Don Nickles: “I wish to compliment Senator Dole for his leadership in--I am saying Bosnia but really I mean in Yugoslavia. I had the…”

“I wish to compliment Senator Dole for his leadership in--I am saying Bosnia but really I mean in Yugoslavia. I had the pleasure of traveling with Senator Dole and several colleagues a couple years or three ago to the former Yugoslavia. I think all of us came away from that trip with a real concern for the people of Yugoslavia for each of the republics and certainly those republics that were oppressed, in many cases really being strongly oppressed, by the Serbian Government headed by Mr. Milosevic. I think we felt that we wanted to do something. As a matter of fact, we did do a couple things. We did pass an amendment on a foreign operations appropriations bill that said we should allocate our foreign aid only to those republics in the former Yugoslavia that made moves and progress toward democracy. I might mention at that time that amendment was opposed by at that time the State Department in the Bush administration. They did not want to have any strings tied by Congress on foreign aid in Yugoslavia, but we still passed the amendment despite some objections by the administration. I remember being involved in that in a very long conference, but I felt like it was important. Mr. President, no question there is some significant tragedy in Yugoslavia today, certainly in Bosnia, and our hearts go out to all the innocent victims, and there are thousands of innocent victims.”