PEACEKEEPING OPERATIONS IN KOSOVO RESOLUTION
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PEACEKEEPING OPERATIONS IN KOSOVO RESOLUTION
(House of Representatives - March 11, 1999)
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PEACEKEEPING OPERATIONS IN KOSOVO RESOLUTION
Mr. DIAZ-BALART. Mr. Speaker, by direction of the Committee on Rules,
I call up House Resolution 103 and ask for its immediate consideration.
The Clerk read the resolution, as follows:
H. Res. 103
Resolved, That at any time after the adoption of this
resolution the Speaker may, pursuant to clause 2(b) of rule
XVIII, declare the
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House resolved into the Committee of the Whole House on the
state of the Union for consideration of the concurrent
resolution (
H. Con. Res. 42) regarding the use of United
States Armed Forces as part of a NATO peacekeeping operation
implementing a Kosovo peace agreement. The first reading of
the concurrent resolution shall be dispensed with. General
debate shall be confined to the concurrent resolution and
shall not exceed two hours equally divided and controlled by
the chairman and ranking minority member of the Committee on
International Relations. After general debate the concurrent
resolution shall be considered for amendment under the five-
minute rule. The concurrent resolution shall be considered as
read. No amendment to the concurrent resolution shall be in
order except those printed in the portion of the
Congressional Record designated for that purpose in clause 8
of rule XVIII and except pro forma amendments for the purpose
of debate. Each amendment so printed may be offered only by
the Member who caused it to be printed or his designee and
shall be considered as read. The chairman of the Committee of
the Whole may: (1) postpone until a time during further
consideration in the Committee of the Whole a request for a
recorded vote on any amendment; and (2) reduce to five
minutes the minimum time for electronic voting on any
postponed question that follows another electronic vote
without intervening business, provided that the minimum time
for electronic voting on the first in any series of questions
shall be 15 minutes. At the conclusion of consideration of
the concurrent resolution for amendment the Committee shall
rise and report the concurrent resolution to the House with
such amendments as may have been adopted. The previous
question shall be considered as ordered on the concurrent
resolution to final adoption without intervening motion
except one motion to recommit with or without instructions.
The SPEAKER pro tempore (Mr. Burr of North Carolina). The gentleman
from Florida (Mr. Diaz-Balart) is recognized for 1 hour.
Mr. DIAZ-BALART. Mr. Speaker, for the purpose of debate only, I yield
the customary 30 minutes to the gentleman from Ohio (Mr. Hall). During
consideration of this resolution, all time yielded is for the purpose
of debate only.
Mr. Speaker, I yield such time as he may consume to the distinguished
Speaker of the House of Representatives.
Mr. HASTERT. Mr. Speaker, I thank the gentleman from Florida for
yielding me this time. I rise in support of this rule. I would like to
address the House for a few moments on the issue we are preparing to
consider, the possible deployment of U.S. troops to Kosovo.
The President has made it clear that he is committed to sending
approximately 4,000 U.S. troops to Kosovo as part of a NATO force
intended to keep the peace. I am convinced that the President firmly
believes the presence of U.S. troops in Kosovo is essential to
maintaining peace in this troubled area. Like every American, I hope
the Serbs and the Kosovars are able to achieve a peaceful resolution to
their dispute. We all pray for that outcome. Kosovo is a great human
tragedy, fanned by injustice and unexplained hatred.
As a Member of this great body and now as your Speaker, I have never
wavered in my belief and trust in this institution. Some have argued
that we should not have this debate today, that we should just leave it
to the President. Some have even suggested that taking part and talking
about this could damage the peace process. I disagree. No one should
fear the free expression of ideas, the frank exchange of opinions in a
representative democracy. Two weeks ago, the German Bundestag held an
extensive debate and voted on whether or not Germany should deploy over
5,000 German troops in Kosovo. The British Parliament has also
discussed the deployment of British troops in Kosovo. I do not believe
that any harm has been done to the peace process by the workings of
these two great democracies. In fact, one message which should come
from this debate and those held in the parliaments of our allies is
that a free people can disagree without violence and bloodshed.
On this important subject, I have tried to be direct and honest. I
have spoken with the President and with his Secretary of State. I told
them that I believed it was my duty as Speaker to ensure that Members
of the House of Representatives, Republicans and Democrats, have the
opportunity to fairly and openly debate the important issue before
troops are sent into a potentially dangerous situation. I believe
Congress must have a meaningful role in this decision, no matter how
difficult our choice nor how hard our task.
I have been equally honest in telling the President that I personally
have reservations regarding the wisdom of deploying the additional U.S.
troops to the former Yugoslavia, but I have not made up my mind and I
will listen intently and closely to this debate. I hope that each of
you will do the same, because it is our heavy responsibility and high
honor to represent the men and women who are being asked by the
President to go into harm's way. Each of us must be prepared to answer
to their families and loved ones. I am deeply convinced that we owe
them today's debate, for under our Constitution we share this burden
with our President.
Our debate today will enable each of us to carry out our
responsibilities in a fair and thoughtful way. The gentleman from New
York (Mr. Gilman), at my request, has offered without prejudice this
resolution stating the President's position, that troops be deployed. I
urge the adoption of this open rule that allows every Member of this
House to have a say and to amend this resolution. We have set in place
a fair and open process. We are here to discuss sensitive issues of
policy and not personality. And let me repeat, we are here today to
discuss policy and not personality. I know it does not need to be said,
but I urge all Members to treat this issue with the seriousness that it
deserves. We have a solemn duty to perform. And let us do it with the
dignity that brings credit to this great House.
Mr. DIAZ-BALART. Mr. Speaker, I yield myself such time as I may
consume.
Mr. Speaker, House Resolution 103 is a modified open rule providing
for the consideration, as the Speaker of the House has just explained,
of House Concurrent Resolution 42, the Peacekeeping Operations in
Kosovo Resolution.
The purpose of the resolution is to authorize the President to deploy
United States armed forces to Kosovo and just as importantly it makes
possible congressional discussion of this very complex situation.
The rule provides for 2 hours of general debate equally divided
between the chairman and the ranking minority member of the Committee
on International Relations. It is the intention of the rule that the
managers of general debate yield time fairly to Republican and
Democratic proponents and opponents of the concurrent resolution.
Further, the bill provides that the concurrent resolution shall be
considered as read and makes in order only those amendments preprinted
in the Congressional Record, to be offered only by the Member who
caused the amendment to be printed, or his designee, and each amendment
shall be considered as read.
In addition, the rule allows the Chairman of the Committee of the
Whole to postpone votes during consideration of the bill and to reduce
voting time to 5 minutes on votes following a 15-minute vote. Finally,
the rule provides one motion to recommit, with or without instructions.
Mr. Speaker, House Resolution 103 is a fair framework to provide a
forum to debate the issues surrounding the possible deployment of U.S.
troops for participation in a NATO peacekeeping force in Kosovo. Any
Member can offer any germane amendment to this resolution providing the
amendment was preprinted in the Congressional Record prior to its
consideration. The gentleman from California (Mr. Dreier) made this
announcement on Monday, March 8, on the House floor, as well as through
a Dear Colleague letter to Members.
It has been well known, including in fact through constant press
reports, that the House would be debating this difficult issue this
week. In spite of the snowstorm we had on Tuesday, Members have known
for weeks that we would be taking up this issue prior to the March 15
peace talks in France, the deadline. Were it not for this fair rule,
if, for example, we had brought
H.Con.Res. 42 to the floor under
suspension of the rules, it would be nonamendable and would be allowed
only 40 minutes of debate. Therefore, I think it is very important that
Members support this rule, regardless of their position on deployment
or nondeployment of troops, because Congress has every
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right to be debating this resolution today and this rule provides a
fair way to do so.
Some Members as well as other foreign policy experts have questioned
the timing of this debate while peace negotiations have not been
concluded. But if Congress is to deliberate these serious issues prior
to the possible deployment of U.S. troops, now is the time. March 15,
the proposed deadline for a peace agreement for Kosovo, is this Monday,
and U.S. troops could be on their way to Kosovo Monday night if
agreement is reached.
As the gentleman from Florida (Mr. Goss) stated at the Committee on
Rules during our markup, there is no perfect time for this. At least
two of the Members of the six-nation contact group on Kosovo, Germany
and Great Britain, as the Speaker of the House just made reference,
have debated in their parliaments this precise issue this past month.
Now is indeed an appropriate time for the United States House of
Representatives as the sovereign representative body of the American
people to take up the issue of possible deployment of our troops to
join a NATO force.
The situation in Kosovo is indeed precarious. It has now been over a
year since fighting broke out between the Albanian rebels and the
Serbian forces in Kosovo and in spite of an October 1998 cease-fire
agreement, hostilities have continued.
{time} 1145
March 15 is the current deadline for negotiations to be completed on
a peace agreement. What is at issue is the expansion of the U.S. role
in Kosovo and whether U.S. troops should be deployed to participate in
a NATO peace mission should a peace agreement be reached.
Historically it is well known that the Balkans have been a tinder box
for regional wars, and we must not forget that World War I began in
that part of the world.
In 1995, as a member of the Committee on Rules, I brought to the
floor the Bosnia-Herzegovina Self-defense Act to end the arms embargo
on Bosnia. That embargo was morally wrong, and I believe that it was
legally questionable as well from the very beginning. While not
contiguous with Bosnia, where U.S. troops are currently deployed, the
dangers of a spill-over effect and renewed violence in the region have
been realized in the Serbian province of Kosovo. I am extremely
concerned by the genocidal attacks on civilians in Kosovo. As a British
statesman said while debating the situation in the Balkans:
No language can describe adequately the condition of that large
portion of the Balkan peninsula, Serbia, Bosnia, Herzegovina and the
other provinces, political intrigues, constant rivalries, a total
absence of public spirit, hatred of all races, animosities of rival
religions and an absence of any controlling power, nothing short of an
army of 50,000 of the best troops would produce anything like order in
these parts.
That statement was made by Prime Minister Benjamin Disraeli in
October 1878. Unfortunately his words still ring true today.
In summary, the Congress, Mr. Speaker, has every right to debate
whether we should put U.S. troops in harm's way before they are sent.
That is the reason for today's debate.
I urge my colleagues to support this fair rule so that the House will
have the opportunity to debate this very critical issue regarding the
possible deployment of our troops to Kosovo. I would urge my colleagues
to support the rule.
Mr. Speaker, I reserve the balance of my time.
Mr. HALL of Ohio. Mr. Speaker, I yield myself such time as I may
consume.
Mr. Speaker, I want to thank the gentleman from Florida (Mr. Diaz-
Balart) for yielding me the time. This is a modified open rule. It will
allow for consideration of House Concurrent Resolution 42 which, as my
colleagues have heard, is a resolution authorizing the President to
deploy United States troops to Kosovo. As my colleague has described,
this rule provides for 1 hour of general debate to be equally divided
and controlled by the chairman and ranking minority member of the
Committee on International Relations. The rule permits amendments under
the 5-minute rule, which is the normal amending process in the House.
Under this rule, only amendments which have been preprinted in the
Congressional Record will be in order.
The Committee on Rules has crafted a rule which at another time would
be acceptable. However I believe that the Kosovo resolution should not
be brought up at this time. Therefore I will oppose the previous
question so that the rule can be amended.
For most Americans Kosovo and Serbia are only distant points on the
globe, but that is not so for the community of Dayton, Ohio, the
community which I represent, because it was my community of Dayton that
hosted the peace talks in 1995 that led to the fragile peace that we
are trying to preserve. Today there is continued unrest between the
Serbians and the Albanians in Kosovo. The conflict has already left
more than a thousand civilians dead and as many as 400,000 homeless. If
left unchecked, the turmoil could lead to a broader war in Europe.
However there is hope. Sensitive peace talks are taking place in the
region. Through the efforts of Bob Dole the Albanians appear to be
ready to sign a peace agreement. The United States and its allies
continue to press the parties to restore peace to the region.
My concern with this resolution is not whether Congress has the right
to authorize the commitment of U.S. troops; we have that right. My
concern with this resolution is whether it is in our national interest
to take it up today in the middle of the peace talks that appear to be
succeeding.
Yesterday at the hearing of the Committee on Rules the gentleman from
Connecticut (Mr. Gejdenson), who is the ranking Democratic member of
the House Committee on International Relations warned against bringing
this resolution to the House floor today. He testified that it
seriously undermines the prospects for reaching peace in the region and
could lead to more warfare.
Secretary of State Madeleine Albright sounded a similar note of
alarm. Yesterday she testified before the Subcommittee on Commerce,
Justice, State, and Judiciary that this vote will be taken as a green
light for the warring parties to continue fighting.
During the Committee on Rules consideration the gentleman from
Massachusetts (Mr. Moakley), the ranking Democratic member, offered an
amendment to the rule postponing consideration of the resolution until
the end of the current peace negotiations, and that amendment was
defeated on a straight party line vote. Mr. Moakley also offered an
amendment to the rule making in order a floor amendment by the
gentleman from Connecticut (Mr. Gejdenson) supporting the peace process
and authorizing the deployment of troops if a fair and just peace
agreement is reached. The amendment was also defeated on a straight
party line vote.
Perhaps when the time comes under the right conditions Congress
should support the deployment of troops to Kosovo, and perhaps when the
time comes Congress should oppose the move. But the time is not today.
We in Dayton, Ohio, know about peace negotiations in Kosovo and
Serbia. We know how sensitive they can be. We also know how important
they can be because for a brief moment the negotiations of the 1995
accord lived in my community. Let us let the administration negotiate a
peace without Congress sending the wrong signal, and we should not
bring up the resolution today.
If the previous question is defeated, I will offer an amendment to
the rule which will permit the Kosovo resolution to come up only after
the two parties have signed the agreement on the status of Kosovo. The
delay is necessary to ensure that the actions of the House do not
interfere with the peace negotiations in Kosovo.
Before concluding I want to express my appreciation to the gentleman
from California (Mr. Dreier) and to the Republicans on the Committee on
Rules for keeping this a relatively unrestricted rule and for
permitting the motion to recommit. I am heartened by the bipartisan
spirit in which gentleman from California (Mr. Dreier) approached this
rule, and I believe this sends a positive signal at the beginning of
this Congress. Our differences are not in the crafting of the rule,
only in the timing.
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Mr. Speaker, I reserve the balance of my time.
Mr. DIAZ-BALART. Mr. Speaker, I yield 4 minutes to the distinguished
gentleman from Florida (Mr. Goss), a member of the Committee on Rules
and chairman of the Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence.
(Mr. GOSS asked and was given permission to revise and extend his
remarks.)
Mr. GOSS. Mr. Speaker, I thank my colleague from Florida for yielding
me this time.
Mr. Speaker, today the House will debate whether to send U.S. troops
to Kosovo, an issue that may seem to have little relevance to the lives
of many Americans in this time of very blue skies in this country which
we are fortunate to enjoy. But appearances aside, the decisions we make
about Kosovo will affect the course of the United States and our allies
in the world over the next several years.
This matters. It is a critically important debate, and I urge Members
to give it their most thoughtful attention.
Some may question whether this is the right time for a congressional
debate, as we have already heard, about sending U.S. troops to Kosovo.
Once an agreement is reached, the Clinton administration has announced
that it will deploy troops forthwith to begin enforcement of the
agreement. So when is the right time to debate the issue? The answer is
before our men and women in uniform are placed in harm's way.
I am concerned that the administration tends to place U.S. troops
into a dangerous situation where they are unwelcomed by both parties
and do not have clear marching orders. Serbian President Milosevic, an
unsavory strong man in my view, refuses to accept the presence of
foreign troops on Serbian soil, and the Kosovar rebels on their part
refuse to give up their ultimate goal of independence from Serbia. Of
even greater concern is the possibility that the NATO mission may have
the unintended consequence of destabilizing the region by encouraging
separatism in neighboring areas, a situation we are already familiar
with.
Mr. Speaker, there is no question that the humanitarian crisis in
Kosovo cries out for international attention and assistance. But the
real question is: How should the United States of America respond? Is
the answer always the commission of U.S. forces no matter what?
Listening to the Clinton administration, we would think that bombing
and deployment of troops is the only solution available to us.
I am also concerned about the implications of the administration's
Kosovo plans on the future of NATO. For several years NATO has been
grappling with its role in the post cold war period. The
administration's headlong rush to support deployment of NATO troops
outside the treaty area risks damage to the delicate consensus that
underlies the alliance.
In April at NATO's 50th anniversary to be celebrated here in
Washington the Alliance will announce its new strategic concept for the
direction and mission of NATO. Will this document explain why NATO must
intervene in Kosovo, an area outside the treaty boundary, but not
intervene in an area, say, in Africa where there is genocide and a
civil war going where human suffering is just as great.
Mr. Speaker, when President Clinton first proposed sending U.S.
troops to Kosovo, he laid out the following criteria: a strong and
effective peace agreement with full participation by both parties, a
permissive security environment, including the disarmament of the
Kosovar power militaries and a well-defined NATO mission with a clear
exit strategy. These criteria are a good starting point for the
congressional consideration.
Later today I or others may offer amendments to this resolution to
ensure that these criteria and other equally important ones are met
before U.S. troops are sent to Kosovo.
Before I vote to support sending our men and women in uniform to
Kosovo, people in my district want to know the exit strategy as well as
the entry strategy. They want to know how this fits into our national
interest, and they want to know the costs. These are basic questions
that we in Congress should raise so that the American people are fully
informed. Getting answers from the administration is part of our job
description, especially when the use of our men and women in uniform is
involved.
This rule provides for full debate. I urge its support.
Mr. HALL of Ohio. Mr. Speaker, I yield 3 minutes to the gentleman
from Michigan (Mr. Bonior).
Mr. BONIOR. Mr. Speaker, I thank the gentleman from Ohio (Mr. Hall)
for yielding me the time, and again I rise to say that the timing of
this resolution could not be worse, not the fact that we are debating
it. I think the fact that they have allowed a debate and under a
generally open rule is a positive sign, as my friend from Ohio has
stated. But having this debate and having this vote in the midst of
negotiations makes little sense and, in fact, undermines those
negotiations.
Mr. Speaker, I think it is important for us to review where we have
been in the Balkans. In Bosnia tens of thousands of people lost their
lives, thousands of women were raped, hundreds of thousands of people
displaced from their home before we had the courage to finally say no,
and within the past year in Kosovo we have had 2000 people killed, we
have had 400,000 people displaced in Slobodan Milosevic's genocidal
campaign of violence and human rights abuses against the 2 million
ethnic Albanians.
Mr. Speaker, this is not the time to have this resolution on the
floor of the House. On the 15th of January, at Racak, Serbian special
police shot at least 15 ethnic Albanians including elderly people and
children. Human Rights Watch has evidence suggesting that the Serbians
had, and I quote, ``direct orders to kill village inhabitants over the
age of 15.'' In Rogovo, just 2 weeks later Serbian police raided a
farming village and executed 25 people.
This has gone on for a year, it has gone on for more than a year, but
within the last year we have seen these numbers rise to 2,000 people.
Why would Milosevic do anything but stall, not agree to a peace
agreement, if the United States Congress says in a vote later today, if
this rule passes, that we, in fact, will not deploy troops? We will be
giving him a green light, and we will be seeing more Racaks, we will be
seeing more slaughters as we saw in Rogovo, and we will be in an
unvirtuous circle of islands in which we undoubtedly will have to
revisit again on this House floor.
Just today, while Richard Holbrooke was talking with Milosevic
yesterday, violence continued, and there is a picture in the New York
Times showing the deaths of people in the village of Ivaja in Kosovo.
{time} 1200
This slaughter must stop, and the way to stop it is to stop this
resolution from coming to the floor of the House, and we can do that by
voting against the rule. Arthur Vandenberg once said that politics
should stop at the water's edge when it comes to foreign policy. Bob
Dole asked us not to do this yesterday. Let us not do this. Let us stop
here. Vote no on this rule. Then we can have a good debate on this
issue when the issue comes before us when an agreement occurs in this
troubled land.
Mr. DIAZ-BALART. Mr. Speaker, I yield 2 minutes to the distinguished
gentleman from Georgia (Mr. Linder).
Mr. LINDER. Mr. Speaker, I thank the gentleman from Florida (Mr.
Diaz-Balart) for yielding.
Mr. Speaker, I rise in support of
H. Res. 103, the rule providing for
consideration of the resolution regarding peacekeeping operations in
Kosovo. This rule ensures a free and open debate and provides Members
the opportunity to have their voices heard on this very important
matter involving the lives of our troops.
The modified open rule passed the House Committee on Rules and it did
not provide any preferential waivers. It allows for all germane
amendments and complies with the request of the gentleman from
Connecticut (Mr. Gejdenson), who requested that all amendments be
preprinted in the Congressional Record.
The passage of this rule will, I admit, lead to a wide open
discussion on a very public issue, with the prospect of counter
argument and earnest debate. I welcome that debate and I expect it to
be an extraordinary exchange of ideas and opinions.
I will be honest in stating that I have grave reservations about the
deployment of American troops in Kosovo,
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but I also do not see anything wrong with giving Members the
opportunity to listen closely to the arguments on each side of the
debate.
Our allies, Great Britain and Germany, have deliberated and engaged
in this debate already, and that leads us to the question underlying
the rule we are discussing today: Should the United States House of
Representatives have the opportunity to participate in the decision to
deploy our troops in Kosovo and debate it today?
My personal view is that it would be better if we did not. I would
prefer that this resolution inform the President that we are unwilling
to fund his adventurism without clear rules of engagement, exit
strategies, specific goals and a budget. We have a constitutional
responsibility to participate in decisions putting our troops in harm's
way. I do believe that would better be the question before us.
Having said that, I urge Members to support the fair rule that will
initiate a full and open debate regarding the deployment of young
Americans' lives in a dangerous foreign land.
Mr. HALL of Ohio. Mr. Speaker, I yield 3 minutes to the gentleman
from Missouri (Mr. Skelton), who is the ranking member of the Committee
on Armed Services.
Mr. SKELTON. Mr. Speaker, I thank the gentleman from Ohio (Mr. Hall)
for yielding to me.
Mr. Speaker, I speak against the rule. I will vote against the rule.
I am deeply concerned that taking this matter up now in the midst of
negotiations between the opposing parties, the Kosovars and Milosevic's
people, will cause great harm and great damage to the negotiating
process.
Should what we do today cause there to be no agreement, we would have
lost, Europe would have lost and there will be continued bloodshed and
anguish in Kosovo. I think it is wrong to take this up now. It is
untimely. It is improper to do so.
Secondly, as it was mentioned by my friend, the gentleman from Ohio
(Mr. Hall), I am the ranking member on the Committee on Armed Services.
This deals with the military of the United States of America.
We in our committee should have had the opportunity to have had a
hearing to find out what troops, under what conditions and if there is
a possibility of saving some other deployments because we are short on
troops today. These are questions that we in our committee should have
had the opportunity to ask, a full and fair hearing in the Committee on
Armed Services, which we did not have.
Thirdly, I would like to mention that I also have an amendment,
should this rule carry, which I hope in all sincerity it does not. I
will have an amendment that requires that there be an agreement between
the parties before any American troops are allowed to go into Kosovo.
That is the bottom line. Right now, bringing up this resolution is
improper and uncalled for because it could very well change the
agreement, cause there not to be an agreement and cause confusion in
that part of the Balkans.
I wish that everyone could have been with me to witness the four-
starred German general who is the second in command at NATO a few weeks
ago when I asked him why is it important that America be involved in
Europe and in NATO?
His answer was a full and complete one, which said it is important
that America be there. I think that if America should be there, we
should have the opportunity to do it the right way, the right time and
under the right resolution and the right vote.
Mr. DIAZ-BALART. Mr. Speaker, I yield 2 minutes to the distinguished
gentleman from North Carolina (Mr. Coble).
(Mr. COBLE asked and was given permission to revise and extend his
remarks.)
Mr. COBLE. Mr. Speaker, I thank the gentleman from Florida (Mr. Diaz-
Balart) for yielding.
Mr. Speaker, I usually vote consistently in favor of rules, and I may
vote for this rule, but I am opposed to our dispatching troops to
Kosovo, not unlike my friend, the gentleman from Missouri (Mr. Skelton)
who just spoke.
I recall Bosnia. The President told us our troops would be back home,
I believe, by December 1996. Well, when I last checked, December 1996
has come and long gone and our troops are still there. I was uneasy
about it because I could not grasp the importance of our national
security vis-a-vis Bosnia. Now Kosovo is on the screen and, unlike
Bosnia, as best I remember it, I do not think we have even been invited
to come to Kosovo.
Given these two situations, I don't mean to portray myself as an
isolationist but to suggest that Bosnia and Kosovo are European
problems that should be resolved by Europeans hardly constitutes
isolationism. It is isolationism light at its best, if that.
I just believe that we do not need to insert our oars into those
waters, and I don't mean to come across as uncaring or indifferent to
the problems plaguing Europe, but doggone it, it is indeed a European
problem.
Let our European friends handle it unless it becomes a situation that
causes United States national security to be exposed.
Now, absent that, Mr. Speaker, and my colleagues on both sides, I
think we need to go about our business here. Let our friends across the
water, as my late grandma used to say, let them resolve those problems.
