News

ACCESSION 
NUMBER:326050

FILE ID:POL203

DATE:02/08/94

TITLE:CONGRESSIONAL REPORT, TUESDAY, FEBRUARY 8 (02/08/94)

TEXT:*94020803.POL

CONGRESSIONAL REPORT, TUESDAY, FEBRUARY 8

1

(Bosnia)  (610)

LAWMAKERS DIFFER ON HOW TO RESPOND TO SARAJEVO KILLINGS

U.S. lawmakers continue to condemn the mortar attack on Sarajevo's

marketplace over the weekend which killed scores of people and wounded

hundreds others, but they differ on how the United States should respond.



Congressman Lee Hamilton, chairman of the House Foreign Affairs Committee,

told NBC-TV he thinks that air strikes, while "clearly necessary," should

be for "limited purposes" -- to prevent the siege of Sarajevo, to stop

mortar and artillery shelling of the city, to help move the humanitarian

aid forward, and to protect the U.N. troops.



Broader air strikes "to roll back Serbian aggression" are unlikely, he said,

and he sees "no support" in the United States, or among North Atlantic

Treaty Organization (NATO) allies, to put combat troops on the ground

there.



But Senator Richard Lugar, a leading Republican on the Senate Foreign

Relations Committee, said on the same program that he supports broader air

strikes.



"If we're serious about making our point, we're going to have to think about

air strikes on Serbian targets, military targets," he maintained.



The most basic thing that needs to be done, Lugar asserted, is for President

Clinton "to take leadership."  And this is "a tough thing to do," Lugar

said, because "allies are balking" and "the U.N. situation is difficult."



Senate Minority Leader Bob Dole, in a prepared statement, called for

"immediate and firm action to implement air strikes" and an end to the U.S.

arms embargo on the Bosnian government.



"What is at stake here," Dole maintained, "is not only the future of Bosnia,

but the credibility of NATO, the United Nations, and United States global

leadership."



Senator Joseph Biden, chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations subcommittee

on Europe, in a prepared statement, charged that the West has held back

from lifting a U.N. arms embargo on the Muslims and ordering air strikes

"in the mistaken belief that silence would bring peace."  He urged

immediate NATO air strikes against Serbian military targets and an end to

the arms embargo against Bosnia.  "Failure to act now," he said, "dooms us

to see this weekend's scene of slaughter repeated in Bosnia and throughout

the Balkans."



Democratic Senator Dennis DeConcini, chairman of the Senate Intelligence

Committee, also urged airstrikes because, "There is only one way to stop

the aggressor, and that is by force."



Republican Senator Orrin Hatch told ABC News that "We can't allow this

aggression by the Serbs to continue."  But he cautioned that air strikes

alone "are not going to do it, so you have to lift the embargo and you have

to allow these people to defend themselves."



"It's time we take a punitive strike against the Serbians," said

Congresswoman Susan Molinari on CNN TV.  What is happening to the Muslims

in Bosnia, she said, "is not unlike" what happened to the Jews during World

War Two.



But Democratic Senator James Exon, in a Senate floor speech, cautioned

against a military response "unless we have a clear, thought-through

policy" that has the support of "our NATO allies" and has a chance of

stopping the shelling.



Republican Senator Phil Gramm also warned on CBS TV that for him to support

1merican military intervention there must be "a clear plan as to how, by

intervening, we're going to stop the killing, which is our objective; how

we're going to not only get into the conflict, but how we're going to get

out.  I have seen no such plan.  Nobody in the military has told me that

bombing would be decisive."



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