U.S. GOVERNMENT PRINTING OFFICE

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UNITED NATIONS PEACEKEEPING

HEARING

BEFORE THE

SUBCOMMITTEE ON

INTERNATIONAL OPERATIONS AND HUMAN RIGHTS

OF THE

COMMITTEE ON

INTERNATIONAL RELATIONS

HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES

ONE HUNDRED SIXTH CONGRESS

SECOND SESSION

SEPTEMBER 20, 2000

Serial No. 106–184

Printed for the use of the Committee on International Relations

(

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(II)

COMMITTEE ON INTERNATIONAL RELATIONS

BENJAMIN A. GILMAN, New York, Chairman

WILLIAM F. GOODLING, Pennsylvania

JAMES A. LEACH, Iowa

HENRY J. HYDE, Illinois

DOUG BEREUTER, Nebraska

CHRISTOPHER H. SMITH, New Jersey

DAN BURTON, Indiana

ELTON GALLEGLY, California

ILEANA ROS-LEHTINEN, Florida

CASS BALLENGER, North Carolina

DANA ROHRABACHER, California

DONALD A. MANZULLO, Illinois

EDWARD R. ROYCE, California

PETER T. KING, New York

STEVE CHABOT, Ohio

MARSHALL ‘‘MARK’’ SANFORD, South

Carolina

MATT SALMON, Arizona

AMO HOUGHTON, New York

TOM CAMPBELL, California

JOHN M. MCHUGH, New York

KEVIN BRADY, Texas

RICHARD BURR, North Carolina

PAUL E. GILLMOR, Ohio

GEORGE P. RADANOVICH, California

JOHN COOKSEY, Louisiana

THOMAS G. TANCREDO, Colorado

SAM GEJDENSON, Connecticut

TOM LANTOS, California

HOWARD L. BERMAN, California

GARY L. ACKERMAN, New York

ENI F.H. FALEOMAVAEGA, American

Samoa

DONALD M. PAYNE, New Jersey

ROBERT MENENDEZ, New Jersey

SHERROD BROWN, Ohio

CYNTHIA A. MCKINNEY, Georgia

ALCEE L. HASTINGS, Florida

PAT DANNER, Missouri

EARL F. HILLIARD, Alabama

BRAD SHERMAN, California

ROBERT WEXLER, Florida

STEVEN R. ROTHMAN, New Jersey

JIM DAVIS, Florida

EARL POMEROY, North Dakota

WILLIAM D. DELAHUNT, Massachusetts

GREGORY W. MEEKS, New York

BARBARA LEE, California

JOSEPH CROWLEY, New York

JOSEPH M. HOEFFEL, Pennsylvania

[VACANCY]

RICHARD J. GARON, Chief of Staff

KATHLEEN BERTELSEN MOAZED, Democratic Chief of Staff

SUBCOMMITTEE ON INTERNATIONAL OPERATIONS AND HUMAN RIGHTS

CHRISTOPHER H. SMITH, New Jersey, Chairman

WILLIAM F. GOODLING, Pennsylvania

HENRY J. HYDE, Illinois

THOMAS G. TANCREDO, Colorado

DAN BURTON, Indiana

CASS BALLENGER, North Carolina

PETER T. KING, New York

MATT SALMON, Arizona

CYNTHIA A. MCKINNEY, Georgia

ENI F.H. FALEOMAVAEGA, American

Samoa

EARL F. HILLIARD, Alabama

BRAD SHERMAN, California

WILLIAM D. DELAHUNT, Massachusetts

GREGORY W. MEEKS, New York

GROVER JOSEPH REES, Subcommittee Staff Director

JEFFREY A. PILCH, Democratic Professional Staff Member

DOUGLAS C. ANDERSON, Counsel

MARTA PINCHEIRA, Staff Associate

(III)

C O N T E N T S

Page

WITNESSES

Dr. William J. Durch, Senior Associate, Henry L. Stimson Center .................... 6

Mr. John Bolton, Senior Vice President, American Enterprise Institute ........... 8

Mr. Joel R. Charny, Vice President, Refugees International ............................... 12

Mr. Hasan Nuhanovic, Former translator, U.N. Peacekeeping Force in

Srebrenica ............................................................................................................. 14

APPENDIX

Prepared statements:

Hon. Christopher H. Smith, a Representative in Congress from the State

of New Jersey, and Chairman, Subcommittee on International Operations

and Human Rights ............................................................................................... 42

Mr. John Bolton, Senior Vice President, American Enterprise Institute ........... 45

Mr. Joel R. Charny, Vice President, Refugees International ............................... 59

Dr. William J. Durch, Senior Associate, Henry L. Stimson Center .................... 65

Mr. Hasan Nuhanovic, Former translator, U.N. Peacekeeping Force in

Srebrenica ............................................................................................................. 77

Additional material submitted for the record:

List of current U.N. Peacekeeping operations ....................................................... 80

Executive Summary of the Report on United Nation Peace Operations ............ 82

Introduction to the Report of the Independent Inquiry into the Actions of

the United Nations During the 1994 Genocide in Rwanda (‘‘Carlsson Report’’), submitted by Hon. Cynthia A. McKinney .............................................. 88

(1)

UNITED NATIONS PEACEKEEPING

WEDNESDAY, SEPTEMBER 20, 2000

HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES,

SUBCOMMITTEE ON INTERNATIONAL

OPERATIONS AND HUMAN RIGHTS,

COMMITTEE ON INTERNATIONAL RELATIONS,

Washington, DC.

The Subcommittee met, pursuant to call, at 10:30 a.m. in Room

2172, Rayburn House Office Building, Hon. Christopher H. Smith

[Chairman of the Subcommittee] presiding.

Mr. SMITH. Good morning. The Subcommittee will be in session.

Today’s hearing is about the United Nations peacekeeping forces,

a review of some of their past successes and failures, and some suggestions about what shape they should take in the future.

At the moment, there are 14 separate U.N. peacekeeping missions around the world. Some have been in existence for less than

a year, others for as long as 52 years.

U.N. peacekeepers are fighting and, sadly, dying in East Timor

and struggling to protect a cease-fire in Sierra Leone, where violence against civilians continues, where hundreds of peacekeepers

have been held hostage by rebel groups, and where open dissent

has erupted between various commanders of the peacekeeping

force.

Peacekeepers will also be embarking soon on a mission to protect

international observers being sent to monitor the cease-fire between Ethiopia and Eritrea. Even as the use of U.N. peacekeepers

is expanding, the U.N. and the United States have not fully come

to terms with the peacekeeping failures of the mid-1990’s.

As this Subcommittee has examined in previous hearings, the

worst of those failures from a humanitarian perspective occurred in

Rwanda and in Srebrenica in Bosnia.

In April 1994, Hutu extremists in Rwanda began the systematic

massacre of that country’s minority Tutsi population, as well as of

many thousands of moderate Hutus who refused to participate in

the bloodshed.

For the next 3 months, mothers and their babies were hacked to

death with machetes. Families seeking refuge in churches were

butchered inside. Streets, littered with corpses, literally ran with

blood. By the time the killing ended, somewhere between 500,000

and 1 million people had been murdered.

Although it already had peacekeepers on the ground, the United

Nations failed to take preemptive action to prevent these mass

murders, and the U.N. refused to take effective action even after

the killing began. After Interahamwe militiamen killed 10 Belgian

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peacekeepers, the U.N. focused on avoiding risk to U.N. peacekeepers, rather than on stopping the genocide.

Notwithstanding pleas for increased assistance with a broader

mandate by General Dallaire, the U.N. Security Council instead

voted to withdraw most of the peacekeepers from that country.

Many informed observers, including General Dallaire himself, believed that a modest, strategically placed international force could

have put a stop to the killing.

A similarly shameful episode occurred the following year in

Srebrenica. During four terrible days in July, 1995, an estimated

8,000 people were executed by Bosnian Serb soldiers who had overrun that United Nations-designated safe haven. The victims were

unarmed men, and in some cases women and children, who had

been repeatedly assured that they would not be harmed if they surrendered. In some cases, these assurances came not only from the

killers, but also from the U.N. peacekeeping forces, whose mission

was to protect the victims.

