[Congressional Record (Bound Edition), Volume 146 (2000), Part 17]
[House]
[Page 24320]
[From the U.S. Government Publishing Office, www.gpo.gov]



                          PERSONAL EXPLANATION

  Mr. McGOVERN. Mr. Speaker, because of urgent business in my 
congressional district, I was unable to be present earlier today, 
October 25, 2000, and I missed votes as a result. Had I been here, I 
would have voted in support of the Conference Report on the FY 2001 
Foreign Operations Appropriations Bill (H.R. 4811) and in support of 
H.R. 782, the Older American Act Amendments, which would have been 
recorded as ``yea'' on rollcall votes 546 and 547.
  I applaud Chairman Callahan and Ranking Member Pelosi for negotiating 
a conference agreement that provides important funding for multilateral 
debt relief, HIV/AIDS treatment and prevention programs and child 
survival programs. While I would support greater funding for 
development assistance for USAID bilateral programs that promote 
sustainable development, poverty alleviation, universal education and 
refugee and disaster assistance, I recognize that this bill is a 
significant improvement over the original House-approved bill. I am 
very glad to see that the so-called ``Mexico City'' restrictions on 
international family planning programs have been removed from the bill. 
I also commend the conferees for including strong conditions on our 
military aid and relations with Indonesia because of the continuing 
refugee crisis in West and East Timor and for maintaining the Section 
907 conditions on U.S. assistance to Azerbaijan.
  I am especially pleased that statutory language remains in this bill 
requiring the President to direct all federal agencies to declassify 
and release all relevant documents about the 1980 murders in El 
Salvador of four American churchwomen. This is a matter on which I have 
long labored, and I hope our government will make all documents and 
other materials available to the families of these women before 
December 2, 2000, which will observe the 20th Anniversary of their 
deaths.

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