Replies

IRAQ (Senate - October 10, 1998)

[Page: S12286]

Mr. KERRY. Mr. President, there are two subjects that I wish to bring to my colleagues' attention this afternoon. First, I want to talk about an issue of enormous international consequence--the situation with respect to Iraq. For the last 2 months, as we know, Saddam Hussein has been testing, yet again, the full measure of the international community's resolve to force Iraq to eliminate its weapons of mass destruction. That has been the fundamental goal of our policy toward Iraq since the end of the gulf war and is reflected in the U.N. agreements reached in the aftermath of the war.

Two months ago, on August 5, Saddam Hussein, formally adopting a recommendation that had been made by the Iraqi parliament 2 days earlier, announced that Iraq would no longer permit U.N. weapons inspectors to conduct random searches in defiance of its obligations under those U.N. resolutions that were adopted at the end of the war, and also in violation, I might add, of its agreement last February with U.N. Secretary General Kofi Annan, to give UNSCOM teams, accompanied by diplomatic overseers, unconditional access to all sites where UNSCOM believed that Iraq may be stockpiling weapons or agents to make those weapons.

Let's understand very clearly that ever since the end of the war, it has been the clear, declared, accepted, and implemented policy of the United States of America and its allies to prevent Saddam Hussein from building weapons of mass destruction. And as part of that agreed-upon policy, we were to be permitted unlimited, unfettered, unconditional, immediate access to the sites that we needed to inspect in order to be able to make that policy real.

Iraq's defiance and the low-key--some would say weak--response of the United States and the United Nations initially went unnoticed, in part because of other events, including the dual bombings of our embassies in Kenya and Tanzania, as well as the obvious fascination with domestic events that have dominated the headlines now for so many months. Those events, frankly, have continued to obscure the reality of what is happening in Iraq; and, accordingly, the reality of the potential threat to the region--a region where, obviously, the United States, for 50 years or more, has invested enormous amounts of our diplomatic and even our domestic energy.

Press reports of the administration's efforts to intervene in, or at minimum, to influence UNSCOM's inspection process and the resignation of American UNSCOM inspector, Scott Ritter, focused the spotlight briefly on our Iraqi policy and raised some serious and troubling questions about our efforts to eliminate Iraq's weapons of mass destruction. The principal question raised was a very simple one: Are those efforts still intact, or has our policy changed?

Last month, press reports suggested that administration officials had secretly tried to quash aggressive U.N. inspections at various times over the last year, most recently in August, in order to avoid a confrontation with Iraq--this despite repeatedly demanding the unconditional, unfettered accesses that I referred to earlier for the inspection teams. Scott Ritter, the longest serving American inspector in UNSCOM, charged at the time that the administration had intervened at least six or seven times since last November when Iraq tried to thwart UNSCOM's work by refusing to allow Ritter and other Americans to participate on the teams, in an effort to delay or postpone or cancel certain UNSCOM operations out of fear of confrontation with Iraq.

Those were serious charges. We held an open hearing, a joint hearing between the Armed Services Committee and Foreign Relations Committee on these charges. There were some protestations to the contrary by the administration and a subsequent effort to ensure that the Security Council would maintain the sanctions against Iraq, but, frankly, nothing more.

In explaining his reasons for resigning, Scott Ritter stated that the policy shift in the Security Council supported `at least implicitly' by the United States, away from an aggressive inspections policy is a surrender to Iraqi leadership that makes a `farce' of the commission's efforts to prove that Iraq is still concealing its chemical, biological, and nuclear weapons programs.