But when the moment of truth came, U.N. forces offered only

token resistance to the Serb offensive. Their military and political

commanders had redefined their primary mission not as the protection of the people of Srebrenica, but as the self-preservation of the

U.N. forces. The peacekeepers became little more than observers to

genocide.

Sadly, they also became something other than observers. On July

13, 1995, a Dutch blue helmet battalion handed over to Serb invaders some 300 Bosnian Muslims who had sought safety within the

U.N. compound. They watched as the men were separated from the

women and children, a process already well known as a sign that

the men were in imminent danger of death. These men were never

heard from again.

It is my earnest hope that these examples will never be surpassed as the darkest days in the history of U.N. peacekeeping.

The mistakes of Rwanda and Srebrenica must not be repeated.

Today, there is a general agreement that there have been and

still are serious problems with U.N. peacekeeping, but the more

difficult, unresolved questions are: What exactly are those problems, and how should they be fixed?

One set of answers were proposed last month by the Panel on

United Nations Peace Operations convened by Secretary General

Kofi Annan. The panel’s report, also known as the Brahimi report,

identifies ‘‘serious problems in strategic direction, decision-making,

rapid deployment, operational planning and support, and the use

of modern information technology.’’

It also admits moral failures, such as the U.N.’s past ‘‘reluctance

to distinguish victim from aggressor,’’ as occurred in Rwanda and

Srebrenica. In response, the Panel proposes a renewed commitment

to peacekeeping on the part of member states, significant institutional change, and increased financial support. It emphasizes the

need for stronger ties between peacekeepers and peace-builders

from civil society in the areas where U.N. forces are deployed. It

calls for robust rules of engagement and for ‘‘bigger forces, better

equipped and more costly but able to be a credible deterrent.’’

It highlights the need to streamline the logistics of deployment.

It also emphasizes the importance of clear, achievable mandates.

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But the bottom line solution proposed by the Brahimi report seems

to be ‘‘more′′: more resources, more power, and more autonomy for

U.N. peacekeeping efforts.

Other advocates urge changes beyond those envisioned by the

Brahimi report, including the creation of a standing U.N. rapid reaction peacekeeping force. They assert that prompt, forceful action

would help deter the worst humanitarian costs of many crises.

They point to the fact that past U.N. deployments have been too

little, too late, and that past multinational forces have lacked cohesion, efficient coordination, and a unified chain of command.

They argue that a standing U.N. force is the best way to correct

these deficiencies. However, because of the serious problems of sovereignty and accountability posed by such a freestanding military

entity, both the current Administration and many Members of Congress have opposed the rapid deployment force concept.

Still other experts question whether U.N. forces are competent,

either legally or militarily, to enforce the unstable peace that exists

in the regions where many peacekeepers are deployed.

They warn that by injecting international peacekeeping forces

into circumstances where there is no preexisting peace, we are entangling ourselves in an expensive, dangerous, and potentially endless morass.

Furthermore, they note that the robust military engagement contemplated by the Brahimi report and the standing force concept are

less like peacekeeping than like making war—a prerogative properly exercised by sovereign states, not by the U.N.

I am happy to note that we have before us today capable experts

representing each of these viewpoints, as well as one witness who

speaks from personal experience of the tragedies that result from

peacekeeping failures.

I hope that our witnesses will propose answers to a number of

important questions: How should U.N. peacekeeping be reformed

and improved? What is the proper competence of a U.N. peacekeeping force, both legally and operationally? What role should the

United States and the U.N. Security Council play in initiating, directing, and supporting U.N. peacekeeping activities? And, finally,

how should we balance our proper concerns about United States

sovereignty and strategic interests with our moral obligations to

act when innocent peoples are threatened with unspeakable evil

and extermination?

I would like to yield to my very good friend and colleague, the

Ranking Member of our Subcommittee, the gentlewoman from

Georgia, Ms. McKinney, and thank her for her leadership on the

issue of peacekeeping and for suggesting today’s hearing.

Ms. MCKINNEY. Thank you very much, Mr. Chairman. I want to

thank you for calling this very important hearing. I want to thank

our witnesses for coming to enlighten us on this very important

subject.

We are looking today at the future of the United Nations. Our

witnesses have specific visions for our world and the United Nations. Mr. Nuhanovic represents a group of people who must not

be left behind as we pursue our common vision of the United Nations.

4

The United Nations is a very important development in the

course of human events. The creation of the United Nations, and

now, recommendations arising from the Brahimi report, are high

water marks in human development and organization.

Today, however, the U.N. proposes having a ready reservoir of

able men and women willing to go to places near and far to achieve

the objective of peace. That is a laudable mission, but the question

we must analyze is the ability of the U.N. to achieve that mission.

The United Nations is supposed to be a force for good in the

world, and this principle is enshrined in its charter. However, before I place more authority and responsibility in the hands of the

United Nations, I have many questions that remain unanswered.

I hope this hearing today will help me begin to answer those questions so I can lend my support to the U.N. in its efforts to become

more adept at policing the world and protecting all of us from nefarious and deadly characters.

I have asked representatives from survivors in Rwanda and

Srebrenica to present testimony today because they know the horrors of a peacekeeping effort gone bad. I regret the decision of the

government of Rwanda to deny my request for a witness. The survivors know that all the best intentions in the world don’t bring

relatives back. They know, too, that all the best intentions in the

world don’t help survivors of an effort gone awry.

I was recently alerted that a Bosnia woman who had survived

the horrors of Srebrenica and who had been relocated to Missouri

committed suicide because she could not cope with a new language,

a new culture, isolation from her accustomed environment, no safety net to provide a smooth transition to immigrant life in America.

What went wrong with this peacekeeping operation and its aftermath? What went so wrong that would allow a city to be destroyed,

its survivors to be scattered like chaff around the world, leading

this one desperate woman to kill herself? Could the United Nations

have done something to prevent the double victimization of this

woman, the double victimization of its survivors? What are the responsibilities of the U.N. to these families?

For the first time in its history now, United Nations peacekeeping troops have been directly implicated in the crimes of genocide and in crimes against humanity. The Kavaruganda family

lives daily with the fact that the Supreme Court Justice, His Honorable Joseph Kavaruganda, of Rwanda was under the protection

of U.N. peacekeepers at the time of his handover to the presidential guard for his murder. U.N. peacekeepers then stood by

drinking stolen beer and watched as his wife and daughter were

tortured by Rwandan soldiers.

Mr. Chairman, I have testimony about this episode from the

United Nations Carlsson report on Rwanda, which I would like to

submit for the Record.

[The information referred to is available in the appendix.]

Ms. MCKINNEY. Hasan Nuhanovic lost his family as U.N. peacekeepers turned over 7,000 Bosnians to the Serbian Army for the

slaughter of men and young boys. We know that this happened because of our witnesses and their insistence that the United Nations

tell their story.

5

After reviewing the evidence submitted by the prosecutor, Judge

Riad confirmed the indictment of Karadzic and Mladic, stating,

‘‘After Srebrenica fell to besieging Serbian forces in July, 1995, a

truly terrible massacre of the Muslim population appears to have

taken place. The evidence tendered by the prosecutor describes

scenes of unimaginable savagery: thousands of men executed and

buried in mass graves; hundreds of men buried alive; men and

women mutilated and slaughtered; children killed before their

mothers’ eyes; a grandfather forced to eat the liver of his own

grandson.’’ These are truly scenes from hell written on the darkest pages of

human history. The United Nations was forced to write two reports

which now tell the world of its gross failures and complicity in

these great crimes, but the United Nations has not lifted one finger

to help these and other survivors of U.N. peacekeeping atrocities.

In East Timor, the United Nations Special Representative issued

an apology for not acting during the razing of Dili during and after

the independence referendum. Who will rebuild East Timor?

Secretary General Kofi Annan has said that heads of state and

world leaders must not be allowed to hide behind their sovereign

immunity, and that they must be prosecuted for their complicity in

genocide, in crimes against humanity. The Secretary General remains mute on the responsibility of the United Nations to survivors entrusted in its care.

The loved ones of our witnesses were under the direct care of

United Nations peacekeeping troops. But those troops abandoned

the people they were sent to protect and left them to be brutally

murdered. Shouldn’t the U.N. voluntarily live up to its own standard for heads of state and world leaders and be held accountable

for its own participation in genocide and crimes against humanity?

