[Congressional Record Volume 141, Number 187 (Monday, November 27, 1995)]
[Senate]
[Pages S17538-S17540]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




                        THE SITUATION IN BOSNIA

  Mr. GLENN. Mr. President, I followed with great interest the comments 
made on the floor today, and on previous days, regarding the 
President's speech this evening on the situation in Bosnia and our 
potential participation in that effort.
  I have said all along that I thought the odds were stacked against a 
peace agreement that we could work on and that had sufficient detail to 
enhance the likelihood of doing some good in that troubled area of the 
world.
  We do, however, have an agreement that has been hammered out in 
Dayton. We should look at several things with regard to the agreement 
and what happens after the agreement. I said all along--and I say again 
today--the agreement must be specific in its detail. You cannot draw a 
line that is not exact. We cannot go over there and put our people in 
harm's way and find out later that something was not agreed to or that 
a line was not agreed to, or was not marked out closely enough. We must 
know precisely what we are protecting and who we are keeping apart. 
That kind of detail appears to have been worked out in Dayton.
  Today we got a copy of the Proximity Peace Talks. In this, they 
specify that we will use 1,000 to 50,000 scale maps and charts. This 
will define the lines down to within 50 meters. Local commanders 
enforcing the truce within those areas will get together with the local 
people to define it even down below that 155 or 160 feet that would be 
the 50 meters. That is a pretty good definition of road intersections 
and road routes, and all are listed here; they are well defined. We 
want to see this carried out. It appears that we are well along the way 
toward defining the agreement in its initial phases.
  The final agreement that will be signed in Paris--not just 
initialed--will even go into more detail, as I understand it. So the 
first requirement of a peace over there, and for our participation in 
it, or even considering American participation in it, is to see that we 
do have that agreement signed with as much detail as possible.
  Now, a second requirement is a tough one. That is, a cease-fire has 
to have taken place and be in effect. That sounds great. Some may think 
that the military commander puts out word and the cease-fire occurs and 
that is it. That is not the way it works in that Balkan area. We were 
briefed on our trip there several weeks ago. One of the big problems 
over there is that 20 to 50 percent of the people in combat over there 
are not the regular troops that receive commands down the military 
chain of command. They are what are called the ``irregulars,'' those 
who have a village they have been used to defending. They may have a 
rifle, and one man may be mowing hay one day and he decides it is his 
turn to protect whatever they are protecting. He then relieves another 
fellow and maybe takes the same rifle. That other man then goes back 
and cuts hay for a while. They take turns.
  Those irregulars that have interests in particular local areas have 
been the primary reason why the more than 30 cease-fire agreements have 
failed in the last couple of years. Over 30 agreements have failed 
because the irregulars are not really taking their orders from anyone. 
Once they start firing, other firing starts, and the whole thing breaks 
down again.
  So these two things must be in place before we can even consider 
sending Americans in there. One, the agreement must be worked out 
defining 

