Joseph Lieberman

Mr. LIEBERMAN

Mr. LIEBERMAN. The Senator is a tough negotiator. I thank the Senator from South Carolina. As my colleagues before me have said, I thank the Senator from Idaho for his leadership on this. I oppose the amendment offered by Senator Bumpers. The point is that this is an attempt to help the defense industry of our country and our defense workers whose jobs are endangered for a reason that we are happy about, the end of the cold war. But they are not happy about it. And we ought to try the keep that base alive by helping them sell abroad. The fact is that there is no source of export financing for arms exports available to American firms except at high commercial rates. The fact is that other countries are helping their firms dramatically with financing. I can give you one example. In Connecticut, where a Connecticut company actually moved over 70 good jobs from Connecticut to Canada in order to qualify for the export financing that the Canadian Government offers. Mr. President, this program is not only self-financing but it is limited. Let me come back to the references that my friend from Arkansas made to Burundi and Chad and Senegal and Zambia, et cetera, et cetera. High-risk countries are ruled out of participation in this program under this law. I refer my friend from Arkansas to section [[Page S 11301]] 2540 of the bill. You have to be a member of NATO. You have to be a country designated as a major non-NATO ally. I think we are thinking here of countries like Israel. You have to be a country in Central Europe that has changed its form of government, and you have to be a non-communist country that was a member nation of the Asian Pacific Economic Cooperation group, which includes countries like Korea, Singapore, et cetera. This is a good program: self-financing; protect jobs; protect the military industrial base. I urge my colleagues to vote against the amendment.

Mr. LIEBERMAN. I will try my best.

Mr. LIEBERMAN. No more than 5 minutes.

Mr. LIEBERMAN. Mr. President, will the Senator from South Carolina yield?

Mr. LIEBERMAN. I move to lay that motion on the table. The motion to lay on the table was agreed to. Amendment No. 2094 (Purpose: To strike the bill's provision concerning Defense Export Loan Guarantees)

Mr. LIEBERMAN. Mr. President, very briefly, we disagree with our friend from Arizona whether or not to finish the third Seawolf. We do not disagree on the question of whether or not there should be a cost cap. There should be. I hope we will agree to the second-degree amendment. We disagree on the question of whether we should complete the third Seawolf. The Senate has spoken now on that question. On the question that the Senator from Arizona now raises as to whether there should be a cost cap, there is no disagreement. Senator Dodd and I and all the others who support the Seawolf feel probably even more strongly that there should be a cost cap. So I hope we can agree on a number and leave it at that. I thank the Chair.

Mr. LIEBERMAN. I move to lay that motion on the table. The motion to lay on the table was agreed to. Several Senators addressed the chair.

Mr. LIEBERMAN. Mr. President, first, I ask unanimous consent that Edward Foster, a legis fellow in my office, be given the privilege of the floor for the duration of the debate on S. 1026.

Mr. LIEBERMAN. Mr. President, I would like to thank my friend from Arizona for his gracious statement and say to him that, given a choice, I would much rather have him on my side than against me, having real strength and conviction, and this is one of those cases where I end up after a fight respecting somebody more than I did before.

