Republic of Bosnia and Herzegovina in 
     exercise of its inherent right of individual and collective 
     self-defense in accordance with Article 51 of the Charter;


                   recorded vote on resolution 49/10

       In favour: Afghanistan, Albania, Algeria, Antigua and 
     Barbuda, Austria, Azerbaijan, Bahamas, Bahrain, Bangladesh, 
     Barbados, Bhutan, Bolivia, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Botswana, 
     Brunei Darussalam, Burkina Faso, Cambodia, Cape Verde, Chile, 
     Colombia, Comoros, Costa Rica, Croatia, Djibouti, Ecuador, 
     Egypt, El Salvador, Eritrea, Federated States of Micronesia, 
     Fiji, Gabon, Guatemala, Guyana, Haiti, Honduras, Hungary, 
     Indonesia, Iran, Iraq, Israel, Jamaica, Jordan, Kazakhstan, 
     Kuwait, Kyrgyz Republic, Latvia, Lebanon, Lesotho, Libya, 
     Lithuania, Madagascar, Malaysia, Maldives, Mali, Marshall 
     Islands, Mauritania, Mauritius, Mongolia, Morocco, 
     Mozambique, Namibia, Nepal, Nicaragua, Niger, Oman, Pakistan, 
     Panama, Papua New Guinea, Paraguay, Peru, Philippines, Qatar, 
     Republic of Korea, Republic of Moldova, Rwanda, Samoa, Saudi 
     Arabia, Senegal, Singapore, Slovenia, Solomon Islands, Sri 
     Lanka, Sudan, Suriname, Syria, The former Yugoslavia Republic 
     of Macedonia, Thailand, Trinidad and Tobago, Tunisia, Turkey, 
     Uganda, United Arab Emirates, United Republic of Tanzania, 
     United States, Uruguay, Vanuatu, Yemen.
       Against: None.
                                                                    ____

  Resolution 48/88 Adopted by the General Assembly, December 29, 1993


                the situation in bosnia and herzegovina

       The General Assembly,
       17. Also urges the Security Council to give all due 
     consideration, on an urgent basis, to exempt the Republic of 
     Bosnia and Herzegovina from the arms embargo as imposed on 
     the former Yugoslavia under Security Council resolution 713 
     (1991) of 25 September 1991;
       18. Urges Member States, as well as other members of the 
     international community, from all regions to extend their 
     cooperation to the Republic of Bosnia and Herzegovina in 
     exercise of its inherent right of individual and collective 
     self-defense in accordance with Article 51 of Chapter VII of 
     the Charter;
                   recorded vote on resolution 48/88:

       In favor: Afghanistan, Albania, Algeria, Antigua and 
     Barbuda, Australia, Austria, Azerbaijan, Bahamas, Bahrain, 
     Bangladesh, Barbados, Belize, Bhutan, Bolivia, Bosnia and 
     Herzegovina, Botswana, Brunei Darussalam, Burkina Faso, 
     Cameroon, Cape Verde, Central African Republic, Chad, Chile, 
     Columbia, Comoros, Costa Rica, Croatia, Cyprus, Djibouti 
     Dominica, Dominican Republic, Ecuador, Egypt, El Salvador, 
     Estonia, Federated States of Micronesia, Fiji, Gambia, 
     Grenada, Guatemala, Guinea, Guinea-Bissau, Guyana, Haiti, 
     Honduras, Hungary, Indonesia, Iran, Iraq, Jamaica, Jordan, 
     Kazakhstan, Kuwait, Kyrgyz Republic, Latvia, Lebanon, 
     Lesotho, Libya, Lituania, Madagascar, Malaysia, Maldives, 
     Mali, Marshall Islands, Mauritania, Mauritius, Mongolia, 
     Morocco, Mozambique, Namibia, Nepal, Nicaragua, Niger, Oman, 
     Pakistan, Panama, Papua New Guinea, Paraguay, Peru, 
     Philippines, Qatar, Republic of Moldova, Rwanda, Saint Lucia, 
     Saint Vincent and the Grenadines, Samoa, Saudi Arabia, 
     Senegal, Sierra Leone, Singapore, Slovenia, Solomon Islands, 
     Sri Lanka, Sudan, Suriname, Syria, Tajikistan, The former 
     Yugoslav Republic of Macedonia, Thailand, Trinidad and 
     Tobago, Tunisia, Turkey, Uganda, United Arab Emirates, United 
     Republic of Tanzania, United States, Uruguay, Yemen, Zambia.
       Against: None.

  Mr. COHEN. Mr. President, let me conclude my remarks by saying that 
no Member here can stand on the Senate floor with complete assurance 
that we know what the outcome of our deliberations and ultimately our 
vote will be.
  That is something we cannot predict. There is no foreknowledge of the 
finality of things in this body or elsewhere. There are great risks 
involved in whatever decision we choose.
  I might point out that the Dole resolution of several months ago has 
already been taken over by events. Perhaps we could have beefed up the 
forces several months ago and prevented the Serbs from overrunning the 
so-called safe haven areas. That is no longer the case. They have been 
and are being overrun. One or two more remain.
  The difficulty, of course, now, is that assuming the Dole resolution 
were to pass, I think the administration makes a valid point that there 
is going to be more bloodshed. The Serbs are on the offensive. They are 
in high gear now. They are moving, there is no doubt about it. If they 
think that the U.N. forces are coming out with the aid and assistance 
of the United States, they will move as expeditiously as possible to 
exact even a greater blood toll. That is something I think that we can 
anticipate, reasonably, will take place.
  I must say that as we have delayed and delayed and delayed and 
exercised this sort of Hamlet-like irresoluteness, we have witnessed 
safe area after safe area falling, more atrocities being committed, 
more rapes, more plunder, more pillage, more arrogance. The notion that 
the Serbs can flaunt their military power in the face of the United 
States, or indeed the entire Western 

[[Page S 10284]]

world, strikes everyone as simply unacceptable.
  We should make no mistake about it. We do not have any real 
conclusive answers as to what will flow from our action. That is why we 
have hesitated today.
  Perhaps if we had followed Lady Margaret Thatcher's leadership 
several years ago, we would not find ourselves in the place we are 
today. Perhaps if we had taken collective action 3 years ago--we can go 
back and retrace our mistakes. We can go back and say perhaps if we had 
never recognized Bosnia as a separate state--all the ``perhapses'' that 
we can engage in right now--but we are where we are, and what we are 
witnessing is an ethnic cleansing on a horrific scale.
  So we cannot turn away from what is taking place. We are trying not 
to become engaged in that effort. But I think we have to be very 
careful on the proposals coming out of our European allies. I give them 
great credit for their willingness to commit ground forces in an effort 
to preserve lives. And they have preserved lives. I want to make this 
point again. They have helped to sustain life in that war-torn country. 
But I take issue with the notion that UNPROFOR is responsible for 
cutting down on the numbers, the vast number of casualties. Secretary 
Perry testified to that in open session of the Senate Armed Services 
Committee.
  I pointed out, at that time, the reason the casualties have fallen is 
because the Serbs have largely accomplished their objectives. They have 
cleansed those areas. They have murdered those people, so they achieved 
most of their objectives, so the casualties have come down. It is not 
in any way to diminish or denigrate the heroic effort on the part of 
UNPROFOR, but UNPROFOR really has not been there in order to defend 
against Serb aggression. They have been trying to deliver food and 
medicines and carry out a humanitarian mission--against all odds, I 
might add.
  So I think there is danger in whichever direction we go. If we are to 
follow the French proposal, if we are to be asked to provide the 
helicopters and gunships necessary to transport French troops to 
certain regions, I can imagine what the Serb reaction will be. Let us 
not go at Gorazde, let us go over here to Tuzla. Let us pick a 
different location. Then we are into ferrying troops here and there 
with the risk, obviously, of losing our gunships, our transport 
helicopters, our men and women. That obviously will involve us in a 
very significant way.
  So there is no easy solution. There is no happy ending to this tragic 
story. And whatever route we take is going to involve risk for the 
United States.
  I listened with great interest to my colleague from Massachusetts 
saying there are no risk-free options. There are not. Every option we 
consider has great risks. But we have been standing by, year after 
year, and we have watched the decimation of a people take place. And we 
have foundered because we have not had a consensus, we have not had a 
sense of obligation, we have not had a moral commitment to do much 
about it, other than to talk.
  So I think the time for talking has reached an end. I believe we have 
to take action. Whether ultimately the Senate will go on record as 
supporting the Dole resolution remains to be seen. For the first time, 
I have heard my colleague from Massachusetts suggest an option, 
something akin to what President Bush put together for the Persian Gulf 
war. It will be interesting to find out what our allies think about 
such a proposal. I have not heard such a proposal offered on this floor 
before, or indeed in any of the international circles. Perhaps there is 
support for having a Persian Gulf-like armada go off into the hills of 
Bosnia and Herzegovina. I am not satisfied that is the case.
  Nonetheless, I believe the time has come for us to take action, 
knowing full well there are risks involved. There are risks to the men 
and women who are in our armed services. There are risks involved that 
this will be seen as an effort to Americanize the war. There is also 
the risk that, indeed, the U.S. Senate, by its action, could be blamed 
for the failure which has preceded any action we might take. Those are 
risks we have to assume with full knowledge before we finally cast a 
vote, either today or sometime during the course of the week.
  I yield the floor.
  Mr. MOYNIHAN. Will the distinguished Senator from Maine yield for a 
question?
  Mr. COHEN. Certainly.
  Mr. MOYNIHAN. I know my colleague from Maine has been patiently 
waiting to address the Senate. I just want to first thank the senior 
Senator from Maine for what he has said; the very tone, the clarity, 
and the openness to the complexity that we face.
  In November 1992 I made my way into Sarajevo and met, at UNPROFOR 
headquarters, with General Morillon, who was then the commander. Even 
as the evening mortars were beginning to descend on the neighborhood 
and he was heading off for a roadblock, I asked him what would be the 
possibility of lifting the arms embargo on Bosnia. And he made no 
comment as such, but said, ``By all means, if that is what you want to 
do, but give me 48 hours to get my people out of here.''
  It was already clear that, had we enforced the sanctions on Serbia 
that were voted on May 30, 1992, had we cut off the oil--three-quarters 
of the oil used in Serbia is imported--if we just stopped it on the 
Danube, and had we just bombed every bridge in Belgrade, and more, we 
might have made our point.
  We did not. And the UNPROFOR forces were hostages then; they are 
hostages now. But the Senator is aware that the same General Morillon 
is now part of the chiefs of staff in the French Government, in Paris. 
He said just a week ago, ``We have to declare war on General Mladic''--
that is the commander of the Bosnian Serb forces--``or get out.''
  It is possible the French now are of that view. It may be that this 
is a real option. But it seems to me--I will ask the Senator if he does 
not agree--that it in no way precludes our responsibility under the 
U.N. Charter, under article 51. It reads so very clearly. It is 
unambiguous. It is emphatic:

       Nothing in the present Charter shall impair the inherent 
     right of individual or collective self-defense if an armed 
     attack occurs against a Member of the United Nations.

  That is the Charter. If we cannot abide by that and allow the Bosnian 
Government to defend itself, then what has the last half-century been 
for? Would he not agree?
  Mr. COHEN. I agree with my friend from New York. One of the great 
tragedies in all of this is that the United Nations has been deeply--
not fatally perhaps--but deeply humiliated. Day after day after day, we 
have seen the Serbs flaunt their arrogance to the United Nations. To 
send blue-helmeted peacekeepers into that region, declare no-fly zones 
that go unenforced--in fact we see a reversal, an inversion, where the 
Serbs threaten the United Nations that they will shoot down any 
aircraft that they see in the no-fly zone. That is a complete 
inversion.
  Mr. MOYNIHAN. Or on first sight of a NATO plane, they will cut the 
throats of eight Dutch hostages.
  Mr. COHEN. Exactly. We have seen them use U.N. forces as hostages, 
make them pay tribute, demand that they give up 50 percent of their 
fuel or food or medicines in order to gain passage to the areas for 
which they were headed. It has been one humiliation after another.
  Again, this is not to diminish in any way, to undercut the tremendous 
heroism being demonstrated by those who are there. But when the ground 
forces call in and say, ``Please send us air cover,'' and someone 
sitting in Zagreb, or perhaps back in New York, says, ``No, that might 
be too provocative,'' there has to be a level of exasperation among 
those who are now held hostage with the threat of their throats being 
severed in response to any action taken by the United States.
  It seems to me that we have really very few choices here. We can say 
there is going to be an all-out war declared against the Bosnian Serbs, 
and mean it; saying we are going to wage holy hell, in terms of your 
country, for what you have done and continue to do, unless you are 
willing to sit down and negotiate a peace and not only to say it but to 
mean it. I am not sure--that means coming, sort of, I call it a 
Shaquille O'Neal: You come big or you do not come at all. That type of 
strategy. You come with power, overwhelming power, and you have a 
united front. It is not the United States, it is not Britain, it is not 
France; it is the United Nations represented by its members' 

[[Page S 10285]]

military forces, meaning you are going to wage war in order to help 
make a peace.
  I have not seen such resolve offered or indeed generated by our 
European allies to date. It has been, more or less, these half-step, 
half measures. ``Let's see if we cannot contain. Let's see if we cannot 
work out something.'' With no real threat that can be made, a 
legitimate threat, backed up by power. Each time we made a threat the 
threat has been empty. It has been idle. So each time there has been an 
idle threat made we have invited the arrogant display on the part of 
the Serbs.
  So I say to my friend, we have some choices here. They are very 
clear, in terms of either go in, in a very big way, in a united way, in 
order to help make a peaceful solution--say it and mean it and do it, 
meaning that nothing is off base. It could be carried all the way to 
Belgrade if necessary.
 That runs a risk of running into a controversy with our Russian 
friends. That is why I raised the question yesterday. What is the role 
of the Russians in all of this? What have been the state of 
negotiations between the Russian diplomats and our own? Are they 
prepared to act, as a member of the United Nations, to really see that 
a peace is arrived at? Or has it been one of covert support, be it 
military or moral assistance, to those who continue to snub and to 
violate the U.N. sanctions? We do not know the answer to this. I do not 
know the answer to this. They obviously will be a major player. They 
can have a major impact on what is to take place. Obviously, if the 
arms embargo were to be lifted, we could foresee more arms going in to 
the Serbs as well as to the Bosnian Moslems.