The United Nations issued four apologies in 6 weeks for Rwanda,

Srebrenica, East Timor, and Kosovo. Sierra Leone and Cambodia

I presume will be next. In Sierra Leone, Medecins Sans Frontieres

recently struck out at the U.N. When the entire town was abandoned by U.N. peacekeepers and RUF was allowed to go in unhampered. Sierra Leoneans were forced to flee the RUF with intravenous tubes dangling from their bodies because of the collapse of

the U.N. peacekeeping effort.

In 1991, Cambodia had one AIDS patient. In 1993, they had

three. Now they have almost 200 new infections every day. United

Nations peacekeepers are alleged to have infected thousands of

Cambodians as they performed their duties in UNTAC’s peacekeeping operation in Cambodia.

Will the U.N. do HIV testing on their recruits? How will they repair this damage done to innocent Cambodians? Does the U.N.

care?

The United Nations will acquire more and more power and authority to act on our behalf, but will the U.N. have transparency

in its operations, and will the victims of its failings be able to hold

the U.N. accountable?

More importantly, will governments be able to give big contracts

to their friends and escape scrutiny by the public and people like

us in Congress by allowing the U.N. to do in peacekeeping and policing what governments previously did?

6

Probably the more important question is, how will the United

Nations prevent itself from being used by other countries for their

own purposes and thereby subverting the U.N. mission? Many assert that this is exactly what was done by the United States in

Rwanda, in Srebrenica, in Iraq, and in East Timor.

I have read the Brahimi report and I have many questions.

NATO has set an important precedent by admitting and paying

damages to a family that was able to prove that it was NATO

bombs that destroyed their home. NATO stands above no law.

I would like to once again thank the witnesses for appearing, and

I look forward to their testimony.

Mr. SMITH. Thank you, Ms. McKinney.

Mr. Delahunt.

Mr. DELAHUNT. No opening statement, thank you.

Mr. SMITH. Let me present the four witnesses, beginning first

with Dr. William Durch, a Senior Associate at the Henry L.

Stimson Center, and who recently served as project director for the

Panel on United Nations Peace Operations, whose report was

issued last month, and the former Assistant Director of the Defense

and Arms Control Studies Program at the Massachusetts Institute

of Technology. Dr. Durch presently teaches courses on international

peacekeeping at Georgetown University.

Next we will hear from John R. Bolton, who has served as Senior

Vice President of the American Enterprise Institute since the beginning of 1997. Previously, Mr. Bolton served as Assistant Secretary of State for International Organizational Affairs in the Bush

Administration, as well as the Assistant Attorney General in the

Civil Division of the Reagan Administration. During the early

1980’s, he served as General Counsel and as Assistant Administrator for Program and Policy Coordination at the U.S. Agency for

International Development.

Next we will hear from Joel Charny, who has served as Vice

President of Refugees International since July of this year. Previously he worked in Cambodia as a Deputy Program Manager

with the U.N. Development Program, UNDP. Before that, Mr.

Charny worked for 16 years with Oxfam America. A graduate of

Harvard Graduate School of Education, Mr. Charny has written

numerous articles on humanitarian issues.

Finally, we will hear from Hasan Nuhanovic, who was formerly

a translator for the United Nations protection force in Srebrenica.

Members of his own family have not been seen since they were

turned over to Bosnian Serbs by U.N. peacekeeping forces in July

1995. Since that time, Mr. Nuhanovic has investigated the fate of

thousands who were turned over to Serb forces and the possible

complicity of U.N. forces in those disappearances.

Dr. Durch, if you could begin.

STATEMENT OF DR. WILLIAM J. DURCH, SENIOR ASSOCIATE,

HENRY L. STIMSON CENTER

Mr. DURCH. Thank you, Mr. Chairman, for the invitation to testify at this hearing on U.N. peacekeeping.

I am a Senior Associate of the Henry L. Stimson Center here in

Washington, and recently served as Project Director for the Panel

on U.N. Peace Operations. I am speaking here in my personal caVerDate 11-MAY-2000 17:43 Feb 27, 2001 Jkt 069536 PO 00000 Frm 00010 Fmt 6633 Sfmt 6633 F:\WORK\IOHR\H092000\69536 HINTREL1 PsN: HINTREL1
7

pacity, however, not for the U.N. nor for the Panel. I will be summarizing my prepared statement.

After the disasters of the mid-1990’s, which both you and Ms.

McKinney spoke about, there was an opportunity, breathing space

to correct the more obvious problems with U.N. peacekeeping, but

there seemed to be little interest on the part of member states to

invest more time and money in what many assumed to be a failed

enterprise. The tears in the fabric of U.N. peacekeeping were left

largely unmended.

Then last year, the U.N. was suddenly called upon, in rapid succession, to administer Kosovo under the protection of NATO ground

forces; and then to replace Australia-led INTERFET and launch a

new government for East Timor; then to replace Nigeria-led

ECOMOG in Sierra Leone to implement a deeply flawed peace accord that the U.N. did not negotiate; then to oversee a shaky ceasefire in the vast Democratic Republic of Congo. The elements of the

U.N. Secretariat responsible for peacekeeping were at this time underfunded, understaffed, unprepared to run a country. Consider the

headlines had they been foresighted enough to try to prepare.

Clearly, something needed to be done to better match U.N. capabilities to the operational tasks once again being handed to the organization, the basic choice being either to do these operations

right or not do them.

The twin assumptions of the mid-1990’s that the U.N. would not

again be called upon to undertake tough missions and that regional

organizations could handle all elements of such missions seemed to

have been invalidated by the resurgence of 1999–2000. Better,

then, that the U.N. be prepared; that the Security Council better

understand what the U.N. is and is not capable of doing; and that

new missions reflect that understanding.

The Panel’s report advocates this latter course. The report emphasizes that the U.N. Secretariat is in no position to raise or command a warfighting force. At the same time, unless U.N.-flagged

forces deployed to implement accords ending internal conflicts can

defend themselves—and the peace they have come to implement—

against the opponents of peace and the well-armed criminal gangs

who spring up in the wake of war, their deployment is pointless.

Thus, while the report rightly leaves warfighting to states, it

urges member states to collaborate among themselves to make better trained, more capable forces available to U.N. operations.

The report recommends that the Secretariat plan for realistic

worst case scenarios and be given the capacity to do so, and recommends that the Secretariat dispatch teams to assess whether

troops offered to a U.N. operation meet specified high standards of

training and equipment, and that the Secretary General decline to

accept contingents that fail to meet those standards.

But even if troops offered to a U.N. operation are well-trained

and well-equipped, that operation should not go ahead unless they

are offered in sufficient quantity to meet anticipated operational

challenges. That is, for any given operation, the size of the operating area imposes its own requirements and constraints on U.N.

or any other peace operations, which figures 1 and 2 in my submitted testimony help to illustrate.

8

Most big states that fall prey to internal conflict will remain beyond the reach of peacekeeping, whether U.N.-run or regionallyrun. To date, even coalitions of the willing have addressed themselves to fairly small places.

If international remedial efforts can only be applied in such

places, a few at a time, then the international community must

place greater emphasis on conflict prevention if the need for peace

operations is to match either the U.N.’s or regional organizations’ capabilities to keep or restore peace. By that, I really mean longterm prevention.

Such operations have been given a wide variety of tasks over

time; some easier, some harder. Monitoring international borders is

a relatively simple task compared to establishing a safe and secure

environment in the aftermath of civil war.

The tasks assigned to post-Cold War operations have been mostly

of the harder, more complex variety. Complex peace operations

have explicitly political tasks, and deploy in the aftermath of conflicts that nobody has won, conflicts that are really unfinished. If

they are skilled, tough, and lucky, the outsiders will help to shift

those conflicts from the battlefield to the political arena, breaking

the cycle of armed conflict under the protective umbrella of peacekeeping forces.

That is, peacekeeping, the maintenance of a secure environment,

and peace-building, all the other tasks that an operation undertakes to implement a peace accord, are inseparable functions. The

objective of peace-building is not to remake a society, but to give

the members of that society a shot at remaking it themselves. Such

peace-building, which aims at a self-sustaining security environment, is a necessary component of the peacekeepers’ exit strategy.