Mr. LIEBERMAN. Mr. President, it has been used on many occasions before, but in the famous words of Yogi Berra, ``It is deja vu all over again,'' with regard to the Seawolf. I rise in opposition to the amendment of my friend from Arizona which would terminate the SSN-23, the third and final Seawolf nuclear attack submarine. I am going to make three points in opposition to the amendment. The first is that in finishing the Seawolf submarine, we are not just involved in a make-work project. It will produce a submarine that will be of military value immediately and, in fact, will be the best nuclear attack submarine in the world and will help us close what I will call a submarine gap that has opened up between Russia and the United States in favor of Russia. Second, I will argue that the construction or the finishing of the third Seawolf is part of a carefully designed plan by the Pentagon to lead us to the construction of the new attack submarine, a smaller version of the Seawolf, smaller and less expensive. Mr. President, no one seems to disagree with the contention that we need to build more submarines for our national security in the future as the older attack submarines live out their lifespan. What we are seeing in opposition to this amendment is that the best way to get to the next stage, which we all seem to agree on, is to complete the Seawolf submarine, the SSN-23, and to preserve the military-industrial base that is necessary to get to the new attack submarine and to create competition in building that submarine. [[Page S 11289]] And finally, just as a matter of business common sense, we have spent almost a billion dollars on the third Seawolf already. It does not make sense not to complete it. Mr. President, let me go to the first argument. We are not debating production of a weapon which has no use or which no one wants. On the contrary. Everyone, and I stress everyone, involved in the national security of our Government has spoken out loudly and clearly that they want this submarine to be produced and that the Navy needs it for its military value, not just because it enables us to produce the next generation of attack submarines at a lower price into the next century. So let us not be confused as to what is fat and what is muscle in the defense budget that we are debating today. The President asked Congress to authorize this submarine, it is part of his budget and part of the plan which the Department of the Navy has laid out for shipbuilding into the next century. The Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, General Shalikashvili, has told us why we need this submarine. He has said: Cancellation would deprive our Armed Forces of a needed military capability to counter the growing number of deployed improved Akula-class submarines--Russian subs--which are quieter than our improved 688 attack submarine. And the quietness of a submarine is critical to its effectiveness. Mr. President, I will speak more about that in a moment. The Secretary of Defense, continuing our national security administration, has urged us to stay with the Navy plan and to authorize the SSN-23. Secretary Perry has said: We believe the Department's plan merits the full support of Congress. It is the most straightforward and lowest-cost approach to sustaining attack submarine force level requirements. Secretary of the Navy Dalton and Chief of Naval Operations Admiral Boorda have spent numerous hours testifying before congressional committees and meeting with individual Members of Congress to explain why they are convinced that the Seawolf is essential to our future security. Secretary Dalton has said: The builders of this submarine * * * are a national treasure in knowledge and skills * * *. We are gambling with a national treasure if we do not take steps to preserve it. And Admiral Boorda, the top warfighter in the Navy today, says: The Seawolf class submarine will ensure continued undersea superiority, a position the United States cannot give up. Mr. President, I note also that as you listen to the best thinkers when they talk about the future of warfare and security citing particularly the technological revolution that is occurring in warfare, the submarine will play an increasingly central role because of its stealth, which is to say obviously that it is hard to detect at its best. It is under water, and because of the enormous range of capacities it has, not only to perform the traditional attack submarine function of hitting targets in the water or under the water, but being able to fire cruise missiles from standoff positions unseen at targets on the land, as was done in the gulf war, being able to perform intelligence missions, being able to drop special forces into difficult situations, being able to move in shallow water and, in fact, being able to perform intelligence functions with very sophisticated technical equipment from a standoff, safe position. Mr. President, there are many times on military authorizations when the Congress substitutes its judgment for that of the administration which is in power. I believe, however, that this is one time when we ought to listen carefully to the military experts and give them, as we always should, the benefit of the doubt. The Armed Services Committee of this Senate spent many hours in hearings earlier this year seeking the views of those experts, and we all listened with care. And it is with some satisfaction that I note the strong support which the completion of the third Seawolf, after hearing all that testimony, received from members of the committee. The SSN-23 is necessary and essential because it has military value and meets valid military requirements. Some have said that this submarine will serve no purpose, that there is no need or threat. I respectfully say that these allegations are wrong. We know that Russia, no matter what else has happened to its military apparatus, has continued to produce nuclear attack submarines after the end of the cold war. We know, as well, that these submarines are quieter than their predecessors--some because of better designs in their production and others because of backfitting of newer and quieting technologies. These submarines which Russia is putting to sea today are quieter than most of our existing fleet of attack submarines. For the first time in the history of undersea warfare, the United States does not have a qualitative edge over its potential adversaries in the stealth of the submarines which are taking our young sailors to sea to protect our national security. That is a fact, I would guess, that most persons are not aware of, but it is one that each of us must be unsettled by. Mr. President, I know it is counterintuitive because the general impression is that the Russian military is falling apart. But they have made a conscious decision, no matter what else is happening in their military, to invest in attack submarines. I think we should take a look at their reasoning and think about it as we plan our national security in the future. Listen to the words of the Russian Defense Minister, Gen. Pavel Grachev, who said a couple of years ago, June 8, 1993: A nuclear submarine fleet is the future of the armed forces. The number of tanks and guns will be reduced, as well as the infantry, but a modern navy is a totally different thing. The underlying reality today is that the Russian political and military leadership has decided that they want to keep Russia a global military power. To do so, they have scaled down much of their military capacity and programming, but there are several key components critical to remaining a global military power, and at the top of that list-- particularly when it comes to strategic weapons but also the attack submarine function--is submarines. Much is made of the fact that the Russian surface ships are seen sitting in piers rusting, with no crews, undertrained crews, or rebellious and dissatisfied crews. But nobody has made those assertions about the Russian submarine forces because they are just not true. We know that Russia has in the water today about six submarines with fourth generation quieting technology. These improved Akula-class subs which are in the water today are quieter at tactical operating speeds that the best American submarines currently in our inventory cannot match. Further, we know that the Russian Navy has under construction and will launch in the next year or so the lead ship of a new class of submarines which will be even quieter than the Akula, better armed and with improved sensors. The lead ship has been named the Severodvinsk, the first true multimission submarine in the Russian inventory. These are all facts that are generally agreed upon by the entire U.S. intelligence community. There is also no disagreement within the intelligence community that the Russian Navy is returning to submarine operating patterns last seen in the mid-1990's. We are observing once again deployments of a submarine force capable of worldwide operations--and this includes renewed operations in the Western Atlantic. Thus, my view--and I believe the view of the senior military leadership in this country--is that there is a real threat which must be addressed and this Seawolf addresses it quite well. In short, there is a valid military requirement for SSN-23. The Joint Staff examined submarine force level requirements necessary to support the Bottom-Up Review and concluded that the U.S. Navy needs 10 to 12 Seawolf-quiet submarines by the year 2012. Since the Russian Navy has 6 fourth-generation-quiet submarines in the water today which are quieter than our 688I submarines with more under construction, the United States military needs to establish a stable low rate of production of submarines with Seawolf-level quieting. The Navy view is that completion of the SSN-23 is the [[Page S 11290]] most critical and timely contribution to achieving this essential warfighting capability. The bottom line then in my view, after having questioned every witness who came before the Army Services Committee on this subject this year, is NOT that SSN-23 would be militarily helpful as one analyst asserted, but that it is essential to meeting valid military requirements. Fourth, completing the third Seawolf is part of a plan which has been carefully developed by the Navy to ensure that this country can regain the tactical superiority it needs in undersea warfare and that we can maintain a national treasure, to use Admiral Boorda's description--the submarine industrial base in its broadest sense, in its entirety--which we will need in the future. And we should note, that future is not very far off as I have already demonstrated. Some critics try to argue that the Navy's plan--building SSN-23 and then a new attack submarine which will be more affordable and more focused on the threats of the 21st century--is not well thought-out or based on analysis. These charges are flat wrong. In the past 3 years, there have been some 14 different studies which have examined the submarine industrial base. The consensus of these studies has been that the most cost-effective approach to sustaining our ability to design and build nuclear submarines is through low-rate production of submarines. One does not learn or create the skills necessary to build these highly sophisticated ships and their many unique components in a short period of time. If this industrial base is shut down, as we will risk if SSN-23 is not authorized, the costs of regenerating these essential skills will be prhibitive--if in fact they can be regenerated. Let me turn then to a point which is often made when considering this subject and which does a disservice to this debate and to this body. Some people try to describe the third Seawolf as a jobs program--an attempt to keep people working in spite of the fact that there is no sense to the program anymore. Obviously, each of us in our own way wants to preserve jobs in our own State, and I, no less than any of our colleagues. But the fact is that even if this third Seawolf is built--as I believe it should and will be--the level of employment at Electric Boat in Connecticut and Rhode Island will go from a high of some 23,000 5 years ago to less than 14,000 by the end of this year and some 6,000 by the year 2000. That means some 17,000 workers at Electric Boat have or are going to lose their jobs as part of the effort to maintain our ability to build submarines into the next century. The managers at Electric Boat do not have any allusions that the cold war still exists. They have been actively reengineering and downsizing for a number of years to ensure that their company--a company with a long and proud history of submarine construction, a company made up of skilled and dedicated workers who don't get rich doing the work they do, but do take great pride in producing the world's finest submarines to protect our way of life--can continue to make submarines in the next century. Those who might claim that the Seawolf is just a jobs program for two northeastern States--or that the Navy plan is submarines for everyone-- are wrong and their observations are a disservice to the broader issues involved here, and an offense to the people whose jobs are going to be lost, even with the building of the third Seawolf. Mr. President, we have been here before on this issue. But, I believe the issues I have raised today are more relevant and more important than ever before. The cold war is over--no one who supports the Seawolf believes otherwise. But that does not mean that this incredible submarine--the first of which has already been christened and is in the water at Groton today--is not militarily necessary and vital to our national security. This has not been a perfect program. What weapons system ever is? For that matter, when was the last time an automobile was designed and produced without some problems? But the program is on a sound footing today. It will produce a submarine which has been requested by the President and the Department of Defense and will meet a valid military requirement. This issue has been studied at length by the Armed Services Committee under the leadership of Senator Thurmond and, in particular, in the Seapower Subcommittee under the probing and thoughtful leadership of its chairman, Senator Cohen. I urge my colleagues to support the Armed Services Committee position on this issue and to vote to authorize and complete construction of the third Seawolf. I will vote against the amendment by my colleague from Arizona and urge all Senators to do the same.