  Mr. MOYNIHAN. Surely the Senator would agree that it is time the U.S. 
Senate made its views known.
  Mr. COHEN. We have come to that point. We have delayed and been 
irresolute too long.
  Mr. MOYNIHAN. I thank my colleague.
  Ms. SNOWE addressed the Chair.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from Maine.
  Ms. SNOWE. Mr. President, thank you.
  Mr. President, I certainly want to commend the distinguished majority 
leader and the distinguished Senator from Connecticut [Mr. Lieberman] 
for their bipartisan leadership on this matter. The moral question of 
whether to lift the arms embargo on Bosnia is a bipartisan issue.
  The original cosponsors of this bill represent a distinguished cross-
section of the Senate. And the legislation to lift the arms embargo 
passed the House by an overwhelming vote of 318 to 99. It received 
broad support from both sides of the aisle. It was sponsored by the 
Democrats. I believe that the U.S. Senate deserves to take a similar 
action on the Dole-Lieberman bill.
  The Bosnia and Herzegovina Self-Defense Act is not a panacea. It will 
not bring back to life the Bosnian women who have been raped, 
mutilated, and torn from their homes by advancing Serbian forces.
  It will not return the thousands of Bosnian men who have disappeared 
into Serbian concentration camps never to be heard from again.
  It will not erase 3 years of Serb genocidal atrocities in this war, 
which the Serbs call ethnic cleansing.
  What this bill would do, however, is to return to a country and a 
people under siege their God-given right to defend themselves against 
naked aggression. This principle is enshrined in article 51 of the 
United Nations Charter, which states:

       Nothing in the present Charter shall impair the inherent 
     right of individual or collective self-defense.

  Today, Bosnia faces perhaps its gravest threat from Serb forces that 
have already conquered 70 percent of the country's territory. These are 
the same forces that on July 11 overran the U.N.-designated safe area 
of Srebrenica, in blatant violation of the U.N. Security Council and 
their own earlier agreements.
  These are the same forces that promised not to take any future U.N. 
personnel as hostages, yet captured Dutch peacekeepers as they advanced 
on the town and used them as human shields against NATO airstrikes.
  And these are the same forces that murdered, raped, and disappeared 
the people of Srebrenica and today they are poised to overrun Zepa, 
another U.N. safe area, with inevitable similar results.
  Mr. President, the Bosnian Government is not asking for United States 
troops to come to their aid. They are not asking Americans to fight and 
to die to turn back the aggression of the Bosnian Serbs. They are, 
however, asking for us to stop impeding their own ability to fight--
and, if necessary, to die--to defend their own homes and families from 
Serbian aggression.
  I would like to take a moment to respond to the two main arguments 
the administration has made against this legislation. No. 1 is that the 
United States should take this action, but should do so only 
multilaterally, not unilaterally. I have two responses to this. First, 
this is an argument that says no matter how bad things may get in 
Bosnia, we must allow any single permanent member of the Security 
Council to prevent us from doing what we know to be moral and right.
  But there is an equally strong legal argument. I challenge any of my 
colleagues to find a Security Council resolution that places an arms 
embargo on the sovereign nation of Bosnia and Herzegovina. In 1991, the 
Security Council placed an arms embargo on the country of Yugoslavia in 
a failed effort to prevent the outbreak of violence in the Balkans.
  A year later, in 1992, Bosnia, Croatia, and Slovenia gained their 
independence from Yugoslavia. These countries quickly received
 diplomatic recognition from the United States and Western Europe, and 
they were admitted to the United Nations as sovereign states.

  At that time, the United States should have simultaneously recognized 
the legal status of these countries as not being the Federal Republic 
of Yugoslavia--which today encompasses only Serbia and Montenegro. At 
that time, we should have had the political courage to do what was 
right. We did not--and I recognize that this error was made in the 
waning months of the Bush administration.
  Mr. President, I voted for the Hyde amendment to lift the arms 
embargo 2 years ago in the House. I believe that the Bush 
administration got this issue wrong, and the Clinton administration 
continued that error, despite Clinton's campaigning against President 
Bush's policy in Bosnia. But it is never too late to do what is morally 
right and legally correct. That is what this bill is intended to do.
  The administration's second argument against this bill is curious, 
because it is logically incompatible with the first, which argues that 
we should lift the embargo but should do so multilaterally.
  The second argument is if we were to lift the embargo at all, it 
would only encourage more bloodshed, or that the Bosnian Serbs would 
immediately launch an offensive against remaining Bosnian Government 
territory to take advantage of their military superiority while they 
still have it.
  I have a simple response to this. Just look at what is happening 
today--even as we talk--in Bosnia. Do we have any right to determine 
for the Bosnian people whether they should choose to fight for their 
lives and their independence against aggression? Must we tell them that 
their duty to the international community is to die quietly and 
submissively, to avoid provoking the Serbs even further?
  Mr. President, the Dole-Lieberman substitute adds an important 
element to the original version of S. 21. It delays its effective date 
to 12 weeks after enactment to permit time for the withdrawal of the 
U.N. protection force in Bosnia. The President may extend this another 
30 days, if necessary, for the safe withdrawal of UNPROFOR.
  I think it is also important to mention, especially in response to 
the Senator from Massachusetts, who earlier said that the Bosnians want 
both--they want to lift the embargo as well as keep UNPROFOR in place--
but that is not what this resolution says. It requires that, prior to 
the termination of the arms embargo, the United States Government has 
to receive a request from the Bosnian Government for a termination of 
the arms embargo. In addition, they have to request the U.N. Security 
Council for departure of UNPROFOR, and there has to be a decision by 
the U.N. Security Council, or decisions by countries contributing 
forces to UNPROFOR, to withdraw 

[[Page S 10286]]
UNPROFOR. So the point is that has to occur before we lift the embargo.
  I think this resolution, in the final analysis, is perhaps an overdue 
recognition, unfortunately, that UNPROFOR, as constituted, has no 
viable mission.
  UNPROFOR is incapable of protecting the victims of this war. It is 
incapable of keeping open humanitarian supply routes. And it has become 
the pawn of the Serb forces who now routinely using U.N. forces as 
hostages to protect their own military advances.
  In Bosnia, the United States and other Western nations have supported 
policies that have put NATO and U.N. forces into the midst of a raging 
civil war with a complicated line of command that weaves and snakes its 
way through the United Nations through NATO, and through the labyrinth 
of bureaucracies in various national governments.
  This U.N. Protection Force in Bosnia is not a humanitarian mission, 
because it is not perceived of as neutral. It is not a traditional 
peacekeeping force, because there is no peace to keep.
  And it cannot be merely a fighting force, because it does not have a 
military mission and does not have adequate rules of engagement 
required for combat.
  Call it the ``no-name'' defense. No one knows exactly what it is--or 
what it should become.
  But this confusion and timidity has had consequences. It has had 
consequences for those Bosnians who apparently believed that the United 
Nations designation of so-called safe areas actually meant anything. 
And it has had consequences for NATO personnel who struggled to defend 
themselves under the United Nations mandated rules of engagement.
  Last month, Lt. Gen. Wesley Clerk, Director of Plans and Policy of 
the Joint Chiefs of Staff, revealed in an open session before the 
Foreign Relations Committee that the NATO flights over Bosnian Serb 
areas under Operation Deny Flight have been hampered by the U.N. 
refusal to grant our forces the right to defend themselves. The United 
Nations has expressly denied past NATO requests for authority to take 
out Bosnian Serb surface-to-air missile batteries that have fired at 
our planes enforcing the no-flight zone over Bosnia, the very same 
missiles that shot down Scott O'Grady during a mission over Bosnia not 
long ago.
  As we all know, NATO made a request to take out the surface-to-air 
missiles last year when a British plane was shot down, and they were 
denied. They were denied then and they are denied now because such an 
action could provoke the Bosnian Serbs--could provoke the Bosnian 
Serbs. Exactly what are the Serbs doing today?
  The key question is whether the status quo is something that makes 
sense for the long term and whether it is leading to any acceptable 
solution in Bosnia. I believe that the current situation makes no sense 
precisely because UNPROFOR has no coherent goal, and it certainly 
cannot function for the purposes for which it was originally designed 
and intended. As the loss of innocent human life increases, our options 
to stem the tide of the bloodbath decrease conversely.
  I have long supported the lifting of the United States arms embargo 
in Bosnia, and that is why I think this resolution is so critically 
important. Unfortunately, it comes late, is long overdue, knowing the 
thousands and thousands of casualties in Bosnia, but the fact remains 
that we have to do what is right now.
  I support this measure because I think it clearly gives the Bosnians 
the understanding that lifting the arms embargo is out of respect for 
their inherent right of self-defense, and I think we can do no less 
under these very circumstances. And considering the fact that we look 
at the safe haven issue and what has already happened--we have lost 
one, perhaps we will lose another--the fact remains these people, these 
refugees going to these safe havens think they are protected, and they 
are not. So the time has come to do something different, to introduce a 
different dynamic.
  I do not support the authorization of ground troops, and again this 
resolution stipulates very clearly that there will be no authorization 
of ground troops but for the purposes of training and support of 
military equipment. I do think we should give the Bosnian Serbs a right 
to defend themselves.
  Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent to have printed in the Record 
an article that appeared in the Washington Post today that was written 
by Richard Perle, the headline of which says, ``Will We Finally 
Recognize the Right to Self-Defense?''
  There being no objection, the article was ordered to be printed in 
the Record, as follows:

               [From the Washington Post, July 19, 1995]

          Will We Finally Recognize the Right to Self-Defense?

       Today the majority leader of the U.S. Senate, Robert Dole, 
     and Democratic Sen. Joe Lieberman will once again propose 
     legislation that would require President Clinton to end U.S. 
     participation in the U.N. embargo barring the supply of arms 
     to the government of Bosnia.
       This time, unlike the previous occasions on which similar 
     legislation was defeated, Dole and Lieberman have more than 
     enough votes to win. Administration arguments on Bosnia, 
     steadily undermined by events, are no longer convincing. 
     Indeed, among the growing majority of senators and 
     congressmen who believe the embargo is wrong and should be 
     lifted are many who have, until now, accepted Clinton 
     administration arguments that lifting the embargo would 
     damage NATO, widen and ``Americanize'' the war and lead to 
     increased casualties among the Bosnians.
       The deterioration of the administration's case was 
     inevitable. After all, it was the president himself who 
     argued the invalidity of the embargo during the 1992 campaign 
     and who promised to end it immediately upon taking office. It 
     was the president who dispatched Warren Christopher to Europe 
     in May 1993 with a reasoned, prudent proposal to lift the 
     embargo on Bosnia and provide air strikes to support the 
     Bosnian government.
       Sadly, dangerously, Clinton lacks the courage of his 
     convictions. And every member of Congress knows that a weak 
     and indecisive president, acquiescing to allied demands, has 
     been singing Europe's tune since his policy--now Dole's--ran 
     into opposition from weak governments in Britain and France.
       Many members--but fewer with each diplomatic failure, each 
     humiliation of NATO at Serb hands, each ghastly shelling of 
     women and children--opposed unilateral lifting of the 
     embargo, until now. They believed that diplomacy would soon 
     achieve results, that our European allies, who had sent their 
     sons to create safe havens in Bosnia and keep peace between 
     warring parties, would eventually succeed, that lifting the 
     embargo would weaken or even destroy the North Atlantic 
     Alliance.
       Hardly anyone in Washington now believes that diplomacy 
     will succeed or that America's NATO allies have either a 
     serious policy or the will to implement one. Few now agree 
     that the way to save NATO is for the United States to abandon 
     its leadership of the alliance and cave in to weak European 
     policies. And most members of Congress have grown weary of 
     hearing from London and Paris that the U.S. Congress has no 
     right to insist on a new policy because we did not follow 
     British and French folly in sending ground troops to Bosnia. 
     For an increasing number of Americans, those troops were 
     unwisely sent in harm's way with no clear mission under 
     paralytic U.N. guidelines that render them hostages and 
     prevent them from defending themselves, much less the 
     Bosnians they are there to help.
       With television images of unbearable brutality and 
     suffering, most members of Congress have found it 
     increasingly difficult to put aside the central truth about 
     the war in Bosnia: that it is a war of territorial 
     aggrandizement carried out by well-armed Serbs, largely 
     against unarmed civilians, a war in which the shelling of 
     towns and villages, rape, pillage and massacre are the 
     instruments of ``ethnic cleansing.''
       They deplore the failure of the United Nations to 
     distinguish between the perpetrators and the victims of 
     aggression. They are angry that NATO forces, including U.S. 
     air forces, have been subordinated to the United Nations. In 
     increasing numbers they believe, as Clinton once did, that 
     the government of Bosnia has an inalienable, inherent right 
     to self-defense of such primacy that it can no longer be 
     abridged in the interests of ``NATO unity'' or theories about 
     how to contain the war and keep it from spreading. They 
     accept that participation in an embargo that keeps the 
     Bosnian Muslims hopelessly outgunned creates a moral 
     obligation to defend them. Yet they know it is an obligation 
     the West, has cynically failed to honor.
       For a while, many members accepted the administration's 
     argument that lifting the embargo would merely prolong the 
     war and increase the suffering. Now they are appalled to hear 
     this argument, from British officials especially. They 
     remember that the same argument could have been made in 1940 
     when Lend Lease ``prolonged'' a war that might have been 
     ended quickly by British surrender or Nazi victory.
       As they look for an end to the fighting, they now see that 
     with their monopoly of heavy weapons protected by the 
     embargo, the Serbs have no intention of bringing the war to 
     an end. They are placing new credence in Sen. Dole's argument 
     that the surest way to end the fighting in Bosnia is to 
     enable the Bosnians to defend themselves.
       Dole's legislation recognizes that the U.N. mission in 
     Bosnia is bankrupt and that the 

[[Page S 10287]]
     U.N. forces there must be withdrawn as the Bosnians are armed. It 
     contemplates their withdrawal by allowing time for the 
     British, French and other governments that have troops on the 
     ground to bring them home.
       Time to get home safely. That is a great deal more than the 
     Western powers have so far given the people of Bosnia.

  Ms. SNOWE. I yield the floor.
  Mr. MOYNIHAN addressed the Chair.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from New York.
  Mr. MOYNIHAN. May I congratulate the Senator from Maine on a 
carefully balanced, reasoned, and documented statement. I particularly 
appreciate the reference to Richard Perle's article this morning. The 
right of self-defense is an innate right under international law. It 
was what the U.N. Charter was all about. Fifty years ago this June the 
charter was adopted, with a very specific decision by President 
Roosevelt and the United Kingdom, after much debate, that article 51 
would be included.
  She is so right, I believe. Had we only understood that when the 
original embargo was placed on Yugoslavia, the Yugoslavian Government 
in Belgrade--the Serbian Government, in effect--in Belgrade asked for 
it, knowing it controlled the armaments of Yugoslavia itself and not 
wishing to have any weapons go to successor states. But when Bosnia and 
Herzegovina, as with Croatia, as with Slovania, became independent 
Members of the United Nations, they had a right to arms, a right to 
defend themselves.
  You can make the clearest case, in my view--the Senator may not 
agree--that the present embargo is illegal and contrary to the charter.
  So I thank her, and I hope she is widely attended.
  Ms. SNOWE. I appreciate the words of the Senator from New York and 
his leadership on this issue as well. He is absolutely correct with 
respect to the arms embargo. Regrettably, it did not happen before. 
They do have the inherent right of self-defense, and that is what we 
should give them now.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The majority leader is recognized.
  Mr. DOLE. Mr. President, I wish to thank my colleagues for the 
excellent debate. I have been listening to the debate all morning on 
the pending matter. I appreciate the fact that we have underscored 
again this is not partisan at all. It is nonpartisan, bipartisan. It is 
not an attack on this administration. As I have said, many of us were 
just as critical of the previous administration, the Bush 
administration. But I think the debate is good. I know that the 
Democratic leader indicates we may not be able to vote today, but 
hopefully we can tomorrow, or there may be amendments.
  Mr. MOYNIHAN. Mr. President, the Senate continues consideration today 
of the Bosnian arms embargo with the Dole-Lieberman substitute, of 
which I am a cosponsor and which I rise to support. I rise, sir, in the 
context of the ceremonies that took place in San Francisco on June 26 
where our revered senior Senator from Rhode Island was present, having 
been present at the creation of the San Francisco Conference, in 1945. 
He was there 50 years later. And he was then carrying, as he invariably 
does, his U.N. Charter. And to say, sir, that the issue that confronts 
us in the Balkans and in Bosnia and Herzegovina, Croatia, and in 
surrounding areas is the elemental issue which the charter of the 
United Nations was designed to address. The charter is above all a 
treaty about the use of force in international affairs. It arose out of 
the Second World War, which in so many ways was a continuation of the 
First World War, which began in the setting of territorial aggression, 
the armed forces of one nation crossing the borders of another for 
purposes of annexation.
  It is a great irony that the First World War began on a street corner 
in Sarajevo, with the assassination of the Archduke by a young Serb 
nationalist named Princip. I stood on that street corner Thanksgiving 
1992 with bullets from an AK-47 coming across the Princip Bridge. I 
thought, ``My God, this is where the 20th century began and now it is 
going to end, here.'' After all we have been through.
  The idea of collective security was put in place in San Francisco. We 
had hoped to do so in the League of Nations, which had failed partly 
because the United States had not joined but partly because the lessons 
had not yet been learned and had not yet been absorbed. Here we are 50 
years later and it turns out they still have not been absorbed.
  The charter provides first of all under article 24 that the Security 
Council will be responsible for the maintenance of international peace 
and security.