To summarize, the report argues that it is better to choose carefully, go in strong, and draw down than to go in weak and build

up. National militaries, disaster relief teams, and other crisis response entities cannot function without preparedness, and neither

can the United Nations. Preparedness costs money, but in a pinch,

the lack of preparedness costs even more.

Thank you.

[The prepared statement of Mr. Durch is available in the appendix.]

Mr. SMITH. Dr. Durch, thank you very much for that testimony.

Without objection, yours and all the other witnesses’ full statements will be made part of the record, as well as the attachments

that my good friend, the gentlewoman from Georgia, had asked to

be made part of the record.

Mr. Bolton.

STATEMENT OF JOHN BOLTON, SENIOR VICE PRESIDENT,

AMERICAN ENTERPRISE INSTITUTE

Mr. BOLTON. Thank you very much, Mr. Chairman. It is a pleasure to be here today. I, too, would like to discuss the Brahimi report. If I could, I would just like to put it in context first.

I think the Brahimi report follows logically from the past 8 years

of the current Administration’s peacekeeping policy. When they

came into office, they announced a new doctrine they called ‘‘assertive multilateralism.’’ I was never quite sure what assertive

9

multilateralism meant, but it is pretty clear from the historical

record that the principal experiment in that doctrine was intended

to and in fact did take place in Somalia.

In 1993, when she was permanent representative to the U.N.,

Mrs. Albright said, with respect to one of the key Security Council

resolutions on Somalia, and I quote now, ‘‘With this resolution, we

will embark on an unprecedented enterprise aimed at nothing less

than the restoration of an entire country as a proud, functioning,

and viable member of the community of nations.’’ The policy, for a lot of different reasons that we don’t have time

to go into this morning, failed in Somalia with the tragic death of

18 Americans. The rhetoric of assertive multilateralism disappeared from the Administration’s speeches, but it did not disappear from their policies. Indeed, as written in PDD 25, the peacekeeping decision directive, even whether or not followed, that notion of assertive multilateralism continued. It has widespread support in many circles in New York. In fact, I think it was the doctrine of assertive multilateralism that led the Secretary General to

create the Brahimi Commission, and I think the doctrine informs

virtually all of its conclusions and recommendations.

I note to begin with that some of what the Brahimi report says

is unquestionably correct. In fact, they make one point, a very courageous statement, where they say that sometimes in the past political compromise has led to confused mandates for U.N. peacekeeping forces.

They say, and I am quoting the report, ‘‘Rather than send an operation into danger with unclear instructions, the Panel urges that

the Council refrain from mandating such a mission.’’ I think that

is a good and important lesson. It is sad that the Brahimi report

did not carry through that logic in other contexts.

It is important, as Congress begins to consider the Brahimi report, and the issue I am going to address, is what American foreign

policy should be with respect to U.N. peacekeeping operations. I do

not think for us this is an abstract discussion of what the best looking U.N. peacekeeping structure should be. I think our issue is

what is in the best interests of the United States.

Let me very quickly run through a couple of major respects of the

Brahimi report that I think are badly flawed from that perspective.

The Brahimi report takes a nod in the direction of principles that

underlie successful U.N. peacekeeping missions: the consent of the

parties, neutrality of the U.N. force, and limited rules of engagement, rules of engagement confined to its own self-defense.

Then it proceeds basically to write those three heretofore successful preconditions out of its report. It talks about circumstances

where the consent of the parties can be manipulated. What it is

really talking about is a situation where there is no true peace,

where the parties in fact have not given their consent.

I would suggest that in Sierra Leone today we have exactly an

example of that kind of problem.

Second, the Brahimi report takes the notion of impartiality and

applies it not to the parties to the conflict, but in a very, if I may

say so, abstract sense to neutrality and impartiality in the context

of the U.N. charter. It talks expressly about taking moral sides in

conflicts, which may be appropriate at some points, but which I

10

would suggest to you, in some conflicts around the world, it is very

hard to find out where the white hats are and where the black hats

are.

Finally, although the report does state modestly that the U.N.

does not wage war, it then proceeds to contradict itself on that

point as well. In what I think is really the most intellectually dishonest part of the report, it really is talking about a U.N. capability to engage in combat; not simply the self-defense of its own

forces, but with the ability and determination to defeat what it considers to be enemies of the mission. This is not peacekeeping, this

is war. I think it is just a mistake for us or for any decision-makers

not to understand the consequences of confusing that doctrine.

There is another, I think, very important political point here. The

Brahimi report found in its specific discussion of preventive diplomacy, in many of the recommendations it makes for the beefing up

of the capabilities of the U.N. Secretariat, its information-gathering

capabilities, what in Washington we call its intelligence-gathering

capabilities, and in its analytical capabilities generally.

I think that we have made a mistake over the past several years

in the extent to which we have provided intelligence information to

the United Nations. I make no bones about saying that when it is

in the best interests of the United States to provide sensitive intelligence to the United Nations, we should do it, but we should not

do it as a matter of course, and we should not under any circumstances permit the United Nations to develop its own autonomous intelligence-gathering capability. Its analytical skills should

be really things that we can call on as necessary.

Mr. Chairman, there are a number of unrealistic recommendations in the report on the so-called peace-building side of things. I

think as the failure of nation-building in Somalia showed, the ability of external actors to create a functioning civil society in failed

states is really quite limited.

A little humility would do us all good here in assessing exactly

what responsibilities we should assign the United Nations. Just as

I think in this country there is a broad consensus that it is not the

government that builds our Nation, it is the people, so, too, in

international matters, it is not the United Nations or external observers who are ultimately going to build civil society in troubled

states, it is the people who live there themselves.

Finally, Mr. Chairman, one last specific point on the Brahimi report. All of the recommendations about increased capacity and increased resources are written in the context of increasing the Secretariat’s capabilities. Completely ignored in this report is the role

of the Military Staff Committee which is set up by the Charter.

We are all very familiar with the fact that the Military Staff

Committee, gridlocked by the Cold War right from the start, has

never functioned, but, Mr. Chairman, the Charter is unambiguous

when it comes to military activities. It is the Military Staff Committee that is established to advise and assist the Security Council

on all questions relating to the Security Council’s military requirements and so on.

If a decision is made to go ahead and implement large chunks

of the Brahimi report, it seems to me that there is a very conscious

and very clear effect on the United States and the other permanent

11

members of the Security Council if responsibility for these military

and quasi-military operations is vested in the Secretariat and not

in the Military Staff Committee, which is the principal arm of the

Security Council, which is to say, us, in overseeing the U.N.’s military affairs.

So I think, quite apart from all of the specific defects in the

Brahimi report, this is no accident that the Military Staff Committee is not mentioned. This is no accident that all of this additional support is to be given to the Secretary General and not the

arm of the Security Council. I think that alone is grounds to reject

the Brahimi report’s conclusions.

The Brahimi report says very explicitly that if its recommendations are not enacted, and I am quoting again from the report, ‘‘The

Secretariat will remain a reactive institution, unable to get ahead

of daily events.’’ Let me just say, Mr. Chairman, from the point of

view of United States foreign policy, I believe the report is correct

when it says the Secretariat is a reactive institution. I believe that

from the American point of view, it should remain a reactive institution. The movers in the United Nations, the movers in the Security Council, are the members, and particularly the five permanent

members. Let us be very clear, it is particularly the United States.

We want the Secretariat to react. We know how to do it. I don’t

think they should be acting on their own.

Finally, Mr. Chairman, I conclude with a little study in my testimony of the ongoing U.N. role in the dispute between Ethiopia and

Eritrea, because I think in this current peacekeeping operation we

see an example of exactly what I have just described as the erroneous conclusions in the Brahimi report itself.

I believe that the conflict between Ethiopia and Eritrea is a classic threat to international peace and security in the language of the

charter. I believe that it is entirely appropriate for the United Nations to take the role that it has. I think it is entirely appropriate

to deploy observers in that conflict to monitor the cease-fire and

the other terms of the agreement that has been reached between

Ethiopia and Eritrea.

Where I disagree emphatically with what the Secretary General

has recommended is in the deployment of three foreign country

battalions, which he justified in an interview with the Washington

Post, saying that this is part of his effort to transform peacekeeping into something else, and as he said, ‘‘to go prepared for all

eventualities, including full combat.’’