Mr. HALL of Ohio. Mr. Speaker, I yield 2 minutes to the gentleman
from Texas (Mr. Ortiz)
Mr. ORTIZ. Mr. Speaker, I rise today as a member of the House
Committee on Armed Services to oppose the rule allowing the House to
consider House Resolution 42 regarding Kosovo.
I want to say this in the strongest possible terms, considering this
vote today is so ill-timed as to adversely affect the peace
negotiations ongoing in the Balkans. It has taken us so long to build
the coalition that we have been able to build in that part of the
world, and we understand this. This Congress says they have the
obligation to ensure that the diplomats in the region exhaust all
possible means in their negotiations.
Like the gentleman from Missouri (Mr. Skelton), I wish that we had
been able to debate this issue in the committee before it came to the
House floor to see what the needs are, how many troops, the equipment.
So I think that it has all been done in good faith but it is ill-timed.
We also have a unique responsibility in this situation, as we do in
most global spots. We are the world's only remaining superpower. We
have more and better military might than any other country in the
world. If we are indeed the only remaining superpower, then that status
brings certain obligations and responsibilities. This is why I say, let
us discuss it further.
I just got back from Bosnia 4 days ago. The morale of our troops is
high and, not only that, they believe in the mission that they are
conducting in that part of the world. They said for the first time we
have seen young children play in the parks, play in the streets, go to
school. So please help us defeat this rule.
Mr. DIAZ-BALART. Mr. Speaker, I yield 2 minutes to the distinguished
gentleman from California (Mr. Cunningham).
Mr. CUNNINGHAM. Mr. Speaker, this is exactly the time to have this
discussion, exactly the time. It may not be the time for negotiators
and bean counters but it is for our troops.
I remember Somalia, where the President did not come to Congress when
he changed going after Aideed, and we lost 22 rangers because they
failed to give armor which the military wanted; or Haiti, that we are
today spending $25 million a year in building schools and roads out of
the defense budget.
Kosovo is like any of the United States is to Greater Serbia. It is
not a separate entity. It is the birthplace of the Orthodox Catholic
religion. It is their home. It was occupied by 100 percent Serbs, and
the Turks and the Nazis eliminated and desecrated and ethnically
cleansed Jews, Gypsies and Serbs and now the population is Albanian.
Albania does not want just Kosovo. They want part of Greece. They
want Montenegro. This is only a beginning.
Listen to George Tenet's brief. Bin Laden is working with the KLA,
the terrorists, that is going to hit the United States. If we do not
want to stop this, then do not talk about it, but if we go in there, we
are going to lose a great number of people. For what? They have been
fighting for 400 years.
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This debate is well timed. Maybe not for my colleagues on the other
side but for the kids that have to put those backpacks on and carry
rifles. It is the time to stop this.
Take a look at the number of military deployments. It was 300 percent
during the height of Vietnam. We are killing our military as it is, and
we have one-half the force to do it. That is why they are bailing out.
This is exactly the time, Mr. Speaker, and I reject the other side.
Mr. HALL of Ohio. Mr. Speaker, I yield 1 minute to the gentleman from
North Dakota (Mr. Pomeroy).
Mr. POMEROY. Mr. Speaker, I strongly object to this rule which will
provide for the House to debate the U.S. involvement in the Kosovo
peace agreement. The reason I object to consideration of this issue at
this time is that as of today, there is no peace agreement and the
process leading to the arriving at a peace agreement is at a terribly
tenuous, sensitive and delicate stage.
{time} 1215
We have all read with horror about the atrocities committed in
Kosovo. Innocent civilians, including little children, have been
savagely and brutally murdered. For the sake of humanity and decency,
we all want this butchery to end. It will require a peace agreement to
end this killing. Our taking up the resolution now while the
deliberations are still underway can only make it more difficult to
resolve this.
Yesterday, former Majority Leader Bob Dole gave advice to the
Committee on International Relations. He says, ``We have 2 steps here.
First, we get an agreement, then the President goes to the American
people to explain it.''
Mr. Speaker, I think we must follow Majority Leader Dole's advice.
Defeat this rule and let the deliberations leading to peace be
concluded.
Mr. DIAZ-BALART. Mr. Speaker, I yield 2 minutes to the distinguished
gentleman from Colorado (Mr. McInnis).
Mr. McINNIS. Mr. Speaker, I appreciate the gentleman from Florida
yielding me this time.
The preceding speaker talked about the tragedies that are going on.
Mr. Speaker, those kinds of tragedies are going on throughout the
entire world. This country cannot be the world's police officer. We do
have international commitments, but before we exercise these
commitments, we need to look at the precedents, what we have done in
regards to these kinds of situations.
Number one, we have never gone into the sovereign territory of
another country like this without being invited to settle a dispute
within their boundaries. This is a very similar situation. If the State
of Colorado that I am from got in a dispute with the State of Texas,
would we invite the Turks or the Greeks or NATO to come in and resolve
the dispute between Colorado and Texas?
There are atrocities occurring in Kosovo. It is a proper mission for
humanitarian efforts. It is not a proper mission to intervene with
American military troops that will be there on an indefinite basis. Do
not kid ourselves. It is an indefinite basis.
Look at Cyprus, the United Nations. I just came from Cyprus. United
Nations troops have never been able to make the peace there. They have
been able to keep the peace because of the fact they have troops there.
They have been there for 27 years. It is the same thing here. We are
attempting as outsiders to intervene within the boundaries of a
sovereign country to resolve a dispute that is based in large part on
religion, in large part on nationality; a dispute of which we have very
little historical knowledge; we certainly have very little historical
experience, and we think by force and sending in troops we are going to
make peace. We are not.
We are going to be able to keep the peace. As long as we have troops
in Kosovo, we can keep peace. But we cannot, we do not have the
capability to take hundreds of years of battle and hundreds of years of
rock-solid feelings and force them into a peace agreement.
Finally, Mr. Speaker, let me wrap up by saying that some would
suggest that this is not an appropriate time for delay. This is an
appropriate time for delay before the troops go in. Do not debate after
the troops are in; do it before the troops are in.
Mr. HALL of Ohio. Mr. Speaker, I yield 3 minutes to the gentleman
from New York, (Mr. Engel).
Mr. ENGEL. Mr. Speaker, I thank my friend from Ohio for yielding me
this time.
Mr. Speaker, I have spent as much time as anyone over these past 10
or 11 years dealing with the problem in Kosovo. I want to tell my
colleagues as far as I am concerned this is a wrong rule and the wrong
resolution at the wrong time, and it should be defeated. I have hardly
seen anything more irresponsible, quite frankly, in my 10 plus years
here than this resolution and this rule.
As far as I am concerned, this is an attempt to embarrass the
President, this is mischief-making at its worst, and it undermines
American foreign policy, it undermines the negotiations going on. I
returned from Rambouillet 3 weeks ago, and I can tell my colleagues
that if we pass this rule and the resolution offered by the gentleman
from New York (Mr. Gilman) goes down to defeat, as I suspect it will,
this will destroy the negotiations and destroy the peace process, and
we will be responsible for that.
The Speaker of the House, the gentleman from Illinois (Mr. Hastert)
came and said that this was an open process, and I think he was a bit
disingenuous, quite frankly. He says that he wants to meet Democrats
halfway. We have not seen that meeting us halfway on committee ratios,
we have not seen it on funding, and now the Democrats are pleading, the
administration is pleading and saying please postpone this vote until
there is an agreement, and we cannot even get a postponement on the
vote.
Senator Dole was quite eloquent yesterday. He said, quite simply,
first we get an agreement and then we go before Congress to ratify the
agreement. We do not do it the other way around. Senator Dole has also
spent more time than anybody in terms of Kosovo, and he thinks this
will be very damaging. Everybody that has worked in this process thinks
it will be very, very damaging.
There is no reason to do this kind of thing now, except to embarrass
the President politically and undermine U.S. foreign policy. This is
absolutely irresponsible. It will damage the peace process.
Let me remind my colleagues that foreign policy should be bipartisan.
I was one of those Democrats that voted with President Bush and
supported him in the Persian Gulf War when he asked for bipartisanship.
Now that the shoe is on the other foot, we get very little of it from
the other side. All I know is that in Kosovo there is genocide, ethnic
cleansing and killing, and it needs to stop, and if the United States
Congress votes against sending troops to Kosovo, Slobodan Milosevic,
the butcher of Kosovo, will laugh and laugh and laugh, because we will
have given him cover.
The Albanians, who have agreed to the agreement will back off,
because without strong American participation they will not have the
fortitude; they only trust the United States of America. We have seen
time and time again, we saw it in Bosnia, 200,000 people were
ethnically cleansed, and until the United States grabbed the bull by
the horns and showed the leadership in NATO, people were being killed
and genocide was happening again on the face of Europe. And when the
United States grabbed the bull by the horns, only then did it stop, and
it is the same situation here. It is disingenuous of my colleagues to
say they want the killing to stop, but they do not want to support
American troops as part of NATO on the ground.
Without our participation, the killing will continue and the ethnic
cleansing will continue.
Defeat this rule. It is nothing more than mischief making and it does
not do this Congress good service at all.
Mr. DIAZ-BALART. Mr. Speaker, I yield myself such time as I may
consume.
I feel obliged to reject the allegation that Congress would be
responsible for atrocities based on the fact that we are bringing forth
this resolution as a sovereign representative body of the American
people. I am unaccustomed to citing, to quoting The Washington Post,
Mr. Speaker, but I feel at this time that I must.
The Washington Post editorial today says, ``It is a bad time for
Congress to
[[Page
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debate whether the United States should send troops to help police any
peace reached in Kosovo. But there is no better time left, and Congress
has good reason to proceed.''
The Washington Post continues by saying, ``The President ought to be
asking forthrightly for congressional approval, not trying to evade a
congressional judgment on his policy in Kosovo.''
So with all respect, I tell my colleagues that it is not fair, based
on a policy disagreement, which is genuine and which is most
appropriate to say that we would be responsible for atrocities or
horrors that are based on unexplainable and historical reasons in that
part of the world.
Mr. Speaker, I yield 4 minutes to the gentleman from New York (Mr.
Gilman), the distinguished chairman of the Committee on International
Relations.
(Mr. GILMAN asked and was given permission to revise and extend his
remarks.)
Mr. GILMAN. Mr. Speaker, I thank the gentleman for yielding me this
time.
Mr. Speaker, I am pleased to rise in support of the rule,
H. Con.
Res. 42, authorizing deployment of our U.S. armed forces in Kosovo. It
provides for a clear general debate, and then opens this measure up to
amendments from any member, as long as these amendments were preprinted
in the Record.
I understand that some 53 amendments have been filed and some are
duplicates and I expect the debate will focus on authorizing the
deployment, requiring reports, praising the negotiations, praising our
troops, or prohibiting the deployment. This debate will fulfill our
historic constitutional and legal mandate given by our Founding Fathers
to put the war powers in the hands of the Congress, not the President.
We have called for this because as I understand it, the President
does not want us to vote prior to the conclusions of the ongoing Kosovo
negotiations, and will deploy troops within 48 hours of the agreement,
as he has indicated that he will deploy some 4,000 troops to support
the agreement. And if we were to vote subsequent to deployment, we
would risk undercutting our troops in the field.
According to the Secretary of State, the people's elected
representatives should not vote before deployment and to avoid
undercutting the troops, we should not vote after deployment. That must
not be so. The elected representatives of the people must vote on this
risky mission.
From some of the past conflicts up to and including Desert Storm,
Congress has voted on deployment of our troops and when we did so, we
strengthened our Nation's resolve and our diplomacy.
I believe we must have this vote to require the President to clarify
our mission and to bring the American people into the debate that could
put our uniformed personnel in harm's way.
I want to state that I support this resolution. I support the
deployment of troops to Kosovo, provided they enter Kosovo in a
permissive environment and with agreed-on conditions of the contact
group. With such conditions, I would support our President's commitment
to guaranteeing peace in Kosovo.
To quote the editorial that was just cited by our good colleague from
Florida, the editorial in today's Washington Post entitled ``Bring
Congress In,'' and I quote, ``It takes a bold decision for Bill Clinton
to bring Congress in as a partner this Kosovo, and he should not shy
away from it.''
Mr. HALL of Ohio. Mr. Speaker, I yield 3 minutes to the gentleman
from Connecticut (Mr. Gejdenson), who is the ranking minority member on
the Committee on International Relations.
Mr. GEJDENSON. Mr. Speaker, first let us get straight where we are.
There is no constitutional requirement that the United States Congress
take action prior to the President putting troops into a peacekeeping
situation. This is not initiating a war; this is not moving troops in
an area where we anticipate war. These are peacekeeping operations, and
we have troops all over the world in peacekeeping operations without
having gotten prior congressional approval.
Let us also get rid of some of the arguments that we have heard here
on the floor that we are going to let the Europeans take care of that.
That was tried. The previous administration waited for Europe to
respond to the crisis in Yugoslavia. Mr. Speaker, 200,000 people
murdered, raped, killed in their homes, in open fields, maybe not
reaching the numbers of other mass murders in this century, but
certainly enough that the American people felt that we could no longer
wait, and this President led our effort to end that slaughter.
Burden sharing. We have never had an action where the United States
is to play such a small role in the number of people on the ground;
that in every other action, American forces were there in larger number
and in this case the Europeans are, for the first time in my memory,
accepting a larger responsibility. When we look at the statements, not
just of Ambassador Kirkpatrick and Senator Dole who are clearly in
favor of the President's policy, and in particular Senator Dole
deserves great praise for his actions, his efforts, going to the region
and the work he has done. But even Secretary Kissinger, who has written
in opposition to the policy, was very hesitant to suggest that anybody
should interpret from his article that they should vote against this
resolution.
{time} 1230
What is the right thing to do? The right thing to do, as Senator Dole
said, is first have an agreement and then have a vote. Because if we do
not do it that way, as again Senator Dole said, if we have the vote
first and we fail to pass it, we will probably not have an agreement.
It is an awfully hard place to get an agreement in the first place.
Without all the support from Congress, with the unanimity of the
American people, expressed by 435 Members of this House voting in favor
of the President's actions, it will be exceedingly difficult to achieve
a goal of peace in that area.
But with the actions that we take today, even if we pass it, but with
a small number, it will encourage Milosevic and others who object to
the peace process, who want to see battle continue, and who care not
for the lives on the ground.
I do hope this is a sincere effort where we differ. I sure hope that
we do not see a unified rejection of the negotiations that are going on
today because it is a Democratic President. Speaker Foley, when he sat
in this House, held up the vote on the Persian Gulf for months at the
request of the President of the United States, George Bush. He waited
until the troops were there and ready, and then, with agreement from
the administration, held a vote.
We are asked to vote before there is an agreement, before there is a
conclusion. Support the Committee on Rules' proposal to send this back
and bring it back to the floor when there is actually something to vote
on.
Mr. HALL of Ohio. Mr. Speaker, I yield 2 minutes to the gentleman
from California (Mr. Lantos), who is also a very distinguished member
of the Committee on International Relations.
Mr. LANTOS. Mr. Speaker, I have the highest regard for all of my
colleagues on the other side of the Chamber, and of course, I
recognize, as we all must, that this is not a partisan issue.
When President Bush asked this body to support him with respect to
the Persian Gulf, I was one of those Democrats who proudly and publicly
supported him. I want to pay tribute to Senator Dole for his courageous
public statements and actions supporting the policy that we support.
It is self-evident that this is the wrong time to deal with this
issue. There may be no agreement for us to implement. But if we vote
now, the likelihood of an agreement diminishes.
How many innocent children and women have to be killed in the former
Yugoslavia for us to talk about genocide? Had we acted in 1991, a
quarter million innocent people who are now dead would be here, and
2\1/2\ million refugees would still be living in their homes.
I know the difference between the Persian Gulf and Kosovo. Kosovo has
no oil. That is the principle that is invoked here, under the table.
Clearly we are not protecting our oil resources in Kosovo, as we did in
the Persian Gulf.
This ought not to be a partisan dispute. We are undermining NATO,
that succeeded in destroying the mighty Soviet Union, if we as the
leader of NATO
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bail out on our international responsibilities.
If we listen closely, we hear the voices of isolationism
reverberating in this Chamber. It is mindboggling. As we close this
century, the lesson of it is that appeasement does not pay, that
aggression must be resisted. I ask my colleagues to reject this rule,
and to have this debate after an agreement will have been reached.
Mr. HALL of Ohio. Mr. Speaker, I yield 2 minutes to the gentleman
from Michigan (Mr. Levin).
(Mr. LEVIN asked and was given permission to revise and extend his
remarks.)
Mr. LEVIN. Mr. Speaker, I was in Bosnia 4 years ago as cochair of a
House delegation, and there were three clear lessons from that trip.
Number one, there is a U.S. national interest in preventing an
outbreak of major conflagration in the Balkans. We should not be the
world's policeman, true. We also should not be asleep at the switch.
Whether we like it or not, the Balkans is an important crossroads.
Secondly, Mr. Milosevic is a major roadblock to peace, and
understands only firmness, total firmness.
Third, the U.S. has a special credibility there. We have a special
credibility, and we need to use it to help bring about peace and to
help enforce it.
The question now is not whether we are going to go to war, but
whether we can negotiate a peace. I urge Members on the majority side
to listen to their standardbearer of 1996, Robert Dole, who said just
yesterday, I would rather have the vote come after the agreement. Mr.
Dole, to his credit, knows the importance of bipartisanship in foreign
policy.
I close with this. This is a particularly sensitive time in the
negotiations for peace in Kosovo. This is not the time to take risks in
undermining those efforts. Those who insist on a debate at this
particular moment should think again, or they bear the responsibility
for the possible consequences of their actions.
Mr. DIAZ-BALART. Mr. Speaker, I yield 1\1/2\ minutes to the
gentlewoman from North Carolina (Mrs. Myrick), a distinguished member
of the Committee on Rules.
Mrs. MYRICK. Mr. Speaker, I do rise today in support of this rule,
because it provides a fair and open debate, as should be the case with
such an important matter. But that said, I strongly oppose the
commitment of U.S. troops to Kosovo unless we are going to go in and
solve the problem.
I do not believe the United States can be the parent or the policeman
of the world, and the fighting there and in the rest of the Balkans is
primarily a European matter and should remain a European matter, and
they should be involved in taking the lead in this.
I believe wholeheartedly in maintaining a strong national defense,
and I will always support our men and women in uniform. In fact, it is
because of my commitment to the troops and not despite of it that I
oppose this deployment of the troops to Kosovo.
To put it simply, our forces are stretched too thin around the globe
to commit 4,000 or 5,000 troops in an effort whose end is nowhere in
sight. When we committed troops to Bosnia, we were told they would be
home that fall; then, that Christmas. That was in 1996. Three years
later, our troops are still in Bosnia.
I have tremendous confidence in America's Armed Forces, and have no
doubt that given a properly defined mission with a clear objective and
a sensible exit strategy, our forces would perform brilliantly. That,
however, does not describe our presence in the former Yugoslavia.
I urge my colleagues to join me in supporting this rule and opposing
House Concurrent Resolution 42.
Mr. HALL of Ohio. Mr. Speaker, I yield 3 minutes to our leader, the
gentleman from Missouri (Mr. Gephardt).
(Mr. GEPHARDT asked and was given permission to revise and extend his
remarks.)
Mr. GEPHARDT. Mr. Speaker, I have always believed that Congress
should be involved in decisions by our government to send our armed
services into harm's way. I really believe it is best to first commit
the people and then commit the troops.
However, I object strongly to the timing of this debate. We should
not be debating this matter while our diplomats at this very moment are
seeking to convince the parties to this conflict to lay down their
weapons and choose the path of peace.
To conduct a divisive debate in Congress and perhaps fail to support
our government's efforts is the height of irresponsibility, and
threatens the hope for an agreement to halt the bloodshed and prevent
the widening of this war.
We all know that we are at a very delicate moment in the Kosovo peace
negotiations. In part due to the efforts of former Senate Majority
Leader Bob Dole, the Kosovar Albanians are reportedly ready to sign an
agreement, and our diplomats are right now continuing convince
Yugoslavia President Milosevic to agree, as well.
If we reject this legislation, the Kosovars may refuse to sign an
agreement out of fear that U.S. leadership is wavering, and clearly,
Milosevic will be emboldened to continue his rejection of a NATO force
as part of any agreement. Either outcome will only lead to more
violence, more bloodshed, which has engulfed this region over the past
years.
This should not be about politics. It should not be about giving the
administration a black eye. This is about ending a humanitarian
catastrophe and preventing the slaughter of thousands of innocent
people caught in a simmering ethnic conflict.
Lives are at stake here. Our actions today may determine whether the
people of Kosovo have a chance for a peaceful future, or simply resume
the killing that could destabilize the region and threaten United
States interests. I thought until recently that the Republican
leadership shared this view, and grieve that partisanship has no place
in this debate.
When asked a few weeks ago about a House vote on Kosovo, the Speaker
stated publicly, I think we need to make sure that the administration
has the room to negotiate and get the job done in Rambouillet first.
The fact that we are here today demonstrates that Republican leaders
have chosen partisan politics over a united American effort to end the
conflict. It seems that politics has infected foreign policy, and I
think, if that has happened, with great harm to our credibility
overseas.
Others will talk about the importance of U.S. leadership in the
Balkans and Kosovo's significance for the future of NATO. I will simply
reiterate to the Members what Bob Dole said yesterday in the Committee
on International Relations. When asked about the timing of the vote,
Senator Dole said, ``I would rather have the vote come after the
agreement between the Kosovar Albanians and Serbia.''
When asked how Members should vote if this resolution is not
postponed, Senator Dole said, we hope there will be strong bipartisan
support. It is in our national interest to do this.
I regret that the leadership in Congress has forgotten our history
and our background, and the importance of standing united as we attempt
to resolve yet another international conflict. I urge all Members,
Republican and Democratic alike, to vote against this rule, and defer
this action that very well may provoke further bloodshed in the
Balkans.
We can have this vote if there is a treaty. We can have this vote
once there has been some kind of pulling together of a policy that we
can look at and evaluate. This vote today is premature. It is wrong to
have it today. The Members have it within their ability to put this
vote off. I urge Members to vote against the previous question, vote
against the rule, and let us bring up this vote when it is timely and
appropriate.
Mr. HALL of Ohio. Mr. Speaker, I yield myself such time as I may
consume.
(Mr. HALL of Ohio asked and was given permission to revise and extend
his remarks and include extraneous material.)
Mr. HALL of Ohio. Mr. Speaker, I urge Members to vote against the
previous question. If the previous question is defeated, I will offer
an amendment to the rule that will delay consideration of the Kosovo
peacekeeping resolution until an agreement on the status of Kosovo has
been signed between the Serbian government and the Kosovo Albanians.
There is potential for serious damage to the peace process if we
insist on
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bringing this debate while negotiations are in midstream and are in a
precarious state. We certainly would not want to do anything in this
body which could have the effect of disrupting or even ending the
prospect for peace in the Balkan region.
{time} 1245
Mr. Speaker, I urge a no vote on the previous question.
Mr. Speaker, I include for the Record the document entitled ``The
Vote on the Previous Question: What It Really Means,'' as follows:
The Vote on the Previous Question: What it Really Means
This vote, the vote on whether to order the previous
question on a special rule, is not merely a procedural vote.
A vote against ordering the previous question is a vote
against the Republican majority agenda and a vote to allow
the opposition, at least for the moment, to offer an
alternative plan. It is a vote about what the House should be
debating.
Mr. Clarence Cannon's ``Precedents of the House of
Representatives,'' (VI, 308-311) describes the vote on the
previous question on the rule as ``a motion to direct or
control the consideration of the subject before the House
being made by the Member in charge.'' To defeat the previous
question is to give the opposition a chance to decide the
subject before the House. Cannon cites the Speaker's ruling
of January 13, 1920, to the effect that ``the refusal of the
House to sustain the demand for the previous question passes
the control of the resolution to the opposition'' in order to
offer an amendment. On March 15, 1909, a member of the
majority party offered a rule resolution. The House defeated
the previous question and a member of the opposition rose to
a parliamentary inquiry, asking who was entitled to
recognition. Speaker Joseph G. Cannon (R-Illinois) said:
``The previous question having been refused, the gentleman
from New York, Mr. Fitzgerald, who had asked the gentleman to
yield to him for an amendment, is entitled to the first
recognition.''
Because the vote today may look bad for the Republican
majority they will say ``the vote on the previous question is
simply a vote on whether to proceed to an immediate vote on
adopting the resolution . . . [and] has no substantive
legislative or policy implications whatsoever.'' But that is
not what they have always said. Listen to the Republican
Leadership ``Manual on the Legislative Process in the United
States House of Representatives,'' (6th edition, page 135).
Here's how the Republicans describe the previous question
vote in their own manual:
``Although it is generally not possible to amend the rule
because the majority Member controlling the time will not
yield for the purpose of offering an amendment, the same
result may be achieved by voting down the previous question
on the rule. . . . When the motion for the previous question
is defeated, control of the time passes to the Member who led
the opposition to ordering the previous question. That
Member, because he then controls the time, may offer an
amendment to the rule, or yield for the purpose of
amendment.''