       In order to ensure prompt and effective action by the 
     United Nations, its Members confer on the Security Council 
     primary responsibility for the maintenance of international 
     peace and security, and agree in carrying out its duties 
     under this responsibility the Security Council acts on their 
     behalf.

  Mr. President, I served as our representative at the United Nations 
under President Ford. I have been President of the Security Council. 
And I cannot express how painful it is to see this first test of the 
charter following the end of the cold war, which paralyzed the United 
Nations for reasons we understood for so long, but now, in this first 
test, this clear bright line test, to see us failing. Failing in a 
manner that history will judge contemptible. We have not yet failed. 
But we are failing.
  Security Council Resolution 836 of June 4, 1993, declared that acting 
under chapter 7 of the charter, the Security Council decides ``To deter 
attacks against the safe areas.'' It goes on to authorize UNPROFOR ``to 
take the necessary measures, including the use of force, in reply to 
bombardments against the safe areas by any of the parties or to an 
armed incursion into them or in the event of any deliberate obstruction 
in or around those areas to the freedom of movement of UNPROFOR or of 
protected humanitarian convoys.''
  That has been the Security Council proposition for the last 2 years. 
And we are seeing it being shredded, being treated with contempt, and 
being made a nullity.
  We do so, sir, at the risk not just of the independence and the 
integrity of the state of Bosnia and Herzegovina, but of the whole 
world order we had hoped to put in place in San Francisco, with the 
Second World War still under way in Asia--Japan was to surrender almost 
2 months later.
  As I remarked earlier to the Senator from Maine, in November 1992 I 
traveled to Sarajevo and I reported back a long memorandum to the 
President-elect saying that this would be the central foreign policy 
issue that would be awaiting him on his inauguration. The trip into 
Sarajevo was not what it should have been. I was then a member of the 
Foreign Relations Committee. I was traveling on official business.
 We informed the NATO command and the United States Air Force that we 
would be coming, myself and now-Ambassador Galbraith, the Ambassador in 
Zagreb; that we would be in Frankfurt and hoped to go to Sarajevo. This 
was sent by cable. It was fully understood we were coming and meant to 
go down in that part of the world.

  We arrived and the base commander knew nothing of our trip. I said I 
would like to go to Sarajevo, and he piled us into a station wagon and 
roared across the tarmac and there was a C-130 manned by the West 
Virginia Air National Guard, propellers just beginning to turn, with a 
cargo of meals ready to eat for Sarajevo. We got on board, and off we 
went.
  Halfway across Austrian airspace, because countries were opening up 
their airspace for this purpose, we received a message that said 
``Members of Congress are not allowed into Sarajevo.'' I simply said, 
``Signal back that if the West Virginia Air National Guard could take 
the risk, so could I and that I had no intention of being diverted.'' 
Silence. Then a half hour later a signal came that the airport at 
Sarajevo had closed, which certainly could have been the case. Sarajevo 
is in a bowl. The lid of fog goes up and down, up and down.
  We landed, diverted to Zagreb, and got off. The American Charge 
d'Affaires was there at the airport, which was not far from downtown. I 
apologized for parachuting in thus, explaining that the airport was 
closed. He said, ``What do you mean it is closed? Two C-130's just took 
off.'' The airport was indeed open. Which it is not always, and when it 
is one knows.
  I was lied to, which is not a good practice. It took me a year to get 
the Air Force to sort out what happened. The word came from Washington. 
They did not want us to know what was 

[[Page S 10288]]
going on in Sarajevo. As the junior Senator from Maine has said, this 
is a matter that has crossed two administrations. We are not here on a 
partisan issue. We are here in response to an international emergency 
which we have helped create.
  The Canadians got me in to Sarajevo the next day. The British got me 
out the day after that. We arrived in Sarajevo and went through hellish 
small arms fire in a Ukrainian armored personnel carrier. If you have 
ever been in a Ukrainian armored personnel carrier, you would have a 
better understanding how they prevailed over the Wehrmacht. If you can 
live in those, you can live in anything. We went directly to the 
UNPROFOR headquarters and met with General Morillon. He was very open. 
When asked should we not lift the embargo on Bosnia--clearly an illegal 
embargo as Article 51 gives the absolute right to self-defense--
Morillon said, ``Do so if you want, but give me 2 days to get my people 
out.'' They were already hostages. We allowed that to happen by 
injecting them into a situation where there was no peace to keep. There 
was just the aggressor and the member state aggressed against.
  That is the fundamental fact that Senator Dole and Senator Lieberman 
bring before us today. You cannot have seen those UNPROFOR forces 
without admiring them. I will cite Anthony Lewis in this matter when he 
referred to General Morillon's recent statement that we have to declare 
war on General Mladic, commander of the Bosnian Serb forces, or get 
out. Anthony Lewis went on to say:

       General Morillon's words pithily summed up one lesson of 
     Bosnia for the Western alliance: To intervene in a conflict 
     and pretend there is no difference between the aggressors and 
     the victims is not only dishonorable but ineffective.

  He say further that the UNPROFOR forces deserve the greatest 
admiration, but they have been given an impossible task.
  A year ago on this floor, I put the same proposition. I said the 
forces ``deserve our utmost support. But if we are to refrain from 
helping the Bosnians out of concern for their welfare, let us at least 
be candid and call the members of UNPROFOR what they have become: 
hostages.''
  This was a year ago on this floor. I said, if we are going to refrain 
from helping the Bosnians out of concern for the welfare of those 
troops, ``let us at least be candid and call the members of UNPROFOR 
what they have become: hostages.''
  Now this has taken on a miserable, contemptible mode. We are told 
that--as I read this morning--if Bosnian Serbs see one NATO plane in 
the sky, they will cut the throats of the Dutch soldiers they have 
taken hostage. That is what we are dealing with.
  At the very minimum, we can understand that the grotesque fact of 
this whole horror has been our denial to the Bosnian Government of its 
innate right of self-defense. We have put an embargo on the capacity of 
the member country aggressed against to defend themselves. Remember 
that one of the central purposes of the original embargo against 
Yugoslavia itself was the fact that Belgrade had control of all of the 
armed forces and the material of the Yugoslav Government. It did not 
want any successor states to get it, and the Bosnians had none. That 
they are still there 2\1/2\ years later is hard to contemplate. But 
they are still there. They have begun to arm themselves. They have 
begun to train, and they have not been overrun.
  Now all we are asking is to grant them what is their right at law, 
which is the right of self-defense.
  The issue has been raised, if we act in what we are doing and the 
United States proceeds unilaterally, will this put in jeopardy the 
authority of U.N. sanctions in other areas of the world? When we 
debated this last year, I addressed the question as follows:

       First, we are asked, if we lift this embargo how will we 
     resist other nations lifting embargoes on Iraq, Serbia and 
     Libya? How, that is, shall we distinguish between lambs and 
     lions, between victims and aggressors? By looking at the 
     facts. Iraq was an aggressor, not the victim of ``an armed 
     attack'' giving rise to Article 51 rights. Serbia is not 
     subject to an armed attack. Nor is Libya. Each of these 
     states is as clearly an aggressor or violator of 
     international law as Bosnia is clearly a victim.
       To be clear: lifting the embargo on Bosnia creates no legal 
     or factual precedent for ignoring valid enforcement action 
     taken against an aggressor state. Article 51 applies solely 
     to the victim of an act of aggression.

  This right to self defense was so obvious and fundamental that the 
United States delegation to the San Francisco Conference at first 
opposed including language on the right of self defense in the charter 
for fear that such a provision might be used to limit the right of self 
defense. In a dispatch to the New York Times from the San Francisco 
Conference, James Reston described the breakthrough which produced 
article 51:

       San Francisco, May 15 [1945].--President Truman broke the 
     deadlock today between the Big Five and the Latin American 
     nations over the relations between the American and world 
     security systems.
       After over a week of negotiating, during which American 
     foreign policy was being made and remade by a bi-partisan 
     conference delegation, the President gave to the Latin 
     American nations the reassurance which they wanted before 
     accepting the supremacy of the World Security Council in 
     dealing with disputes in the Western Hemisphere. . . .
       This assurance was announced late tonight by Secretary 
     Stettinius, who said that an amendment to the Dumbarton Oaks 
     proposals would be proposed reading substantially as follows:
       ``Nothing in this charter impairs the inherent right of 
     self defense, either individual, or collective, in the event 
     that the Security Council does not maintain international 
     peace and security and an armed attack against a member state 
     occurs. . . .''

  Mr. President, we have been here before. That charter was in so many 
ways written in response to the failure of the collective security 
arrangements of the League of Nations, of which the most conspicuous 
was the civil war, so-called, in Spain. A group was put together, 
called the Lyon Conference, where representatives of Britain, France, 
Germany, and Italy agreed in 1936 to stem the flow of supplies to both 
sides. France and Britain complied with the agreement. Germany and 
Italy ignored it, and in a very little while, the world was at war at 
large.
  I would like to end these remarks by quoting two citations from the 
New Republic.
 Both are addressed to the President of the United States:

       [We] urge you to act at once in raising the unneutral 
     embargo which is helping to turn Spain over to the friend of 
     Hitler and Mussolini . . . Is the course of this country 
     determined by the wishes of . . . Great Britain? . . . 
     Perhaps you believe that it is too late to do anything. But 
     you probably believed that last spring . . . Mr. President, 
     we urge you not to hesitate or delay. We can imagine no valid 
     reason for you to do so. You have spoken bravely--in some 
     cases, we believe, so bravely as to be foolhardy. But here is 
     something that you can safely do--and do now. Why not make 
     your acts correspond with your words?

  This Telegram to the President was dated February 1, 1939. We did 
nothing. In no time at all, we were attacked and the war became a world 
war.
  And now, more recently, Mr. President, from the New Republic of May 
9, 1994:

       The administration does not grasp that moral principles are 
     also analytically useful. Consider its most frequently stated 
     explanation for its timidity in the Balkans. It is reluctant, 
     it says to ``take sides'' in the conflict. It aspires to 
     neutrality, in other words, between the Serbs and the 
     Bosnians, between the conqueror and the conquered, between 
     the raper and the raped. This is a kind of blindness, alas, 
     that no major diplomatic initiative will cure.

  I think we have all been impressed with the candor of the Assistant 
Secretary of State for European Affairs, Richard Holbrooke, who called 
the situation in Bosnia and Herzegovina ``the greatest collective 
failure of the west since the 1930's.'' That a U.N. declared safe area 
could be allowed to be taken is shameful. That one week later no 
measurable response from the United Nations has been recorded is 
potentially fatal. The analogies to the confusion of the 1930's--the 
undoing of the League of Nations--are not idle. Our actions, or lack of 
action, in Bosnia will be defining. It will indicate whether or not we 
are committed to abiding by the legal structures put in place at San 
Francisco a half century ago in the wake of two world wars, and now, at 
long last, tested in a clearest possible setting--a setting in which 
those wars began, Sarajevo, 1914.
  If what we constructed in the wake of two world wars in an effort to 
prevent the third is not adhered to, the alternative is chaos. It will 
spread much more rapidly than we think. We will 

