Tom Lantos

Mr. LANTOS

Mr. LANTOS. Mr. Speaker, five weeks ago the Senate began the debate on the admission of Poland, Hungary and the Czech Republic to the North Atlantic Alliance (NATO). That debate and the vote of the Senate to ratify the accession protocols of these three countries is expected to take place in the near future. A few weeks ago, Mr. Speaker, two opinion pieces which were published in the Washington Post--one by David Broder and the other by Jim Hoagland--which questioned the extent to which the enlargement of NATO has been thoroughly discussed and evaluated prior to the Senate vote on this critical issue. I strongly disagree with the point of view that these two experienced journalists have expressed. During the recent District Work Period, the Washington Post published an excellent letter to the editor from U.S. Permanent Representative to the North Atlantic Council, Ambassador Alexander R. Vershbow, ``The Case for NATO Expansion.'' Ambassador Vershbow is a career diplomat who has served our nation with great distinction as Special Assistant to the President and Senior Director for European Affairs at the National Security Council at the White House (1994-1997). Earlier he served as Principal Deputy Assistant Secretary of State for European and Canadian Affairs (1993- 1994) and he was Deputy Permanent U.S. Representative to NATO (1991- 1993). He also brings a sensitivity to the problem of Russia in the expansion of NATO, having served as Director of the State Department's Office of Soviet Union Affairs (1988-1991). Mr. Speaker, I ask that Ambassador Vershbow's excellent letter, published in the Washington Post on Tuesday, April 7, be placed in the Record. I urge my colleagues to read his thoughtful views. [From the Washington Post, April 7, 1998] The Case for NATO Expansion Critics have sought to give the impression that serious debate about NATO enlargement has never taken place and that the United States and its allies have failed to address important questions about Russia and the future security environment in Europe. More than 1,000 articles published during the past year and a half have covered all aspects of NATO's evolving role. More than 300 conferences on NATO enlargement have been held in Europe and North America, including several in Russia. Twelve hearings before Congress in the past six months--with more than 550 pages of testimony--have explored the details of NATO's mission and membership and examined arguments from every point on the political spectrum. Critics charge that NATO enlargement will poison relations with Russia. This might be true if NATO were seeking to isolate Russia, but the opposite is the case. Through the Partnership for Peace and the newly established NATO-Russia Permanent Joint Council, NATO has created a network of security cooperation that has engaged all the states of Europe--even former neutrals. The new NATO gives Moscow a chance to move away from the old Soviet pattern of confrontation to one of real partnership in Europe. NATO-Russian relations are better and show more promise today than they have at any time in the past 50 years. They encompass everything from planning for joint action in civil disasters to joint military operations in Bosnia. And they are still developing. How counterproductive it would be if we undercut Boris Yeltsin's courageous decision to cooperate with NATO by bowing to the pressure of Russian hard-liners. That would strengthen the anti-democratic elements in Russia and encourage the belief that the Allies, in the face of Moscow's bullying, had returned Central Europe to a gray zone of instability and limited sovereignty. As we work to adapt NATO to better fit the security environment of the next century, we understand that we must preserve the essential feature that has made this the most successful alliance in history--the integrated military structure and its capacity for collective defense. The three new members we have invited will significantly improve the alliance's defense capabilities. And having so recently regained their freedom after decades of totalitarian oppression, they can be counted on to stand with us, not just in defense of NATO territory but when the values we share are threatened--as they did recently during the confrontation with Iraq. In postponing the vote on ratification for several weeks, Senate Majority Leader Trent Lott declared that his intention was to ``get a focus on the issue.'' It is proper to ensure a fair debate of the issue, but as Sen. Jesse Helms noted in sending the bill to the floor of the Senate, now is the time to act. No one who favors democracy should want to keep the lines of security drawn in Europe where Stalin marked them in 1945. NATO enlargement is the right policy for the United States and the right policy for the future of democracy in Europe. Alexander Vershbow, Ambassador, U.S. Mission to NATO, Brussels.

Mr. LANTOS

Mr. LANTOS. Mr. Speaker, on Thursday of this week, representatives of the Congress, the Administration, and the Supreme Court will gather in the Great Rotunda of this building for the National Civic Commemoration to remember the victims of the Holocaust. This annual national memorial service pays tribute to the six million Jews who died through senseless and systematic Nazi terror and brutality. At this somber commemoration, we will also honor those heroic American and other Allied forces who liberated the Nazi concentration camps over half a century ago. Mr. Speaker, this past week Fortune Magazine (April 13, 1998) devoted several pages to an article entitled ``Everything in History was Against Them,'' which profiles five survivors of Nazi savagery who came to the United States penniless and built fortunes here in their adopted homeland. It is significant, Mr. Speaker, that four of these five are residents of my home state of California. My dear friend Fred Kort of Los Angeles was one of the five that Fortune Magazine selected to highlight in this extraordinary article, and I want to pay tribute to him today. Fred Kort, like the other four singled out by Fortune Magazine, has a unique story, but there are common threads to these five tales of personal success. The story of the penniless immigrant who succeeds in America is a familiar theme in our nation's lore, but these stories involve a degree of courage and determination unmatched in the most inspiring of Horatio Alger's stories. These men were, in the words of author Carol J. Loomis, ``Holocaust survivors in the most rigorous sense,'' they ``actually experienced the most awful horrors of the Holocaust, enduring a Nazi death camp or a concentration camp or one of the ghettos that were essentially holding pens for those camps.'' They picked themselves up ``from the very cruelest of circumstances, they traveled to America and prospered as businessmen. They did it, to borrow a phrase from Elie Wiesel, when everything in history was against them.'' They were teenagers or younger when World War II began. They lost six years of their youth and six years of education. ``They were deprived of liberty and shorn of dignity. All lost relatives, and most lost one or both parents. Each . . . was forced to live constantly with the threat of death and the knowledge that next time he might be `thumbed' not into a line of prisoners allowed to live, but into another line headed for the gas chambers.'' Through luck and the sheer will to survive, these were some of the very fortunate who lived to tell the story of that horror. The second part of their stories is also similar--a variant of the American dream. These courageous men came to the United States with ``little English and less money.'' Despite their lack of friends and mentors, they found the drive to succeed. As Loomis notes, ``many millions who were unencumbered by the heavy, exhausting baggage of the Holocaust had the same opportunities and never reached out to seize them as these men did.'' Their success in view of the immense obstacles that impeded their path makes their stories all the more remarkable. One other element that is also common to these five outstanding business leaders--they are ``Founders'' of the U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum here in Washington, D.C. They have shown a strong commitment to remembering the brutal horrors of the Holocaust, paying honor to its victims, and working to prevent the repetition of this vicious inhumanity. Mr. Speaker, Fred Kort is one of the five Holocaust survivors and leading American entrepreneurs highlighted in this article. Fred is the Chairman of the Imperial Toy Corporation in Los Angeles. As we here in the Congress mark the annual Days of Remembrance in honor of the victims of Nazi terror, I ask that the profile of Fred Kort from Fortune Magazine be placed in the Congressional Record. [From Fortune Magazine, Apr. 13, 1998] Everything in History Was Against Them Fred Kort, Chairman, Imperial Toy Corp. He's 74 now and has hair that spikes from his forehead as if it were exhibiting surprise at having made it this far. That image fits Fred Kort's life: At Treblinka, the Nazis' killing camp in north-central Poland, somewhere between 700,000 and 850,000 Jews were exterminated and only nine are believed to have survived. Kort is one of the nine. Before Treblinka, the youth then called Manfred endured the Holocaust as most of its survivors did, fleeing and barely substituting. The son of a hard-up Polish Jew who lived in Germany, he was pushed with his family into Poland and then, as the Germans overran that country in September 1939, into a succession of mean ghettos and work camps. Once, when he was 17, he turned smalltime entrepreneur, sneaking out of the Warsaw ghetto, risking capture and probable death each trip, to sell baking power, cinnamon, and other spices on the streets. ``When you're young,'' he says, ``you think you're invincible.'' He abandoned such thoughts in July 1943, when the Germans summarily collected Kort and 2,000 other Jews and packed them into cattle cars headed for Treblinka. The train crawled for two days, and people perished. Those who didn't were shoved into a selection process aimed at sending around 300 of the strongest to the work camp called Treblinka 1 and the rest to the gas chambers of Treblinka 2. From the grass on which all the Jews huddled, one man rose to plead for the work camp and was immediately shot. Kort nonetheless also rose and in German said rapidly that he was an electrician--true, sort of, since he'd been an apprentice before the war--and could be useful. A German raised his gun. He then waved Kort to the work group. Kort skinned by for about a year, mainly doing water- carrying duty that got him food from the guards' kitchen. Then one day in July 1944, the Jews in Treblinka 1--about 550 at that point--heard the guns of the advancing Russian army. To them the sound was ominous, because they felt sure their German captors would not let them live to broadcast the story of Treblinka 2's exterminations. On a Sunday morning, July 23, 1944, guards burst into Kort's barracks with a rough command: ``Lie down wherever you are.'' Instead, Kort ran, climbing out a barracks window and hiding in a storage shed. Guards searched the shed but did not find him. He hid there until nighttime, repeatedly hearing gunfire that he assumed, correctly, meant that Jews were being shot. And then--we know this scene from fiction, except that this was not--Kort covertly watched the guards patrolling the camp's three rings of fences, discovering that their rounds were at intervals of 15 to 20 minutes. When the moment seemed right, he took a spade and ran for the fences, there finding the ground so softened by rain that he could dig under them easily. As he crossed a corn field outside the fences, sentries in the camp's towers tried to shoot him down, but he zigzagged into woods just beyond. He walked all that night and in the morning discovered that he must have gone in a circle, because he had returned to the camp's edge and to mass graves that held the hundreds of Jews murdered on the previous day. Shortly, Kort joined up with members of the Polish underground. But Jews were unwelcome there, and within days he risked crossing into Russian-held territory, his hands high as he entreated: ``Don't shoot, comrades. I'm a Jew.'' Russian troops interrogated him for ten days before finally accepting his Treblinka story as true. Later, Kort entered the official Polish army, then reconstituting itself, and in a battle caught a piece of shrapnel from a German shell. A far deeper wound: His father, his brother, and 60 relatives died in the Holocaust. Fred Kort, then 24, arrived in the U.S. in 1947 with a nickel. On the boat that carried him, he used the English he'd begun to learn in postwar Europe to ask a sailor what American money was like--and got not just a look but a coin to keep. Beyond the nickel, though, Kort had some resources, because he was under the wing of the American Jewish Joint Distribution Committee--called the Joint by all who knew it. The Joint put him up in a modest Manhattan hotel, and soon he got a job at Bendix Corp. and entered night school. Still exploiting those electrical skills, Kort next landed a job at General Electric and in time wangled a transfer to California. Leaving GE, he went to work for Los Angeles' Biltmore Hotel as an electrician. On one fateful day, he was called to a guest's room to fix a desk lamp. Engaging Kort in conversation, the guest, Martin Feder, said he was planning to open a toy factory and wondered if Kort knew anybody he might hire. ``How about me?'' Kort asked, in a question that would chart the rest of his career. Over the next 20 years he worked for Feder, who specialized in producing the bubble-blowing kits that we all used as kids; started, and folded, a bubbles company of his own; and served as a manufacturers' rep for other toy manufacturers, proving to be a master salesman who could have sold jump ropes to snails. As a rep, he made good money. So he was ready to march when by chance he came upon a tiny, hard- rubber, high-bouncing ball that hadn't been pushed in the market. In 1969, Kort took this irrepressible bit, the Teeny Bouncer, and $50,000 and, with a partner, set up Imperial Toy Corp. Today the partner's gone, but the original Teeny Bouncer is still a big seller in Imperial's huge line of 880 toys. Most of the items are the year-round, very basic, $1.99-to-$4.99 stuff of everyone's childhood--jacks, marbles, balloons, paddle balls, water guns, rubber snakes, and yes, bubble kits, of which Imperial is the world's largest producer. Imperial's 1997 sales were just over $100 million, which makes the company a midget compared to Mattel and Hasbro but a steady, important force in an industry teeming with smaller, trend-riding companies. Kort says with particular pride that Imperial has never had ``a losing year.'' That applies even to 1997, though the importance of money in that year was dwarfed by a disaster: a November explosion in Imperial's Los Angeles headquarters (linked to roll caps sold by the company) that killed four factory employees and injured several others. That tragedy punctured Kort's natural ebullience, but not much else does. From an office decorated in purple--and with that hair going boing!--he runs his business as if he expects to be there forever, which he pretty much does. His son Jordan, one of three sons who work with him and try to match his pace, says his father has ``this drive, this incredible drive.'' Since the war, Kort has testified in four war-crimes trials and has sketched, from memory, a detailed map of Treblinka 1 that is now at Washington's Holocaust museum. But Kort is in no way locked into the memories of the past. Deeply aware that America has been good to him, he is instead propelled by the thought that he'd just better bounce out there and ``do more.''

Mr. LANTOS

Mr. LANTOS. Mr. Speaker, our concluding speaker on this occasion was His Excellency Arpad Goncz, President of the Republic of Hungary. He is one of the outstanding figures of post-communist Central Europe. President Goncz joined the resistance to communism during the 1956 Hungarian Revolution. He was arrested, tried as a revolutionary, and sentenced to life in prison. He spent six years in prison but was released following an amnesty in 1963. During his time in prison, he taught himself English. After his release from prison, he became a translator and produced the definitive Hungarian translations of the works of a number of American authors, including Faulkner and Mark Twain. He is also a distinguished playwright, and has produced a number of profoundly original works of his own. In 1990, President Goncz was elected President of the Republic of Hungary, and in 1995 was reelected to a second five-year term. It was a special honor to have this distinguished leader here for our ceremony. Remarks of His Excellency Arpad Goncz, President of the Republic of Hungary President Goncz. It is with genuine pleasure that I now recall with you two historic moments here in the Capitol--in this magnificent building where the bronze bust of Lajos Kossuth stands as a symbol of a century-long struggle of a small European nation for democracy. This statue also stands for all the values that our two respective countries share. Exactly one hundred and fifty years ago in the Hungarian capital, Lajos Kossuth took the lead of an uprising, crowning a long political and spiritual reform movement. A couple of years later, Kossuth, the champion of a struggle that was defeated by superior power and external intervention, was welcomed here as a hero by the American people. In addition, many soldiers of the Hungarian freedom struggle were also welcomed here--including General Asboth and General Stahel Szamvrald, at whose grave I had the privilege of laying a wreath yesterday. There were so many unrecorded, nameless soldiers who fought in their new homeland under the banner of the same ideals, because the values and ideals of the revolution and freedom fight of 1848 were also the fundamentals of the great American political tradition. Democracy and national liberalism are notions that signify attitudes, morals, and values which served then--and which serve even in the twenty-first century--as guides to our civilization, as it faces constantly changing challenges. The second historic moment was 20 years ago, on the eve of a new outburst of another wave of the Cold War. A country, trying to help herself in the Soviet zone of influence, was given back the Holy Crown, the first and foremost symbol of her national pride and sovereignty after 33 years. As President Jimmy Carter put it, this millennial treasure attached to the memory of our first king, was given back to the Hungarian people by the American people as the reinforcement of the traditional friendship between our two nations. It was on the 5th of January 1978 when our national relics arrived in Budapest from Fort Knox. In Europe the geographic frontiers were made impenetrable by barbed wires separating peoples and political systems. The everyday relations between the two blocs were shaped by exchanged ultimatums and gestures, but it was in those years when truly remarkable events took place, which influenced the political and spiritual future of the whole continent. These are but episodes in the recent and not-so-recent past of the European continent--history from the perspective of 150 years and of 20 years. What connects the two? The Holy Crown of St. Stephen and the bust of Kossuth--living tokens that symbolize where we belong and what our commitments are. By the turn of this millennium, Hungary will reach the doors of organizations that have developed in our vicinity, but that are still so very far away from us. Our country is now about to join the democratic community, whose values upheld by so many Hungarian historic figures--values, which, regardless of political systems, have long been leading ideas for the Hungarian people. Now we have a unique chance to become part of the zone of stability and security. By sharing our values and fulfilling our commitments, we can also contribute to the peace and welfare of our region and consequently the whole European continent. The lesson of our history confirms our conviction that the new challenges, affecting each and every one of us, can only be met by joint efforts, by standing united along the same values and purposes. When we steadfastly commit ourselves to the dissemination of democratic principles, respect for human rights and dignity, and the protection of private property, we really vote for a safe and secure future for new, upcoming generations. When we emphasize the need for genuine unity in Europe and the prevention of isolating nations that have not yet qualified for integration, we do nothing but draw the historic lessons of our region and also outline a vision of our future. In one of his short stories, John Updike raises the question: ``Without the cold war, what's the point of being an American?'' Please, let me try to answer this question as a translator of several books of the writer and also in my capacity as a Central European intellectual--the end of the bipolar world does not mean the immediate and complete prevailing of the ideas championed by the United States throughout the past centuries. Your responsibility today is to facilitate the completion of a promising process, a historic chance, that democracy and stability find a home now and forever in the Eastern part of Europe. I am convinced that this expectation is not idealism, that through advocating our common interests we can effectively contribute to the spread of the values that have been proclaimed so many times by outstanding American politicians within the walls of this historic building. In conclusion, please allow me to use this opportunity to gratefully thank the American people and their leaders for the steady support they have given to Hungary to achieve as much as possible under the present international circumstances. I am sure if we build upon the legacy of St. Stephen and Lajos Kossuth, Hungary can again join the democratic community of nations.