Administration officials have categorically rejected the notion that U.S. policy has shifted, either in terms of our willingness to use force or support for UNSCOM. They have also disputed Ritter's charges of repeated U.S. efforts to limit UNSCOM's work. Writing in the New York Times on August 17, Secretary Albright stated that the administration has `ruled nothing out, including the use of force' in determining how to respond to Iraqi actions, and that supporting UNSCOM is `at the heart of U.S. efforts to prevent Saddam Hussein from threatening his neighborhood.' While acknowledging that she did consult with UNSCOM's Chairman, Richard Butler, after Iraq suspended inspections last month, she argued that he `came to his own conclusion that it was wiser to keep the focus on Iraq's open defiance of the Security Council.' Attempting to proceed with the inspections, in her view, would have `allowed some in the Security Council to muddy the waters by claiming again that UNSCOM had provoked Iraq,' whereas, not proceeding would give us a `free hand to use other means' if Iraq does not `resume cooperation' with the Security Council. At that time, she also stressed the importance of maintaining the comprehensive sanctions in place to deny Saddam Hussein the ability to rearm Iraq and thus threaten his neighbors.

I appreciate the Secretary's efforts to set the record straight. But, Mr. President, I have to say, in all candor, that I don't think that her op-ed or subsequent statements by the administration have put to rest legitimate questions

--legitimate questions or concerns about what our policy is and where it is headed--not just our policy alone, I might add, but the policy of the United Nations itself, and the policy of our allies in Europe.

The fact of the matter is, in my judgment, the U.S. response and that of the Security Council to Saddam Hussein's latest provocations are different in tone and substance from responses to earlier Iraqi provocations.

Three times in the last 11 months Saddam Hussein has launched increasingly bolder challenges to UNSCOM's authority and work. In November, he refused to allow American inspectors to participate on the teams. Although that crisis ultimately was resolved through Russian intervention, the United States and Britain were leading the effort to push the Security Council to respond strongly. In subsequent weeks, Saddam Hussein refused to grant UNSCOM access to Presidential palaces and other sensitive cites, kicked out the team that was led by Scott Ritter, charging at the time that he was a CIA spy, and threatened to expel all inspectors unless sanctions were removed by mid-May.

By February, the United States had an armada of forces positioned in the gulf, and administration officials from our President on down had declared our intention to use military force if necessary to reduce Iraq's capacity to manufacture, stockpile or reconstitute its weapons of mass destruction, or to threaten its neighbors.

Ultimately diplomacy succeeded again. In a sense, it succeeded again. It averted the immediate crisis. One can certainly raise serious questions about how effective it was with respect to the longer-term choices we face. But certainly in the short term, Secretary General Kofi Annan successfully struck an agreement with Iraq to provide UNSCOM inspectors, accompanied by diplomatic representatives, full and unfettered access to all sites. There is little doubt that this agreement would not have been concluded successfully without the Security Council's strong calls for Iraqi compliance combined with the specter of the potential use of American force.

Saddam's latest provocation, however, Mr. President, strikes at the heart of our policy, and at the capacity of UNSCOM to do its job effectively. As long as the U.N. inspectors are prevented, as they are, from undertaking random no-notice inspections, they will never be able to confirm the fundamentals of our policy. They will never be able to confirm what weapons Iraq still has or what it is doing to maintain its capability to produce weapons of mass destruction.

Yet, when confronted with what may be the most serious challenge to UNSCOM to date, the administration's response, and that of our allies and the United Nations, has been to assiduously avoid brandishing the sword and to make a concerted effort to downplay the offense to avoid confrontation at all costs, even if it means implicit and even explicit backing down on our stated position as well as that of the Security Council. That stated position is clear: That Iraq must provide the U.N. inspectors with unconditional and unfettered access to all sites.

Secretary Albright may well be correct in arguing that this course helps keep the focus on Iraq's defiance. It may well do that. But it is also true that the U.N.-imposed limits on UNSCOM operations, especially if they are at the behest of the United States, work completely to Saddam Hussein's advantage.

