[Congressional Record Volume 142, Number 93 (Friday, June 21, 1996)]
[Senate]
[Pages S6667-S6669]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




SENATE RESOLUTION 270--RELATIVE TO THE INTERNATIONAL CRIMINAL TRIBUNAL 
                       FOR THE FORMER YUGOSLAVIA

  Mr. LIEBERMAN (for himself, Mr. Lugar, Mr. Biden, Mr. Specter, Mrs. 
Feinstein, and Mr. Moynihan) submitted the following resolution; which 
was referred to the Committee on Foreign Relations:

                              S. Res. 270

       Whereas the United Nations, recognizing the need for 
     justice in the former Yugoslavia, established the 
     International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia 
     (hereafter in this resolution referred to as the 
     ``International Criminal Tribunal'');
       Whereas United Nations Security Council Resolution 827 of 
     May 25, 1993, requires states to cooperate fully with the 
     International Criminal Tribunal;
       Whereas the parties to the General Framework Agreement for 
     Peace in Bosnia and Herzegovina and associated Annexes (in 
     this resolution referred to as the ``Peace Agreement'') 
     negotiated in Dayton, Ohio and signed in Paris, France, on 
     December 14, 1995, accepted, in Article IX, the obligation 
     ``to cooperate in the investigation and prosecution of war 
     crimes and other violations of international humanitarian 
     law'';
       Whereas the Constitution of Bosnia and Herzegovina, agreed 
     to as Annex 4 of the Peace Agreement, provides, in Article 
     IX, that ``No person who is serving a sentence imposed by the 
     International Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia, and no 
     person who is under indictment by the Tribunal and who has 
     failed to comply with an order to appear before the Tribunal, 
     may stand as a candidate or hold any appointive, elective, or 
     other public office in Bosnia and Herzegovina'';
       Whereas the International Criminal Tribunal has issued 57 
     indictments against individuals from all parties to the 
     conflicts in the former Yugoslavia;
       Whereas the International Criminal Tribunal continues to 
     investigate gross violations of international law in the 
     former Yugoslavia with a view to further indictments against 
     the perpetrators;
       Whereas on July 25, 1995, the International Criminal 
     Tribunal issued an indictment for Radovan Karadzic, president 
     of the Bosnian Serb administration of Pale, and Ratko Mladic, 
     commander of the Bosnian Serb administration and charged them 
     with genocide and crimes against humanity, violations of the 
     law or customs of war, and grave breaches of the Geneva 
     Conventions of 1949, arising from atrocities perpetrated 
     against the civilian population throughout Bosnia-
     Herzegovina, for the sniping campaign against civilians in 
     Sarajevo, and for the taking of United Nations peacekeepers 
     as hostages and for their use as human shields;
       Whereas on November 16, 1995, Karadzic and Mladic were 
     indicted a second time by the International Criminal 
     Tribunal, charged with genocide for the killing of up to 
     6,000 Muslims in Srebrenica, Bosnia, in July 1995;
       Whereas the United Nations Security Council, in adopting 
     Resolution 1022 on November 22, 1995, decided that economic 
     sanctions on the Federal Republic of Yugoslavia (Serbia and 
     Montenegro) and the so-called Republika Srpska would be 
     reimposed if, at any time, the High Representative or the 
     IFOR commander informs the Security Council that the Federal 
     Republic of Yugoslavia or the Bosnian Serb authorities are 
     failing significantly to meet their obligations under the 
     Peace Agreement;
       Whereas the so-called Republika Srpska and the Federal 
     Republic of Yugoslavia (Serbia and Montenegro) have failed to 
     arrest and turn over for prosecution indicted war criminals, 
     including Karadzic and Mladic;
       Whereas efforts to politically isolate Karadzic and Mladic 
     have failed thus far and would in any case be insufficient to 
     comply with the Peace Agreement and bring peace with justice 
     to Bosnia and Herzegovina;
       Whereas in the so-called Republika Srpska freedom of the 
     press and freedom of assembly are severely limited and 
     violence against ethnic and religious minorities and 
     opposition figures is on the rise;
       Whereas it will be difficult for national elections in 
     Bosnia and Herzegovina to take