Mr. LIEBERMAN

Mr. LIEBERMAN. Mr. President, I am pleased to join my colleagues today to introduce our Work First welfare reform legislation. This Congress has an historic opportunity to address the welfare crisis. The primary welfare program--Aid to Families With Dependent Children [AFDC]--is viewed by those participating in it and those paying for it as a failure. It is failing at its most important task--moving people into the work force. Worse yet, it is contributing to the cycle of poverty. By rewarding single parents who don't work, don't marry, and have children out of wedlock, the current system demeans our most cherished values and deepens society's most serious problems. The Work First plan repeals the failed AFDC Program and replaces it with a temporary employment assistance program focused on putting people to work. It gives States the flexibility and incentives they need to successfully move people into private sector jobs. And it addresses two key causes of welfare dependency through tough new child support enforcement laws and provisions to reduce out-of-wedlock births to teenagers. The Work First Program ends unconditional benefits that foster dependency. Each person receiving assistance will sign an individualized contract for achieving self-sufficiency. If recipients do not comply with the plan, then they will lose some or all of their benefits. While the plan may include some training or education, the emphasis will be squarely on work experience; all recipients will be required to search for a job from day one. Eligibility for benefits will be limited to 5 years, although children whose parents reach this time limit will still be eligible for assistance. We must continue to meet our responsibility to our Nation's poorest children. States must focus their program directly on placing people in private sector jobs. The bill requires States to have at least 50 percent of their caseload working by the year 2001. It moves away from telling States how to succeed and instead rewards results--States that have high private sector job placement rates will receive a financial bonus. Our work requirements are tough and funded. We understand that child care assistance is the critical link between welfare and work and, unlike Republican welfare proposals, our bill gives States the child care funding they need to put people in jobs and move them off of welfare. In contrast, the Congressional Budget Office estimates that, under the Republican proposal, only 6 States could afford to put 50 percent of people on welfare to work. The legislation also tackles the critical problem of teen pregnancy. Unmarried teen parents are particularly likely to fall into long-term welfare dependency. More than one-half of welfare spending goes to women who first gave birth as teens. This legislation, among other things, requires teen mothers to live at home and helps communities establish supervised group homes for single teen mothers. Finally, the bill incorporates strong child support enforcement legislation Senator Bradley introduced, and I cosponsored, earlier this year. The legislation will make it easier for States to locate absent noncustodial parents; establish paternity; establish a court order; and enforce payment of court orders. A tough child support enforcement system will help keep millions of children out of poverty and off of welfare. And tougher laws will send a message of responsibility to would-be dead-beat parents. In an era of skyrocketing out-of-wedlock births and rising teen pregnancy rates, child support enforcement payments must become a well-known and unavoidable fact of life for absent fathers and mothers. The work first plan is true welfare reform. It demands responsibility from parents while providing continued protection for children. It addresses two of the key causes of welfare dependency--teen pregnancy and unpaid child support. It gives States the incentives and funding they need to put people back to work--and it holds States accountable for results.

Mr. LIEBERMAN

Mr. LIEBERMAN. I thank the Chair, and I thank my friend and colleague from California. Mr. President, I rise to support the resolution offered by the Senator from California. And I do so with great respect and empathy for the six colleagues who are on the Ethics Committee. And I do so--it does not need to be said; I am sure it is true of all of us today--I do so without in any way prejudging the allegations that have been made against Senator Packwood. In fact, quite the contrary. What I am saying in rising to support the resolution is that I believe that I, as one Senator, will not be able to reach the kind of informed decision I want to reach on the serious allegations that have been made against Senator Packwood without the benefit of testimony from the witnesses live before the committee, subject to examination by the members of the committee and by counsel for Senator Packwood. Mr. President, the Senate has established the Ethics Committee in a remarkable act as a way to delegate responsibility to this committee to adopt standards for the behavior of the Members of this institution and then to uphold those standards. As a way, if you will, to discipline, to set standards for our behavior, in between those times when the ultimate judges of our behavior, namely our constituents, have the opportunity to vote on us. The committee was established, I am convinced, to keep strong the bonds of trust between those of us who have been privileged and honored to govern and those for whom we govern. And at the heart of that trust is credibility and confidence in the process by which we judge each other. And it is on that basis that I feel so strongly that it is right and fair to have public hearings in this matter. The precedents seem to say to me that in every case which has reached the investigative stage, including, I gather, the case of former Senator Cranston, there have been public hearings, although in the Cranston case the hearings were uniquely at an earlier stage. The point here is to preserve public credibility on the one hand. And that credibility is based on the public's assessment of the fairness of the process. But it is also critically important in terms of the judgment we reach. The members of the committee will have the opportunity to hear the witnesses come before them, and as I have said, Senator Packwood's counsel will have the opportunity to cross-examine those witnesses. The fact also is that how can we explain to the witnesses, those who have made allegations, that the doors to the judge's chamber essentially are closed to them, although the one against whom they have made the accusations has had the opportunity to appear in person. Mr. President, the chairman of the committee, the distinguished Senator from Kentucky, has made an important argument and statement when he says that this would be a breach of precedent for the Senate as a whole to intervene in ongoing ethics proceedings, without letting the committee make the judgments itself. It is an important point. Let me explain to him, and I was troubled by it, why I am supporting Senator Boxer's resolution. I do not take this resolution to amount to an intervention on a side. I do not take this resolution to equal an intervention to direct a particular verdict, to bias the proceedings. I see this as an intervention that is totally procedural and not at all substantive. It is, in fact, neutral on the question of substance. Does it create a precedent? In a sense, it builds on a precedent and perhaps creates a clear statement by the full Senate, which has delegated our authority to govern ourselves and judge our own ethics to this six-member committee. And the precedent is that the burden of proof should be on the committee in rejecting hearings, because the openness of these proceedings is so critically important to the credibility of the final judgment. Let me repeat what I said as one Senator as to why I am supporting this resolution to the members of the committee. We give them a tremendous responsibility, and it is a difficult responsibility, to spend all this time, to hear all this evidence and to come back and report to us. On the basis of that, we make these terribly difficult judgments about our colleagues. This Senator is saying respectfully to the members of this committee, I feel that I will not have all the information I need to make an informed judgment on the charges against our colleague from Oregon unless the committee has the opportunity to hear and confront those who have made these serious allegations and to cross-examine them. That is why I hope that my colleagues on both sides of the aisle, in that spirit, will vote to support the resolution of the Senator from California, understanding it does not in any way prejudge the case. Quite the contrary, it suggests the desire that all of us have for the fullest possible information before we reach a conclusion in this case. I thank the Chair and I yield the floor. Mrs. BOXER addressed the Chair.