They raise questions of the most serious nature about the preparedness of the international community to keep its own commitment to force Iraq to destroy its weapons of mass destruction, and the much larger question of our overall proliferation commitment itself. They undermine the credibility of the United States and the United Nations position that Iraq comply with the Security Council's demands to provide unconditional and unfettered access to those inspectors. And, obviously, every single one of our colleagues ought to be deeply concerned about the fact that by keeping the inspectors out of the very places that Saddam Hussein wants to prevent them from entering, they substantially weaken UNSCOM's ability to make any accurate determination of Iraq's nuclear, chemical or biological weapons inventory or capability. And in so doing, they open the door for Iraq's allies on the Security Council to waffle on the question of sanctions.

I recognize that the Security Council recently voted to keep the sanctions in place and to suspend the sanctions review process. But, Mr. President, notwithstanding that, the less than maximum level of international concern and focus on the underlying fact that no inspections take place, the continuation of Iraq's weapons of mass destruction program, and the fact that Saddam Hussein is in complete contravention of his own agreements and of the U.N. requirements--that continues to be the real crisis. And Saddam Hussein continues to refuse to comply.

Since the end of the gulf war, the international community has sought to isolate and weaken Iraq through a dual policy of sanctions and weapons inspections. Or, as one administration official said, to put him in a `box.' In order to get the sanctions relief, Iraq has to eliminate its weapons of mass destruction and submit to inspections. But it has become painfully apparent over the last 11 months that there are deep divisions within the Security Council particularly among the Permanent 5 members over how to deal with Saddam Hussein's aggressive efforts to break out of the box.

Russia, France and China have consistently been more sympathetic to Iraq's call for sanctions relief than the United States and Britain. We, on the other hand, have steadfastly insisted that sanctions remain in place until he complies. These differences over how to deal with Iraq reflect the fact that there is a superficial consensus, at best, among the Perm 5 on the degree to which Iraq poses a threat and the priority to be placed on dismantling Iraq's weapons capability. For the United States and Britain, an Iraq equipped with nuclear, chemical or biological weapons under the leadership of Saddam Hussein is a threat that almost goes without description, although our current activities seem to call into question whether or not one needs to be reminded of some of that description. Both of these countries have demonstrated a willingness to expend men, material and money to curb that threat.

France, on the other hand, has long established economic and political relationships within the Arab world, and has had a different approach. Russia also has a working relationship with Iraq, and China, whose commitment to nuclear nonproliferation has been less than stellar, has a very different calculus that comes into play. Iraq may be a threat and nonproliferation may be the obvious, most desirable goal, but whether any of these countries are legitimately prepared to sacrifice other interests to bring Iraq to heel remains questionable today, and is precisely part of the calculus that Saddam Hussein has used as he tweaks the Security Council and the international community simultaneously.

Given the difference of views within the Security Council, and no doubt the fears of our Arab allies, who are the potential targets of Iraqi aggression, it is really not surprising, or shouldn't be to any of us, that the administration has privately tried to influence the inspection process in a way that might avoid confrontation while other efforts were being made to forge a consensus. But now we have to make a judgment about the failure to reinstate the inspection process and ask ourselves whether or not that will destroy the original `box' that the administration has defined as so essential to carrying out our policy.

Is it possible that there is a sufficient lack of consensus and a lack of will that will permit Saddam Hussein to exploit the differences among the members of the Security Council and to create a sufficient level of sanctions fatigue that we would in fact move further away from the policy we originally had?

To the extent that his efforts are successful, we will find ourselves increasingly isolated within the Security Council. In fact, it is already clear that some of our allies in the Security Council are very open to the Iraqi idea of a comprehensive review of its performance in dismantling all of its nuclear, biological, and chemical weapons--a review which Iraq hopes will lead to a lifting of some if not all of the sanctions.

I think the question needs to be asked as to how long we can sustain our insistence on the maintenance of sanctions if support for sanctions continues to erode within the Security Council. If it is indeed true that support is eroding--and there are great indicators that, given the current lack of confrontation, it is true--then the question remains, How will our original policy be affected or in fact is our original policy still in place?