[[Page S6668]]

     place meaningfully so long as key war criminals, including 
     Karadzic and Mladic, remain at large and able to influence 
     political and military developments;
       Whereas on June 6, 1996, the President of the International 
     Criminal Tribunal, declaring that the Federal Republic of 
     Yugoslavia's failure to extradite indicted war criminals is a 
     blatant violation of the Peace Agreement and of United 
     Nations Security Council Resolutions, called on the High 
     Representative to reimpose economic sanctions on the so-
     called Republika Srpska and on the Federal Republic of 
     Yugoslavia (Serbia and Montenegro); and
       Whereas the apprehension and prosecution of indicted war 
     criminals is essential for peace and reconciliation to be 
     achieved and democracy to be established throughout Bosnia an 
     Herzegovina: Now, therefore, be it
       Resolved, That (a) the Senate finds that the International 
     Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia merits continued 
     and increased United States support for its efforts to 
     investigate and bring to justice the perpetrators of gross 
     violations of international law in the former Yugoslavia.
       (b) It is the sense of the Senate that the President of the 
     United States should support the request of the President of 
     the International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia 
     for the High Representative to reimpose full economic 
     sanctions on the Federal Republic of Yugoslavia (Serbia and 
     Montenegro) and the so-called Republika Srpska, in accordance 
     with United Nations Security Council Resolution 1022 (1995), 
     until the Federal Republic of Yugoslavia (Serbia and 
     Montenegro) and Bosnian Serb authorities have complied with 
     their obligations under the Peace Agreement and United 
     Nations Security Council Resolutions to cooperate fully with 
     the International Criminal Tribunal.
       (c) It is further the sense of the Senate that the NATO-led 
     Implementation Force (IFOR), in carrying out its mandate, 
     should make it an urgent priority to detain and bring to 
     justice persons indicted by the International Criminal 
     Tribunal.
       (d) It is further the sense of the Senate that states in 
     the former Yugoslavia should not be admitted to international 
     organizations and fora until and unless they have complied 
     with their obligations under the Peace Agreement and United 
     Nations Security Council Resolutions to cooperate fully with 
     the International Criminal Tribunal.
       Sec. 2. The Secretary of the Senate shall transmit a copy 
     of this resolution to the President of the United States.

  Mr. LIEBERMAN. Mr. President, I do rise today on a serious matter. 
That is to submit, along with several colleagues, a resolution which we 
hope will advance the twin causes of peace and justice in the former 
Yugoslavia. I am very proud to be joined in introducing this resolution 
by a bipartisan group of colleagues, Senator Lugar, Senator Biden, 
Senator Specter, Senator Feinstein, and Senator Moynihan.
  Unfortunately, because of the ups and downs of Senate scheduling, I 
do not think that any of these distinguished colleagues are able to be 
here today to join me to speak on this resolution, though Senator Biden 
did address the subject generally and mentioned the imminence of this 
resolution when he spoke on the floor on Wednesday. I hope my 
colleagues will have the opportunity to speak to the resolution in the 
days and weeks ahead.
  Last October President Clinton honored us in Connecticut by speaking 
at the University of Connecticut, at the opening of the Thomas J. Dodd 
Library and to commemorate the 50th anniversary of the Nuremberg trials 
that followed World War II. At that time, last October, while war still 
raged in the former Yugoslavia, in Bosnia, President Clinton spoke 
these very eloquent words. ``Some people,'' he said, ``are concerned 
that pursuing peace in Bosnia and prosecuting war criminals are 
incompatible goals. But I believe,'' President Clinton said, ``they are 
wrong. There must be peace for justice to prevail, but there must be 
justice when peace prevails.''
  I could not agree more. A very powerful principle stated very 
eloquently by President Clinton.
  Later last year, a few months later, the United States, led by former 
Assistant Secretary of State Richard Holbrooke, in an extraordinary act 
of diplomacy, following the force that the United States operation had 
applied to the forces on the ground, particularly the aggressive forces 
in Bosnia, the parties to the conflict were brought together in Dayton, 
OH.
  The peace agreement for Bosnia resulting from those talks in Dayton 
was signed in Paris just about 6 months ago. There followed the 
deployment of the NATO-led Implementation Force, or IFOR, including 
within it 20,000 of America's finest soldiers. The work of IFOR has 
been a clear success in ending the war, in separating the forces, and 
in monitoring the actual withdrawal of the previous combatant forces to 
within agreed areas under the Dayton peace agreement.
  But, Mr. President, unfortunately the process of rebuilding Bosnia as 
a unified, multiethnic state has been much slower and much more 
difficult. I suppose that should not be shocking when one considers the 
scars of war, the way in which the war took a country that had become 
in so many parts of it so magnificently multiethnic and brought out and 
raised to the surface historic ethnic antagonisms that had previously 
existed.
  But even in that effort toward recreating Bosnia, progress has been 
made. Yet many, understandably, have called for the elections that are 
planned, pursuant to the Dayton agreement, for September 14 to be 
delayed because the conditions do not yet exist for them to be free and 
fair. War criminals are still in power, refugees and displaced persons 
are unable to return to their homes, and freedom of movement is still 
severely limited by the nationalistic barriers that have been created 
in one community or another within Bosnia.
  But I believe strongly that our focus should not be on when the 
elections should take place. Rather we, together with the majority of 
people in Bosnia and in the international community who favor peace and 
reconciliation, must redouble our efforts to create the right 
conditions for the elections to go forward as scheduled.
  Mr. President, to do so, to rebuild that peace and reconciliation 
that I am convinced the overwhelming majority of Bosnians long for so 
deeply, we must deal with the problem of indicted war criminals, 
particularly Karadzic and Mladic, former President and military chief 
of the Bosnian Serb aggressors.
  These two, as is well known, remain at large. They are able to 
influence political and military developments. As the President said so 
well in the statement that I quoted, there can be no peace without 
justice in the long term. To secure that peace the time has come for 
this body to restate that the apprehension of these indicted war 
criminals must be an urgent priority. It is time for concerted action 
to bring these indicted war criminals to justice.