Mr. LANTOS. Mr. Speaker, on March 18 in Statuary Hall of the United States Capitol, just a few steps from the Chamber of the House, the President of the Republic of Hungary, His Excellency Arpad Goncz, was joined by a number of our distinguished colleagues from both the House and the Senate and by a distinguished group of current and former Administration officials, members of the diplomatic corps and a large number of other Hungarians and Americans in celebrating the 20th anniversary of the return to the people of Hungary of the Holy Crown of Hungary, the Crown of St. Stephen. It is one of the significant and curious aspects of the nearly one thousand year history of the Hungarian Crown that, for a third of a century, the United States government was custodian of this most important symbol of the Hungarian nation. In 1945 the troops guarding the Crown handed it over to United States Army troops in Germany to prevent its falling into the hands of the Soviet military. First in Germany and later at Fort Knox, Kentucky, the United States safeguarded this Hungarian treasure for 33 years. It was clearly the intention of American officials to return the Crown to the Hungarian people, but the communist coup d'etat in 1947 and the unsuccessful Hungarian revolution of 1956 prevented that from happening. By the late 1970s, Hungary had shown its independence from the Soviet Union in a whole range of domestic policies. In 1978 in a courageous decision, President Jimmy Carter, with the strong concurrence of Secretary of State Cyrus Vance and National Security Advisor Zbigniew Brzezinski, decided to return the Hungarian Crown to the people of Hungary. The Crown was a powerful symbol of Hungary's links with the West and a potent emblem of Hungarian national identity. The decision to return the crown was based on the desire to encourage the reality of both of those elements. The rightness of the decision to return the Crown has unquestionably been confirmed by events since 1978. Hungary was instrumental in the opening of the Iron Curtain. In the fall of 1989, thousands of East German citizens were camped on Hungary's border with Austria seeking to leave the East bloc and flee to the West. At that critical moment, the Hungarian government made the fateful decision to open its borders, and thousands of East Germans fled to West Germany and to freedom and opportunity. That was a dramatic and fateful decision which hastened and precipitated the collapse of the Iron Curtain. Since 1978, our relationship with Hungary has progressed from being members of opposing alliances to partners and now to becoming full allies. Today, Mr. Speaker, Hungary stands at the door of NATO. It was symbolically significant that on the day before our ceremony in Statuary Hall, the Senate began debate on the admission to NATO of Hungary, Poland, and the Czech Republic. In recognition of the significance of the return of the Crown twenty years ago and as a symbol of the friendship of the Hungarian and American peoples, the Hungarian government has presented to the American people a magnificent replica of the Holy Crown of Hungary. That replica was presented to the American people at the conclusion of the ceremony in Statuary Hall in the Capitol, and the Members of Congress who were present symbolically accepted it on behalf of the American people. Appropriately, the replica of the Crown was taken to the Jimmy Carter Presidential Library in Atlanta later that same day, where it was placed on permanent display. It is most appropriate that the replica of the Crown is housed there, since President Carter made the courageous and controversial but correct decision to return the Crown to Hungary two decades ago. Mr. Speaker, this Crown has a long and important legacy that is highly significant to the history of the Hungarian people. In the year 896 the seven Hungarian tribes crossed the Carpathian Mountains and occupied the Hungarian plain. In the year 1001, Stephen was crowned King of Hungarians with a crown given him by Pope Sylvester II. That moment signified Hungary's decision to be an integral part of western culture and civilization, and throughout the entire past millennium this hope and dream and struggle of the Hungarian people was frustrated every step of the way--in the 13th century by the invasion of the Tartars, in the 16th century by the Turks, in the middle of the 19th century by the forces of the Tsar putting down Hungary's freedom revolution, and, of course, in recent times by Soviet domination. For Hungarians this is a historic moment when we celebrate the friendship of the United States and the Republic of Hungary, and when the Hungarian people thank the American people by giving them in perpetuity this replica of the crown which symbolizes for Hungarians all that is good and decent and civilized. It is significant that just a few steps away from where we met for this ceremony, the debate was underway on admitting Hungary to NATO, and the vote is not too far distant when Hungary will also be made a part of the European Union. These great events mark a fulfillment of this millennium-long yearning of the Hungarian people to be linked with Western civilization and culture. The cosponsors of the event marking the 20th anniversary of the return of the Crown were Speaker of the House Newt Gingrich, Senate Majority Leader Trent Lott, Senate Democratic Leader Tom Daschle, Senator Richard Lugar, Senator Joseph R. Biden, Jr., Senator Gordon Smith, House Democratic Leader Richard Gephardt, Congressman Benjamin A. Gilman, Congressman Lee Hamilton, and Congressman Tom Lantos. Mr. Speaker, I want to thank those speakers who participated in this happy and historic event: Dr. James Ford, Chaplain of the House of Representatives, who offered the invocation; Speaker of the House Newt Gingrich; Senators Richard Lugar, Gordon Smith, Joseph Biden, Jr., Paul Sarbanes; Congressman Lee Hamilton, Congressman Benjamin A. Gilman; representing the Administration were Dr. Joseph Duffey, Director of the United States Information Agency, and Ambassador Marc Grossman, Assistant Secretary of State for Europe; representing the government of Hungary, in addition to President Arpad Goncz, was Ambassador to the United States, Gyorgy Banlaki. The benediction was offered by Pastor Stephen N. Mustos. Also making an important contribution to the ceremony were the United States Army String Ensemble, which played the national anthems of the United States and Hungary as well as other music, and the Joint Forces Color Guard, which presented the colors at the opening of the ceremony. I also want to thank the members of my staff for their role in this ceremony, and in particular, I want to thank Dr. Kay King, who was responsible for organizing this event and who made all of the arrangements. I ask that excerpts of the remarks of several of those who participated in this event be placed in the Record. I am including those who had written remarks, and I regret that excellent remarks from a number of participants which were not available in writing are not included in this statement. Remarks of Hon. Gordon Smith, United States Senate Senator Smith. Congressman Lantos, thank you for your efforts in organizing this event honoring the 20th anniversary of the return of the Hungarian Crown by the United States. The Crown of St. Stephen is a powerful symbol for the Hungarian Nation. Legendary as the crown that Stephen used in his coronation in 1001, it was last used by the Hapsburg King Franz Joseph II in the 19th century and by his successor Karl IV early in this century. More than a simple crown of kings this has been a symbol of Hungary's strong links with Western Europe. It was this strong kinship with the West that finally led President Carter to return the crown to Hungary twenty years ago. Twenty years ago, American leaders were proud to return this important artifact to a Hungary that was taking a slightly different economic road than the rest of the Communist bloc. It gave the West hope for Hungary. Now twenty years later, Communism has fallen and again Hungary is taking a different road. This time its preparation for membership in the NATO alliance gives us pause to celebrate a new ally. Yesterday, the Senate began an historic debate that will, I am confident, end in an overwhelming vote to accept Hungary as a new member of NATO. I am happy to vigorously support Hungary's membership and I look to this crown, the replica of which will go to the Carter Presidential Library, as an enduring symbol of Hungarian Pride and also of the strong bond between our two countries, now about to become allies in Europe. Thank you for inviting me to take part in this ceremony.

Mr. LANTOS

Mr. LANTOS. Mr. Speaker, I rise today to commemorate the life and the contributions of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., and to mark the thirtieth anniversary of his tragic death on April 4th, 1998. Dr. King's life is a testament to our highest values of peace, equality, and justice that we honor in this nation. I shudder to think of our country without the words, the inspiration, and the activism of Dr. King. I shudder to think of this world without his eloquent voice to lead us in preserving civil rights and human rights for all people, no matter their differences. Mr. Speaker, it is in honor of Dr. King that we must rededicate ourselves to an unfinished task--the elimination of social, legal, and economic discrimination against all minorities, against all disadvantaged Americans. Let us remember his achievements so that his vision of a peaceful, prosperous humanity will not be silenced and will not go unheeded. During the civil rights movement of the 1950's and 1960's, Dr. King was an advocate for nonviolent change. His beliefs were the basis for an effective and powerful movement by Americans everywhere to protest against blatant racism in the form of racial segregation. He organized ``sit-ins'' and boycotts against both public and private institutions participating in the segregation of black people. His immensely influential work with the civil rights campaign earned him the Nobel Peace Prize in 1964. Our nation was in shock and grief after his tragic and untimely assassination on April 4, 1968. Mr. Speaker, I know that my colleagues share with me the profound inspiration and hope that I experienced as I listened to Dr. King's stirring ``I Have a Dream'' speech during the 1964 civil rights demonstration in our nation's capital. I still remember the urgency of his words to the poor, the disenfranchised, and the oppressed. And when we allow freedom to ring, when we let it ring from every village, from every hamlet, from every state and every city, we will be able to speed up that day when all of God's children, black men and white men, Jews and Gentiles, Protestants and Catholics, will be able to join hands, and sing in the words of the Old Negro spiritual: ``Free at Last! Free at last! Thank God Almighty, we are free at last!'' Mr. Speaker, we in this Congress know that Dr. King's remarkable dream is still unfulfilled. We know that those who are weak, those who suffer from poverty, from hatred, from ignorance, are those for whom our country is still returning the check that Dr. King denounced--the check marked ``insufficient funds.'' The disease of discrimination still exists in our country in both its most blatant and more subtle forms. Equal political participation still eludes our fight for equal justice for all. Our liberty is incomplete without adequate provisions for the elderly and without quality care for our children. We cannot succeed in our quest for liberty and freedom without acknowledging, as Dr. King wisely taught us that ``there is no peace without justice.'' Therefore, we must continue to struggle for justice. We must support our President who engages this nation in a dialogue of race with his ``Initiative on Race: One America in the 21st Century.'' We must prosecute all hate crimes, those against race, ethnicity, gender, and sexuality, against anyone who is different. We must give everyone equal opportunities to education, especially higher education. We must pass just laws which protect those who remain unprotected by our system. We must create and pass a budget which takes into account the needs of all Americans. Genuine leadership will result in genuine reform. We cannot have genuine reform until we take into account the relative position of minorities, and the relative position of the economically disadvantaged. There will be no peace and true prosperity in this county until every homeless person has shelter and every hungry mouth is fed. Americans have common needs and common desires, and we must work with each other, not against each other, to achieve our goals. Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. spoke to us of unity, not dissension. It is our responsibility to move toward social justice through nonviolent means, and it is our responsibility to prevent violence by examining our laws and their enforcement. We must learn to enact change, rather than merely react to change. We can start by recognizing the ways in which discrimination operates in subtle and insidious ways within our society despite our laws, ways which may not be as obvious as segregation, but are discrimination nonetheless. We must acknowledge that America cannot rest on laurels of prosperity, but must continue to seek a prosperous equality. We can be non-violent in ways that are filled with respect and dignity for all. Mr. Speaker, as this nation solemnly marks 30 years since the tragic and violent and untimely death of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., I urge my colleagues in the Congress to recommit ourselves to the struggle which Dr. King so personified and defined. I urge my colleagues in the Congress to share with me my appreciation of this great man and to work together to achieve his vision. The road to Dr. King's vision of peace is long and difficult. Let us not be daunted. Let us march together for freedom.

Mr. LANTOS

Mr. LANTOS. Mr. Speaker, on March 18 in Statuary Hall we held a ceremony celebrating the 20th anniversary of the return to the people of Hungary of the Holy Crown of Hungary, the Crown of St. Stephen. The United States government was custodian for a third of a century (from 1945 to 1978) of this most important symbol of the Hungarian nation. At the time the Crown was returned to Hungary, Dr. Robert king, who currently serves as my Chief of Staff, was a member of the staff of the National Security Council at the Carter White House. He was involved on behalf of the White House in the decisions surrounding the return of the Crown, and he was an official member or the delegation headed by Secretary of State Vance which returned the Crown to Hungary. It is significant, Mr. Speaker, that Bob's association with Hungary and with the Crown predates our association in my office. In connection with the ceremony in Statuary Hall of the United States Capitol, Bob prepared a written description of the background information on the political history and the art history of the crown. Because of the significance and the interest in this important coronation symbol and historic object, Mr. Speaker, I ask that this description be placed in the Record. The Hungarian Crown ``The Holy Crown of Hungary'' (Magyar Szent Korona) or ``the Crown of St. Stephen'' is the medieval Crown that for centuries was the symbol of Hungarian kingship and today remains a powerful symbol of the Hungarian nation. The Crown is depicted atop the Hungarian national crest, which was adopted as the official symbol of the Republic of Hungary. For centuries the Hungarian Crown has been linked with St. Stephen, the first Christian king of Hungary. Medieval records report that Pope Sylvester II gave a Crown to Stephen for his coronation in 1001. Because of this tradition, the Crown has long symbolized Hungary's cultural, political, and religious links with Western Europe, although the present Crown is not the actual object given by Sylvester II. The Crown is composed of two parts. The upper portion is composed of two cross-bands with enamel panels with Latin inscriptions. Earlier, it was believed that the Latin portion of the Crown was a remnant of the Crown given by Sylvester II. Contemporary scholars now believe that it is a reliquary or other object associated with Stephen. The lower portion is a Byzantine crown produced between 1067 and 1077 which was made for the wife of King Geza I, and it was a gift of the Byzantine emperor Michael Ducas. These two separate portions were combined to create a crown for the coronation of one of Hungary's later kings. It was at this time that a cross was placed on top of the crossed Latin bands. Combining the two elements took place about the twelfth century. The first source calling this relic ``the Holy Crown'' dates from 1256, and by that date, it was in much the same form as it is today. The Crown was last used for coronations in 1867, when Hapsburg Emperor Franz Joseph II was crowned King of Hungary, and in 1916, when his successor, Karl IV, was crowned. Karl was deposed in 1918 at the end of World War I, but the new independent State of Hungary remained a Kingdom without a king from 1918 until 1945. Throughout its history the Crown has generally remained in Hungary, but it was frequently moved from place to place and hidden for security reasons. It was buried for four years after the national uprising of 1848-1849. In November 1944, as the Soviet Army neared Budapest, the Crown guard moved the coronation regalia from the capital to western Hungary and Austria to protect them from damage in the fighting and to prevent their seizure by Soviet troops. On April 26, 1945, the guard buried the Crown in an oil drum at Mattsee in western Austria, and on July 25, 1945, the Crown and coronation regalia were transferred to U.S. Army officers in Augsburg, Germany. The Crown remained in American custody until January 6, 1978. Initially it was kept in the American occupation zone of Germany at a special military facility in Wiesbaden, and in the early 1950s, it was transferred to the U.S. Gold Depository at Fort Knox, Kentucky. It was always the intention of the United States to return the Crown to Hungary, and it was designated ``property of special status held in trust and safekeeping by United States authorities.'' Plans to return the Crown to Hungary were put off following the communist coup in Hungary in 1947 and the intensification of the Cold War. The Hungarian uprising of 1956, which was violently suppressed by Soviet troops, also made it impossible to return the Crown. It was only two decades later that gradual but significant domestic changes in Hungary opened up the opportunity for the Crown's return. When Jimmy Carter became President in 1977, the U.S. reassessed its policies toward the countries of Central and Eastern Europe, and determined that the U.S. should encourage relations between America and those Soviet client states which pursued international or domestic policies that differed from the Soviet Union. Since the late 1960s, Hungary's domestic economic and social policy had moved considerably away from the Soviet model and fostered market- oriented changes, which laid the foundation for Hungary's remarkable success in the post-communist period. President Carter, Secretary of State Cyrus Vance, and National Security Advisor Zbigniew Brzezinski agreed that the crown should be returned to Hungary. The Crown symbolized Hungary's links with the West and Hungarian national identity, and U.S. officials wanted to strengthen both. As a condition for the return, it was required that the Crown be placed on public display and representatives who accepted the Crown be leaders of a wide variety of Hungarian religious social, cultural, and other groups. The ceremony for return of the crown was held on January 6, 1978, in the rotunda of the Hungarian Parliament. The U.S. delegation was headed by U.S. Secretary of State Cyrus Vance. Congressional members of that delegation included Congressman Lee Hamilton of Indiana and Fortney H. ``Pete'' Stark of California. Three weeks after the return of the Crown, it was put on display at the Hungarian National Museum in Budapest, and it has been on display there since that time. Return of the Crown led to a marked improvement in U.S. relations with Hungary, and that, in turn, contributed to greater Hungarian self-confidence and encouraged economic and political reform. The changes that took place in Hungary during this period were important in preparing Hungary for the successful transition to political democracy and free market economy in the period after 1989.