In April, Secretary Albright stated that, `It took a threat of force to persuade Saddam Hussein to let the U.N. inspectors back in. We must maintain that threat if the inspectors are to do their jobs.'

That was the policy in April. Whether the administration is still prepared to use force to compel Iraqi compliance is now an enormous question. The Secretary says it is, but the recent revelations raise questions about that.

In addition, it seems to me that there are clear questions about whether or not the international community at this point in time is as committed as it was previously to the question of keeping Iraq from developing that capacity to rob its neighbors of tranquility through its unilateral development of a secret weapon program.

In May, India and Pakistan, despite all of our exhortations, conducted nuclear tests. In August, U.S. intelligence reports indicated that North Korea is building a secret underground nuclear facility, and last month North Korea tested a new 1,250-mile-range ballistic missile which landed in the Sea of Japan. Each and every one of these events raises the ante on international proliferation efforts and should cause the Senate and the Congress as a whole and the administration, in my judgment, to place far greater emphasis and energy on this subject.

If the United States and the United Nations retreat in any way on Iraq, if we are prepared to accept something less than their full compliance with the international inspection requirement that has been in place now for 7 years, it will be difficult to understand how we will have advanced the cause of proliferation in any of those other areas that I just mentioned.

Mr. President, over the years, a consensus has developed within the international community that the production and use of weapons of mass destruction has to be halted. We and others worked hard to develop arms control regimes toward that end, but obviously Saddam Hussein's goal is to do otherwise. Iraq and North Korea and others have made it clear that they are still trying, secretly and otherwise, to develop those weapons.

The international consensus on the need to curb the production and use of weapons of mass destruction is widespread, but it is far from unanimous, and, as the divisions within the Security Council over Iraq indicate, some of our key allies simply don't place the same priority on proliferation as we do.

The proliferation of weapons, be they conventional or of mass destruction, remains one of the most significant issues on the international agenda. Obviously, solutions won't come easily. But I am convinced that in the case of Iraq, our failure would set the international community's nonproliferations efforts back enormously.

Our allies need to understand that the ramifications of letting Saddam Hussein out of the box that we put him in with respect to inspections would be serious and far-reaching. So I believe we need to keep the pressure on them to stand firm, to stand firm with us, and unless we reassert our leadership and insist that Iraq allow those inspectors to do their job, we will have destroyed a number of years of our effort in ways, Mr. President, that we will regret in our policy for the long haul.

I would point out also that there are experts on Iraq, those in the inspections team, those at the U.N. and elsewhere in our international community, who are very clear that Saddam Hussein's first objective is not to lift the sanctions. His first objective is to keep Iraq's weapons of mass destruction program--that will come ahead of all else.

The situation is really far more serious than the United Nations, the Congress or the administration have made clear to the American people or demonstrated through the level of diplomacy and focus that is currently being placed on this issue. It is not simply about eliminating Saddam Hussein's capacity to threaten his neighbors. It is about eliminating Iraq's weapons of mass destruction--chemical, biological, and nuclear. Failure to achieve this goal will have a profound impact, I believe, on our efforts with respect to our other nonproliferation efforts including completion of our talks with Russia and the ultimate ratification of the START II treaty by the Duma.

In recent conversations that I had with Chairman Butler, he confirmed that Saddam Hussein has only this one goal--keeping his weapons of mass destruction capability--and he further stated with clarity that Iraq is well out of compliance with U.N. resolutions requiring it to eliminate those weapons and submit to inspections and out of compliance with the agreement that he signed up to in February with Kofi Annan.

Mr. President, I believe there are a number of things we could do, a number of things both in covert as well as overt fashion. There is more policy energy that ought to be placed on this effort, and I believe that, as I have set forth in my comments, it is critical for us to engage in that effort, to hold him accountable.

In February, when we had an armada positioned in the gulf, President Clinton said that `one way or the other, we are determined to deny Iraq the capacity to develop weapons of mass destruction and the missiles to deliver them. That is our bottom line.'