[[Page S 10289]]
have lost the central legal, moral principle of world order we 
undertook to set in place--which we defended at enormous costs through 
50 years of cold war. Now to see it trivialized and lost in the Balkans 
is an act for which we will no more be forgiven than were the leaders 
of Europe that let the war in Spain lead on to their own--the Second 
World War, from which they have never yet recovered.
  Mr. President, it is not too late, although it is very late indeed. 
The Republican leader and Senator Lieberman are very much to be 
congratulated. I very much hope the Senate will support them and that 
the administration will get the message, as well as the rest of the 
world. They have been listening to us with great care and attention, as 
well they ought, after the contributions we have made to the rest of 
the world these past 75 years.
  Thank you, Mr. President. I yield the floor.
  (Mr. COATS assumed the chair.)
  Mr. McCAIN. Mr. President, yesterday the President's spokesman 
labeled the proposal to lift the arms embargo against Bosnia a nutty 
idea. Given the quality of invective in what passes for political 
debate today, Mr. McCurry's remark seems to me a rather light censure.
  However, it is fair to observe that to make such a charge, Mr. 
McCurry had to exceed the already Olympic standards of hypocrisy that 
the administration has established throughout the many twists and turns 
of the catastrophe that is its Bosnia policy. Let us consider two truly 
nutty ideas, offered by the Governments of France and the United States 
which will be considered at the ministerial level by NATO governments 
this Friday.
  Let us consider what the administration is reportedly proposing to do 
about the rapidly deteriorating situation in Bosnia.
  As I understand it, the administration has rejected French President 
Chirac's proposal to reinforce peacekeepers in Gorazde. Instead, 
administration officials have proposed more aggressive NATO air strikes 
against Bosnian Serb forces currently besieging Gorazde.
  Before commenting on the two proposals, Mr. President, I must caution 
that they are only the proposals of the moment. As France's and the 
United States positions on Bosnia have experienced for many months now 
dizzying and frequent metamorphoses, no one can be certain that today's 
proposals will resemble tomorrow's.
  Neither idea has been conceived in anything approaching a historical 
review of the failure of the United Nations and the West's efforts to 
resolve the Bosnian conflict or even, apparently, a rational analysis 
of the present circumstances in Bosnia. Both ideas are certainly 
unsound as deterrents to Bosnian Serb aggression and as remedies to the 
decline of the Atlantic Alliance.
  Let us first consider President Chirac's call for reinforcing U.N. 
peacekeepers in Gorazde with an additional force of up to 1,000 French 
and British troops who would arrive in Gorazde aboard American 
helicopters, accompanied by American gunships, and after Serbian air 
defenses had been suppressed by NATO warplanes.
  President Chirac has threatened to remove existing French 
peacekeepers if his plan is not adopted by NATO. I have no idea if his 
threat is serious or imminent. Nor do I particularly care.
  We can be certain, however, that France will withdraw it peacekeepers 
from Bosnia, as will all other countries who have contributed troops to 
UNPROFOR, and that the United States will conduct the withdrawal. All 
that remains uncertain is whether the withdrawal will occur in a few 
days or a few weeks or a few months. All that will be accomplished by 
deploying more French or British or Dutch troops to Gorazde is to 
complicate our contingency planning and to make more dangerous our 
eventual evacuation of UNPROFOR.
  At one point last week, both Presidents Clinton and Chirac indicated 
their preference that UNPROFOR retake Srebrenica from the Serbs. They 
wisely re-thought that suggestion moments after making it. However, the 
difference in degree of foolishness between their previous suggestion 
and the idea that we can somehow prevent Serbian advances and retain a 
peacekeeping function by reenforcing UNPROFOR's failure in the eastern 
safe areas is, quite obviously, only marginal.
  Again, the deployment of a few hundred or a thousand or 10 thousand 
additional forces to UNPROFOR will only increase the number of hostages 
to fortune currently at risk in Bosnia, exacerbate the confusion in 
Bosnia about the West's commitment to peace in Bosnia, worsen the 
burden on the United States when we extract UNPROFOR, and get a lot of 
Americans and our European comrades-in-arms killed in the bargain.
  Only marginally less ridiculous is the administration's proposal to 
use NATO air power more aggressively to defend Gorazde. What 
constitutes more aggressive air strikes is, of course, unknown. Since 
the use of NATO air power in this conflict to date has been so 
inconsequential, so utterly futile, its more aggressive use could mean 
little more than an intention to actually harm a single Serbian 
soldier.
  Interestingly, the administration proposes this option to counter 
President Chirac's proposal because they fear the latter would make 
NATO a belligerent in this war. What, pray tell, does bombing the Serbs 
make us--a disinterested third party?
  Mr. President, I do not believe in the occasional, or the 
incremental, or the half-hearted, or the uncertain, or the timid use of 
American force. History has shown its contempt for doubt and 
vacillation in the decision making process which sends Americans into 
harm's way. If we commit force it must be with confidence that we can 
affect a substantial improvement in the situation on the ground in 
Bosnia. Can anyone--anyone--be even fairly certain that bombing a 
little more artillery, or a few more tanks will really deter Serb 
aggression?
  I have never believed airstrikes alone could make difference in the 
course of the conflict in Bosnia. Winning wars, as I have often 
observed in our many debates on Bosnia, is about seizing and holding 
ground. You cannot do that from the air.
  I have been strongly opposed to the almost comical pinprick 
airstrikes authorized by the United Nations. against Serb military 
targets following Serb attacks on civilians and UNPROFOR forces. I have 
little faith that the more aggressive use of NATO air power--whatever 
that entails--will accomplish anything more than to momentarily make 
the West feel a little better about its manifest failure in Bosnia. My 
opposition to air strikes today rests in the same argument I made a 
year ago.
  When the United States commits its prestige and the lives of our 
young to resolving a conflict militarily then we must be prepared to 
see the thing through to the end. If you start from the premise--and I 
have heard no voice in Congress oppose this premise--that American 
ground forces will not be deployed to Bosnia for any purpose other than 
to help evacuate UNPROFOR, then you identify to the enemy the 
circumstances under which you can be defeated. You have indicated the 
conditionality, the half-heartedness of our commitment. And you have 
told the Serbs: We may bomb you, but if you can withstand that, Bosnia 
is yours.
  NATO's ineffectual use of air power to date has clearly indicated to 
the Serbs that they can withstand the limit of the West's commitment to 
Bosnia. No one, no one in Congress, no one in the administration, no 
one in the Pentagon can tell me with any degree of confidence that even 
more aggressive air strikes will determine or change in any way the 
outcome of this war.
  The American people and their representatives in Congress have 
already made the most important decision governing United States 
involvement in Bosnia. As a nation, we have decided that the tragedy in 
Bosnia--as terrible as it is, as unjust as it is, as brutal as it is--
the tragedy in Bosnia does not directly affect the vital national 
security interests of the United States. We made that decision when we 
decided not to send American infantry to fight in Bosnia.
  Some in Congress and elsewhere have argued the opposite, that the war 
in Bosnia does threaten our most vital security interests to the extent 
that it has the potential to spread throughout the Balkans, and even to 
provoke open 

[[Page S 10290]]
hostilities between two NATO allies. I believe that we can contain the 
conflict. But for the sake of argument, let us consider the conflict as 
a direct threat to our security.
  If the U.S. Government feels our national interests so threatened 
then they should--they must--take all action necessary to defend those 
interests. If our vital interests are at risk then we must say to the 
Serbs and to Serbia: You have threatened the security of the United 
States, the most powerful nation on Earth. We intend to defend our 
interests by all means necessary, and you can expect the invasion of 
Bosnia by American ground forces supported by all available air and sea 
power.
  But the fact is, Mr. President, that neither Congress nor the 
President would support such a grave undertaking. Why? Because we 
cannot make a plausible argument to the American people that our 
security is so gravely threatened in Bosnia that it requires the 
sacrifice, in great numbers, of our sons and daughters to defend.
  So let us dissemble no longer about how the war in Bosnia threatens 
the security of the United States. It does not, and we all know it. 
What the President will apparently decide is to try by the incremental 
escalation of air power to bluff the Serbs into ceasing their 
aggression.
  As I already argued, the previous use of NATO air power has done 
little more than aggravate the bleeding of American and NATO 
credibility. Additional air power, especially the levels contemplated 
by the President and our allies, will be no more decisive in Bosnia 
than our previous attempts to bluff the Serbs from the air.
  A committed foe--and I have no doubt that the Serbs are committed--
can and will resist enormous levels of carnage wrought by air power. In 
Vietnam, we bombed the Than Hoa bridge over a hundred times, We 
unleashed the awesome destructive power of the B-52's on Hanoi, a 
devastation I witnessed personally, and still we did not destroy their 
will to fight.
  I fear the Serbs will endure whatever air strikes NATO next 
undertakes, and will continue their conquest of Bosnia. I fear this, 
Mr. President, because the Serbs know in advance the limit of our 
commitment to Bosnia. They know we will not send troops to fight on the 
ground. They know there are limits to the escalation of any bombing 
campaign we are prepared to undertake, because of the extreme tactical 
difficulties posed by the climate and terrain, and because of the 
certainty that such strikes will do terrible collateral damage.
  Mr. President, I fear that both the Governments of France and the 
United States, are asking us to increase our involvement in an 
undefined military adventure in Bosnia where the limits of our force 
are known to our enemy in advance of its use; where out of concern for 
our prestige we will be drawn deeper into war or compelled to sacrifice 
further that prestige and many lives to a cause we were not prepared to 
win; and where the aggrieved party has been prevented by us from 
fighting in their own defense even as we decline to fight for them.
  There is but one honorable option remaining to us, Mr. President, 
that is to terminate the failed UNPROFOR mission, remove all U.N. 
officials from any further responsibility to preside over the 
destruction of Bosnia; assist in the evacuation of UNPROFOR, and lift 
the unjust arms embargo against Bosnia. That is what the majority 
leader and Senator Lieberman's resolution proposes to do, and all the 
arguments arrayed against it are, in the words of Mr. McCurry, 
``nutty.''
  Lifting the arms embargo against Bosnia is the only action which the 
United States and the U.N. can take that might help the Bosnians 
achieve a more equitable settlement of this conflict without deploying 
massive levels of NATO troops to roll back Serb territorial gains.
  Better armed and better able to defend themselves, the Bosnians might 
be able to present a more credible, long term threat to Serb conquests, 
and by so doing, convince the Serbs to re-think their refusal to 
relinquish any substantial part of their territorial gains.
  But even if lifting the embargo only exacerbates the violence and 
hastens Serbian advances, it has an advantage that our current Bosnia 
policies lack--it is just. It is just.
  We have all heard the arguments that if the West wants to economize 
the violence in Bosnia and contain its spread then we will not lift the 
embargo, but sustain UNPROFOR.
  Shall we sustain the policy which allowed the Serbs to block delivery 
of humanitarian relief; that allowed Srebrenica to fall and that has 
already stipulated its assent to the imminent fall of Zepa; which 
tolerates ethnic cleansing and reported war crimes that if even half 
true should shame us for a generation? Shall we sustain this policy? 
For what another few days, weeks? Until Gorazde falls? Sarajevo?
  Mr. President, if we will not fight for Bosnia, than we are morally--
morally--in the wrong to prevent Bosnians from fighting for themselves.
  We cannot continue to falsely raise the hopes of the Bosnian people 
that the West will somehow stop Serb aggression by maintaining unarmed 
U.N. forces in Bosnia where they serve as likely hostages rather than a 
deterrent to Serb aggression. We cannot tell Bosnians any longer that 
it is better to attenuate their destruction rather than to resist it. 
We cannot any longer refuse the defense of Bosnia while denying 
Bosnians their right to self-defense. We have come to the end of that 
injustice, Mr. President.
  I cannot predict that Bosnians will prevail over the Serb aggressors 
if we lift--at this late date--the arms embargo. I cannot predict that 
Bosnians will even recover enough territory to make an eventual 
settlement of the conflict more equitable. I cannot predict that 
Bosnians will mount anything more than a brief impediment to Serbian 
conquest of all of Bosnia. But they have the right to try, Mr. 
President. They have the right to try. And we are obliged by all the 
principles of justice and liberty which we hold so dear to get out of 
their way.
  Mr. President, I yield the floor and, Mr. President, I suggest the 
absence of a quorum.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The clerk will call the roll.
  The bill clerk proceeded to call the roll.
  Mr. HEFLIN. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the order for 
the quorum call be rescinded.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. Without objection, it is so ordered.
  Mr. HEFLIN. Mr. President, I am not going to really make a speech on 
the issue of the arms embargo on the Government of Bosnia and 
Herzegovina, but rather attempt to raise some issues and some 
questions.
  There have been a number of questions about what would happen in the 
event that the United States unilaterally lifts the arms embargo. Some 
of the questions that have come to my mind--and for which I do not have 
the answers--I think are important, and I think we ought to ask a 
number of questions and attempt to at least analyze those questions, 
and, of course, hopefully to come up with answers.
  Some of my questions are, first, how close to winning the war are the 
Serbs? Second, if we arm the Bosnians, what are their chances of 
winning the war? Third, if we arm the Bosnians, and they cannot win the 
war, then there seems to be a number of questions that ought to be 
considered, such as the following:
  What are the consequences in terms of death and other casualties?
  What will be the likelihood of the enlargement of the conflict to 
other areas and countries?
  What period of time will it take to train the Bosnians and assemble 
arms sufficiently to make the Bosnians into a credible fighting force?
  During the period of time that it would take to train the Bosnians 
and assemble the arms, can the Serbs intensify their fighting 
sufficiently to make victory for the Serbs inevitable?
  What type of victories must the Bosnians win, and how many such 
victories will be necessary in order to bring about a negotiated peace?
  Then, I think one of the ultimate questions we have to ask is what 
are the prospects of a lasting peace without a complete, unconditional 
surrender by one side or the other?
  I do not know the answer to these questions. But I think these 
questions ought to enter the thought processes of each Senator in 
making his decision on this issue. 

[[Page S 10291]]

  Mr. President, I yield the floor.
  I suggest the absence of a quorum.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The clerk will call the roll.
  The assistant legislative clerk proceeded to call the roll.
  Mr. JEFFORDS. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the order 
for the quorum call be rescinded.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. Without objection, it is so ordered.
  Mr. JEFFORDS. Mr. President, I rise in support of the Dole-Lieberman 
substitute amendment to S. 21, the Bosnia and Herzegovina Self Defense 
Act of 1995.
  The events of the last week in Bosnia are appalling. Not only does 
the tragedy continue, but the latest attack on so-called safe areas has 
resulted in a new level of violence aimed at civilians, a new wave of 
ethnic cleansing and the creation of a whole new refugee population.
  The position of the United Nations in Bosnia is increasingly 
untenable: its role in delivering humanitarian aid is marginal, its 
role in protecting ``safe areas'' is dominated by spectacular and 
deadly failures. The fact that the United Nations chief role in Bosnia 
increasingly is offering hostage targets to the Bosnian Serbs would be 
laughable if it were not so sad. Not only are our allies' brave and 
dedicated soldiers being put at risk, but their role as hostage targets 
has virtually guaranteed inaction by NATO air power no matter how 
brutal and blatant Bosnian Serb aggression becomes--whether it is aimed 
at Bosnian Government forces, at civilians, or even at the U.N. 
peacekeepers themselves.
  The United Nations must strengthen its position in Bosnia or get out. 
At a minimum, it must reconfigure its troops into stronger and more 
easily defended units. I am inclined to support efforts by the 
administration and our European allies to do this, if it can contribute 
to offering real protection to the currently misnamed ``safe areas.'' 
In the end, however, if the resulting UN forces have no viable mission 
to carry out they should be withdrawn. U.S. and NATO assistance in this 
effort would be appropriate.
  I do not support the use of U.S. ground troops to take sides in this 
war, or simply to assist a feckless U.N. force. But NATO air power can 
contribute to protection of Bosnian ``safe areas'' or at least deter 
further Bosnian Serb aggression. It should be used. We have a moral 
responsibility to allow the Bosnians to defend themselves and to try to 
end the one-sided slaughter. And our broader security interests will be 
seriously damaged if we allow this aggression to go unchallenged, and 
to spread to Kosovo, Croatia, and eventually Albania, Macedonia, and 
beyond. Failure to act carries grave risks.
  I am under no illusion that solutions to the problems in Bosnia are 
simple. Some problems defy attempts from the outside to solve them, and 
this may be a tragedy the United States cannot end, as much as we would 
like to. But, there are things we can do, and the people of Bosnia have 
suffered too long. At a minimum, and as an immediate step, we can and 
should end the unjust arms embargo against Bosnia.
  Mr. President, I have been involved and interested in this situation 
for several years now. I would like to try to put it in some sort of 
perspective that perhaps all of us can understand where the morality is 
and where we ought to be.
  I was, in August 1992, at a conference in Austria with several 
European members of Parliament. At that time, I had also just come from 
visiting Croatia, and had been to the front and visited with refugees 
that had streamed out, with those that had been victims, and with those 
that had witnessed the terrible situation with respect to the raping of 
women, and the deaths of many males which had occurred as a result of 
the Serb intrusion into the villages and homes of the Bosnian Moslems 
and Croats.
  When I was at that conference, the Chancellor of Austria was present. 
And I asked the Chancellor--I said, ``Why is it not imperative, and 
certainly rational, for the European Community to step in and stop the 
fighting in some way?'' He looked at me and he said, ``Well, we cannot 
get involved because they are both our friends.''
  I started to think about that at that conference. It seemed to me 
that the time you really want to get involved between two of your 
friends who are fighting is when one of your friends is there 
handcuffed to a post and the other friend is there beating him with a 
lead pipe. It seems even more imperative that you ought to get involved 
and stop the fighting, especially when you consider that the size of 
those that are standing around watching the fight are more than capable 
of walking in and resoling the situation. That seems to me the 
situation we have right now.
  Also, at that conference I asked a question of the group there. Well, 
would it not be right under this situation, if you are not ready to go 
in and separate your friends from fighting, that perhaps at least you 
ought to take the handcuffs off the individual that is at the post and 
perhaps give that individual a weapon or the weapons necessary to be on 
equal terms with his opponent? No, they said. The answer to that is, 
well, more people might get hurt that way--with the conclusion, 
therefore, that it would be better to allow your friend to be beaten to 
death than to come in and try to separate them because somebody might 
get hurt.
  Take a look at the U.N. situation. There is a way you can look at it 
and, I think, using that same scenario, understand what has happened 
there. First of all, in the two opponents, the Serbs and the Bosnian 
Serbs on the one hand against the Moslems, Bosnian Moslems and Croats 
on the other, we have a situation where one side is heavily armed and 
the other is not. The Bosnian Serbs inherited the arms which came from 
Yugoslavia--howitzers, the tanks, and the airplanes--whereas those 
weapons are not available to the other side. That is the situation we 
have now.
  It seems to me that again those forces that are standing outside, 
that have the ability to come in and settle it, are faced with a couple 
of options, again very similar to the scenario I laid out, and that is 
we can walk in with force, and we can do it. But then that may put some 
of our people and others in harm's way.
  The other thing we could do is to say, all right, we are going to 
level the fighting field. In fact, we will not only do that, but if we 
arm the Bosnians, their forces outnumber the Serb forces. Well, if I am 
standing there as a Serb force and recognize that, whereas I now have 
the upper hand because of the weapons I possess, if the United States 
suddenly enters and changes its policy and says, OK, that is enough, we 
are now going to arm the other side so they have the same kind of arms 
you do, all of a sudden I am not in a position of superiority but 
instead in a position of inferiority.
  So that is why I support this amendment, because what we will be 
doing is aiming a huge weapon at the Serbs instead of their pointing 
weapons in the other direction, and that leverage alone, in my mind, 
will bring the Serbs to the conclusion that they have to come to heel 
and to reach some political accomodation.
  The other way, which is represented by our current policy, is to come 
in and say we will hold a shield up and prevent one side from beating 
the other. And then, of course, when that got troublesome and we began 
to get hurt, we let the shield down, and the beating began again with 
impunity. If we just go in there now and try to strengthen those forces 
but we still do not raise the shield to protect, we are not going to 
make any headway at all.
  I am a strong believer that if you get involved in these things and 
you have overwhelming force, the best way to resolve the situation is 
to make sure that force is available and ready, whether it is the 
United Nations or ours. Alternatively, as this amendment would provide, 
we can say, if you do not come in and work out a peace here, we will 
arm the other side so they have the superiority.
  Continuation of this policy which relies on an ineffectual peace 
force and hamstrings real efforts to assist the war's victim is a very 
destructive policy with respect to the United Nations. This event could 
well make the difference as to whether the United Nations is going to 
be an effective body to prevent war in the future or not. We are at 
that point where we have to do what is necessary to ensure that we can 
preserve the ability of the United Nations to make a difference, and, 