Mr. LANTOS

Mr. LANTOS. Mr. Speaker, it is my honor to call to the attention of my colleagues Mr. Hao Fuyuan, a Chinese Prisoner of Conscience adopted by my office as part of the Congressional Human Rights Caucus` Adopt-a- Political Prisoner campaign. Mr. Hao is a peasant from the province of Shandong who, inspired by the Tiananmen Square disturbances he saw on television, joined some students making their way to join the fray. Upon returning from Tiananmen Square, Mr. Hao purchased a blank tape and recorded such messages as ``Li's words deceive the masses; You must not believe him''; ``You should listen to Voice of America''; and ``Students and workers all over the country, strike!'' Mr. Hao played this tape in seven peasant homes in his village. Arrested during the aftermath of the bloody crackdown in Tiananmen Square, June 4-5, 1989, Mr. Hao was tried and found hostile to the socialist system and sentenced to ten years imprisonment and three years loss of political rights for ``broadcasting dissent to the masses.'' He has currently served eight of those ten years in Shandong Prison 3 in Weifang, punished simply for exercising his right of free speech, a right recognized by most governments throughout the world as a fundamental human right. Mr. Speaker, in March, 1997, the category of ``counterrevolutionary crimes'', under which Mr. Hao was charged, was eliminated by the Chinese legislature. Even more suggestive, four men charged with counterrevolutionary crimes for their involvement in the 1989 protests were recently released. This suggests that the Chinese government, under its new leadership, may be rethinking the Tiananmen Square incident. The time is right, Mr. Speaker, for the release of Hao Fuyuan, and I invite my colleagues to join me in urging the Chinese government to release him from prison. My office has also adopted Mr. Ngawang Oeser, a monk from the Drepung Monastery currently jailed in Drapchi. Mr. Ngawang was arrested for ``spreading counterrevolutionary propaganda'', such as a translation of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, which China itself signed fifty years ago. For this ``egregious crime'', Mr. Ngawang received the outrageous sentence of seventeen years in jail with loss of political rights for an additional five years. He has so far served nine years of that sentence. Mr. Speaker, Amnesty International rightfully considers Hao Fuyuan and Ngawang Oeser Prisoners of Conscience, those imprisoned solely for the non-violent expression of their beliefs, who have not used or advocated violence. In cooperation with Amnesty International, the Congressional Human Rights Caucus in October of last year sponsored a campaign urging congressional offices to adopt a Tibetan or Chinese Prisoner of Conscience. Many of my colleagues in Congress have participated in this project, joining the Congressional Human Rights Caucus in the belief that a violation of human rights anywhere is a violation of human rights everywhere. All Prisoners of Conscience, insofar as they have defended human rights without resorting to violence, are eminently deserving of our assistance. Mr. Hao is especially significant, however, because like most of the more than 2,500 political prisoners in China, he is not a well-known intellectual or activist. Hao Fuyuan is a simple man who was dissatisfied with his country's leaders and who communicated that dissatisfaction to his neighbors. He did nothing more. He is a testament to the truth that, though occasionally perceived as the property and passion of an educated elite, human rights are universal . . . and they must be universally recognized.

Mr. LANTOS

Mr. LANTOS. Mr. Speaker, on Thursday, March 12, the Congressional Human Rights Caucus held an important meeting with a number of the distinguished members of the Advisory Committee on Religious Freedom. I had the great honor of chairing that meeting of the Caucus. The Advisory Committee on Religious Freedom was established last year by the Secretary of State to report to the Secretary and to the President on issues of religious persecution and appropriate United States government policy on religious liberty issues. The Advisory Committee is composed of a number of distinguished religious, academic, human rights and foreign policy leaders. The Committee members have spent a great deal of time meeting and examining the relationship between religious freedom and American foreign policy. Mr. Speaker, earlier this year, the Advisory Committee on Religious Freedom Abroad presented its Interim Report to the Secretary of State and the President. Our hearing on Thursday focused on this significant report. In order to deal with serious, and in many places growing, pressure upon believers who wish to practice their religion in peace, the Advisory Committee on Religious Freedom Abroad has met a number of times this past year and has prepared an excellent report on the problem of religious persecution. The report of the Advisory Committee includes a series of thoughtful and useful recommendations for United States policy to encourage and promote religious liberty. I am delighted, Mr. Speaker, that Secretary Albright began immediately to implement the recommendations made by the Committee. At the time the Advisory Committee's Interim Report was made public, she announced that she was implementing the first recommendation of the Committee by designating a new senior-level coordinator at the Department of State who will have responsibility for integrating concern for religious freedom into U.S. foreign policy and for developing a coordinated interagency strategy on this issue of great importance to the American people. As Secretary Albright said when she met with journalists at the time the report was released, America is a leader in promoting religious freedom because it serves our interests and because it is right. We hope to pursue that goal with even more vigor and effectiveness in the days ahead. Remarks by Secretary of State Madeleine K. Albright on the Interim Report to the Secretary of State and the President of the United States From the Advisory Committee on Religious Freedom Abroad, Washington, D.C., January 23, 1998 Good afternoon. I wanted to come down here today to bring to your attention the very constructive and timely interim report I've just received from my advisory committee on religious freedom. I very much welcome this report. Although I've just begun to study it, its overall direction and tone is very much in keeping with the Administration's own intentions and aspirations. So I'm pleased to tell you now what I told the committee just a little bit earlier, which is that I'm taking immediate action on the report's first and most important recommendation. I will designate a new, senior-level coordinator within the Bureau of Democracy, Human Rights and Labor to ensure that our efforts to advance religious freedom are integrated successfully into our broader foreign policy. The coordinator's responsibilities will include developing a strategy for appropriate overall implementation of the advisory committee's recommendation. This work will be done under the direction of Assistant Secretary John Shattuck, and in consultation with the White House, religious leaders, members of the advisory committee and of Congress. In this way, we can assure the American people and the committee that its best ideas will be brought to life, not studied to death. I also assured the committee that I consider the promotion of religious freedom to be an integral component of US foreign policy to be pursued not in isolation, but as part of our efforts to increase the respect for human rights around the world. That's why I've urged our diplomats to raise our concerns about religious freedom energetically; report on these issues thoroughly; and maintain contact with NGOs and local religious leaders on a regular basis. We will continue these and other efforts and give serious consideration to the committee's ideas on how we can do them better. As we speak, the resilience and depth of the human desire to worship freely is on display in Cuba Decades of repression could not vanquish the thirst for religious liberty on that island, just as it has not diminished the desire among the Cuban people for political liberty. The Cuban Government did the right thing in permitting His Holiness, the Pope, to accept the invitation of his church to visit. Let us pray that the message of freedom and respect for the individual which he is conveying will influence the direction of government policies long after this historic visit is concluded so that Cuba, indeed, becomes more open to the world, and the world can, indeed, become more open to Cuba. In closing, I want to thank publicly every member of the religious freedom advisory committee. This is a committee uniquely qualified to discuss and review America's approach to promoting religious freedom abroad. Its members include religious leaders who represent millions of Americans of all major faiths and denominations, and scholars who have dedicated their professional lives to the study of issues related to religious liberty. In the course of their work, they interviewed such eminent figures as the Dalai Lama, Cardinal Daly of Northern Ireland and Pastor Robert Fu of China. The committee clearly took its work very seriously, and we take it seriously as well. America is a leader in promoting religious freedom because it serves our interests and because it is right. With the committee's counsel, we hope to pursue that goal with even more vigor and effectiveness in the days ahead.

Mr. LANTOS

Mr. LANTOS. Mr. Speaker, it is a distinct privilege and honor to congratulate the people of Greece on the 177th anniversary of their nation's independence. The Hellenic Republic has held high the torch of democracy since its inception in 1821, reflecting a love of freedom, justice, and self-government rooted both in its renowned history as well as in the exuberant spirit of its people. The ancient Greeks served as one of America's most inspiring examples during the creation of our Republic, and more recently has stood by our side as one of our closest and most loyal allies. The governments of ancient Greece were the original laboratories of democratic government. Thousands of years ahead of their time, the leaders of these legendary city-states were powered by the then- revolutionary notion that the choices of individual voters could result in a fair, free, democratic government emboldened by the confidence of the populace and driven by the interests of its constituents. Centuries later, the lessons of their civic experiments would provide the intellectual foundation for the birth of America's own democracy. ``To the ancient Greeks,'' Thomas Jefferson once proclaimed, ``we are all indebted for the light which led ourselves, the American colonies, out of Gothic darkness.' Forty-five years after the birth of the United States, the Greek people determined to fight to end their own ``darkness.'' Following both the examples of their forefathers and the encouragement of their American contemporaries, the Greeks rebelled against hundreds of years of domination by the Ottoman Empire. Their war of independence, which began on March 25, 1821, lasted seven years and received the full support of the young American nation. President James Monroe described the Greek struggle in 1822: ``That such a country should have been overwhelmed and so long hidden under a gloomy despotism has been a cause of unceasing and deep regret. A strong hope is entertained that these people will recover their independence and resume their equal station among the nations of the Earth.'' Six years later this battle for freedom ended victoriously, as the Greek people overcame seemingly insuperable odds to establish a modern state with the intellectual and moral strength to match their ancient predecessors. The record of the Hellenic Republic shows the realization of this early promise. Greece has stood on the front lines of the fight for international justice as one of only three nations in the world outside of the British Empire to serve on the side of the United States in every major international conflict of this century. One our of every nine Greeks died while defending their country against Nazi oppression during World War II. During the half-century since that brutal conflict, a strong and principled Greece has worked with the United States as member of NATO, standing firm against communism and, in more recent times, the abridgement of human rights in the Balkans and elsewhere throughout the world. Throughout all of these obstacles, Greece's dedication to democratic principles has remained steadfast and proud. Mr. Speaker, as a member of the Hellenic Caucus and on behalf of the citizens of California's Twelfth Congressional District, I am proud to commemorate the 177th anniversary of Greek Independence Day.

Mr. LANTOS

Mr. LANTOS. Mr. Speaker, I invite my colleagues to join me in paying tribute to my dear friend and advisor Tom Szelenyi of Millbrae, California. This week he marks his 70th birthday, and his seven decades provide lessons from which all of us can learn--worthy examples about perseverance and overcoming obstacles to create a life distinguished by a commitment to his family and his community. Mr. Speaker, Tom Szelenyi's long and unpredictable journey began on March 28, 1928, in Budapest, Hungary. The only child of a middle-class Jewish family, his early years were happy ones, marked by close friends and loving parents. His father was a traveling salesman who was away from home for a portion of every week. During this time Tom remained with his mother and freely engaged in typical childhood pranks without fear of punishment--until his father's return at the weekend. The happy circumstances of Tom's early life were abruptly shattered on March 19, 1944, when the German Army seized control of Hungary. The occupation had swift and bloody consequences for the Hungarian Jewish population. Tom, only sixteen years old at the time, suffered mightily. Shortly after the German occupation, Nazi storm troopers arrested Tom's father and sent him to a forced labor camp. He never returned. He was murdered by a young German soldier for not working fast enough. Tom and his mother found temporary refuge in one of the ``safe houses'' that Swedish diplomat and humanitarian Raoul Wallenberg designated as ``Swedish Legation Property'' throughout Budapest. Wallenberg's remarkable courage saved the lives of as many as 100,000 Hungarian Jews--including myself and my wife, Annette, as well as Tom Szelenyi and his mother. Through Wallenberg's efforts, Tom Szelenyi survived through the summer months, the time when the bulk of the Hungarian Jewish population was deported to Auschwitz and other Nazi death camps. Tom's sanctuary was short-lived, however. He was captured by the Germans in the fall of 1944 and, with a group of Hungarian Jewish men, was forced to undertake a ``death march'' of exhaustion and starvation from Budapest to the Austrian border. From there, Tom was shipped to the concentration camp at Buchenwald, Germany, where he arrived in November 1944. Tom endured seven months at Buchenwald--seven months of hunger, agonizing work details, and the ubiquitous fear of death. At the end of the war, with the American Army driving closer and closer to the center of the Third Reich, he and other surviving inmates were forced to march from Buchenwald to the concentration camp at Theresienstadt in Czechoslovakia. Most of Tom's fellow prisoners succumbed during this last Nazi torment, victims of starvation, exhaustion, and cold-blooded murder. Throughout this agonizing trial, as with his many previous struggles, Tom endured, driven by the hope that he would live to create a better life for himself and his family. The German war machine collapsed in May 1945, and Tom Szelenyi was liberated from Theresienstadt that same month. Still only a seventeen year-old boy, he then proceeded to make his way back across the war- ravaged continent to his home in Budapest. There he joyfully discovered that his mother had survived the war and had remarried. At this time, it became evident to Tom that he had no future in Hungary. He realized that the time had come to fulfill his lifelong dream of living in the United States. Tom initially spent time in Germany and Canada, but he finally arrived in New York City in 1952-- penniless, but emboldened by a hunger to build a new life in America. His early years in this country were not easy. The young, but strong- willed Tom Szelenyi worked at a number of different jobs--loading bales of hay onto ships, loading motion picture film cans onto trucks, and then working his way up to become a movie distributor for Warner Brothers. In late 1956, Tom received a telephone call from the Red Cross informing him that his mother had escaped from Budapest in the wake of the Hungarian uprising and that she was on her way to New York City. When she arrived, he immediately decided to take her to live in California. He had been impressed by the mild climate--he visited the state once in January and did not need to wear an overcoat. He was also attracted by the great opportunities available on the West Coast. In California, through hard work, Tom found great success in the air freight business. He recently retired after thirty successful years in that field. He has also applied his accumulated wisdom to making a difference in his adopted homeland, and he has advised and assisted me on some of the most important decisions that I have faced in my career in public service. For some time, Tom has been my representative to the San Mateo County Democratic Central Committee, and he has served as liaison with the small business community in my district. As successful as his business career had been and as important as his contributions to the community have been, Tom Szelenyi's proudest accomplishment is his family. In early 1957, three months after moving to the Bay Area, he met Evelyn Feiler, a charming and brilliant woman, and they were married soon after. Tom and Evelyn have enjoyed forty wonderful years together. They are the parents of two fine sons, Mark and Bob. They also have two delightful grandsons, and Tom never misses their soccer and T-ball games. Mr. Speaker, I invite my colleagues to join me in paying tribute to Tom Szelenyi for the integrity and example of his life and for his service to our community as he celebrates his 70th birthday. I am proud to know Tom and to have him as my friend.