Mr. LIEBERMAN

Mr. LIEBERMAN. Mr. President, last week the Senate sent a clear message to President Clinton and to our allies that the illegal and immoral arms embargo on the Bosnian Government should be lifted so that the Government and people of the Republic of Bosnia and Herzegovina can exercise their right to defend themselves and their homes. While we wait for the lifting to occur, the people of Bosnia remain under siege--with suffering, death and destruction an intrinsic part of everyday life. I am particularly concerned by the tragic developments in the Bihac region of Bosnia. While NATO threatens tough action in response to attacks on Gorazde--a threat I hope NATO will actually act on--the attacks on the Bihac safe area continue. These are coordinated attacks by the Bosnian Serbs, the Krajina Serbs from Croatia, and even renegade Moslems who have sided with the Serbs. These are concerted attacks which, like so much of the fighting in Bosnia, include direct targeting of heavy weapons against the civilian population. These are inhumane attacks accompanied by efforts to deny food and water to the Bosnians in Bihac who are surrounded by Serbs. The fall of Bihac--another U.N. safe haven--would result in more human tragedy, more ethnic cleansing, more refugees forced from their homes. But the consequences of the fall of Bihac would go well beyond the immediate tragedy for the Bosnians in the region. The fall of Bihac would fundamentally change the strategic balance in Bosnia and Croatia to favor victory for the Serbs and the establishment of a greater Serbia. The establishment of a greater Serbia with no place for Bosnians and Croats of other races and other religions clearly remains the objective of the Serbs in Belgrade, Pale and Knin alike. For the fall of Bihac would free up Bosnian Serb and Krajina Serb troops to continue their campaign of terror elsewhere in Bosnia and Croatia. The Croatian Government, recognizing these strategic as well as humanitarian implications, has agreed with the Bosnian Government to come to the aid of Bihac. This may lead to a wider war with renewed fighting in Croatia. But the fall of Bihac will become imminent, and this safe area dependent on Croatian intervention, if the United Nations forces and NATO fail to protect the Bosnian people of the Bihac region. The United Nations Security Council has declared Bihac a safe haven, but UNPROFOR has failed to keep it safe. NATO has declared Bihac a heavy weapons exclusion zone, but NATO has not carried out airstrikes to enforce that exclusion zone. The dual key arrangement under which the United Nations has denied NATO the authority to eliminate the missile threat to NATO aircraft has increased the likelihood that Bihac will not be protected. The United Nations Security Council has declared Bosnia a no-fly zone, but NATO aircraft have not been able to prevent Krajina Serb jets from bombing Bihac, because United Nations and NATO rules don't allow NATO to pursue these planes into Croatian airspace or to hit them on the ground. We need to eliminate these rules and the dual key arrangements which stand in the way of effective action. Mr. President, the United Nations and NATO failed to protect Srebrenica. The United Nations and NATO failed to protect Zepa. The United Nations and NATO must not fail again in Gorazde. They must not fail in Bihac, Tuzla, Sarajevo or other areas where Bosnian civilians come under attack. The international community must not fail the people of Bosnia. Mr. President, last week an important voice spoke out against the international failure to halt atrocities in Bosnia. Former Polish Prime Minister Mazowiecki resigned his position as the United Nations human rights investigator for the former Yugoslavia to protest the United Nation's inaction to address the human rights violations he reported and the United Nation's failure to protect the United Nations-declared safe havens of Srebrenica and Zepa. Allow me to read a few passages from Mazowiecki's letter of resignation, since his words are surely more eloquent than mine: One cannot speak about the protection of human rights with credibility when one is confronted with the lack of consistency and courage displayed by the international community and its leaders. Human rights violations continue blatantly. There are constant blockages of the delivery of humanitarian aid. The civilian population is shelled remorselessly and the blue helmets and representatives of humanitarian organizations are dying. Crimes have been committed with swiftness and brutality and by contrast the response of the international community has been slow and ineffectual. Mr. President, these are not the words of a partisan spokesman. These are the words of a statesman who has devoted years to impartially investigating human rights abuses for the United Nations. I hope that President Clinton, the U.N. Secretary General, the NATO Secretary General and other world leaders will hear these words and will heed them.

Mr. LIEBERMAN

Mr. LIEBERMAN. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that Frederic S. Baron, a Pearson fellow in my office, be permitted privileges of the floor for the duration of the debate on S. 908 and S. 961.

Mr. LIEBERMAN. Mr. President, this statement is especially impressive for the list of leaders in America's foreign affairs community who have endorsed it--a list that includes Democrats and Republicans, conservatives and liberals. The signatories include, and it is a large list, Dr. Zbigniew Brzezinski, former National Security Adviser in the Carter administration, Dr. Edward Feulner of the Heritage Foundation, our distinguished former colleague, Senator Malcolm Wallop, Lane Kirkland, President of the AFL-CIO, Malcolm S. Forbes, Jr, and Ambassadors Jeane Kirkpatrick and Andrew Young, all signing this statement. A remarkable group, reflecting a broad consensus across ideological and partisan lines in the foreign policy leadership of our country, in favor of keeping the USIA independent and strong, not consolidating it into the State Department. These opinion leaders base this judgment on long, practical experience in the tough work of international relations. They recognize, and I quote again from their statement: ``The culture of the State Department differs substantially from the culture of USIA.'' Formal diplomacy requires quiet, sometimes even secret negotiation; careful attention to consistency, nuance and form; and a willingness to continue even when the pace is painfully slow. That is the work of the State Department. Public diplomacy--the work of the USIA--requires openness, rapid response, and a willingness to put aside differences in order to make the most of agreement on broader themes that are shared by people throughout the world. It says the obvious to say I have the highest respect for the foreign policy and diplomatic professionals of the Department of State. But their training and their experience, in my opinion, does not prepare them for the work in the informational environment, in the communications environment, the public-to-public environment, in which USIA and its officers and employees operate. Let me say, responding to what has been said here a while ago, that the President and the Secretary of State should clearly determine the foreign policy of the United States. It is in the management and implementation of that policy that I believe the distinctions between formal and public diplomacy, between the State Department and an independent USIA, have their importance. It is in the management and implementation that the differences in organizational cultures add their respective values to the product. The value of distinct organizational cultures is no novel, New Age idea. It was grasped by President Eisenhower when he founded USIA, and has proven itself in foreign affairs, now, for more than 40 years. Operational autonomy is increasingly followed by corporations and other large financial institutions in the private sector. Centralized, pyramidal structures are what modern management is, frankly, trying to avoid. Teamwork is a recipe for success in both the public and private sectors. And the essence of teamwork, as it is understood in the modern organizational context, is in using the different talents of the different members of the team in working to achieve a common goal. That is why I believe, here, organizationally, the better course is to leave USIA independent. As so many have said before me in this debate, victory in the cold war presents the United States with rare new opportunities. To grasp these opportunities, to advance our national interests and our moral principles, a more forward-positioned, engaged in aggressive economic, political, cultural, and communications, stance is required. The new world we face also holds many challenges and dangers and obviously we must be prepared to meet them. But I think we can best overcome those challenges and avert or mitigate those dangers and build a more stable, peaceful, and democratic international environment through purposeful engagement--engagement which is enhanced by the kind of active public diplomacy that an independent USIA can carry out. What we now have is a plurality of means for engaging the wider world, and presenting American policy and projecting American interests and principles to different audiences, and one might say different consumers, worldwide. USIA inhabits the realms of the media, of education, of what we are happy to call in this country civil society, and what we are hoping to help develop in many of the fledgling new democracies that were former wards of the Soviet Union. The USIA, incidentally, Mr. President, serves all agencies of the U.S. Government, not just the Department of State--but Commerce, Justice, Treasury, Defense, and others. It is useful, I think, to all involved, that the USIA's program stand at one removed from the government-to-government functions carried on by the Department of State. When the Voice of America carries a news broadcast on a subject that is of some discomfort to a foreign government, is it not a good thing that our Ambassador can honestly say that the Voice of America is not controlled by--or organizationally aligned with--the Department of State? Or to give another example, when one of our exchange programs brings a scholar from a foreign country to the United States who may be out of favor with the government of his country, is it not helpful that our ambassador can point out that the USIA, which has brought this scholar to America, is separate from the Department of State? And when that dissident goes home, will he or she not find it useful honestly to assert that their visit to the United States was not a foreign policy mission in behalf of the Department of State? Mr. President, this formal separation is central I think to the credibility of our exchange and broadcast programs which have so well served America's interest in the cold war, which have so well served the interests and the aspirations of people living behind the Iron Curtain during the cold war and can so well serve people throughout the world who still yearn to be free? People listening to USIA broadcasts around the world know that they are not hearing a propaganda instrument of the State Department but an independent voice--incidentally, a voice speaking so often in their language--reporting on world events and reflecting the views and values of the American people and helping make links between them in this country and the people of this country. Mr. President, the United States Information Agency should not be part of the reorganization of foreign affairs agencies that are central to this bill. I say that respectfully. One of the amendments that I have filed among the 144 that are filed would remove the USIA from the consolidation aspects of this bill, with the minor exception of the consolidation of inspector general functions, and would maintain the USIA as an effective and independent agency. We learned in the cold war that persuasion and involvement with peoples is the most powerful instrument that American democracy has in foreign affairs. The power of an idea, the power of an American idea, of the American idea conveyed to people around the world, ultimately is what cracked the Berlin wall. The kind of engagement USIA had, for instance, with Solidarnosc--not just with people generally, but with specific heroes in the fight for freedom--with Solidarity in Poland or with the pro-democracy movements in Central America is the kind of engagement we need today throughout the world, and particularly, may I say, with the coming generation of leaders in China and with the modernizers in the Islamic world. This is no time to pull back and stop speaking to the people of the world and their future leaders. This is the time to continue effective public diplomacy through the USIA--independent and strong--to meet new challenges, seize new opportunities, and advance America's principles and strategic interests throughout the world. I thank the Chair. I yield the floor. Exhibit 1 [From Roll Call, May 11, 1995] The Future of U.S. Public Diplomacy New proposals have been advanced to place the United States Information Agency (USIA)--long the chief instrument of American public diplomacy--under the centralized control of the State Department. We believe this proposed consolidation and centralization would weaken American public diplomacy. Why should the USIA remain independent? Through its broadcasting, numerous exchange programs and links with people throughout the world, it already is highly successful in promoting American interests and articulating who we are and how our policies and values are shaped. The State Department has a different though related role. It explains U.S. foreign policy to Americans and presents our government's official positions to foreign governments. The State Department values quiet negotiations, government-to- government contacts, protracted discussion, compromise and sometimes secrecy. A credible public diplomacy, by contrast, requires openness, the ability to respond quickly to rapidly changing world events, and independence in reporting, analysis and comment. In short, the culture of the State Department differs substantially from the culture of the