[[Page S 10292]]
hopefully, we will have the courage to do that.
  So I again reflect back upon a year and a half ago or so or 3 years 
ago now when we were starting to take a look at this, and I have come 
to the same conclusion again that I came to then, that if we do not as 
a United Nations intervene in a responsible way, we will cause the 
United Nations to become an ineffective and unusable organization with 
respect to this kind of conflict.
  I yield the floor.
  Mr. PELL addressed the Chair.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from Rhode Island.
  Mr. PELL. Last night when this debate opened, I said I find this a 
very difficult vote to cast. Hearing the debate this morning, I find 
some of my colleagues' arguments to be very compelling. Senator 
Lieberman and others have given us an excellent, eloquent account, for 
example, of the horror the Bosnian civilians are suffering--of the 
dreadful behavior of the Serbian forces who are outgunning the 
Bosnians.
  The invasion of two safe areas, areas that the international 
community said it would protect, outrages us, as it should. We all want 
to do something to respond to the atrocious Serb behavior in Bosnia. 
Indeed, the United States and our allies are working hard on a united 
response.
  Lifting the arms embargo certainly seems, at first glance, to offer a 
cost-free solution to the fall of the safe areas. I, too, am torn. I am 
still not convinced, though, that we will make things better by passing 
this legislation. Indeed, we could make things worse, at great risk not 
only to the besieged in Bosnia but to the United States and to our 
European allies.
  It is time for our President, along with our U.N. and NATO allies, to 
consider how we will respond to the dreadful, egregious Serbian 
behavior and, indeed, to consider the very future of the United Nations 
in Bosnia. The United States and our allies know that if the United 
Nations were to pull out altogether, many areas of Bosnia, now stable 
and well supplied due to the U.N. presence, would face humanitarian 
disaster. This is particularly true in central Bosnia.
  The President and our NATO allies must balance that potential 
catastrophe against the current tragedy which has led many to call for 
a complete U.N. withdrawal.
  We should be honest about what we are debating. This bill, if passed, 
will actually trigger the U.N. withdrawal from Bosnia. I remind my 
colleagues that the United States has committed to helping our allies 
to withdraw from Bosnia as part of the NATO effort, so in essence by 
passing this bill we are precipitating the commitment of up to 25,000 
U.S. troops to Bosnia to help with the withdrawal.
  I do believe that if and when a decision is made to withdraw 
UNPROFOR, the arms embargo will de facto be lifted. And that is just as 
it should be. We are not at that point yet, though. The troop-
contributing countries have not made a decision to withdraw. The U.N. 
Security Council has not made a decision to withdraw UNPROFOR. The 
Bosnian Government has not asked UNPROFOR to withdraw. Yet, by passing 
this bill, the United States Senate would very likely trigger a U.N. 
withdrawal from Bosnia.
  If we pass this bill today, it will inevitably be perceived as the 
beginning of a U.S. decision to go it alone in Bosnia. It is naive to 
think we can unilaterally lift the arms embargo and walk away. Instead, 
we would have to assume responsibilities for Bosnia not only in terms 
of our moral obligation but in practical terms as well.
  Lifting the embargo without international support would increase the 
American responsibility for the outcome of the conflict.
 Delivering weapons to Bosnia would likely require sending in United 
States personnel. Granted, this legislation states that nothing should 
be construed as authorizing the deployment of U.S. forces to Bosnia and 
Herzegovina for any purpose. But I want to emphasize that this would be 
the U.S. decision to dismantle the embargo. I do not see how we can 
lift the embargo on our own without sending in the personnel and 
without providing the wherewithal to carry out the new policy.

  Another serious concern on this legislation is that it says that the 
lifting of the embargo shall occur after UNPROFOR personnel have 
withdrawn or 12 weeks after the Bosnian government asks U.N. troops to 
leave, whichever comes first. Basically, what this does is it gives the 
Bosnian Government, not the United States Government, the power to end 
the United States participation in a U.N.-imposed embargo.
  As I have said, if and when UNPROFOR does leave, it is very likely 
that the arms embargo would be lifted. While the Bosnian Government 
does indeed have the right to ask UNPROFOR to leave, we should not give 
the Bosnian Government the power to trigger the unilateral lifting of 
the embargo. To give them that right is an abdication of U.S. power. 
Lifting the embargo unilaterally would increase U.S. responsibility in 
Bosnia, yet this legislation would allow the Bosnian Government to make 
the decision to increase our involvement.
  Finally, I do not want to see happen to the United Nations at this 
time what happened many years ago when Abyssinia was about to be 
overrun by Italy. It appealed to the League of Nations, but the League 
wrung its hands and did nothing. That was the downfall of the League. 
We do not want to see the same set of circumstances arise here where 
Bosnia comes and asks for help, and we wring our hands but do not 
reply.
  I yield the floor.
  Mr. BIDEN addressed the Chair.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from Delaware is recognized.
  Mr. BIDEN. Mr. President, I rise today to speak to the subject that 
Senator Pell just addressed. My colleagues are probably tired of my 
rising and speaking to this subject over the last 3 years. I have been 
arguing for some time and continue to contend that we need to lift what 
is, in fact, an illegal as well as immoral arms embargo against the 
Government of Bosnia-Herzegovina.
  Mr. President, observers in the Senate know full well that I am no 
stranger to this issue. Nearly 3 years ago, on September 30, 1992, I 
spoke out against the arms embargo on Bosnia after returning from 
Sarajevo, Tuzla, Belgrade, and various places in Croatia--in short, 
from having traveled Bosnia, Serbia, and Croatia fairly extensively and 
observing what was going on. I came back and wrote a report, which I 
delivered to the President and to the Secretary of State, and spoke on 
the floor of the Senate and to the Foreign Relations Committee. I 
recommended a policy that came to be referred to as lift and strike and 
said that the arms embargo was illegal as well as immoral. After 
speaking out against the embargo, I introduced the so-called Biden 
amendment, which was subsequently adopted by the U.S. Senate during the 
waning months of the Bush Presidency.
  The Biden amendment, I would like to remind everyone, is law now. The 
Biden amendment authorized assistance to Bosnia and Herzegovina through 
a drawdown of up to $50 million in Defense Department stocks of 
military weapons and equipment. As I said, it passed. It became law. It 
gave the President the discretion when to draw down this weaponry.
  But we heard then from many people who are now suggesting we should 
lift the embargo as well as all those who are against it that this 
weaponry would be of little value to the Bosnian Government and their 
army, which then as now was made up of Serbs, Croats, and Moslems. 
Nearly everyone forgets, incidentally, that when hostilities started 
only perhaps 60 percent of the Serbs in Bosnia, who made up only a 
portion of the population of Bosnia, were engaged in or supported this 
vile ethnic cleansing.
  To return to the issue of arms, I was told then--incorrectly--that 
these Bosnian Moslems, Serbs, and Croats who supported the multiethnic 
Bosnian Government would not be able to use these weapons. Supposedly 
they had to be trained by Americans and other Westerners. I reminded 
people then and I remind people now who will raise the same argument 
that every young Bosnian Moslem, every young Bosnian Croat, every young 
Bosnian Serb male was conscripted into the Yugoslav Army, trained in 
the Yugoslav army, and became fully capable of using the weaponry we 
would send their way.
  Mr. President, less than a week after we passed the Biden amendment, 
on 

[[Page S 10293]]
October 5, 1992, I made the following statement.

       Surely the greatest single step the U.N. could take to 
     increase the impact on sanctions on Serbia is to leave the 
     embargo against Serbia in place while lifting the embargo 
     against Bosnia and Herzegovina--an embargo that, however well 
     intentioned--

  I might note parenthetically here, I may have been too generous in 
that remark--

     has had the undeniable effect of freezing the people of that 
     country in a state of utter defenselessness.

  That was true on October 5, 1992, and now it is clear to the whole 
world. Since that time I have spoken regularly here on the floor of the 
Senate and elsewhere against the arms embargo on Bosnia, which flies in 
the face of article 51 of the U.N. Charter, an article that gives every 
member state the right to self-defense.
  While we have prevented heavy weapons from reaching the victims of 
aggression, we have not prevented the shells from heavy weapons in the 
hands of the Bosnian Serb aggressors from reaching the victims of 
aggression. The Bosnian Serb aggressors have been lavishly supplied 
with tanks, artillery, planes, and even troops by Serbian strongman 
Milosevic.
  Mr. President, I mentioned my long record of public opposition to 
this illegal and totally immoral embargo only to remind my colleagues, 
first, that the embargo has been strangling an innocent victim for 
years. This is not new. It is just increasingly more dire.
  Second, that the issue has been before this House for just as long, 
and each time we have opted not to act decisively, preferring to give 
diplomacy one more chance. If one more of my colleagues, as much as I 
respect them, comes up to me on the floor, as several of my Democratic 
and one of my Republican friends recently have, and says privately, 
``Joe, why don't we give diplomacy one more chance?'' my answer will 
be, because I do not want to be a party to a delay that I know is going 
to result, while we are acting diplomatically, in the corralling of 
young Bosnian women into rape camps, in the siphoning off of young boys 
and men into death camps, and in the expulsion of old men and old women 
from their home areas by the repulsive practice whose grotesque 
euphemism is ethnic cleansing. Not one single time, not once since 
September 30, 1992, has any delay resulted in anything other than the 
death, destruction, humiliation, and genocide of the people of Bosnia.
  I bring up this history not in the vein of, ``I told you so,'' but to 
remind everybody how long this has been going on and to caution my 
colleagues not to listen to the siren song of inaction one more time. 
You can convince me once, maybe, not to act; twice; maybe three times, 
but 7, 8, 9, 10 times? I challenge anyone in this body to give me one 
shred of evidence that any delay in lifting the embargo has in any 
way--in any way--enhanced the prospect that fewer women in Bosnia will 
be raped, that fewer young girls will be raped, that fewer men will be 
exterminated, and that fewer older people will be expelled from the 
areas in which their families have lived for centuries. One shred of 
evidence. I challenge any of my colleagues to come to the floor now or 
at any time at their convenience and debate that issue with me.
  So wait, wait for what?
  The third reason I bring up the history on this, is that the 
President of the United States of America has been and is still 
authorized to provide $50 million worth of military assistance to 
Bosnia. This is authorized without any further congressional action 
required, to be delivered as soon as we take the step of lifting the 
embargo.
  This step has never been more acutely necessary than it is now, Mr. 
President. Since the Bosnian Serb aggressors brazenly defied the United 
Nations, in a sense the entire civilized world, by overrunning the U.N. 
safe area in Srebrenica last week, we have now had the whole world see 
what I saw and other folks saw firsthand the last time an enclave was 
overrun, as people were driven into Tuzla as I stood there.
  I was meeting with the aid relief workers, and there was a great 
commotion. Everyone got up out of the makeshift meeting room we were in 
because great big, old, white dump trucks were coming into Tuzla filled 
with men and women, holding their young children over their heads and 
outside the dump truck. There was an air of relief and celebration, and 
those of us watching thought this holding up their children was part of 
the celebration. We were, however, to find out as they unloaded this 
dump truck filled with human beings that the reason they were holding 
up their children was because other children had been trampled 
underfoot and smothered to death on the last trip from ethnically 
cleansed territory into the safe area of Tuzla.
  Then the United Nations and the contact group--Russians, French, 
British, Germans, Americans--said, ``Tell you what we're going to do. 
Through the United Nations, we're going to lay out certain safe 
areas,'' which they listed.
  I remind everybody what the deal was in the safe areas. The deal was 
that if the Bosnian Government--primarily Moslems, but also some Croats 
and Serbs who supported the Government--if they would give up what few 
weapons they had left in Gorazde and Zepa and Tuzla and Srebrenica, 
then we, the United Nations, speaking for the world, would guarantee 
that we would keep the Huns away from the door. We would guarantee that 
the ethnic cleansing would stop, and we would negotiate.
  So then they gave up their weapons and, as John McCain and I 
mentioned last week on the floor, all one had to do was hold up any 
newspaper in America and see--and I am not being critical of the troops 
that are there personally--blue-helmeted and blue-bereted soldiers 
sitting on armored personnel carriers, sitting on tanks and sitting in 
trucks, watching as the Bosnian Serbs went in and, before their very 
eyes, cleansed, in the same way that the Nazis cleansed when they 
dropped off folks at the Auschwitz train station in cattle cars.
 They found an interesting thing as they observed this vile ethnic 
cleansing. All the young women and all the young girls were sent off in 
one direction. The men who were fighting were not seen anywhere. The 
old folks were loaded into trucks with the very young children. And 
armed military personnel sat there, representing the world--they sat 
there while the Bosnian Serbs, before the very eyes of all the world, 
culled out these folks as if they were cattle. Then, we were told that 
if we lifted the arms embargo, do you know what was going to happen? 
The Bosnian Serbs might really get mad and overrun the safe areas.