The fact is, Mr. President, over these last months there has been precious little to prevent Saddam Hussein from developing that capacity without the inspectors there and without the unwavering determination of the United Nations to hold him accountable. So the question still stands, What is our policy and what are we prepared to do about it?

Mr. President, I had asked to speak also on another topic for a moment. I see my colleague from New Mexico is here. Let me ask him what his intentions might be now and maybe we can work out an agreement.

[Page: S12288]

Mr. DOMENICI. Mr. President, I am on the list for 20 minutes, and I have a 2:30 beginning on the budget process working with the White House on some offsets. How much longer did the Senator need?

Mr. KERRY. Mr. President, under those circumstances, I know that the chairman needs to get to those talks. I was going to speak for a longer period of time. What I will do is just proceed for another 5 minutes, to summarize my thoughts, if it is agreeable.

The PRESIDING OFFICER. Without objection, it is so ordered.

END

Kerry's other 5mins he was talking about education.

WE MUST BE FIRM WITH SADDAM HUSSEIN (Senate - November 09, 1997)

[Page: S12254]

Mr. KERRY. Mr. President, I will speak tomorrow on the subject of fast track. I wish to talk this evening about another subject that has not received as much conversation on the floor of the Senate as it merits--because, while we have been focused on fast track and on a lot of loose ends which must be tied up before this first session of the 105th Congress can be brought to a close, a very troubling situation has developed in the Middle East that has ominous implications, not just for our national security but literally for the security of all civilized and law-abiding areas of the world.

Even after the overwhelming defeat that the coalition forces visited upon Iraq in and near Kuwait in the Desert Storm conflict, Iraqi dictator Saddam Hussein's truculence has continued unabated. In the final days of that conflict, a fateful decision was made not to utterly vanquish the Iraqi Government and armed forces, on the grounds that to do so would leave a risky vacuum, as some then referred to it, in the Middle East which Iran or Syria or other destabilizing elements might move to fill.

But instead of reforming his behavior after he was handed an historic defeat, Saddam Hussein has continued to push international patience to the very edge. The United Nations, even with many member nations which strongly favor commerce over conflict, has established and maintained sanctions designed to isolate Iraq, keep it too weak to threaten other nations, and push Saddam Hussein to abide by accepted norms of national behavior. These sanctions have cost Iraq over $100 billion and have significantly restrained his economy. They unavoidably also have exacted a very high price from the Iraqi people, but this has not appeared to bother Saddam Hussein in the least. Nor have the sanctions succeeded in obtaining acceptable behavior from Saddam.

Now, during the past 2 weeks, Saddam again has raised his obstinately uncooperative profile. We all know of his announcement that he will no longer permit United States citizens to participate in the U.N. inspection team searching Iraq for violations of the U.N. requirement that Iraq not build or store weapons of mass destruction. And he has made good on his announcement. The UNSCOM inspection team, that is, the United Nations Special Commission team, has been refused access to its inspection targets throughout the week and once again today because it has Americans as team members. While it is not certain, it is not unreasonable to assume that Saddam's action may have been precipitated by the fear that the U.N. inspectors were getting uncomfortably close to discovering some caches of reprehensible weapons of mass destruction, or facilities to manufacture them, that many have long feared he is doing everything in his power to build, hide, and hoard.

Another reason may be that Saddam Hussein, who unquestionably has demonstrated a kind of perverse personal resiliency, may be looking at the international landscape and concluding that, just perhaps, support may be waning for the United States's determination to keep him on a short leash via multilateral sanctions and weapons inspections. This latest action may, indeed, be his warped idea of an acid test of that conclusion.

We should all be encouraged by the reactions of many of our allies, who are evincing the same objections to Iraq's course that are prevalent here in the United States. There is an inescapable reality that, after all of the effort of recent years, Saddam Hussein remains the international outlaw he was when he invaded Kuwait. For most of a decade he has set himself outside international law, and he has sought to avoid the efforts of the international community to insist that his nation comport itself with reasonable standards of behavior and, specifically, not equip

itself with implements of mass destruction which it has shown the willingness to use in previous conflicts.