Mr. LIEBERMAN. Mr. President, a number of Senators on both sides of the aisle have focused with some seriousness on the questions raised in this bill. The amendment currently before the Senate, offered by the Senator from North Carolina, is, of course, a serious proposal and deserves the kind of reasoned consideration that our colleague from Massachusetts has described. I rise to speak about the impact of the bill before the Senate on one particular agency, which is the U.S. Information Agency, and to make the case, respectfully, to my colleagues and to the chairman of the committee and members who come forth with this proposal, why I believe the USIA uniquely should not be consolidated as part of the State Department, although the general request for consolidation I think is a very worthy one. Mr. President, I suppose I could spend this time explaining and defending the work of the USIA. It is a modest but highly effective foreign affairs agency. I do first want to say that I believe more is at issue here than just the work of the USIA. The proposal to consolidate or perhaps to abolish the USIA presents another opportunity in this debate to address the choice that has been referred to here on the floor that we face at this juncture in our history between two profoundly different views of America's role in the post-cold-war world. The choice, put simply, is this: Will America remain involved and lead in shaping the values and ideas, the military realities and the markets of the modern world? Will we continue to reach out in search of economic opportunities, cultural enrichment, and the alliances that strengthen our national security? Or will we step back and become a detached and reactive power that regards the wider world chiefly as a source of difficulty and danger? Mr. President, I am convinced that on both sides of the aisle here the overwhelming majority of my colleagues have chosen the former course, which is to say staying involved in the world, exercising America's leadership role in the world, because that is not only the correct course but the realistic course. Having made that choice, it seems to me that we are then left with the question of methods. What is the method we choose to remain involved and to remain the leader of the world, not just the free world, but the world overall? Mr. President, I understand that some of my colleagues who share my concern for maintaining America's involvement and leadership have reservations about some aspects of our foreign aid program, including our involvement in the United Nations and other international institutions. Mr. President, I want to respectfully suggest that for anyone who thinks that America must lead in today's world, it does not make common sense to favor the consolidation of the functions of the USIA to the Department of State, or certainly not to favor the abolition of the USIA. In fact, if we reduce our foreign aid and scale back our involvement in other multilateral organizations, as other parts of the bill before the Senate would do, I suggest that we will even have a greater need for a more robust, and I might say agile, USIA. Mr. President, the distinguished chairman of the committee, Senator Helms, and his committee, I say, have acted on a sound impulse, which is that we do need a searching reappraisal of the way we conduct our foreign policy in the post-cold-war era. The committee has produced a coherent, centralized, new architecture for our foreign affairs agencies. However, no organization is an end in itself. Organizations are tools that we create to carry out our strategic and moral purposes as a nation. What are the goals? What is the strategy that the new centralized foreign affairs edifice laid out in this bill is meant to serve? It is, indeed, an impressive organization, but I think we have to continue to come back and ask, What is its purpose? In that sense, what is our purpose--our American purpose--in the world, after the cold war? Today, the cold war that possessed our thinking and our energies for four decades is over. The period of conflict with aggressive global totalitarianism reaches back another generation even beyond the beginning of the cold war. That is at an end. We are grappling with large and difficult questions about what role America should play in the world that go deeper than our country has faced for over a half century. Now, the problems we face in developing a broad foreign policy to guide us into the next century are extraordinarily difficult. As was clear on the Senate floor last week in the debate on Bosnia, we have not yet reached a universal consensus about just when and how and under what circumstances the United States should exert its power and prestige in world affairs. But disagree as we may about the specifics, so far as I have suggested a moment ago, I think we have maintained a remarkably broad consensus about one thing; that is, that the United States must continue our engagement with the world and must retain the capacity to lead, not out of the goodness of our hearts, but in the interests of our security and our principles. That brings me back to the proposed consolidation or abolition of the U.S. Information Agency. Why is this such a key matter--an issue that I personally regard as a fork in the foreign policy road? Mr. President, although we are searching for a new course for the future, I want to argue here that we should not abandon existing institutions just because they were developed during the cold war. Rather, we should profit from our experience in the cold war, which was, obviously, a very difficult and trying experience, but it was ultimately a successful experience. Where once we faced the Soviet Empire and feared a third world war, now, democracy and free market systems are establishing themselves from Vilnius to Vladivostok. It is clear our military might was central to our success in the cold war. So, too, was the skill and perseverance of our diplomats and negotiators, and our political leaders. But what else ultimately helped us win this struggle that we sometimes overlook? My answer to that is that we engaged people, not just governments, but the people of the nations who were our potential adversaries in debate and discussion about the values, ideas and interests that guide the United States in world affairs. Our not-so-secret weapon here in the cold war was information and contact with people throughout the world, particularly those living under totalitarian regimes with the democratic world. I think that had an enormous influence and helped and inspired peoples who were captive behind totalitarian walls to sustain their hopes and ultimately to rise up and create the pressure that miraculously crumbled the Berlin wall and all that it represented. Mr. President, rather than wiping our foreign policy slate clean, I think we should draw upon the successes of the past to develop the foreign policy strategies for America's future. We must do this work together. Republican administrations can and should take credit for some of the great successes of public diplomacy which have enduring relevance today. The Reagan administration revived our understanding of the importance of values, ideas, and information in international affairs, and strongly supported the independent role of the USIA in conveying those values, ideas, and information. Far from losing importance, our values, ideas, and information--and an independent USIA--I think will be even more crucial as we chart our course in the next phase of world history after the cold war. This new world is ever more democratic, ever more integrated into a global market economy, ever more linked by electronic communications. In such a world, relations among governments obviously remain important. But, frankly, such government-to-government relations simply do not matter as much as they did before. Increasingly, I believe, relations between countries will depend, as they have in the recent past, upon the perceptions and interests of the public within those countries, and particularly of what might be called key subsections of the public within those countries--political and intellectual elites, are two examples. So, U.S. foreign policy in the next phase, with communications particularly growing as rapidly and in as revolutionary a fashion as they do today, must go beyond government-to-government relations and reach the people of the world. We always say the world is a small world. It is a dramatically smaller world today. When I can sit at my personal computer--I have just been educated in the last several months--and try to reach one of my children who is at school in Boston, in the State of my colleague from Massachusetts, and find I cannot get into the so-called ``Gopher'' index to Massachusetts, so I go to the worldwide index of indexes and I am instructed to go through the index of the University of Southern Australia in Perth, find an opening there, then go to North America, then to the United States, then to Massachusetts, then, at the risk of offending my colleague and alumnus of Yale, to Harvard, then to my son's room--and all of that happening in about 20 seconds--it is a very, very small world indeed. We all know one of the forces that brought the Berlin wall crumbling down was the availability of knowledge within the countries of the former Soviet Union and Eastern Europe about what was happening elsewhere, knowledge that they obtained in ways that could not be stopped by the dictators. They obtained it over the radio and they obtained increasingly over the fax machine and the personal computer. So the central roles of the Department of State as I see them are to develop our overall foreign policy and manage the relations our Government has with the governments of other countries. The Department of State, obviously, has extraordinary experience and skill at the work of government-to-government relations. But, as a recent statement by Freedom House put it: ``Public diplomacy--which is to say--our open efforts to win understanding and support among the peoples of foreign countries on matters that affect U.S. national interests--suffers when it is subordinated to the demands of formal diplomacy.'' This Freedom House statement is a remarkable statement for its content and those who have signed it. It lays out in greater detail the argument for the separation of public diplomacy from formal diplomacy. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the Freedom House letter on the USIA be printed in the Record following my remarks.

