Tom Coburn: “Mr. Chairman, if possible, I would like to enter into a colloquy with the chairman to discuss an area that I think in…”

“Mr. Chairman, if possible, I would like to enter into a colloquy with the chairman to discuss an area that I think in our foreign policy that we overlooked, and that is the funding for the former Yugoslav Republic of Macedonia. This is a country that of all the countries in the Balkans has achieved what none of the others have. And, in fact, what we have is a multiethnic society that has democracy, a functioning parliament that we, through our foreign policy, have not kept our agreements with, and specifically, the agreement that we signed that, if we were there longer than 5 days, we would renegotiate our agreements for the utilization of that society during the war in Kosovo. The toll on Macedonia has been tremendous. They had an influx of 350,000 refugees in a country of 2 million people. That would be like us taking 45 million people in. The agreements that were made are not being kept with the Macedonian people. In this time of instability in the Balkans and the need for stabilization, it is, I believe, imperative that, number one, we go back and reemphasize our effort for support for that democracy; and, number two, we keep the agreement that the administration made.”