Joe Biden: “I rise tonight to deplore the fall of the Bosnian City of Srebrenica. Almost 2 years ago, when Srebrenica was under…”

“I rise tonight to deplore the fall of the Bosnian City of Srebrenica. Almost 2 years ago, when Srebrenica was under siege in the despicable policy of ethnic cleansing, instigated by President Milosevic of Serbia and executed by General Silajdzic and the leader of the Bosnian Serbs, Mr. Karadzic, I met with Mr. Milosevic to attempt to get into Srebrenica. I was unable to do that and went on up to Tuzla where hundreds, eventually thousands, of Bosnian Serbs and Croats were fleeing for their lives with all of their possessions on their back and their families in tow. I met in Tuzla with a man and a woman in their early forties who told me they had to make a very difficult decision as they fled over the mountains into Tuzla from Srebrenica, because they could not get back in. And I was wondering what that terrible decision was they were about to tell me. They pointed out they had left to die on the mountain top in the snow the man's elderly mother who was 81. They had to choose between taking their kids or the mother-in-law, or the wife, who could make it, or no one making it. The Bosnian Serb aggression and Serbian aggression--I know I sound like a broken record, I have been speaking about this for 2 years-- seems to cause very little concern in this country and the world. Mr. President, I think it is time for an immediate and fundamental change in our policy in the former Yugoslavia.”