Deschler's ``P
Major Actions:
All articles in House section
PEACEKEEPING OPERATIONS IN KOSOVO RESOLUTION
(House of Representatives - March 11, 1999)
Text of this article available as:
TXT
PDF
[Pages
H1179-H1250]
PEACEKEEPING OPERATIONS IN KOSOVO RESOLUTION
Mr. DIAZ-BALART. Mr. Speaker, by direction of the Committee on Rules,
I call up House Resolution 103 and ask for its immediate consideration.
The Clerk read the resolution, as follows:
H. Res. 103
Resolved, That at any time after the adoption of this
resolution the Speaker may, pursuant to clause 2(b) of rule
XVIII, declare the
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House resolved into the Committee of the Whole House on the
state of the Union for consideration of the concurrent
resolution (
H. Con. Res. 42) regarding the use of United
States Armed Forces as part of a NATO peacekeeping operation
implementing a Kosovo peace agreement. The first reading of
the concurrent resolution shall be dispensed with. General
debate shall be confined to the concurrent resolution and
shall not exceed two hours equally divided and controlled by
the chairman and ranking minority member of the Committee on
International Relations. After general debate the concurrent
resolution shall be considered for amendment under the five-
minute rule. The concurrent resolution shall be considered as
read. No amendment to the concurrent resolution shall be in
order except those printed in the portion of the
Congressional Record designated for that purpose in clause 8
of rule XVIII and except pro forma amendments for the purpose
of debate. Each amendment so printed may be offered only by
the Member who caused it to be printed or his designee and
shall be considered as read. The chairman of the Committee of
the Whole may: (1) postpone until a time during further
consideration in the Committee of the Whole a request for a
recorded vote on any amendment; and (2) reduce to five
minutes the minimum time for electronic voting on any
postponed question that follows another electronic vote
without intervening business, provided that the minimum time
for electronic voting on the first in any series of questions
shall be 15 minutes. At the conclusion of consideration of
the concurrent resolution for amendment the Committee shall
rise and report the concurrent resolution to the House with
such amendments as may have been adopted. The previous
question shall be considered as ordered on the concurrent
resolution to final adoption without intervening motion
except one motion to recommit with or without instructions.
The SPEAKER pro tempore (Mr. Burr of North Carolina). The gentleman
from Florida (Mr. Diaz-Balart) is recognized for 1 hour.
Mr. DIAZ-BALART. Mr. Speaker, for the purpose of debate only, I yield
the customary 30 minutes to the gentleman from Ohio (Mr. Hall). During
consideration of this resolution, all time yielded is for the purpose
of debate only.
Mr. Speaker, I yield such time as he may consume to the distinguished
Speaker of the House of Representatives.
Mr. HASTERT. Mr. Speaker, I thank the gentleman from Florida for
yielding me this time. I rise in support of this rule. I would like to
address the House for a few moments on the issue we are preparing to
consider, the possible deployment of U.S. troops to Kosovo.
The President has made it clear that he is committed to sending
approximately 4,000 U.S. troops to Kosovo as part of a NATO force
intended to keep the peace. I am convinced that the President firmly
believes the presence of U.S. troops in Kosovo is essential to
maintaining peace in this troubled area. Like every American, I hope
the Serbs and the Kosovars are able to achieve a peaceful resolution to
their dispute. We all pray for that outcome. Kosovo is a great human
tragedy, fanned by injustice and unexplained hatred.
As a Member of this great body and now as your Speaker, I have never
wavered in my belief and trust in this institution. Some have argued
that we should not have this debate today, that we should just leave it
to the President. Some have even suggested that taking part and talking
about this could damage the peace process. I disagree. No one should
fear the free expression of ideas, the frank exchange of opinions in a
representative democracy. Two weeks ago, the German Bundestag held an
extensive debate and voted on whether or not Germany should deploy over
5,000 German troops in Kosovo. The British Parliament has also
discussed the deployment of British troops in Kosovo. I do not believe
that any harm has been done to the peace process by the workings of
these two great democracies. In fact, one message which should come
from this debate and those held in the parliaments of our allies is
that a free people can disagree without violence and bloodshed.
On this important subject, I have tried to be direct and honest. I
have spoken with the President and with his Secretary of State. I told
them that I believed it was my duty as Speaker to ensure that Members
of the House of Representatives, Republicans and Democrats, have the
opportunity to fairly and openly debate the important issue before
troops are sent into a potentially dangerous situation. I believe
Congress must have a meaningful role in this decision, no matter how
difficult our choice nor how hard our task.
I have been equally honest in telling the President that I personally
have reservations regarding the wisdom of deploying the additional U.S.
troops to the former Yugoslavia, but I have not made up my mind and I
will listen intently and closely to this debate. I hope that each of
you will do the same, because it is our heavy responsibility and high
honor to represent the men and women who are being asked by the
President to go into harm's way. Each of us must be prepared to answer
to their families and loved ones. I am deeply convinced that we owe
them today's debate, for under our Constitution we share this burden
with our President.
Our debate today will enable each of us to carry out our
responsibilities in a fair and thoughtful way. The gentleman from New
York (Mr. Gilman), at my request, has offered without prejudice this
resolution stating the President's position, that troops be deployed. I
urge the adoption of this open rule that allows every Member of this
House to have a say and to amend this resolution. We have set in place
a fair and open process. We are here to discuss sensitive issues of
policy and not personality. And let me repeat, we are here today to
discuss policy and not personality. I know it does not need to be said,
but I urge all Members to treat this issue with the seriousness that it
deserves. We have a solemn duty to perform. And let us do it with the
dignity that brings credit to this great House.
Mr. DIAZ-BALART. Mr. Speaker, I yield myself such time as I may
consume.
Mr. Speaker, House Resolution 103 is a modified open rule providing
for the consideration, as the Speaker of the House has just explained,
of House Concurrent Resolution 42, the Peacekeeping Operations in
Kosovo Resolution.
The purpose of the resolution is to authorize the President to deploy
United States armed forces to Kosovo and just as importantly it makes
possible congressional discussion of this very complex situation.
The rule provides for 2 hours of general debate equally divided
between the chairman and the ranking minority member of the Committee
on International Relations. It is the intention of the rule that the
managers of general debate yield time fairly to Republican and
Democratic proponents and opponents of the concurrent resolution.
Further, the bill provides that the concurrent resolution shall be
considered as read and makes in order only those amendments preprinted
in the Congressional Record, to be offered only by the Member who
caused the amendment to be printed, or his designee, and each amendment
shall be considered as read.
In addition, the rule allows the Chairman of the Committee of the
Whole to postpone votes during consideration of the bill and to reduce
voting time to 5 minutes on votes following a 15-minute vote. Finally,
the rule provides one motion to recommit, with or without instructions.
Mr. Speaker, House Resolution 103 is a fair framework to provide a
forum to debate the issues surrounding the possible deployment of U.S.
troops for participation in a NATO peacekeeping force in Kosovo. Any
Member can offer any germane amendment to this resolution providing the
amendment was preprinted in the Congressional Record prior to its
consideration. The gentleman from California (Mr. Dreier) made this
announcement on Monday, March 8, on the House floor, as well as through
a Dear Colleague letter to Members.
It has been well known, including in fact through constant press
reports, that the House would be debating this difficult issue this
week. In spite of the snowstorm we had on Tuesday, Members have known
for weeks that we would be taking up this issue prior to the March 15
peace talks in France, the deadline. Were it not for this fair rule,
if, for example, we had brought
H.Con.Res. 42 to the floor under
suspension of the rules, it would be nonamendable and would be allowed
only 40 minutes of debate. Therefore, I think it is very important that
Members support this rule, regardless of their position on deployment
or nondeployment of troops, because Congress has every
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right to be debating this resolution today and this rule provides a
fair way to do so.
Some Members as well as other foreign policy experts have questioned
the timing of this debate while peace negotiations have not been
concluded. But if Congress is to deliberate these serious issues prior
to the possible deployment of U.S. troops, now is the time. March 15,
the proposed deadline for a peace agreement for Kosovo, is this Monday,
and U.S. troops could be on their way to Kosovo Monday night if
agreement is reached.
As the gentleman from Florida (Mr. Goss) stated at the Committee on
Rules during our markup, there is no perfect time for this. At least
two of the Members of the six-nation contact group on Kosovo, Germany
and Great Britain, as the Speaker of the House just made reference,
have debated in their parliaments this precise issue this past month.
Now is indeed an appropriate time for the United States House of
Representatives as the sovereign representative body of the American
people to take up the issue of possible deployment of our troops to
join a NATO force.
The situation in Kosovo is indeed precarious. It has now been over a
year since fighting broke out between the Albanian rebels and the
Serbian forces in Kosovo and in spite of an October 1998 cease-fire
agreement, hostilities have continued.
{time} 1145
March 15 is the current deadline for negotiations to be completed on
a peace agreement. What is at issue is the expansion of the U.S. role
in Kosovo and whether U.S. troops should be deployed to participate in
a NATO peace mission should a peace agreement be reached.
Historically it is well known that the Balkans have been a tinder box
for regional wars, and we must not forget that World War I began in
that part of the world.
In 1995, as a member of the Committee on Rules, I brought to the
floor the Bosnia-Herzegovina Self-defense Act to end the arms embargo
on Bosnia. That embargo was morally wrong, and I believe that it was
legally questionable as well from the very beginning. While not
contiguous with Bosnia, where U.S. troops are currently deployed, the
dangers of a spill-over effect and renewed violence in the region have
been realized in the Serbian province of Kosovo. I am extremely
concerned by the genocidal attacks on civilians in Kosovo. As a British
statesman said while debating the situation in the Balkans:
No language can describe adequately the condition of that large
portion of the Balkan peninsula, Serbia, Bosnia, Herzegovina and the
other provinces, political intrigues, constant rivalries, a total
absence of public spirit, hatred of all races, animosities of rival
religions and an absence of any controlling power, nothing short of an
army of 50,000 of the best troops would produce anything like order in
these parts.
That statement was made by Prime Minister Benjamin Disraeli in
October 1878. Unfortunately his words still ring true today.
In summary, the Congress, Mr. Speaker, has every right to debate
whether we should put U.S. troops in harm's way before they are sent.
That is the reason for today's debate.
I urge my colleagues to support this fair rule so that the House will
have the opportunity to debate this very critical issue regarding the
possible deployment of our troops to Kosovo. I would urge my colleagues
to support the rule.
Mr. Speaker, I reserve the balance of my time.
Mr. HALL of Ohio. Mr. Speaker, I yield myself such time as I may
consume.
Mr. Speaker, I want to thank the gentleman from Florida (Mr. Diaz-
Balart) for yielding me the time. This is a modified open rule. It will
allow for consideration of House Concurrent Resolution 42 which, as my
colleagues have heard, is a resolution authorizing the President to
deploy United States troops to Kosovo. As my colleague has described,
this rule provides for 1 hour of general debate to be equally divided
and controlled by the chairman and ranking minority member of the
Committee on International Relations. The rule permits amendments under
the 5-minute rule, which is the normal amending process in the House.
Under this rule, only amendments which have been preprinted in the
Congressional Record will be in order.
The Committee on Rules has crafted a rule which at another time would
be acceptable. However I believe that the Kosovo resolution should not
be brought up at this time. Therefore I will oppose the previous
question so that the rule can be amended.
For most Americans Kosovo and Serbia are only distant points on the
globe, but that is not so for the community of Dayton, Ohio, the
community which I represent, because it was my community of Dayton that
hosted the peace talks in 1995 that led to the fragile peace that we
are trying to preserve. Today there is continued unrest between the
Serbians and the Albanians in Kosovo. The conflict has already left
more than a thousand civilians dead and as many as 400,000 homeless. If
left unchecked, the turmoil could lead to a broader war in Europe.
However there is hope. Sensitive peace talks are taking place in the
region. Through the efforts of Bob Dole the Albanians appear to be
ready to sign a peace agreement. The United States and its allies
continue to press the parties to restore peace to the region.
My concern with this resolution is not whether Congress has the right
to authorize the commitment of U.S. troops; we have that right. My
concern with this resolution is whether it is in our national interest
to take it up today in the middle of the peace talks that appear to be
succeeding.
Yesterday at the hearing of the Committee on Rules the gentleman from
Connecticut (Mr. Gejdenson), who is the ranking Democratic member of
the House Committee on International Relations warned against bringing
this resolution to the House floor today. He testified that it
seriously undermines the prospects for reaching peace in the region and
could lead to more warfare.
Secretary of State Madeleine Albright sounded a similar note of
alarm. Yesterday she testified before the Subcommittee on Commerce,
Justice, State, and Judiciary that this vote will be taken as a green
light for the warring parties to continue fighting.
During the Committee on Rules consideration the gentleman from
Massachusetts (Mr. Moakley), the ranking Democratic member, offered an
amendment to the rule postponing consideration of the resolution until
the end of the current peace negotiations, and that amendment was
defeated on a straight party line vote. Mr. Moakley also offered an
amendment to the rule making in order a floor amendment by the
gentleman from Connecticut (Mr. Gejdenson) supporting the peace process
and authorizing the deployment of troops if a fair and just peace
agreement is reached. The amendment was also defeated on a straight
party line vote.
Perhaps when the time comes under the right conditions Congress
should support the deployment of troops to Kosovo, and perhaps when the
time comes Congress should oppose the move. But the time is not today.
We in Dayton, Ohio, know about peace negotiations in Kosovo and
Serbia. We know how sensitive they can be. We also know how important
they can be because for a brief moment the negotiations of the 1995
accord lived in my community. Let us let the administration negotiate a
peace without Congress sending the wrong signal, and we should not
bring up the resolution today.
If the previous question is defeated, I will offer an amendment to
the rule which will permit the Kosovo resolution to come up only after
the two parties have signed the agreement on the status of Kosovo. The
delay is necessary to ensure that the actions of the House do not
interfere with the peace negotiations in Kosovo.
Before concluding I want to express my appreciation to the gentleman
from California (Mr. Dreier) and to the Republicans on the Committee on
Rules for keeping this a relatively unrestricted rule and for
permitting the motion to recommit. I am heartened by the bipartisan
spirit in which gentleman from California (Mr. Dreier) approached this
rule, and I believe this sends a positive signal at the beginning of
this Congress. Our differences are not in the crafting of the rule,
only in the timing.
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Mr. Speaker, I reserve the balance of my time.
Mr. DIAZ-BALART. Mr. Speaker, I yield 4 minutes to the distinguished
gentleman from Florida (Mr. Goss), a member of the Committee on Rules
and chairman of the Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence.
(Mr. GOSS asked and was given permission to revise and extend his
remarks.)
Mr. GOSS. Mr. Speaker, I thank my colleague from Florida for yielding
me this time.
Mr. Speaker, today the House will debate whether to send U.S. troops
to Kosovo, an issue that may seem to have little relevance to the lives
of many Americans in this time of very blue skies in this country which
we are fortunate to enjoy. But appearances aside, the decisions we make
about Kosovo will affect the course of the United States and our allies
in the world over the next several years.
This matters. It is a critically important debate, and I urge Members
to give it their most thoughtful attention.
Some may question whether this is the right time for a congressional
debate, as we have already heard, about sending U.S. troops to Kosovo.
Once an agreement is reached, the Clinton administration has announced
that it will deploy troops forthwith to begin enforcement of the
agreement. So when is the right time to debate the issue? The answer is
before our men and women in uniform are placed in harm's way.
I am concerned that the administration tends to place U.S. troops
into a dangerous situation where they are unwelcomed by both parties
and do not have clear marching orders. Serbian President Milosevic, an
unsavory strong man in my view, refuses to accept the presence of
foreign troops on Serbian soil, and the Kosovar rebels on their part
refuse to give up their ultimate goal of independence from Serbia. Of
even greater concern is the possibility that the NATO mission may have
the unintended consequence of destabilizing the region by encouraging
separatism in neighboring areas, a situation we are already familiar
with.
Mr. Speaker, there is no question that the humanitarian crisis in
Kosovo cries out for international attention and assistance. But the
real question is: How should the United States of America respond? Is
the answer always the commission of U.S. forces no matter what?
Listening to the Clinton administration, we would think that bombing
and deployment of troops is the only solution available to us.
I am also concerned about the implications of the administration's
Kosovo plans on the future of NATO. For several years NATO has been
grappling with its role in the post cold war period. The
administration's headlong rush to support deployment of NATO troops
outside the treaty area risks damage to the delicate consensus that
underlies the alliance.
In April at NATO's 50th anniversary to be celebrated here in
Washington the Alliance will announce its new strategic concept for the
direction and mission of NATO. Will this document explain why NATO must
intervene in Kosovo, an area outside the treaty boundary, but not
intervene in an area, say, in Africa where there is genocide and a
civil war going where human suffering is just as great.
Mr. Speaker, when President Clinton first proposed sending U.S.
troops to Kosovo, he laid out the following criteria: a strong and
effective peace agreement with full participation by both parties, a
permissive security environment, including the disarmament of the
Kosovar power militaries and a well-defined NATO mission with a clear
exit strategy. These criteria are a good starting point for the
congressional consideration.
Later today I or others may offer amendments to this resolution to
ensure that these criteria and other equally important ones are met
before U.S. troops are sent to Kosovo.
Before I vote to support sending our men and women in uniform to
Kosovo, people in my district want to know the exit strategy as well as
the entry strategy. They want to know how this fits into our national
interest, and they want to know the costs. These are basic questions
that we in Congress should raise so that the American people are fully
informed. Getting answers from the administration is part of our job
description, especially when the use of our men and women in uniform is
involved.
This rule provides for full debate. I urge its support.
Mr. HALL of Ohio. Mr. Speaker, I yield 3 minutes to the gentleman
from Michigan (Mr. Bonior).
Mr. BONIOR. Mr. Speaker, I thank the gentleman from Ohio (Mr. Hall)
for yielding me the time, and again I rise to say that the timing of
this resolution could not be worse, not the fact that we are debating
it. I think the fact that they have allowed a debate and under a
generally open rule is a positive sign, as my friend from Ohio has
stated. But having this debate and having this vote in the midst of
negotiations makes little sense and, in fact, undermines those
negotiations.
Mr. Speaker, I think it is important for us to review where we have
been in the Balkans. In Bosnia tens of thousands of people lost their
lives, thousands of women were raped, hundreds of thousands of people
displaced from their home before we had the courage to finally say no,
and within the past year in Kosovo we have had 2000 people killed, we
have had 400,000 people displaced in Slobodan Milosevic's genocidal
campaign of violence and human rights abuses against the 2 million
ethnic Albanians.
Mr. Speaker, this is not the time to have this resolution on the
floor of the House. On the 15th of January, at Racak, Serbian special
police shot at least 15 ethnic Albanians including elderly people and
children. Human Rights Watch has evidence suggesting that the Serbians
had, and I quote, ``direct orders to kill village inhabitants over the
age of 15.'' In Rogovo, just 2 weeks later Serbian police raided a
farming village and executed 25 people.
This has gone on for a year, it has gone on for more than a year, but
within the last year we have seen these numbers rise to 2,000 people.
Why would Milosevic do anything but stall, not agree to a peace
agreement, if the United States Congress says in a vote later today, if
this rule passes, that we, in fact, will not deploy troops? We will be
giving him a green light, and we will be seeing more Racaks, we will be
seeing more slaughters as we saw in Rogovo, and we will be in an
unvirtuous circle of islands in which we undoubtedly will have to
revisit again on this House floor.
Just today, while Richard Holbrooke was talking with Milosevic
yesterday, violence continued, and there is a picture in the New York
Times showing the deaths of people in the village of Ivaja in Kosovo.
{time} 1200
This slaughter must stop, and the way to stop it is to stop this
resolution from coming to the floor of the House, and we can do that by
voting against the rule. Arthur Vandenberg once said that politics
should stop at the water's edge when it comes to foreign policy. Bob
Dole asked us not to do this yesterday. Let us not do this. Let us stop
here. Vote no on this rule. Then we can have a good debate on this
issue when the issue comes before us when an agreement occurs in this
troubled land.
Mr. DIAZ-BALART. Mr. Speaker, I yield 2 minutes to the distinguished
gentleman from Georgia (Mr. Linder).
Mr. LINDER. Mr. Speaker, I thank the gentleman from Florida (Mr.
Diaz-Balart) for yielding.
Mr. Speaker, I rise in support of
H. Res. 103, the rule providing for
consideration of the resolution regarding peacekeeping operations in
Kosovo. This rule ensures a free and open debate and provides Members
the opportunity to have their voices heard on this very important
matter involving the lives of our troops.
The modified open rule passed the House Committee on Rules and it did
not provide any preferential waivers. It allows for all germane
amendments and complies with the request of the gentleman from
Connecticut (Mr. Gejdenson), who requested that all amendments be
preprinted in the Congressional Record.
The passage of this rule will, I admit, lead to a wide open
discussion on a very public issue, with the prospect of counter
argument and earnest debate. I welcome that debate and I expect it to
be an extraordinary exchange of ideas and opinions.
I will be honest in stating that I have grave reservations about the
deployment of American troops in Kosovo,
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but I also do not see anything wrong with giving Members the
opportunity to listen closely to the arguments on each side of the
debate.
Our allies, Great Britain and Germany, have deliberated and engaged
in this debate already, and that leads us to the question underlying
the rule we are discussing today: Should the United States House of
Representatives have the opportunity to participate in the decision to
deploy our troops in Kosovo and debate it today?
My personal view is that it would be better if we did not. I would
prefer that this resolution inform the President that we are unwilling
to fund his adventurism without clear rules of engagement, exit
strategies, specific goals and a budget. We have a constitutional
responsibility to participate in decisions putting our troops in harm's
way. I do believe that would better be the question before us.
Having said that, I urge Members to support the fair rule that will
initiate a full and open debate regarding the deployment of young
Americans' lives in a dangerous foreign land.
Mr. HALL of Ohio. Mr. Speaker, I yield 3 minutes to the gentleman
from Missouri (Mr. Skelton), who is the ranking member of the Committee
on Armed Services.
Mr. SKELTON. Mr. Speaker, I thank the gentleman from Ohio (Mr. Hall)
for yielding to me.
Mr. Speaker, I speak against the rule. I will vote against the rule.
I am deeply concerned that taking this matter up now in the midst of
negotiations between the opposing parties, the Kosovars and Milosevic's
people, will cause great harm and great damage to the negotiating
process.
Should what we do today cause there to be no agreement, we would have
lost, Europe would have lost and there will be continued bloodshed and
anguish in Kosovo. I think it is wrong to take this up now. It is
untimely. It is improper to do so.
Secondly, as it was mentioned by my friend, the gentleman from Ohio
(Mr. Hall), I am the ranking member on the Committee on Armed Services.
This deals with the military of the United States of America.
We in our committee should have had the opportunity to have had a
hearing to find out what troops, under what conditions and if there is
a possibility of saving some other deployments because we are short on
troops today. These are questions that we in our committee should have
had the opportunity to ask, a full and fair hearing in the Committee on
Armed Services, which we did not have.
Thirdly, I would like to mention that I also have an amendment,
should this rule carry, which I hope in all sincerity it does not. I
will have an amendment that requires that there be an agreement between
the parties before any American troops are allowed to go into Kosovo.
That is the bottom line. Right now, bringing up this resolution is
improper and uncalled for because it could very well change the
agreement, cause there not to be an agreement and cause confusion in
that part of the Balkans.
I wish that everyone could have been with me to witness the four-
starred German general who is the second in command at NATO a few weeks
ago when I asked him why is it important that America be involved in
Europe and in NATO?
His answer was a full and complete one, which said it is important
that America be there. I think that if America should be there, we
should have the opportunity to do it the right way, the right time and
under the right resolution and the right vote.
Mr. DIAZ-BALART. Mr. Speaker, I yield 2 minutes to the distinguished
gentleman from North Carolina (Mr. Coble).
(Mr. COBLE asked and was given permission to revise and extend his
remarks.)
Mr. COBLE. Mr. Speaker, I thank the gentleman from Florida (Mr. Diaz-
Balart) for yielding.
Mr. Speaker, I usually vote consistently in favor of rules, and I may
vote for this rule, but I am opposed to our dispatching troops to
Kosovo, not unlike my friend, the gentleman from Missouri (Mr. Skelton)
who just spoke.
I recall Bosnia. The President told us our troops would be back home,
I believe, by December 1996. Well, when I last checked, December 1996
has come and long gone and our troops are still there. I was uneasy
about it because I could not grasp the importance of our national
security vis-a-vis Bosnia. Now Kosovo is on the screen and, unlike
Bosnia, as best I remember it, I do not think we have even been invited
to come to Kosovo.
Given these two situations, I don't mean to portray myself as an
isolationist but to suggest that Bosnia and Kosovo are European
problems that should be resolved by Europeans hardly constitutes
isolationism. It is isolationism light at its best, if that.
I just believe that we do not need to insert our oars into those
waters, and I don't mean to come across as uncaring or indifferent to
the problems plaguing Europe, but doggone it, it is indeed a European
problem.
Let our European friends handle it unless it becomes a situation that
causes United States national security to be exposed.
Now, absent that, Mr. Speaker, and my colleagues on both sides, I
think we need to go about our business here. Let our friends across the
water, as my late grandma used to say, let them resolve those problems.