Mr. LANTOS

Mr. LANTOS. Mr. Speaker, last week the Senate began the debate on the admission of Poland, Hungary and the Czech Republic to the North Atlantic Alliance. One of the key players in the process of admitting these three newly democratic states of Central Europe to NATO was Robert E. Hunter, who served for most of the past five years as the United States Ambassador to NATO in Brussels. Ambassador Hunter was a highly articulate and extremely effective representative of our government in this critical post at that critical time, and we owe him a debt of gratitude for his constructive and productive efforts. As the Senate debate began last week, Mr. Speaker, two opinion pieces which were published in The Washington Post--one by David Broder and the other by Jim Hoagland--questioned the extent to which the enlargement of NATO has been thoroughly discussed and evaluated prior to the Senate vote on this critical issue. I strongly disagree with the point of view that these two experienced journalists have expressed on this matter. While I could express the reasons for my disagreement with their positions at some length, Ambassador Hunter has done a much more effective and concise job than I could do in responding to the issues raised in the two Post articles. Mr. Speaker, I ask that Ambassador Hunter's excellent response, published in The Washington Post on Monday, March 23, be placed in the Record. I urge my colleagues to read his thoughtful article. [From the Washington Post, Mar. 23, 1998] This Way To a Safer Europe (By Robert E. Hunter) David Broder and Jim Hoagland [op-ed, March 18 and 19] see a rush to judgment in the impending U.S. Senate vote to admit Poland, Hungary and the Czech Republic to NATO. They are right that full debate is critical to create the potilical underpinning for the most important U.S. commitment abroad in a generation. They are wrong that the Senate is acting ``in haste'' (Hoagland) or ``outside the hearing of the American people'' (Broder). Rarely has any major foreign policy have been developed over such a long period, displayed so fully before the public and considered so comprehensively with so many members of Congress. The commitment to enlarge NATO was made by all 16 allies at the January 1994 NATO summit in Brussels, fully 50 months before today's Senate deliberations on whether to ratify the accession of the first new members. In the intervening period, every aspect of the issue has been ventilated in the media and with our elected leaders. As ambassador to NATO, I welcomed to its Brussels headquarters a stream of congressional visitors and immersed them in discussion with the allies, the Central Europeans and the Russians. During the past several months, Congress has held a score of hearings and been bombarded by arguments by all sides. Doubts may remain about NATO enlargement, but adequate information and debate are not the problem. Hoagland argues that the administration is engaging in ``strategic promiscuity and impulse'' and ``has not taken seriously its responsibility to think through the consequences of its NATO initiative.'' Not so. During the past 50 months, the United States--indeed, all the allies-- carefully and thoughtfully has sought to take advantage of the first opportunity in European history to craft a security system in which all countries can gain and, potentially, none will lose. After a century of three wars, hundreds of millions killed and a nuclear confrontation, no other test can suffice. Thus the 16 allies understand that security cannot just be based on accepting Russia's viewpoint, which includes leaving Central Europe in limbo (the practical result of the views Broder reports); nor can it be based on rushing all of Central Europe, unprepared, into a Western alliance which freezing Russia out and thus eroding allied strength and cohesion. Hard as it is to achieve, the perspectives of both Russia and the Central Europeans must be accounted for. They and the current allies must all end up more secure, and the alliance must be as strong and robust in the future as it is now. This is an agenda of unprecedented scope, but one NATO allies set out to achieve four years ago. This is why enlargement is only one part of the ``new NATO'' and the overall, root-and-branch reform of European security to meet the realities of the 21st century. The integrated grand strategy devised by the alliance includes renovating the NATO command structure, creating new combined joint task forces (and validating the principles in Bosnia) and making it possible for the Europeans to take more responsibility through a Western European union able for the first time to take military action. This strategy also explains why NATO created the Partnership for Peace, which is both a program for NATO aspirants to meet the military demands of membership--a valid matter for Senate scrutiny--and a means for those who do not join to have practical engagement with the alliance instead of feeling considered to a security gray area. It is why NATO created a special partnership with Ukraine, whose independence is a critical test of any European security arrangements. It is why the alliance undertook responsibility for preserving peace in Bosnia, and why the United States has pressed the European Union to expand its membership. And this grand strategy is why the allies negotiated the NATO-Russia Founding Act. No one coerced President Boris Yeltsin into signing it, nor dragooned the Russions into the practical cooperation now taking place at NATO headquarters, nor drafted the 1,500 Russian soldiers who serve with the Stabilization Force in Bosnia, within an American division under NATO command. And remarkably, while NATO's actions in Central Europe can resolve Russia's historic preoccupation with stability on its western frontier, the alliance's effort to forge a strategic partnership with Moscow has elicited not one charge of a ``new Yalta'' from Central Europe. Thus, despite Hoagland's assertion, NATO allies do have a clear sense of ``strategic mission.'' If the NATO plan can secure the full backing of the Senate and thus of American power and purpose, it offers hope for a lasting security that Europe and its peoples have never known.

Mr. LANTOS

Mr. LANTOS. Mr. Speaker, for the past two weeks, H.R. 1757, the foreign affairs authorization legislation has been on the schedule for House consideration and both weeks, the bill was pulled because the Republican leadership was not able to get the necessary votes to pass the bill. Mr. Speaker, that is fortunate for the American people and for the foreign policy of the United States. Mr. Speaker, this legislation has been foisted on the House through a flawed and blatantly partisan procedure. It is a preposterous process that was perpetrated in public. It is calculated to appeal to a narrow but noisy special interest group, and it is clearly not in the best interests of the American people and our nation's foreign policy. American foreign policy is best, strongest, and most effective when it is a bipartisan foreign policy. As many of our colleagues have observed throughout the years, ``Politics should stop at the water's edge.'' Unfortunately, what we have here is domestic politics being injected into foreign policy. All Americans are the losers in this process, Mr. Speaker. I call the attention of my colleagues in the House to an excellent editorial that appeared on March 13 in the San Francisco Examiner which discusses H.R. 1757. I ask that the full text of that editorial be placed in the Record, and I urge my colleagues to read it carefully and thoughtfully. Who knows? We may actually find ourselves having to cast a vote on this outrageous bill some day in the near future. GOP Shortsightedness: Republicans in Congress Should Rethink Tying IMF and U.N. Funds to an Anti-abortion Provision That Does More Harm Than Good The annual blackmail of the administration by some Republican members of Congress has begun. They insist that $18 billion in U.S. funding for the International Monetary Fund, as well as payment of past dues to the United Nations, be held hostage to an anti-abortion provision. ``Killing babies is a very serious matter,'' Rep. Christopher Smith, R-N.J., told a New York Times reporter. ``The administration is promoting abortion overseas.'' Smith wants to deny U.S. funds to any overseas organization that provides or promotes abortions. Under existing law, no U.S. money can be used for those activities. Smith argues that other activities, such as family planning services, allows organizations to shift money abortion-related programs. But it's much more reasonable to assume that supporting birth control in other countries actually reduces the number of unplanned pregnancies and, hence, diminishes the need for abortions. The GOP position is offensive to some traditional political allies. Thomas Donohue, president of the United States Chamber of Commerce, says failing to fund the IMF during its financial bailout of Asian nations would ``come under the heading of stupid.'' Many conservatives and environmentalists concerned about the escalation of world population believe global education about family planning is essential to humankind's future welfare and even its survival. The U.S. debt to the United Nations, now almost $1 billion, has been a source of embarrassment to Americans who believe in the worldwide organization. The image of the United States as a deadbeat is especially alarming when this country needs to persuade other nations to go along with its policy initiatives, as in the recent confrontation over arms inspections in Iraq. In any case, U.S. funding for international financial and political organizations ought to be separate from the question of whether this country should back family planning groups that also provide abortion services. Combining the two issues hurts causes that even the most anti-abortion members of the GOP cares about--or ought to care about. Last year's hostage was the $12 billion foreign operations bill. After a threatened veto, the GOP finally relented. The annual exercise is, unfortunately, even more harmful this year when resurrecting the economies of a half dozen Asian allies depends on our financial goodwill. Their pain, of course, soon can become our own as American exports fall and U.S. investments in those countries teeter. Let's instill some good sense in the IMF/U.N. funding debate--and turn down the volume of political rhetoric.

Mr. LANTOS

Mr. LANTOS. Mr. Speaker, I rise today to express my abhorrence to all forms of violence against women and to speak out in support of International Women's Day. With many of our colleagues here in this body, I have worked to foster respect for civil rights here at home and human rights abroad. In connection with the celebration of International Women's Day, Mr. Speaker, I want to call to the attention of my colleagues those justice seekers who are beginning to expose the roots of injustice, who are bringing to our attention human beings denied their uniqueness and their personhood. Our task as advocates for human rights is not only to continue the pursuit of justice, but also to realize that as we make progress, we must release ourselves from ignorance and biases that allow us to overlook some atrocities but not others. In this regard, Mr. Speaker, we must affirm that the rights of women are the rights of all individuals. I add my voice to that of the United Nations' World Conference on Human Rights in Vienna, 1993, which proclaims, ``Women's rights are human rights.'' Unfortunately, Mr. Speaker, women face a triple threat to their human rights. They are victimized by the construction of gender in their society. They are victimized by gender-based violence. And they are discriminated against by the structures of justice. Today, we must take action by properly addressing human rights violations against women. We must recognize gender-based violence in its various forms, and we must recognize these violent acts as human rights violations including, among others, sexual trafficking, economic discrimination, female genital mutilation, domestic violence, and rape. These crimes against humanity are compounded by many victims' justifiable fear that their suffering will be disclaimed, that their suffering will be thrown out as invalid. Human rights violations against women are under-reported and under-emphasized. We must be certain, Mr. Speaker, that violence against women is no longer silenced. One of the most repugnant ways in which gender-based constructs discriminate against women, Mr. Speaker, is the trafficking of women and girls. They are reduced to mere economic sexual value to be sold and bartered. In the disturbing realm of sexual trafficking, women are forced into prostitution and coerced into marriage; they are often sold into bondage, where they are tortured and face degrading treatment as well as sexually transmitted diseases. Trafficking in women occurs across some well-patrolled international borders, and it is no coincidence that in many countries the institutions of justice, including the police, condone and profit from the trade in women. In Thailand, there is a flourishing trade in Burmese women and girls; in India, the same trafficking occurs with Nepali women and girls. Bangladeshi women are lured to Pakistan by promises of a better life or abducted from their homes; they are then sold in clandestine settings to brothels were pimps threaten them with their illegal immigrant status and then denounce them for having sex outside of marriage. Mr. Speaker, women are often subjected to gender-based economic discrimination and degradation because some states fail to recognize them as individuals outside of their material value. Economic discrimination against women makes them particularly vulnerable to harassment and abuse. Women are now increasingly important to the economies of most countries, but at the same time, many countries neglect women's rights as laborers. Women in the workplace are exploited and abused in a number of ways relating specifically to their sex. As the majority of workers in the Maquiladoras, the export-processing factories along the U.S.-Mexico border, women must engage in a gender- specific fight to gain equal protection in the labor market. Most women who work in Maquiladoras do so because they are less well-educated and lack opportunities to gain necessary qualifications for other jobs. As a condition of employment, women applicants are routinely required to give urine samples for pregnancy tests. If a worker becomes pregnant and this is discovered by her boss, she is frequently forced to resign. Female workers may be harassed and mistreated, given more physically difficult tasks, and often forced to stand while working. Furthermore, when a Mexican woman is a victim of sex discrimination, she has few avenues of legal redress. The Mexican justice system fails to protect women's reproductive health. The economic disincentive of regulating the manufacturing sector, which is the excuse given for failing to take action to protect women, is a poor excuse for failing to act. Sexual discrimination in the workplace is reinforced by the lack of economic opportunity for women in many countries. Fear of losing a job reinforces a woman's inability to seek redress of her grievances. These acts of abuse are intolerable as women are forced into an outrageous choice between their legitimate human rights and their jobs. In time of war or periods of social unrest, Mr. Speaker, violence toward women is intensified. As a Co-Chair of the Congressional Human Rights Caucus, I stepped forward with the horrifying story of the treatment of women and children in Uganda during the recent conflict there. Girls and women in Uganda are traded back and forth, bartered as wives. Their allocation is part of a dehumanizing reward system for male soldiers. This crime addresses a theme of ownership which precludes women's sexual rights and brings to light the brutalization of Ugandan women. Rape within ``marriage'' is not construed as a crime in Uganda, or for that matter, in many countries which consistently violate women's rights. When intra-marriage rape is condoned within a society, this neglect is one of several factors leading to a normalization of domestic violence. Sexual discrimination and power are especially apparent in Uganda as girls who are forcibly married are required to cook for the soldiers as they are on the move and are severely beaten or killed should they not cook quickly enough. Both girls and boys are forced to kill other children who have not performed their tasks to a sufficient level. Captive boys are often forced to sleep with captive girls, and this sexual indoctrination has terrible ramifications for future sexual violence. The nightmare in Uganda demonstrates the importance of taking into account the sexual specificity of violence. We should recognize how sexual violence harms both girls and boys, women and men. Mr. Speaker, one of the most horrible examples of gender-based violence against women and children is female genital mutilation (FGM). FGM refers to either the removal of certain parts of the female genitalia or all of it. FGM is a crime against humanity--it violates a woman's fundamental right to a healthy life. Nearly 135 million girls and women around the world have undergone FGM, and it continues at an astounding rate of approximately 6,000 incidents per day. It is practiced extensively in Africa, in the Middle East, and among many immigrant communities in parts of Asia and the Pacific. FGM is an extremely painful and even dangerous procedure which scars women both physically and mentally for life. FGM is an example of how violence is connected to gender determination as a woman is often considered ``incomplete'' lest she undergo FGM. A woman is not treated as a specific individual, rather she is a sexual being whose sexuality, sexual appetite, and reproductive functions are supposedly controlled and limited through FGM. In the case of FGM, we are forced to deal with brutal cultural discrimination against women. Women who have undergone FGM have publicly come forward to present their stories of humiliation and pain. Crimes specific to women, Mr. Speaker, often revolve around religious and cultural justifications that seem inevitable to discriminate against the female gender rather than the male. In Afghanistan, which has endured 18 years of armed conflict, we are witnessing a tragic situation in which thousands of women are literally prohibited from leaving their homes. They must be ``invisible;'' they are denied their humanity. Women are forced to wear a robe which completely covers their bodies, the burqa robe. Should women expose their ankles, they are accused of violating the Taliban, the interpretation of the Shari's (Islamic law) based upon the teaching of Islamic schools in Pakistan. The restrictions upon Afghani women are a shocking violation of human rights based upon culturally determined ideas of gender. Mr. Speaker, we must not become desensitized to violence against women. It is the responsibility of every state to preserve the human rights of women and to protect them against violence. Violence against women is not a private matter. In far too many countries-- unfortunately, including our own--it is a structural and system-wide violation of human rights of women. States that do not prevent and punish crimes of domestic violence are as guilty as the perpetrators of that violence. Inaction against domestic violence reinforces the denial of basic human rights. Domestic or family violence is a commonplace occurrence in nearly every country in the world, and battered women are isolated from national systems of justice, as well as from community and family. Intimate partners are prosecuted less harshly than those who victimize strangers, and this pattern of neglect for women's rights is evident in many corners of the world. In Brazil, some courts still exonerate men accused of domestic violence if they acted ``to defend their honor.'' South African justice officers do not wish to be involved in domestic violence; they consider it a ``private'' affair. Not only are women subjected to acts of violence, but they are also subjected to judicial establishments which systematically are involved in gender-specific violation of human rights. Mr. Speaker, the harmful perceptions of domestic violence are magnified in the case of rape. Rape is widely portrayed as an individual act and a private crime of honor, not as the political use of violence. Since World War II, however, human rights organizations estimate that there have been one million women raped during wars. Rape in war has been obscured from public view by our assumptions about the hyper masculine nature of soldiering and of rape as a crime of sex rather than a crime of violence. This past week, Dragoljub Kunarac, a former Bosnian Serb paramilitary commander, confessed that he had raped Muslim women in an international legal process before the Yugoslav war crimes tribunal in The Hague. He is the first individual to plead guilty to rape as a war crime. The Hague is the first court of its kind to specifically list rape and other sexual offenses as war crimes. The international women's movement has seldom been so effective in alerting the world to crimes against women as it has been in calling to international attention the brutal use of rape during the armed conflict in Bosnia. Rape is an especially under-reported and minimized assault on women. It is ``the least condemned war crime; throughout history, the rape of hundreds of thousands of women and children in all regions of the world has been a bitter reality,'' according to the UN Special Rapporteur of Violence Against Women. We must not cease our efforts to identify gender-specific violence against women in such situations. Rape has been used to brutalize, to dehumanize, and to humiliate civilian populations on ethnic, national, political, and religious grounds. Sexual violence was defined by many analysts as a genocidal act in the Yugoslavian conflict because it was perpetrated primarily by Bosnian-Serbs as a weapon in their effort to drive out the Muslim population. Some Muslims were told while being raped that they would bear Serbian children. During the 1994 genocide in Africa, Hutu militia in Rawanda subjected the Tutsi minority women to gender-based violence on a mass scale as they raped and sexually assaulted hundreds of thousands of women. In another instance of human rights violation, Pakistani soldiers committed ethnically-motivated mass rapes during the Bangladesh war for independence. It is an outrage that rape is still categorized by many as a crime of honor and property as opposed to a crime against personal physical integrity. This misconception adds to the false notion that rape is a ``lesser'' crime in comparison to torture. Women are denied their individual humanity and instead perceived by the aggressor as a symbol of the enemy community that can be humiliated, violated, and eradicated. This year we will celebrate the 50th anniversary of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights (UDHR), but we should not overlook the fact that the human rights of women were not specifically affirmed by the United Nations until 1993. Before this time, the gender-specific nature of many of the crimes against women were often ignored. By recognizing that violence is often specific to gender and by acknowledging the ways in which violence relates to our conceptions of gender, we can illuminate the barriers that we must transcend to achieve equal rights for women. The pervasive forms of violence that are normalized and trivialized by culture and society must not be tolerated as we affirm the human rights of women on this International Day of Women. Mr. Speaker, the rights of all humans are unalienable rights. We must stand firm in our belief that all--women, as well as men--have an individual right to dignity and that our own rights are not assured unless the human rights of all others on this planet are secure. I urge my colleagues to join me in this fight for human rights for all women. I commend to my colleagues the words of Pastor Martin Niemoeller, who endured the horrors of Nazi Germany: ``In Germany they came first for the Communists, and I didn't speak up because I wasn't a Communist. Then they came for the Jews, and I didn't speak up because I wasn't a Jew. Then they came for the trade unionists, and I didn't speak up because I wasn't a trade unionist. Then they came for the Catholics, and I didn't speak up because I was a Protestant. Then they came for me, and by that time no one was left to speak up.'' Mr. Speaker, the violation of the human rights of any woman is the violation of the rights of all of us. As we mark International Women's Day, we must recommit overselves to that struggle.

