[Congressional Record Volume 142, Number 55 (Thursday, April 25, 1996)]
[House]
[Page H4044]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




                         ARMS EMBARGO IN BOSNIA

  The SPEAKER pro tempore. Under a previous order of the House, the 
gentleman from California [Mr. Cox] is recognized for 5 minutes.
  Mr. COX of California. Mr. Speaker, during his recent 
circumnavigation of the planet, President Clinton told the G-7 summit 
leaders that they should join with him in urging Russia to put the 
squeeze on Iranian mullahs who are shipping arms, in particular 
shipping arms to the Hezbollah guerrillas in Lebanon.
  While the President was calling on our allies to pressure Iran, and 
while the President and the Clinton administration were calling the 
Iranian terrorists, quote, ``the main source of international 
terrorism,'' and while publicly condemning Iran's shipment of arms to 
the Hezbollah guerrillas in Lebanon, Bill Clinton was secretly and 
simultaneously conniving at even bigger Iranian arms shipments to 
Bosnia.
  Let us look at the history of this. On May 30, 1992, the United 
States imposed an arms embargo on the former Yugoslavia. The United 
States supported it, and when spy photographs showed Iranian 747's 
unloading illegal arms shipments in Zagreb, our State Department told 
us and told the world that we raised hell.
  That was the United States' policy that candidate Bill Clinton 
opposed. Candidate Bill Clinton said he supported lifting the arms 
embargo in Bosnia, not so that Iran could sell weapons to the Bosnian 
Moslems, but rather so they could receive support from United States 
allies like Saudi Arabia and Turkey.

                              {time}  1400

  As President, he promised when he was a candidate, he would lift the 
unfair United Nations arms embargo against Bosnia. But once in office, 
Bill Clinton completely changed his mind. He broke that pledge, broke 
that promise, and opposed lifting the arms embargo.
  He reversed his position because, he said, it would be wrong for any 
international arms shipments to go to Bosnia. It would ``Convert a 
complex ethnic war into an American responsibility. The United States 
must, therefore, oppose any international arms shipments to Bosnia.''
  The Congress, however, voted to lift the arms embargo and sent the 
President a bill. It was not quite unanimous, but it was hugely 
bipartisan. Democrats and Republicans in the House and Senate sent the 
President a bill so that we could, through our allies, help the Bosnian 
Moslems to defend themselves. The President vetoed that bill. He said 
nobody, not Turkey, not Saudi Arabia, none of our friends, least of all 
the United States of America, could help arm the Bosnian Moslems.
  The President assured not only Congress, but the American people and 
allies, like Britain and France, that he was staunchly opposed to 
lifting the arms embargo. And without telling even our own Joint Chiefs 
of Staff, it now develops the President secretly let it be known in 
Iran that the United States would not oppose huge, illegal arms 
shipments to the Bosnian Moslems.
  Huge quantities of weapons, accompanied by Iranian intelligence 
agents and mujahedin rebels, were thus shipped into Bosnia, by a regime 
that the Clinton administration publicly was branding as the financier, 
the armorer, the trainer, the safe haven, and inspiration for 
terrorists. These are the people that the secret Clinton policy, that 
Bill Clinton himself, secretly was introducing to Europe.
  As the U.S. Assistant Secretary of Defense was using those exact 
words I just quoted, the financier, armorer, trainer, safe haven, and 
inspiration for terrorists, the description of Iran, he was using those 
exact same words in his testimony to Congress. His boss in the White 
House, Bill Clinton, knew that up to eight cargo jets each month were 
taking off with Iranian arms bound for Bosnia. There can be no question 
that this was duplicitous.
  Right now congressional committees are preparing to investigate this 
sordid matter, to determine whether laws were broken governing illegal 
covert operations and governing failure to report truthfully to the 
Congress.
  But while it remains to be seen whether and, if so, which laws were 
broken, there is no question that the President broke his word to this 
Congress and to the American people. There can be no question that the 
President broke his word to France and to England. In briefs prepared 
for John Major and Jacques Chirac at the G-7 Summit, unknown to the 
President, they had incontrovertible proof that the President had lied 
publicly to them.
  It is incumbent upon this Congress to take this matter with the 
utmost gravity and to investigate it so that we can restore the good 
word of the American people around the world.

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