  Mr. President, being as calm as I can about this, let me remind 
everyone that safe areas have already been overrun. I plead with some 
of my colleagues not to come to the floor and tell me what you have 
been telling me for 2 years--that if we lift the embargo, the Bosnian 
Serbs will overrun the safe areas. They have already done it in 
Srebrenica, and they are going to do it very soon in Zepa; they are in 
the process of overrunning it right now. I spoke with the Bosnian 
Foreign Minister, and indirectly through him to the Prime Minister, 
only 2 hours ago. The world has a perverse notion of how to deal with 
this. The Bosnian Government forces have taken into their protective 
custody the U.N. protectors of Zepa because of what is going to happen 
if they do not. If they do not, the Serbs will take the U.N. troops and 
threaten to kill them. Unless the people in Zepa throw down what few 
arms they have been able to find, unless they get into trucks, go to 
rape camps and go to death camps, the Bosnian Serbs are going to kill 
some of those U.N. blue helmet peacekeepers.
  But how is this being portrayed by the Mr. Akashi of the United 
Nations? He says that the Bosnian Government is no different from the 
Bosnian Serbs; they are both holding hostage blue-helmeted U.N. 
peacekeepers. What the Bosnian Government forces know, however, is that 
if they do not prevent those blue-helmeted peacekeepers from coming 
under the control of the Bosnian Serbs, they are dead. Mr. Akashi's 
fallacious moral equivalency is just another example of the twisted 
logic, the overwhelming rationalization the United Nations and others 
will undertake to avoid facing the truth of international inaction.
  Genocide. Genocide. Genocide. That is what this is about. Many of 
these brutalized Moslems, as we have been reading in the paper, as a 
consequence of having been raped or otherwise tortured, have committed 
suicide. When is the last time we read about that in this 

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century? It is not Joe Biden's judgment. World news organizations are 
reporting this now.
  These war crimes and crimes against humanity are no longer deeds 
known only by the specialists. They are there for all the world to see. 
These unspeakable deeds would be horrific enough if the government of 
those unfortunate people, the Bosnian Government, had been unwilling to 
defend them.
  But, Mr. President, the story is far worse than that.
  The Government of Bosnia has shown for more than 3 years that its 
young Moslems, young Croats, and young Serbs, are willing to fight 
against a foe with vastly superior weaponry, and to die defending their 
homes, their wives, their mothers, and their sisters. And what have we 
done? We have forbidden them to get the arms necessary to defend 
themselves. Instead, we have opted for the cruel deception of alleging 
that the U.N. Protection Force would defend them.
  Well, that has been laid to rest, Mr. President, as an outright 
fabrication.
  Mr. President, after the last few days, even the most naive American 
cannot hear those words--and I repeat--the U.N. Protection Force--
without being sickened by its Orwellian name.
  Mr. President, we have to put an end to this madness. We have 
temporized for far too long. The so-called U.N. Protection Force has 
abdicated its responsibility to the people it had pledged to defend, 
and the contact group's diplomacy is at a dead end.
  I might add that former Secretary of State, Henry Kissinger, is right 
that this U.N. Protection Force is not to blame; it has been the 
excuse. Many of those folks in the protection force are brave and 
decent and, from my personally meeting with them on two occasions in 
Bosnia--last year in June, and in September 1992--I know that they are 
repulsed by this, as well. But, Mr. President, their mandate is not to 
get involved. For that, I blame the West--not the United Nations, but 
the West.
  Mr. President, the least the United States can do is to allow the 
victims of oppression to defend themselves. We must lift this illegal, 
immoral arms embargo now. As an original cosponsor of the Dole-
Lieberman legislation, and of previous legislation, I strongly urge my 
colleagues to support S. 21.
  Mr. President, I might add that in order to get more votes --and I do 
not say that critically--Senators Dole and Lieberman have apparently 
already decided to amend the legislation to allow the President the 
right to postpone lifting the embargo for 30 days at a crack if he 
believes that the safe and secure completion of the U.N. personnel 
would otherwise be endangered. I understand the intention of this 
waiver. But I respectfully suggest, Mr. President, that this waiver 
will only invite the rabid minority of Bosnian Serbs led by Karadzic 
and General Mladic and his genocidal troops to go after the U.N. forces 
as they withdraw, or American forces if they are moved in to help them 
withdraw.
  In conclusion, Mr. President, I say that we have made a botch of our 
policy in the former Yugoslavia in two successive administrations. 
President Bush started this awful policy off. He handed it off to 
President Clinton, and, unfortunately, in my view, this administration 
has not reacted because of the need to find NATO unity. But there is no 
unity on this, Mr. President. We should get on the right side of 
history. We should get on the side that makes the most sense. We should 
get on the side of morality.
  I might add, Mr. President, that there is no need for any American 
forces in order to lift the embargo. The Moslems have a right to be 
able to defend themselves. I will end with a quote from the Prime 
Minister of Bosnia, who, 2 years ago, was Foreign Minister. I have said 
this to my colleagues before, but I want to remind them, and maybe even 
awaken their consciences a little bit.
  I held a meeting in my conference room and invited about a dozen 
Senators of both parties. The then Foreign Minister, now Prime Minister 
Haris Silajdzic--all of you have met him by now, I suspect--was there. 
When I made the case for lifting the arms embargo and using air power 
to protect peacekeepers and others while they moved, one of my 
colleagues said, ``I do not want to do that because more death will 
result.
 If the U.N. force leaves, more of your people will die.''

  This Senator was very sincere, because that was the wisdom of the 
moment. Silajdzic looked at this Senator, for whom I have a great deal 
of respect, and said, ``Senator, please, do me a favor. Allow me the 
dignity to choose how I will die. Senator, all the UNPROFOR does for us 
now is to fatten up my wife, my children, my countrymen, and me to be 
killed incrementally over the winter and the next spring and the 
summer. I would rather not have the food and have a weapon. Let me 
choose how I am going to die. For certain, I will die.''
  Mr. President, that was not a comment of a man engaging in hyperbole. 
It is a man who puts his life on the line every day. His predecessor 
said the same thing.
  Please, when this legislation comes up, please, we should get on the 
right side of history and morality and lift the arms embargo that is 
putting the Bosnian Government in a position where they cannot defend 
themselves. I yield the floor.
  Mr. EXON addressed the Chair.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from Nebraska.
  Mr. EXON. Mr. President, what is the pending matter before the 
Senate?
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The pending business is the Dole amendment to 
S. 21.
  Mr. EXON. I thank the Chair.
  Mr. President, the United States is caught in a dilemma. For the past 
3 years we have been working with our allies to bring the warring 
factions in what was formerly Yugoslavia to a peace settlement and end 
the pervasive brutality against innocent men, women, and children.
  As we have pursued this diplomatic track, the United States has 
refused to become involved militarily on the ground to halt the 
aggression against civilian populations or punish the root sources of 
the aggression, the Bosnian Serbs against the Bosnian Moslems.
  The fact is that there is no political will in America for a level of 
involvement that may result in Americans dying in Bosnia. It is, as 
many proponents of the legislation are fond of saying, a European 
problem.
  American national security interests are not at stake, it is said. 
Let the Europeans get their own house in order.
  On its face, Mr. President, that sounds reasonable enough. It is 
also, as it has most unfortunately turned out, a convenient exercise in 
face saving for us. It has not worked, obviously. Clearly, the efforts 
thus far have not stopped the fighting and the killing. There is no 
peace settlement. The U.N. peacekeepers have been ineffective shields 
against Serb forces who regard human flesh as fodder and ravenous eyes 
cast on innocent people, penned in like sheep waiting to be 
slaughtered.
  As a nation, we are outraged at the dark turn of events. The chorus 
cries louder and more demanding. Something must be done. The United 
States must lead. The United States recognizes the problem, but the 
efforts of the Europeans have failed.
  There has emerged a political scapegoat theory by some Republicans 
and some Democrats alike. It is called ``Clinton bashing.'' Blame the 
President and his leadership, even though I suggest that George 
Washington could not have led such a collection of wet noodles.
  Here lies our dilemma. Our moral outrage has led to an overwhelming 
desire to do something--anything--to halt Serb aggression. But there is 
an important restriction on any action that we take: no American can be 
put at risk. In what is the messiest, most intractable crisis the world 
has known in this decade, we want a neat, antiseptic solution.
  I think it is time for a little realism. I do not think it is going 
to happen, but we should try. The die is cast. Many of my closest 
colleagues in the Senate do not see this as I do. They may be correct. 
I think not.
  The bill before the Senate now is not a solution, and it does not 
fill the leadership vacuum with respect to Bosnia that so many lament. 
It says let us lift the embargo and let the chips fall where they may. 
At least we will feel better about ourselves knowing that we have 
removed an impediment against the Bosnian forces trying to defend 
themselves, and it keeps our hands clean.
  I have heard a lot about ``heavy lifting'' in the Senate over the 
years. 

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 While we have been talking about S. 21, it is often referred to as 
lifting. It should not be confused with the substance or the wisdom of 
S. 21. S. 21 is foreign policy light. It represents an approach that 
starts a course of events in motion without being honest enough to 
admit the resulting likely consequences. S. 21 is like a mischievous 
boy who lights the end of a firecracker and then runs a safe distance 
out of harm's way.
  Mr. President, I say those nations that have displayed the courage 
and put their soldiers in Bosnia should not be undercut. Our allies, 
the British, the French, the Dutch, and others are on the ground in 
Bosnia. We are by our own wishes not. They have lost dozens of their 
troops to snipers, to mortars, to mines, in an attempt to keep the 
forces of slaughter at bay. We have not.
  The question each of us should consider before we vote for S. 21 is 
whether it is right to force a decision on our own allies when we enjoy 
the luxury of not being involved, when our forces are not at risk.
  I am not a supporter of the embargo against Bosnia, and I do not 
believe that the U.N. peacekeepers are effectively protecting the 
supposedly civilian safe areas. However, let the Bosnians go to the 
United Nations and ask that the peacekeepers leave. To date, they have 
not. Or if the situation on the ground in Bosnia becomes untenable, let 
the nations with troops in Bosnia make the decision that it is best for 
them to leave. After all, they are risking their lives to protect 
innocent Bosnians. That should count for something when it comes to the 
question of who decides that the forces should be withdrawn.
  The decision should be made without having the Senate lighting a 
firecracker under the seat and then running away.
  Perhaps the most important part of S. 21 is what it does not say. It 
does not say what damage will result to NATO if the United States 
decides to break with our allies on the question of the embargo.
  It does not say that a United States decision to unilaterally lift 
the embargo will endanger compliance with existing embargoes against 
Serbia, Iraq, Libya, or with economic sanctions against rogue nations 
in the future.
  It does not say that passage of the bill will precipitate the removal 
of peacekeeping forces which in turn will involve American forces for 
the possible purpose of extraction.
  It does not face up to this consequence and authorize the President 
to use military forces to safely remove our allies from Bosnia. They 
are silent on that, evidently by design.
  It does not recognize the safe areas may be protected in western 
Bosnia despite Serb actions in the east and the withdrawal of 
peacekeepers there.
  It does not mention how many more civilians will die when the Serbs 
step up their attacks before the arms reach the Bosnian Moslem forces 
under the theory of lifting the embargo.
  It does not explain that an infusion of arms from Serbian and Slavic 
allies will flow freely to counter the arms embargo against Bosnia, 
likely resulting in heavier fighting and more killing.
  It does not talk about who will arm and train the Bosnians and how 
much it will cost. Do we bear a significant portion of that?
 How much? It is not surprising that S. 21 is silent on these 
questions. It not only has the United States light the firecracker 
underneath our allies and then run off, it has us look the other way 
conveniently as well. We do not want to know the consequences of our 
actions or deal with the details. We want a shot of cortisone to allay 
our guilt complex in the pretense of leadership. Cortisone is not a 
cure for cancer.

  The well-meaning S. 21, in my opinion, will make a bad situation 
worse. If the authors of the bill feel its passage is necessary due to 
the lack of coherent, effective policy in Bosnia, they have failed to 
step up with an approach that will end the fighting. S. 21, in my 
opinion, is very likely to inflame the fighting to new heights 
resulting in the deaths and the horrible situation for refugees and the 
atrocities that are so rampant in that area.
  Mr. President, it is a scapegoat approach. It is cleaner and neater 
and more antiseptic for the United States to unilaterally lift the arms 
embargo and thumb our noses at our allies. Such an action is 
counterproductive and obviously endangers an alliance that has 
furthered the cause of peace on the continent for 50 years. When it 
comes to the crisis in Bosnia, we are not participants in the solution. 
We are removed observers who cannot accept that the situation has 
turned sour. I am reminded of a quotation that, ``For every complex 
problem there is a solution that is both simple and wrong.'' S. 21 in 
its present form, in the opinion of this Senator, is such a solution.
  Mr. President, I thank the chair. And I yield the floor.
  Mr. GRAMS addressed the Chair.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER (Mr. Santorum). The Senator from Minnesota is 
recognized.
  Mr. GRAMS. Mr. President, I rise in strong support of S. 21, the 
Bosnian Self-Defense Act. I want to commend the majority leader for his 
strong and principled leadership in responding to the escalating crisis 
in Bosnia. His decisive move to bring this legislation to a vote may 
prove to be a turning point for U.S. policy in the Balkans. I, like 
many of my colleagues on both sides of the aisle, have had grave 
reservations about our Bosnian policy for several years, and even the 
hearings by the Senate Foreign Relations Committee have done little, if 
anything, to alleviate my concerns. Frankly, I am amazed at this 
administration's refusal to recognize numerous foreboding signs for the 
U.N. mission in Bosnia.
  On May 8, the General Accounting Office released a report on the so-
called peace operations in Bosnia. In that report GAO states that 
``UNPROFOR has been ineffective in carrying out mandates leading to 
lasting peace in the former Yugoslavia.'' Moreover, it continues, 
``UNPROFOR's limited effectiveness to deter attacks and provide 
protection stems from an approach to peacekeeping that is dependent on 
the constant cooperation of the warring parties.'' And finally, GAO 
concludes, ``UNPROFOR [has] lost credibility as a peacekeeping force * 
* *''
  I point out this report was released before the Bosnian Serbs took 
hundreds of U.N. peacekeepers hostage, before the Serbs shot down an 
American pilot on a NATO operation and before the Serbs began storming 
so-called U.N. safe areas.
  Mr. President, the GAO's report foreshadowed what many in Congress 
have now concluded, that is, the U.N. operation in Bosnia has failed 
and is moving toward a state of complete collapse. UNPROFOR cannot even 
meet the most minimal of its mandates. The U.N. force can no longer 
protect itself, let alone civilians in safe areas. Moreover, the 
ongoing offensive by Bosnian Serb forces against U.N.-declared safe 
areas has underscored the folly of the arms embargo. Imposed before 
Bosnia even officially existed, the embargo has consistently denied the 
Bosnians the right to defend themselves. There is not one Member of 
Congress, not one member of the State Department, and not one member of 
the Clinton administration who would deny that the arms embargo has 
allowed the Bosnian Serbs to preserve a powerful military advantage.
  With the help of the arms embargo, the 80,000-man Bosnian Serb 
militia has dominated 70 percent of Bosnia through its near monopoly of 
heavy weapons. Even with 200,000 soldiers, the Bosnian Government 
simply cannot compete. The occupation of U.N. safe areas by Bosnian 
Serbs is the beginning of the end for the U.N. mission. It is another 
gruesome admission of how the arms embargo continues to condemn the 
Bosnian people to a slow death. In Srebrenica, Bosnian troops actually 
outnumbered the attacking Serbs, but the Serb forces had far more 
firepower. Bosnian forces had no tanks or artillery with which to 
defend themselves, and once again the United Nations waited too long to 
call in NATO, too late for airstrikes to make a difference.
  Now, the opponents of lifting the arms embargo have repeatedly said 
they fear the Serbs would make a grab for the ``safe areas'' in eastern 
Bosnia. But the Serbs have not waited, even with the embargo in place 
and UNPROFOR on the ground. The United Nations, with American 
assistance, is perpetuating a cruel hoax on the Bosnian people. We 
force them to fight without adequate defenses, promise to protect them 
from hostile Serb troops, 