Mr. LIEBERMAN

Mr. LIEBERMAN. Mr. President, I rise in support of the Ryan White CARE Act. The purpose of the act is to provide health care services in a cost effective way to people with HIV and AIDS. The Ryan White CARE Act is working in my State and throughout the Nation. I am very concerned about any amendment that would undermine the effectiveness of this program. Senate Helms' amendment 1854 would prohibit the use of Federal funding to ``promote or encourage, directly or indirectly, homosexual activities or injection drug use.'' Senator Helms' amendment could be broadly applied and therefore potentially undermine one of the most cost effective Federal programs we have. Under the Helms amendment, it would be difficult to determine what services provided by a clinic would be considered to ``promote or encourage homosexual activities or injection drug use.'' In particular, prevention programs that discuss sexual behaviors that contribute to the spread of AIDS might be judged to promote homosexual activities. Prevention programs that discuss and advocate clean needles for drug addicts might be judged to promote injection drug use. Although the Ryan White Act does not pay for preventive services, clinics that deliver Ryan White-funded health services often have prevention programs. If these clinics which provide comprehensive care to people with AIDS are considered to indirectly promote homosexuality, then these programs could lose funding. That means denying lifesaving medical services for people with HIV and AIDS. Mr. President, doctors, nurses and other health professionals cannot talk about a sexually transmitted disease without also talking about the sexual behaviors that will prevent its spread. It is unclear if this amendment would allow professionals serving the HIV-infected population to talk about sexual behaviors. The ambiguous language of this amendment could damage the protection of public health. Again, let me remind my colleagues that the purpose of this bill is to provide health care to individuals suffering from a terrible, terminal disease. The bill reflects not a moral consensus about homosexuality but a shared compassion for people with AIDS and a commitment to the public's health. Finally, the Ryan White CARE Act makes economic sense. Cost-effective delivery of care keeps AIDS patients out of costly emergency rooms. The public funds provided by Ryan White have been leveraged in my State with private dollars to provide a network of cost-effective services to the HIV-infected population. If we shut off Federal funds to community- based providers because there is a question of whether or not the nature of their services indirectly promotes homosexuality, then we will undermine efforts to limit the spread of AIDS and will shift the burden of caring for people with AIDS on to our already over-burdened public hospitals. (At the request of Mr. Dole, the following statement was ordered to be printed in the Record.)

Mr. LIEBERMAN

Mr. LIEBERMAN. Mr. President, I rise today to honor one of Connecticut's oldest businesses which will be celebrating its 100th anniversary this year: Albert Bros., Inc. In 1891, Nathan and Lewis Albert came to Waterbury, Ct from their native home of Vilna, Lithuania. Traveling by horse and wagon through Connecticut, Nathan and Lewis Albert began their livelihood by selling tin goods and buying scrap metal. In 1895, with the opening of their own scrap yard, Albert Bros., Inc. began. The Albert brothers moved the location of their business several times, finally settling on Judd Street in 1917. One year later, Lewis left the company to manage his own coal and oil business. Spending over 50 years on Judd Street, the company survived the Great Depression and a flood in 1955 and continued to prosper at that location for over three decades. In 1971, the company outgrew the Judd Street location and moved to its present location on East Aurora Street. In the 1980's, Albert Bros., Inc. welcomed the fourth generation of Albert's into the business. With this came yet another prosperous expansion for the company. Currently, Albert Bros., Inc. is one of the largest scrap metal recyclers/processors in New England, operating on both a national and an international level. Albert Bros. has received numerous awards for the quality of its processed scrap, and a variety of awards from the State of Connecticut for its excellence in workplace safety. The success of Albert Bros. can be seen by recognizing its commitment to the people. Therefore, in this year of the 100th anniversary of Albert Bros., Inc., I wish to commend the company for their hard work and dedication.

Mr. LIEBERMAN

Mr. LIEBERMAN. I yield the floor.

