Joseph Lieberman

Joseph Lieberman

L.A.Times, July 01, 1998. Strike or face another Bosnia

„In early summer 1995, Congress voted overwhelmingly to lift the arms embargo on Bosnia. This was a bipartisan effort that signaled congressional support for stopping Serbian aggression. The price of that genocidal aggression had been the slaughter of 250,000 Bosnians and the displacement of 2.5 million people”

Bosnia, Senat, June 19, 1995

“Mr. President, I noted a short while ago that three or four of my colleagues were addressing themselves to the most recent events in the former Yugoslavia. I myself wanted to take this occasion to do the same, because the events there, which have been heartbreaking, tragic, frustrating, and infuriating in various degrees for the last 3 years, seem to only get more so.

International outlaws–the Serbs–seize U.N. soldiers–peacekeepers, supposedly, wearing the blue helmets, noncombatants–seize them as hostages. And what is their reward? Their reward is that the United Nations ceases to enforce a U.N. resolution which compelled U.N. forces to protect Sarajevo and other safe areas in Bosnia. In other words, internationally, at least in Bosnia , crime does pay. The most outrageous, inhumane crime.

This follows genocidal acts against people singled out only because of religion, in this case Moslem. Two hundred thousand dead, two million refugees taken from their homes, increasingly under the cover of a U.N. mission that was supposed to bring peace, but has not brought any of it and has, unfortunately, increased the suffering.

With the withdrawal of UNPROFOR, the international community will again have the opportunity to act to lift the immoral arms embargo of Bosnia and Herzegovina, an embargo that has left one side with heavy weapons, the other side ill prepared to defend families and country.

Time has been running out for the people of Bosnia for too long now. The United Nations has not been willing or able to stop the bloodshed. It is time for the United Nations to step aside. What is left is for the people of Bosnia to fight their own fight with our assistance: at least with us untying their hands, which we have tied behind their backs by the continued imposition of this embargo, which originated at a time when the State of Bosnia did not exist, as an attempt to avoid the expansion of war by keeping arms out of the area. But it is the Serbs in Belgrade who control most of the war-fighting industrial capacity that was Yugoslavia’s. It is the Bosnians who are left to fight tanks with light arms.

The time is at hand for us finally to answer the call for help which has been coming, but has been unanswered, from Bosnia for too long. I hope that my colleagues in both parties in this chamber will be able to play a leadership role in supporting, encouraging, as rapidly as possible, the withdrawal of the U.N. forces from Bosnia , the lifting of the arms embargo, and the selective use of Allied air power to protect not just the sovereignty of a nation, Bosnia , that has been invaded by a neighbor, but to protect the rule of law, in Europe and throughout the world. In that, we here continue to have a vital national interest. ”