John Olver

Mr. OLVER

Mr. OLVER. Mr. Speaker, as my colleagues can see, I have been filling in here. So I ask unanimous consent to hand the time over to the gentleman from Maryland (Mr. Hoyer), my distinguished ranking member.

Mr. OLVER. Mr. Speaker, I offer a motion to instruct conferees.

Mr. OLVER

Mr. OLVER. Mr. Speaker, today this people's House is going to vote on a tax cut: the rich get richer. The Republican leadership says their tax cut is for the middle class, but that is clearly not true. Under their plan, 100 million taxpayers whose income falls below $65,000 a year, added together, get less than half the tax relief given to 1.25 million taxpayers whose incomes starts at $300,000 a year and ends at Bill Gates. In fact, under the rich-get-very-much-richer-plan that the Republicans will pass today, the richest 1 percent of Americans will get more in tax cuts than the 95 percent of taxpayers, all 120 million of them put together whose income falls below the income of a Member of Congress. It is pure propaganda to assert that this plan is for working Americans, the middle class, that needs a tax cut. In a Congress where cynicism is the norm, this is the most cynical action I have seen in more than 8 years in Congress. But, it is written in the scriptures: as you sow, so shall you reap.

Mr. OLVER

Mr. OLVER. Mr. Chairman, I yield 30 seconds to the gentlewoman from the Virgin Islands (Mrs. Christensen).

Mr. OLVER. Mr. Chairman, I yield 30 seconds to the gentlewoman from California (Ms. Lee).

Mr. OLVER. Mr. Chairman, I yield 30 seconds to the gentlewoman from California (Ms. Millender-McDonald).

Mr. OLVER. Mr. Chairman, I ask unanimous consent that each side be granted 1 additional minute.

Mr. OLVER. Mr. Chairman, I yield such time as he may consume to the distinguished gentleman from New York (Mr. Rangel), the ranking member.

Mr. OLVER. Mr. Chairman, I offer an amendment made in order under the rule.

Mr. OLVER. Mr. Chairman, I yield myself such time as I may consume. Mr. Chairman, sustained economic growth is desperately needed throughout Africa. Expanded trade between African nations and the United States, which is the goal of the legislation before us today, must be a major part of sustained economic growth. But sub-Saharan Africa is under siege from the HIV-AIDS epidemic. Twelve million people have already died, and 20-plus million are HIV- AIDS infected. I would just ask Members to look at this quickly, at these maps, and imagine first that in 1977 a map like this up here shows not a single case of AIDS identified in the continent of Africa. In this map for 1987 we can see the growth of AIDS, and for 1997 we can see the further growth, with a group of countries in the very dark red where the average AIDS infection rate for people in the working force, between 15 and 49, is average 25 percent, and for all these dark orange countries it is in the range of 15 percent. Mr. Chairman, if we think of that map, that is the very age group that is necessary to build any economy anywhere in this world. So the sense of Congress in our amendment simply states that solving the AIDS crisis should be central to our foreign policy in sub-Saharan Africa; number two, that this crisis is a global threat that warrants greatly expanded effort at all levels, government, private, private-public partnerships, including appropriate legislation by this Congress; and number 3, that progress must be made on prevention and treatment for HIV-AIDS if there is to be any real hope for sustained economic growth or any mutually beneficial trading relationship with the nations in sub-Saharan Africa. Mr. Chairman, I reserve the balance of my time.

Mr. OLVER. Mr. Chairman, I am happy to yield 1 minute to the distinguished gentlewoman from California (Ms. Pelosi), who is also the ranking member of the Subcommittee on Foreign Operations, Export Financing and Related Programs of the Committee on Appropriations.

Mr. OLVER. Mr. Chairman, I am happy to yield 30 seconds to the gentleman from Illinois (Mr. Davis). (Mr. DAVIS of Illinois asked and was given permission to revise and extend his remarks.)

