Benjamin Gilman: “Mr. Chairman, in debating United States policy toward Bosnia, we have to begin with a candid assessment of where current…”

“Mr. Chairman, in debating United States policy toward Bosnia, we have to begin with a candid assessment of where current administration policy is taking us. It is leading us apparently to another Cyprus. Since 1974, U.N. peacekeepers have been deployed along the so-called green line in Cyprus, an artificial boundary separating Christian and Muslim communities that used to be able to live together as one nation. There is no end in sight of that peacekeeping operation. Mr. Chairman, we do not want to be involved in another Cyprus, this time in the infamous tinderbox of Europe, the Balkan peninsula. As everyone knows, the President disregarded the deadline he initially set for the withdrawal of United States forces from Bosnia and predictably we now see signs that the second deadline is beginning to slip. None of us should have any doubt that in the end the President may have to renege on his second deadline, just as he did on the first, unless we step in and hold him to his word. He will renege not because he is trying deliberately to mislead us but because he has become a prisoner of a policy that just will not work, a policy that can lead our Nation to only one place, to a Cyprus in the Balkans. We need to help the President out of this quagmire. We need to help him remain true to his word.”