Mr. LANTOS

Mr. LANTOS. Mr. Speaker, the year 1848 was a time of great political and social upheaval in Europe, which led to significant changes throughout the continent, with major events taking place in Germany, Austria, France, and Hungary. This was the revolutionary year when Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels penned the Communist Manifesto. Nowhere in Europe were those transformations more dramatic and far-reaching than those that convulsed Hungary. Exactly 150 years ago yesterday--on March 15, 1848--Hungarians in the city of Pest staged a massive peaceful demonstration demanding their independence from Austria. That demonstration marked the beginning of a brief but very significant period of independence and freedom for the people of Hungary. On March 15th in Vienna, the father of Hungarian democracy, Lajos Kossuth, and Hungarian parliamentary representatives presented demands to the Austrian Court for the severing of all ties between Austria and Hungary, except for the personal union of the Habsburg Emperor, who was also King of Hungary. The panic-sticken court accepted Kossuth's demands and a brief period of Hungarian independence began. In recognition of the importance of these events in the nation's history, March 15th has been the national day of Hungary. Hungary's independence, however, was short-lived. Under the leadership of Kossuth, Hungary severed all ties with Austria and the Habsburgs in July. The Austrian government, however, mobilized an army of troops loyal to the emperor. Kossuth rallied the Hungarian nation, organized the military defense of the country, and continued the organization of the newly independent nation. Despite the overwhelming odds, he was making progress. In June 1849, however, the Russian Tsar Nicholas I offered troops to the Austrian Emperor, and the Austrians accepted their offer. Against such an overwhelming force, however, the Hungarians could not prevail. Many of the Hungarian freedom fighters of 1848-1849 were killed in the military action that followed the Russian invasion. Kossuth, and many of his associates, were forced to flee Hungary. The leader of Hungarian independence came to the United States for over six months from December 1851 through July 1852. Here he was welcomed and honored for his inspired leadership in the struggle for the freedom of the Hungarian people. Mr. Speaker, in March 1990, as the people of Hungary were celebrating their new birth of freedom as the old communist government was disintegrating, a bust of Lajos Kossuth was placed in the United States Capitol, and it is still there on display as a symbol of the great friendship between the people of Hungary and the United States. On Friday of last week, I joined a group of Hungarian Americans and representatives of the government of Hungary to place a wreath on this bust of Kossuth to mark the 150th anniversary of that historic date of March 15, 1848. Mr. Speaker, the event which catalyzed the revolution in Hungary on March 15, 1848, was the reading of a poem that expressed national sentiments of the Hungarian people. On that day Sandor Petofi, a twenty-five year old Hungarian romantic poet, read his poem ``Rise Up, Magyar!'' or ``Natonal Song'' on the steps of the National Museum in Budapest. Petofi's recitation of ``Rise Up, Magyar!'' incited the crowd as they joined with him in chanting in unison the final line of each stanza of the poem-- ``God of Hungarians, we swear unto Thee, We swear unto Thee--that slaves we shall no longer be!'' Petofi was true to the high patriotic sentiments that he expressed in his magnificent poem. He was killed in 1849 in fighting to defend the independence and freedom of Hungary. Poetry is always difficult to translate, Mr. Speaker, but Professor Adam Makkai has done an excellent job of rendering this poem into English. Professor Makkai, a poet who was born in Budapest, received a B.A. from Harvard University and an M.A. and Ph.D from Yale University. He is currently a professor of Linguistics at the University of Illinois at Chicago. This is his translation of Petofi's patriotic ``National Song.''***HD***National Song Rise up, Magyar, the country calls! It's `now or never' what fate befalls . . . Shall we live as slaves or free men? That's the question--choose your `Amen'! God of Hungarians, we swear unto Thee, We swear unto Thee--that slaves we shall no longer be! For up till now we lived like slaves, Damned lie our forefathers in their graves-- They who lived and died in freedom Cannot rest in dusts of thraldom. God of Hungarians, we swear unto Thee, We swear unto Thee--that slaves we shall no longer be! A coward and a lowly bastard Is he, who dares not raise the standard-- He, whose wretched life is dearer Than the country's sacred honor. God of Hungarians, we swear unto Thee, We swear unto Thee--that slaves we shall no longer be! Sabers outshine chains and fetters, It's the sword that one's arm betters. Yet we wear grim chains and shackles. Swords, slash through the damned manacles! God of Hungarians, we swear unto Thee, We swear unto Thee--that slaves we shall no longer be! Magyars' name will tell the story Worthy of our erstwhile glory: We must wash off--fiercely cleansing Centuries of shame condensing. God of Hungarians, we swear unto Thee, We swear unto Thee--that slaves we shall no longer be! Where our grave-mounds bulge and huddle Our grandsons will knell and cuddle, While in grateful prayer they mention All our sainted names' ascension. God of Hungarians, we swear unto Thee, We swear unto Thee--that slaves we shall no longer be!

Mr. LANTOS

Mr. LANTOS. Mr. Speaker, today--March 10th--marks one of the great historic occasions in the history of the United States, and it is a particularly significant anniversary for the people of the great State of California. Today is the 150th anniversary of the vote in the United States Senate in which that body approved the Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo by a vote of 38 to 14. That historic document marked the conclusion of the two-year war with Mexico. The treaty is also a tribute to American diplomacy and the creatively of Nicholas P. Trist, the chief clerk of the Department of State who was sent to Mexico by President James K. Polk at the end of 1847 with instructions ``to take advantage of circumstances as they might arise to negotiate a peace.'' After a lengthy delay, Trist was about to begin negotiations with Mexican representatives when the President sent instructions for Trist to return to Washington. Trist--convinced that he was on the verge of achieving all of the objectives that he was sent to achieve--ignored his instructions to return, continued his negotiations with Mexican officials, and concluded the treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo, named after the place where it was completed. When Trist returned to Washington with the treaty, President Polk could find no fault with the document and, despite ``the exceptional conduct of Mr. Trist,'' submitted the treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo to the Senate for its advice and consent. It was this document which was approved by the Senate on March 10, 1848, which I invite my colleagues to join me in commemorating today, Mr. Speaker. The anniversary of the Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo, Mr. Speaker, is an occasion for both celebration and for thoughtful reflection about the nature of our great nation. First, Mr. Speaker, it is an occasion for celebration because the treaty led to major changes that helped to define the United States as we know it today. Under terms of the treaty, 1.2 million square miles were added to the United States, and the United States government paid $15 million to the government of Mexico. Included in these new territories were the Mexican states of Upper California and New Mexico, which today comprise the entire state of California, plus most of New Mexico, Arizona, and Nevada, as well as portions of Utah, Wyoming, and Colorado. The treaty also confirmed the Rio Grande River as the boundary between the State of Texas and Mexico. Texas had become an independent Republic in 1836, and, at the request of the majority Anglo American population, it was annexed to the United States in 1845. Questions regarding the boundary between Texas and Mexico were among the principle causes of the United States' war with Mexico. My home state of California has become the most populous state in our Union, with some 32 million residents--12 percent of the entire population of our country, considerably ahead of Texas (19 million) and New York (18 million). Furthermore, California has made significant contributions to the history, character, and culture of the United States. It has provided a number of prominent national leaders in science, medicine, education, entertainment, and many other fields, and our state has been the home state of two presidents of the United States. Mr. Speaker, this Sesquicentennial of the Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo is also an occasion for us to reflect thoughtfully upon the cultural heritage of Hispanic Americans in the United States. Under terms of the treaty, residents of the land that was ceded to the United States who were Mexican citizens were permitted to chose American or Mexican citizenship, and it guaranteed the property rights of new Hispanic Americans by reaffirming land grants that had been made by Spain and Mexico before 1846. The treaty, however, did not define or affirm the language or cultural rights of these new American citizens of Hispanic background. In the half century after the approval of the Treaty, most states in the new territories that were added to the United States enacted laws limiting the participation of Hispanic participation in voting, the judicial process, and education. Other laws resulted in dispossessing many Hispanic Americans of their lands. Throughout most of the 150 years since the historic approval by the Senate of the Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo, Hispanic Americans have been subject to exclusion and marginalization. In recent times, however, this treaty has become a potent symbol as Hispanic Americans have affirmed their right to participate fully in American life. Again, Mr. Speaker, it is California that is a harbinger of the America of the twenty-first century. Hispanic Americans play an important role in the economic, political and social life of the State of California, and they bring a vitality and a healthy diversity to our state and to our nation. As California moves toward becoming a ``majority minority'' state, with Hispanic Americans the largest of our state's minority populations, it is my hope that Americans of all ethnic backgrounds can work together in contributing to the greatness that the rich diversity of our nation can produce. Mr. Speaker, as we mark the Sesquicentennial of the Senate's approval of the Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo, it is my sincere wish that all of us as Americans will take this occasion to recommit ourselves to understanding, appreciating, and celebrating the depth and meaning of our historical past. It is also my hope, Mr. Speaker, that we will also recommit ourselves to the ideals of equality and diversity which have contributed so much to the richness and culture of our nation and of which this anniversary should remind us.

Mr. LANTOS

Mr. LANTOS. Mr. Speaker, the Diplomatic Security Service (DSS) of the Department of State has been a vital law enforcement and national security asset of the United States government, although the DSS has been far less known than other federal law enforcement organizations. Mr. Speaker, I want to call the attention of my colleagues to this valuable international asset, and pay tribute to DSS officers who play such a vital role in our nation's foreign policy and the security of all Americans. Earlier this year, the normally low profile of the Diplomatic Security Service received a well-deserved boost when one of the U.S. Marshall Service's most wanted fugitives was apprehended as a result of the assistance of the DSS. For two years, Nathan Hill was one of our nation's most wanted criminal suspects. Law enforcement officials pursued him in Chicago, where he was indicted for the distribution of 9,000 pounds of cocaine through violent gangs in Chicago, Los Angeles, and Houston, and for ordering the killing of two individuals. After his indictment in 1996, Hill fled the United States. U.S. officials suspected that Hill was in Conakry, Guinea, and the Diplomatic Security Service was pressed into service. They carried out a discreet investigation to confirm Hill's identity and his location in Guinea. DSS officers then worked with Guinean law enforcement officials to arrange the arrest of Hill, which was carried out in the presence of members of the DSS, and they work with Guinean officials to expedite his extradition to the United States to stand trial. He is now being held without bond in Chicago, awaiting trial. Mr. Speaker, this is only one of the more recent and public examples of the kind of outstanding law-enforcement and security assistance that the Diplomatic Security Service provides. The DSS has wide-ranging domestic and international law enforcement and security responsibilities. DSS agents are not only federal law enforcement officers, they also serve as members of the U.S. Foreign Service, and this combination makes the DSS truly unique. For over 75 years, the DSS has been the law enforcement arm of the Department of State. It is at the forefront of the struggle against terrorism and transnational crime. No law enforcement agency of the U.S. government is more broadly represented overseas than the agents of the Diplomatic Security Service. Of the 660 special agents of the Diplomatic Security Service, some 240 are serving in 133 embassies, consulates, and U.S. interest sections abroad, and in most countries the DSS officer there is the sole representative of U.S. law enforcement. DSS officers are trained criminal investigators, since they receive the same basic criminal investigative training as the Secret Service, U.S. Customs officials, and other federal law enforcement officers. DSS officers are given on-the-job training at domestic field offices for the first three to five years of their service. Subsequent assignments can be either domestic or foreign, and throughout a DSS officer's career he or she will have a blend of postings. Domestically, DSS has responsibility for the protection of foreign dignitaries visiting the United States, and at 21 field offices throughout the country they are engaged in criminal passport and visa fraud investigations. Such investigations are vital to protecting our national security because terrorists and individuals engaged in international organized crime frequently use such bogus travel documents. For example, Mr. Speaker, four of the conspirators in the World Trade Center bombing were charged with passport fraud. Overseas, DSS agents serving in U.S. diplomatic missions abroad serve as Regional Security Officers (RSO)--the principal advisor on security matters to the ambassador or chief of mission. The RSO manages the Marine Security Guards, the local guard program, security and counterintelligence briefing programs, and a broad criminal and personnel investigative program. In addition to these important functions for the security of each embassy or foreign mission, the RSO administers anti-terrorism assistance training for foreign police, and, in just the past decade, over 18,000 foreign law enforcement officers have been trained under the Anti-Terrorism Assistance Program. Abroad, DSS officers are frequently the principal liaison with foreign police and security services, in which position they assist U.S. law enforcement initiatives and investigations. Mr. Speaker, the Diplomatic Security Service has provided invaluable security and law enforcement service in support of United States foreign policy and law enforcement objectives. The record of the men and women who comprise the DSS clearly reflects their dedication to duty and their determination to serve the American people in a wide variety of extremely difficult situations. Mr. Speaker, I am delighted to report to my colleagues that in the First Session of this Congress, the Foreign Relations Authorization Act for Fiscal Year 1998 and 1999 (H.R. 1757) which was adopted by this House on June 11, 1997, approved the inclusion of members of the Diplomatic Security Service under the provisions of the Law Enforcement Assistance Pay (LEAP). Section 1327 of H.R. 1757, which I adamantly supported in the face of considerable doubt and skepticism as the International Relations Committee went through the drafting of the legislation, provides the Diplomatic Security personnel who perform law enforcement and security functions will receive the same compensation as other federal law enforcement personnel, such as the FBI, Secret Service, and other agencies. In light of the importance of the dedicated agents of the Diplomatic Security Service, Mr. Speaker, I urge my colleagues in this House to continue to support the LEAP provisions in the Foreign Relations Authorization legislation, and I urge my colleagues on the other side of the aisle to work in a cooperative fashion to see that the conference report on H.R. 1757 is completed and approved quickly.