I don’t think three battalions or even many more are going to

stop war breaking out again between Ethiopia and Eritrea. I think

the observers that have been recommended, a total of 220, are sufficient. If it is not, I would be willing to see an increase in the number of observers. It is enough to know whether the cease-fire is

holding and where the other terms are being met. But the idea

that a size force as he has recommended with these other three

battalions is enough to engage in peace enforcement I think is both

wrong, and I think it undercuts the vital role of the observers.

Here is the key question for decision-makers, Mr. Chairman. In

the end, in the end, if the Ethiopians and Eritreans are not willing

to uphold their own peace, what other nationality is prepared to

kill and die for it?

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Mr. Chairman, I think that your calling this hearing is an important step in the Congress’ consideration of the Brahimi report and

in peacekeeping. I appreciate your inviting me. I would be pleased

to answer any questions you or the Committee may have.

[The prepared statement of Mr. Bolton is available in the appendix.]

Mr. SMITH. Thank you very much, Mr. Bolton.

Mr. Charny?

STATEMENT OF JOEL R. CHARNY, VICE PRESIDENT,

REFUGEES INTERNATIONAL

Mr. CHARNY. I would first like to thank the Chairman of the

Subcommittee on International Operations and Human Rights,

Representative Christopher Smith, for providing the opportunity

for Refugees International to testify on the issue of U.N. peacekeeping, one of the most critical issues facing the world today.

As presently organized and as we have heard, there seems to be

a consensus that U.N. peacekeeping is not working. The starting

point for Refugees International is the fate of the most vulnerable,

the mainly women and children who are caught in conflicts.

The failure to act, as in Rwanda and the eastern Congo from

1994 to 1996, or the ineffectiveness of the response, as in Sierra

Leone earlier this year, have led to unnecessary deaths numbering

in the hundreds of thousands.

More unnecessary deaths are in the offing in the eastern Congo

or along the border between Ethiopia and Eritrea because the machinery of international peacekeeping is shamefully inadequate. It

is inadequate because it is slow. The time from Security Council

authorization to deployment averages 6 months.

It is inadequate because the forces deployed have neither trained

together nor used common equipment, leading to chaos in the field.

It is inadequate because the forces are feeble, not powerful enough

to intimidate even the poorly armed thugs who often make up the

primary security threat to humanitarian relief operations, and it is

inadequate because the forces have lacked a clear mandate and a

unified command.

Refugees International has concluded that the most effective way

to address these weaknesses would be the creation of a rapid reaction force, or RRF. An RRF might consist of 5,000 to 10,000 elite

volunteers from around the world. They would live and train together, follow the same doctrine, use the same equipment, answer

to the same chain of command, and be ready for dispatch with a

few days notice.

A rapid reaction force would give the international community a

sharp instrument to project military and police power quickly and

effectively. The RRF, or part of it, could be deployed for a multitude of purposes: To prevent or mitigate conflicts, protect noncombatants and humanitarian aid workers. We have just in the

last week or 10 days had four UNHCR workers killed, three in

Timor, one in Guinea. Again, it begs the question of why humanitarian aid workers are putting their lives at risk in a situation

where security is not being adequately provided.

An RRF could also supervise cease-fire agreements and police

refugee camps.

13

Let me stress that the RRF should be a standing force. At

present, to form a peacekeeping force, the U.N. collects troops from

all over the world and attempts to make them into a professional

peacekeeping force on short notice. The existence of a standing,

highly professional elite force would enhance greatly the speed and

quality of the deployment and reduce the possibilities for mission

failure.

The personnel of a rapid reaction force should be recruited internationally to the highest standards. However, to try to limit the influence of politics, and in keeping with informal agreements that

underlay the original U.N. peacekeeping deployments in the 1950’s,

perhaps citizens of permanent Security Council members should

not be permitted or recruited to serve. The RRF would be an independent entity of the Secretariat for missions enacted by the Security Council.

The idea for the creation of an RRF is not new. Several nations

and many prestigious individuals have already endorsed the concept. H.R. 4453, the McGovern-Porter U.N. Rapid Deployment Police and Security Force Act of 2000, was introduced in Congress

this session, and includes a concept similar to the one that I am

proposing. But the proposals for the creation of a rapid deployment

force have not gone very far because the U.S. Government is opposed. Why? First of all, quality costs money, and the U.S. is

penny-wise and pound foolish when it comes to international expenditures.

Second, as you well know, the specter of a so-called U.N. army

excites a tiny vocal minority of Americans, although calling a rapid

reaction force of a few thousand personnel an army is a gross exaggeration.

But for the U.S., the advantages of the creation of an RRF are

many. Chief among them is that American lives might be preserved

by reducing the pressure on the U.S. to intervene militarily in crises in far away countries in which we have no vital national interest, and at least some of the money the U.S. is spending to respond

to unnecessary humanitarian crises could be saved or diverted to

other uses, such as investing in programs to address poverty, the

root cause of many of the conflicts afflicting the world.

We have already heard in some detail from you, Mr. Chairman,

about the Rwanda example. I just want to very quickly state that

in four instances in the Rwanda case, the existence of an RRF

could have prevented the mass deaths that you were referring to.

First, during the genocide itself, there is now general agreement

that an immediate strengthening of peacekeeping forces on the

ground would have stopped the genocide and saved 500,000 lives.

The second missed opportunity was in July and August, 1994,

when more than 1 million Rwandan refugees crossed the border

into Zaire, now the Democratic Republic of the Congo. A peacekeeping force stationed near the border could have disarmed Hutu

military units crossing it and prevented much of the later carnage.

The third missed opportunity came later in 1994, when the U.N.

Secretary General appealed in vain to the Security Council for

7,000 troops to disarm the Hutu militia now dominating the refugee camps. The camps were increasingly under their control. A

peacekeeping force could have been deployed to disarm them.

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Finally, the fourth missed opportunity took place in November,

1996, when the Congo rebels broke up the refugee camps and hundreds of thousands of refugees fled deep into the forests of eastern

Congo, where they suffered excruciating hardships, and thousands,

perhaps tens of thousands, died.

A peacekeeping force could have made a quick excursion in the

Congo to set up a safe corridor to deliver aid and repatriate the refugees. Canada proposed that a force be deployed for this very purpose, but the U.S. scuttled the idea, arguing incorrectly that the

number of refugees in the Congo was overestimated.

The international community thus failed four times in quick succession with respect to genocide and its aftershocks in Rwanda.

Moreover, if an intervention had been carried out successfully on

the first occasion, the opportunities for interventions two, three,

and four would not have arisen, and arguably, we would not have

a massive humanitarian crisis in the Congo at the moment, because this whole situation has come inexorably from the 1994 disaster.

For Refugees International, reforming the entire emergency response system of the international community is thus the number

one issue of the post-Cold War world. Again, we start from a humanitarian perspective. Capable rapid reaction to prevent and

mitigate the impact of life-threatening conflicts is a critical component of the reform. If we are truly serious about enhancing the

international capability for peacekeeping, as President Clinton has

indicated, then the U.S. needs to support the creation of a standing

international rapid reaction force.

Thank you for your attention.

[The prepared statement of Mr. Charny is available in the appendix.]

Mr. SMITH. Mr. Charny, thank you very much for your testimony.

Mr. Nuhanovic.

STATEMENT OF HASAN NUHANOVIC, FORMER TRANSLATOR,

U.N. PEACEKEEPING FORCE IN SREBRENICA

Mr. NUHANOVIC. Mr. Chairman, I want to thank you for having

taken the initiative in calling this important hearing today on

United Nations peacekeeping.

Congresswoman McKinney, I especially want to thank you, first

for inviting me to appear before this honorable Committee, and

then second, for the help of all your staff in getting me here from

Tuzla, Bosnia.

I come as a victim of the terrible slaughter which followed the

fall of Srebrenica in July 1995. I personally lost my entire family

there. My mother, my father, and my younger brother were all

forced by the United Nations peacekeepers, Dutch battalion, out of

the U.N. military compound and handed over to the Serb troops

waiting outside.

The Serb soldiers then took my family away and murdered them.