[[Page S 10296]]
and then let them fend for themselves when they are attacked.
  So far the American taxpayers have provided $2.5 billion to support 
the U.N. operations in Bosnia and they continue to support UNPROFOR to 
the tune of $500 million a year. Added to this sum is the 
administration's new pledge to provide another $95 million in cash and 
military equipment to the European rapid reaction force. Now, this 
latest action was taken in spite of strong congressional opposition, 
and it only threatens to deepen United States involvement in the 
Bosnian quagmire. Unfortunately, the Clinton administration seems 
determined to sink or swim with the status quo policy in Bosnia. If the 
President continues to stay the course, he will be in danger of 
dragging down the Bosnian people, along with American and NATO 
credibility.
  Supporters of lifting the arms embargo in Bosnia are often accused of 
being naive and unrealistic. I am neither. Ending the embargo is far 
from a perfect solution. There are many logistical questions that 
remain to be worked out. But given the events of the last few months, 
let alone the last few weeks in Bosnia, I see no other option in a 
civil war with no end in sight and with no peace agreement within 
reach.
  It is those who support the current Bosnian policy who have lost 
touch with reality. The U.N. peacekeeping mission cannot sustain itself 
in a country where there is no peace to keep. The United Nations has 
never been equipped to enforce peace on factions that are still 
spoiling for war. It is time for the administration to stop acting as 
if some miracle will occur to save the day.
  Just last month the House of Representatives approached an end to the 
arms embargo with a bipartisan and veto-proof vote of 318 to 99. I urge 
my colleagues to follow that example and also send a strong message of 
our own to the President by voting for S. 21. I believe it is the least 
we can do for the Bosnians and the very least that the American people 
can expect.
  Mr. President, I yield the floor. I suggest the absence of a quorum.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The clerk will call the roll.
  The bill clerk proceeded to call the roll.
  Mr. GORTON. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the order for 
the quorum call be rescinded.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. Without objection, it is so ordered.
  Mr. GORTON. Mr. President, I appear once again, briefly, to support 
the majority leader and my distinguished friend and colleague from 
Connecticut, in the proposal which they have before the Senate to 
terminate the arms embargo against Bosnia.
  Other than to add my voice to that cause, I can add nothing to the 
eloquence of what they have already said. What began as a policy of 
convenience and a seeking for time and a diplomatic solution on the 
occasion of the breakup of Yugoslavia, has not only proven to be a 
policy failure, a significant contributor to the loss of thousands of 
lives, and war crimes unmatched in Europe since the era of the Nazis, 
it has degenerated into a moral swamp, in which the actions of the 
United States and the United Nations contribute only to the success of 
the aggressors, to the success of those who have proposed this barbaric 
system, based on the religious background of the people of Bosnia.
  We are fond of saying, as a number of newspapers have, that the time 
has come to end that arms embargo.
  In truth, Mr. President, the time came long since. The distinguished 
Senator from Delaware, [Mr. Biden] in his remarks an hour or so ago, 
referred to statements that he made in the fall of 1992 which were 
valid then and are valid today.
  The particular occasion for the debate over this resolution today, of 
course, is the latest set of atrocities on the part of the Bosnian 
Serbs, the destruction of what we had long trumpeted as a safe haven, 
the rape of some, the murder of others, the driving out of most of the 
citizens that were supposedly protected in that safe haven.
  Mr. President, I think the failure of our policies and our 
proclamations cannot better be summarized than it was indirectly in two 
paragraphs in a story from last Friday's Washington Post about those 
citizens driven out of Srebrenica to a temporarily safe haven 
elsewhere. I want to quote those two paragraphs from that news story.

       ``This is Major's work,'' yelled a man on crutches, 
     referring to British Prime Minister John Major. ``It is 
     Clinton's work, too. Clinton--always talking so nice and 
     doing nothing.''
       ``They had better take a gun and kill us all,'' one woman 
     said. And waving her arms towards the masses of dazed people 
     who made up the weeping, nearly hysterical crowd, she added: 
     ``Look at what you did for us, all you governments.''

  That is a tiny portion of the human price we have paid for this arms 
embargo, for all of the threats not backed up, for all of the promises 
that got broken, for all of the lives lost. And have we done this in 
order to protect the lives of Americans? No, Mr. President. Just 
recently we had one of our Air Force pilots shot down over Bosnia--
rescued by a magnificent feat of arms, and celebrated here in this 
country for his escape, but those who shot him down remain totally 
unpunished.
  Can it not be said that perhaps that last, most recent demonstration 
of our lack of dedication led to the overrunning of the safe haven, the 
loss of hundreds, perhaps thousands of lives, and the driving out of 
tens of thousands of others? We have made ourselves contemptible. We 
have made ourselves a laughingstock. And it is time to end that policy 
now.
  Will we save more American lives? No. The President has promised that 
when the war is irretrievably lost, and when the U.N. forces want to 
come out, we will send troops in to save them--undoubtedly at the 
expense of casualties. Mr. President, that is a wrong policy as well. 
The correct policy is to end the arms embargo, to allow, to encourage, 
to assist in the arming of people desperately anxious to fight for 
their own freedom and probably capable successfully of fighting for 
that freedom if they are armed with weapons anywhere near equal to 
those of their aggressors. That was the correct strategy during the 
Presidency of George Bush. It has been the correct policy for the 2\1/
2\ years, at least, of the Presidency of Bill Clinton.
  Mr. President, the policies in which we have engaged have undercut, 
if they have not destroyed completely, our own credibility--not just in 
the Balkans, but all over the world. They have not only failed to 
succeed in ending or limiting the war, they have encouraged it. They 
have not discouraged aggression, they have encouraged it. They have not 
limited ethnic cleansing, they have increased it. And it is time to end 
those failed policies. It is time, at the very least, to allow the 
victims to fight for their own liberties.
  It is also time--not at all incidentally, Mr. President, in my view--
to end the arms embargo against Croatia and Slovenia as well. Slovenia 
is not in the news yet. It had succeeded in winning its independence 
and has been at peace ever since. It threatens no one. There is no 
reason in the world not to lift the embargo against it. Croatia is 25 
percent occupied by a dissident government which is engaged in some, 
though not all, of the same practices of their compatriots, the Bosnian 
Serbs.
  The only way there is any possibility in this case of proving that 
aggression and ethnic cleansing and rape and murder do not pay is to 
allow the victims of those crimes to be able to liberate themselves 
from those crimes.
  So I believe the two principal sponsors of this resolution, the 
majority leader and the distinguished Senator from Connecticut, who are 
now on the floor, are proposing exactly what the United States ought to 
do and I wish to express the hope that the Senate will promptly and 
overwhelmingly vote in favor of their resolution.
  Mr. President, I suggest the absence of a quorum.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The clerk will call the roll.
  The assistant legislative clerk proceeded to call the roll.
  Mr. HATCH. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the order for 
the quorum call be rescinded.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. Without objection, it is so ordered.
  Mr. HATCH. Mr. President, I would like to say a few words about the 
Bosnia and Herzegovina Self-Defense Act of 1995.
  Mr. President, I rise to support S. 21, the bill to terminate the 
illegal and immoral arms embargo on the Government of Bosnia and 
Herzegovina. It is 

[[Page S 10297]]
time we abandoned this morally and politically bankrupt policy. It is 
long past time that we permitted the victims of ethnic genocide to 
defend themselves; it is time we stand for a policy that may not 
guarantee an easy outcome, but that will put the United States on the 
side of principle.
  That principle is the right to self-defense against conquest by 
aggression, the right to self-defense against ethnic genocide.
  The time has come to declare our intentions to aid the victims in the 
bloodiest war to wreak mayhem in Europe since World War II. For too 
long the international community has been hamstrung by diplomatic 
inertia; for too long have sympathetic nations of the world been 
frustrated by U.N. and European reluctance to act; for too long have we 
watched United States policy flit about while Bosnia has suffered 
attacks against civilians, mass deportations, rape, and ethnic 
genocide. Washington dithers while Sarajevo burns.
  We cannot allow the Serbs to continue with their aggression by 
continuing to tie the hands of those who wish to defend themselves. The 
arms embargo has played into the hands of these aggressors; it has 
failed to make the moral distinction between the victims and the 
architects of genocide.
  The fall of Srebrenica demonstrates the collapse of the multinational 
mission and the hollowness of U.S. support for it. I believe it is past 
time for the Clinton administration to abandon this failed policy, 
rather than continue to make pathetic attempts to rationalize or 
perpetuate it.
  Some have noted that the arms embargo is a carryover of the Bush 
administration policy on Bosnia. This is true, Mr. President, and I 
urged President Bush to lift it then. The situation has grossly 
worsened in the 2\1/2\ years since he left office, and it is now 
President Clinton's responsibility to deal with this international 
horror.
  Last month, Bosnia's Prime Minister made another visit to Washington. 
To meet with him was to meet with a man fighting for the very existence 
of his country. I saw him after he went to the White House to meet with 
Vice President Gore. The Vice President used to be a supporter of 
lifting the embargo when he was a member of this body. At the White 
House, he told Prime Minister Silajdzic that the administration would 
continue to oppose a lift, because a lift would incite the Serbs to 
attack the safe havens.
  The administration had it exactly wrong. The fall of Srebrenica last 
week demonstrates the collapse of the multinational mission and, with 
its failure, the failure of U.S. policy supporting it. Now, if anything 
good can come out of these horrors, it must be that this body will vote 
to lift the embargo now.
  Over the past week we have all been horrified by the pictures and 
stories coming from Srebrenica, Zepa, and Sarajevo. There is no reason 
to repeat the horror here, nor is there any excuse to act as if these 
latest outrages against humanity have been of any surprise. I can only 
lament that it did not have to come to this.
  Many of us who have followed this war have concluded long ago that 
Serbia and its proxies would not cease in its pursuit of a Greater 
Serbia. After we saw that the Serbs would use the horror of ethnic 
genocide as an instrument of war, we could not be surprised about the 
developments we saw over the past 2\1/2\ years.
  We could not be surprised when the Serbs continued to attack the 
civilian population of the so-called safe havens.
  We could not be surprised when the Serbs starved Bihac.
  We could not be surprised that pinprick airstrikes emboldened the 
Serbs.
  We could not be surprised when the Serbs took U.N. hostages last 
month.
  And, finally, we could not be surprised when it was revealed that 
U.N. Special Envoy Akashi had recently sent a secret letter to the 
Bosnian Serbs assuring them that the United Nations would not seek 
confrontation with them.
  And no one, Mr. President, should have been surprised to learn that 
Belgrade continues to supply and assist its Serbian proxies in Bosnia 
and Croatia.
  We were dismayed, yes. Outraged, yes. But no one who has been 
watching this war could be surprised.
  No one, perhaps, except the policymakers at the White House and State 
Department. From the constantly shifting statements of the 
administration, however, it appears that every development has caught 
them off guard. Their only constancy has been their insistence on 
refusing the Bosnians the right to defend themselves. This has become 
incomprehensible.
  Today's U.S. policy lies in tatters. It is the product of a misplaced 
belief in multilateralism. An exaggerated estimate of a ruthless but 
third-rate foe. A solipsistic faith in the selfless intent of 
dictators. And an immature and myopic view of geopolitics.
  This administration supported the U.N. missions in Bosnia and 
Croatia. Many of these peacekeepers bravely put their lives on the line 
feeding the captives in the safe havens. But they never had a peace to 
keep; they disarmed the victims and aggressors alike, but when the 
aggressors challenged them by violating Security Council resolution 
after resolution, the United Nations feared calling in NATO air 
support.
  When the planes came, as rarely they did, they delivered pinprick 
strikes, destroying a tent here, a truck there. The Serbs laughed and 
became emboldened. The United Nations became more reluctant to engage. 
The Security Council resolutions enacted in New York City became 
worthless documents in Sarajevo, Tuzla, Gorazde, and the other towns of 
Bosnia.
  The United Nations, without a peace to keep, kept the borders set by 
the aggressors; and if the peacekeepers dared challenge the Serbs, they 
were taken as hostages.
  Multilateralism failed because multilateralism was incapable of 
acting on the distinction between victim and aggressor. As a result, 
multilateralism engendered a policy of deference to the aggressor and 
indifference to victims.
  The longer this dynamic went unchallenged, the larger the myth of 
Serb power grew. Despite the stories of a supine Serbian economy, 
despite the reports of thousands of military-age men fleeing Serbia, 
despite the reprehensible and cowardly behavior of any army that could 
only terrorize unarmed civilian populations, policymakers around the
 world, including many in our State Department, began to accept the 
notion of the formidable foe.