Mr. HALL of Ohio. Mr. Speaker, I yield 2 minutes to the gentleman
from Texas (Mr. Ortiz)
Mr. ORTIZ. Mr. Speaker, I rise today as a member of the House
Committee on Armed Services to oppose the rule allowing the House to
consider House Resolution 42 regarding Kosovo.
I want to say this in the strongest possible terms, considering this
vote today is so ill-timed as to adversely affect the peace
negotiations ongoing in the Balkans. It has taken us so long to build
the coalition that we have been able to build in that part of the
world, and we understand this. This Congress says they have the
obligation to ensure that the diplomats in the region exhaust all
possible means in their negotiations.
Like the gentleman from Missouri (Mr. Skelton), I wish that we had
been able to debate this issue in the committee before it came to the
House floor to see what the needs are, how many troops, the equipment.
So I think that it has all been done in good faith but it is ill-timed.
We also have a unique responsibility in this situation, as we do in
most global spots. We are the world's only remaining superpower. We
have more and better military might than any other country in the
world. If we are indeed the only remaining superpower, then that status
brings certain obligations and responsibilities. This is why I say, let
us discuss it further.
I just got back from Bosnia 4 days ago. The morale of our troops is
high and, not only that, they believe in the mission that they are
conducting in that part of the world. They said for the first time we
have seen young children play in the parks, play in the streets, go to
school. So please help us defeat this rule.
Mr. DIAZ-BALART. Mr. Speaker, I yield 2 minutes to the distinguished
gentleman from California (Mr. Cunningham).
Mr. CUNNINGHAM. Mr. Speaker, this is exactly the time to have this
discussion, exactly the time. It may not be the time for negotiators
and bean counters but it is for our troops.
I remember Somalia, where the President did not come to Congress when
he changed going after Aideed, and we lost 22 rangers because they
failed to give armor which the military wanted; or Haiti, that we are
today spending $25 million a year in building schools and roads out of
the defense budget.
Kosovo is like any of the United States is to Greater Serbia. It is
not a separate entity. It is the birthplace of the Orthodox Catholic
religion. It is their home. It was occupied by 100 percent Serbs, and
the Turks and the Nazis eliminated and desecrated and ethnically
cleansed Jews, Gypsies and Serbs and now the population is Albanian.
Albania does not want just Kosovo. They want part of Greece. They
want Montenegro. This is only a beginning.
Listen to George Tenet's brief. Bin Laden is working with the KLA,
the terrorists, that is going to hit the United States. If we do not
want to stop this, then do not talk about it, but if we go in there, we
are going to lose a great number of people. For what? They have been
fighting for 400 years.
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This debate is well timed. Maybe not for my colleagues on the other
side but for the kids that have to put those backpacks on and carry
rifles. It is the time to stop this.
Take a look at the number of military deployments. It was 300 percent
during the height of Vietnam. We are killing our military as it is, and
we have one-half the force to do it. That is why they are bailing out.
This is exactly the time, Mr. Speaker, and I reject the other side.
Mr. HALL of Ohio. Mr. Speaker, I yield 1 minute to the gentleman from
North Dakota (Mr. Pomeroy).
Mr. POMEROY. Mr. Speaker, I strongly object to this rule which will
provide for the House to debate the U.S. involvement in the Kosovo
peace agreement. The reason I object to consideration of this issue at
this time is that as of today, there is no peace agreement and the
process leading to the arriving at a peace agreement is at a terribly
tenuous, sensitive and delicate stage.
{time} 1215
We have all read with horror about the atrocities committed in
Kosovo. Innocent civilians, including little children, have been
savagely and brutally murdered. For the sake of humanity and decency,
we all want this butchery to end. It will require a peace agreement to
end this killing. Our taking up the resolution now while the
deliberations are still underway can only make it more difficult to
resolve this.
Yesterday, former Majority Leader Bob Dole gave advice to the
Committee on International Relations. He says, ``We have 2 steps here.
First, we get an agreement, then the President goes to the American
people to explain it.''
Mr. Speaker, I think we must follow Majority Leader Dole's advice.
Defeat this rule and let the deliberations leading to peace be
concluded.
Mr. DIAZ-BALART. Mr. Speaker, I yield 2 minutes to the distinguished
gentleman from Colorado (Mr. McInnis).
Mr. McINNIS. Mr. Speaker, I appreciate the gentleman from Florida
yielding me this time.
The preceding speaker talked about the tragedies that are going on.
Mr. Speaker, those kinds of tragedies are going on throughout the
entire world. This country cannot be the world's police officer. We do
have international commitments, but before we exercise these
commitments, we need to look at the precedents, what we have done in
regards to these kinds of situations.
Number one, we have never gone into the sovereign territory of
another country like this without being invited to settle a dispute
within their boundaries. This is a very similar situation. If the State
of Colorado that I am from got in a dispute with the State of Texas,
would we invite the Turks or the Greeks or NATO to come in and resolve
the dispute between Colorado and Texas?
There are atrocities occurring in Kosovo. It is a proper mission for
humanitarian efforts. It is not a proper mission to intervene with
American military troops that will be there on an indefinite basis. Do
not kid ourselves. It is an indefinite basis.
Look at Cyprus, the United Nations. I just came from Cyprus. United
Nations troops have never been able to make the peace there. They have
been able to keep the peace because of the fact they have troops there.
They have been there for 27 years. It is the same thing here. We are
attempting as outsiders to intervene within the boundaries of a
sovereign country to resolve a dispute that is based in large part on
religion, in large part on nationality; a dispute of which we have very
little historical knowledge; we certainly have very little historical
experience, and we think by force and sending in troops we are going to
make peace. We are not.
We are going to be able to keep the peace. As long as we have troops
in Kosovo, we can keep peace. But we cannot, we do not have the
capability to take hundreds of years of battle and hundreds of years of
rock-solid feelings and force them into a peace agreement.
Finally, Mr. Speaker, let me wrap up by saying that some would
suggest that this is not an appropriate time for delay. This is an
appropriate time for delay before the troops go in. Do not debate after
the troops are in; do it before the troops are in.
Mr. HALL of Ohio. Mr. Speaker, I yield 3 minutes to the gentleman
from New York, (Mr. Engel).
Mr. ENGEL. Mr. Speaker, I thank my friend from Ohio for yielding me
this time.
Mr. Speaker, I have spent as much time as anyone over these past 10
or 11 years dealing with the problem in Kosovo. I want to tell my
colleagues as far as I am concerned this is a wrong rule and the wrong
resolution at the wrong time, and it should be defeated. I have hardly
seen anything more irresponsible, quite frankly, in my 10 plus years
here than this resolution and this rule.
As far as I am concerned, this is an attempt to embarrass the
President, this is mischief-making at its worst, and it undermines
American foreign policy, it undermines the negotiations going on. I
returned from Rambouillet 3 weeks ago, and I can tell my colleagues
that if we pass this rule and the resolution offered by the gentleman
from New York (Mr. Gilman) goes down to defeat, as I suspect it will,
this will destroy the negotiations and destroy the peace process, and
we will be responsible for that.
The Speaker of the House, the gentleman from Illinois (Mr. Hastert)
came and said that this was an open process, and I think he was a bit
disingenuous, quite frankly. He says that he wants to meet Democrats
halfway. We have not seen that meeting us halfway on committee ratios,
we have not seen it on funding, and now the Democrats are pleading, the
administration is pleading and saying please postpone this vote until
there is an agreement, and we cannot even get a postponement on the
vote.
Senator Dole was quite eloquent yesterday. He said, quite simply,
first we get an agreement and then we go before Congress to ratify the
agreement. We do not do it the other way around. Senator Dole has also
spent more time than anybody in terms of Kosovo, and he thinks this
will be very damaging. Everybody that has worked in this process thinks
it will be very, very damaging.
There is no reason to do this kind of thing now, except to embarrass
the President politically and undermine U.S. foreign policy. This is
absolutely irresponsible. It will damage the peace process.
Let me remind my colleagues that foreign policy should be bipartisan.
I was one of those Democrats that voted with President Bush and
supported him in the Persian Gulf War when he asked for bipartisanship.
Now that the shoe is on the other foot, we get very little of it from
the other side. All I know is that in Kosovo there is genocide, ethnic
cleansing and killing, and it needs to stop, and if the United States
Congress votes against sending troops to Kosovo, Slobodan Milosevic,
the butcher of Kosovo, will laugh and laugh and laugh, because we will
have given him cover.
The Albanians, who have agreed to the agreement will back off,
because without strong American participation they will not have the
fortitude; they only trust the United States of America. We have seen
time and time again, we saw it in Bosnia, 200,000 people were
ethnically cleansed, and until the United States grabbed the bull by
the horns and showed the leadership in NATO, people were being killed
and genocide was happening again on the face of Europe. And when the
United States grabbed the bull by the horns, only then did it stop, and
it is the same situation here. It is disingenuous of my colleagues to
say they want the killing to stop, but they do not want to support
American troops as part of NATO on the ground.
Without our participation, the killing will continue and the ethnic
cleansing will continue.
Defeat this rule. It is nothing more than mischief making and it does
not do this Congress good service at all.
Mr. DIAZ-BALART. Mr. Speaker, I yield myself such time as I may
consume.
I feel obliged to reject the allegation that Congress would be
responsible for atrocities based on the fact that we are bringing forth
this resolution as a sovereign representative body of the American
people. I am unaccustomed to citing, to quoting The Washington Post,
Mr. Speaker, but I feel at this time that I must.
The Washington Post editorial today says, ``It is a bad time for
Congress to
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debate whether the United States should send troops to help police any
peace reached in Kosovo. But there is no better time left, and Congress
has good reason to proceed.''
The Washington Post continues by saying, ``The President ought to be
asking forthrightly for congressional approval, not trying to evade a
congressional judgment on his policy in Kosovo.''
So with all respect, I tell my colleagues that it is not fair, based
on a policy disagreement, which is genuine and which is most
appropriate to say that we would be responsible for atrocities or
horrors that are based on unexplainable and historical reasons in that
part of the world.
Mr. Speaker, I yield 4 minutes to the gentleman from New York (Mr.
Gilman), the distinguished chairman of the Committee on International
Relations.
(Mr. GILMAN asked and was given permission to revise and extend his
remarks.)
Mr. GILMAN. Mr. Speaker, I thank the gentleman for yielding me this
time.
Mr. Speaker, I am pleased to rise in support of the rule,
H. Con.
Res. 42, authorizing deployment of our U.S. armed forces in Kosovo. It
provides for a clear general debate, and then opens this measure up to
amendments from any member, as long as these amendments were preprinted
in the Record.
I understand that some 53 amendments have been filed and some are
duplicates and I expect the debate will focus on authorizing the
deployment, requiring reports, praising the negotiations, praising our
troops, or prohibiting the deployment. This debate will fulfill our
historic constitutional and legal mandate given by our Founding Fathers
to put the war powers in the hands of the Congress, not the President.
We have called for this because as I understand it, the President
does not want us to vote prior to the conclusions of the ongoing Kosovo
negotiations, and will deploy troops within 48 hours of the agreement,
as he has indicated that he will deploy some 4,000 troops to support
the agreement. And if we were to vote subsequent to deployment, we
would risk undercutting our troops in the field.
According to the Secretary of State, the people's elected
representatives should not vote before deployment and to avoid
undercutting the troops, we should not vote after deployment. That must
not be so. The elected representatives of the people must vote on this
risky mission.
From some of the past conflicts up to and including Desert Storm,
Congress has voted on deployment of our troops and when we did so, we
strengthened our Nation's resolve and our diplomacy.
I believe we must have this vote to require the President to clarify
our mission and to bring the American people into the debate that could
put our uniformed personnel in harm's way.
I want to state that I support this resolution. I support the
deployment of troops to Kosovo, provided they enter Kosovo in a
permissive environment and with agreed-on conditions of the contact
group. With such conditions, I would support our President's commitment
to guaranteeing peace in Kosovo.
To quote the editorial that was just cited by our good colleague from
Florida, the editorial in today's Washington Post entitled ``Bring
Congress In,'' and I quote, ``It takes a bold decision for Bill Clinton
to bring Congress in as a partner this Kosovo, and he should not shy
away from it.''
Mr. HALL of Ohio. Mr. Speaker, I yield 3 minutes to the gentleman
from Connecticut (Mr. Gejdenson), who is the ranking minority member on
the Committee on International Relations.
Mr. GEJDENSON. Mr. Speaker, first let us get straight where we are.
There is no constitutional requirement that the United States Congress
take action prior to the President putting troops into a peacekeeping
situation. This is not initiating a war; this is not moving troops in
an area where we anticipate war. These are peacekeeping operations, and
we have troops all over the world in peacekeeping operations without
having gotten prior congressional approval.
Let us also get rid of some of the arguments that we have heard here
on the floor that we are going to let the Europeans take care of that.
That was tried. The previous administration waited for Europe to
respond to the crisis in Yugoslavia. Mr. Speaker, 200,000 people
murdered, raped, killed in their homes, in open fields, maybe not
reaching the numbers of other mass murders in this century, but
certainly enough that the American people felt that we could no longer
wait, and this President led our effort to end that slaughter.
Burden sharing. We have never had an action where the United States
is to play such a small role in the number of people on the ground;
that in every other action, American forces were there in larger number
and in this case the Europeans are, for the first time in my memory,
accepting a larger responsibility. When we look at the statements, not
just of Ambassador Kirkpatrick and Senator Dole who are clearly in
favor of the President's policy, and in particular Senator Dole
deserves great praise for his actions, his efforts, going to the region
and the work he has done. But even Secretary Kissinger, who has written
in opposition to the policy, was very hesitant to suggest that anybody
should interpret from his article that they should vote against this
resolution.
{time} 1230
What is the right thing to do? The right thing to do, as Senator Dole
said, is first have an agreement and then have a vote. Because if we do
not do it that way, as again Senator Dole said, if we have the vote
first and we fail to pass it, we will probably not have an agreement.
It is an awfully hard place to get an agreement in the first place.
Without all the support from Congress, with the unanimity of the
American people, expressed by 435 Members of this House voting in favor
of the President's actions, it will be exceedingly difficult to achieve
a goal of peace in that area.
But with the actions that we take today, even if we pass it, but with
a small number, it will encourage Milosevic and others who object to
the peace process, who want to see battle continue, and who care not
for the lives on the ground.
I do hope this is a sincere effort where we differ. I sure hope that
we do not see a unified rejection of the negotiations that are going on
today because it is a Democratic President. Speaker Foley, when he sat
in this House, held up the vote on the Persian Gulf for months at the
request of the President of the United States, George Bush. He waited
until the troops were there and ready, and then, with agreement from
the administration, held a vote.
We are asked to vote before there is an agreement, before there is a
conclusion. Support the Committee on Rules' proposal to send this back
and bring it back to the floor when there is actually something to vote
on.
Mr. HALL of Ohio. Mr. Speaker, I yield 2 minutes to the gentleman
from California (Mr. Lantos), who is also a very distinguished member
of the Committee on International Relations.
Mr. LANTOS. Mr. Speaker, I have the highest regard for all of my
colleagues on the other side of the Chamber, and of course, I
recognize, as we all must, that this is not a partisan issue.
When President Bush asked this body to support him with respect to
the Persian Gulf, I was one of those Democrats who proudly and publicly
supported him. I want to pay tribute to Senator Dole for his courageous
public statements and actions supporting the policy that we support.
It is self-evident that this is the wrong time to deal with this
issue. There may be no agreement for us to implement. But if we vote
now, the likelihood of an agreement diminishes.
How many innocent children and women have to be killed in the former
Yugoslavia for us to talk about genocide? Had we acted in 1991, a
quarter million innocent people who are now dead would be here, and
2\1/2\ million refugees would still be living in their homes.
I know the difference between the Persian Gulf and Kosovo. Kosovo has
no oil. That is the principle that is invoked here, under the table.
Clearly we are not protecting our oil resources in Kosovo, as we did in
the Persian Gulf.
This ought not to be a partisan dispute. We are undermining NATO,
that succeeded in destroying the mighty Soviet Union, if we as the
leader of NATO
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bail out on our international responsibilities.
If we listen closely, we hear the voices of isolationism
reverberating in this Chamber. It is mindboggling. As we close this
century, the lesson of it is that appeasement does not pay, that
aggression must be resisted. I ask my colleagues to reject this rule,
and to have this debate after an agreement will have been reached.
Mr. HALL of Ohio. Mr. Speaker, I yield 2 minutes to the gentleman
from Michigan (Mr. Levin).
(Mr. LEVIN asked and was given permission to revise and extend his
remarks.)
Mr. LEVIN. Mr. Speaker, I was in Bosnia 4 years ago as cochair of a
House delegation, and there were three clear lessons from that trip.
Number one, there is a U.S. national interest in preventing an
outbreak of major conflagration in the Balkans. We should not be the
world's policeman, true. We also should not be asleep at the switch.
Whether we like it or not, the Balkans is an important crossroads.
Secondly, Mr. Milosevic is a major roadblock to peace, and
understands only firmness, total firmness.
Third, the U.S. has a special credibility there. We have a special
credibility, and we need to use it to help bring about peace and to
help enforce it.
The question now is not whether we are going to go to war, but
whether we can negotiate a peace. I urge Members on the majority side
to listen to their standardbearer of 1996, Robert Dole, who said just
yesterday, I would rather have the vote come after the agreement. Mr.
Dole, to his credit, knows the importance of bipartisanship in foreign
policy.
I close with this. This is a particularly sensitive time in the
negotiations for peace in Kosovo. This is not the time to take risks in
undermining those efforts. Those who insist on a debate at this
particular moment should think again, or they bear the responsibility
for the possible consequences of their actions.
Mr. DIAZ-BALART. Mr. Speaker, I yield 1\1/2\ minutes to the
gentlewoman from North Carolina (Mrs. Myrick), a distinguished member
of the Committee on Rules.
Mrs. MYRICK. Mr. Speaker, I do rise today in support of this rule,
because it provides a fair and open debate, as should be the case with
such an important matter. But that said, I strongly oppose the
commitment of U.S. troops to Kosovo unless we are going to go in and
solve the problem.
I do not believe the United States can be the parent or the policeman
of the world, and the fighting there and in the rest of the Balkans is
primarily a European matter and should remain a European matter, and
they should be involved in taking the lead in this.
I believe wholeheartedly in maintaining a strong national defense,
and I will always support our men and women in uniform. In fact, it is
because of my commitment to the troops and not despite of it that I
oppose this deployment of the troops to Kosovo.
To put it simply, our forces are stretched too thin around the globe
to commit 4,000 or 5,000 troops in an effort whose end is nowhere in
sight. When we committed troops to Bosnia, we were told they would be
home that fall; then, that Christmas. That was in 1996. Three years
later, our troops are still in Bosnia.
I have tremendous confidence in America's Armed Forces, and have no
doubt that given a properly defined mission with a clear objective and
a sensible exit strategy, our forces would perform brilliantly. That,
however, does not describe our presence in the former Yugoslavia.
I urge my colleagues to join me in supporting this rule and opposing
House Concurrent Resolution 42.
Mr. HALL of Ohio. Mr. Speaker, I yield 3 minutes to our leader, the
gentleman from Missouri (Mr. Gephardt).
(Mr. GEPHARDT asked and was given permission to revise and extend his
remarks.)
Mr. GEPHARDT. Mr. Speaker, I have always believed that Congress
should be involved in decisions by our government to send our armed
services into harm's way. I really believe it is best to first commit
the people and then commit the troops.
However, I object strongly to the timing of this debate. We should
not be debating this matter while our diplomats at this very moment are
seeking to convince the parties to this conflict to lay down their
weapons and choose the path of peace.
To conduct a divisive debate in Congress and perhaps fail to support
our government's efforts is the height of irresponsibility, and
threatens the hope for an agreement to halt the bloodshed and prevent
the widening of this war.
We all know that we are at a very delicate moment in the Kosovo peace
negotiations. In part due to the efforts of former Senate Majority
Leader Bob Dole, the Kosovar Albanians are reportedly ready to sign an
agreement, and our diplomats are right now continuing convince
Yugoslavia President Milosevic to agree, as well.
If we reject this legislation, the Kosovars may refuse to sign an
agreement out of fear that U.S. leadership is wavering, and clearly,
Milosevic will be emboldened to continue his rejection of a NATO force
as part of any agreement. Either outcome will only lead to more
violence, more bloodshed, which has engulfed this region over the past
years.
This should not be about politics. It should not be about giving the
administration a black eye. This is about ending a humanitarian
catastrophe and preventing the slaughter of thousands of innocent
people caught in a simmering ethnic conflict.
Lives are at stake here. Our actions today may determine whether the
people of Kosovo have a chance for a peaceful future, or simply resume
the killing that could destabilize the region and threaten United
States interests. I thought until recently that the Republican
leadership shared this view, and grieve that partisanship has no place
in this debate.
When asked a few weeks ago about a House vote on Kosovo, the Speaker
stated publicly, I think we need to make sure that the administration
has the room to negotiate and get the job done in Rambouillet first.
The fact that we are here today demonstrates that Republican leaders
have chosen partisan politics over a united American effort to end the
conflict. It seems that politics has infected foreign policy, and I
think, if that has happened, with great harm to our credibility
overseas.
Others will talk about the importance of U.S. leadership in the
Balkans and Kosovo's significance for the future of NATO. I will simply
reiterate to the Members what Bob Dole said yesterday in the Committee
on International Relations. When asked about the timing of the vote,
Senator Dole said, ``I would rather have the vote come after the
agreement between the Kosovar Albanians and Serbia.''
When asked how Members should vote if this resolution is not
postponed, Senator Dole said, we hope there will be strong bipartisan
support. It is in our national interest to do this.
I regret that the leadership in Congress has forgotten our history
and our background, and the importance of standing united as we attempt
to resolve yet another international conflict. I urge all Members,
Republican and Democratic alike, to vote against this rule, and defer
this action that very well may provoke further bloodshed in the
Balkans.
We can have this vote if there is a treaty. We can have this vote
once there has been some kind of pulling together of a policy that we
can look at and evaluate. This vote today is premature. It is wrong to
have it today. The Members have it within their ability to put this
vote off. I urge Members to vote against the previous question, vote
against the rule, and let us bring up this vote when it is timely and
appropriate.
Mr. HALL of Ohio. Mr. Speaker, I yield myself such time as I may
consume.
(Mr. HALL of Ohio asked and was given permission to revise and extend
his remarks and include extraneous material.)
Mr. HALL of Ohio. Mr. Speaker, I urge Members to vote against the
previous question. If the previous question is defeated, I will offer
an amendment to the rule that will delay consideration of the Kosovo
peacekeeping resolution until an agreement on the status of Kosovo has
been signed between the Serbian government and the Kosovo Albanians.
There is potential for serious damage to the peace process if we
insist on
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bringing this debate while negotiations are in midstream and are in a
precarious state. We certainly would not want to do anything in this
body which could have the effect of disrupting or even ending the
prospect for peace in the Balkan region.
{time} 1245
Mr. Speaker, I urge a no vote on the previous question.
Mr. Speaker, I include for the Record the document entitled ``The
Vote on the Previous Question: What It Really Means,'' as follows:
The Vote on the Previous Question: What it Really Means
This vote, the vote on whether to order the previous
question on a special rule, is not merely a procedural vote.
A vote against ordering the previous question is a vote
against the Republican majority agenda and a vote to allow
the opposition, at least for the moment, to offer an
alternative plan. It is a vote about what the House should be
debating.
Mr. Clarence Cannon's ``Precedents of the House of
Representatives,'' (VI, 308-311) describes the vote on the
previous question on the rule as ``a motion to direct or
control the consideration of the subject before the House
being made by the Member in charge.'' To defeat the previous
question is to give the opposition a chance to decide the
subject before the House. Cannon cites the Speaker's ruling
of January 13, 1920, to the effect that ``the refusal of the
House to sustain the demand for the previous question passes
the control of the resolution to the opposition'' in order to
offer an amendment. On March 15, 1909, a member of the
majority party offered a rule resolution. The House defeated
the previous question and a member of the opposition rose to
a parliamentary inquiry, asking who was entitled to
recognition. Speaker Joseph G. Cannon (R-Illinois) said:
``The previous question having been refused, the gentleman
from New York, Mr. Fitzgerald, who had asked the gentleman to
yield to him for an amendment, is entitled to the first
recognition.''
Because the vote today may look bad for the Republican
majority they will say ``the vote on the previous question is
simply a vote on whether to proceed to an immediate vote on
adopting the resolution . . . [and] has no substantive
legislative or policy implications whatsoever.'' But that is
not what they have always said. Listen to the Republican
Leadership ``Manual on the Legislative Process in the United
States House of Representatives,'' (6th edition, page 135).
Here's how the Republicans describe the previous question
vote in their own manual:
``Although it is generally not possible to amend the rule
because the majority Member controlling the time will not
yield for the purpose of offering an amendment, the same
result may be achieved by voting down the previous question
on the rule. . . . When the motion for the previous question
is defeated, control of the time passes to the Member who led
the opposition to ordering the previous question. That
Member, because he then controls the time, may offer an
amendment to the rule, or yield for the purpose of
amendment.''