Mr. LANTOS

Mr. LANTOS. Mr. Speaker, earlier this month the Subcommittee on Health and Environment of the Commerce Committee held a hearing on ``Preventing the Transmission of the Human Immunodeficiency Virus (HIV),'' at which a number of witnesses discussed the problems related to this serious health issue facing our nation. The subcommittee also considered legislation that has been introduced in the House relating to HIV transmission. I requested the opportunity to present a statement for inclusion in the record of the hearing, Mr. Speaker, because of the importance of this issue to my congressional district and because of the serious national importance of this health problem. Unfortunately, there is considerable misunderstanding of the issue and the best way to deal with it. Mr. Speaker, I ask that my statement to the Subcommittee on Health and Environment be placed in the Record, and I urge my colleagues to give thoughtful consideration to this important issue. It is probable that the House will be considering legislation involving the transmission of HIV later this year, and it is important that all of us here in this body be well informed on this issue. Statement of Congressman Tom Lantos Hearing of the Subcommittee on Health and Environment on Preventing the Transmission of the Human Immunodeficiency Virus (HIV) House Committee on Commerce Mr. Chairman, I thank you for conducting this hearing on HIV transmission and prevention and for this opportunity to express my support of our country's public health efforts in dealing with this serious epidemic. As you know, the Center for Disease Control (CDC) reports over 600,000 AIDS cases reported nationally since the outbreak of the AIDS epidemic. Annually, 40,000 new HIV infections are reported and approximately 650,000-900,000 Americans are diagnosed HIV-positive. According to the San Francisco AIDS Foundation, California alone currently reports over 100,000 cases which accounts for nearly 18% of all AIDS cases in the U.S. Only New York reports a larger total number of AIDS cases. These figures indicate precisely why the fight against HIV transmission and infection is a top public health priority. Despite these overwhelming numbers associated with HIV infection, I am greatly encouraged by the fact that California has recently reported a 60% decline in AIDS- related deaths in the first six months of 1997, as compared to the first six months of 1996. And it is especially urgent that we understand what has enabled California to dramatically decrease its number of AIDS deaths and cases so that we may reproduce these efforts and continue to successfully combat the disease. Federal funding has been a main impetus through which we have developed new drug therapies, and we cannot underestimate the significance of improved access to medical care and increased prevention efforts in reducing AIDS transmission and fatalities. Our country needs to take an intelligent approach to the AIDS epidemic. By intelligent approach, I mean that we need to take into account how different populations are affected by this disease. We now know that new HIV infections in the U.S. occurs among people between the ages of 13 and 20. Young gay and bisexual men experience disproportionately high numbers of AIDS cases and HIV infections. We know that the proportion of AIDS cases has risen among women and among several minority groups, despite declining in several other populations. The facts are compelling, and rather than ignore these facts, we should direct our attention to specific populations that have been specifically affected. Research and science are our tools; we should use them to guide us in our federal policies. Because the scientific and statistical findings in regards to HIV transmission indicate significantly different proportions of HIV infection in different population groups, I am fully supportive and a proud cosponsor of H.R. 1219, the Comprehensive HIV Prevention Act of 1997, introduced by my esteemed colleagues Representative Nancy Pelosi (D-CA) and Representative Constance Morella (R-MD). Their legislation will promote targeted, primary prevention programs that effectively consider the increasing challenge for high risk populations such as people of color and women. H.R. 1219 would enhance federal coordination and planning by giving authority and responsibility for developing a strategic HIV prevention and appropriations plan to the Secretary of HHS, in consultation with an Advisory Committee. In addition, the bill will authorize further research for investigating possible new HIV infection sites. With its provisions for community-based prevention programs, counseling and testing programs, treatment and related services for rape victims, funding for AIDS/HIV education and information dissemination, as well as adolescent and school-based programs--the Pelosi- Morella act is a thorough and natural extension of current HIV prevention programs in the United States. It will approach HIV prevention through methods that are locally defined, community-based, and that utilize at-risk population targeting. In contrast, the HIV Prevention Act of 1997 (H.R. 1062) is based upon a belief that identifying individuals who are HIV positive, in and of itself, can prevent new infections. It is a major setback to the progress we have been making in implementing effective HIV prevention programs. Despite the fact that no other disease is required to be reported by federal mandate, and despite the fact that the CDC has not requested that Congress create such an unprecedented mandate for HIV, H.R. 1062 still calls for mandatory partner notification. Furthermore, H.R. 1062 mandates reporting of HIV infected people to the State public health officer and the CDC. Not only should HIV reporting remain a state responsibility, but this mandate is a coercive measure which would discourage people at risk for HIV from seeking treatment and testing at a time when we are making impressive breakthroughs in new treatments. This measure would only hurt our efforts to slow HIV transmission, a public health concern. There is no reason for us to isolate and differentiate HIV from other sexually transmitted diseases, nor to stigmatize HIV infected citizens. The creation of a national partner notification program as would be mandated by H.R. 1062 would also be an unnecessary waste of resources. Furthermore, the Ryan White CARE Act Amendments of 1996 already requires states to administer partner/spousal notification programs as a condition of receiving HIV care funding. The HIV Prevention Act of 1997 would prevent state and local officials from effectively targeting their programs and making decisions to meet the needs of their individual, unique populations. We cannot tolerate a reductive one-size-fits all solution to HIV infection, a complex epidemic. We should not simplify our efforts to prevent HIV transmission. In fighting the epidemic of HIV, we have learned a great deal from our colleagues in scientific research. Because I believe that needle exchange programs have proven to be an effective and cost-effective way of reducing the spread of HIV, I am delighted to also be a cosponsor of H.R. 2212, the HIV Prevention Outreach Act of 1997, introduced by Representatives Elijah Cummings and Nancy Pelosi. A single clean syringe costs less than 10 cents, and treatment for one HIV-infected individual costs over $100,000. More than half a billion dollars in health care expenditures could be avoided through the implementation of needle exchange programs. There is a tragic cost to not acting and implementing needle exchange programs. The Cummings-Pelosi bill would end the ban on federal funding of needle exchange programs, and along with H.R. 1219, it enables us to battle AIDS in such a way that does not ignore the inroads we have already made into how the disease has affected certain populations. It is my pleasure to announce that I am not alone in my sentiments about needle exchange. The findings of the scientific community support my view that needle exchange is a necessary and extremely efficient way of dealing with HIV transmission. To date, six federally funded studies, including a Consensus Development Conference by the National Institutes of Health and also a study by the University of California, San Francisco for the Centers of Disease Control and Prevention, all demonstrate the effectiveness of needle exchange in reducing an important risk factor for HIV transmission. It is not a coincidence that by providing clean needles to injection drug users who comprise nearly 50% of newly infected HIV victims, we are slowing the spread of HIV not only to those who will use the needles but to their partners and their children as well. This information has found the ears of the American public, approximately 66% of which support needle exchange. Distinguished and respected public health organizations such as the American Medical Association, the American Public Health Association, as well as public officials and legal groups such as the United States Conference of Mayors and the American Bar Association have all heard the facts supporting needle exchange and are supportive of preserving the authority of the Secretary of Health and Human Services to determine if federal funds can be used for needle exchange programs. In the matter of HIV transmission and infection, we should listen to what our scientific knowledge makes undeniable; we need comprehensive programs such as those authorized by the Pelosi-Morella bill, and we need to give our public health officials the means to combat HIV through needle exchange, as expressed through the Cummings-Pelosi bill. I urge the Congress not to delay the use of federal funds for needle exchange programs. Furthermore, I want to reiterate the importance of learning from our research investigations of HIV infection and AIDS cases. The spread of HIV has taken a specific path that we have traced, and that we must take steps to counteract. The word is out that needle exchange is a successful way of addressing HIV transmission. The word is out that we can best approach this problem by funding research and funding programs that will allow states to target and address the specific developments of the HIV/ AIDS epidemic. We need to lift the ban on federal funding of needle exchange and to address the needs of children, women, and minorities who are affected by AIDS and the HIV infection. Thank you again for holding this important hearing. I hope you will be supportive of state and local officials in their efforts to combat HIV transmission and infection.

Mr. LANTOS

Mr. LANTOS. Madam Speaker, peace is fragile anyplace, but it is particularly so in the Middle East. Only time will tell whether the agreement reached by U.N. Secretary General Kofi Annan in Baghdad will hold. There are two things, however, which are nondebatable: that the presence of our military forces is the best guarantee that the agreement will be kept; and that the extraordinary diplomatic skill of the Secretary General of the United Nations, Kofi Annan, needs to be honored and recognized. I ask all of my colleagues on both sides of the aisle to join me in recommending and nominating Kofi Annan for the Nobel Peace Prize. This great international public servant deserves this recognition. His impeccable integrity and commitment to the finest values manifested itself in his negotiations, and may in fact save untold human lives in the region and beyond. I ask my colleagues to join me in nominating Kofi Annan for the Nobel Peace Prize.

Mr. LANTOS

Mr. LANTOS. Mr. Speaker, it is a great pleasure for me to congratulate the beautiful City of Millbrae, California, on the 50th anniversary of its incorporation. Located just 16 miles south of San Francisco on magnificent sloping land between San Francisco Bay and the Pacific Ocean, Millbrae has evolved through the years from rural farmland to a sleepy town to a bustling suburban community. Despite all these changes, Millbrae has remained an outstanding home to its 21,000 citizens, a nourishing environment for parents to raise children and for citizens to become involved in their schools and their neighborhoods. Millbrae's history begins long before the presentation of its City Charter on January 14, 1948. It can be traced back to the years prior to the birth of our country. The first documented residents were the Costanoan Indians, who were joined during the 18th century by Spanish explorers traveling north from Mexico. The first sighting of San Francisco Bay by the European newcomers took place near Millbrae's present border, on Sweeney Ridge in 1769. Growth was quite limited during the next century, Mr. Speaker. In the 1860s, financier and philanthropist Darius Ogden Mills purchased a large tract of land in what is now Millbrae. He encouraged the development of his property, which he named Millbrae, combining his last name with the Scottish word brae, which means ``rolling hills.'' While the area encompassed by the estate remained largely rural, dairy, a train depot, and several other buildings eventually joined Mills' impressive mansion. As San Francisco matured into a leading American city, Millbrae and other surrounding communities steadily grew and began to thrive. Around 1919, the West Coast Porcelain Works Factory opened in Millbrae, creating enough jobs to boost the area population to over 300 people. Eight years later, on May 7, 1927, Mayor James Rolph, Jr., of San Francisco dedicated the Mills Field Municipal Airport just east of Millbrae. By the end of 1928, 22,352 flights carrying 38,302 passengers had used the new airport. Today--seventy years later--the facility, now called San Francisco International Airport, handles over 35 million passengers annually, is one of the major airports in the United States, and remains a major boon to Millbrae's economy. The City currently claims over five hundred flourishing business, including six major hotels, and branch offices of leading financial institutions. Millbrae organized a volunteer fire department in 1931, a signal of the progress and rapid growth that continued unabated during the Great Depression and post-World War II years. This progress culminated in the incorporation of the City of Millbrae less than three years after V-J Day. The half-century since its incorporation, Mr. Speaker, has witnessed the continuing growth and invigoration of Millbrae's economic and social life. As the able and devoted city mayor, Mark Church, explained: Despite tremendous growth and change in and around the City, Millbrae still remarkably maintains its unique charm. Millbrae is strengthened by its citizenry who give selflessly for the betterment of the community. An economically viable, balanced community, where residents enjoy a high quality of life is the result. Mr. Speaker, the outstanding quality of life that the citizens of Millbrae enjoy is the result to a long line of dedicated city officials and city workers, including Mayor Church, the current Millbrae City Council, the City Administrator and the 136 full-time employees. They serve as a hallmark of the City's long tradition of public service and devotion to community. I would like to encourage all of my colleagues to visit this splendid city. Millbrae is the host of a number of wonderful events throughout the year. One of the premier activities is the annual Millbrae Art & Wine Festival, one of Northern California's premier events with over 250 craftspeople and 20 international food vendors. The City also boasts a year-round Farmers Market, which attracts an average of 2,000 patrons every Saturday. But as wonderful as it is to visit Millbrae, Mr. Speaker, it is an even greater delight to live there. I can personally attest to this, as I lived in the City for ten years and served as a member of the Millbrae School Board for eight years. Millbrae's spirit and energy represents the best our nation has to offer, and I am honored to invite my colleagues in this House to join me in congratulating Millbrae on the 50th anniversary of its incorporation.

Mr. LANTOS

Mr. LANTOS. Mr. Speaker, during the district work period that is just ending, the Foreign MInisters of Poland, Hungary, and the Czech Republic were here in Washington to present jointly the case for the accession of these three countries to the North Altantic Treaty-- Boleslaw Geremek of Poland, Laszlo Kovacs of Hungary, and Jaroslaw Sedivy of the Czech Republic. While the chief diplomats of these three countries were here in Washington, they met with our colleagues in the Senate and with some of our colleagues here in the House. Also during the past week, the President formally submitted to the Senate for ratification the documents for the admission of these three countries to NATO. I welcome, Mr. Speaker, the President's decision which was affirmed by the heads of government of the other fifteen NATO member countries at Madrid in July of last year to invite the Czech Republic, Hungary, and Poland to become full members of NATO. The admission of these three Central European states to NATO is the next critical step in healing the division of Europe that came about at the end of World War II. As we face the uncertainties of the post-Cold War world, it is critical that the new democratic states of Central and Eastern Europe have the opportunity to join the North Atlantic community of nations--action which will give them the sense of security that will permit them to consolidate the gains of democracy and economic market reform. Mr. Speaker, two weeks ago, Secretary of State Madeleine K. Albright spoke at a conference of the New Atlantic Initiative here in Washington, and joining her on this occasion were the three visiting foreign ministers from Poland, Hungary, and the Czech Republic. In that address, Secretary Albright made the case for the expansion of NATO clearly and convincingly. I ask that excerpts of her outstanding remarks be placed in the Record, and I urge my colleagues to give and give thoughtful consideration to her comments. Remarks of Secretary of State Madeleine K. Albright Before the New Atlantic Initiative Conference in Washington, D.C., February 9, 1998 Thank you very much. * * * Let me welcome my colleague Foreign Ministers Geremek, Kovacs, Mikhailova and Sedivy to Washington. And let me thank John O'Sullivan, Jeffrey Gedmin and everyone at the New Atlantic Initiative for all you have done to strengthen America's partnership with its friends and allies in Europe, old new new. * * * These old and new organizations in Europe are part of a truly hopeful global trend that our country has done more than any other to shape. In every part of the world, we have encouraged the growth of institutions that bring nations closer together around basic principles of democracy, free markets, respect for the law and a commitment to peace. America's place and I believe, correctly--is at the center of this emerging international system. And our challenge is to see that the connections around the center, between regions and among the most prominent nations, are strong and dynamic, resilient and sure. But it is equally our goal to ensure that the community we are building is open to all those nations, large and small, distant and near, that are willing to play by its rules. There was a time not long ago when we did not see this as clearly as we do today. Until World War II, we didn't really think that most of the world was truly part of our world. This attitude even applied to the half of Europe that lay east of Germany and Austria. Central Europe and Eastern Europe was once a quaint, exotic mystery to most Americans. We wondered at King Zog of Albania; we puzzled about Admiral Horthy, ruler of landlocked Hungary; we laughed with the Marx Brothers as they sang ``Hail, Hail Fredonia.'' Jan Masaryk, the son of Czechoslovakia's first president, used to tell a story about a U.S. Senator who asked him, ``How's your father; does he still play the violin?'' To which Jan replied, ``Sir, I fear you are making a small mistake. You are perhaps thinking of Paderewski and not Masaryk. Paderewski plays piano, not the violin, and was president not of Czechoslovakia, but of Poland. Of our presidents, Benes was the only one who played. But he played neither the violin nor the piano, but football. In all other respects, your information is correct.'' It took the horror of World War II and the Holocaust to get across the message that this region mattered; that it was the battleground and burial ground for Europe's big powers; that the people of Paris and London could neither be safe nor free as long as the people of Warsaw and Riga and Sofia were robbed of their independence, sent away in box cars, and gunned down in forests. President Bush certainly understood this when, after the fall of the Berlin Wall, he inspired us to seek a Europe whole and free. And President Clinton understood it when, in 1993, he set in motion a process that would bring that ideal to life. Part of our challenge was to adapt NATO to master the demands of the world not as it has been, but as it is and will be. This meant adopting a new strategic concept, streamlining NATO's commands, accepting new missions and asking our European allies to accept new responsibilities. It also meant welcoming Europe's new democracies as partners, and some eventually as members, in a way that preserves NATO's integrity and strength. For NATO, like any organization, is defined not just by its mission, but by its makeup. The preeminent security institution in an undivided Europe cannot maintain the Iron Curtain as its permanent eastern frontier. And so last July, after three years of careful study, President Clinton and his fellow NATO leaders invited three new democracies--Poland, Hungary and the Czech Republic--to join our alliance, while holding the door open to others. This month, Canada and Denmark became the first NATO members to ratify the admission of our future central European allies. On Wednesday, President Clinton will send the instruments of ratification to the United States Senate. The strategic rationale for this policy is straightforward. First, a larger NATO will make us safer by expanding the area of Europe where wars do not happen. By making it clear that we will fight, if necessary, to defend our new allies, we make it less likely that we will ever be called upon to do so. It is true that no part of Europe faces an immediate threat of armed attack. But this does not mean we face no dangers in Europe. There is the obvious risk of ethnic conflict. There is the growing threat posed by rogue states with dangerous weapons. There are still questions about the future of Russia. And while we cannot know what other dangers might arise in ten or 20 or 50 years from now, we know enough from history and human experience to believe that a grave threat, if allowed to arise, would arise. Whatever the future may hold, it will not be in our interest to have a group of vulnerable, excluded nations sitting in the heart of Europe. It will be in our interest to have a vigorous and larger alliance with those European democracies that share our values and our determination to defend them. A second reason why enlargement passes the test of national interest is that it will make NATO stronger and more cohesive. Our Central European friends are passionately committed to NATO. Experience has taught them to believe in a strong American role in Europe. They will add strategic depth to NATO, not to mention 200,000 troops. Their forces have risked their lives alongside ours from the Gulf War to Bosnia. Without the bases Hungary has already provided to NATO, our troops could not have deployed to Bosnia as safely as they did. Here are three qualified European democracies that want us to let them be good allies. We can and should say yes. A third reason to support a larger NATO is that the very promise of it has given the nations of Central and Eastern Europe an incentive to solve their own problems. Aspiring allies have strengthened democratic institutions; made sure soldiers serve civilians, not the other way around; and resolved virtually every old ethnic and border dispute in the region. I have been a student of Central European history, and I have lived some of it myself. When I see Romanians and Hungarians building a real friendship after centuries of enmity; when I see Poles, Ukrainians and Lithuanians forming joint military units after years of suspicion; when I see Czechs and Germans overcoming decades of mistrust; when I see Central Europeans confident enough to improve their political and economic ties with Russia, I know something amazing is happening. NATO is doing for Europe's east precisely what it did for Europe's west after World War II. I know that there are serious critics who have had legitimate concerns about our policy. We have grappled with many of the same concerns. Some revolve around the cost of a larger NATO, which will be real. But NATO has now approved estimates which make clear that the costs will be manageable, that they will be met, and that they will be shared fairly. I certainly understand the concern some have expressed about Russian opposition to a larger NATO. But as Secretary of State, I can tell you that Russia's disagreement on this issue has not in any way hurt our ability to work together on other issues. On the contrary; we have made progress on arms control; Russia now has a permanent relationship with NATO; it has improved its ties with the Baltic states, even as those nations have made clear their desire to join NATO. Russia has a better relationship with Central Europe now than at any time in history; and the differences we still have with Russia would certainly not disappear if we suddenly changed our minds about enlargement. We need to keep Russia's objections in perspective. They are the product of old misperceptions about NATO and old ways of thinking about its former satellites. Instead of changing our policies to accommodate Russia's outdated fears, we need to concentrate on encouraging Russia's more modern aspirations. Others have argued that we should let the European Union do the job of reuniting Europe, or at least tell Central European countries that they cannot join NATO until they join the EU. I want the EU to expand as rapidly as possible. But the EU is not in the business of providing security; NATO is. And we saw in Bosnia what a difference that makes. As for tying membership in one institution to membership in another, it is not in America's interest to subordinate critical security decisions of NATO to another institution. We are a leader in NATO; we're not even members of the EU. The qualifications for joining the EU are vastly different from the qualifications for becoming a member of NATO. Forcing the two processes to move in lockstep makes no sense, neither for the EU nor for NATO. Others ask why we need to enlarge NATO when we already have NATO's Partnership for Peace. When the Partnership for Peace was established in 1994, I went to Central Europe with General Shalikashvili and with my good friend, Charles Gati, who is with us here today, to explain its purpose. I can tell you the Partnership was never intended to be an alternative to a larger NATO. On the contrary, it has always provided both the opportunity to cooperate with NATO, and a program for preparing to join. That is why so many nations have participated in it so enthusiastically, whether they aspire to membership or not. If we want the Partnership to thrive, the last thing we should do is to tell some of its members that they can never be allies, no matter how much progress they make. NATO is a military alliance, not a social club; but neither is it an in-bred aristocracy. That is one reason why today every NATO ally agrees that NATO doors must remain open after the first three new allies join. Let us be clear--we have made no decisions about who the next members of NATO should be or when they might join. But let us also have some humility before the future. How many people--even in this room of experts--predicted in 1949 that Germany would so soon be a member of the Alliance? Who could have known in 1988 that in just ten years, members of the old Warsaw Pact would be in a position to join NATO? Who can tell today what Europe will look like in even a few years? We should not erect artificial roadblocks today that will prevent qualified nations from contributing to NATO tomorrow. This Administration opposes any effort in the Senate to mandate a pause in the process of NATO enlargement. This would be totally unnecessary, since the Senate would, in any case, need to give its advice and consent to any new round of enlargement. It would also harm American interests by surrendering our leverage and flexibility, fracturing the consensus NATO has reached on its open door, and diminishing the incentive Central European countries now have to cooperate with the Alliance. Some critics have said NATO enlargement would draw a destabilizing dividing line in Europe. A larger NATO with an open door will not. One round of enlargement with a mandated pause would. President Clinton and I will keep on addressing these concerns, and others, in the days ahead. The debate has been joined, and it will continue. But already an extraordinary coalition has come together to say NATO enlargement is right and smart for America. It includes American veterans, who do not want their country to have to fight another war in Europe; American business, which understands the link between security and prosperity; American labor, which aided freedom's victory in Europe and wants it to endure. It includes every living former Secretary of State, a half a dozen former National Security Advisors and five Chairmen of the Joint Chiefs. The debate about a larger NATO might easily have provided an opportunity for skeptics to praise isolationism. Instead, it has given the American people and the Congress an opportunity to bury it. And I have confidence that is what will happen. If the Senate says yes to a larger NATO--and I believe it will--that will be a vote for continued American engagement in Europe. It will be a signal that America will defend its values, protect its interests, stand by its allies and keep its word. We'll need that same spirit to prevail when the Congress faces its other foreign policy tests this year. For example, the President and I are asking the Congress to pay what our country owes to the International Monetary Fund and to the United Nations. At issue is a very simple question. Will we stand alone in the face of crises from Gulf to Rwanda to Indonesia, asking American soldiers to take all the risks and American taxpayers to pay all the bills? Or will we support organizations that allow us to share the burdens of leadership with others? This is not least an issue in our relationship with Europe. When we challenge our allies to meet their responsibilities to us, it hurts our case when we are seen as not meeting ours. . . . It is my great hope that Poland, Hungary and the Czech Republic will be part of a transatlantic partnership that is not only broader, but deeper as well; a partnership that is a force for peace from the Middle East to Central Africa; a partnership that has overcome barriers to trade across the Atlantic; a partnership strong enough to protect the environment and defeat international crime; a partnership that is united in its effort to stop the spread of weapons of mass destruction, the overriding security interest of our time. However old or new the challenges we face, there is still one relationship that more than any other will determine whether we meet them successfully, and that is our relationship with Europe. The transatlantic partnership is our strategic base--the drivewheel of progress on every world-scale issue when we agree, and the brake when we do not. In cultivating that partnership and extending it to those free nations that were too long denied its benefits, I pledge my continued best efforts, and respectfully solicit all of yours.