  So the resolution we are introducing today is really quite direct and 
simple. It restates the clear obligation under the Dayton peace 
agreement and U.N. Security Council resolutions of all the parties in 
the former Yugoslavia, including in particular both the Federal 
Republic of Yugoslavia, with its capital in Belgrade, and the Bosnian 
Serb entity called Republika Srpska, to cooperate with the 
International Criminal Tribunal.
  Mr. President, the most urgent element of that requirement is that 
the indicted war criminals, particularly Karadzic and Mladic, must be 
detained and brought to justice. That must be reaffirmed and remain an 
urgent priority, in the words of the resolution we have introduced. To 
do that, the resolution calls for four separate actions.
  First, it finds and urges that the International Criminal Tribunal, 
the war crimes tribunal, merits continued and increased American 
support to do its work. The tribunal faces daunting challenges in 
collecting and analyzing evidence to ascertain exactly what crimes were 
committed and by whom. But if this work is not done, the peace that is 
enjoyed in Bosnia will forever be a hollow peace and in fact it will 
not be a lasting peace.
  Second, the resolution expresses the sense of the Senate that the 
President should support the request of the President of the 
International Criminal Tribunal, the war crimes tribunal, for 
reimposition of economic sanctions on the Federal Republic of 
Yugoslavia with its capital in Belgrade and on the Bosnian Serbs for 
their clear failure to carry out the responsibilities they accepted in 
signing the Dayton peace agreement, which is to say, their failure to 
cooperate with the tribunal in the apprehension and the bringing to 
justice of these indicted war criminals.
  There are many flagrant pieces of evidence of this. Some months ago 
there were television pictures of General Mladic in a parka skiing as 
if he was some American on a weekend jaunt in the winter to northern 
New England, in my part of the country, or perhaps Colorado or Utah or 
other

[[Page S6669]]

parts of the country. An indicted war criminal, a man with blood on his 
hands, specifically indicted for being the leader involved in the 
slaughter of at least 6,000 people--6,000 people--in Srebrenica after 
the fall of that undefended city, allegedly a safe haven in Bosnia.
  Most recently, of course, Karadzic has been seen repeatedly walking 
around, seemingly free, in the Republika Srpska. General Mladic 
recently carried out the responsibility of attending a funeral in 
Belgrade--quite publicly. Authorities clearly knew he was coming, and 
he was not arrested.