Mr. LIEBERMAN. Mr. President, I want to make a comment in regard to the story in the New York Times today referred to by my friend from Virginia, and to talk more broadly for a moment about some of the understandable and very sincere statements that my senior colleague from Connecticut made about the impact of our actions today on our NATO allies. We have been in a historic alliance with the French and British, one of the great alliances of history, which successfully thwarted the advance of Soviet troops into Europe and beyond, and the cold war. Part of what is being played out here--and I do not use that verb lightly--in the former Yugoslavia is the extent to which this great alliance, NATO, remains viable, the extent to which we have common interests or acknowledge that we have common interests, both in protecting stability in Europe and in having NATO be a force for stability in the world, which we continue to need. Mr. President, the last two American administrations, the Bush administration, Republican, and the Clinton administration, Democratic, have either agreed with or gone along with our allies in Europe, particularly the British and the French, in their vision of what was happening in Yugoslavia and what they ought to do and ought not to do to try to stop it. From the beginning, there has been a group of us in Congress on a bipartisan basis that has disagreed with the position of the administrations, the Bush and Clinton administrations, and our allies particularly in Britain and France. As I have said before, this is a Democratic administration, obviously, but Senator Dole stood with me, and I with him and with many others of both parties during the Bush administration in criticizing that administration for standing by and letting this arms embargo continue to be imposed, particularly in response to the appeals of our allies of Britain and France. President Clinton ran for office, as we have said, critical of the Bush administration for its weakness in Bosnia, urging the policy of lifting the arms embargo and then striking from the air. He came into office with that policy. A lot of Members had a high sense of hope. But as this debate has gone on, people say if you vote for this Dole- Lieberman proposal there will be more bloodshed, the war will be Americanized. We have rebutted that and we will again. Do we not have a responsibility to listen to the people whose blood has been shed? What gives us the sense of presumptuousness, of moral paternalism, to say to these people who have lost 200,000 lives, that we are worried that what we are about to do, which they want us to do, give them the weapons to defend themselves, will shed more of their blood? That is preposterous. It is outrageous. Think how we would feel if we were on the other side of this tragedy, attacked, having lost a substantial percentage of our population, watching our families separated, men in this direction, women in that direction, women raped, men slaughtered, refugees all around, torn from our homes because of our religion. How would we feel in trying to fight back against these tanks and heavy artillery, with light weapons on our side, if the world not only stood by and watched this slaughter occurring, but it continued to impose an embargo that meant we could not make it a fair fight, that we could not stand up and fight for our families. Mr. President, these excuses that have been given are really, to me, unacceptable. The Americanization of the war--we have responded to that as we have gone along, too; but what remains is the fact that as we look at this history, we continue to impose this illegal arms embargo. Let me go back to the NATO allies. The allies talked Secretary Christopher out of the lift-and-strike position. The allies had a few months before, earlier in 1992, as a result of the first understanding of the atrocities being committed in Europe, the ITN British television crews going into the concentration camps--I cannot call them anything else. They called them ``detention camps'' at that time--emaciated bodies of men, clearly starving. Yesterday, the International Tribunal in the Hague, authorized by the United Nations, indicted the President of the Bosnian Serbs, Mr. Karadzic and his chief of staff, General Mladic. Among the elements of the indictment is the operation of these detention camps and slaughtering of people. Europeans at that point, very much on their own, felt pressure from world opinion. We, too, instead of responding with the basic and fundamental policy that at long last--this is 1992--give these victims, the Bosnians, the weapons with which to fight back. We did not do that. We maintained the embargo. And instead of using NATO air power to punish the Serbs for their aggression and genocide, what did we do? We sent in--we, at the urging of the Western European allies--sent in the United Nations on a peacekeeping mission where there was no peace, misusing the brave soldiers--British, French, Dutch, Bangladeshi, Jordanian, a whole host of countries that are there, Malaysian--sending them into combat without adequate weapons themselves, making a mistake for which we will pay for a long time, bringing the United Nations down because of the outrageous mission. That was the decision that was supported and led by our allies in Europe. Allies are just like members of the same family--you have disagreements. It is a test of the strength of the family and a test of the strength of this alliance as to whether we can transcend the disagreement and go on and be allies. Understand how this happened--the British and French led the drive to send in the United Nations to assert their own ability to deal with this problem in Europe. It was dealt with in a way that was ambivalent. ``If the sound of the trumpet be uncertain, who will follow into battle?'' Remember the words of the Scripture. The sound of that trumpet was extremely uncertain. No one followed in the battle except the Serbs who saw the weakness and continued the aggression. The policy has continued. The strength of rejection of the policy has grown on a bipartisan basis here in Congress. That is what, I think, will be expressed later today. Now the latest excuse for not acting--at every step we were told, Senator Dole and I, ``Do not lift the arms embargo, they will seize hostages, U.N. personnel.'' The embargo has not been lifted, and hostages were seized. ``Do not lift the embargo, they will attack the safe havens.'' We did not lift the embargo, they attacked the safe havens. The latest excuse is the London communique, an agreement, an expression of strength by the NATO allies to use the might of NATO air power, a warning to the Serbs: Attack Gorazde and you will pay the price. As I have said here before in the last 3 or 4 days, a threat, not a policy to end the war, and a limited threat at that. Only going to one of the four so-called safe areas is sending a clear signal to the Serbs that the other three are open season. In fact, in the last 3 or 4 days, that is exactly what they have done, attacked Sarajevo, Tuzla, and particularly, Bihac. OK, a limited threat, but at least a threat with regard to Gorazde. At least the assertion coming out of the meetings that the dual-key approach was over, that we no longer had to go to the United Nations, that NATO had finally taken control, and this great alliance was working, together, to stop aggression, instability in Europe, and genocide, once again, in this century, against a people, because of their religion. What do we find? Today is Wednesday, 5 days later. Exactly what my friend and colleague, Senator Warner from Virginia, has said. Apparently, it was not as strong a message from London. Apparently, the dual-key approach, where soldiers on the ground have to go to the U.N. politicians to get approval, and over and over, they have gone and been refused the right to strike back at those who are shooting at them. I will read from the article in today's New York Times written from Brussels by Craig Whitney. Far from doing away with the cumbersome ``dual-key'' arrangement that the United States says has hampered NATO's ability to protect United Nations peacekeepers on the ground, the NATO allies in effect have sided with the United Nations Secretary-General Boutros Boutros-Ghali, who has been saying nobody could take his key away from him. The allies agreed to make what one NATO official called a ``strong recommendation'' to Mr. Boutros-Ghali to leave it to his military field commanders on the ground in Gorazde and elsewhere to decide when the time had come to start bombing the Serbs if they attacked. Imagine this. We have gotten ourselves in a position where the strongest military alliance in the world today must make a plea to the Secretary General of the United Nations to allow this strong alliance to strike back at countries, at soldiers, that are not only attacking civilians in safe areas, but are attacking NATO soldiers. Continuing: But since Mr. Boutros-Ghali has been extremely cautious about approving airstrikes in the past, what was meant to sound like a roar in London 4 days ago appeared likely to have been throttled down to something more like a growl by the time NATO ambassadors finished grappling with it in the small hours of Wednesday morning.