[[Page S 17539]]
very, very specifically the borders of what belongs in one jurisdiction 
and what belongs in another. The second is that the cease-fire has to 
have actually occurred, and that includes the irregulars.
  The Proximity Peace Talk agreement document says: ``The parties also 
commit themselves to disarm and disband all armed civilian groups, 
except for authorized police forces, within 30 days after the Transfer 
of Authority.''
  The definition of the lines is in another section. It says the lines 
will be ``accurate to within approximately 50 meters. During the period 
in which the IFOR is deployed, the IFOR commander shall have the right 
to determine, after consultation with the parties, the exact 
delineation of such lines and zones, provided that with respect to 
Sarajevo the IFOR commander shall have the right to adjust the Zone of 
Separation as necessary.''
  They were able to hammer this out and get all parties to initial this 
agreement, and we hope to have the signing in Paris before too long.
  Why is it necessary that we go in at all? If they are willing to go 
to this length and say we agree we are all tired of war and that is the 
reason they have come as far as they have--we are tired of war and do 
not want to fight anymore. We are tired of the killing, tired of seeing 
people killed, and over 250,000 people have been killed. We are tired 
of seeing 2 million refugees floating from one place to another. They 
want peace.
  You may ask if they want peace that badly, why can they not just stop 
fighting? Well, they have a long history, going back several hundred 
years, of not trusting each other and not fully trusting the people in 
Europe either. But they trust the United States. To our credit, they 
trust us, and so we can be a party for good in that part of the world, 
if we want to be. And if the agreement is signed and if a cease-fire 
has taken place, then we can keep these irregulars, which I defined a 
moment ago, from breaking the peace within the 2- to 4-kilometer-wide 
area between the previously warring parties.
  They want peace. If we can help implement it, it seems to me that we 
can do a great service by doing that.
  Secretary Perry described yesterday, once again, the fact that we 
would not fight our way in. I heard comments on the floor today about 
whether we are to create peace or not. We are not there to create 
peace. We are not there to take one side or the other or carry 
anybody's battle for them. We are there to maintain a peace that will 
have been established before we move in, with the agreement signed by 
all parties and with a cease-fire actually having occurred--or we do 
not go in.
  We can help them achieve this peace because the parties trust us as 
long as we are involved. We did not fight our way in. We establish our 
separation zones, and we move into those separation zones.
  Local violations of the agreement will be met with a preponderance, 
an overpreponderance of force, as we were briefed by our military 
commanders in Europe while on our trip just weeks ago.
  This is not the U.N. rules of engagement. This is not debating and 
asking for permission to retaliate if fired upon. As it was described 
to us, if anyone fires on the forces in there, the implementation 
forces, they will be met with return fire of overwhelming support.
  Now, say someone changes their mind about this, which has been in the 
paper the last couple of days. Say any of the participants that 
initialed the agreement change their mind and say they now believe it 
is a bum deal, and ``we will not go on with what we initialed in 
Dayton.'' In that case, our participation is not going to occur.
  It is that simple. We are not there to go in and fight somebody's war 
for them. We are there only to help implement a peace that they have 
said they, themselves, want and that they have initialed in Dayton, and 
we would only go in after the final signing in Paris.
  Any general attempt at breaking the agreement would mean that we 
would not stay. We are not there to fight anybody's battle or establish 
peace throughout the Balkans by military action. We are there only to 
help separate the combatants for this 1-year period while they can see 
the benefits of peace more than the war that has gone on there for far 
too long.
  Let me put our involvement in a little bit different light. I believe 
a little risk now--and there is a little risk--may enhance our long-
term leadership toward freedom and peace around the world, and in the 
long run, perhaps, even save lives.
  I think those who question American participation could well ask, why 
did we keep our troops in Korea at the end of the Korean war? Because 
we have been able to maintain peace in that area. How about the Middle 
East? We are very much involved in the Mideast. I know we have a good 
percentage of our population of Jewish heritage, and they are 
particularly interested in that part of the world, but I think our 
interest goes well beyond that and we have tried to get a Mideast peace 
because we care.
  We are a nation that wants to see peace. We do not like to see one 
nation fighting another. We are interested in the Mideast and the peace 
process there. We have pursued it for years and years and years. We 
accept that as part of the American way of doing good around the world, 
of putting into real terms our Christian-Judeo heritage of which we are 
so proud.
  Mr. President, Americans want to alleviate suffering. We never want 
to see people being killed or hurt or one nation pitted against 
another. Granted, we cannot take on all the world's problems, nor 
should we try. Any time we move outside the confines of our own 
country, whatever the purpose is, we do take some risk.
  There would be some risk in this situation, of course. I do not want 
to minimize this, but we take a little risk when we get up in the 
morning and get out of bed, I guess every time we take an airplane out 
of a hangar and fly it. Yet, we are willing to take that risk for the 
good that may come from it.
  Have we taken any risks in the past? I imagine if we had a vote here 
in the Senate today as to whether we would want to keep the Peace Corps 
in operation, we would find that the Peace Corps would be rather 
popular. There would probably be no votes against ending the Peace 
Corps because it has done a lot of good around the world. But how many 
lives have been lost in the Peace Corps by people overseas killed in 
accidents or shot or catching some disease? They were put at risk 
because they went overseas. Do you know how many there are? We have 
lost 224 people that have died overseas in the Peace Corps. Yet we do 
not say, pull the Peace Corps out because we have lost people overseas. 
We would not do that.
  Another issue that has repeatedly been raised is the fact that our 
leadership in NATO is very important. It is. As important as that is, I 
personally do not think we would go into Bosnia-Herzegovina just 
because our NATO allies say we should go in. ``So, America, you lead 
our way into that area.''
  If they were going in some other area we thought was not right, I 
doubt we would want to rush in and be their leader just to show we are 
part of NATO. Too many American people, I think, do not have 
appreciation of NATO, though. Too many people in our country see NATO 
as a remnant of the cold war and not of the good things that NATO has 
done. It has been the most successful peacekeeping operation in the 
history of this world.
  At the present time, it is adapting under their own impetus with the 
Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe, cooperating with 
the European Union, with the Partnership for Peace, which is in its 
fledgling status right now, and the North Atlantic Cooperation Council, 
which came into being in 1991. NATO has taken part in all of these 
things and is a tremendous benefit for peace in the world.
  We could even say that we have had economic benefits. Europe is an 
economic entity and is now one of three major economic centers in the 
world: Europe, Japan, and our own country.
  The main point here is the tragedy and suffering in Bosnia. All 
parties are war weary. There is now a framework for peace with a 
detailed agreement. If a cease-fire can come into place, we can move in 
and help stop what has been a tinderbox over the years and that helped 
trigger World War I. We do not want to see that ever happen again.
  Old enmities die hard. It is very complicated. There are ethnic, 
religious, patriotic feelings in that area where 

