Eliot Engel: “for the last several weeks the world has watched in horror as innocent civilians, men, women, and children, have been…”

“for the last several weeks the world has watched in horror as innocent civilians, men, women, and children, have been slaughtered in the province of Kosova in Europe. Forty thousand people are now fleeing their homes, are now refugees. Kosova is a province of 2 million people, 90 percent of whom are ethnic Albanian, controlled totally and dominated by the Serbs, living under tremendous oppression. Serbian President Slobodan Milosevic uncorked ethnic cleansing in Bosnia, and here it is happening again in Kosova. The people of Kosova, the Albanians, have no rights. They have no political rights, no civil rights, no economic rights. They are truly a people under oppression. Unemployment is 80 percent. They have tried for years peaceful resistance. It has not worked. Now their plight is worse than ever. The tens of thousands of Serb troops in Kosova have fired the opening shots, Mr. Speaker, in a renewed campaign of ethnic cleansing. I have warned for years that Kosova was a powderkeg. Unless the U.S. and the international community intervene now to ward off a catastrophe, Milosevic will carry out there what he did in Bosnia, a horrific campaign of ethnic cleansing and genocide. Two hundred thousand people died in Bosnia. It could be worse in Kosova if we let it happen.”