Mr. OLVER

Mr. OLVER. Mr. Chairman, I yield myself such time as I may consume. Mr. Chairman, the gentleman from Ohio (Mr. Hobson) has put a great deal of effort and leadership into this bill, and I thank him. I have also come to appreciate the tremendous job of the staff on both sides for the majority and the minority, the tremendous job and the hours that they put in as a staff, and I want to thank them, as well, but particularly our clerk on the majority side, Liz Dawson, and her assistants, and on the minority side Tom Forhan for the minority side of the Subcommittee on Military Construction. It has not been easy balancing the dollars available against the priority needs for the men and women who serve our Nation, and they have served this subcommittee and this Congress as a total well in their effort. This is a good bill and deserves our support. The military construction bill serves as the guardian of the quality of life of men and women who serve America in the military and their families whose lives are caught up in their breadwinners' service to the country. This bill provides $8.5 billion to address some of the most pressing needs for better workplaces and housing for these men and women in uniform. I wish that we could do more. We have a huge backlog with respect to operational and training facilities, the barracks for the single military personnel, the family housing, the daycare centers, the health facilities. But we find ourselves at the same spending level as last year; in other words, a frozen budget at exactly the same level as the previous year. Still, the gentleman from Ohio (Chairman Hobson) has done an excellent and fair-minded job. In the area of housing, for instance, we all agree that our military families deserve decent housing. The President's budget request put a lot of reliance on the recent family housing privatization program, but that pilot program has had significant problems. Some people see privatization as a quick fix to address the unmet need for quality housing. But there have been false starts, and it is not at all clear that all the specific privatization proposals make long-term fiscal and budgetary sense for us. In the short term, these problems with the privatization program have held up money appropriated for housing; and the delays have really hurt the families that the program is supposed to help. The chairman very deliberately tackled these problems head-on, and I am happy that several projects are now going forward while we take a harder look at the whole program. At the same time, the bill before us here today also includes traditional MILCON housing and I believe keeps the housing program appropriately balanced, as it needs to be. Let me conclude by simply saying that this is a solid bipartisan bill that deserves full support of the members of the committee as a whole and the Congress as a whole. Mr. Chairman, I reserve the balance of my time.

Mr. OLVER. Mr. Chairman, I yield back the balance of my time.

Mr. OLVER. Mr. Chairman, I yield 3 minutes to the gentleman from Texas (Mr. Edwards), who is a member of the Subcommittee on Military Construction.

Mr. OLVER

Mr. OLVER. Mr. Speaker, I rise today to commend a public servant of the highest caliber--Kate Mehr of Amherst, Massachusetts, who currently serves as a White House Fellow. Since 1965, the White House Fellowship Program has called upon outstanding citizens, like Ms. Mehr, who have demonstrated excellence in community service, leadership, and professional achievement. It is the country's most prestigious fellowship for public service and leadership development. The selection process for White House Fellows is very competitive and is conducted by a Commission appointed by the President. Every year, there are 500 to 800 applicants nationwide for 11 to 19 fellowships. Ms. Mehr has demonstrated a long-standing commitment to public service through her involvement with many community-based organizations. Her service and commitment on behalf of the people of Massachusetts have earned her the honor of participating in this prestigious fellowship. Ms. Mehr earned her BA in political science from Amherst College and an MPA from the John F. Kennedy School of Government at Harvard. She is the executive director of the Massachusetts Service Alliance in Boston, a statewide non-profit group. Its mission is to strengthen Massachusetts's communities through service and volunteerism, running over 200 service programs including AmeriCorps and after-school programs. During her tenure, the Alliance has increased state support for services by 750 percent. Her involvement with youth causes in Massachusetts is extensive and impressive. For example, the Governor appointed her coordinator of The Massachusetts Summit: The Promise of Our Youth, the follow up to the President's Summit, and served as a founding member of the Massachusetts, Legislative Children's Caucus. Ms. Mehr was also a victim-witness advocate, tutored a young Cambodian immigrant and was a volunteer basketball coach at a local YMCA. She taught government and history, and coached basketball and golf at the high school level. As a White House Fellow, Ms. Mehr has been assigned to the U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA), where she has been involved in several important hunger initiatives. She is responsible for developing and implementing the Initiative on Community Food Security, which will coordinate the resources of the USDA to assist communities in developing an infrastructure to fight hunger. Additionally, Ms. Mehr serves as a policy advisor to Secretary Dan Glickman on hunger policy and international food assistance programs. She also is planning a USDA Summit on Hunger for the fall of 1999. Mr. Speaker, in recognition of Kate Mehr's remarkable record of professional excellence and community service, I ask my colleagues to join me in saluting her hard work and good citizenship.