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they do not trust each other. They trust us to come in and try and help 
implement peace in that area.
  This is one of the first times in history I think we have ever seen a 
superpower--and we are the world's superpower--that had no ulterior 
motive, that had no territorial designs, and would help to spread the 
benefits of democracy and freedom around the world. This is a place 
where, with perhaps little risk, we may enhance the long-term benefits 
toward freedom and peace that will literally save lives.
  I do not think we can withdraw from the world. We cannot withdraw to 
our own shores and take an isolationist stance. We can work for peace 
in that part of the world. I am thankful that we have not withdrawn 
from the rest of the world. We can be involved for good.

  To those who say we are off on another do-gooder mission around the 
world, I think we should take pride that we have a heritage of trying 
to do good, of trying to alleviate suffering, of trying to stop 
conflicts such as this one. We are a powerful nation that cares--truly 
cares about other people and what happens around the world. We care 
when 250,000 people have been killed. We care on a personal basis. We 
have empathy for the people there who have lost children, husbands, 
fathers, mothers, wives. Two million refugees. So we care.
  If we are to have leadership for the future, this is an opportunity 
for us to do what we have done historically, to care for other people. 
Obviously, we cannot take on everything in the world. But, here we can 
help to maintain the peace.
  We stayed active around the world after World War I. We stayed active 
after World War II and helped form the United Nations. We stayed active 
in Europe in partnership in NATO. Because of that alignment of the 
United States along with other nations, we have a world, now, which 
looks much more peaceful into the future than it did just a few years 
ago.
  I would say thank God we have a nation like the United States, a 
superpower, that truly does care about the suffering and about the 
tragedy of what is going on in a place like the Balkans. Thank God we 
have a nation like the United States, that wants the benefits of peace 
and cooperation for everyone. And thank God, if the conditions are 
right, if the agreement holds, and if the fighting has stopped, we are 
willing to take the risk that will have to be taken if we are to do 
much good in that part of the world.
  I look forward to President Clinton's speech this evening and his 
assessment of the situation. I believe that we want true, long-term 
peace in the world. I think we are a force for peace and freedom and 
taking the small amount of risk to enforce the peace will be worth it.
  I yield the floor.

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