Desc
Amendments:
Cosponsors:
PEACEKEEPING OPERATIONS IN KOSOVO RESOLUTION
Sponsor:
Summary:
All articles in House section
PEACEKEEPING OPERATIONS IN KOSOVO RESOLUTION
(House of Representatives - March 11, 1999)
Text of this article available as:
TXT
PDF
[Pages
H1179-H1250]
PEACEKEEPING OPERATIONS IN KOSOVO RESOLUTION
Mr. DIAZ-BALART. Mr. Speaker, by direction of the Committee on Rules,
I call up House Resolution 103 and ask for its immediate consideration.
The Clerk read the resolution, as follows:
H. Res. 103
Resolved, That at any time after the adoption of this
resolution the Speaker may, pursuant to clause 2(b) of rule
XVIII, declare the
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House resolved into the Committee of the Whole House on the
state of the Union for consideration of the concurrent
resolution (
H. Con. Res. 42) regarding the use of United
States Armed Forces as part of a NATO peacekeeping operation
implementing a Kosovo peace agreement. The first reading of
the concurrent resolution shall be dispensed with. General
debate shall be confined to the concurrent resolution and
shall not exceed two hours equally divided and controlled by
the chairman and ranking minority member of the Committee on
International Relations. After general debate the concurrent
resolution shall be considered for amendment under the five-
minute rule. The concurrent resolution shall be considered as
read. No amendment to the concurrent resolution shall be in
order except those printed in the portion of the
Congressional Record designated for that purpose in clause 8
of rule XVIII and except pro forma amendments for the purpose
of debate. Each amendment so printed may be offered only by
the Member who caused it to be printed or his designee and
shall be considered as read. The chairman of the Committee of
the Whole may: (1) postpone until a time during further
consideration in the Committee of the Whole a request for a
recorded vote on any amendment; and (2) reduce to five
minutes the minimum time for electronic voting on any
postponed question that follows another electronic vote
without intervening business, provided that the minimum time
for electronic voting on the first in any series of questions
shall be 15 minutes. At the conclusion of consideration of
the concurrent resolution for amendment the Committee shall
rise and report the concurrent resolution to the House with
such amendments as may have been adopted. The previous
question shall be considered as ordered on the concurrent
resolution to final adoption without intervening motion
except one motion to recommit with or without instructions.
The SPEAKER pro tempore (Mr. Burr of North Carolina). The gentleman
from Florida (Mr. Diaz-Balart) is recognized for 1 hour.
Mr. DIAZ-BALART. Mr. Speaker, for the purpose of debate only, I yield
the customary 30 minutes to the gentleman from Ohio (Mr. Hall). During
consideration of this resolution, all time yielded is for the purpose
of debate only.
Mr. Speaker, I yield such time as he may consume to the distinguished
Speaker of the House of Representatives.
Mr. HASTERT. Mr. Speaker, I thank the gentleman from Florida for
yielding me this time. I rise in support of this rule. I would like to
address the House for a few moments on the issue we are preparing to
consider, the possible deployment of U.S. troops to Kosovo.
The President has made it clear that he is committed to sending
approximately 4,000 U.S. troops to Kosovo as part of a NATO force
intended to keep the peace. I am convinced that the President firmly
believes the presence of U.S. troops in Kosovo is essential to
maintaining peace in this troubled area. Like every American, I hope
the Serbs and the Kosovars are able to achieve a peaceful resolution to
their dispute. We all pray for that outcome. Kosovo is a great human
tragedy, fanned by injustice and unexplained hatred.
As a Member of this great body and now as your Speaker, I have never
wavered in my belief and trust in this institution. Some have argued
that we should not have this debate today, that we should just leave it
to the President. Some have even suggested that taking part and talking
about this could damage the peace process. I disagree. No one should
fear the free expression of ideas, the frank exchange of opinions in a
representative democracy. Two weeks ago, the German Bundestag held an
extensive debate and voted on whether or not Germany should deploy over
5,000 German troops in Kosovo. The British Parliament has also
discussed the deployment of British troops in Kosovo. I do not believe
that any harm has been done to the peace process by the workings of
these two great democracies. In fact, one message which should come
from this debate and those held in the parliaments of our allies is
that a free people can disagree without violence and bloodshed.
On this important subject, I have tried to be direct and honest. I
have spoken with the President and with his Secretary of State. I told
them that I believed it was my duty as Speaker to ensure that Members
of the House of Representatives, Republicans and Democrats, have the
opportunity to fairly and openly debate the important issue before
troops are sent into a potentially dangerous situation. I believe
Congress must have a meaningful role in this decision, no matter how
difficult our choice nor how hard our task.
I have been equally honest in telling the President that I personally
have reservations regarding the wisdom of deploying the additional U.S.
troops to the former Yugoslavia, but I have not made up my mind and I
will listen intently and closely to this debate. I hope that each of
you will do the same, because it is our heavy responsibility and high
honor to represent the men and women who are being asked by the
President to go into harm's way. Each of us must be prepared to answer
to their families and loved ones. I am deeply convinced that we owe
them today's debate, for under our Constitution we share this burden
with our President.
Our debate today will enable each of us to carry out our
responsibilities in a fair and thoughtful way. The gentleman from New
York (Mr. Gilman), at my request, has offered without prejudice this
resolution stating the President's position, that troops be deployed. I
urge the adoption of this open rule that allows every Member of this
House to have a say and to amend this resolution. We have set in place
a fair and open process. We are here to discuss sensitive issues of
policy and not personality. And let me repeat, we are here today to
discuss policy and not personality. I know it does not need to be said,
but I urge all Members to treat this issue with the seriousness that it
deserves. We have a solemn duty to perform. And let us do it with the
dignity that brings credit to this great House.
Mr. DIAZ-BALART. Mr. Speaker, I yield myself such time as I may
consume.
Mr. Speaker, House Resolution 103 is a modified open rule providing
for the consideration, as the Speaker of the House has just explained,
of House Concurrent Resolution 42, the Peacekeeping Operations in
Kosovo Resolution.
The purpose of the resolution is to authorize the President to deploy
United States armed forces to Kosovo and just as importantly it makes
possible congressional discussion of this very complex situation.
The rule provides for 2 hours of general debate equally divided
between the chairman and the ranking minority member of the Committee
on International Relations. It is the intention of the rule that the
managers of general debate yield time fairly to Republican and
Democratic proponents and opponents of the concurrent resolution.
Further, the bill provides that the concurrent resolution shall be
considered as read and makes in order only those amendments preprinted
in the Congressional Record, to be offered only by the Member who
caused the amendment to be printed, or his designee, and each amendment
shall be considered as read.
In addition, the rule allows the Chairman of the Committee of the
Whole to postpone votes during consideration of the bill and to reduce
voting time to 5 minutes on votes following a 15-minute vote. Finally,
the rule provides one motion to recommit, with or without instructions.
Mr. Speaker, House Resolution 103 is a fair framework to provide a
forum to debate the issues surrounding the possible deployment of U.S.
troops for participation in a NATO peacekeeping force in Kosovo. Any
Member can offer any germane amendment to this resolution providing the
amendment was preprinted in the Congressional Record prior to its
consideration. The gentleman from California (Mr. Dreier) made this
announcement on Monday, March 8, on the House floor, as well as through
a Dear Colleague letter to Members.
It has been well known, including in fact through constant press
reports, that the House would be debating this difficult issue this
week. In spite of the snowstorm we had on Tuesday, Members have known
for weeks that we would be taking up this issue prior to the March 15
peace talks in France, the deadline. Were it not for this fair rule,
if, for example, we had brought
H.Con.Res. 42 to the floor under
suspension of the rules, it would be nonamendable and would be allowed
only 40 minutes of debate. Therefore, I think it is very important that
Members support this rule, regardless of their position on deployment
or nondeployment of troops, because Congress has every
[[Page
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right to be debating this resolution today and this rule provides a
fair way to do so.
Some Members as well as other foreign policy experts have questioned
the timing of this debate while peace negotiations have not been
concluded. But if Congress is to deliberate these serious issues prior
to the possible deployment of U.S. troops, now is the time. March 15,
the proposed deadline for a peace agreement for Kosovo, is this Monday,
and U.S. troops could be on their way to Kosovo Monday night if
agreement is reached.
As the gentleman from Florida (Mr. Goss) stated at the Committee on
Rules during our markup, there is no perfect time for this. At least
two of the Members of the six-nation contact group on Kosovo, Germany
and Great Britain, as the Speaker of the House just made reference,
have debated in their parliaments this precise issue this past month.
Now is indeed an appropriate time for the United States House of
Representatives as the sovereign representative body of the American
people to take up the issue of possible deployment of our troops to
join a NATO force.
The situation in Kosovo is indeed precarious. It has now been over a
year since fighting broke out between the Albanian rebels and the
Serbian forces in Kosovo and in spite of an October 1998 cease-fire
agreement, hostilities have continued.
{time} 1145
March 15 is the current deadline for negotiations to be completed on
a peace agreement. What is at issue is the expansion of the U.S. role
in Kosovo and whether U.S. troops should be deployed to participate in
a NATO peace mission should a peace agreement be reached.
Historically it is well known that the Balkans have been a tinder box
for regional wars, and we must not forget that World War I began in
that part of the world.
In 1995, as a member of the Committee on Rules, I brought to the
floor the Bosnia-Herzegovina Self-defense Act to end the arms embargo
on Bosnia. That embargo was morally wrong, and I believe that it was
legally questionable as well from the very beginning. While not
contiguous with Bosnia, where U.S. troops are currently deployed, the
dangers of a spill-over effect and renewed violence in the region have
been realized in the Serbian province of Kosovo. I am extremely
concerned by the genocidal attacks on civilians in Kosovo. As a British
statesman said while debating the situation in the Balkans:
No language can describe adequately the condition of that large
portion of the Balkan peninsula, Serbia, Bosnia, Herzegovina and the
other provinces, political intrigues, constant rivalries, a total
absence of public spirit, hatred of all races, animosities of rival
religions and an absence of any controlling power, nothing short of an
army of 50,000 of the best troops would produce anything like order in
these parts.
That statement was made by Prime Minister Benjamin Disraeli in
October 1878. Unfortunately his words still ring true today.
In summary, the Congress, Mr. Speaker, has every right to debate
whether we should put U.S. troops in harm's way before they are sent.
That is the reason for today's debate.
I urge my colleagues to support this fair rule so that the House will
have the opportunity to debate this very critical issue regarding the
possible deployment of our troops to Kosovo. I would urge my colleagues
to support the rule.
Mr. Speaker, I reserve the balance of my time.
Mr. HALL of Ohio. Mr. Speaker, I yield myself such time as I may
consume.
Mr. Speaker, I want to thank the gentleman from Florida (Mr. Diaz-
Balart) for yielding me the time. This is a modified open rule. It will
allow for consideration of House Concurrent Resolution 42 which, as my
colleagues have heard, is a resolution authorizing the President to
deploy United States troops to Kosovo. As my colleague has described,
this rule provides for 1 hour of general debate to be equally divided
and controlled by the chairman and ranking minority member of the
Committee on International Relations. The rule permits amendments under
the 5-minute rule, which is the normal amending process in the House.
Under this rule, only amendments which have been preprinted in the
Congressional Record will be in order.
The Committee on Rules has crafted a rule which at another time would
be acceptable. However I believe that the Kosovo resolution should not
be brought up at this time. Therefore I will oppose the previous
question so that the rule can be amended.
For most Americans Kosovo and Serbia are only distant points on the
globe, but that is not so for the community of Dayton, Ohio, the
community which I represent, because it was my community of Dayton that
hosted the peace talks in 1995 that led to the fragile peace that we
are trying to preserve. Today there is continued unrest between the
Serbians and the Albanians in Kosovo. The conflict has already left
more than a thousand civilians dead and as many as 400,000 homeless. If
left unchecked, the turmoil could lead to a broader war in Europe.
However there is hope. Sensitive peace talks are taking place in the
region. Through the efforts of Bob Dole the Albanians appear to be
ready to sign a peace agreement. The United States and its allies
continue to press the parties to restore peace to the region.
My concern with this resolution is not whether Congress has the right
to authorize the commitment of U.S. troops; we have that right. My
concern with this resolution is whether it is in our national interest
to take it up today in the middle of the peace talks that appear to be
succeeding.
Yesterday at the hearing of the Committee on Rules the gentleman from
Connecticut (Mr. Gejdenson), who is the ranking Democratic member of
the House Committee on International Relations warned against bringing
this resolution to the House floor today. He testified that it
seriously undermines the prospects for reaching peace in the region and
could lead to more warfare.
Secretary of State Madeleine Albright sounded a similar note of
alarm. Yesterday she testified before the Subcommittee on Commerce,
Justice, State, and Judiciary that this vote will be taken as a green
light for the warring parties to continue fighting.
During the Committee on Rules consideration the gentleman from
Massachusetts (Mr. Moakley), the ranking Democratic member, offered an
amendment to the rule postponing consideration of the resolution until
the end of the current peace negotiations, and that amendment was
defeated on a straight party line vote. Mr. Moakley also offered an
amendment to the rule making in order a floor amendment by the
gentleman from Connecticut (Mr. Gejdenson) supporting the peace process
and authorizing the deployment of troops if a fair and just peace
agreement is reached. The amendment was also defeated on a straight
party line vote.
Perhaps when the time comes under the right conditions Congress
should support the deployment of troops to Kosovo, and perhaps when the
time comes Congress should oppose the move. But the time is not today.
We in Dayton, Ohio, know about peace negotiations in Kosovo and
Serbia. We know how sensitive they can be. We also know how important
they can be because for a brief moment the negotiations of the 1995
accord lived in my community. Let us let the administration negotiate a
peace without Congress sending the wrong signal, and we should not
bring up the resolution today.
If the previous question is defeated, I will offer an amendment to
the rule which will permit the Kosovo resolution to come up only after
the two parties have signed the agreement on the status of Kosovo. The
delay is necessary to ensure that the actions of the House do not
interfere with the peace negotiations in Kosovo.
Before concluding I want to express my appreciation to the gentleman
from California (Mr. Dreier) and to the Republicans on the Committee on
Rules for keeping this a relatively unrestricted rule and for
permitting the motion to recommit. I am heartened by the bipartisan
spirit in which gentleman from California (Mr. Dreier) approached this
rule, and I believe this sends a positive signal at the beginning of
this Congress. Our differences are not in the crafting of the rule,
only in the timing.
[[Page
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Mr. Speaker, I reserve the balance of my time.
Mr. DIAZ-BALART. Mr. Speaker, I yield 4 minutes to the distinguished
gentleman from Florida (Mr. Goss), a member of the Committee on Rules
and chairman of the Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence.
(Mr. GOSS asked and was given permission to revise and extend his
remarks.)
Mr. GOSS. Mr. Speaker, I thank my colleague from Florida for yielding
me this time.
Mr. Speaker, today the House will debate whether to send U.S. troops
to Kosovo, an issue that may seem to have little relevance to the lives
of many Americans in this time of very blue skies in this country which
we are fortunate to enjoy. But appearances aside, the decisions we make
about Kosovo will affect the course of the United States and our allies
in the world over the next several years.
This matters. It is a critically important debate, and I urge Members
to give it their most thoughtful attention.
Some may question whether this is the right time for a congressional
debate, as we have already heard, about sending U.S. troops to Kosovo.
Once an agreement is reached, the Clinton administration has announced
that it will deploy troops forthwith to begin enforcement of the
agreement. So when is the right time to debate the issue? The answer is
before our men and women in uniform are placed in harm's way.
I am concerned that the administration tends to place U.S. troops
into a dangerous situation where they are unwelcomed by both parties
and do not have clear marching orders. Serbian President Milosevic, an
unsavory strong man in my view, refuses to accept the presence of
foreign troops on Serbian soil, and the Kosovar rebels on their part
refuse to give up their ultimate goal of independence from Serbia. Of
even greater concern is the possibility that the NATO mission may have
the unintended consequence of destabilizing the region by encouraging
separatism in neighboring areas, a situation we are already familiar
with.
Mr. Speaker, there is no question that the humanitarian crisis in
Kosovo cries out for international attention and assistance. But the
real question is: How should the United States of America respond? Is
the answer always the commission of U.S. forces no matter what?
Listening to the Clinton administration, we would think that bombing
and deployment of troops is the only solution available to us.
I am also concerned about the implications of the administration's
Kosovo plans on the future of NATO. For several years NATO has been
grappling with its role in the post cold war period. The
administration's headlong rush to support deployment of NATO troops
outside the treaty area risks damage to the delicate consensus that
underlies the alliance.
In April at NATO's 50th anniversary to be celebrated here in
Washington the Alliance will announce its new strategic concept for the
direction and mission of NATO. Will this document explain why NATO must
intervene in Kosovo, an area outside the treaty boundary, but not
intervene in an area, say, in Africa where there is genocide and a
civil war going where human suffering is just as great.
Mr. Speaker, when President Clinton first proposed sending U.S.
troops to Kosovo, he laid out the following criteria: a strong and
effective peace agreement with full participation by both parties, a
permissive security environment, including the disarmament of the
Kosovar power militaries and a well-defined NATO mission with a clear
exit strategy. These criteria are a good starting point for the
congressional consideration.
Later today I or others may offer amendments to this resolution to
ensure that these criteria and other equally important ones are met
before U.S. troops are sent to Kosovo.
Before I vote to support sending our men and women in uniform to
Kosovo, people in my district want to know the exit strategy as well as
the entry strategy. They want to know how this fits into our national
interest, and they want to know the costs. These are basic questions
that we in Congress should raise so that the American people are fully
informed. Getting answers from the administration is part of our job
description, especially when the use of our men and women in uniform is
involved.
This rule provides for full debate. I urge its support.
Mr. HALL of Ohio. Mr. Speaker, I yield 3 minutes to the gentleman
from Michigan (Mr. Bonior).
Mr. BONIOR. Mr. Speaker, I thank the gentleman from Ohio (Mr. Hall)
for yielding me the time, and again I rise to say that the timing of
this resolution could not be worse, not the fact that we are debating
it. I think the fact that they have allowed a debate and under a
generally open rule is a positive sign, as my friend from Ohio has
stated. But having this debate and having this vote in the midst of
negotiations makes little sense and, in fact, undermines those
negotiations.
Mr. Speaker, I think it is important for us to review where we have
been in the Balkans. In Bosnia tens of thousands of people lost their
lives, thousands of women were raped, hundreds of thousands of people
displaced from their home before we had the courage to finally say no,
and within the past year in Kosovo we have had 2000 people killed, we
have had 400,000 people displaced in Slobodan Milosevic's genocidal
campaign of violence and human rights abuses against the 2 million
ethnic Albanians.
Mr. Speaker, this is not the time to have this resolution on the
floor of the House. On the 15th of January, at Racak, Serbian special
police shot at least 15 ethnic Albanians including elderly people and
children. Human Rights Watch has evidence suggesting that the Serbians
had, and I quote, ``direct orders to kill village inhabitants over the
age of 15.'' In Rogovo, just 2 weeks later Serbian police raided a
farming village and executed 25 people.
This has gone on for a year, it has gone on for more than a year, but
within the last year we have seen these numbers rise to 2,000 people.
Why would Milosevic do anything but stall, not agree to a peace
agreement, if the United States Congress says in a vote later today, if
this rule passes, that we, in fact, will not deploy troops? We will be
giving him a green light, and we will be seeing more Racaks, we will be
seeing more slaughters as we saw in Rogovo, and we will be in an
unvirtuous circle of islands in which we undoubtedly will have to
revisit again on this House floor.
Just today, while Richard Holbrooke was talking with Milosevic
yesterday, violence continued, and there is a picture in the New York
Times showing the deaths of people in the village of Ivaja in Kosovo.
{time} 1200
This slaughter must stop, and the way to stop it is to stop this
resolution from coming to the floor of the House, and we can do that by
voting against the rule. Arthur Vandenberg once said that politics
should stop at the water's edge when it comes to foreign policy. Bob
Dole asked us not to do this yesterday. Let us not do this. Let us stop
here. Vote no on this rule. Then we can have a good debate on this
issue when the issue comes before us when an agreement occurs in this
troubled land.
Mr. DIAZ-BALART. Mr. Speaker, I yield 2 minutes to the distinguished
gentleman from Georgia (Mr. Linder).
Mr. LINDER. Mr. Speaker, I thank the gentleman from Florida (Mr.
Diaz-Balart) for yielding.
Mr. Speaker, I rise in support of
H. Res. 103, the rule providing for
consideration of the resolution regarding peacekeeping operations in
Kosovo. This rule ensures a free and open debate and provides Members
the opportunity to have their voices heard on this very important
matter involving the lives of our troops.
The modified open rule passed the House Committee on Rules and it did
not provide any preferential waivers. It allows for all germane
amendments and complies with the request of the gentleman from
Connecticut (Mr. Gejdenson), who requested that all amendments be
preprinted in the Congressional Record.
The passage of this rule will, I admit, lead to a wide open
discussion on a very public issue, with the prospect of counter
argument and earnest debate. I welcome that debate and I expect it to
be an extraordinary exchange of ideas and opinions.
I will be honest in stating that I have grave reservations about the
deployment of American troops in Kosovo,
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but I also do not see anything wrong with giving Members the
opportunity to listen closely to the arguments on each side of the
debate.
Our allies, Great Britain and Germany, have deliberated and engaged
in this debate already, and that leads us to the question underlying
the rule we are discussing today: Should the United States House of
Representatives have the opportunity to participate in the decision to
deploy our troops in Kosovo and debate it today?
My personal view is that it would be better if we did not. I would
prefer that this resolution inform the President that we are unwilling
to fund his adventurism without clear rules of engagement, exit
strategies, specific goals and a budget. We have a constitutional
responsibility to participate in decisions putting our troops in harm's
way. I do believe that would better be the question before us.
Having said that, I urge Members to support the fair rule that will
initiate a full and open debate regarding the deployment of young
Americans' lives in a dangerous foreign land.
Mr. HALL of Ohio. Mr. Speaker, I yield 3 minutes to the gentleman
from Missouri (Mr. Skelton), who is the ranking member of the Committee
on Armed Services.
Mr. SKELTON. Mr. Speaker, I thank the gentleman from Ohio (Mr. Hall)
for yielding to me.
Mr. Speaker, I speak against the rule. I will vote against the rule.
I am deeply concerned that taking this matter up now in the midst of
negotiations between the opposing parties, the Kosovars and Milosevic's
people, will cause great harm and great damage to the negotiating
process.
Should what we do today cause there to be no agreement, we would have
lost, Europe would have lost and there will be continued bloodshed and
anguish in Kosovo. I think it is wrong to take this up now. It is
untimely. It is improper to do so.
Secondly, as it was mentioned by my friend, the gentleman from Ohio
(Mr. Hall), I am the ranking member on the Committee on Armed Services.
This deals with the military of the United States of America.
We in our committee should have had the opportunity to have had a
hearing to find out what troops, under what conditions and if there is
a possibility of saving some other deployments because we are short on
troops today. These are questions that we in our committee should have
had the opportunity to ask, a full and fair hearing in the Committee on
Armed Services, which we did not have.
Thirdly, I would like to mention that I also have an amendment,
should this rule carry, which I hope in all sincerity it does not. I
will have an amendment that requires that there be an agreement between
the parties before any American troops are allowed to go into Kosovo.
That is the bottom line. Right now, bringing up this resolution is
improper and uncalled for because it could very well change the
agreement, cause there not to be an agreement and cause confusion in
that part of the Balkans.
I wish that everyone could have been with me to witness the four-
starred German general who is the second in command at NATO a few weeks
ago when I asked him why is it important that America be involved in
Europe and in NATO?
His answer was a full and complete one, which said it is important
that America be there. I think that if America should be there, we
should have the opportunity to do it the right way, the right time and
under the right resolution and the right vote.
Mr. DIAZ-BALART. Mr. Speaker, I yield 2 minutes to the distinguished
gentleman from North Carolina (Mr. Coble).
(Mr. COBLE asked and was given permission to revise and extend his
remarks.)
Mr. COBLE. Mr. Speaker, I thank the gentleman from Florida (Mr. Diaz-
Balart) for yielding.
Mr. Speaker, I usually vote consistently in favor of rules, and I may
vote for this rule, but I am opposed to our dispatching troops to
Kosovo, not unlike my friend, the gentleman from Missouri (Mr. Skelton)
who just spoke.
I recall Bosnia. The President told us our troops would be back home,
I believe, by December 1996. Well, when I last checked, December 1996
has come and long gone and our troops are still there. I was uneasy
about it because I could not grasp the importance of our national
security vis-a-vis Bosnia. Now Kosovo is on the screen and, unlike
Bosnia, as best I remember it, I do not think we have even been invited
to come to Kosovo.
Given these two situations, I don't mean to portray myself as an
isolationist but to suggest that Bosnia and Kosovo are European
problems that should be resolved by Europeans hardly constitutes
isolationism. It is isolationism light at its best, if that.
I just believe that we do not need to insert our oars into those
waters, and I don't mean to come across as uncaring or indifferent to
the problems plaguing Europe, but doggone it, it is indeed a European
problem.
Let our European friends handle it unless it becomes a situation that
causes United States national security to be exposed.
Now, absent that, Mr. Speaker, and my colleagues on both sides, I
think we need to go about our business here. Let our friends across the
water, as my late grandma used to say, let them resolve those problems.