My family should not have died. Instead, my family should have

been allowed to stay in the U.N. compound and remain protected

by the United Nations troops. My family should be alive today. The

UNPROFOR Dutch battalion forced around 6,000 men, women and

children right into the hands of their executioners. In this way,

15

they assisted the war criminals in their plan to exterminate the entire male population of Srebrenica. They did not have to do that.

They considered the 6,000 civilians on the base to be a burden and

handed them over to the Serbs only for one reason, to speed up

their own departure from Srebrenica. I should point out that this

was in contravention of the written order dated 11 July 1995 from

the U.N. Protection Force Commander Major General Gobiliard to

the Dutchbat Commander Lieutenant Colonel Karemans.

It said, ‘‘Concentrate your forces into the Potocari Camp, including withdrawal of your Ops. Take all reasonable measures to protect refugees and civilians in your care.’’ whatever the reasonable

measures may mean, it certainly didn’t mean to hand these people

over to the executioners.

Second, I come here today to bear witness to the truth of the horrors which occurred in Srebrenica. I was there. I saw what happened. I can confirm for you that on 11 July 1995 the U.N. safe

area was allowed to fall to the hands of General Ratko Mladic and

his forces. Mladic’s forces had a free hand to enter the safe haven

and murder over 10,000 Bosnian men and young boys, and rape

hundreds of helpless women and young girls. It was a terrifying

time for me and all the others trapped in the U.N.-declared safe

haven, and it should have never been allowed to happen.

But I do not need to detail today the full extent of the horrors

which occurred following the destruction of Srebrenica. Indeed,

these horrors are now well known and have become a matter of the

international public record. Numerous books, films, and a number

of official inquiries, including one conducted in 1998 by this honorable Committee, all catalog in great detail the surrender of the

United Nations safe haven and subsequent horrific crimes committed by General Mladic’s forces against Srebrenica’s civilian population.

Mr. Chairman, what I do want to raise with you is the ongoing

struggle for justice by the survivors of Srebrenica. Following the

fall of Srebrenica, as many as 10,000 civilians were murdered, a

number of women raped and brutalized, and several thousand people were traumatized and brutalized.

The decision to surrender Srebrenica forced thousands of survivors to leave their homes and all their property in Bosnia and relocate in Canada, Australia, the United States, and elsewhere

throughout the world.

The extent of the damage and the subsequent cost of these decisions by certain world leaders to surrender the enclave is almost

incalculable. What price can be put on the deliberate surrender of

a modern European city and the annihilation of 10,000 of its inhabitants? What price can be put on the long-term trauma inflicted

upon 30,000 people? What level of accountability can be held

against those world leaders who, knowing or suspecting that

Srebrenica’s civilian population was going to be annihilated, decided to surrender the city to General Mladic anyway?

Despite the enormity of the crimes committed in Srebrenica and

the extraordinary amount of evidence available to the international

tribunal from the former Yugoslavia, in 6 years only four persons

have been indicted for these crimes, and of which only two have

been arrested.

16

I and other survivors from Srebrenica are concerned that there

is an ongoing reluctance to aggressively prosecute the Serbian military and its leadership who oversaw the destruction of Srebrenica.

We see this as yet another abandonment of the victims of

Srebrenica, and part of the ongoing cycle of impunity worldwide

which cloaks ethnic cleansing and cleansers and mass murderers

from the hand of justice.

How can there be any sense of justice for the victims when we

know that mass murderers move about Europe free from fear of arrest?

In addition, the exhumed remains of over 4,000 of Srebrenica’s

victims are still being stored in the above ground facility in Tuzla.

As you could imagine, this is totally unacceptable to the surviving

family members. The remains should be shown respect and buried

in a dignified place. I am pleased to say that the U.S. Ambassador

to Bosnia and Herzegovina supports the families’ requests to erect

a memorial complex and bury the remains of their loved ones near

Potocari.

Regrettably, there is a strong resistance to this by certain Bosnian people in Srebrenica and the Republika Srpska. Mr. Chairman, I think you will agree that 6 years is an unreasonable period

of time to have to wait to bury loved ones. We need your help and

that of your Committee to end this outrage and ongoing indignity

against our loved ones.

I want to commend you, Mr. Chairman, along with the other

members of your Committee, for undertaking this important task.

I hope that by better understanding what happened in Srebrenica,

you all might be able to ensure that there is some kind of honor

and sanctity restored in the words ‘‘never again.’’ I hope and pray that you will be able to ensure worldwide observance of international humanitarian law. Those who attempt to

commit mass murder and those world leaders who choose to abandon innocent civilians in their care and turn them over to mass

murderers must be shown that they will be met with force and

prosecuted to the full extent of the law.

There seems to be an uncomfortable paradox: We want more to

be put right, but we are only prepared to sacrifice less. Is it right

that promises to protect civilians from harm can be made to tens

of thousands of helpless men, women, and children, only to abandon them in their hour of need?

In Srebrenica, the survival rate of thousands of men and young

boys who believed in the U.N. Protection Force, UNPROFOR,

promises for protection and remained behind with the U.N. Protection Force troops in Potocari was zero. The number of men and

boys who survived believing in the protection of this force was zero,

while the men who chose to disbelieve in the U.N. Protection Force

and flee through the minefields and risk attacks by the Serbian

troops surrounding the enclave was over 50 percent.

Is there not sometimes a risk that by doing something halfheartedly, we may actually be doing more harm than good?

Mr. Chairman, in spite of all my family has endured, I still believe in the United Nations, and I hope it can fulfill its role in ensuring world peace. But the souls of the victims will not rest and

the survivors will not find closure before those responsible for this

17

great crime, no matter who they may be, are held accountable. If

we are ever to ensure that evil is defeated in this world, then we

must ensure that justice is triumphant and that the world community once again recognizes the equal and inalienable rights of all

members of the human family.

I hope that as a part of that process of overcoming every ill, that

one day there is justice for the great wrongs committed in

Srebrenica in July 1995.

I would like to comment on a few points made here by the other

witnesses.

When it comes to the presence of a rapid reaction force that my

predecessor mentioned, a rapid reaction force, to my best knowledge, and I followed the situation as one of the inhabitants of the

U.N. safe area by improvised radio stations because we had no

means of communication to the outside world, but we knew that a

rapid reaction force at least 2 months before Srebrenica was finally

attacked by the Serb forces was deployed in the suburbs of Sarajevo, in the vicinity of Sarajevo.

Those were French and British troops. I don’t know how many

troops were there at that moment, but the deployment started at

least one or 2 months before. When Srebrenica was falling, I believe that some strong force could have been used to prevent this

massacre, and that can be also, of course, double-checked.

There is another thing concerning the situation in Potocari,

which was the U.N.-Dutch battalion base near Srebrenica. These

troops, in order to save the lives of those people, these troops did

not have to engage in combat. They did not have to fight war.

This is also about the point of Mr. Bolton. The Dutch peacekeepers, U.N. peacekeepers in Potocari, the only thing they had to

do was to allow the people to stay on their base. They did not have

to fight with anyone at all. Also, the other thing is that Srebrenica

as a whole, as an enclave, could have been protected.

Again, I am speaking from the perspective of a survivor and of

someone who was looking at the sky 5 years ago. There were no

planes in the sky, jets, bombers, even though they were promised

many times. There was a substantial force, including American jets

and NATO jets from other countries, in the area, and they did not

do what they promised to do. They did not prevent the massacre.

Use of air power sufficient to stop or even eliminate the attacking

Serb units could be used.

That is all I wanted to comment on the points of the other witnesses.

Mr. SMITH. Mr. Nuhanovic, thank you very much. Thank you for

coming back to this Subcommittee. Members of the Panel will recall that you were here 21⁄2 years ago and gave very compelling testimony about the horrific events that happened in Srebrenica and

your own personal tragedy.

I wonder if you can just tell us if there has been any reckoning,

or have any of those who committed the atrocities in Srebrenica

been brought to justice at the Hague? Are there pending indictments against those who perpetrated those terrible cruelties?

Mr. NUHANOVIC. To my best knowledge, the U.N. International

Crimes Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia has indicted three persons. Their names are on the public list of the indictees. The offiVerDate 11-MAY-2000 17:43 Feb 27, 2001 Jkt 069536 PO 00000 Frm 00021 Fmt 6633 Sfmt 6633 F:\WORK\IOHR\H092000\69536 HINTREL1 PsN: HINTREL1
18

cials of the ICTY claim that there is also another list, which is a

sealed list not available to the public, but of course I and other survivors do not have access to this list.