Plainly and simply, Saddam Hussein cannot be permitted to get away with his antics, or with this latest excuse for avoidance of international responsibility.

This is especially true when only days earlier, after months of negotiations, the administration extracted some very serious commitments from China, during President Jiang Zemin's state visit to Washington, to halt several types of proliferation activities. It is unthinkable that we and our allies would stand by and permit a renegade such as Saddam Hussein, who has demonstrated a willingness to engage in warfare and ignore the sovereignty of neighboring nations, to engage in activities that we insist be halted by China, Russia, and other nations.

Let me say that I agree with the determination by the administration, at the outset of this development, to take a measured and multilateral approach to this latest provocation. It is of vital importance to let the United Nations first respond to Saddam's actions. After all, those actions are first and foremost an affront to the United Nations and all its membership which has, in a too-rare example of unity in the face of belligerent threats from a rogue State, managed to maintain its determination to keep Iraq isolated via a regime of sanctions and inspections.

I think we should commend the resolve of the Chief U.N. Inspector, UNSCOM head Richard Butler, who has refused to bend or budge in the face of Saddam's intransigence. Again and again he has assembled the inspection team, including the U.S. citizens who are part of it, and presented it to do its work, despite being refused access by Iraq.

He rejected taking the easy way out by asking the U.S. participants simply to step aside until the problem is resolved so that the inspections could go forward. He has painstakingly documented what is occurring, and has filed regular reports to the Security Council. He clearly recognizes this situation to be the matter of vital principle that we believe it to be.

The Security Council correctly wants to resolve this matter if it is possible to do so without plunging into armed conflict, be it great or small. So it sent a negotiating team to Baghdad to try to resolve the dispute and secure appropriate access for UNSCOM's inspection team. To remove a point of possible contention as the negotiators sought to accomplish their mission, the United Nations asked that the U.S. temporarily suspend reconnaissance flights over Iraq that are conducted with our U-2 aircraft under U.N. auspices, and we complied. At that time, in my judgment this was the appropriate and responsible course.

But now we know that Saddam Hussein has chosen to blow off the negotiating team entirely. It has returned emptyhanded to report to the Security Council tomorrow. That is why I have come to the floor this evening to speak about this matter, to express what I think is the feeling of many Senators and other Americans as the Security Council convenes tomorrow.

We must recognize that there is no indication that Saddam Hussein has any intention of relenting. So we have an obligation of enormous consequence, an obligation to guarantee that Saddam Hussein cannot ignore the United Nations. He cannot be permitted to go unobserved and unimpeded toward his horrific objective of amassing a stockpile of weapons of mass destruction. This is not a matter about which there should be any debate whatsoever in the Security Council, or, certainly, in this Nation. If he remains obdurate, I believe that the United Nations must take, and should authorize immediately, whatever steps are necessary to force him to relent--and that the United States should support and participate in those steps.

The suspended reconnaissance flights should be resumed beginning tomorrow, and it is my understanding they will be. Should Saddam be so foolish as to take any action intended to endanger those aircraft or interrupt their mission, then we should, and I am confident we will, be prepared to take the necessary

actions to either eliminate that threat before it can be realized, or take actions of retribution.

When it meets tomorrow to receive the negotiators' report and to determine its future course of action, it is vital that the Security Council treat this situation as seriously as it warrants.

In my judgment, the Security Council should authorize a strong U.N. military response that will materially damage, if not totally destroy, as much as possible of the suspected infrastructure for developing and manufacturing weapons of mass destruction, as well as key military command and control nodes. Saddam Hussein should pay a grave price, in a currency that he understands and values, for his unacceptable behavior.