Mr. OLVER

Mr. OLVER. Mr. Chairman, I thank the gentleman from Wisconsin (Mr. Obey) for yielding me this time. Mr. Chairman, I would just like to point out here that the amendment that has been offered, and I have the greatest of respect for the gentleman from Iowa (Mr. Latham) and for the gentleman from South Dakota (Mr. Thune) for doing the best they possibly can for their constituents, who are desperate people. People who are on the farms these days are living in desperation for their continued livelihood. I would just like to point out here that the amendment that has been offered by the gentleman from Iowa (Mr. Latham) is one-fifth, only 20 percent, of the amount that is provided for agriculture under the Obey amendment that will be before us very shortly. Not only that, but it is offset. We have a true emergency. We have a true emergency of people who are desperate for being able to continue their livelihood, and that sort of emergency ought to be something where we are willing to provide the money as an emergency in the same way that we are for military purposes here in the underlying bill. In this instance, the Obey bill provides five times as much money, more than what was in the supplemental bill that has already gone over to the Senate and has not been acted on in months. This would move it along, yes, but it ought to be moved on. If my colleagues are not interested in only some sort of a fig leaf, it ought to be moved along with the Obey amendment, because the Obey amendment does something else for other desperate people. It deals with the desperate people in Central America, also an emergency, which happened 7 months ago and which has also been sitting in the Senate for the last several weeks, at least, where the emergency that would allow those desperate people also to get on with their lives and put their lives together, not be immigrating to the United States and such; that they would also be able to move on. I would urge that if my colleagues are not for a fig leaf that they would defeat the amendment that is before them and instead vote for the Obey amendment.

Mr. OLVER. Mr. Chairman, I move to strike the requisite number of words. Mr. Chairman, I oppose the amendment by the gentleman from Oklahoma (Mr. Istook), and I support the passage of the final legislation before us. But first I want to just say, I want to thank the distinguished majority leader for his very eloquent words here not so very long ago in opposition to the amendment. And then I want to make some comments about the earlier comments that have been made by the distinguished chairman of the Committee on the Budget. The gentleman from Ohio (Mr. Kasich) asked the question, ``Is it in our national interest to be in Kosovo?'' And I think, to use his words, that it certainly is in the national interest to be there because we are there as part of the NATO alliance, all 19 countries. It is difficult to keep them together. That is part of the problem, why it is so difficult to keep a process and a strategy that many of us might disagree with. But all 19 are together and they are together at stopping a pathological killer from continuing what is this most odious kind of operation of ethnic cleansing that he has been involved with over an historical period, at least the last 10 years. We heard the gentleman from Virginia (Mr. Wolf), who could have stood at the microphone and regaled us for 2 hours, 2 hours without stopping, with the incidents, one after the other. He gave some of the most graphic ones, but there are others, each as graphic, each as odious or more odious than the last, of the history of what Slobodan Milosevic had done in Croatia and then in Bosnia. But we are talking about Kosovo and it is right there in Kosovo. He has now driven out three-quarters of a million of the citizens of Kosovo. His own Yugoslavian citizens he has driven out. He has been the cause of the burning of hundreds of Albanian ethnic villages where people in the middle of the night were told they must be out within 5 minutes or 10 minutes and then their villages were burned. We could go through a whole series as long as the series in regard to Bosnia or in regard to Croatia, of the whole communities where every man, woman, and child was killed, everybody. We can find a considerable number of others where all the men were separated from the women and the children, and the men and boys from 15 and older, 16 and older, the men have not been seen again. The number that we will find when we get into Kosovo will surprise us all. The distinguished chairman of the Committee on the Budget then gave what I think almost everybody here would agree unanimously are the principles that we are there for, which are, as he put it, that there must be an international force that could provide security so that refugees could return to their homes, homes that they have lived in for in some cases several generations or hundreds of years, and to build democratic institutions in Kosovo. I think we would almost all agree that those are principles that we ought to be for, and almost all of us could agree that those are important principles. I would submit to my colleagues that the adoption of the Istook amendment tonight would make it considerably harder to achieve any one of those principles or all of them in their totality. It would make it much more difficult for NATO, the 19-member alliance in which we have a very strong interest, to achieve what we went there to do, which was to stop the ethnic cleansing, to stop that most odious action, which is rape and expulsion and intimidation and the killing of men, separation of families, the men from the women and children, the separation and the killing of the men. That is why we are there. The adoption of the Istook amendment would make it much more difficult for us to achieve those ends, and I hope the amendment will be defeated.

