[Congressional Record Volume 143, Number 5 (Wednesday, January 22, 1997)]
[Senate]
[Pages S587-S588]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




 NOVEMBER 1996 TRIP TO THE NORTH ATLANTIC ASSEMBLY AND THE MIDDLE EAST

  Mr. SPECTER. Mr. President, as has always been my practice on return 
home from official travels overseas, I have sought recognition today to 
record for the information of our colleagues and my constituents in 
Pennsylvania the results of my recess trip, from November 16 to 
November 24, to the North Atlantic Assembly and to the Middle East.
  As you know, the Senate delegation in November 1996 to the North 
Atlantic Assembly included 13 Senators during all or part of a full 
schedule of meetings in Paris and London, arranged and ably chaired by 
Senator Roth. Let me take a moment to note here the important news of 
Senator Roth's election as the President of the North Atlantic 
Assembly.
  Our delegation's mission began with a working flight to Paris early 
in the morning on Saturday, November 16. As the presiding officer knows 
how rare it is for eight Senators to share 7\1/2\ hours together--
especially in the absence of a telephone--I know you can appreciate the 
value of this group of colleagues being able to exchange views and form 
plans relevant to the 105th Congress.
  In Paris and, later in the week, in London, our Senate North American 
Assembly Delegation focused its work on the vital--but vexing--
questions of the purposes, the structures and the problems of 
transatlantic relations in the post cold war era.
  NATO has been perhaps the most successful international collective 
security arrangement in the world's history, ultimately achieving its 
once thought unattainable goal of containing and outlasting the empire 
of the former Soviet Union through a vigilant deterrence rather than 
actual conflict. It was this successful because it is more than a 
mutual defense pact. It is the coming together, across the Atlantic, of 
the power of the ideas of freedom and democracy. But NATO's very 
success in achieving its original aim is the basis of the present 
quandary of the alliance. In the wake of the dissolution of the Soviet 
Union, we must ask for many reasons--including our responsibility to 
wisely spend the American taxpayers' dollars--what is NATO for now, 
what countries should be a part of the alliance and what roles and 
burdens should be played and borne by the different members of the 
North Atlantic community.
  Our Senate delegation took up these questions--and many subordinate 
ones as well, including the allied operation in Bosnia and trade and 
economic relations across the Atlantic--with our European parliamentary 
colleagues, senior officials of the executives of France, Britain, and 
other allied nations, international business leaders and, of course, 
our American Ambassadors and their staffs.
  Apart from the formal itinerary of the entire delegation, I made a 
point to visit with Alan J. Blinken, the America Ambassador in 
Brussels, headquarters of the European Economic Community, to discuss 
the transatlantic trade situation and other matters, and to engage in 
substantive conversations with our Ambassador to France, Pamela 
Harriman, concerning a variety of security and international economic 
issues.
  At mid-week, specifically, from Tuesday, November 19 through 
Thursday, November 21, I split off from my North American Assembly 
colleagues for an individual visit to the Middle East.
  As the presiding officer is well aware, I have reported to the Senate 
and my constituents many times on my visits to the Middle East, visits 
I began making in 1964, some 16 years prior to my election to the 
Senate. As a Senator, I have traveled extensively in this vital, but 
deeply troubled, part of the world in order to better fulfill my 
responsibilities as a member of the Foreign Operations Subcommittee of 
Appropriations--where I have been a member since coming to the Senate--
and my roles as chairman of the Judiciary Committee's Subcommittee on 
Terrorism and as chairman of the Select Committee on Intelligence, as 
well as my general duties as a Senator to be informed on a part of the 
world frequently requiring action by this body.
  This past August, the first visit to the Middle East I had made since 
the Israeli elections of May 1996, my trip became something more than a 
fact-finding assessment of the always changing situation in that part 
of the world when Prime Minister Netanyahu asked me to carry a message 
to Syrian President Assad concerning the Prime Minister's views on the 
reopening of peace talks between Israel and Syria and, in an even more 
time-sensitive vein, on Israeli thinking regarding Syrian troop 
movements occurring at that time in Lebanon and in areas of Syria near 
the Israeli controlled Golan Heights.
  As I stated on the floor upon my return at that time, I carried Prime 
Minister Netanyahu's messages to President Assad in Damascus and, 
following a substantive 3-hour exchange with the Syrian leader--with 
whom I have been meeting regularly since 1988--I returned to Israel to 
brief Prime Minister Netanyahu on President Assad's responses to the 
messages.
  In preparation for my joining the North Atlantic Assembly Delegation 
visit to Europe--because I would be half-way there, so to speak--I met 
here in Washington with the Syrian Ambassador to the United States, 
Walid Al-Moualem, to get an update from his perspective on the 
situation between Syria and Israel. Ambassador Al-Moualem told me that 
his government viewed my August round of talks between Prime Minister 
Netanyahu and President Assad as having been helpful in deescalating 
the dangerous tensions, especially related to troop movements, between 
Israel and Syria and the Ambassador encouraged me to return to the 
region for another round of meetings aimed at helping the parties find 
a basis to reopen their peace negotiations.
  Now, I do not know if the Ambassador is correct in his 
characterization of my August meetings as helpful in reducing military 
tensions, but I told him that I obviously would make myself available 
to be helpful--without seeking either to displace the President or his 
representatives in this matter and without seeking to advance any 
personal agenda on the substance of an Israeli-Syrian peace--if both 
sides had an interest in my so doing.
  When consultations with Israeli officials, including a telephone 
conversation I had directly with Prime Minister Netanyahu, indicated a 
similar encouragement for me to make another visit to Israel and Syria 
as had been expressed by the Syrian Ambassador, I decided to make such 
a trip during a portion of the North Atlantic Assembly Delegation 
program in Europe.
  Naturally, and any press accounts at the time to the contrary 
notwithstanding, I and my staff both informed the State Department 
about my planned trip and received extensive briefings by relevant 
administration officials as to the Israeli/Syrian situation and 
administration policy on the matter.
  Mr. President, as you know, this sort of active involvement in 
foreign policy issues is, while--as I have already said--not meant to 
supplant the President, the Secretary of State or their 
representatives, a time-honored role for Members of the U.S. Senate, 
going

[[Page S588]]

back to such distinguished Senators as Arthur Vandenburg and William 
Fulbright. In any case, one could not responsibly pass up even a slight 
chance of being helpful in promoting peace between Israel and Syria 
when the alternative to peace could threaten dire consequences for us 
all.
  I met with Prime Minister Netanyahu at 8 a.m. on Wednesday, November 
20 at his office in the Israeli Knesset Building. United States 
Ambassador to Israel Martin Indyk was present. The Prime Minister told 
me that tensions with Syria have been reduced since the August/
September time period and that he wants to continue to de-escalate the 
saber-rattling. He asked me to convey this, and specifically that 
Israel has no aggressive intent against Syria, when I went on to see 
President Assad that afternoon. He noted as an exception to the 
reduction of military dangers attacks on Israeli forces in southern 
Lebanon by Hezbollah and asked me to convey his request to President 
Assad that Syria seek to stop the Hezbollah attacks.
  On the broader issue of reopening peace talks with Syria, Prime 
Minister Netanyahu told me to tell President Assad that he wishes to do 
so as soon as possible and that he is ready, willing, and able to be 
personally involved in such talks. He said that although there are 
clearly tough issues to be addressed in negotiating with Syria, he has 
a real sense that talks could be productive. Prime Minister Netanyahu 
reiterated that any talks with Syria will be based on the framework for 
Arab/Israel peace established by U.N. resolutions 242 and 338 and by 
the terms of reference of the 1991 Middle East peace conference 
organized by President Bush in Madrid. The Prime Minister's willingness 
to state the basis of talks with Syria in this way is significant 
because it indicates an acceptance that such talks would be based on 
the formula standardly called ``land for peace.''
  The Prime Minister held his ground, however, on what has been the 
Syrian demand that new talks begin where the old talks left off, that 
is that Prime Minister Netanyahu's government be bound as a condition 
for reopening talks by what the Syrians consider a commitment by the 
prior Israel governments of Prime Ministers Rabin and Peres to full 
withdrawal by Israel from the Golan Heights to the June 4, 1967 line. 
He stated that he would not and could not agree to talks with such a 
precondition.
  I flew on to Damascus that day and held a wide ranging, cordial but 
frank 3-hour meeting with President Assad, lasting from 1:20 p.m. to 
4:20 p.m. Syrian Foreign Minister Sharra and United States Ambassador 
to Syria, Christopher Ross, were also present.
  I raised with President Assad the mounting evidence of Iranian and 
perhaps Syrian involvement in or connection to the dastardly act of 
terrorist murder against United States soldiers at Khobar Towers in 
Dharhan, in Saudi Arabia, on June 15, 1996. I reminded President Assad 
that the United States had responded militarily against Libya in 1986 
when we received proof of Libyan responsibility for a bombing at a 
nightclub in Germany which killed two American servicemen.
  Our exchange on this subject was pointed but it was incumbent on me 
to take this opportunity of a face-to-face session at this time to 
reiterate that the United States cannot be targeted by terrorists with 
impunity.
  On the central purpose of the meeting, I regret to say I can report 
little progress, frankly less than I had hoped based on the 
encouragement I had received to make this visit and on public 
statements by the Syrian Foreign Minister about the possibility of 
renewing talks with Israel.
  President Assad did generally seem to share Prime Minister 
Netanyahu's desire to continue to ease and avoid military tensions 
which could lead to unintended hostilities. Although he denied having 
the ability to control Hezbollah activities in Lebanon, President Assad 
received this portion of Prime Minister Netanyahu's message positively 
and reiterated his own return message to the same effect. President 
Assad's position was unmovable, however, regarding the terms for the 
reopening of talks with Israel.
  The Syrian leader asserts with complete conviction that he will not 
restart talks without a prior reaffirmation by Israel of the pledge he 
says he received from the prior Israeli governments, and ratified in 
his view by the United States as participants in the talks, for full 
Israeli withdrawal from the Golan Heights. In his view the next round 
of talks are only properly about the details of security arrangements 
along the new border and the process of normalization between the 
countries, not on the territorial question itself. This is not a 
``precondition'' for future talks, he argues, because Syria already 
obtained this commitment from Israel and the United States in the prior 
talks and that commitment binds Israel despite its change of 
government.
  I attempted to argue to President Assad that in any negotiation such 
as that between Syria and Israel, nothing is final until everything is 
final, and that in the absence of any signed document binding Israel as 
a state, the new Israeli government was not obligated by the 
negotiating position of a former administration. I also argued that 
Prime Minister Netanyahu's public comments accepting the land for peace 
framework for talks with Syria should be a sufficient basis to get back 
to the table and see what happens in that very different dynamic. I 
tried many formulations of these ideas but he would have none of it.
  I returned to Israel that evening and met again with Prime Minister 
Netanyahu, to brief him on my talks with President Assad, on the 
following morning, Thursday, November 21, 1996.
  While there is certainly a very sharp divide between the Israeli and 
Syrian leaders on the basis for a reopening of peace talks, I continue 
to believe that such a return to the negotiating table is not only 
essential, but possible if the American involvement in this process is 
taken to a new level. I came away from this round of meetings convinced 
that the logjam might be broken, but only with direct action by the 
President of the United States.
  The United States has been more than an observer or facilitator of 
the Israeli/Syrian peace process so far. We have been an indispensable 
party, viewed by both sides as the guarantor of the integrity of both 
the negotiating process and of any final outcome which might be 
achieved. If the different accounts of where the last round of talks 
left off and what that means for future talks are to be resolved, it 
will happen only with the most active American role at the highest 
level.
  Since my return, I have discussed with the President's National 
Security advisor--and CIA Director designee--Anthony Lake, and his 
Special Mid-East Envoy, Dennis Ross, and I intend to discuss with the 
President directly, my suggestion that President Clinton invite 
President Assad--who has never been to this country--and Prime Minister 
Netanyahu to a meeting in the Oval Office--not to conclude a final 
peace treaty at this time but simply to find a formula for the 
reopening of talks between their countries.
  While nothing is ever certain in such a difficult situation, I 
believe it would be productive for the President to raise the stakes of 
the peace process between Israel and Syria--as an Oval Office 
invitation would surely do--because the stakes of a continued state of 
war between these two countries remain so high.
  Mr. President, we must all continue to do all we can to find the path 
to a just and secure peace in the Middle East.

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