Joe Biden: “I rise today to speak of the military technical agreement signed by NATO and Yugoslavia. That is a fancy way for saying…”

“I rise today to speak of the military technical agreement signed by NATO and Yugoslavia. That is a fancy way for saying that we accepted the surrender of Slobodan Milosevic. I just got off the phone with the Secretary of State who called me from Germany with another piece of very positive news. She indicated that because the G-8 was meeting in Germany, they put together a group of Europeans to flesh out in detail a Southeastern Europe Stability Pact, which is an idea generated by the German Government. The objective of that pact is to encourage democratic processes in southeastern Europe, in the Balkans, and to reduce tensions in the area. They have set up a very elaborate but clear timetable, and what they call ``regional'' tables, to promote democracy, economic reconstruction, and security. They have involved as the lead group the European Union, plus the OSCE, the United Nations, NATO, and to a lesser extent, the United States. The reason I bother to mention this is that the hard part is about to come. I hope we will have the patience that we did not show on this floor to win the peace. We have won the war, notwithstanding the fact many thought somehow we should be able to do this in less than 78 days. I think it is astounding that we talked about how this ``dragged on.'' We will probably find that close to 10,000 paramilitary and Serbian troops were killed. Only 2 Americans were lost in a training exercise--as bad as that is.…”