This should not be a strike consisting only of a handful of cruise missiles hitting isolated targets primarily of presumed symbolic value. But how long this military action might continue and how it may escalate should Saddam remain intransigent and how extensive would be its reach are for the Security Council and our allies to know and for Saddam Hussein ultimately to find out.

Of course, Mr. President, the greatest care must be taken to reduce collateral damage to the maximum extent possible, despite the fact that Saddam Hussein cynically and cold-heartedly has made that a difficult challenge by ringing most high-value military targets with civilians.

As the Security Council confronts this, I believe it is important for it to keep prominently in mind the main objective we all should have, which is maintaining an effective, thorough, competent inspection process that will locate and unveil any covert prohibited weapons activity underway in Iraq. If an inspection process acceptable to the United States and the rest of the Security Council can be rapidly reinstituted, it might be possible to vitiate military action.

Should the resolve of our allies wane to pursue this matter until an acceptable inspection process has been reinstituted--which I hope will not occur and which I am pleased to say at this moment does not seem to have even begun--the United States must not lose its resolve to take action. But I think there is strong reason to believe that the multilateral resolve will persist.

To date, there have been nine material breaches by Iraq of U.N. requirements. The United Nations has directed some form of responsive action in five of those nine cases, and I believe it will do so in this case.

The job of the administration in the next 24 hours and in the days to follow is to effectively present the case that this is not just an insidious challenge to U.N. authority. It is a threat to peace and to long-term stability in the tinder-dry atmosphere of the Middle East, and it is an unaffordable affront to international norms of decent and acceptable national behavior.

We must not presume that these conclusions automatically will be accepted by every one of our allies, some of which have different interests both in the region and elsewhere, or will be of the same degree of concern to them that they are to the U.S. But it is my belief that we have the ability to persuade them of how serious this is and that the U.N. must not be diverted or bullied.

The reality, Mr. President, is that Saddam Hussein has intentionally or inadvertently set up a test which the entire world will be watching, and if he gets away with this arrogant ploy, he will have terminated a most important multilateral effort to defuse a legitimate threat to global security--to defuse it by tying the hands of a rogue who thinks nothing of ordering widespread, indiscriminate death and destruction in pursuit of power.

If he succeeds, he also will have overwhelmed the willingness of the world's leading nations to enforce a principle on which all agree: that a nation should not be permitted to grossly violate even rudimentary standards of national behavior in ways that threaten the sovereignty and well-being of other nations and their people.

I believe that we should aspire to higher standards of international behavior than Saddam Hussein has offered us, and the enforcement action of the United Nations pursues such a higher standard.

We know from our largely unsuccessful attempts to enlist the cooperation of other nations, especially industrialized trading nations, in efforts to impose and enforce somewhat more ambitious

standards on nations such as Iran, China, Burma, and Syria that the willingness of most other nations--including a number who are joined in the sanctions to isolate Iraq--is neither wide nor deep to join in imposing sanctions on a sovereign nation to spur it to `clean up its act' and comport its actions with accepted international norms. It would be a monumental tragedy to see such willingness evaporate in one place where so far it has survived and arguably succeeded to date, especially at a time when it is being subjected to such a critical test as that which Iraq presents.

In a more practical vein, Mr. President, I submit that the old adage `pay now or pay later' applies perfectly in this situation. If Saddam Hussein is permitted to go about his effort to build weapons of mass destruction and to avoid the accountability of the United Nations, we will surely reap a confrontation of greater consequence in the future. The Security Council and the United States obviously have to think seriously and soberly about the plausible scenarios that could play out if he were permitted to continue his weapons development work after shutting out U.N. inspectors.

There can be little or no question that Saddam has no compunctions about using the most reprehensible weapons--on civilians as readily as on military forces. He has used poison gas against Iranian troops and civilians in the Iran-Iraq border conflict. He has launched Scud missiles against Israel and against coalition troops based in Saudi Arabia during the gulf war.