Mr. HALL of Ohio. Mr. Speaker, I yield 2 minutes to the gentleman
from Texas (Mr. Ortiz)
Mr. ORTIZ. Mr. Speaker, I rise today as a member of the House
Committee on Armed Services to oppose the rule allowing the House to
consider House Resolution 42 regarding Kosovo.
I want to say this in the strongest possible terms, considering this
vote today is so ill-timed as to adversely affect the peace
negotiations ongoing in the Balkans. It has taken us so long to build
the coalition that we have been able to build in that part of the
world, and we understand this. This Congress says they have the
obligation to ensure that the diplomats in the region exhaust all
possible means in their negotiations.
Like the gentleman from Missouri (Mr. Skelton), I wish that we had
been able to debate this issue in the committee before it came to the
House floor to see what the needs are, how many troops, the equipment.
So I think that it has all been done in good faith but it is ill-timed.
We also have a unique responsibility in this situation, as we do in
most global spots. We are the world's only remaining superpower. We
have more and better military might than any other country in the
world. If we are indeed the only remaining superpower, then that status
brings certain obligations and responsibilities. This is why I say, let
us discuss it further.
I just got back from Bosnia 4 days ago. The morale of our troops is
high and, not only that, they believe in the mission that they are
conducting in that part of the world. They said for the first time we
have seen young children play in the parks, play in the streets, go to
school. So please help us defeat this rule.
Mr. DIAZ-BALART. Mr. Speaker, I yield 2 minutes to the distinguished
gentleman from California (Mr. Cunningham).
Mr. CUNNINGHAM. Mr. Speaker, this is exactly the time to have this
discussion, exactly the time. It may not be the time for negotiators
and bean counters but it is for our troops.
I remember Somalia, where the President did not come to Congress when
he changed going after Aideed, and we lost 22 rangers because they
failed to give armor which the military wanted; or Haiti, that we are
today spending $25 million a year in building schools and roads out of
the defense budget.
Kosovo is like any of the United States is to Greater Serbia. It is
not a separate entity. It is the birthplace of the Orthodox Catholic
religion. It is their home. It was occupied by 100 percent Serbs, and
the Turks and the Nazis eliminated and desecrated and ethnically
cleansed Jews, Gypsies and Serbs and now the population is Albanian.
Albania does not want just Kosovo. They want part of Greece. They
want Montenegro. This is only a beginning.
Listen to George Tenet's brief. Bin Laden is working with the KLA,
the terrorists, that is going to hit the United States. If we do not
want to stop this, then do not talk about it, but if we go in there, we
are going to lose a great number of people. For what? They have been
fighting for 400 years.
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This debate is well timed. Maybe not for my colleagues on the other
side but for the kids that have to put those backpacks on and carry
rifles. It is the time to stop this.
Take a look at the number of military deployments. It was 300 percent
during the height of Vietnam. We are killing our military as it is, and
we have one-half the force to do it. That is why they are bailing out.
This is exactly the time, Mr. Speaker, and I reject the other side.
Mr. HALL of Ohio. Mr. Speaker, I yield 1 minute to the gentleman from
North Dakota (Mr. Pomeroy).
Mr. POMEROY. Mr. Speaker, I strongly object to this rule which will
provide for the House to debate the U.S. involvement in the Kosovo
peace agreement. The reason I object to consideration of this issue at
this time is that as of today, there is no peace agreement and the
process leading to the arriving at a peace agreement is at a terribly
tenuous, sensitive and delicate stage.
{time} 1215
We have all read with horror about the atrocities committed in
Kosovo. Innocent civilians, including little children, have been
savagely and brutally murdered. For the sake of humanity and decency,
we all want this butchery to end. It will require a peace agreement to
end this killing. Our taking up the resolution now while the
deliberations are still underway can only make it more difficult to
resolve this.
Yesterday, former Majority Leader Bob Dole gave advice to the
Committee on International Relations. He says, ``We have 2 steps here.
First, we get an agreement, then the President goes to the American
people to explain it.''
Mr. Speaker, I think we must follow Majority Leader Dole's advice.
Defeat this rule and let the deliberations leading to peace be
concluded.
Mr. DIAZ-BALART. Mr. Speaker, I yield 2 minutes to the distinguished
gentleman from Colorado (Mr. McInnis).
Mr. McINNIS. Mr. Speaker, I appreciate the gentleman from Florida
yielding me this time.
The preceding speaker talked about the tragedies that are going on.
Mr. Speaker, those kinds of tragedies are going on throughout the
entire world. This country cannot be the world's police officer. We do
have international commitments, but before we exercise these
commitments, we need to look at the precedents, what we have done in
regards to these kinds of situations.
Number one, we have never gone into the sovereign territory of
another country like this without being invited to settle a dispute
within their boundaries. This is a very similar situation. If the State
of Colorado that I am from got in a dispute with the State of Texas,
would we invite the Turks or the Greeks or NATO to come in and resolve
the dispute between Colorado and Texas?
There are atrocities occurring in Kosovo. It is a proper mission for
humanitarian efforts. It is not a proper mission to intervene with
American military troops that will be there on an indefinite basis. Do
not kid ourselves. It is an indefinite basis.
Look at Cyprus, the United Nations. I just came from Cyprus. United
Nations troops have never been able to make the peace there. They have
been able to keep the peace because of the fact they have troops there.
They have been there for 27 years. It is the same thing here. We are
attempting as outsiders to intervene within the boundaries of a
sovereign country to resolve a dispute that is based in large part on
religion, in large part on nationality; a dispute of which we have very
little historical knowledge; we certainly have very little historical
experience, and we think by force and sending in troops we are going to
make peace. We are not.
We are going to be able to keep the peace. As long as we have troops
in Kosovo, we can keep peace. But we cannot, we do not have the
capability to take hundreds of years of battle and hundreds of years of
rock-solid feelings and force them into a peace agreement.
Finally, Mr. Speaker, let me wrap up by saying that some would
suggest that this is not an appropriate time for delay. This is an
appropriate time for delay before the troops go in. Do not debate after
the troops are in; do it before the troops are in.
Mr. HALL of Ohio. Mr. Speaker, I yield 3 minutes to the gentleman
from New York, (Mr. Engel).
Mr. ENGEL. Mr. Speaker, I thank my friend from Ohio for yielding me
this time.
Mr. Speaker, I have spent as much time as anyone over these past 10
or 11 years dealing with the problem in Kosovo. I want to tell my
colleagues as far as I am concerned this is a wrong rule and the wrong
resolution at the wrong time, and it should be defeated. I have hardly
seen anything more irresponsible, quite frankly, in my 10 plus years
here than this resolution and this rule.
As far as I am concerned, this is an attempt to embarrass the
President, this is mischief-making at its worst, and it undermines
American foreign policy, it undermines the negotiations going on. I
returned from Rambouillet 3 weeks ago, and I can tell my colleagues
that if we pass this rule and the resolution offered by the gentleman
from New York (Mr. Gilman) goes down to defeat, as I suspect it will,
this will destroy the negotiations and destroy the peace process, and
we will be responsible for that.
The Speaker of the House, the gentleman from Illinois (Mr. Hastert)
came and said that this was an open process, and I think he was a bit
disingenuous, quite frankly. He says that he wants to meet Democrats
halfway. We have not seen that meeting us halfway on committee ratios,
we have not seen it on funding, and now the Democrats are pleading, the
administration is pleading and saying please postpone this vote until
there is an agreement, and we cannot even get a postponement on the
vote.
Senator Dole was quite eloquent yesterday. He said, quite simply,
first we get an agreement and then we go before Congress to ratify the
agreement. We do not do it the other way around. Senator Dole has also
spent more time than anybody in terms of Kosovo, and he thinks this
will be very damaging. Everybody that has worked in this process thinks
it will be very, very damaging.
There is no reason to do this kind of thing now, except to embarrass
the President politically and undermine U.S. foreign policy. This is
absolutely irresponsible. It will damage the peace process.
Let me remind my colleagues that foreign policy should be bipartisan.
I was one of those Democrats that voted with President Bush and
supported him in the Persian Gulf War when he asked for bipartisanship.
Now that the shoe is on the other foot, we get very little of it from
the other side. All I know is that in Kosovo there is genocide, ethnic
cleansing and killing, and it needs to stop, and if the United States
Congress votes against sending troops to Kosovo, Slobodan Milosevic,
the butcher of Kosovo, will laugh and laugh and laugh, because we will
have given him cover.
The Albanians, who have agreed to the agreement will back off,
because without strong American participation they will not have the
fortitude; they only trust the United States of America. We have seen
time and time again, we saw it in Bosnia, 200,000 people were
ethnically cleansed, and until the United States grabbed the bull by
the horns and showed the leadership in NATO, people were being killed
and genocide was happening again on the face of Europe. And when the
United States grabbed the bull by the horns, only then did it stop, and
it is the same situation here. It is disingenuous of my colleagues to
say they want the killing to stop, but they do not want to support
American troops as part of NATO on the ground.
Without our participation, the killing will continue and the ethnic
cleansing will continue.
Defeat this rule. It is nothing more than mischief making and it does
not do this Congress good service at all.
Mr. DIAZ-BALART. Mr. Speaker, I yield myself such time as I may
consume.
I feel obliged to reject the allegation that Congress would be
responsible for atrocities based on the fact that we are bringing forth
this resolution as a sovereign representative body of the American
people. I am unaccustomed to citing, to quoting The Washington Post,
Mr. Speaker, but I feel at this time that I must.
The Washington Post editorial today says, ``It is a bad time for
Congress to
[[Page
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debate whether the United States should send troops to help police any
peace reached in Kosovo. But there is no better time left, and Congress
has good reason to proceed.''
The Washington Post continues by saying, ``The President ought to be
asking forthrightly for congressional approval, not trying to evade a
congressional judgment on his policy in Kosovo.''
So with all respect, I tell my colleagues that it is not fair, based
on a policy disagreement, which is genuine and which is most
appropriate to say that we would be responsible for atrocities or
horrors that are based on unexplainable and historical reasons in that
part of the world.
Mr. Speaker, I yield 4 minutes to the gentleman from New York (Mr.
Gilman), the distinguished chairman of the Committee on International
Relations.
(Mr. GILMAN asked and was given permission to revise and extend his
remarks.)
Mr. GILMAN. Mr. Speaker, I thank the gentleman for yielding me this
time.
Mr. Speaker, I am pleased to rise in support of the rule,
H. Con.
Res. 42, authorizing deployment of our U.S. armed forces in Kosovo. It
provides for a clear general debate, and then opens this measure up to
amendments from any member, as long as these amendments were preprinted
in the Record.
I understand that some 53 amendments have been filed and some are
duplicates and I expect the debate will focus on authorizing the
deployment, requiring reports, praising the negotiations, praising our
troops, or prohibiting the deployment. This debate will fulfill our
historic constitutional and legal mandate given by our Founding Fathers
to put the war powers in the hands of the Congress, not the President.
We have called for this because as I understand it, the President
does not want us to vote prior to the conclusions of the ongoing Kosovo
negotiations, and will deploy troops within 48 hours of the agreement,
as he has indicated that he will deploy some 4,000 troops to support
the agreement. And if we were to vote subsequent to deployment, we
would risk undercutting our troops in the field.
According to the Secretary of State, the people's elected
representatives should not vote before deployment and to avoid
undercutting the troops, we should not vote after deployment. That must
not be so. The elected representatives of the people must vote on this
risky mission.
From some of the past conflicts up to and including Desert Storm,
Congress has voted on deployment of our troops and when we did so, we
strengthened our Nation's resolve and our diplomacy.
I believe we must have this vote to require the President to clarify
our mission and to bring the American people into the debate that could
put our uniformed personnel in harm's way.
I want to state that I support this resolution. I support the
deployment of troops to Kosovo, provided they enter Kosovo in a
permissive environment and with agreed-on conditions of the contact
group. With such conditions, I would support our President's commitment
to guaranteeing peace in Kosovo.
To quote the editorial that was just cited by our good colleague from
Florida, the editorial in today's Washington Post entitled ``Bring
Congress In,'' and I quote, ``It takes a bold decision for Bill Clinton
to bring Congress in as a partner this Kosovo, and he should not shy
away from it.''
Mr. HALL of Ohio. Mr. Speaker, I yield 3 minutes to the gentleman
from Connecticut (Mr. Gejdenson), who is the ranking minority member on
the Committee on International Relations.
Mr. GEJDENSON. Mr. Speaker, first let us get straight where we are.
There is no constitutional requirement that the United States Congress
take action prior to the President putting troops into a peacekeeping
situation. This is not initiating a war; this is not moving troops in
an area where we anticipate war. These are peacekeeping operations, and
we have troops all over the world in peacekeeping operations without
having gotten prior congressional approval.
Let us also get rid of some of the arguments that we have heard here
on the floor that we are going to let the Europeans take care of that.
That was tried. The previous administration waited for Europe to
respond to the crisis in Yugoslavia. Mr. Speaker, 200,000 people
murdered, raped, killed in their homes, in open fields, maybe not
reaching the numbers of other mass murders in this century, but
certainly enough that the American people felt that we could no longer
wait, and this President led our effort to end that slaughter.
Burden sharing. We have never had an action where the United States
is to play such a small role in the number of people on the ground;
that in every other action, American forces were there in larger number
and in this case the Europeans are, for the first time in my memory,
accepting a larger responsibility. When we look at the statements, not
just of Ambassador Kirkpatrick and Senator Dole who are clearly in
favor of the President's policy, and in particular Senator Dole
deserves great praise for his actions, his efforts, going to the region
and the work he has done. But even Secretary Kissinger, who has written
in opposition to the policy, was very hesitant to suggest that anybody
should interpret from his article that they should vote against this
resolution.
{time} 1230
What is the right thing to do? The right thing to do, as Senator Dole
said, is first have an agreement and then have a vote. Because if we do
not do it that way, as again Senator Dole said, if we have the vote
first and we fail to pass it, we will probably not have an agreement.
It is an awfully hard place to get an agreement in the first place.
Without all the support from Congress, with the unanimity of the
American people, expressed by 435 Members of this House voting in favor
of the President's actions, it will be exceedingly difficult to achieve
a goal of peace in that area.
But with the actions that we take today, even if we pass it, but with
a small number, it will encourage Milosevic and others who object to
the peace process, who want to see battle continue, and who care not
for the lives on the ground.
I do hope this is a sincere effort where we differ. I sure hope that
we do not see a unified rejection of the negotiations that are going on
today because it is a Democratic President. Speaker Foley, when he sat
in this House, held up the vote on the Persian Gulf for months at the
request of the President of the United States, George Bush. He waited
until the troops were there and ready, and then, with agreement from
the administration, held a vote.
We are asked to vote before there is an agreement, before there is a
conclusion. Support the Committee on Rules' proposal to send this back
and bring it back to the floor when there is actually something to vote
on.
Mr. HALL of Ohio. Mr. Speaker, I yield 2 minutes to the gentleman
from California (Mr. Lantos), who is also a very distinguished member
of the Committee on International Relations.
Mr. LANTOS. Mr. Speaker, I have the highest regard for all of my
colleagues on the other side of the Chamber, and of course, I
recognize, as we all must, that this is not a partisan issue.
When President Bush asked this body to support him with respect to
the Persian Gulf, I was one of those Democrats who proudly and publicly
supported him. I want to pay tribute to Senator Dole for his courageous
public statements and actions supporting the policy that we support.
It is self-evident that this is the wrong time to deal with this
issue. There may be no agreement for us to implement. But if we vote
now, the likelihood of an agreement diminishes.
How many innocent children and women have to be killed in the former
Yugoslavia for us to talk about genocide? Had we acted in 1991, a
quarter million innocent people who are now dead would be here, and
2\1/2\ million refugees would still be living in their homes.
I know the difference between the Persian Gulf and Kosovo. Kosovo has
no oil. That is the principle that is invoked here, under the table.
Clearly we are not protecting our oil resources in Kosovo, as we did in
the Persian Gulf.
This ought not to be a partisan dispute. We are undermining NATO,
that succeeded in destroying the mighty Soviet Union, if we as the
leader of NATO
[[Page
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bail out on our international responsibilities.
If we listen closely, we hear the voices of isolationism
reverberating in this Chamber. It is mindboggling. As we close this
century, the lesson of it is that appeasement does not pay, that
aggression must be resisted. I ask my colleagues to reject this rule,
and to have this debate after an agreement will have been reached.
Mr. HALL of Ohio. Mr. Speaker, I yield 2 minutes to the gentleman
from Michigan (Mr. Levin).
(Mr. LEVIN asked and was given permission to revise and extend his
remarks.)
Mr. LEVIN. Mr. Speaker, I was in Bosnia 4 years ago as cochair of a
House delegation, and there were three clear lessons from that trip.
Number one, there is a U.S. national interest in preventing an
outbreak of major conflagration in the Balkans. We should not be the
world's policeman, true. We also should not be asleep at the switch.
Whether we like it or not, the Balkans is an important crossroads.
Secondly, Mr. Milosevic is a major roadblock to peace, and
understands only firmness, total firmness.
Third, the U.S. has a special credibility there. We have a special
credibility, and we need to use it to help bring about peace and to
help enforce it.
The question now is not whether we are going to go to war, but
whether we can negotiate a peace. I urge Members on the majority side
to listen to their standardbearer of 1996, Robert Dole, who said just
yesterday, I would rather have the vote come after the agreement. Mr.
Dole, to his credit, knows the importance of bipartisanship in foreign
policy.
I close with this. This is a particularly sensitive time in the
negotiations for peace in Kosovo. This is not the time to take risks in
undermining those efforts. Those who insist on a debate at this
particular moment should think again, or they bear the responsibility
for the possible consequences of their actions.
Mr. DIAZ-BALART. Mr. Speaker, I yield 1\1/2\ minutes to the
gentlewoman from North Carolina (Mrs. Myrick), a distinguished member
of the Committee on Rules.
Mrs. MYRICK. Mr. Speaker, I do rise today in support of this rule,
because it provides a fair and open debate, as should be the case with
such an important matter. But that said, I strongly oppose the
commitment of U.S. troops to Kosovo unless we are going to go in and
solve the problem.
I do not believe the United States can be the parent or the policeman
of the world, and the fighting there and in the rest of the Balkans is
primarily a European matter and should remain a European matter, and
they should be involved in taking the lead in this.
I believe wholeheartedly in maintaining a strong national defense,
and I will always support our men and women in uniform. In fact, it is
because of my commitment to the troops and not despite of it that I
oppose this deployment of the troops to Kosovo.
To put it simply, our forces are stretched too thin around the globe
to commit 4,000 or 5,000 troops in an effort whose end is nowhere in
sight. When we committed troops to Bosnia, we were told they would be
home that fall; then, that Christmas. That was in 1996. Three years
later, our troops are still in Bosnia.
I have tremendous confidence in America's Armed Forces, and have no
doubt that given a properly defined mission with a clear objective and
a sensible exit strategy, our forces would perform brilliantly. That,
however, does not describe our presence in the former Yugoslavia.
I urge my colleagues to join me in supporting this rule and opposing
House Concurrent Resolution 42.
Mr. HALL of Ohio. Mr. Speaker, I yield 3 minutes to our leader, the
gentleman from Missouri (Mr. Gephardt).
(Mr. GEPHARDT asked and was given permission to revise and extend his
remarks.)
Mr. GEPHARDT. Mr. Speaker, I have always believed that Congress
should be involved in decisions by our government to send our armed
services into harm's way. I really believe it is best to first commit
the people and then commit the troops.
However, I object strongly to the timing of this debate. We should
not be debating this matter while our diplomats at this very moment are
seeking to convince the parties to this conflict to lay down their
weapons and choose the path of peace.
To conduct a divisive debate in Congress and perhaps fail to support
our government's efforts is the height of irresponsibility, and
threatens the hope for an agreement to halt the bloodshed and prevent
the widening of this war.
We all know that we are at a very delicate moment in the Kosovo peace
negotiations. In part due to the efforts of former Senate Majority
Leader Bob Dole, the Kosovar Albanians are reportedly ready to sign an
agreement, and our diplomats are right now continuing convince
Yugoslavia President Milosevic to agree, as well.
If we reject this legislation, the Kosovars may refuse to sign an
agreement out of fear that U.S. leadership is wavering, and clearly,
Milosevic will be emboldened to continue his rejection of a NATO force
as part of any agreement. Either outcome will only lead to more
violence, more bloodshed, which has engulfed this region over the past
years.
This should not be about politics. It should not be about giving the
administration a black eye. This is about ending a humanitarian
catastrophe and preventing the slaughter of thousands of innocent
people caught in a simmering ethnic conflict.
Lives are at stake here. Our actions today may determine whether the
people of Kosovo have a chance for a peaceful future, or simply resume
the killing that could destabilize the region and threaten United
States interests. I thought until recently that the Republican
leadership shared this view, and grieve that partisanship has no place
in this debate.
When asked a few weeks ago about a House vote on Kosovo, the Speaker
stated publicly, I think we need to make sure that the administration
has the room to negotiate and get the job done in Rambouillet first.
The fact that we are here today demonstrates that Republican leaders
have chosen partisan politics over a united American effort to end the
conflict. It seems that politics has infected foreign policy, and I
think, if that has happened, with great harm to our credibility
overseas.
Others will talk about the importance of U.S. leadership in the
Balkans and Kosovo's significance for the future of NATO. I will simply
reiterate to the Members what Bob Dole said yesterday in the Committee
on International Relations. When asked about the timing of the vote,
Senator Dole said, ``I would rather have the vote come after the
agreement between the Kosovar Albanians and Serbia.''
When asked how Members should vote if this resolution is not
postponed, Senator Dole said, we hope there will be strong bipartisan
support. It is in our national interest to do this.
I regret that the leadership in Congress has forgotten our history
and our background, and the importance of standing united as we attempt
to resolve yet another international conflict. I urge all Members,
Republican and Democratic alike, to vote against this rule, and defer
this action that very well may provoke further bloodshed in the
Balkans.
We can have this vote if there is a treaty. We can have this vote
once there has been some kind of pulling together of a policy that we
can look at and evaluate. This vote today is premature. It is wrong to
have it today. The Members have it within their ability to put this
vote off. I urge Members to vote against the previous question, vote
against the rule, and let us bring up this vote when it is timely and
appropriate.
Mr. HALL of Ohio. Mr. Speaker, I yield myself such time as I may
consume.
(Mr. HALL of Ohio asked and was given permission to revise and extend
his remarks and include extraneous material.)
Mr. HALL of Ohio. Mr. Speaker, I urge Members to vote against the
previous question. If the previous question is defeated, I will offer
an amendment to the rule that will delay consideration of the Kosovo
peacekeeping resolution until an agreement on the status of Kosovo has
been signed between the Serbian government and the Kosovo Albanians.
There is potential for serious damage to the peace process if we
insist on
[[Page
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bringing this debate while negotiations are in midstream and are in a
precarious state. We certainly would not want to do anything in this
body which could have the effect of disrupting or even ending the
prospect for peace in the Balkan region.
{time} 1245
Mr. Speaker, I urge a no vote on the previous question.
Mr. Speaker, I include for the Record the document entitled ``The
Vote on the Previous Question: What It Really Means,'' as follows:
The Vote on the Previous Question: What it Really Means
This vote, the vote on whether to order the previous
question on a special rule, is not merely a procedural vote.
A vote against ordering the previous question is a vote
against the Republican majority agenda and a vote to allow
the opposition, at least for the moment, to offer an
alternative plan. It is a vote about what the House should be
debating.
Mr. Clarence Cannon's ``Precedents of the House of
Representatives,'' (VI, 308-311) describes the vote on the
previous question on the rule as ``a motion to direct or
control the consideration of the subject before the House
being made by the Member in charge.'' To defeat the previous
question is to give the opposition a chance to decide the
subject before the House. Cannon cites the Speaker's ruling
of January 13, 1920, to the effect that ``the refusal of the
House to sustain the demand for the previous question passes
the control of the resolution to the opposition'' in order to
offer an amendment. On March 15, 1909, a member of the
majority party offered a rule resolution. The House defeated
the previous question and a member of the opposition rose to
a parliamentary inquiry, asking who was entitled to
recognition. Speaker Joseph G. Cannon (R-Illinois) said:
``The previous question having been refused, the gentleman
from New York, Mr. Fitzgerald, who had asked the gentleman to
yield to him for an amendment, is entitled to the first
recognition.''
Because the vote today may look bad for the Republican
majority they will say ``the vote on the previous question is
simply a vote on whether to proceed to an immediate vote on
adopting the resolution . . . [and] has no substantive
legislative or policy implications whatsoever.'' But that is
not what they have always said. Listen to the Republican
Leadership ``Manual on the Legislative Process in the United
States House of Representatives,'' (6th edition, page 135).
Here's how the Republicans describe the previous question
vote in their own manual:
``Although it is generally not possible to amend the rule
because the majority Member controlling the time will not
yield for the purpose of offering an amendment, the same
result may be achieved by voting down the previous question
on the rule. . . . When the motion for the previous question
is defeated, control of the time passes to the Member who led
the opposition to ordering the previous question. That
Member, because he then controls the time, may offer an
amendment to the rule, or yield for the purpose of
amendment.''