Mr. OLVER. Mr. Chairman, I thank the gentleman for yielding me the time. Mr. Chairman, the reason we are here today is that the President submitted a request for $6 billion for the Kosovo operation, which would bring us to the end of fiscal year 1999; and that was clearly an unforeseen and unforeseeable circumstance that came up because of the actions of Slobodan Milosevic. Those situations ought to be few and far between, outside the caps, without any offsets, a true emergency. The underlying bill that has come from committee more than doubles the amount from the President's request on a set of premises which are entirely different. It is operating on a premise that goes far beyond, entirely beyond the definition of ``emergency,'' which had been part of the President's request, and much of it is only partly related to Kosovo. On the other hand, we have before us an amendment that has been offered by the minority ranking member, the gentleman from Wisconsin (Mr. Obey), which responsibly but narrowly deals with the Kosovo situation and other emergencies along the way. Who can deny that we look rather foolish in this Congress, and I really am embarrassed by it, that 7 months after what had happened in Central America and 7 months after we truly knew way back in the fall that the problems on our farms were very serious, yet we passed that legislation 3 months ago. It has not moved to a final conclusion, the emergencies relating to Central America and related to the farms, and we have not done anything about it. The Obey amendment deals with both of those issues and also makes certain that the pay increase for our military personnel is funded now, not uncertain as to when and if it will be authorized, but funded now. So it deals with the emergencies in Kosovo, on the farms, in Central America, and our military personnel. I urge support for the amendment.

Mr. OLVER

Mr. OLVER. Mr. Speaker, I come to the floor with an overwhelming sense of sadness that we be debating constraints on America's ability to lead in this world on a most profound issue of human rights. We are a people and a Nation whose very creation was to protect life and liberty against imperial sovereignty. In my view, whatever constrains the 19 nations that comprise NATO from successfully prosecuting this war and successfully degrading the military capacity of the Milosevic regime to conduct ethnic cleansing and successfully returning ethnic Albanian citizens of Kosova to the homes they've lived in for generations is bad policy. It is tough enough to achieve consensus among those 19 nations, from France, Britain, and Italy to Hungary, Luxemburg and Iceland. But a broad consensus exists, a remarkable agreement, that the consummate evil in Europe today is represented by the Milosevic regime's execution of his belief that it has every right to repress, to terrorize, to intimidate, to expel, and, if those fail, to massacre whoever is left, of nearly 2 million citizens of Kosovo, whose only crime is that their religion is Islam. I believe that if NATO had said ``no'' when Milosevic attacked eastern Croatia in 1991, an attack that ended when the defenses of Vukovar were overrun and the people remaining in the hospital were taken from their beds and slaughtered, we would not have witnessed the agony of Bosnia with 200,000 killed and 2 million--fully 50% of the population--displaced from their homes. That agony culminated at Srebrenica where 8,000 men and boys were separated out and slaughtered. And if NATO had said ``no'' when the Milosevic regime killed 200,000 Bosnians and sent 2 million more into exile and into displacement from their homes, then the agony of Kosovo would not have occurred. I believe equally fervently that if NATO is not equally successful in its resolve on Kosovo, that the anti-Milosevic freely-elected government, and, in fact, the very republic status of Montenegro within the rump of federal Yugoslavia, is as good as dead, and that the Milosevic regime will then adopt the destabilization of Macedonia as its next expansionist project. NATO must succeed in this effort, before all the Kosovar males between the ages of 15 and 50 are murdered by the Milosevic regime.

Mr. OLVER

Mr. OLVER. Mr. Speaker, today I am reintroducing the Medicaid Nursing Incentive Act of 1999, and I want to thank the gentlewoman from Connecticut (Mrs. Nancy Johnson) and the 13 other original cosponsors, men and women from all over this country and from both parties, for joining me in this introduction. This bill will provide direct Medicaid reimbursement for all nurse practitioners and college nurse specialists. Each year millions of Americans go without the health care they need simply because physicians are not available to treat them. From the streets of Los Angeles to the hill towns of western Massachusetts and all in between, Americans cannot find physicians who are willing to practice in their urban or small rural communities. There is an exception to this trend, however. Nurse practitioners and clinical nurse specialists often serve in areas where others refuse to work. Federal law requires Medicaid reimbursement only for certified family and pediatric nurse practitioners and certified nurse midwives. Extending Medicaid coverage to all nurse practitioners and clinical nurse specialists, as 22 States have done, makes good common sense. By expanding this coverage, these qualified health professionals will finally be able to provide the care so many of our constituents need.