It is not possible to overstate the ominous implications for the Middle East if Saddam were to develop and successfully militarize and deploy potent biological weapons. We can all imagine the consequences. Extremely small quantities of several known biological weapons have the capability to exterminate the entire population of cities the size of Tel Aviv or Jerusalem. These could be delivered by ballistic missile, but they also could be delivered by much more pedestrian means; aerosol applicators on commercial trucks easily could suffice. If Saddam were to develop and then deploy usable atomic weapons, the same holds true.

Were he to do either, much less both, the entire balance of power in the Middle East changes fundamentally, raising geometrically the already sky-high risk of conflagration in the region. His ability to bluff and bully would soar. The willingness of those nations which participated in the gulf war coalition to confront him again if he takes a course of expansionism or adventurism may be greatly diminished if they believe that their own citizens would be threatened directly by such weapons of mass destruction.

The posture of Saudi Arabia, in particular, could be dramatically altered in such a situation. Saudi Arabia, of course, was absolutely indispensable as a staging and basing area for Desert Storm which dislodged Saddam's troops from Kuwait, and it remains one of the two or three most important locations of U.S. bases in the Middle East.

Were its willingness to serve in these respects to diminish or vanish because of the ability of Saddam to brandish these weapons, then the ability of the United Nations or remnants of the gulf war coalition, or even the United States acting alone, to confront and halt Iraqi aggression would be gravely damaged.

Were Israel to find itself under constant threat of potent biological or nuclear attack, the current low threshold for armed conflict in the Middle East that easily could escalate into a world-threatening inferno would become even more of a hair trigger.

Indeed, one can easily anticipate that Israel would find even the prospect of such a situation entirely untenable and unacceptable and would take preemptive military action. Such action would, at the very least, totally derail the Middle East peace process which is already at risk. It could draw new geopolitical lines in the sand, with the possibility of Arab nations which have been willing to oppose Saddam's extreme actions either moving into a pan-Arab column supporting him against Israel and its allies or, at least, becoming neutral.

Either course would significantly alter the region's balance of power and make the preservation and advancement of U.S. national security objectives in the region unattainable--and would tremendously increase the risk that our Nation, our young people, ultimately would be sucked into yet another military conflict, this time without the warning time and the staging area that enabled Desert Storm to have such little cost in U.S. and other allied troop casualties.

Finally, we must consider the ultimate nightmare. Surely, if Saddam's efforts are permitted to continue unabated, we will eventually face more aggression by Saddam, quite conceivably including an attack on Israel, or on other nations in the region as he seeks predominance within the Arab community. If he has such weapons, his attack is likely to employ weapons of unspeakable and indiscriminate destructiveness and torturous effects on civilians and military alike. What that would unleash is simply too horrendous to contemplate, but the United States inevitably would be drawn into that conflict.

Mr. President, I could explore other possible ominous consequences of letting Saddam Hussein proceed unchecked. The possible scenarios I have referenced really are only the most obvious possibilities. What is vital is that Americans understand, and that the Security Council understand, that there is no good outcome possible if he is permitted to do anything other than acquiesce to continuation of U.N. inspections.

As the world's only current superpower, we have the enormous responsibility not to exhibit arrogance, not to take any unwitting or unnecessary risks, and not to employ armed force casually. But at the same time it is our responsibility not to shy away from those confrontations that really matter in the long run. And this matters in the long run.

While our actions should be thoughtfully and carefully determined and structured, while we should always seek to use peaceful and diplomatic means to resolve serious problems before resorting to force, and while we should always seek to take significant international actions on a multilateral rather than a unilateral basis whenever that is possible, if in the final analysis we face what we truly believe to be a grave threat to the well-being of our Nation or the entire world and it cannot be removed peacefully, we must have the courage to do what we believe is right and wise.

I believe this is such a situation, Mr. President. It is a time for resolve. Tomorrow we must make that clear to the Security Council and to the world.

I yield back the balance of my time.