Mr. LANTOS

Mr. LANTOS. Mr. Speaker, I rise today to call to the attention of my colleagues in this House the very high honor recently bestowed upon our colleague from New York, Congressman Benjamin A. Gilman, the Chairman of the International Relations Committee. During a visit to Poland last month as head of a congressional delegation, Congressman Gilman was presented with the Commanders Cross of the Order of Service of the Republic of Poland by the Minister of Foreign Affairs, Boleslaw Geremek. The award was made at the direction of the President of the Republic of Poland, Aleksander Kwasniewski. The Order of Service is given to foreigners and to Polish citizens permanently resident abroad for distinguished service in support of cooperation between nations. The Commanders Cross is awarded to distinguished political leaders and leaders in the fields of culture, art, and science. The order was created by the Sejm (the Polish Parliament) in 1992. Previous recipients of this honor include Dr. Henry Kissinger, our former Secretary of State. The decision to decorate Congressman Gilman with the Commanders Cross of the Order of Service is a most appropriate recognition of his activities in support of cooperation between the United States and Poland, as well as cooperation with Poland and other countries of Central and Eastern Europe in their desire to be admitted to NATO. As the Chairman of the Committee on International Relations in the 104th and 105th Congress (since 1995) and as the Ranking Member of the Committee on Foreign Affairs during the 103rd Congress (1993-1994), Congressman Gilman was one of the leaders in the Congress in encouraging the expansion of NATO to encompass the newly democratic countries of Central and Eastern Europe, including Poland. Legislation that he introduced has provided important authorities to the Administration permitting the provision of assistance to these countries which have been proposed for membership in NATO, and the strong support in Congress for Congressman Gilman's legislation has been an important indicator of Congressional support for NATO expansion. Mr. Speaker, I invite my colleagues in the Congress to join me in extending congratulations and best wishes to Ben Gilman for his receiving this most appropriate recognition of his outstanding contribution to the excellent relations between the United States and Poland.

Mr. LANTOS

Mr. LANTOS. Mr. Speaker, I rise today to pay tribute to Mr. Louis Walsh, who was honored on Friday, February 20, as ``Irishman of the Year'' by the Denver Chapter of the Ancient Order of Hibernians. I invite my colleagues to join me in extending congratulations to Mr. Walsh on his receiving this outstanding and appropriate honor. Mr. Speaker, there are many characteristics which we associate with the Irish--loyalty, perseverance, humor, trustworthiness, generosity, hospitality. These are especially true of Louis Walsh. He has also been blessed with an unmistakable Irish wit. For all intents and purposes, his home is your home. But Lou can also be very demanding--he expects the best from all of his friends and colleagues, and in doing so he has contributed markedly to improving the quality of their lives. Lou appreciates the best of everything, whether it be music, drink, entertainment or, most important of all, friendship and loyalty. He appreciates the good life all the more for having starting out in humble circumstances. Lou was born on March 5, 1928, in Curry, County Sligo, Ireland, one of ten children. Life was simple and full of hard work, but that did not stop Lou from riding ten miles on his bike to get to a dance, arriving home in time to sleep for but an hour before morning chores. But he had much longer journeys in his future. Lou attended St. Nathy's College before traveling to England to teach school at Rodbourne College. Soon afterwards, with the assistance of his brother Matt, he made the decision to cross the Atlantic and emigrate to America. Lou initially settled in Chicago and continued his education, attending Peter Shannon's School of Accounting. Mr. Shannon, astutely noting his numerous abilities, employed Lou after his completion of the course. Lou has been everlastingly grateful to Mr. Shannon for believing in him from the start and for assisting him in every possible way. Lou has tried to be similarly inspiring and helpful to others throughout the course of his life. After five years of work for Mr. Shannon and an additional two years of service as an Army medic during the Korean War, Lou's appreciation of nature and love of beauty prompted him to move to Colorado in 1961. He worked as an auditor for the State of Colorado for a dozen years, during which time he was involved in the creation of the Colorado lottery. Lou also started a real estate business, which proved both demanding and successful. Lou's philosophic foundation appeared on every one of his real estate signs: ``Let Right Be Done.'' This outlook has reflected his approach towards his customers, his neighborhood and his family. Lou's legacy is to be found in a myriad of activities, organizations and good deeds, most notably those within the Irish community. He was one of the founders of several significant Irish organizations, including The Emerald Athletic Club in Chicago, The Irish Fellowship Club of Colorado and The St. Patrick's Day Parade Committee, which has given rise to one of the most prominent St. Patrick's Day parades in the country. Louis love of Irish culture applies to Irish books (of which he has many), Irish newspapers and magazines (to which he still subscribes), Irish wolfhounds (of which he once had four), Morgan horses (of which he has two), and Irish Whiskey. He appetite for Irish music and entertainment has promoted him to develop and foster Irish concerts and special events, and he has long dreamed of the establishment of an Irish cultural center in Denver. His concern for young people inspired him to organize a summer program in Colorado for Irish students. Finally, Lou's strong and unabated commitment to his church and homeland once gave him the opportunity to host the highest cleric in Ireland, Cardinal O'Fiaich. While Lou's devotion to the Irish community is legendary, his greatest passion is for his family: Ann, his extraordinary wife and partner in work as well as in life, son Louis, Jr., who has followed his proud father in his interest in real estate, and innumerable other relatives by blood or friendship whose lives have been touched by his compassion and enthusiasm. Mr. Speaker, it is time, to paraphrase Lou, to see to it that Right Be Done. I ask my colleagues to join me in expressing appreciation for a fine man and a true Irishman, Mr. Louis Walsh.

Mr. LANTOS

Mr. LANTOS. Mr. Speaker, it is my great pleasure to report to my colleagues about the visit of our Vice-President, Al Gore, who is a former colleague of many of us here in this house. I had the pleasure of joining the Vice President on Thursday, January 29, 1998, for his visit to Genentech, Inc., which is located in the city of South San Francisco in the heart of my congressional district. Genentech is an innovative pioneer in the significant and increasingly important universe of biotechnology. Mr. Speaker, Vice-President Gore's visit serves as an exclamation point--not only to the necessity of federal investment in the exciting, path-breaking research and development that will lead us into the 21st century, but also to the humanitarian nature of biotechnology as practiced by outstanding companies such as Genentech. By supporting research and development such firms conduct, we are aggressively fighting against cancer, prevailing against both rare and common diseases, and rallying against those intrepid enemies of our times that we have come to know as heart-disease, stroke, and diabetes, among others. In short, by supporting research and development, we are improving the quality of the lives of all Americans. I would like to take this opportunity, Mr. Speaker, to bring to the attention of my colleagues the highlights of the remarks of Vice- President Gore in relation to the specific accomplishments of Genentech, Inc., which were made during the meeting at the corporate headquarters during our visit. Genentech serves as a unique and commendable model for the high-tech industry. As Vice-President Gore pointed out, ``Here at Genentech, you have taught us another lesson: in the 21st Century, research and experimentation--innovation and ingenuity--is about our livelihoods as well as our lives.'' In these remarks, Vice-President Gore referred to both the high-wage levels of the high-tech industry, as well as the high-tech industry's status as one of the largest employers in the United States. The fostering of the high-tech industry spurs economic growth and a healthy and vital job market that benefits whole communities. Vice-President Gore also referred to the Administration's proposal in its annual budget to extend the $2.2 billion Research and Experimentation (R&E) Tax Credit from June 30th, 1998 to June 30th, 1999. The extension of this tax credit is especially encouraging to the growing Bay Area bioscience industry and to all of our high tech industries which depend upon the R&E Tax Credit to make their extensive and dynamic research feasible. By allowing firms such as Genentech to claim a credit against their federal taxes for a portion of their extensive research and development costs, we in the federal government are taking a critical step to ensure new, high-wage jobs in the next century. As Vice-President Gore estimated, ``Here at Genentech alone, it will mean 150 new jobs for Californians.'' Importantly, Mr. Speaker, the R&E Tax Credit not only promotes a healthy economy, it also stimulates additional research and experimentation. The savings gained by the biotechnology companies from the R&E Tax Credit allows them to meet significant human medical needs as expediently as possible. Genentech is a leader among United States firms in its unequivocal commitment to research and development investment, spending almost 50% of its total sales revenues on continuing research and development activities. The emphasis on research has, in part, enabled Genentech to offer the world a special insight into the disease of breast cancer. Approximately 45,000 women in the United States are affected by breast cancer every year. With the help of a new Genentech product, Herceptin, which is currently in the final clinical trial phase for the Federal Drug Administration (FDA), we may soon be able to fight cancer at a molecular level--a new and very promising breakthrough. Genentech has completed its Herceptin research and is compiling data for the new drug application for FDA approval. The company hopes that Herceptin will be as successful as their drug Retuxin, which the FDA approved in November and is currently a significant weapon to patients battling non-Hodgkins lymphoma, a type of cancer which attacks the lymph nodes. The development of drugs such as Herceptin and Retuxin, however, come with a heavy price tag, as the average research cost for any one drug can cost over $360 million. Despite this expenditure, Genentech works hard to make its drugs available to patients, and it is my distinct pleasure to commend one of Genentech's humanitarian operations, its Uninsured Patient's Program. Through this program, Genentech is committed to make its market products available despite the limits of a patient's government or private insurance. Essentially, to the extent that a patient cannot afford a product, it is provided to them free of charge. During his visit to Genentech, Vice-President Al Gore re-iterated the Administration's commitment to research with the 21st Century Research Fund, the ``largest investment in civilian research and development in American history.'' The scientific community works together to produce the miraculous science that gives us our current technology and medical innovations. This 21st Century Research Fund includes the highest-ever increases in the budgets of the National Institute of Health and the National Science Foundation. As Vice-President Gore proclaimed, ``Taken together, the $31 billion in the 21st Century Research Fund will help us to cure deadly diseases; to find new sources of clean energy . . . to build the next generation of the Internet, moving 1,000 times faster than the current one; and to continue to explore the heavens.'' I am extremely impressed by the efforts of Genentech and the biotechnology industry in the Bay Area. I have always believed that Genentech is a special place, a different kind of company, and I was pleased that Vice-President Gore commented upon the fact that of all the corporations he has visited, he had not seen the diversity of faces that he observed at Genentech. And, as a federal legislator, I was especially affected by Vice-President Gore's words that, ``In fact, Genentech's 3,200 jobs might not be here at all if our federal government had not invested in the research that led to the discovery of the DNA.'' It is a meaningful and significant chain that connects our country to the high-tech industry, and Vice-President Gore wisely discerned that ``More research and development means higher productivity, rising wages, and lower costs throughout our economy.'' Mr. Speaker, I thank my colleagues in this House for their efforts in support of funding research and development which has helped to move our country forward and make possible the exciting breakthroughs in science and technology which have furthered the progress of all of mankind. It is with tremendous sense of excitement about the future and a profound hope that I urge my colleagues to join me in applauding the efforts of Genentech, Inc., and other American companies which are leaders in the scientific world through whose work we will step into the next century with strength, with courage, and with knowledge.