Mr. LIEBERMAN. Mr. President, the Senator from Virginia is absolutely right. Yesterday, I was in a meeting with the Democratic Senators which Secretary Perry and Secretary Christopher addressed. I have the highest regard for both of them. It is clear to me--I know they are acting with the best of intentions and sincerity here--that the policy they took and fought so hard for last week in London, and it appeared that they thought was adopted, was clearly not what the British and the French are willing to accept. The paragraph that the Senator from Virginia read is exactly where I was going, which is to say that our allies, presumably having accepted a policy in London on Friday, then at the NATO Ministers' meeting in Brussels yesterday have undercut it and set up Mr. Boutros-Ghali as their instrument to frustrate that. I must say that I do not understand it because they do have troops on the ground. They are the ones who are most vulnerable if the NATO allies are not able to strike back against Serbian aggression. When will they understand that the Serbs will take the--who is smiling, who is laughing most at this story from Brussels? The Serbs are. The signals are clear. ``Do what you want with the three of the four remaining areas, `safe areas,' incredulously titled today. And as for Gorazde, don't worry too much about attacking that either eventually because the West does not have its act together.'' That was just a toothless tiger roaring, or growling, as the article in the Times today said, from London. I want to make two points about this. The first is to my colleagues who are going to vote in a few hours, and it is an important vote. Please read this article. Then I simply do not know how any colleague in good conscience could say that the policy emanating from the London communique is a reason not to vote to lift the arms embargo. This sense that somehow the calvary was coming and, therefore, the victims do not need to defend themselves is not so. It is simply not so. That is not a reason to sustain this illegal, immoral arms embargo. The second point is, and let us acknowledge it, that we continue to have a fundamental difference of opinion--that is, the bipartisan majority here in the Senate, bipartisan majority in the other body-- with our allies in Britain and France. Let us acknowledge it. We acknowledge it. I do not understand how our Western European allies, having gone through two world wars in Europe this century because aggression was not stopped early, can stand by and not see that they have an interest in stopping aggression here before it goes on to Kosovo, and then to Macedonia, which will bring in Greece and Turkey, Bulgaria, Albania, and in the worst of all circumstances will create truly another tragic wider war in the Balkans. But they have apparently not reached that conclusion. Let us acknowledge here what we are saying. We disagree with our allies. Let us acknowledge also that that disagreement puts in doubt, sadly unsettlingly, the viability of this great alliance. I think we have to figure out a way to disagree within the family and still remain strong. We have to figure out a way. Looking back in hindsight I wish that both the Bush and Clinton administrations had figured out a way to lead our NATO allies to a stronger policy, the policy of lifting the embargo and striking from the air. I truly believe that if we had implemented that policy in 1992, the war would be over today. A settlement would have been reached because the Serbs finally would have been given a reason to stop their aggression.

Mr. LIEBERMAN. Yes.

Mr. LIEBERMAN

Mr. LIEBERMAN. I would be glad to.

Mr. LIEBERMAN. No. I agree with Senators and others who have spoken that air power can help but never decide the conflict. But when combined with the considerable Bosnian military force on the ground, finally fully armed, I think it is a winning combination. I say to my friend I note the presence on the floor of the Senator from Georgia. I do not want to impinge on his time. I would simply answer the second question raised about the troops on the ground and the allied nations that I hope that the U.N. mission can be fortified as a result of the London communique. I am doubtful based on the conflicting messages that have come out of late, but it does seem to me the lifting of the embargo does stand separately because it is an illegal and invalid act and it can stand alongside the continued presence of the U.N. troops. However, responding to concerns expressed, I think appropriately, by the Senator from Georgia and others, Senator Dole and I made a substantial change in the proposal to lift the arms embargo from the measure we introduced last year to say the embargo would not be lifted until the allies on the ground had the chance to exit if, in fact, they chose to exit. I will say finally, as the Senator from North Dakota considers how to vote, it seems to me--and I must say of all the reasons given for voting against our proposal, the one that has most profoundly troubled me is the suggestion that it would cause more bloodshed. Here I think we owe it to the victims, those who have shed their blood, to listen to them and not to make a paternalistic judgment for them about what may be better for them. They are the ones who have suffered. I close, finally, with words from a letter of Prime Minister Silajdzic of Bosnia, who said: Our people ask that we be allowed only our right to defend ourselves. It is on their behalf that I appeal to the American people and Government to untie our hands so that we may protect ourselves. The slaughter has gone far enough. My people insist that they would rather die while standing and fighting than on their knees. In God's name, we ask that you lift the arms embargo. I thank the Chair and yield the floor.

Mr. LIEBERMAN. Noting the absence in the Chamber of any colleagues wishing to speak on the other side, I rise to say a few words with the understanding that as soon as or even before I see someone else who wishes to speak, I will yield the floor. Mr. President, this has been, since we began it yesterday afternoon at 2:15 p.m., a very important, very serious, very heartfelt debate, and I thank my colleagues for, no matter which side they are on, appreciating the seriousness of what we are doing here and for reflecting that seriousness in their remarks. I just want to say a few words in closing. Of course, Senator Dole will speak in leader's time a little bit later. No matter what any of those in opposition to the proposal that Senator Dole and I and others of both parties have made, no matter what arguments have been made--that it would cause bloodshed, it would Americanize the war, it would do offense to our allies, all of which arguments I feel we have rebutted--one thing stands out. No one has come to the floor of this Senate to say that the arms embargo is justified or should stay in place. No one has supported the arms embargo. Everyone who has said they will be voting against our measure to lift the arms embargo will do so because of their fear of what might happen--the war might be widened; it does not give a proper opportunity for the London communique, as flawed as Senator Warner and I indicated we believed it was earlier in the morning, or did not give time for the London communique to go into effect. But I have not heard anyone come here and justify the arms embargo, because it is unjustifiable. As Senator Moynihan said, in what might be called an articulation of a natural rights theory of international law, quite valid, to suggest that this is a right of self-defense that must be granted or can be taken away by an international body is wrong. It is conveyed as a right under the charter of the United Nations. I would say under any theory of natural rights that people have individually or acting collectively. Again, remember that it was imposed in 1991 on Yugoslavia, which no longer exists, on the premise that it might help stop a war from breaking out because it would keep weapons from pouring into that area, encouraged--in fact, requested by Milosevic in Belgrade. Why? Because he knew he had a monopoly of the weapons and munitions, supported by a well-meaning world. But what was its justification to support it after war broke out, and after the Serbs invaded Slovenia, Croatia, Bosnia and began to kill and remove from their homes hundreds of thousands of people, millions of refugees? This is an illegal act. It is an immoral act, and has consequences on the victims. And it is invalid. Some have said if we lift this arms embargo, what about the other international policies of sanctions against Iran and Iraq and Libya? Is any Member of the Chamber prepared to compare the behavior of Iran to that of the Bosnian people or Libya to Bosnia or Iraq to Bosnia? And in every other one of those cases, those nations violated international law, international norms. The Bosnians have done no such thing. And they have been the victims of this embargo. Just think if anyone stood up today, the embargo had not been in effect since 1991, and proposed an arms embargo on the nations in the former Yugoslavia, no one would support it. It is so self-evidently unfair, and unfortunately in its consequences brutally deadly. So, I take some heart from the fact that the opposition to the proposal that we have made to lift the arms embargo has not featured anyone saying that the embargo was or is justified in their feature arguments of what might happen if the embargo was lifted. Does the Senator from North Dakota wish to speak?