So as far as I know, the only war criminals, war crimes suspects

so far indicted are Ratko Mladic, Karadzic, and Krstic. He was arrested 1 year ago, and he is being tried in a tribunal at the moment.

Mr. SMITH. When it comes to empowering a U.N. force with the

proper mandate, is it your view, and any of the other panelists who

might want to speak to this, that it was the lack of a proper mandate, or was it the military personnel on the ground, or was it a

combination of both, that led to the significant deficiencies in the

U.N.-deployed forces?

I remember as Chair of the Helsinki Commission and the Subcommittee we held a whole series of hearings about the safe havens

and the fact that they acted as a magnet for further bloodshed, and

did not serve the role that had been envisioned.

Was the U.N. and the Security Council not serious enough? Were

we bluffing, or was it poor military people on the ground? Who

would like to comment?

Mr. Bolton?

Mr. BOLTON. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. We considered during

the Bush Administration in 1992—we expressly considered the

issue of endorsing and creating safe havens in Bosnia at several

points during 1992. We concluded that it would be a mistake to

create safe havens precisely because of the natural reaction: When

the United Nations declares a safe haven, reasonable people fearful

for their safety we feel were likely to go to the safe havens, and

thus attract a vulnerable civilian population that no nation then

participating in UNPROFOR, the U.N. Protection Force, was willing to offer up sufficient real military power, real military power,

to defend.

We felt that however bad the situation was in Bosnia, and from

a humanitarian point of view there is simply no question it was an

ongoing tragedy, but we felt it would have been basically just an

exercise in feel-good diplomacy at best to create the safe havens

and run the risk, I think sad to say, of ultimately what happened

there.

The members of the Security Council with whom we discussed

this in greatest detail were on the one hand the British and the

French and on the other hand the Russians. The British and the

French at that time and subsequently had forces in UNPROFOR.

They were present on the ground. They were among the strongest

voices against creating safe havens. At the same time, at that

point, the Russians were much more cooperative. I don’t think they

would be so cooperative today in doing that type of thing.

This underlines what I think is a very important point. This is

almost never a question of capabilities. This is almost certainly a

question of the political judgment of the Security Council, which

may do what we consider to be the right policy or may not do the

right policy, but nobody should think that when members of the

United Nations sit on the Security Council they lose their sense of

national interest. They pursue it vigorously, and they would on any

19

international council created to look into these kinds of situations.

That is a reality that is not going to change.

Mr. SMITH. Let me just make a point here, that the whole idea

of the safe havens and what should be done about the former Yugoslavia was not without another possibility, and that was lifting the

arms embargo. I was the prime sponsor of a bill that would have

lifted the arms embargo.

Then Prime Minister Silagic appeared twice before the Commission on Security and Cooperation in Europe and said, we don’t

want your troops, French, British, American, we want the capability that every sovereign state ought to have, and that is to defend itself.

It seems to me there was a double miscalculation. I know there

perhaps were good arguments that it would lead to further bloodshed. But it seems to me when we had an aggressor—and I think

Dr. Durch, one point that you make is this inability to differentiate

between aggressor and victim. It seems to me we are looking at

Serbia, Milosevic, somehow as being just another player, perhaps

worse than others but still just another player on that scene, rather than an offensive, obscene aggressor against first the Croats and

then the people of Bosnia.

I just mention that, and you might want to comment on that. Let

me just ask a question of Mr. Charny with regard to the rapid reaction force.

It seems to me we learned the wrong lesson from Somalia. It was

not a matter of the deployment. I will never forget Les Aspin, then

Secretary of Defense, at a meeting in which both Democrats and

Republicans attended. He was trying to defend a statement that it

would just not fly on the Hill for us to beef up the local commanders’ requests for additional materiel and troop strength because the situation was so volatile.

Then, because of the insufficiency of the force and an opportunity, the warlords took advantage of that and obviously killed

our men and dragged them through the street, leading to a policy

and humanitarian debacle. We learned the wrong lesson, I think,

from Somalia. If you are going to have troops there, have sufficient

numbers.

The rapid reaction force, I am not sure how that would differ.

The U.N. had, with General Dallaire, a force on the ground in

Rwanda. We have seen the memos that went to the Secretary and

the faxes that went to Secretary Kofi Annan, then head of the

peacekeeping processes, and it was ignored. There was a breakdown. Either he didn’t think it was serious enough or had other

balls in the air, if you will, but there was a major, major miscalculation.

Why were there not other people in the Secretariat or in some

other area—and Dr. Durch, you might want to speak to this—who

saw that fact and said, hey, we have a problem here. That could

have been mitigated, maybe cut off at the root, before a killing field

unfolded. So there was a force there. I am not sure now a rapid

reaction force would differ.

Add to that, Mr. Bolton, your assertion that there should not be

independent intelligence-gathering capabilities. Perhaps all of you

might want to speak to why or why not that is a good or bad thing.

20

Mr. CHARNY. That is a big question, because I am not here to defend the U.N. as an institution. Therefore, I cannot address the

issue of why this cry for help was ignored.

We are interested in, I think, in the first instance having a rapid

reaction force under U.N. control precisely because of this issue of

the Security Council, and the reality that this force could only be

deployed with the support of the great powers within the Security

Council.

Some of us are thinking in the back of our minds that because

the U.N. has been so dysfunctional and so ineffective, you could actually push this even further and ask, should this somehow be an

independent entity? But that raises governance. That opens a

whole other Pandora’s box about governance issues related to the

force.

The issue in Rwanda was that you had a commander on the

ground who had an inadequate force. He asked for reinforcements

and did not receive them. If a rapid reaction force were available

and 300 members of that force were deployed and another thousand were needed, the whole point is they could be deployed immediately if, if it was recognized—if that message gets through and

it was recognized that deployment was necessary under those circumstances.

We can look back—the U.N. has to accept responsibility, but we

also know that the Secretariat cannot act basically in this system

without political will from ‘‘the international community.’’ Other

great powers, the U.S., France, perhaps other countries in Europe,

knew that a genocide was imminent, but for whatever reason they

didn’t push for a response under those conditions, partially because

they didn’t then want to be called on to supply troops to such an

operation.

That is another advantage of an RRF, that it exists. No one’s

troops are going to be put on the line. These are people who have

volunteered to be a part of this force, and therefore, that deals with

one of the political issues, which is we don’t want to sacrifice our

boys in a useless conflict 5,000 miles away.

Mr. SMITH. Mr. Durch?

Mr. DURCH. Thank you. I can’t speak to the command and control failures with the two incidents. I was not there and was not

part of the U.N. Certainly there is plenty of blame to spread

around among members states as well as the United Nations.

Several developed countries had noncombatant evacuation operations with security forces to protect them in Kigali that probably,

if combined, could have provided the force necessary. It is also perhaps not focusing on enough that the killing took a long time. It

spread out in a particular way. If at any time the sort of delays

that various member states were imposing on the Security Council

had not occurred, and instead of 800,000, maybe 400,000 or fewer

would have died; it was something that could have been stopped

at many steps along the way.

On the other hand, I would like to differ with Mr. Charny about

whether the particular kind of rapid deployment force that he is

talking about could have done any good in the Goma camps, or

could have made the Canadian proposal in 1996 work.

21

They were about to march into disaster with ordinary peacekeeping rules of engagement against 50,000 heavily armed and relatively fanatical individuals embedded in 1 million civilians.

The thing about the Rwandan genocide or any other comparable

tragedy, whether we are talking about Sierra Leone or someplace

else, if we go with John Bolton’s philosophy, we would essentially

ignore future instances and let tragedy unfold, whereas I think

what some of the other speakers are trying to get at is to try to

figure out how to prevent and contain them; to figure out when

they are going to happen and to take rapid action upstream before

we have to deal with a holocaust.

That is kind of what we were grappling with with the Brahimi

report.

Mr. SMITH. Thank you, Mr. Charny.

Mr. Bolton.