Deschler's ``P
Major Actions:
All articles in House section
PEACEKEEPING OPERATIONS IN KOSOVO RESOLUTION
(House of Representatives - March 11, 1999)
Text of this article available as:
TXT
PDF
[Pages
H1179-H1250]
PEACEKEEPING OPERATIONS IN KOSOVO RESOLUTION
Mr. DIAZ-BALART. Mr. Speaker, by direction of the Committee on Rules,
I call up House Resolution 103 and ask for its immediate consideration.
The Clerk read the resolution, as follows:
H. Res. 103
Resolved, That at any time after the adoption of this
resolution the Speaker may, pursuant to clause 2(b) of rule
XVIII, declare the
[[Page
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House resolved into the Committee of the Whole House on the
state of the Union for consideration of the concurrent
resolution (
H. Con. Res. 42) regarding the use of United
States Armed Forces as part of a NATO peacekeeping operation
implementing a Kosovo peace agreement. The first reading of
the concurrent resolution shall be dispensed with. General
debate shall be confined to the concurrent resolution and
shall not exceed two hours equally divided and controlled by
the chairman and ranking minority member of the Committee on
International Relations. After general debate the concurrent
resolution shall be considered for amendment under the five-
minute rule. The concurrent resolution shall be considered as
read. No amendment to the concurrent resolution shall be in
order except those printed in the portion of the
Congressional Record designated for that purpose in clause 8
of rule XVIII and except pro forma amendments for the purpose
of debate. Each amendment so printed may be offered only by
the Member who caused it to be printed or his designee and
shall be considered as read. The chairman of the Committee of
the Whole may: (1) postpone until a time during further
consideration in the Committee of the Whole a request for a
recorded vote on any amendment; and (2) reduce to five
minutes the minimum time for electronic voting on any
postponed question that follows another electronic vote
without intervening business, provided that the minimum time
for electronic voting on the first in any series of questions
shall be 15 minutes. At the conclusion of consideration of
the concurrent resolution for amendment the Committee shall
rise and report the concurrent resolution to the House with
such amendments as may have been adopted. The previous
question shall be considered as ordered on the concurrent
resolution to final adoption without intervening motion
except one motion to recommit with or without instructions.
The SPEAKER pro tempore (Mr. Burr of North Carolina). The gentleman
from Florida (Mr. Diaz-Balart) is recognized for 1 hour.
Mr. DIAZ-BALART. Mr. Speaker, for the purpose of debate only, I yield
the customary 30 minutes to the gentleman from Ohio (Mr. Hall). During
consideration of this resolution, all time yielded is for the purpose
of debate only.
Mr. Speaker, I yield such time as he may consume to the distinguished
Speaker of the House of Representatives.
Mr. HASTERT. Mr. Speaker, I thank the gentleman from Florida for
yielding me this time. I rise in support of this rule. I would like to
address the House for a few moments on the issue we are preparing to
consider, the possible deployment of U.S. troops to Kosovo.
The President has made it clear that he is committed to sending
approximately 4,000 U.S. troops to Kosovo as part of a NATO force
intended to keep the peace. I am convinced that the President firmly
believes the presence of U.S. troops in Kosovo is essential to
maintaining peace in this troubled area. Like every American, I hope
the Serbs and the Kosovars are able to achieve a peaceful resolution to
their dispute. We all pray for that outcome. Kosovo is a great human
tragedy, fanned by injustice and unexplained hatred.
As a Member of this great body and now as your Speaker, I have never
wavered in my belief and trust in this institution. Some have argued
that we should not have this debate today, that we should just leave it
to the President. Some have even suggested that taking part and talking
about this could damage the peace process. I disagree. No one should
fear the free expression of ideas, the frank exchange of opinions in a
representative democracy. Two weeks ago, the German Bundestag held an
extensive debate and voted on whether or not Germany should deploy over
5,000 German troops in Kosovo. The British Parliament has also
discussed the deployment of British troops in Kosovo. I do not believe
that any harm has been done to the peace process by the workings of
these two great democracies. In fact, one message which should come
from this debate and those held in the parliaments of our allies is
that a free people can disagree without violence and bloodshed.
On this important subject, I have tried to be direct and honest. I
have spoken with the President and with his Secretary of State. I told
them that I believed it was my duty as Speaker to ensure that Members
of the House of Representatives, Republicans and Democrats, have the
opportunity to fairly and openly debate the important issue before
troops are sent into a potentially dangerous situation. I believe
Congress must have a meaningful role in this decision, no matter how
difficult our choice nor how hard our task.
I have been equally honest in telling the President that I personally
have reservations regarding the wisdom of deploying the additional U.S.
troops to the former Yugoslavia, but I have not made up my mind and I
will listen intently and closely to this debate. I hope that each of
you will do the same, because it is our heavy responsibility and high
honor to represent the men and women who are being asked by the
President to go into harm's way. Each of us must be prepared to answer
to their families and loved ones. I am deeply convinced that we owe
them today's debate, for under our Constitution we share this burden
with our President.
Our debate today will enable each of us to carry out our
responsibilities in a fair and thoughtful way. The gentleman from New
York (Mr. Gilman), at my request, has offered without prejudice this
resolution stating the President's position, that troops be deployed. I
urge the adoption of this open rule that allows every Member of this
House to have a say and to amend this resolution. We have set in place
a fair and open process. We are here to discuss sensitive issues of
policy and not personality. And let me repeat, we are here today to
discuss policy and not personality. I know it does not need to be said,
but I urge all Members to treat this issue with the seriousness that it
deserves. We have a solemn duty to perform. And let us do it with the
dignity that brings credit to this great House.
Mr. DIAZ-BALART. Mr. Speaker, I yield myself such time as I may
consume.
Mr. Speaker, House Resolution 103 is a modified open rule providing
for the consideration, as the Speaker of the House has just explained,
of House Concurrent Resolution 42, the Peacekeeping Operations in
Kosovo Resolution.
The purpose of the resolution is to authorize the President to deploy
United States armed forces to Kosovo and just as importantly it makes
possible congressional discussion of this very complex situation.
The rule provides for 2 hours of general debate equally divided
between the chairman and the ranking minority member of the Committee
on International Relations. It is the intention of the rule that the
managers of general debate yield time fairly to Republican and
Democratic proponents and opponents of the concurrent resolution.
Further, the bill provides that the concurrent resolution shall be
considered as read and makes in order only those amendments preprinted
in the Congressional Record, to be offered only by the Member who
caused the amendment to be printed, or his designee, and each amendment
shall be considered as read.
In addition, the rule allows the Chairman of the Committee of the
Whole to postpone votes during consideration of the bill and to reduce
voting time to 5 minutes on votes following a 15-minute vote. Finally,
the rule provides one motion to recommit, with or without instructions.
Mr. Speaker, House Resolution 103 is a fair framework to provide a
forum to debate the issues surrounding the possible deployment of U.S.
troops for participation in a NATO peacekeeping force in Kosovo. Any
Member can offer any germane amendment to this resolution providing the
amendment was preprinted in the Congressional Record prior to its
consideration. The gentleman from California (Mr. Dreier) made this
announcement on Monday, March 8, on the House floor, as well as through
a Dear Colleague letter to Members.
It has been well known, including in fact through constant press
reports, that the House would be debating this difficult issue this
week. In spite of the snowstorm we had on Tuesday, Members have known
for weeks that we would be taking up this issue prior to the March 15
peace talks in France, the deadline. Were it not for this fair rule,
if, for example, we had brought
H.Con.Res. 42 to the floor under
suspension of the rules, it would be nonamendable and would be allowed
only 40 minutes of debate. Therefore, I think it is very important that
Members support this rule, regardless of their position on deployment
or nondeployment of troops, because Congress has every
[[Page
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right to be debating this resolution today and this rule provides a
fair way to do so.
Some Members as well as other foreign policy experts have questioned
the timing of this debate while peace negotiations have not been
concluded. But if Congress is to deliberate these serious issues prior
to the possible deployment of U.S. troops, now is the time. March 15,
the proposed deadline for a peace agreement for Kosovo, is this Monday,
and U.S. troops could be on their way to Kosovo Monday night if
agreement is reached.
As the gentleman from Florida (Mr. Goss) stated at the Committee on
Rules during our markup, there is no perfect time for this. At least
two of the Members of the six-nation contact group on Kosovo, Germany
and Great Britain, as the Speaker of the House just made reference,
have debated in their parliaments this precise issue this past month.
Now is indeed an appropriate time for the United States House of
Representatives as the sovereign representative body of the American
people to take up the issue of possible deployment of our troops to
join a NATO force.
The situation in Kosovo is indeed precarious. It has now been over a
year since fighting broke out between the Albanian rebels and the
Serbian forces in Kosovo and in spite of an October 1998 cease-fire
agreement, hostilities have continued.
{time} 1145
March 15 is the current deadline for negotiations to be completed on
a peace agreement. What is at issue is the expansion of the U.S. role
in Kosovo and whether U.S. troops should be deployed to participate in
a NATO peace mission should a peace agreement be reached.
Historically it is well known that the Balkans have been a tinder box
for regional wars, and we must not forget that World War I began in
that part of the world.
In 1995, as a member of the Committee on Rules, I brought to the
floor the Bosnia-Herzegovina Self-defense Act to end the arms embargo
on Bosnia. That embargo was morally wrong, and I believe that it was
legally questionable as well from the very beginning. While not
contiguous with Bosnia, where U.S. troops are currently deployed, the
dangers of a spill-over effect and renewed violence in the region have
been realized in the Serbian province of Kosovo. I am extremely
concerned by the genocidal attacks on civilians in Kosovo. As a British
statesman said while debating the situation in the Balkans:
No language can describe adequately the condition of that large
portion of the Balkan peninsula, Serbia, Bosnia, Herzegovina and the
other provinces, political intrigues, constant rivalries, a total
absence of public spirit, hatred of all races, animosities of rival
religions and an absence of any controlling power, nothing short of an
army of 50,000 of the best troops would produce anything like order in
these parts.
That statement was made by Prime Minister Benjamin Disraeli in
October 1878. Unfortunately his words still ring true today.
In summary, the Congress, Mr. Speaker, has every right to debate
whether we should put U.S. troops in harm's way before they are sent.
That is the reason for today's debate.
I urge my colleagues to support this fair rule so that the House will
have the opportunity to debate this very critical issue regarding the
possible deployment of our troops to Kosovo. I would urge my colleagues
to support the rule.
Mr. Speaker, I reserve the balance of my time.
Mr. HALL of Ohio. Mr. Speaker, I yield myself such time as I may
consume.
Mr. Speaker, I want to thank the gentleman from Florida (Mr. Diaz-
Balart) for yielding me the time. This is a modified open rule. It will
allow for consideration of House Concurrent Resolution 42 which, as my
colleagues have heard, is a resolution authorizing the President to
deploy United States troops to Kosovo. As my colleague has described,
this rule provides for 1 hour of general debate to be equally divided
and controlled by the chairman and ranking minority member of the
Committee on International Relations. The rule permits amendments under
the 5-minute rule, which is the normal amending process in the House.
Under this rule, only amendments which have been preprinted in the
Congressional Record will be in order.
The Committee on Rules has crafted a rule which at another time would
be acceptable. However I believe that the Kosovo resolution should not
be brought up at this time. Therefore I will oppose the previous
question so that the rule can be amended.
For most Americans Kosovo and Serbia are only distant points on the
globe, but that is not so for the community of Dayton, Ohio, the
community which I represent, because it was my community of Dayton that
hosted the peace talks in 1995 that led to the fragile peace that we
are trying to preserve. Today there is continued unrest between the
Serbians and the Albanians in Kosovo. The conflict has already left
more than a thousand civilians dead and as many as 400,000 homeless. If
left unchecked, the turmoil could lead to a broader war in Europe.
However there is hope. Sensitive peace talks are taking place in the
region. Through the efforts of Bob Dole the Albanians appear to be
ready to sign a peace agreement. The United States and its allies
continue to press the parties to restore peace to the region.
My concern with this resolution is not whether Congress has the right
to authorize the commitment of U.S. troops; we have that right. My
concern with this resolution is whether it is in our national interest
to take it up today in the middle of the peace talks that appear to be
succeeding.
Yesterday at the hearing of the Committee on Rules the gentleman from
Connecticut (Mr. Gejdenson), who is the ranking Democratic member of
the House Committee on International Relations warned against bringing
this resolution to the House floor today. He testified that it
seriously undermines the prospects for reaching peace in the region and
could lead to more warfare.
Secretary of State Madeleine Albright sounded a similar note of
alarm. Yesterday she testified before the Subcommittee on Commerce,
Justice, State, and Judiciary that this vote will be taken as a green
light for the warring parties to continue fighting.
During the Committee on Rules consideration the gentleman from
Massachusetts (Mr. Moakley), the ranking Democratic member, offered an
amendment to the rule postponing consideration of the resolution until
the end of the current peace negotiations, and that amendment was
defeated on a straight party line vote. Mr. Moakley also offered an
amendment to the rule making in order a floor amendment by the
gentleman from Connecticut (Mr. Gejdenson) supporting the peace process
and authorizing the deployment of troops if a fair and just peace
agreement is reached. The amendment was also defeated on a straight
party line vote.
Perhaps when the time comes under the right conditions Congress
should support the deployment of troops to Kosovo, and perhaps when the
time comes Congress should oppose the move. But the time is not today.
We in Dayton, Ohio, know about peace negotiations in Kosovo and
Serbia. We know how sensitive they can be. We also know how important
they can be because for a brief moment the negotiations of the 1995
accord lived in my community. Let us let the administration negotiate a
peace without Congress sending the wrong signal, and we should not
bring up the resolution today.
If the previous question is defeated, I will offer an amendment to
the rule which will permit the Kosovo resolution to come up only after
the two parties have signed the agreement on the status of Kosovo. The
delay is necessary to ensure that the actions of the House do not
interfere with the peace negotiations in Kosovo.
Before concluding I want to express my appreciation to the gentleman
from California (Mr. Dreier) and to the Republicans on the Committee on
Rules for keeping this a relatively unrestricted rule and for
permitting the motion to recommit. I am heartened by the bipartisan
spirit in which gentleman from California (Mr. Dreier) approached this
rule, and I believe this sends a positive signal at the beginning of
this Congress. Our differences are not in the crafting of the rule,
only in the timing.
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Mr. Speaker, I reserve the balance of my time.
Mr. DIAZ-BALART. Mr. Speaker, I yield 4 minutes to the distinguished
gentleman from Florida (Mr. Goss), a member of the Committee on Rules
and chairman of the Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence.
(Mr. GOSS asked and was given permission to revise and extend his
remarks.)
Mr. GOSS. Mr. Speaker, I thank my colleague from Florida for yielding
me this time.
Mr. Speaker, today the House will debate whether to send U.S. troops
to Kosovo, an issue that may seem to have little relevance to the lives
of many Americans in this time of very blue skies in this country which
we are fortunate to enjoy. But appearances aside, the decisions we make
about Kosovo will affect the course of the United States and our allies
in the world over the next several years.
This matters. It is a critically important debate, and I urge Members
to give it their most thoughtful attention.
Some may question whether this is the right time for a congressional
debate, as we have already heard, about sending U.S. troops to Kosovo.
Once an agreement is reached, the Clinton administration has announced
that it will deploy troops forthwith to begin enforcement of the
agreement. So when is the right time to debate the issue? The answer is
before our men and women in uniform are placed in harm's way.
I am concerned that the administration tends to place U.S. troops
into a dangerous situation where they are unwelcomed by both parties
and do not have clear marching orders. Serbian President Milosevic, an
unsavory strong man in my view, refuses to accept the presence of
foreign troops on Serbian soil, and the Kosovar rebels on their part
refuse to give up their ultimate goal of independence from Serbia. Of
even greater concern is the possibility that the NATO mission may have
the unintended consequence of destabilizing the region by encouraging
separatism in neighboring areas, a situation we are already familiar
with.
Mr. Speaker, there is no question that the humanitarian crisis in
Kosovo cries out for international attention and assistance. But the
real question is: How should the United States of America respond? Is
the answer always the commission of U.S. forces no matter what?
Listening to the Clinton administration, we would think that bombing
and deployment of troops is the only solution available to us.
I am also concerned about the implications of the administration's
Kosovo plans on the future of NATO. For several years NATO has been
grappling with its role in the post cold war period. The
administration's headlong rush to support deployment of NATO troops
outside the treaty area risks damage to the delicate consensus that
underlies the alliance.
In April at NATO's 50th anniversary to be celebrated here in
Washington the Alliance will announce its new strategic concept for the
direction and mission of NATO. Will this document explain why NATO must
intervene in Kosovo, an area outside the treaty boundary, but not
intervene in an area, say, in Africa where there is genocide and a
civil war going where human suffering is just as great.
Mr. Speaker, when President Clinton first proposed sending U.S.
troops to Kosovo, he laid out the following criteria: a strong and
effective peace agreement with full participation by both parties, a
permissive security environment, including the disarmament of the
Kosovar power militaries and a well-defined NATO mission with a clear
exit strategy. These criteria are a good starting point for the
congressional consideration.
Later today I or others may offer amendments to this resolution to
ensure that these criteria and other equally important ones are met
before U.S. troops are sent to Kosovo.
Before I vote to support sending our men and women in uniform to
Kosovo, people in my district want to know the exit strategy as well as
the entry strategy. They want to know how this fits into our national
interest, and they want to know the costs. These are basic questions
that we in Congress should raise so that the American people are fully
informed. Getting answers from the administration is part of our job
description, especially when the use of our men and women in uniform is
involved.
This rule provides for full debate. I urge its support.
Mr. HALL of Ohio. Mr. Speaker, I yield 3 minutes to the gentleman
from Michigan (Mr. Bonior).
Mr. BONIOR. Mr. Speaker, I thank the gentleman from Ohio (Mr. Hall)
for yielding me the time, and again I rise to say that the timing of
this resolution could not be worse, not the fact that we are debating
it. I think the fact that they have allowed a debate and under a
generally open rule is a positive sign, as my friend from Ohio has
stated. But having this debate and having this vote in the midst of
negotiations makes little sense and, in fact, undermines those
negotiations.
Mr. Speaker, I think it is important for us to review where we have
been in the Balkans. In Bosnia tens of thousands of people lost their
lives, thousands of women were raped, hundreds of thousands of people
displaced from their home before we had the courage to finally say no,
and within the past year in Kosovo we have had 2000 people killed, we
have had 400,000 people displaced in Slobodan Milosevic's genocidal
campaign of violence and human rights abuses against the 2 million
ethnic Albanians.
Mr. Speaker, this is not the time to have this resolution on the
floor of the House. On the 15th of January, at Racak, Serbian special
police shot at least 15 ethnic Albanians including elderly people and
children. Human Rights Watch has evidence suggesting that the Serbians
had, and I quote, ``direct orders to kill village inhabitants over the
age of 15.'' In Rogovo, just 2 weeks later Serbian police raided a
farming village and executed 25 people.
This has gone on for a year, it has gone on for more than a year, but
within the last year we have seen these numbers rise to 2,000 people.
Why would Milosevic do anything but stall, not agree to a peace
agreement, if the United States Congress says in a vote later today, if
this rule passes, that we, in fact, will not deploy troops? We will be
giving him a green light, and we will be seeing more Racaks, we will be
seeing more slaughters as we saw in Rogovo, and we will be in an
unvirtuous circle of islands in which we undoubtedly will have to
revisit again on this House floor.
Just today, while Richard Holbrooke was talking with Milosevic
yesterday, violence continued, and there is a picture in the New York
Times showing the deaths of people in the village of Ivaja in Kosovo.
{time} 1200
This slaughter must stop, and the way to stop it is to stop this
resolution from coming to the floor of the House, and we can do that by
voting against the rule. Arthur Vandenberg once said that politics
should stop at the water's edge when it comes to foreign policy. Bob
Dole asked us not to do this yesterday. Let us not do this. Let us stop
here. Vote no on this rule. Then we can have a good debate on this
issue when the issue comes before us when an agreement occurs in this
troubled land.
Mr. DIAZ-BALART. Mr. Speaker, I yield 2 minutes to the distinguished
gentleman from Georgia (Mr. Linder).
Mr. LINDER. Mr. Speaker, I thank the gentleman from Florida (Mr.
Diaz-Balart) for yielding.
Mr. Speaker, I rise in support of
H. Res. 103, the rule providing for
consideration of the resolution regarding peacekeeping operations in
Kosovo. This rule ensures a free and open debate and provides Members
the opportunity to have their voices heard on this very important
matter involving the lives of our troops.
The modified open rule passed the House Committee on Rules and it did
not provide any preferential waivers. It allows for all germane
amendments and complies with the request of the gentleman from
Connecticut (Mr. Gejdenson), who requested that all amendments be
preprinted in the Congressional Record.
The passage of this rule will, I admit, lead to a wide open
discussion on a very public issue, with the prospect of counter
argument and earnest debate. I welcome that debate and I expect it to
be an extraordinary exchange of ideas and opinions.
I will be honest in stating that I have grave reservations about the
deployment of American troops in Kosovo,
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but I also do not see anything wrong with giving Members the
opportunity to listen closely to the arguments on each side of the
debate.
Our allies, Great Britain and Germany, have deliberated and engaged
in this debate already, and that leads us to the question underlying
the rule we are discussing today: Should the United States House of
Representatives have the opportunity to participate in the decision to
deploy our troops in Kosovo and debate it today?
My personal view is that it would be better if we did not. I would
prefer that this resolution inform the President that we are unwilling
to fund his adventurism without clear rules of engagement, exit
strategies, specific goals and a budget. We have a constitutional
responsibility to participate in decisions putting our troops in harm's
way. I do believe that would better be the question before us.
Having said that, I urge Members to support the fair rule that will
initiate a full and open debate regarding the deployment of young
Americans' lives in a dangerous foreign land.
Mr. HALL of Ohio. Mr. Speaker, I yield 3 minutes to the gentleman
from Missouri (Mr. Skelton), who is the ranking member of the Committee
on Armed Services.
Mr. SKELTON. Mr. Speaker, I thank the gentleman from Ohio (Mr. Hall)
for yielding to me.
Mr. Speaker, I speak against the rule. I will vote against the rule.
I am deeply concerned that taking this matter up now in the midst of
negotiations between the opposing parties, the Kosovars and Milosevic's
people, will cause great harm and great damage to the negotiating
process.
Should what we do today cause there to be no agreement, we would have
lost, Europe would have lost and there will be continued bloodshed and
anguish in Kosovo. I think it is wrong to take this up now. It is
untimely. It is improper to do so.
Secondly, as it was mentioned by my friend, the gentleman from Ohio
(Mr. Hall), I am the ranking member on the Committee on Armed Services.
This deals with the military of the United States of America.
We in our committee should have had the opportunity to have had a
hearing to find out what troops, under what conditions and if there is
a possibility of saving some other deployments because we are short on
troops today. These are questions that we in our committee should have
had the opportunity to ask, a full and fair hearing in the Committee on
Armed Services, which we did not have.
Thirdly, I would like to mention that I also have an amendment,
should this rule carry, which I hope in all sincerity it does not. I
will have an amendment that requires that there be an agreement between
the parties before any American troops are allowed to go into Kosovo.
That is the bottom line. Right now, bringing up this resolution is
improper and uncalled for because it could very well change the
agreement, cause there not to be an agreement and cause confusion in
that part of the Balkans.
I wish that everyone could have been with me to witness the four-
starred German general who is the second in command at NATO a few weeks
ago when I asked him why is it important that America be involved in
Europe and in NATO?
His answer was a full and complete one, which said it is important
that America be there. I think that if America should be there, we
should have the opportunity to do it the right way, the right time and
under the right resolution and the right vote.
Mr. DIAZ-BALART. Mr. Speaker, I yield 2 minutes to the distinguished
gentleman from North Carolina (Mr. Coble).
(Mr. COBLE asked and was given permission to revise and extend his
remarks.)
Mr. COBLE. Mr. Speaker, I thank the gentleman from Florida (Mr. Diaz-
Balart) for yielding.
Mr. Speaker, I usually vote consistently in favor of rules, and I may
vote for this rule, but I am opposed to our dispatching troops to
Kosovo, not unlike my friend, the gentleman from Missouri (Mr. Skelton)
who just spoke.
I recall Bosnia. The President told us our troops would be back home,
I believe, by December 1996. Well, when I last checked, December 1996
has come and long gone and our troops are still there. I was uneasy
about it because I could not grasp the importance of our national
security vis-a-vis Bosnia. Now Kosovo is on the screen and, unlike
Bosnia, as best I remember it, I do not think we have even been invited
to come to Kosovo.
Given these two situations, I don't mean to portray myself as an
isolationist but to suggest that Bosnia and Kosovo are European
problems that should be resolved by Europeans hardly constitutes
isolationism. It is isolationism light at its best, if that.
I just believe that we do not need to insert our oars into those
waters, and I don't mean to come across as uncaring or indifferent to
the problems plaguing Europe, but doggone it, it is indeed a European
problem.
Let our European friends handle it unless it becomes a situation that
causes United States national security to be exposed.
Now, absent that, Mr. Speaker, and my colleagues on both sides, I
think we need to go about our business here. Let our friends across the
water, as my late grandma used to say, let them resolve those problems.