  I think it is clear that the Serbian authorities, in this case, 
particularly President Milosevic, have failed to act. That failure to 
act is clear, and it is inexcusable.
  The High Representative, Carl Bildt, overseeing so much of the 
civilian reconstruction effort, has the clear authority to reimpose 
sanctions if the Federal Republic of Yugoslavia or the Bosnian Serbs, 
are failing significantly--that is the term used--to meet their 
obligations under the peace agreement.
  There can be no doubt that the continued leadership roles of 
Karadzic, Mladic, and others are a significant violation of the Dayton 
agreement. Mr. President, this resolution calls for reimposition of 
full economic sanctions, which we believe is long overdue.
  Third, the resolution expresses the sense of the Senate that the 
NATO-led implementation force, or IFOR, in carrying out its mandate, 
should make it an urgent priority to detain and bring to justice 
persons indicted by the International Criminal Tribunal. I know that 
some will be concerned that this call for IFOR action to arrest war 
criminals could lead to a situation similar to the hunt for Aideed in 
Somalia, which had tragic consequences. That, Mr. President, I assure 
my colleagues, is not the intention of those of us who have sponsored 
the resolution. The resolution is drawn with real clarity and concern 
to make sure that is the case. The detention of war criminals, in fact, 
has always been part of the IFOR mandate. The IFOR's authority to 
arrest war criminals has never been in doubt. But the kind of house-to-
house search carried out in Somalia is not called for by this 
resolution.
  In fact, from what I have heard Secretary Perry and General 
Shalikashvili say, IFOR is already mandated and, in fact, is doing just 
what it should be: patrolling more widely and aggressively to restrict 
the freedom of movement of war criminals, as well as to improve the 
freedom of movement of ordinary, peaceful citizens. If an IFOR patrol 
encounters Karadzic or Mladic or any other indicted war criminal, IFOR 
personnel should bring to bear the necessary resources to effectively 
detain those war criminals and to bring them to justice.
  We did not want to go into this level of detail in this resolution 
because, frankly, we do not believe the Senate should be expressing 
such detailed directions about on-the-ground military operations. The 
intention of this resolution is to make clear that an agreed upon 
aspect of the IFOR mission--to detain war criminals and bring them to 
justice--must remain an urgent priority and must be carried out 
effectively.
  Mr. President, the reason this function is so critical, so central, 
to the IFOR mission is that otherwise all the extraordinarily 
courageous and effective work done by this 60,000-person force, 20,000 
of whom are Americans, all the work they have done to separate the 
parties, to move them back into agreed upon areas, to create the 
context for peace, will all be for naught. All the effort, all the 
money spent, in my opinion, will all be worth nothing and have no 
lasting affect unless these war criminals are apprehended, because so 
long as they are free, their freedom makes a mockery of the Dayton 
agreement. It is an insult, a wound, to those hundreds of thousands of 
people who lost relatives or who were forcibly removed from their homes 
during the war.
  The fact is that so long as people like Karadzic and Mladic, indicted 
war criminals, remain free, peace will not take hold in the former 
Yugoslavia. That is why we are restating, as this resolution does, that 
the apprehension, the detention, and bringing to justice of these war 
criminals must remain an urgent priority as part of the IFOR mission in 
the former Yugoslavia.
  Fourth, finally, recognizing that the lack of full cooperation on war 
crimes goes beyond the so-called Republika Srpska, the resolution calls 
for all States in the former Yugoslavia--this involves people on all 
sides ethnically--to be denied membership and participation in 
international organizations until and unless they are operating fully 
with the tribunal.

  Mr. President, as we have found over the course of the conflict in 
the former Yugoslavia, which threatened to grow wider and threaten 
stability more broadly in Europe, if the sound of the trumpet--if I may 
paraphrase the Bible--is uncertain, who will follow into battle? If the 
sound of the trumpet is uncertain, who will hear what is behind the 
trumpet?
  If we allow these outrageous, provocative acts by indicted war 
figures roaming free to go unresponded to, they will act more 
outrageously. The latest proof of this is in the newspaper this 
morning. Page A-30 of the Washington Post carries a Reuters story from 
Belgrade: ``A local board of the Serb Democratic Party nominated 
Radovan Karadzic today as candidate for president of the Bosnian Serb 
Republic in elections to be held later this year, Serb media 
reported.''
  Can you imagine that? Can you imagine the outrage here? This is as 
if, at the end of World War II, someone in one of the countries that 
the allies defeated nominated a leader in that country who had fought 
the war against us to be a leader of the postwar country. Can you 
imagine the reaction in the United States of America if that had 
happened?
  Here these people are nominating Karadzic, in direct and outrageous 
violation of the Dayton agreement, to run for President. This is 
specifically prohibited by the Dayton agreement, but reminds us that 
unless we continue to keep the apprehension of these criminals as an 
urgent priority, unless we begin to tighten the screws again by 
reimposing economic sanctions on Belgrade and tightening the area of 
mobility that these war criminals have enjoyed in the past, as I am 
encouraged to believe we are now doing, this whole effort will have 
been for naught.
  This resolution, my cosponsors and I believe, gives the Senate an 
opportunity to make clear the importance we place on the full and 
successful completion of the IFOR mission, which is to say to remove 
the conditions that will bring about clearly a return of war and 
genocide and the absence of peace with true justice in Bosnia.
  In closing, I want to thank my colleagues who joined me in 
cosponsoring this resolution. I hope that other colleagues of both 
parties--there is nothing partisan about this at all--will take a look 
at the resolution and decide to cosponsor and join us as supporters.
  Mr. President, I do also want to offer personal thanks to Frederic 
Baron who is working in my office as a fellow on loan from the State 
Department, who really represents a quality of service, as I have seen 
in my office, the highest standards of intellect and of principle that 
characterizes the American Foreign Service. I thank Frederic for the 
role he played in assisting me in putting this resolution together.

                          ____________________