William Helms: “this past week, the Senate Foreign Relations Committee held its final business meeting of the 1st session of the 105th…”

“this past week, the Senate Foreign Relations Committee held its final business meeting of the 1st session of the 105th Congress. At that meeting, the committee approved 50 nominations as well as three pieces of legislation. This was the culmination of an ambitious 1997 agenda which included 97 committee meetings--the first on January 8 when the committee convened to consider the nomination of Madeleine Albright to be Secretary of State. With this past week's business meeting, the committee had approved and sent to the Senate, in 1997, 119 nominations, approved 1,004 Foreign Service promotions and reported out 37 pieces of legislation, while approving 15 treaties. Among the nominations were the Secretary of State, numerous Assistant Secretaries of State, and Ambassadors to the United Nations, Canada, the United Kingdom, Japan, Greece, Korea, Israel, and Egypt. But this, Mr. President, does not begin to tell the full story. Thanks to the able members of the committee staff, hard work of the committee members--the subcommittee chairmen and ranking members--and thanks to the bipartisan spirit which we, all of us, have worked to establish, we have--all of us together--succeeded, in the opinion of, at least, two former Secretaries of State, in returning the Foreign Relations Committee to top-drawer relevancy for the first time in decades.”