Tom Lantos: “Mr. Speaker, let me at the outset congratulate the gentleman from Illinois (Mr. Shimkus) for crafting this very…”

“Mr. Speaker, let me at the outset congratulate the gentleman from Illinois (Mr. Shimkus) for crafting this very excellent resolution. I want to thank the gentleman from Nebraska (Mr. Bereuter) for his eloquent and cogent and strong statement. I want to associate myself with the comments of the gentleman from Nebraska, and I call on all of my colleagues to support H. Con. Res. 319. As we congratulate Latvia on the 10th anniversary of its renewed independence, I think it is important to recognize proudly that the United States stood on principle at the time of the beginning of the Second World War in refusing to accept the incorporation of Latvia, Lithuania and Estonia into the Soviet Union. Not many of our fellow citizens know that the embassies of these three Baltic countries continued to function during the long decades of both the Second World War and the Cold War here in Washington, D.C., underscoring the principled commitment of the United States under Republican and Democratic administrations to the independence of the Baltic States. Latvia, along with Lithuania and Estonia, has made enormous progress in developing an economy that was stifled by the nonfunctional Soviet system and building an increasingly democratic and open and free society.”