Donald M. Payne: “let me just say that when we say this is nongermane, it makes it appear as though the question of peacekeeping has never…”

“let me just say that when we say this is nongermane, it makes it appear as though the question of peacekeeping has never been raised. We have been talking about peacekeeping. We even had $2.7 billion removed from the bill about peacekeeping, so we are simply saying that it seems to me that the ruling of the Chair that this is not germane when peacekeeping has actually been part of the appropriations process, it is to a large degree what we have been talking about. We have been talking about it for Ethiopia and Eritrea, for the Democratic Republic of the Congo. We are talking about peacekeepers possibly in Angola. We are talking about peacekeepers now, after the diplomats have made the Lome accord that says this is the outline for peace in the region, when we had the Lusaka accord that says, this is what the diplomats have done for the Congo, now we need to bring the peacekeepers in to preserve the peace; the Lome accords for the peace in Sierra Leone. So for them to be called nongermane when this has been the center of much of the discussion here, especially in Africa for the past 3 or 4 weeks, I just would urge that the Speaker reconsider the narrow interpretation, the strict construction that he has done in the interpretation, and look at it not in the specificity but in the fundamental of the general position of peacekeeping, which has been something that has been germane.”