Transcript - Senate Floor: MORE TEMPORIZING ON BOSNIA | Factba.se

Joe Biden

Mr. President, I rise today to decry the inaction of our Government, and of our allies, in the face of brazen provocations by the Bosnian Serbs and to repeat my call for lifting of the arms embargo against the Bosnian Government and for use of air strikes to protect U.N.-designated safe havens.

Joe Biden

This painful subject may strike my colleagues as repetitive. Indeed it is: It is nothing short of scandalous that 2\1/2\ years into the Bosnian horrors our policy remains all bark, no bite -- grave threats, no action -- pious statements, but no relief for the beaten, raped, and tortured.

Joe Biden

One would think that there was nothing new to say about the vicious aggression that has left a once-thriving, beautiful, southern European country a desolate landscape of burned-out villages, shell-scarred cities, and destitute and demoralized refugees.

Joe Biden

But, Mr. President, there have been new developments in this tragedy, to which, I regret to report, we have not reacted. In recent days the Bosnian Serbs have not only rejected the peace proposal put forward in Geneva by the contact group of the United States, France, Britain, Germany, and Russia -- but have also demonstrated their contempt for the world community by engaging in a series of provocative acts on the ground in Bosnia.

Joe Biden

At the same time, detailed, credible, corroborated reports have surfaced of a Serbian death camp for Moslems in eastern Bosnia -- an unspeakable genocide factory not seen in Europe since Buchenwald and Bergen-Belsen.

Joe Biden

What in heaven's name is going on? What are we -- the United States of America -- going to do about it?

Joe Biden

The Bosnian Serbs' rejection of the contact group's plan for carving up Bosnia was not surprising in light of their insatiable greed and pathological hatred of their Moslem and Croatian fellow citizens.

Joe Biden

My colleagues know of my own opposition to the contact group's plan, since the very hatred of which I speak guarantees the plan's failure in practice. The Bosnian Serbs may have spared us from the misguided sending of American troops to Bosnia as so-called peacekeepers of a nonexistent peace, of playing apartheid cops in a war zone.

Joe Biden

It is not the Bosnian Serbs' rejection per se to which I object -- although they are rejecting the plan for indefensible reasons. No, Mr. President, it is their accompanying actions that I deplore. These actions, while they follow a script the Bosnian Serbs have refined since they began their aggression in 1992, have in the last 10 days set a new standard for insolence.

Joe Biden

The Bosnian Serbs have begun a rollback of the measures imposed by Western threats of force last winter that brought a semblance of normality to the life of Sarajevo. They have blockaded the land routes into the Bosnian capital, even going as far as to ambush a clearly marked U.N. convoy, killing a British peacekeeper and wounding others.

Joe Biden

Furthermore, they have forced the suspension of international relief flights into the city by firing on aid planes trying to land at Sarajevo Airport. I might also add, Mr. President, that Secretary of Defense Perry and his party had to abandon a planned visit to Sarajevo last month because of Serbian shooting.

Joe Biden

In the past 2 weeks the Bosnian Serbs have continued to violate last February's agreement by moving heavy weaponry back into exclusion zones around Sarajevo and Gorazde.

Joe Biden

Not content with military aggression, the Bosnian Serbs have, as part and parcel of their policy, consistently made war on innocent civilians. They have now resumed their sniping at civilians in Sarajevo, hitting, among others, passengers in the streetcars whose resumption of service has been a morale boost to the long-suffering populace.

Joe Biden

Even more ominously, since mid-July the Bosnian Serbs have stepped up their vile policy of ethnic cleansing by expelling hundreds of Moslem civlians -- including women and children -- from the eastern Bosnian town of Bijeljina and from the northwestern city of Banja Luka.

Joe Biden

There has also been a report from Tuzla that armed Serbs have taken a group of Moslem men to a nearby labor camp.

Joe Biden

Mr. President, these continued despicable acts of ethnic cleansing have been put into a ghastly context by Roger Cohen's meticulously researched articles in this week's New York Times on a Serbian death camp called Susica.

Joe Biden

Mr. Cohen documents in grisly detail how in the spring and summer of 1992 Bosnian Serbs, under the direction of units of the former Yugoslav National Army from Serbia proper, systematically arrested, interned, tortured, and murdered thousands of their Moslem neighbors.

Joe Biden

The killings stopped, Mr. President, not because of any moral compunction, but because the murderers had simply run out of available Moslems to victimize.

Joe Biden

As Mr. Cohen points out, the Bosnian Moslems -- and to a greater extent, the Bosnian Croats -- have also run detention camps where atrocities have been committed. They are inexcusable, and I condemn them in the strongest possible terms.

Joe Biden

What distinguishes the Susica death camp and Serbian killings elsewhere in Bosnia from the Moslem and Croat outrages, however, is the systematic coordination and widespread scope of the Bosnia Serbs' policy of genocide. They aim to purge non-Serbs from the territory they control -- usual by deporting the women and children, and by slaughtering the men.

Joe Biden

There was a time when the Western democracies, led by the United States, saw fit to put a halt to aggression and to punish war criminals. I regret that we seem to have abandoned the idealism which distinguished us from other nations and won the admiration and respect of millions around the world, in favor of misguided alliance solidarity and a new friendship with the Russians.

Joe Biden

Simply put, the response to the Bosnian Serbs' thumbing of their noses at the contact group has been a lame communique of vaguely worded threats that will frighten no one. This lowest common denominator was drafted so as not to offend the Russians and not to endanger further the British and French peacekeepers who are virtual hostages of the Bosnian Serbs.

Joe Biden

What does the contact group recommend? Well, economic sanctions against Serbia and Montenegro are to be tightened. I won't even speculate as to how soon that will have a decisive effect.

Joe Biden

How about the U.N.-mandated exclusion zones? In vintage diplo-speak the document only requests the "finalization of planning to permit strict enforcement and extension of exclusion zones." Nothing is said about enforcing existing no-fly zones against the Bosnian Serb crop duster air force. Nothing is even mentioned about air strikes to break the newly imposed Serbian siege of Sarajevo, even though air strikes have already long been authorized by the U.N. and NATO. Perhaps as a rhetorical sop to this Congress, a murky statement is included that the unilateral lifting of the arms embargo against the Moslems could possible become unavoidable.

Joe Biden

Mr. President, I call upon this House to put this glacial process into fast-forward and make it unavoidable. For 2 years I have called for a "lift and strike" policy -- lifting the unjust arms embargo against the Bosnian Government and striking from the air against any aggressor who dares violate U.N.-designated safe havens. History will not forgive us if we dither any longer.

Joe Biden

But, Mr. President, precisely at this pivotal moment, I am chagrined that the administration plans to temporize further. Despite a strong vote in the House for unilaterally lifting the arms embargo against the Bosnian Government and only a razor-thin defeat in the Senate, it is my understanding that in the ongoing conference on the Defense authorization bill the White House remains opposed to any congressional language that would force the United States unilaterally to lift the embargo, even after we have failed to lift multilaterally. The administration is only prepared to consult with the Congress on the progress of the contact group's plan.

Joe Biden

This business-as-usual attitude will simply no longer suffice. The time to act is now, before we squander the last shred of credibility in American ideals and American foreign policy.

Joe Biden

We must not let aggression go unpunished, lest other would-be aggressors be encouraged in the future. The administration seems mesmerized by one-dimensional alliance considerations and erroneous historical analogies.

Joe Biden

Britain and France understandably worry about the safety of their peacekeepers in Bosnia if we should unilaterally lift the arms embargo against the Bosnian Government. Mr. President, alliance unity is a worthy goal, but at what price? If we do not lead NATO into policies that will stifle the emerging security threat to southeastern Europe, what is the alliance worth?

Joe Biden

Some in Europe warn that enforcement of a lift and strike policy would widen the Bosnian war and ultimately lead to a world war III. But Sarajevo 1994 is not Sarajevo 1914. There are no competing alliance systems with great powers committed to aid their Balkan proxies. Mr. President, there is, however, one superpower, and that superpower, thank God, has a tradition of crushing tyrants and rescuing the persecuted.

Joe Biden

And what about the Serbian death camp and other crimes against humanity? Here there is a ray of hope. An "International Tribunal for the prosecution of persons responsible for serious violations of international humanitarian law in the territory of the former Yugoslavia" has been created according to a May 25, 1993, U.N. Security Council resolution.

Joe Biden

The respected South African judge Richard Goldstone has been named prosecutor of the tribunal and will take over his duties on August 15. I am happy to say that 20 U.S. Government employees have been detailed in various capacities to the International Tribunal. Courtroom facilities in The Hague, The Netherlands, will be completed by October, and indictments are expected to be handed down later this fall.

Joe Biden

Of course, unlike Nuremberg where the accused war criminals were already in custody, the likely accused in former Yugoslavia must first be apprehended. But a good start has been made to hold genocidal murderers responsible for their actions.

Joe Biden

The administration has briefed the Committee on Foreign Relations that it will soon submit legislation to enable the United States to cooperate with the International Tribunal. I hope and trust that this will be speedily accomplished in the coming weeks.

Joe Biden

Mr. President, the war in the former Yugoslavia, Europe's bloodiest conflict since World War II, has already claimed more than 200,000 lives, made more than a million persons homeless, and physically and psychologically disfigured countless others.

Joe Biden

Let us not forsake our heritage. Let us wake up to the horrors taking place in Bosnia. Let us do the only honorable -- and the only efficacious thing: Lift the unconscionable embargo on the Bosnian Government and utilize our air power to strike against those who attack safe havens.