[Congressional Record Volume 143, Number 85 (Wednesday, June 18, 1997)]
[Senate]
[Pages S5937-S5938]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




                         ADDITIONAL STATEMENTS

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                  STATE DEPARTMENT AUTHORIZATION BILL

 Mrs. FEINSTEIN. Mr. President, I am pleased to have lent my 
support to H.R. 1757, the 1998-99 State Department authorization bill, 
which passed last night. There is much that I support in this bill, and 
I wanted to take a few minutes today to discuss this bill and my vote.
  With its provisions to reorganize America's foreign policy 
institutions and to press for reform at the United Nations I think it 
is fair to say that this bill is one of the most far-reaching and 
important bills that we will consider this Congress.
  For well over a decade the United States has been steadily reducing 
the amount of money it devotes to international affairs agencies and 
programs. When current figures are adjusted for inflation, the cuts in 
recent years have been significant--50 percent since 1984.
  I was pleased when the administration requested a much-needed 
increase in funds for international affairs in the 1998 budget request. 
And I am pleased that this bill has, on the whole, preserved those 
funds.
  The international affairs budget authorized in this bill will go a 
long way toward righting the inequities of American international 
affairs spending of the past decade, and toward creating an efficient 
framework to support America's global leadership in the millennium to 
come.
  Just as important as authorizing funds for the conduct of American 
foreign policy, this bill also takes an historic step in working with 
President Clinton and Secretary Albright to create a new foreign 
affairs structure for the 21st century.
  Many of our current foreign policy institutions were created during 
the cold war, with specific missions and goals in mind.
  The reorganization plan put forward by the administration and 
supported by this bill reflects the need to preserve the unique skills 
and capabilities of each of the current agencies with the requirement 
that our institutional arrangements reflect the new demands guiding the 
conduct of U.S. foreign policy.
  By the end of 1999 the result of this bill will be a new streamlined 
foreign policy structure, drawing on the best people and practices of 
the old agencies, and fully capable of meeting the new challenges of 
the 21st century.
  Most importantly, from my perspective, this bill preserves some 
flexibility for the administration in its implementation of the 
President's plan.
  I opposed the reorganization plan we considered in the last Congress, 
because it denied the President the flexibility he needs to carry out 
our foreign affairs. This reorganization plan suffers from no such 
flaw.
  I would also like to take a little time to express my support for the 
plan to repay the United Nations the arrears our Nation owes it and for 
reform of the United Nations that is contained in the bill before us, 
S. 903.
  I support this package of repayment of arrears and reform benchmarks 
for one simple reason: because I believe a strong and effective United 
Nations is fundamentally important to the national interest of the 
United States.
  I am an unabashed supporter of the United Nations. Now that our 
colleague, Senator Claiborne Pell, has retired, I believe I am the only 
Member of this body to be in attendance at the founding of the United 
Nations in my hometown of San Francisco 52 years ago. I was not a 
delegate, as was Senator Pell--I was a bit younger then--but I am proud 
that I was able to help the host city celebrate that important 
occasion.
  As mayor of San Francisco, I had the honor and privilege of presiding 
over the 40th anniversary celebrations in 1985, and 2 years ago, I 
traveled with many of my colleagues to San Francisco for the 50th 
anniversary celebrations.
  These milestones mean a great deal to me, not because of their 
historical interest so much as because of their significance in the 
life of the United States. My own belief is that if the United Nations 
did not exist, we would have to invent it.
  I am not among the United Nations' major detractors. I do not believe 
for 1 minute that the United Nations is somehow out to impose its will 
on the United States, or to intrude on our sovereignty. I reject 
outright the paranoid fantasies of those who warn of the specter of 
U.N. taxation or a U.N. army, or the U.N. leading inexorably toward 
world government.
  The United Nations serves American interests each and every day. 
Through the U.N. High Commission for Refugees, it feeds and clothes 
homeless refugees in time of war. Through U.N. development programs, it 
helps the poorer nations of the world develop their

[[Page S5938]]

infrastructures. It provides a forum for negotiating multilateral 
agreements on arms control, protecting the environment, and other 
matters that affect all nations.
  The U.N. specialized agencies also address problems that know no 
political borders. The World Health Organization fights diseases like 
AIDS that destroy the lives of those they afflict, and, if left 
unchecked, threaten countless others. The International Labor 
Organization helps keep track of forced labor and child labor, leading 
to multilateral efforts to improve working conditions around the world.