Mr. HALL of Ohio. Mr. Speaker, I yield 2 minutes to the gentleman
from Texas (Mr. Ortiz)
Mr. ORTIZ. Mr. Speaker, I rise today as a member of the House
Committee on Armed Services to oppose the rule allowing the House to
consider House Resolution 42 regarding Kosovo.
I want to say this in the strongest possible terms, considering this
vote today is so ill-timed as to adversely affect the peace
negotiations ongoing in the Balkans. It has taken us so long to build
the coalition that we have been able to build in that part of the
world, and we understand this. This Congress says they have the
obligation to ensure that the diplomats in the region exhaust all
possible means in their negotiations.
Like the gentleman from Missouri (Mr. Skelton), I wish that we had
been able to debate this issue in the committee before it came to the
House floor to see what the needs are, how many troops, the equipment.
So I think that it has all been done in good faith but it is ill-timed.
We also have a unique responsibility in this situation, as we do in
most global spots. We are the world's only remaining superpower. We
have more and better military might than any other country in the
world. If we are indeed the only remaining superpower, then that status
brings certain obligations and responsibilities. This is why I say, let
us discuss it further.
I just got back from Bosnia 4 days ago. The morale of our troops is
high and, not only that, they believe in the mission that they are
conducting in that part of the world. They said for the first time we
have seen young children play in the parks, play in the streets, go to
school. So please help us defeat this rule.
Mr. DIAZ-BALART. Mr. Speaker, I yield 2 minutes to the distinguished
gentleman from California (Mr. Cunningham).
Mr. CUNNINGHAM. Mr. Speaker, this is exactly the time to have this
discussion, exactly the time. It may not be the time for negotiators
and bean counters but it is for our troops.
I remember Somalia, where the President did not come to Congress when
he changed going after Aideed, and we lost 22 rangers because they
failed to give armor which the military wanted; or Haiti, that we are
today spending $25 million a year in building schools and roads out of
the defense budget.
Kosovo is like any of the United States is to Greater Serbia. It is
not a separate entity. It is the birthplace of the Orthodox Catholic
religion. It is their home. It was occupied by 100 percent Serbs, and
the Turks and the Nazis eliminated and desecrated and ethnically
cleansed Jews, Gypsies and Serbs and now the population is Albanian.
Albania does not want just Kosovo. They want part of Greece. They
want Montenegro. This is only a beginning.
Listen to George Tenet's brief. Bin Laden is working with the KLA,
the terrorists, that is going to hit the United States. If we do not
want to stop this, then do not talk about it, but if we go in there, we
are going to lose a great number of people. For what? They have been
fighting for 400 years.
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This debate is well timed. Maybe not for my colleagues on the other
side but for the kids that have to put those backpacks on and carry
rifles. It is the time to stop this.
Take a look at the number of military deployments. It was 300 percent
during the height of Vietnam. We are killing our military as it is, and
we have one-half the force to do it. That is why they are bailing out.
This is exactly the time, Mr. Speaker, and I reject the other side.
Mr. HALL of Ohio. Mr. Speaker, I yield 1 minute to the gentleman from
North Dakota (Mr. Pomeroy).
Mr. POMEROY. Mr. Speaker, I strongly object to this rule which will
provide for the House to debate the U.S. involvement in the Kosovo
peace agreement. The reason I object to consideration of this issue at
this time is that as of today, there is no peace agreement and the
process leading to the arriving at a peace agreement is at a terribly
tenuous, sensitive and delicate stage.
{time} 1215
We have all read with horror about the atrocities committed in
Kosovo. Innocent civilians, including little children, have been
savagely and brutally murdered. For the sake of humanity and decency,
we all want this butchery to end. It will require a peace agreement to
end this killing. Our taking up the resolution now while the
deliberations are still underway can only make it more difficult to
resolve this.
Yesterday, former Majority Leader Bob Dole gave advice to the
Committee on International Relations. He says, ``We have 2 steps here.
First, we get an agreement, then the President goes to the American
people to explain it.''
Mr. Speaker, I think we must follow Majority Leader Dole's advice.
Defeat this rule and let the deliberations leading to peace be
concluded.
Mr. DIAZ-BALART. Mr. Speaker, I yield 2 minutes to the distinguished
gentleman from Colorado (Mr. McInnis).
Mr. McINNIS. Mr. Speaker, I appreciate the gentleman from Florida
yielding me this time.
The preceding speaker talked about the tragedies that are going on.
Mr. Speaker, those kinds of tragedies are going on throughout the
entire world. This country cannot be the world's police officer. We do
have international commitments, but before we exercise these
commitments, we need to look at the precedents, what we have done in
regards to these kinds of situations.
Number one, we have never gone into the sovereign territory of
another country like this without being invited to settle a dispute
within their boundaries. This is a very similar situation. If the State
of Colorado that I am from got in a dispute with the State of Texas,
would we invite the Turks or the Greeks or NATO to come in and resolve
the dispute between Colorado and Texas?
There are atrocities occurring in Kosovo. It is a proper mission for
humanitarian efforts. It is not a proper mission to intervene with
American military troops that will be there on an indefinite basis. Do
not kid ourselves. It is an indefinite basis.
Look at Cyprus, the United Nations. I just came from Cyprus. United
Nations troops have never been able to make the peace there. They have
been able to keep the peace because of the fact they have troops there.
They have been there for 27 years. It is the same thing here. We are
attempting as outsiders to intervene within the boundaries of a
sovereign country to resolve a dispute that is based in large part on
religion, in large part on nationality; a dispute of which we have very
little historical knowledge; we certainly have very little historical
experience, and we think by force and sending in troops we are going to
make peace. We are not.
We are going to be able to keep the peace. As long as we have troops
in Kosovo, we can keep peace. But we cannot, we do not have the
capability to take hundreds of years of battle and hundreds of years of
rock-solid feelings and force them into a peace agreement.
Finally, Mr. Speaker, let me wrap up by saying that some would
suggest that this is not an appropriate time for delay. This is an
appropriate time for delay before the troops go in. Do not debate after
the troops are in; do it before the troops are in.
Mr. HALL of Ohio. Mr. Speaker, I yield 3 minutes to the gentleman
from New York, (Mr. Engel).
Mr. ENGEL. Mr. Speaker, I thank my friend from Ohio for yielding me
this time.
Mr. Speaker, I have spent as much time as anyone over these past 10
or 11 years dealing with the problem in Kosovo. I want to tell my
colleagues as far as I am concerned this is a wrong rule and the wrong
resolution at the wrong time, and it should be defeated. I have hardly
seen anything more irresponsible, quite frankly, in my 10 plus years
here than this resolution and this rule.
As far as I am concerned, this is an attempt to embarrass the
President, this is mischief-making at its worst, and it undermines
American foreign policy, it undermines the negotiations going on. I
returned from Rambouillet 3 weeks ago, and I can tell my colleagues
that if we pass this rule and the resolution offered by the gentleman
from New York (Mr. Gilman) goes down to defeat, as I suspect it will,
this will destroy the negotiations and destroy the peace process, and
we will be responsible for that.
The Speaker of the House, the gentleman from Illinois (Mr. Hastert)
came and said that this was an open process, and I think he was a bit
disingenuous, quite frankly. He says that he wants to meet Democrats
halfway. We have not seen that meeting us halfway on committee ratios,
we have not seen it on funding, and now the Democrats are pleading, the
administration is pleading and saying please postpone this vote until
there is an agreement, and we cannot even get a postponement on the
vote.
Senator Dole was quite eloquent yesterday. He said, quite simply,
first we get an agreement and then we go before Congress to ratify the
agreement. We do not do it the other way around. Senator Dole has also
spent more time than anybody in terms of Kosovo, and he thinks this
will be very damaging. Everybody that has worked in this process thinks
it will be very, very damaging.
There is no reason to do this kind of thing now, except to embarrass
the President politically and undermine U.S. foreign policy. This is
absolutely irresponsible. It will damage the peace process.
Let me remind my colleagues that foreign policy should be bipartisan.
I was one of those Democrats that voted with President Bush and
supported him in the Persian Gulf War when he asked for bipartisanship.
Now that the shoe is on the other foot, we get very little of it from
the other side. All I know is that in Kosovo there is genocide, ethnic
cleansing and killing, and it needs to stop, and if the United States
Congress votes against sending troops to Kosovo, Slobodan Milosevic,
the butcher of Kosovo, will laugh and laugh and laugh, because we will
have given him cover.
The Albanians, who have agreed to the agreement will back off,
because without strong American participation they will not have the
fortitude; they only trust the United States of America. We have seen
time and time again, we saw it in Bosnia, 200,000 people were
ethnically cleansed, and until the United States grabbed the bull by
the horns and showed the leadership in NATO, people were being killed
and genocide was happening again on the face of Europe. And when the
United States grabbed the bull by the horns, only then did it stop, and
it is the same situation here. It is disingenuous of my colleagues to
say they want the killing to stop, but they do not want to support
American troops as part of NATO on the ground.
Without our participation, the killing will continue and the ethnic
cleansing will continue.
Defeat this rule. It is nothing more than mischief making and it does
not do this Congress good service at all.
Mr. DIAZ-BALART. Mr. Speaker, I yield myself such time as I may
consume.
I feel obliged to reject the allegation that Congress would be
responsible for atrocities based on the fact that we are bringing forth
this resolution as a sovereign representative body of the American
people. I am unaccustomed to citing, to quoting The Washington Post,
Mr. Speaker, but I feel at this time that I must.
The Washington Post editorial today says, ``It is a bad time for
Congress to
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debate whether the United States should send troops to help police any
peace reached in Kosovo. But there is no better time left, and Congress
has good reason to proceed.''
The Washington Post continues by saying, ``The President ought to be
asking forthrightly for congressional approval, not trying to evade a
congressional judgment on his policy in Kosovo.''
So with all respect, I tell my colleagues that it is not fair, based
on a policy disagreement, which is genuine and which is most
appropriate to say that we would be responsible for atrocities or
horrors that are based on unexplainable and historical reasons in that
part of the world.
Mr. Speaker, I yield 4 minutes to the gentleman from New York (Mr.
Gilman), the distinguished chairman of the Committee on International
Relations.
(Mr. GILMAN asked and was given permission to revise and extend his
remarks.)
Mr. GILMAN. Mr. Speaker, I thank the gentleman for yielding me this
time.
Mr. Speaker, I am pleased to rise in support of the rule,
H. Con.
Res. 42, authorizing deployment of our U.S. armed forces in Kosovo. It
provides for a clear general debate, and then opens this measure up to
amendments from any member, as long as these amendments were preprinted
in the Record.
I understand that some 53 amendments have been filed and some are
duplicates and I expect the debate will focus on authorizing the
deployment, requiring reports, praising the negotiations, praising our
troops, or prohibiting the deployment. This debate will fulfill our
historic constitutional and legal mandate given by our Founding Fathers
to put the war powers in the hands of the Congress, not the President.
We have called for this because as I understand it, the President
does not want us to vote prior to the conclusions of the ongoing Kosovo
negotiations, and will deploy troops within 48 hours of the agreement,
as he has indicated that he will deploy some 4,000 troops to support
the agreement. And if we were to vote subsequent to deployment, we
would risk undercutting our troops in the field.
According to the Secretary of State, the people's elected
representatives should not vote before deployment and to avoid
undercutting the troops, we should not vote after deployment. That must
not be so. The elected representatives of the people must vote on this
risky mission.
From some of the past conflicts up to and including Desert Storm,
Congress has voted on deployment of our troops and when we did so, we
strengthened our Nation's resolve and our diplomacy.
I believe we must have this vote to require the President to clarify
our mission and to bring the American people into the debate that could
put our uniformed personnel in harm's way.
I want to state that I support this resolution. I support the
deployment of troops to Kosovo, provided they enter Kosovo in a
permissive environment and with agreed-on conditions of the contact
group. With such conditions, I would support our President's commitment
to guaranteeing peace in Kosovo.
To quote the editorial that was just cited by our good colleague from
Florida, the editorial in today's Washington Post entitled ``Bring
Congress In,'' and I quote, ``It takes a bold decision for Bill Clinton
to bring Congress in as a partner this Kosovo, and he should not shy
away from it.''
Mr. HALL of Ohio. Mr. Speaker, I yield 3 minutes to the gentleman
from Connecticut (Mr. Gejdenson), who is the ranking minority member on
the Committee on International Relations.
Mr. GEJDENSON. Mr. Speaker, first let us get straight where we are.
There is no constitutional requirement that the United States Congress
take action prior to the President putting troops into a peacekeeping
situation. This is not initiating a war; this is not moving troops in
an area where we anticipate war. These are peacekeeping operations, and
we have troops all over the world in peacekeeping operations without
having gotten prior congressional approval.
Let us also get rid of some of the arguments that we have heard here
on the floor that we are going to let the Europeans take care of that.
That was tried. The previous administration waited for Europe to
respond to the crisis in Yugoslavia. Mr. Speaker, 200,000 people
murdered, raped, killed in their homes, in open fields, maybe not
reaching the numbers of other mass murders in this century, but
certainly enough that the American people felt that we could no longer
wait, and this President led our effort to end that slaughter.
Burden sharing. We have never had an action where the United States
is to play such a small role in the number of people on the ground;
that in every other action, American forces were there in larger number
and in this case the Europeans are, for the first time in my memory,
accepting a larger responsibility. When we look at the statements, not
just of Ambassador Kirkpatrick and Senator Dole who are clearly in
favor of the President's policy, and in particular Senator Dole
deserves great praise for his actions, his efforts, going to the region
and the work he has done. But even Secretary Kissinger, who has written
in opposition to the policy, was very hesitant to suggest that anybody
should interpret from his article that they should vote against this
resolution.
{time} 1230
What is the right thing to do? The right thing to do, as Senator Dole
said, is first have an agreement and then have a vote. Because if we do
not do it that way, as again Senator Dole said, if we have the vote
first and we fail to pass it, we will probably not have an agreement.
It is an awfully hard place to get an agreement in the first place.
Without all the support from Congress, with the unanimity of the
American people, expressed by 435 Members of this House voting in favor
of the President's actions, it will be exceedingly difficult to achieve
a goal of peace in that area.
But with the actions that we take today, even if we pass it, but with
a small number, it will encourage Milosevic and others who object to
the peace process, who want to see battle continue, and who care not
for the lives on the ground.
I do hope this is a sincere effort where we differ. I sure hope that
we do not see a unified rejection of the negotiations that are going on
today because it is a Democratic President. Speaker Foley, when he sat
in this House, held up the vote on the Persian Gulf for months at the
request of the President of the United States, George Bush. He waited
until the troops were there and ready, and then, with agreement from
the administration, held a vote.
We are asked to vote before there is an agreement, before there is a
conclusion. Support the Committee on Rules' proposal to send this back
and bring it back to the floor when there is actually something to vote
on.
Mr. HALL of Ohio. Mr. Speaker, I yield 2 minutes to the gentleman
from California (Mr. Lantos), who is also a very distinguished member
of the Committee on International Relations.
Mr. LANTOS. Mr. Speaker, I have the highest regard for all of my
colleagues on the other side of the Chamber, and of course, I
recognize, as we all must, that this is not a partisan issue.
When President Bush asked this body to support him with respect to
the Persian Gulf, I was one of those Democrats who proudly and publicly
supported him. I want to pay tribute to Senator Dole for his courageous
public statements and actions supporting the policy that we support.
It is self-evident that this is the wrong time to deal with this
issue. There may be no agreement for us to implement. But if we vote
now, the likelihood of an agreement diminishes.
How many innocent children and women have to be killed in the former
Yugoslavia for us to talk about genocide? Had we acted in 1991, a
quarter million innocent people who are now dead would be here, and
2\1/2\ million refugees would still be living in their homes.
I know the difference between the Persian Gulf and Kosovo. Kosovo has
no oil. That is the principle that is invoked here, under the table.
Clearly we are not protecting our oil resources in Kosovo, as we did in
the Persian Gulf.
This ought not to be a partisan dispute. We are undermining NATO,
that succeeded in destroying the mighty Soviet Union, if we as the
leader of NATO
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bail out on our international responsibilities.
If we listen closely, we hear the voices of isolationism
reverberating in this Chamber. It is mindboggling. As we close this
century, the lesson of it is that appeasement does not pay, that
aggression must be resisted. I ask my colleagues to reject this rule,
and to have this debate after an agreement will have been reached.
Mr. HALL of Ohio. Mr. Speaker, I yield 2 minutes to the gentleman
from Michigan (Mr. Levin).
(Mr. LEVIN asked and was given permission to revise and extend his
remarks.)
Mr. LEVIN. Mr. Speaker, I was in Bosnia 4 years ago as cochair of a
House delegation, and there were three clear lessons from that trip.
Number one, there is a U.S. national interest in preventing an
outbreak of major conflagration in the Balkans. We should not be the
world's policeman, true. We also should not be asleep at the switch.
Whether we like it or not, the Balkans is an important crossroads.
Secondly, Mr. Milosevic is a major roadblock to peace, and
understands only firmness, total firmness.
Third, the U.S. has a special credibility there. We have a special
credibility, and we need to use it to help bring about peace and to
help enforce it.
The question now is not whether we are going to go to war, but
whether we can negotiate a peace. I urge Members on the majority side
to listen to their standardbearer of 1996, Robert Dole, who said just
yesterday, I would rather have the vote come after the agreement. Mr.
Dole, to his credit, knows the importance of bipartisanship in foreign
policy.
I close with this. This is a particularly sensitive time in the
negotiations for peace in Kosovo. This is not the time to take risks in
undermining those efforts. Those who insist on a debate at this
particular moment should think again, or they bear the responsibility
for the possible consequences of their actions.
Mr. DIAZ-BALART. Mr. Speaker, I yield 1\1/2\ minutes to the
gentlewoman from North Carolina (Mrs. Myrick), a distinguished member
of the Committee on Rules.
Mrs. MYRICK. Mr. Speaker, I do rise today in support of this rule,
because it provides a fair and open debate, as should be the case with
such an important matter. But that said, I strongly oppose the
commitment of U.S. troops to Kosovo unless we are going to go in and
solve the problem.
I do not believe the United States can be the parent or the policeman
of the world, and the fighting there and in the rest of the Balkans is
primarily a European matter and should remain a European matter, and
they should be involved in taking the lead in this.
I believe wholeheartedly in maintaining a strong national defense,
and I will always support our men and women in uniform. In fact, it is
because of my commitment to the troops and not despite of it that I
oppose this deployment of the troops to Kosovo.
To put it simply, our forces are stretched too thin around the globe
to commit 4,000 or 5,000 troops in an effort whose end is nowhere in
sight. When we committed troops to Bosnia, we were told they would be
home that fall; then, that Christmas. That was in 1996. Three years
later, our troops are still in Bosnia.
I have tremendous confidence in America's Armed Forces, and have no
doubt that given a properly defined mission with a clear objective and
a sensible exit strategy, our forces would perform brilliantly. That,
however, does not describe our presence in the former Yugoslavia.
I urge my colleagues to join me in supporting this rule and opposing
House Concurrent Resolution 42.
Mr. HALL of Ohio. Mr. Speaker, I yield 3 minutes to our leader, the
gentleman from Missouri (Mr. Gephardt).
(Mr. GEPHARDT asked and was given permission to revise and extend his
remarks.)
Mr. GEPHARDT. Mr. Speaker, I have always believed that Congress
should be involved in decisions by our government to send our armed
services into harm's way. I really believe it is best to first commit
the people and then commit the troops.
However, I object strongly to the timing of this debate. We should
not be debating this matter while our diplomats at this very moment are
seeking to convince the parties to this conflict to lay down their
weapons and choose the path of peace.
To conduct a divisive debate in Congress and perhaps fail to support
our government's efforts is the height of irresponsibility, and
threatens the hope for an agreement to halt the bloodshed and prevent
the widening of this war.
We all know that we are at a very delicate moment in the Kosovo peace
negotiations. In part due to the efforts of former Senate Majority
Leader Bob Dole, the Kosovar Albanians are reportedly ready to sign an
agreement, and our diplomats are right now continuing convince
Yugoslavia President Milosevic to agree, as well.
If we reject this legislation, the Kosovars may refuse to sign an
agreement out of fear that U.S. leadership is wavering, and clearly,
Milosevic will be emboldened to continue his rejection of a NATO force
as part of any agreement. Either outcome will only lead to more
violence, more bloodshed, which has engulfed this region over the past
years.
This should not be about politics. It should not be about giving the
administration a black eye. This is about ending a humanitarian
catastrophe and preventing the slaughter of thousands of innocent
people caught in a simmering ethnic conflict.
Lives are at stake here. Our actions today may determine whether the
people of Kosovo have a chance for a peaceful future, or simply resume
the killing that could destabilize the region and threaten United
States interests. I thought until recently that the Republican
leadership shared this view, and grieve that partisanship has no place
in this debate.
When asked a few weeks ago about a House vote on Kosovo, the Speaker
stated publicly, I think we need to make sure that the administration
has the room to negotiate and get the job done in Rambouillet first.
The fact that we are here today demonstrates that Republican leaders
have chosen partisan politics over a united American effort to end the
conflict. It seems that politics has infected foreign policy, and I
think, if that has happened, with great harm to our credibility
overseas.
Others will talk about the importance of U.S. leadership in the
Balkans and Kosovo's significance for the future of NATO. I will simply
reiterate to the Members what Bob Dole said yesterday in the Committee
on International Relations. When asked about the timing of the vote,
Senator Dole said, ``I would rather have the vote come after the
agreement between the Kosovar Albanians and Serbia.''
When asked how Members should vote if this resolution is not
postponed, Senator Dole said, we hope there will be strong bipartisan
support. It is in our national interest to do this.
I regret that the leadership in Congress has forgotten our history
and our background, and the importance of standing united as we attempt
to resolve yet another international conflict. I urge all Members,
Republican and Democratic alike, to vote against this rule, and defer
this action that very well may provoke further bloodshed in the
Balkans.
We can have this vote if there is a treaty. We can have this vote
once there has been some kind of pulling together of a policy that we
can look at and evaluate. This vote today is premature. It is wrong to
have it today. The Members have it within their ability to put this
vote off. I urge Members to vote against the previous question, vote
against the rule, and let us bring up this vote when it is timely and
appropriate.
Mr. HALL of Ohio. Mr. Speaker, I yield myself such time as I may
consume.
(Mr. HALL of Ohio asked and was given permission to revise and extend
his remarks and include extraneous material.)
Mr. HALL of Ohio. Mr. Speaker, I urge Members to vote against the
previous question. If the previous question is defeated, I will offer
an amendment to the rule that will delay consideration of the Kosovo
peacekeeping resolution until an agreement on the status of Kosovo has
been signed between the Serbian government and the Kosovo Albanians.
There is potential for serious damage to the peace process if we
insist on
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bringing this debate while negotiations are in midstream and are in a
precarious state. We certainly would not want to do anything in this
body which could have the effect of disrupting or even ending the
prospect for peace in the Balkan region.
{time} 1245
Mr. Speaker, I urge a no vote on the previous question.
Mr. Speaker, I include for the Record the document entitled ``The
Vote on the Previous Question: What It Really Means,'' as follows:
The Vote on the Previous Question: What it Really Means
This vote, the vote on whether to order the previous
question on a special rule, is not merely a procedural vote.
A vote against ordering the previous question is a vote
against the Republican majority agenda and a vote to allow
the opposition, at least for the moment, to offer an
alternative plan. It is a vote about what the House should be
debating.
Mr. Clarence Cannon's ``Precedents of the House of
Representatives,'' (VI, 308-311) describes the vote on the
previous question on the rule as ``a motion to direct or
control the consideration of the subject before the House
being made by the Member in charge.'' To defeat the previous
question is to give the opposition a chance to decide the
subject before the House. Cannon cites the Speaker's ruling
of January 13, 1920, to the effect that ``the refusal of the
House to sustain the demand for the previous question passes
the control of the resolution to the opposition'' in order to
offer an amendment. On March 15, 1909, a member of the
majority party offered a rule resolution. The House defeated
the previous question and a member of the opposition rose to
a parliamentary inquiry, asking who was entitled to
recognition. Speaker Joseph G. Cannon (R-Illinois) said:
``The previous question having been refused, the gentleman
from New York, Mr. Fitzgerald, who had asked the gentleman to
yield to him for an amendment, is entitled to the first
recognition.''
Because the vote today may look bad for the Republican
majority they will say ``the vote on the previous question is
simply a vote on whether to proceed to an immediate vote on
adopting the resolution . . . [and] has no substantive
legislative or policy implications whatsoever.'' But that is
not what they have always said. Listen to the Republican
Leadership ``Manual on the Legislative Process in the United
States House of Representatives,'' (6th edition, page 135).
Here's how the Republicans describe the previous question
vote in their own manual:
``Although it is generally not possible to amend the rule
because the majority Member controlling the time will not
yield for the purpose of offering an amendment, the same
result may be achieved by voting down the previous question
on the rule. . . . When the motion for the previous question
is defeated, control of the time passes to the Member who led
the opposition to ordering the previous question. That
Member, because he then controls the time, may offer an
amendment to the rule, or yield for the purpose of
amendment.''
Desc
Amendments:
Cosponsors: