[Congressional Record Volume 144, Number 96 (Friday, July 17, 1998)]
[Senate]
[Pages S8456-S8458]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]
SENSE OF CONGRESS REGARDING THE CULPABILITY OF SLOBODAN MILOSEVIC FOR
WAR CRIMES
Mr. D'AMATO. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the Foreign
Relations Committee be discharged from further consideration of S. Con.
Res. 105, and, further, that the Senate proceed to its immediate
consideration.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. The clerk will report.
The legislative clerk read as follows:
A concurrent resolution (S. Con. Res. 105) expressing the
sense of the Congress regarding the culpability of Slobodan
Milosevic for war crimes, crimes against humanity, and
genocide in the former Yugoslavia, and for other purposes.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. Is there objection to the immediate
consideration of the concurrent resolution?
There being no objection, the Senate proceeded to consider the
resolution.
Mr. D'AMATO addressed the Chair.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from New York.
Mr. D'AMATO. Mr. President, I believe we are about to take historic
action that is so important, because, to date, what we have been doing
is pleading, negotiating, hoping while the world burns in front of us.
When I say ``the world,'' I am talking of technically the people in
this war-torn area of Kosovo.
It is incredible that 90 percent of the population there are ethnic
Albanians under withering attack. In today's New York Times, it
graphically speaks about it on the front page.
As a witness to this, a former paramilitary, former police officer in
the Serbian police, said he can no longer stay there and work there as
he watched innocent women and children being raped, killed, tortured
and savaged--3 million people on the move, ethnic cleansing, moving
them out of their homes, moving them out of their communities all
because of one thing--all because of their ethnicity.
What we do today is the least we should be doing; and that is calling
for the United States to, yes, utilize the provisions that the United
Nations set up in terms of Security Council Resolution 827 creating the
International Criminal Tribunal.
This man can and should be charged as the war crime criminal that he
is. The documentation has already been chronicled in one of the best
reports, which I have submitted to this body. The conclusions are
inescapable. It is called ``War Crimes and the Issue of
Responsibility,'' prepared by Norman Cigar and Paul Williams. It
documents the systematic slaughter and use of paramilitary groups
against innocent civilians. There is no doubt that not only did he know
about that but that he continues to perpetuate this kind of conduct.
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To summarize briefly what Resolution 105 does, it says that we, the
United States, should publicly declare its considered reasons to
believe that Milosevic has committed war crimes; that we make the
checks of information that can be supplied to the Tribunal as evidence
to support an indictment and trial of Milosevic for war crimes against
humanity and genocide; that we should undertake it as a high priority;
all of the information that we collect should be provided to the
Tribunal as soon as possible; and, thereafter, that we coordinate our
activities with our allies, members of the North Atlantic Treaty
Organization and others interested in a matter of discussion of what we
can and should be doing to apprehend this war criminal and others.
Yes. Mr. President, the time has come to gather the evidence and to
submit it to the Tribunal, and to see to it that this man is branded as
the war criminal that he is instead of us all sitting back silently as
innocent lives continue to be taken.
Mr. President, I thank all of the Members of the U.S. Senate for the
relatively short period of time Senator Lieberman and I began this
effort in terms of gathering cosponsors and support several days ago.
It makes me proud to be a Member of this body, for people to come
together in this way to see, yes, the indictment of this war criminal.
And he is one of the most evil men of our period of time. Make no
mistake about it.
Mr. BIDEN. Madam President, I rise today as a co-sponsor in support
of S. Con. Res. 105, which expresses the sense of the Congress
regarding the culpability of Slobodan Milosevic for war crimes, crimes
against humanity, and genocide in the former Yugoslavia.
Yugoslav President Milosevic is the walking definition of an
unscrupulous politician. I have come to understand the stark truth that
the only thing that matters to Milosevic is his own political survival.
The only thing.
Since his rise to power in Serbia in the late 1980's, he has been a
failure at everything he has attempted--except, I regret to say, in
staying in power.
Slobodan Milosevic has been an unmitigated disaster for the Serbian
people.
As a result of his insane attempt at creating a ``Greater Serbia,''
the centuries-old Serbian culture in the Krajina and Western Slavonia
in Croatia has been extinguished, the Bosnian Serb community has been
decimated and impoverished, and Serbian life in Kosovo seems on the
verge of eradication.
Of course, that is only half of the story, for Slobodan Milosevic has
also been a curse for many of the neighboring peoples of the Serbs. His
vile ``ethnic cleansing'' led to a quarter-million deaths and more than
two million refugees and displaced persons in Bosnia and Herzegovina.
Bosnian Muslims, Bosnian Croats, and Croats in Croatia were brutalized
and murdered.
Most recently, Milosevic's special police storm troopers have moved
their grisly activities to Kosovo where they are visiting upon the
ethnic Albanian population the same horrors suffered by the Bosnians
and Croats.
I would like to add a personal note. I believe that I am one of only
a very few Senators who have met Milosevic, and I am certain that I am
the only one who ever called him a war criminal to his face.
In April 1993, on the first of my many trips to Bosnia, I also
stopped off in Belgrade to see Milosevic. In the course of a lengthy
meeting that went on late into the evening, I went through the entire
litany of the horrors that his Serbian troops had perpetrated and were
continuing to perpetrate. Of course, Milosevic protested that he had no
control over any of this.
Nonetheless, he later asked if I wanted to meet Radovan Karadzic, the
Bosnian Serb leader who has subsequently been indicted as a war
criminal. I said yes, and twenty minutes later Karadzic came running up
the steps of Milosevic's palace, totally out of breath. Rather
interesting for a guy who supposedly had no influence in Bosnia!
After all this, Milosevic looked across the table and asked, ``What
do you think of me?''
I answered, ``I think you're a damn war criminal!''
Milosevic's reaction was like water off a duck's back. He just
resumed talking as if nothing had happened. He might as well have said,
``lots of luck in your sophomore year!'' This is one brazen guy.
Mr. President, I said earlier that the only thing Milosevic cares
about is his political survival. I believe that for the first time
there is a reasonable chance that he may be failing in this arena too.
In the person of Milo Djukanovic, the dynamic, young reformist
President of Montenegro, the junior partner of Serbia in the Yugoslav
Federation, the democratic opposition to Milosevic has both a new
leader and a constitutional means of expressing its opposition. We must
continue to support Djukanovic and Montenegro in their struggle.
In the meantime, as S. Con. Res. 105 urges, the international
community should speedily bring Milosevic to trial before the
International Tribunal in the Hague for his criminal behavior.
There is no possibility for lasting peace in the Balkans until Serbia
has a democratic government, willing to live in peace and equality with
its non-Serb citizens and non-Serb neighbors. Removing Milosevic from
power is the sine qua non for this to happen, and S. Con. Res. 105
charts the path.
I thank the Chair and yield the floor.
Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the amendments at the
desk, the resolution, and the preamble be agreed to, that the
resolution, as amended, be agreed to, that the preamble be agreed to,
as amended, and that the motion to reconsider be laid upon the table,
and that any statements relating to the resolution appear at this point
in the Record.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. Without objection, it is so ordered.
Amendments Numbered 3212 and 3213, En Bloc
The PRESIDING OFFICER. The clerk will report the amendments.
The legislative clerk read as follows:
The Senator from New York (Mr. D'Amato) proposes amendments
numbered 3212 and 3213, en bloc.
The amendments (Nos. 3212 and 3213) en bloc are as follows:
amendment no. 3212
(Purpose: To make a technical correction)
On page 3, line 4, strike ``probable cause'' and insert
``reason''.
____
amendment no. 3213
On page 5, strike lines 24 through page 6 line 5.
The amendments (Nos. 3212 and 3213) were agreed to.
The concurrent resolution (S. Con. Res. 105), as amended, was agreed
to.
The preamble was agreed to.
The concurrent resolution (S. Con. Res. 105), as amended, with its
preamble, is as follows:
S. Con. Res. 105
Whereas there is reason to mark the beginning of the
conflict in the former Yugoslavia with Slobodan Milosevic's
rise to power beginning in 1987, when he whipped up and
exploited extreme nationalism among Serbs, and specifically
in Kosovo, including support for violence against non-Serbs
who were labeled as threats;
Whereas there is reason to believe that as President of
Serbia, Slobodan Milosevic was responsible for the conception
and direction of a war of aggression, the deaths of hundreds
of thousands, the torture and rape of tens of thousands and
the forced displacement of nearly 3,000,000 people, and that
mass rape and forced impregnation were among the tools used
to wage this war;
Whereas ``ethnic cleansing'' has been carried out in the
former Yugoslavia in such a consistent and systematic way
that it had to be directed by the senior political leadership
in Serbia, and Slobodan Milosevic has held such power within
Serbia that he is responsible for the conception and
direction of this policy;
Whereas, as President of the Federal Republic of Yugoslavia
(Serbia and Montenegro), Slobodan Milosevic is responsible
for the conception and direction of assaults by Yugoslavian
and Serbian military, security, special police, and other
forces on innocent civilians in Kosovo which have so far
resulted in an estimated 300 people dead or missing and the
forced displacement of tens of thousands, and such assaults
continue;
Whereas on May 25, 1993, United Nations Security Council
Resolution 827 created the International Criminal Tribunal
for the former Yugoslavia located in The Hague, the
Netherlands (hereafter in this resolution referred to as the
``Tribunal''), and gave it jurisdiction over all crimes
arising out of the conflict in the former Yugoslavia;
Whereas this Tribunal has publicly indicted 60 people for
war crimes or crimes against humanity arising out of the
conflict in the former Yugoslavia and has issued a number of
secret indictments that have only been made public upon the
apprehension of the indicted persons;
Whereas it is incumbent upon the United States and all
other nations to support the
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Tribunal, and the United States has done so by providing,
since 1992, funding in the amount of $54,000,000 in assessed
payments and more than $11,000,000 in voluntary and in-kind
contributions to the Tribunal and the War Crimes Commission
which preceded it, and by supplying information collected by
the United States that can aid the Tribunal's investigations,
prosecutions, and adjudications;
Whereas any lasting, peaceful solution to the conflict in
the former Yugoslavia must be based upon justice for all,
including the most senior officials of the government or
governments responsible for conceiving, organizing,
initiating, directing, and sustaining the Yugoslav conflict
and whose forces have committed war crimes, crimes against
humanity and genocide; and
Whereas Slobodan Milosevic has been the single person who
has been in the highest government offices in an aggressor
state since before the inception of the conflict in the
former Yugoslavia, who has had the power to decide for peace
and instead decided for war, who has had the power to
minimize illegal actions by subordinates and allies and hold
responsible those who committed such actions, but did not,
and who is once again directing a campaign of ethnic
cleansing against innocent civilians in Kosovo while treating
with contempt international efforts to achieve a fair and
peaceful settlement to the question of the future status of
Kosovo: Now, therefore, be it
Resolved by the Senate (the House of Representatives
concurring), That it is the sense of the Congress that--
(1) the United States should publicly declare that it
considers that there is reason to believe that Slobodan
Milosevic, President of the Federal Republic of Yugoslavia
(Serbia and Montenegro), has committed war crimes, crimes
against humanity and genocide;
(2) the United States should make collection of information
that can be supplied to the Tribunal for use as evidence to
support an indictment and trial of President Slobodan
Milosevic for war crimes, crimes against humanity, and
genocide a high priority;
(3) any such information concerning President Slobodan
Milosevic already collected by the United States should be
provided to the Tribunal as soon as possible;
(4) the United States should provide a fair share of any
additional financial or personnel resources that may be
required by the Tribunal in order to enable the Tribunal to
adequately address preparation for, indictment of,
prosecution of, and adjudication of allegations of war crimes
and crimes against humanity posed against President Slobodan
Milosevic and any other person arising from the conflict in
the former Yugoslavia, including in Kosovo;
(5) the United States should engage with other members of
the North Atlantic Treaty Organization and other interested
states in a discussion of information any such state may hold
relating to allegations of war crimes and crimes against
humanity posed against President Slobodan Milosevic and any
other person arising from the conflict in the former
Yugoslavia, including in Kosovo, and press such states to
promptly provide all such information to the Tribunal;
(6) the United States should engage with other members of
the North Atlantic Treaty Organization and other interested
states in a discussion of measures to be taken to apprehend
indicted war criminals and persons indicted for crimes
against humanity with the objective of concluding a plan of
action that will result in these indictees' prompt delivery
into the custody of the Tribunal; and
(7) the United States should urge the Tribunal to promptly
review all information relating to President Slobodan
Milosevic's possible criminal culpability for conceiving,
directing, and sustaining a variety of actions in the former
Yugoslavia, including Kosovo, that have had the effect of
genocide, of other crimes against humanity, or of war crimes,
with a view toward prompt issuance of a public indictment of
Milosevic.
Sec. 2. The Secretary of the Senate shall transmit a copy
of this resolution to the President.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from New York.
Mr. D'AMATO. Mr. President, I thank this body and thank all of my
colleagues for their support of what I consider to be a very important
initiative. I certainly hope that the House acts quickly on this. I
believe this is the least that we can and should do.
I yield the floor.
Mr. DORGAN addressed the Chair.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. Under the previous order, the Senator from
North Dakota is recognized for 15 minutes.
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