Mr. OLVER

Mr. OLVER. Mr. Speaker, I rise today to pay honor to the fine work and outstanding public service of a true philanthropist, Mr. Ronald Ansin. On this Saturday, Ron will receive the 1999 National Alexis de Tocqueville Society Award for Community Service, United Way of America's highest honor given for volunteer service. A native of central Massachusetts, Ron graduated from Harvard College cum laude in 1955 and continued his education at Yale Law School graduating in 1958. Both a civic and business leader in Massachusetts, Ron heads two successful companies, the Anwelt Corporation in Fitchburg, Massachusetts and L.B. Evans's Son Co., Inc., in Leominster, Massachusetts. Over the past 30 years, Ron has committed himself to civic and community service on many local, state and national issues. Locally, Ron has been a philanthropic force in North Central Massachusetts, supporting the Thayer Symphony Orchestra, HealthAlliance, Inc., the Fitchburg Art Museum, and local educational institutions including the Applewild School, Fitchburg State College and Mount Wachusett Community College. Ron has been the recipient of the Distinguished Citizen Award from the Boy Scouts of America and has received a Honorary Doctor of Humanities Degree from Fitchburg State College. Within Massachusetts, Ron held the position of the Commissioner of Commerce and Development in the mid-1980's. He also served on a number of state-wide boards and councils including the Governor's Commission on Cogeneration, the Mental Health & Retardation Area Board, and the State Job Training Coordinating Council. Ron currently serves on the American Civil Liberties Union of Massachusetts. Nationally, Ron is the treasurer of the Center of National Policy in Washington, DC, a non-partisan and non-profit public policy think tank. In 1977, Ron served as an industry advisor (footwear) to the Office of the President. Mr. Speaker, few people in public life ever make the type of contributions made by Ronald Ansin. I can sincerely commend Ron as a true humanitarian, a role-model for our youth, and a man worthy of honor and respect. It is only appropriate that the House join me in paying tribute to Mr. Ansin today.

Mr. OLVER

Mr. OLVER. Mr. Chairman, I move to strike the requisite number of words. Mr. Chairman, this has been a long debate already, and it is about a topic that I guess every one of us on both sides of the aisle basically agrees that the human disasters that brought this bill to the floor in the first place were true emergencies. The devastating flood in Central America where Hurricane Mitch left 9,000 dead, 9,000 more missing, 13,000 injured and over 3 million homeless, the region's economy and its infrastructure and its environment has been totally devastated; and the second human disaster, namely the collapse of farm prices here at home, across the heartland of America where rural Americans are losing their farms and their livelihoods and their homes. Under those circumstances, with true emergencies, we could well have funded these emergencies without the shenanigans that are going on here, but this bill finances our response to these crises with offsets which themselves have disaster written all over them, and I would just want to talk about one of these. I support the Obey amendment, which covers four of them, but I particularly wanted to talk about one of them that I consider to be the most dangerous, and that is the cut of $150 million for nuclear disarmament nonproliferation programs with Russia. Last year the Congress provided the Energy Department with $525 million, we have talked about it, to dismantle nuclear warheads, dispose of excess weapons-grade plutonium and enriched uranium, mostly in Russia. Some was actually here in the U.S. Well, this $525 million supports two of the most important ``swords into plowshares'' agreements reached by the United States and Russia since the end of the Cold War. And the critical $200 million of it, although we have had at least one suggestion that we ought to virtually throw out the agreement that is already ready to be signed, which relates to the uranium, but I think that is not a very sensible thing to do, the critical $200 million is to be used to implement a bilateral plutonium agreement to dispose of 50 tons of weapons-grade plutonium that is currently on hand in Russia, 50 tons of weapons-grade plutonium which could make 15,000 to 20,000 nuclear weapons. This $200 million does another job along the way. It leverages the nonproliferation contributions from others of the G-7 countries which are necessary in order if we are ever going to manage to get hold of all the plutonium that is around that might get loose among terrorists and rogue nations. The $150 million cut in these two nuclear nonproliferation programs is an extremely dangerous move, in my view, and it is certainly one that I cannot support. Last week 317 of the Members of this House were concerned enough about the dangers of nuclear proliferation to vote in favor of deploying a national missile defense system that would cost us billions of dollars and do nothing about the possibility of terrorists getting hold of this kind of material. Today we are being asked to endorse a $150 million offset which will make more likely the transfer of weapons-usable plutonium from Russia to rogue nations like North Korea, Iraq, Iran and Libya, and surely make it more likely that it could fall into the hands of terrorists. If we are serious about eliminating nuclear threats to our national security, and this is one way of eliminating a major nuclear threat, we should do all we can to keep nuclear weapons material from ever reaching terrorists or the rogue states. We should not cut the nuclear disarmament and nonproliferation programs. Please support the Obey amendment.

Mr. OLVER

Mr. OLVER. Mr. Chairman, I move to strike the requisite number of words. Mr. Chairman, I rise at this point to speak in favor of the Gejdenson amendment but also to say that I think the original amendment, the Gilman amendment, is an acceptable alternative. I would prefer that we were not doing this. I think tonight the timing is not exactly right, but we are doing it. So in those terms I would ask that we remember the history that has gone on; who it is we are dealing with and what the history of those dealings have been in the period of time that Slobodan Milosevic has been the leader of Yugoslavia. I ask us to remember that Milosevic attacked not one but two members of the United Nations in 1991 and 1992, both Croatia and Bosnia, and it was the regular Yugoslav Army, not indigenous folk, who attacked and destroyed the ancient and beautiful city of Vukovar after a 2-month siege, and in the aftermath of that siege the slaughter included people who were pulled out of the hospital, men and women pulled out of hospital beds and slaughtered at the end of that siege. Their crime was that they happened to live in an area that Milosevic wanted to add to Serbia, but their other crime was that they were Roman Catholics. Then I ask us to remember that Milosevic deployed his regular Yugoslav army, that that was the instrument by which the overwhelming Muslim cities and towns in the Drina River Valley in eastern Bosnia were ethnically cleansed in early 1992. That was when the major ethnic cleansing occurred, early in 1992. Their crime was that they were in a part of Bosnia that Mr. Milosevic wanted to add to Serbia. Their other crime happened to be that they were Muslims. So they were ethnically cleansed, which meant that they were either killed or driven out. I ask us to remember Srebrenica, crowded with refugees, whose only crime really was to have taken the U.N. seriously when the U.N. said that Srebrenica would be a safe haven, but, of course, they also happened to be Muslims. They, 8,000 men and boys, every male in that community, when it was overrun, was slaughtered like pigs in a stockyard. I ask us to remember that Milosevic signed the Dayton Accords in 1995, after it was clear that the tide was running against him. That has been a remarkably successful deployment as peacekeeping. The only area, the major area, where it has been unsuccessful is because Milosevic has violated all of the terms of the Dayton Accords that related to allowing refugees to return. I ask us to remember that Milosevic signed agreements in regard to Kosovo only four months ago and has violated every one of those agreements. There is no difference between the policy that the Milosevic regime has put forward either before or after those signings back in October. So there have been thousands of people killed and another 400,000 refugees have been sent around in various places in Europe. It is that history, that history of dealing with this what my ranking member on the Committee on Appropriations called the psychopathic, psychotic, one of those words, whichever one it was, nature of the leader that we are dealing with. With all of that history, it is the contact powers that have come together and empowered NATO, suggested that they go in and create an atmosphere for peace. NATO has not moved quickly. Those contact powers have not moved quickly before in Yugoslavia and it is only because of the history, the 10 years now virtually of history in dealing with that regime, that they are now acting. I think that it would be a tragedy if we did not support their capacity to act at this time. It is not our part, nor any part, nor any intent of that effort on the part of NATO, to give Kosova independence. What is intended is to stop the killing. It is a mission designed to stop the killing, to impose peace.

Mr. OLVER. Mr. Chairman, I hope in that process, I think everyone hopes in that process, if an agreement can be reached, that it will be possible to see if those people can live together, can live and coexist together. After all that has gone on, all of the repression of the Albanian ethnic majority, now 93 percent of the population of Kosovo is Albanian ethnic citizens of the origination of Yugoslavia, from some time ago, whose autonomy was taken away, and the very policies that Milosevic has followed has led to more Serbs leaving Kosovo. So it is 93 percent Albanian. But I think also, now, in the last year of the 20th century, we ought to look at this century and see that early in this century there was a peaceful divorce of two nations put together, two peoples put together by an agreement that had been made after a war earlier. The Swedes and the Norwegians in 1905, they peacefully divorced. Not a single person was killed in that process. At the end of this century, we have seen the Czech Republic and Slovakia. They were united. There was no separated sovereignty, there was only one sovereignty. They decided to peacefully divorce, and there was not a single person killed in that process. We should be seeking ways of developing a peaceful divorce here, if that is what it comes to, and if it is clear that those people cannot live together peacefully and in fairness and in justice, which is what clearly we are trying to have 3 years to be able to develop over a period of time. So I hope that the Gejdenson amendment will be adopted, and if not, the Gilman underlying amendment, either is acceptable, to allow that kind of policy to go forward.