Mr. LANTOS

Mr. LANTOS. Mr. Speaker, I would like to ask my colleagues to join me in commending the public schools of the Canton and City of Basel, Switzerland, on the comprehensive program of Holocaust education which has been adopted for their public schools. Much has been written and said about the outrageous behavior of some Swiss banking executives with regard to deposits of gold and other valuables by Holocaust victims during the period before and during World War II, but little attention has been focused on the outstanding degree to which the people of Basel and other Swiss cities and cantons have assumed the responsibility of teaching Swiss children about the horrors of the Holocaust. By making this a communal priority, they have determined to never let such atrocities take place again. The schools of Basel address the subject of the Holocaust with children of all ages, at all academic levels and in a wide variety of disciplines, primarily in history and in German language and culture classes. In the Wieterbildungsschule (elementary schools), young people learn about the fate of children in the Third Reich, the resistance efforts against Nazi occupation, and other introductory topics ranging from a basic understanding of anti-Semitism to the existence of ghettos, concentration camps, and Hitler's Final Solution. In the secondary level (Grades 5-9) adolescents encounter a wealth of documentary material dealing with anti-Semitism and the murder of the Jews, including The Diary of Anne Frank, the new reader Bilder in Kopf (Pictures in the Head), and numerous short stories which provide an assortment of different approaches to the Holocaust. In Gymnasiums (high schools), older student face an even more comprehensive and substantive treatment of the topic. They survey various theories dealing with the development and forms of anti-Semitism, as well as an analytical and unprejudiced look at their own country's position during World War II. Such syllabus topics include thoughtful subjects such as ``The Refugee Question in the Second World War and Neutrality.'' Mr. Speaker, the people of Basel have recognized the truth of the oft-quoted Santayana observation, ``Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it.'' Their schools are helping to raise a new generation of citizens unfettered by hatreds and prejudices of the past, a people that can use the painful lessons of decades ago to engender tolerance and understanding in the future. It is my pleasure to recognize and to commend the fruitful efforts the people of Basel.

Mr. LANTOS

Mr. LANTOS. Mr. Speaker, Varian Fry was one of the greatest, albeit one of the most unrecognized, American heroes of the twentieth century. As a young relief worker in Vichy France during the early years of World War II, he responded to the onslaught of Nazi persecution with a degree of bravery which stands out even when compared to the courage of other noble men and women who resisted German oppression. Fry led a small group of American liberals in creating the Emergency Rescue Committee (ERC), an organization dedicated to using every means at its disposal to help political and intellectual refugees escape from Nazi- dominated France. The ERC operated for two years, from the fall of France in 1940 until its offices were forcibly shut down in 1942, and its work saved the lives of at least 2,000 talented scholars, artists and leaders, including such cultural luminaries as Marc Chagall, Hannah Arendt and Max Ernst. Fry's actions led to the founding of the International Rescue Committee after the war. Varian Fry's lifesaving efforts are all the more remarkable in light of fierce opposition not only from the pro-Fascist Vichy government, but also from resentful American consular officials. As a result of this antagonism, Fry's heroism went unrecognized in his lifetime. He died in obscurity over thirty years ago. Varian Fry's contributions have been recognized by Yad Vashem, Israel's memorial to the Holocaust, where he stands as the only American honored as a ``Righteous Gentile.'' Mr. Speaker, it is long past due for the American government and the American people to pay tribute to this heroic champion of human rights. I would like to enter into the record a touching and inspiring review of Fry's autobiography, Surrender on Demand, written for ``The New Republic'' by Alfred Kazin. I would also like to invite my colleagues to attend Assignment: Rescue, The Story of Varian Fry and the Emergency Rescue Committee, a moving exhibit which will be featured at The Jewish Museum in New York through March 29, as well as The Varian Fry Celebration, which will be on display at the San Francisco Main Library after March 8. [From the New Republic, Feb. 9, 1998] A Real and Unlikely Hero--Homage to Varian Fry (By Alfred Kazin) The Armistice with Nazi Germany that France had to sign in June 1940 contained a clause, Article XIX, obliging the French Government to ``surrender upon demand all Germans named by the German government in France, as well as in French possessions, colonies, Protectorate Territories, and Mandates.'' ``Germans'' originally meant all inhabitants of the greater German Reich--Germans, Austrians, Czechs, and many Poles--but by 1940 it meant every political opponent whom the Nazis wanted to get their hands on. There were American relief organizations in France sponsored by the YMCA, the Unitarians, and the Quakers. But a group of American liberals, outraged by the Nazis' open violation of the right of asylum, formed the Emergency Rescue Committee to bring political and intellectual refugees out of France before the Gestapo and the Italian and Spanish Fascist police caught them in what their rescuer Varian Fry was to call ``the most gigantic man-trap in history.'' The volunteer (there were not many) whom the Committee chose to direct this effort from Marseille was Varian Fry, a 32-year-old Harvard-trained classicist perfectly at home in Europe. Indeed, on the surface, with his elegant name and his precise manner, he may have seemed just a little too refined. With his classmate Lincoln Kirstein, he had founded the pioneer journal of modernism The Hound and Horn. When I met him at The New Republic after the war, he liked, on our many walks, a little affectedly, to show off the little dogtricks that he had taught his French poodle Clovis, whom he had named after the ancient king of the Franks. But Varian was at heart so pure and intense a democratic conscience that he could not bear the lingering Popular Front sentimentality about Stalin on The New Republic; and he resigned from the magazine in 1945, just before Henry Wallace took it over. In fact, for thirteen months in France, Varian was our own Scarlet Pimpernel. He was endlessly bold and resourceful in the always correct manner that was natural to him. And he was forced to leave France because his labors on behalf of Jews and political refugees had enraged both Vichy's pro-Fascist bureaucrats and reactionary American consular officials. Varian was one of the great civilian heroes of the war. In the face of the most maddening bureaucratic slights, delays, and hostilities presented by Vichy France, Franco's Spain, and the American consul in Marseille (he finally got the French to expel Varian), my friend organized from a room in the Hotel Splendide the ramshackle yet somehow effective organization that helped to get virtually 2,000 people to safety. Varian is the only American honored as a ``Righteous Gentile'' at Yad Vashem, Israel's memorial to the Holocaust. Surrender on Demand, Varian's wonderful account of his noble adventure in France, his ``story of an experiment in democratic solidarity . . . of illegal work under the nose of the Gestapo,'' was first published without much effect in 1945, and it has now been brought back into print in conjunction with the splendid exhibition ``Assignment: Rescue, The Story of Varian Fry and the Emergency Rescue Committee'' at the Jewish Museum in New York. The museum has also enclosed in its press kit Varian's essay ``The Massacre of the Jews,'' which appeared in The New Republic's issue of December 21, 1942. Unlikely as this seems now, the anguish that Varian brought to the subject did not altogether interest people at the magazine (I had just joined the staff), who were languishing for the New Deal that Roosevelt had discarded in wartime. ``That such things could be done by contemporary western Europeans, heirs of the humanist tradition, seems hardly possible'': only Varian, hardly innocent but obstinately virtuous, would have written that sentence. He ended his article by demanding ``a little thing, but at the same time a big thing''--that the United States ``offer asylum now, without delay or red tape, to those few fortunate enough to escape from the Aryan paradise.'' In Berlin on July 15, 1935, Varian had seen Hitler's troppers attack Jews in ``the first pogoam.'' On November 9, 1938, Nazi leaders had openly encouraged the burning of synagogues, the pillage of Jewish homes, and the murder of their inhabitants. ``Injecting air-bubbles into the bloodstream,'' Varian observed in his New Republic article in 1942, ``is cheap, clean, and efficient, producing clots, embolisms, and death within a few hours . . .'' ``Even though Hitler may lose this war, he may win it anyway, at least, as far as Europe is concerned. . . . The Christian churches might also help . . . the Pope by threatening with excommunication all Catholics who in any way participate in these frightful crimes. . . . There is a report, which I have not been able to verify, that the Office of War Information has banned mention of the massacres in its shortwave broadcasts. . . . The fact that the Nazis do not commit their massacres in Western Europe, but transport their victims to the East before destroying them, is certain proof that they fear the effect on the local populations of the news of their crimes. Despite the fact that the urgency of the situation has never been greater, immigration into the United States in the year 1942 will have been less than ten percent of what it has been in `normal' years before Hitler, when some of the largest quotas were not filled. There have been bureaucratic delays in visa procedure which have literally condemned to death many stalwart democrats.'' This was the man who had gone to Marseille two years before with just $3,000 from patrons of the Emergency Rescue Committee, only to find himself initially frustrated by the delusions of some VIPs whom he had come to rescue. Rudolph Breitscheid, the leader of the Social Democratic bloc in the Reichstag, openly frequented a sidewalk cafe with Rudolph Hilferding, formerly German Minister to France. He boasted that Hitler would ``never dare'' to arrest him. He was wrong. He was nabbed and never heard from again. Giuseppe Modigliani, the head of the Italian Socialist Party and a Jew (and the brother of the painter), was easy to spot. He insisted on wearing in all weather a fur coat, a gift from the Garment Workers Union in New York, and he adamantly refused to shave his beard, ``I've always worn it.'' Franz Werfel and his wife Alma were at the Hotel du Louvre et de la Paix, in hiding under the name of Mrs. Werfel's former husband Gustav Mahler, who had died in 1911. Werfel looked ``exactly like his photographs: large, dumpy, and pallid, like a half-filled sack of flour. His hair was thin on top and too long on the sides. He was wearing a silk dressing gown and soft slippers and was sitting all over a small gilt chair.'' The Werfels had fled from Paris to Lourdes, where they had sought the protection of the Church. Werfel, a jew, had begun The Song of Bernadette. When they realized that they would never be able to leave France from Lourdes, they came to Marseille to get the American visas waiting for them at the Consulate. But there was now a general ban on exit visas. The Werfels insisted on ordering up champagne as they went over their problem with Varian. He had just arrived and he hadn't yet found out what the possibilities were. The Werfels had heard of refugees going down to the Spanish frontier and getting over safely, but they didn't know if those lucky souls had reached Lisbon for passage to America. Most of them had probably been arrested in Spain and handed over to the Gestapo. There was also the risk of being arrested for travelling without permission. It was all very confusing. What were they to do? They finally got away, at first encumbering their saviors with twelve suitcase. But Alma made it into Spain on foot, Mahler, manuscripts in her pack. The American Federation of Labor had succeeded in persuading the State Department to grant emergency visas to a long list of European labor leaders, and it had dispatched Frank Bohn to help them with the escape. Bohn, a hearty extrovert who talked like ``an itinerant revivalist,'' was one of the two or three Americans in France prepared to help Varian. Through Bohn he met a young German social democrat named Albert Hirschman, a political refugee who was ``very intelligent and eternally good-natured and cheerful,'' who joined his staff. ``I began to call him Beamish,'' Varian wrote, ``because of his impish eyes and perennial pout, which would turn into a broad grin in an instant.'' Staff conferences were held in the bathroom, where Varian turned on the faucets to create a deafening rush of water. Another invaluable aide was ``vivacious and ebullient'' Lena Fishman, who had worked in the Paris office of the joint Distribution Committee, was competent in English, French, German, Russian, Polish, and Spanish, and was especially useful in calming the excited. ``Il ne faut pas exagerer,'' she used to say. (Lena had her own way of talking. When I first met her, she asked me who my publisher was. I told her, but the name obviously meant nothing to her. ``Je n'ai jamais couche avec,'' she said.) Most of the refugees whose names had been given to Varian in New York were still missing. Nobody knew where they were or what had become of them. But refugees started coming to Varian's room at the Splendide as soon as word went out. ``Many of them had been through hell; their nerves were shattered and their courage was gone. Many had been herded into concentration camps at the outbreak of the war, then released, then interned again when the Germans began their great offensive in May. In the concentration camps they had waited fearfully while the Wehrmacht drew nearer and nearer. It was often literally at the last moment that they had had a chance to save themselves. Then they had joined the great exodus to the south, sometimes walking hundreds of miles to get away from the Nazis. . . . Nor was it only the refugees from Germany and Austria who were worried. Luis Companys, the Catalan trade-union leader, had been picked up by the Nazis in Belgium or the occupied part of France and sent down to Spain, where he was promptly garroted. And the French police were treating foreigners with a combination of muddle and brutality which left very few of them with any desire to stay in France longer than they had to.'' In big cities such as Marseille, the large and constantly changing refugee population kept the police nervous, and occasionally stirred them to mass arrests called rafles. Fortunately for Varian, the first to come to the Splendide were young and vigorous German and Austrian Socialists who were not afraid, once Varian gave them American money, to go down to the Spanish frontier and cross over on foot. One of them gave Varian a map of the frontier, showing that they planned to cross along a cemetery wall at Cerbere. They knew where to avoid the French border control. You were not to go farther into Spain until you got the Spanish entrada stamp on your passport. The Spaniards were interested only in Spanish transit visas and, above all, in money. Refugees who hadn't yet received American visas were taking Chinese or Siamese visas and getting Portuguese transit visas on almost any identification they possessed which seemed to promise that the holder would go on from Portugal. The first difficulty was getting into Marseille, that is, past the police control for passengers arriving by train. You could avoid the police only by going into the station restaurant through a service corridor to the Hotel Terminus. There were risks. Foreigners weren't supposed to travel in France without safe conducts issued by the military authorities. Any foreigner caught traveling without such a safe conduct was likely to be sent to a concentration camp, where his future was uncertain, and where the Gestapo could get him if he was wanted. The Nazis were dreaded, the French were corrupt and brutal, the American consular officials were difficult and nasty. So difficult and nasty, indeed, that they became Varian's particular antagonists. In a short preface to Surrender on Demand, ex-Secretary of State Warren Christopher writes of Varian that ``regretfully, during his lifetime, his heroic actions never received the support they deserved from the United States government, particularly the State Department.'' That is putting it mildly. Varian's book is too taken up with the many people he saved (and the many more he couldn't save) to relate how Assistant Secretary of State Breckenridge Long managed to keep immigration quotas unfilled when thousands of refugees were desperate to get into America. When a member of Varian's staff named Danny was arrested, and Vichy's Ministry of Finance intimated that Danny would be let off with a fine if the American Embassy intervened, Varian had no hope that this would happen. He was aware of the Embassy's hostility to ``aliens.'' To his surprise, he was able ``to touch something very deep in the American consul at Marseille, who helped get Danny off.'' This was astounding. Harry Bingham, son of Hiram Bingham, the former governor of Connecticut and United States senator, had been a humane, helpful figure as head of the visa section at the Marseille Consulate. But he was recalled, and his successor, Varian wrote, ``seemed to delight in making autocratic decisions and refusing as many visas as he could.'' Varian sought a visa for Largo Caballero, the Socialist prime minister of Republican Spain when Franco launched the Civil War. The Consul had never heard of him, and when he was finally informed who Caballero was, he said: ``Oh, one of those Reds.'' Varian explained that Caballero had resigned the premiership rather than continue to cooperate with the Communists. ``Well,'' the Vice-Consul said, ``it doesn't make any difference to me what his politics are. If he has any political views at all, we don't want him. We don't want any agitators in the United States. We've got too many already.'' The court at Aix had refused to grant Caballero's extradition to Spain. If he could get him an American visa, Varian thought, he might be able to smuggle him to Casablanca and there put him on a boat for America. Caballero remained a prisoner of the Nazis until the end of the war. Both the Vichy French and the American Embassy now sought to get Varian out of France. The Gestapo was bringing pressure on the French police to arrest him immediately. A high police official informed him that ``you have caused my good friend the Consul-General of the United States much annoyance. . . . Unless you leave France of your own free will, I shall be obliged to arrest you and place you in residence forcee in some small town far from Marseille, where you can do no harm.'' As Varian got up to go, he asked the official, ``Tell me frankly, why are you so much opposed to me?'' ``Because you have protected Jews and anti-Nazis.'' Varian played for time. He had no assurance of a replacement, and his staff was afraid that their ``relief'' organization would collapse if he was forced out of France. And finally he was. The Embassy had refused to reissue his passport unless he agreed to leave at once. The organization sent out nearly 300 people between the time he left in August 1941 and the time it was raided and closed by the police, on June 2, 1942. Varian returned to the States, wrote his book, and quit The New Republic in protest against the pro-Soviet sentiments of its editors. His last years were unhappy. His first wife died, and he was separated from his second. He moved to Connecticut, taught Latin at a local school, and died in 1967. During his thirteen months in France, Varian's organization offered assistance to 4,000 people, and between 1,200 to 1,800 of those people made it to safety. Varian's organization saved British soldiers and pilots, Marc Chagall, Jacques Lipchitz, Andre Breton, Max Ernst, Andre Masson, Hans Namuth, Hannah Arendt, Wanda Landowska, Marcel Duchamp, Randolfo Pacciardi (leader of Italian exiles fighting in the Spanish Civil War), the German poet Hans Sahl, Victor Serge, Max Ascoli, the pianist Heinz Jolles, the Catholic writer Edgar Alexander-Emmerich, the psychiatrist Dr. Bruno Strauss, the German art critic Paul Westheim, the Sicilian novelist Giuseppe Garetto, the Surrealist poet Benjamin Peret, the former liberal Prime Minister of Prussia Otto Klepper, the museum director Charles Stirling, the novelist Jean Malaquais. There were many, many more. Chagall would not leave until he was assured there were cows in America. Varian rescued also many people who were not famous, not distinguished, not artistic. And how it burned him that there were many, many more he was unable to rescue. This man really cared.