Political Quotes

“I am very pleased to urge Senate adoption of S. 1803, the Security Assistance Act of 2001. This is legislation that the Foreign Relations Committee reports out each year, either free-standing or as a title in our State Department authorization bill. But the substance of the Security Assistance Act is anything but routine. It includes: foreign military assistance, including Foreign Military Financing, FMF, and International Military Education and Training, IMET; international arms transfers; and many of our arms control, nonproliferation and anti-terrorism programs. The Security Assistance Act of 2001 covers those programs and includes not only routine adjustments, but also some significant initiatives. For example, a 5-year National Security Assistance Strategy is mandated, so as to provide country-by-country foreign policy guidance to a function that may tend otherwise to operate on the basis more of military or bureaucratic concerns. Several provisions are designed to streamline the arms export control system, so as to make it more efficient and responsive to competitive requirements in a global economy, without sacrificing controls that serve foreign policy or nonproliferation purposes. This is a vital enterprise. U.S. industry depends upon the efficient processing of arms export applications, and U.S. firms lose contracts when the U.S. Government cannot make up its mind expeditiously.”