  Perhaps most importantly, the United Nations helps promote peace and 
security in trouble spots around the world. The United Nations is 
probably best known for peacekeeping. While Americans often remember 
the debacles of Bosnia and Somalia, few realize that U.N. peacekeepers 
are helping maintain peaceful borders and facilitate peaceful 
transitions in such places as the Golan Heights, Macedonia, Angola, and 
Kuwait.
  The United Nations also enables the United States to cooperate with 
our allies to carry out missions that are important to U.S. and 
international security. With U.N. approval, the United States led the 
nations of the world to expel Saddam from Iraq in Operation Desert 
Storm. The United Nations continues to enforce sanctions on Iraq and 
monitor Iraqi weapons programs.
  Because all of these operations require the approval of the U.N. 
Security Council, the United States, which has a veto on that Council, 
must approve them. These operations are never forced down our throats. 
To the contrary, our leadership role and our veto allow us to leverage 
the United Nations to conduct operations that are in our interests, but 
with the burden shared among our allies.
  For all of these reasons, I value the United Nations and believe it 
is imperative that we help it regain a sound financial footing. The 
United Nations' current financial difficulties are threatening to 
render it unable to implement many of its most important programs. And 
the biggest portion of the United Nations' shortfall is directly 
attributable to the United States' failure to pay its arrears.
  So the payment of these arrears is no trivial matter. It is the 
best--perhaps the only--way to ensure the United Nations' survival as a 
force for international peace and security in the post-cold-war era.
  Now, I share the view of the Senator from Indiana, who rightly 
pointed out that our payment of these arrears is not voluntary. It is 
an obligation under treaty commitments, signed and ratified according 
to our Constitution.
  But I also recognize something else. The political reality dictates 
that if we are to pay any arrears to the United Nations, they must be 
accompanied by a package of reform benchmarks.
  Over 4 months ago, the majority leader convened a working group of 
House and Senate authorizers and appropriators, Republicans and 
Democrats, to work with the administration on resolving the arrears 
question.
  As the ranking member of the International Operations Subcommittee, I 
was involved in this task force from the beginning, and my staff 
attended virtually all of the subsequent meetings, until Senator Helms 
and Senator Biden began the detailed endgame negotiations.
  In the very first meeting of this task force, Secretary of State 
Albright came to discuss the administration's proposal, which was 
essentially for Congress to appropriate all of the arrears--$1.021 
billion--up front, and to attach no conditions to their payment.
  In the room were a number of leading Republican authorizers and 
appropriators, as well as the majority leader. As I recall, the only 
Democrats in the room for much of the meeting were the distinguished 
ranking member of the House International Relations Committee, Lee 
Hamilton of Indiana, and myself.
  Even then, Mr. Hamilton and I--two strong supporters of the U.S. role 
in the United Nations--told the Secretary of State that, as sympathetic 
as we were to the need to pay these arrears, the administration's 
proposal did not stand a chance. We said it then, and I say it here 
today: The votes are not there for repaying our arrears without reform 
benchmarks.
  So the negotiations commenced, and they continued through literally 
hundreds of hours. Both sides have made significant concessions. The 
administration, which wanted to pay all the arrears up front, certainly 
has. Anyone who saw the early Republican proposals, which called for 
payment of only a portion of the arrears, over 5 years, and with many 
more, potentially unachievable benchmarks, knows that the distinguished 
Senator from North Carolina has given a lot.
  But the final result of these talks is a package that calls for a 
tough, but achievable, series of reforms to be implemented by the 
United Nations over the next 3 years, while the United States pays off 
$819 million in U.N. arrears, a figure that is the Administration's 
bottom line. These reforms include greater oversight of budgets and 
personnel, phasing out obsolete programs, and, perhaps most 
importantly, a reduction in the U.S. share of the assessed budget from 
25 to 20 percent.
  From the beginning, I felt that 3 years was about the right length of 
time for this package, and I argued that in the task force. It is long 
enough to give us some leverage to ensure the reforms are enacted, but 
not so long that the other member States do not believe it is credible 
that we will pay our debts.
  Make no mistake, achieving these reforms will take a great deal of 
work. Some of them, such as the reduction of the U.S. share of the 
budget, which the other member States must agree to, will require our 
U.N. Ambassador to employ all of his negotiating skills. Others will 
require the committed effort of the Secretary General, Kofi Annan--a 
man I believe is genuine in his desire for real reform.
  I acknowledge that this process is not perfect, and that there will 
be resentment among other nations who feel that Congress is 
unilaterally dictating what should be multilateral decisions. I 
understand that.
  But these arrears must be paid. And the political reality is that our 
choice is either to pay these bills in this fashion, over 3 years, 
while working with the United Nations for reforms, or not to pay them 
at all. That, to me, is an easy choice. I want to pay our arrears and 
strengthen the United Nations.
  In addition to the two major achievements of U.N. reform and State 
Department reorganization, this bill also contributes to furthering 
American interests in the world in a myriad of smaller, though not less 
significant, ways. Let me provide three such examples.
  This bill authorizes funds which will go to the International War 
Crimes Tribunal, and which will help assure that those who committed 
genocide and rape in Rwanda and Bosnia are brought to justice.
  It lends our support to the work of the Asia Foundation, which, 
through innovative public-private partnerships is able to leverage 
Federal resources to effectively promote U.S. political, economic, 
cultural, and security interests throughout the Pacific rim.
  And this bill authorizes funds which will go to support vitally 
needed infrastructure and new information technology at our embassies 
and missions.
  I have been to many of the crumbling and inadequate State Department 
facilities throughout the world, and can attest from first-hand 
experience the importance of these efforts.
  As I stated earlier, it is my belief that this bill, with its United 
Nations and reorganization provisions, takes a significant step in the 
right direction on several critical issues which Congress has been 
wrestling with for the past several years. Moreover, the cooperation 
and hard work of the distinguished chairman and ranking member of the 
Foreign Relations Committee on this bill, also marks, I believe, a 
return to a spirit of bipartisan cooperation on foreign policy. I am 
proud to have been able to cast my vote in support of this 
bill.

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