[Congressional Record Volume 144, Number 13 (Monday, February 23, 1998)]
[Senate]
[Pages S806-S807]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




                      SECRETARY GENERAL KOFI ANNAN

  Mr. WELLSTONE. Mr. President, I want to talk about 2 issues, and I 
want to talk about them briefly.
  First of all, I would like to talk about this past weekend. I feel as 
if I speak on the floor of the Senate with a sense of history. 
Secretary General Kofi Annan, Secretary General of the United Nations, 
said when he went to Iraq that he considered this to be a sacred 
mission. I think he was right. I think it was very important and is 
very important for our country and the international community to have 
resolve with Saddam Hussein and to make it clear that it is extremely 
important that there be unhindered inspection so that we, in fact, know 
what exactly is going on in Iraq and, for that matter, for other 
countries, I wish it would be the same in terms of development of 
weapons of mass destruction.

  Mr. President, I have to say this from the floor of the U.S. Senate. 
I believe as a Senator that war is always the last option. When you can 
talk instead of fight and when you can work out a peaceful solution and 
when diplomacy works and where there is a nonviolent resolution to a 
conflict, the world is better off for it. We should have no illusions, 
though sometimes people come to the floor of the Senate and people talk 
to each other and we get all pumped up and we talk about going to war 
and how awful Saddam Hussein is. I certainly agree he is a very cruel--
very cruel--man. But, Mr. President, there is no question that if 
military action was to be necessary, a lot of innocent people would 
die. One child, one mother, one civilian in Iraq is one too many. One 
of our soldiers is one too many.
  I am prayerfully thankful that Saddam Hussein seems to have 
understood the importance of these demands and, most important of all, 
because of the strong position that our country has

[[Page S807]]

taken and also because of the very, very skillful diplomacy--very 
skillful diplomacy--of the Secretary General, I would like to thank the 
Secretary General for his effort.
  We haven't dotted all the i's and crossed all the t's, and we have 
not seen the specifics, but I believe as a United States Senator that 
his mission was a sacred mission. I am very hopeful that we will have a 
political settlement. I am very hopeful that diplomacy will have 
worked, and I think the world will be better for that. Whenever we can 
avoid loss of life, let's first do that.
  So we all wait to see. From what I have read, from what I have heard, 
and the Secretary General is a man who is very careful with his words, 
when he says he believes this will be acceptable to the United Nations, 
to the Security Council, I don't think he would have said that unless 
there is good cause for it.
  So I am very hopeful that this will be acceptable to the Security 
Council, and we will have a resolution to this conflict without having 
to go to war, without having to take military action.

                          ____________________