  They confused the ability to commit unspeakable acts with the ability 
to sustain a popularly supported war. Even today, so many analysts do 
not include military assessments of the capabilities of the combatants. 
But when they do take a hard look at Serbian and Bosnian capabilities, 
they seem to reach the same conclusion: The Bosnians have the advantage 
in men and morale; the Serbs, heirs of the Yugoslav Army, have the 
advantage in heavy weapons. And from these assessments we must conclude 
again: If we seek to achieve a shift in this war, we must lift the 
embargo; we must provide the Bosnians with the weapons they need.
  Further emboldening the Serbs was the administration's attempts at 
diplomacy. Taking its diplomatic cue last spring from Russian Foreign 
Minister Kosyrev--an ally of the Serbs--the administration believed 
that it could persuade Serbia's Milosevic to pressure Radovan Karadzic 
to a negotiated peace.
  This is one of the most self-deluding diplomatic strategies in modern 
times, and the administration feigned belief--or maybe, incredibly, 
actually believed--that Milosevic could be a broker for peace. 
Representatives of the administration actually stated that Milosevic 
and Karadzic were competing, and had differing interests. Instead of 
lifting the arms embargo on the embattled Bosnians, the administration 
offered to lift the economic embargo on Serbia, which, most analysts 
agreed, was actually having an affect on Serbia's ability to wage war.
  This notion that Milosevic would curb Karadzic was, of course, 
ridiculous, but the administration persisted. They offered lifting the 
sanctions if Milosevic recognized Bosnia and Croatia. When he refused, 
the administration lowered its demands and asked Milosevic to recognize 
just Bosnia--a move that could have threatened, at that time, to 
shatter the federation between Bosnia and Croatia, which the 
administration had claimed was its single greatest accomplishment in 
this 

[[Page S 10298]]
crisis. Milosevic, no fool, knew that he could gain more and refused.
  Meanwhile, the evidence kept coming that Milosevic continued to 
provide armaments to his proxies in Bosnia and Croatia. No one could 
really be surprised, but many of our allies, and this Administration, 
looked the other way.
  And then Scott O'Grady was shot down by a SAM missile--a NATO jet on 
a mission to enforce U.N. Security Council resolutions was downed by 
the Bosnian Serbs. And NATO did not retaliate. History's most 
successful military alliance--the world's most impressive military 
force--did not retaliate when a third-rate army that specializes in 
torturing civilian populations shot down one of its planes. And we did 
not retaliate when the evidence was revealed that Belgrade had a hand 
in this, and that Milosevic's army provided parts maintenance, computer 
and radar support for the SAM system that shot down our F-16.
  Mr. President, how much evidence do we need that Milosevic and 
Karadzic work hand-in-hand? How much more humiliation should we take 
before we recognize that our diplomacy is based on fatuous delusions?
  One of my greatest concerns throughout this conflict has been the 
administration's inability to see this crisis in the greater context of 
Europe. Specifically, it has refused to recognize the role that Russia 
has played in supporting the Serbs, in frustrating any resolution that 
would be fair to the Bosnians, and in undermining the Western alliance. 
I am disturbed that very few appear to be focusing on Russia's role in 
this crisis.
  One of Russia's primary foreign policy goals has been to obstruct the 
expansion of NATO. Last month, when the Russians finally decided to 
sign on to the President's Partnership for Peace Program, Foreign 
Minister Kozyrev stated that NATO must ``cease to be a military bloc'' 
and must abandon policies of enlargement. Last week, Yuri Baturin, 
national security adviser to Boris Yeltsin, said that the war in Bosnia 
is a test of strength between Russia and the West. President Clinton 
has repeatedly declared that Russia will not exercise a veto over NATO 
expansion. But I must wonder, Mr. President, when the SAM missile of a 
Russian ally shoots down a NATO jet over Europe, could not this be 
construed as a veto over NATO?
  I believe that if Russia wants to try its strength against the West 
by backing the forces of ethnic genocide and by using diplomacy to 
prevent a just settlement in Bosnia and obstruct NATO enlargement, then 
we should, again, engage in the challenge. We must lift the embargo and 
arm the Bosnians. We will be, again and finally, on the side of the 
morally defensible.
  The conflagration in the Balkans, the West's confusion, and America's 
lack of leadership are casting a pall over the prospect of a NATO 
enlargement.
  NATO is not credible when it inflicts pinprick strikes instead of 
effective bombing sorties. NATO is not credible when the Serbs can 
check it by taking hostages.
  NATO cannot be credible if its stands idly by when its planes are 
downed by a third-rate power.
  Mr. President, it is time to abandon this failed policy.
  While the Clinton administration has wrung its hands, vacillated, and 
deferred to inconsistent allies, many Members in this body, led by the 
distinguished majority leader, have declared for some time that the 
only sensible policy after years of inept and immoral policies is to 
lift the arms embargo. To demonstrate how important this issue was, 
Senators Dole and Lieberman introduced S. 21 on the first day of this 
historic Congress.
  The Bosnians are willing to fight for the right to exist as a 
peaceful and democratic nation that respects ethnic rights. They have 
not asked us to defend them, they only ask that we allow them to defend 
themselves. ``We don't need you to die for us,'' Prime Minister 
Silajdzic said here on his last visit, barely two weeks after his 
Foreign Minister was blown out of the sky over Bihac by Serb rockets. 
``We know very well how to do this ourselves.''
  But it seems that some outside observers are in a state of weariness 
brought on by years of inaction against a war of brutal slaughter. We 
want it to stop; we want the suffering to cease. But we must not 
confuse our righteous repugnance for human suffering with the Bosnian 
government's heroic commitment to defend itself.
  The Bosnians have a right to defend themselves. Article 51 of the 
U.N. Charter clearly articulates a nation's right to defend itself from 
hostile aggression. The majority of the nations of the United Nations 
have agreed.
  Lifting the embargo will lead to the removal of U.N. peacekeepers. 
These troops have not kept the peace. They have been hostage bait. And, 
while they have sometimes fought bravely in recent months, their 
presence over the years has, in too many cases, legitimized Serbian 
gains. For the United Nations to stay would mean the symbolic defeat of 
peacekeeping. For the United Nations to leave would indicate that we 
are ready to return to reality.
  I believe that the U.S. should assist in the withdrawal of the 
UNPROFOR troops. I say so reluctantly, because I do not believe this 
war requires a role for U.S. ground troops. But I will support the 
President if he chooses to assist our allies in the withdrawal, 
provided that the conditions the majority leader has laid out are 
strictly observed:
  First, a withdrawal must occur under NATO or U.S. command. There must 
be no U.N. role in the command structure.
  Second, the rules of engagement must be clear to any potential 
antagonists: Any attack on U.S. troops will be met with massive and 
disproportionate retaliatory attacks. If the Serbs take one shot at a 
United States soldier or a blue helmet that we are escorting out, the 
United States will retaliate anywhere in Bosnia or Serbia proper.
  And finally, U.S. troops are not there to extract equipment. Any 
military materiel that could fall into Serb hands must be destroyed, if 
possible, but we will not engage troops for anything but the rescue of 
personnel.
  S. 21 will put into motion a policy that will not bring us peace, but 
it will allow for the possibility of a real peace. By lifting the arms 
embargo on beleaguered Bosnia, this bill will allow for the only kind 
of peace that has worked through history: a peace gained by a balance 
of power on the ground.
  But this will not be a peace guaranteed or easily achieved. We cannot 
realistically or responsibly let the issue stop here. We know that the 
chances of increasing the hostilities are great, although a strong 
signal from the United States in defense of Bosnia will certainly 
convey a level of seriousness to the Serbs that they have not yet seen, 
and we should not rule out the possibility that they may respond to 
this signal with the realization that the terms of the conflict are 
about to get much worse for them. However, since the Serbs have 
demonstrated a reckless intent to conquer by genocide, we should not 
delude ourselves with hopes of an easy settlement.
  For this reason, I believe we must concomitantly begin the debate 
about military assistance to Bosnia. We should declare our support for 
Bosnia through a program of immediate provisions of military aid and 
continued humanitarian assistance. In addition, I believe we must also 
lift the embargo against Croatia, which has also been a victim of 
Serbian aggression, and without which we cannot effect a successful 
program to assist the Bosnians.
  Mr. President, I also believe that we must consider the use of air 
strikes--during the extraction of UNPROFOR and while we arm the 
Bosnians. In addition to providing the necessary support for the 
Bosnian government, these air strikes can demonstrate--for the future 
reference of those who have witnessed NATO's hapless performance to 
date--that the West is capable of using its military might effectively.
  I have always stated that our policy in Bosnia should not require the 
commitment of United States ground troops. U.S. troops should not be 
involved in any mission but the support for an UNPROFOR extraction. It 
has been but one of the many straw men put out by this Administration 
that lifting the arms embargo would require the commitment of U.S. 
troops. The administration is either cynically manipulating a 
legitimate concern of the American people in order to rationalize a 
failed foreign policy, or it is truly naive in assessing the military 
and geopolitical realities of the Balkan conflict.
  Mr. President, I wish to state very clearly that my objection to our 
current foreign policy is not partisan. As 

[[Page S 10299]]
you have seen, some of the most articulate in this body in favor of 
lifting the embargo are Democrats. As I stated earlier, I strongly 
criticized President Bush's support for the arms embargo. As a matter 
of fact, I was encouraged when Governor Clinton, during his 
presidential campaign, advocated lifting the embargo. I am, of course, 
disappointed that now President Clinton has appeared so irresolute.
  I believe the Bosnian crisis may permanently shatter the moral 
stature of our country. The crisis has already severely harmed the 
credibility of the United Nations. Much more importantly, it threatens 
the future of NATO, which had been the most successful military 
alliance in modern history. And it has put the United States--the 
world's remaining superpower--on the sidelines, while Bosnia burns.
  Foreign policy should not be an exercise in naivete or cynicism. It 
should be a discipline requiring the highest order of judgment, soberly 
steeped in the awareness that the affairs of mankind are imperfect and 
recognizing that real options cannot offer panaceas to the bloody 
intents of the brutal. But U.S. foreign policy has often stood for more 
than the pragmatic: Our foreign policy, at its best, has been vitalized 
by principle.
  We should be able to make clear distinctions about Bosnia. We should 
be able to declaim against genocide and put our actions where our 
denunciations are. We must abandon a policy that has been resolute in 
its lack of determination. We can make no argument for supporting an 
arms embargo that perpetuates genocide. And we must declare that we 
believe in the right of self-defense.
  I suggest the absence of a quorum.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The clerk will call the roll.
  The assistant legislative clerk called the roll.
  Mr. Dole. I ask unanimous consent that further proceedings under the 
quorum call be dispensed with.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. Without objection, it is so ordered.
  Mr. DOLE. Mr. President, in just a minute or two I will ask that we 
stand in recess until 5:15 p.m, because the Republicans have a 
conference, and I think a number of my colleagues on the other side are 
at the White House discussing with the President the Bosnian 
resolution. There may be a chance we might bring up the rescission 
package tonight, too. I need to talk to Senator Daschle about that. So 
we will be under a strict time agreement, a limited number of 
amendments, and an agreement that the leadership on each side will vote 
against the amendments, as well as most of our colleagues, because this 
is something that has taken a long time because of a couple of 
Senators, who certainly are within their rights. But if we cannot reach 
that agreement, we will not bring it up.
  I want to say just one additional word on this resolution.
  Yesterday I addressed some of the criticism made by opponents of our 
legislation, and there are just a couple others I want to review at 
this point. The first criticism is that the legislation is unilateral 
in nature. Yes, this bill is unilateral. It provides that the United 
States will lift the arms embargo only after UNPROFOR withdraws--I 
would like to repeat, after withdrawal of the United Nations protection 
forces. This fact is being ignored by the administration and by some of 
our allies.
  In my view, unilateral action as provided by this legislation is 
hardly a negative, but a positive. What the last 3 years of 
multilateral hand-wringing have demonstrated is that if the United 
States does not lead, action is not taken. It is time for leadership. 
We have been waiting, waiting and waiting for leadership. And so far 
nothing has happened. We are witnessing this right now. Thousands of 
civilians have begun to flee Zepa, as the Serbs close in. The United 
Nations has written Zepa off. And the hand-wringing is beginning with 
respect to Gorazde--the third eastern enclave. If Gorazde goes, that 
will be three out of six safe havens have been overrun. The French 
reportedly have a proposal for Gorazde that they are advocating. The 
British oppose stronger action and want the status quo. The White House 
spokesman says the administration is ``leaning'' toward action--but is 
not clear if the main objective is to forestall the fall of Gorazde or 
thwart this legislation.
  In fact, the White House press secretary said this is a nutty idea. 
Well, I hope he tells that to Senator Moynihan and Senator Biden and 
Senator Lieberman and Senator Feinstein and other Democrats who are 
supporting us. If it is a nutty idea, I am certain they would not want 
to have anything to do with it.
  It is not a nutty idea. It is an idea we have been working on for 
years, Democrats and Republicans, to de-Americanize the conflict, lift 
the arms embargo, let Bosnia defend themselves without committing 
American troops. That is what it is all about. But I see an effort now 
by the White House at the last moment to stall and not have a vote on 
this legislation--always something better going to happen; just wait 1 
more week, 1 more month. We waited 11 months. It has been 11 months 
since we had a vote.
  In any event, leaning toward more aggressive action is not a 
substitute for aggressive action. And this is not for airstrikes, which 
the White House appears to be considering. The obstacle to airstrikes 
has been and continues to be opposition from some of our allies; 
namely, the British. Unless that hurdle is overcome, all the reports 
that the President is ``leaning toward'' airstrikes is meaningless. 
Moreover, while many of us in the United States Congress have urged 
that NATO conduct something more than pinpricks, we must realize that 
the robust use of NATO air power now is an appropriate, if overdue, 
reaction to Bosnian Serb action, but does not constitute a policy in 
and of itself.
  Mr. President, what this bill does is commit the United States to 
leading the way and lifting the arms embargo, but going first does not 
mean going it alone.
  Last fall, nearly 100 countries--nearly 100 countries--in the United 
Nations General Assembly voted in support of lifting the arms embargo--
over 100 countries. It is not just the United States alone.
  I believe if the United States was in the lead, others would follow. 
I believe a number of countries, in addition to the United States, 
would also provide military equipment or the funds to purchase such 
equipment.
  I also would like to turn for a moment to the argument that UNPROFOR 
is neutral and lifting the arms embargo would eliminate that 
neutrality.
  First I point out that the U.N. resolutions are clearly not neutral. 
In imposing sanctions on Serbia, they recognize who the aggressor is. 
In committing to protecting the safe havens, on paper, they are 
acknowledging that the Bosnians need protection from this aggression. 
Finally, in perpetuating neutrality on the ground operationally, the 
U.N. peacekeepers are helping the very aggressors that have threatened 
to attack not only the Bosnians but the United Nations as well. This is 
not only absurd but a moral outrage.
  Finally, I would like to comment on the idea raised by some that 
there should be another cease-fire and more negotiations. It seems to 
me that for negotiations to be successful in Bosnia, there needs to be 
some leverage on the side of the Bosnians. Why should the Serbs agree 
to anything when they are given free rein to overrun U.N.-designated 
safe havens?
  At this point, the only negotiations that the Serbs might be 
interested in are the talks to arrange the surrender of the Bosnians. 
Well, the Bosnians are not ready to surrender. They are ready to fight 
and die for their country, if we only let them. That is what this 
debate is about. It is not Democrat; it is not Republican; it is not 
about liberal or conservative; it is about the U.S. Senate speaking on 
a very important issue. I hope we can have the vote before we adjourn 
today.

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