[Congressional Record Volume 152, Number 124 (Thursday, September 28, 2006)]
[Senate]
[Pages S10492-S10493]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




                             FOREIGN POLICY

  Mr. FRIST. Mr. President, we have had a long and full day today. I 
have some remarks to make on a couple of bills, and then we will close 
down, with a brief statement on what I see unfolding over the next 
couple days.
  Mr. President, the Senate has before it two very important bills 
dealing with critical foreign policy issues facing our Nation.
  One of them is the Iran Freedom Support Act, H.R. 6198. This is a 
bipartisan bill which passed the House earlier today by voice vote. In 
other words, it was a noncontroversial bill in the House. It was 
cosponsored there by Congressman Tom Lantos, the ranking Democrat on 
the Committee on International Relations, as well as by Congressman 
Gary Ackerman, the ranking Democrat on the Subcommittee on Middle East 
and Central Asia. The Iran Freedom Support Act is also strongly 
supported by the Bush administration.
  Enactment of this bill is time-sensitive because it will extend for 
another 5 years the provisions of the Iran and Libya Sanctions Act, or 
better known here on the floor as ILSA. ILSA has been an important 
element of the U.S. sanctions regime against Iran for the past 10 
years, and ILSA will expire tomorrow unless Congress acts to extend it.
  Iran is continuing to defy the will of the international community by 
persisting with its efforts to produce nuclear weapons in violation of 
international nonproliferation norms. I could not think of a worse time 
than now to allow ILSA to lapse; the signal this would send to Iran of 
U.S. irresolution and weakness would be terrible.
  Just today, President Ahmadi-Nejad publicly declared that Iran will 
not suspend its nuclear enrichment program, despite being called to do 
so by the United Nations Security Council. The U.N. is now poised to 
impose multilateral sanctions on Iran if it continues to defy Security 
Council mandates. But if we allow ILSA to lapse, the Congress will be 
relaxing U.S. sanctions on Iran at the very same time the rest of the 
world is thinking about tightening sanctions.
  This is not the kind of leadership I was elected to the Senate to 
provide, and I think every Senator will have to lower their head in 
shame if the Senate fails to act tomorrow to extend ILSA.
  H.R. 6198 has been cleared on our side of the aisle. We are ready to 
pass it. We are ready to pass it tonight. I will not ask unanimous 
consent to pass it tonight, however, because I understand it has not 
been cleared on the Democratic side of the aisle. I hope that does 
change overnight, but whether it changes or not, I wish to serve notice 
to all Senators that tomorrow I will ask unanimous consent to pass H.R. 
6198, and I hope there will be no Member of this body who steps forward 
at that time to reward Iran's intransigence by blocking passage of this 
bipartisan legislation.
  The second very important bill affecting our foreign policy that is 
today pending before the Senate is the United States-India Peaceful 
Atomic Energy Cooperation Act, S. 3709. This bill was reported by the 
Committee on Foreign Relations on July 20 and has been pending before 
us since that time. It is strongly supported by Chairman Lugar and the 
ranking Democrat of that committee, Senator Biden. Together they have 
developed a managers' amendment that they both support and that they 
would like the Senate to approve. The House companion measure has 
already passed that body by a wide margin.
  Enactment of this legislation is essential in order to begin a new 
era in relations between our Nation and India, the world's largest 
democracy. This legislation will enable us to commence cooperation with 
India in the area of civil nuclear energy, something that is today 
contrary to U.S. law. We need to be able to do this to fulfill 
commitments President Bush made to Prime Minister Singh of India on 
July 18 of last year. If we are unable to fulfill those commitments, 
the disappointment in India will be such that United States-India 
relations could be set back by many years, and the promise of a new era 
in relations that was born on July 18 of last year will be lost.
  Like the Iran bill, the India legislation has been cleared on our 
side of the aisle. Republican Members of the Senate are ready to 
approve the managers' amendment to S. 3709 tonight, in its current 
form, with no further debate or amendment.
  Regrettably, the same is not true on the other side of the aisle. 
Senate Democrats are not ready tonight to pass the managers' amendment 
to this legislation in its current form.
  This is regrettable because if the Democrats would permit us to pass 
the

[[Page S10493]]

bill tonight, we could send it to conference over the recess, where the 
differences between the House bill could be resolved, and we could be 
assured of sending this bill to the President before we adjourn.
  I understand that the reason they are not prepared to pass the 
legislation is because they have a large number of amendments they wish 
to offer. Some of these Democrat amendments are so-called killer 
amendments which, if adopted, would simply make this legislation 
unacceptable to the Indian government. Others of the Democrat 
amendments are not necessarily designed to kill the legislation, but 
their sheer volume will slow down this whole process considerably and 
could, as a practical matter, make it impossible for the Senate to 
consider this legislation this year.
  I have worked with my colleague, Senator Reid, to come up with some 
sort of unanimous-consent agreement that would enable us to consider 
this legislation in a reasonable period of time. We have not yet 
succeeded, but I will keep trying. We need to bring this matter to a 
resolution before we recess.

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