Mr. BOLTON. Thank you. The central problem is that some day

somebody might rapidly deploy into a situation where there is no

peace to keep, or where the military situation is such that the force

itself could get bogged down. Then once those 10,000 are bogged

down, what happens then? There is not any question what happens

then: Everybody turns to the United States and says: ‘‘you get

them out.’’

The basic issue here is what the members of the Security Council

are willing to do ultimately, and whether they are willing to think

through all of the implications of force. I think it is just bully-boy

talk, and dangerous for that reason, to act as though a few thousand people in some of these conflicts are really going to make a

difference.

In the case of Rwanda, I think the evidence is overwhelming that

the actions of a permanent member of the Security Council—that

is to say, France—actually contributed to this genocide by the protection offered to the Hutus, and in a variety of deployments that

France undertook.

France is a permanent member of the Security Council. Maybe

Mr. Charny wants to throw them off. Good luck. But the idea that

the Council is a group of platonic guardians that you can rely on

to do the right thing is misplaced in and of itself.

I don’t want to add to the Committee’s burdens, but I would

strongly urge you to read a pamphlet that has recently been published by the U.S. Institute of Peace written by Amadou Ould

Abdullah, the former Foreign Minister of Mauritania and the Secretary General’s Special Representative in Burundi in 1993–1995,

which both lays out his experiences there during a time that Rwanda was collapsing into genocide, but Burundi was not.

Some of his observations, which are very powerful, I think, one

of which is pertinent here, is that it is not inevitably the case that

outside intervention makes things better. Outside intervention, and

particularly the interposition of military forces, can complicate

things and make things worse.

Mr. CHARNY. Mr. Chairman, I think Mr. Bolton should respond

to the issue in the eastern Congo at the moment, where the International Rescue Committee has documented with their 2-month

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22

lese have died basically because of humanitarian reasons caused by

the war.

Now, to simply ignore that, and try to work this issue through

Lusaka, through a peace process, is proving extremely difficult for

reasons that we are aware of. The parties are at serious odds with

each other, and the war continues.

At the same time, you have a humanitarian catastrophe unfolding. The basic question is, are we just going to sit here and do

nothing, and allow 2,000 people a day to continue to die? It is very

easy to talk about political interests and the narrow interests of

the United States and other members of the Security Council. However, that just condemns many people to death that don’t deserve

to die.

The other issue is the balance question. It is very easy to ignore

catastrophes in Africa that far exceed the magnitude catastrophes

in other parts of the world. Again, as a humanitarian organization,

for what it is worth, we can’t accept that.

Mr. SMITH. Mr. Charny, there are 5 minutes remaining.

Mr. Bolton, we will go to you, and then I will yield to Ms. McKinney. There is a vote and there are 5 minutes remaining. We will

be in recess for 5 minutes or so. I want to say something in response to that.

Mr. Bolton?

Mr. BOLTON. Thank you very much, Mr. Chairman. To answer

the question that was put before we broke about the situation in

eastern Congo, I think that is a classic case of a confused and very

uncertain military and political environment that leaves the outside world few, if any, realistic options at this point.

I think one of the reasons for that is that one of the principal

problems is in fact the government of the Congo, and the most efficacious way to deal with that would be to change the government.

But I don’t know of any potential contributor, United States or anybody else, that is really willing to do that.

I think that goes to the core of the decision-making, not talking

about abstractions and theories, but talking about hard decisionmaking, being able to contemplate at the beginning of an operation

the possible consequences and really being able to commit to it.

That is why the notion of a rapid reaction force is ultimately more

dangerous than it is naive, although it is certainly naive.

I believe that the events in the eastern Congo are a proof of that.

Mr. SMITH. Ms. McKinney.

Ms. MCKINNEY. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. I have many questions. I will start off with the ones that I posed in my opening

statement.

Mr. Durch, I have read the Brahimi report. The one thing that

is not mentioned in there is the responsibility to the survivors of

the victims of United Nations failures. We have Mr. Nuhanovic

here, who has lost his entire family. What is the responsibility of

the United Nations to the survivors of its victims, and why was

that left out of the Brahimi report?

Mr. DURCH. Ms. McKinney, I have, obviously, the deepest sympathy for Mr. Nuhanovic and his family and their loss, all of those

losses. I cannot answer you what the U.N.’s responsibility is.

23

What we tried to do with the report was to look forward and try

to gauge reforms, restructuring, decision-making, analytical ability,

cooperation among states, such that these things would not happen

again if the U.N. was called upon to deal with them. So we have

been trying to go forward from this point and look back to the reports on Rwanda and Srebrenica that had been issued as the U.N.’s

statement on those tragedies.

But if you are looking at accountability, I would also look at

member states. I would look at the states that voted for too few

forces to implement what was a rather slickly worded, and probably misguided, safe havens policy for Bosnia. I would look at

NATO countries that were unwilling to take forceful action against

Mr. Milosevic and his people under the Bush Administration when

conflict first broke out in 1991 and 1992.

The same goes for early action in Somalia after that country lost

its government in 1991, before people starved to death. There was

an opportunity to move early and strongly before the situation became so difficult.

So you could ask the government of the Netherlands or Britain

or France that were in the chain of command in UNPROFOR. You

could ask the United States Government about the delays in deploying forces in Rwanda. You could ask a lot of governments.

Mr. Bolton is right, that to a very great degree, certainly up to

now, the U.N. and its ability to do peacekeeping is the sum of its

national parts. What we are suggesting is that there should be a

bit more than the sum of the parts; that it not be totally reactive,

even if Mr. Bolton is worried about that. Otherwise, when it is

given the go sign from the Security Council, from the member

states, it is flat-footed. It knows nothing, it has nothing on tap, it

has no people, no money, no goods, no doctrine.

So there should be some sort of advanced ability to think and

plan, to strategize, and to be ready when its members call. This is

critical to respond to any of these kinds of situations, whatever the

kind of situation you think it is that the U.N. should work with.

That kind of gets to our question on robustness and the use of

force. The report says that you really should be very careful in

picking your missions and picking your deployment areas. But

when we get to the use of force, we tried to deal with a very complicated issue in what we hoped was a rather nuanced fashion, and

I guess I resent Mr. Bolton’s characterization of the report as intellectually dishonest. We are not trying to pull a fast one, we are trying to deal with complex issues that have arisen from real operations faced by real troops on the ground, and to work out practical

means of addressing them.

Our point was that if you think there is a risk of violent challenge when you are implementing a peace on behalf of the survivors of a civil war, if there is a challenge, for whatever reason—

factions break off, new factions form that had nothing to do with

signing the peace accord, all sorts of possibilities—if you can’t defend yourself and cannot defend the peace accord there is really no

point in going out there. I think that is an intellectually honest

conclusion and really the only one you can draw if you intend at

all to grapple with these issues.

Ms. MCKINNEY. Mr. Bolton, did you want to respond?

24

Mr. BOLTON. Just a brief point with an example from a practical

situation where the involvement of the United Nations in a peacekeeping capacity actually may have made things more difficult.

I am speaking again specifically of our experience in the Bush

Administration in 1992 in Bosnia, where the UNPROFOR, the

U.N. Protection Force, was deployed there, and where, during that

period in the late summer and early fall in particular, the Serbs

undertook very substantial activities against the delivery of humanitarian assistance, particularly in and around Sarajevo, but basically throughout Bosnia it was becoming more difficult to deliver

humanitarian assistance.

The reaction that many people had in the United States within

the Administration was to say that we ought to toughen up the reaction of the UNPROFOR soldiers already on the ground, or resort

to outside military force if need be.

That possibility, which we urged publicly, was rejected by every

troop-contributing country that had troops on the ground in

UNPROFOR; that is to say, the British and French in particular,

but many others as well, on the ground. Attempting to have, in effect, both peacekeeping and peace enforcement activities in the

same place at the same time by the same organization was in fact,

one, destabilizing, and, two, risky to the peacekeepers.

I think in fact that subsequent developments there and elsewhere showed that to be the case, that you can’t have an on-off

switch in effect between peacekeeping and peacemaking. Once you

cross the line, once the United Nations or anybody else crosses the

line, as happened in Somalia, and becomes a military force in a

confused and ongoing military situation, it cannot pull back later

and say ‘‘we are neutral again.’’ That is an important lesson that I think the Brahimi report completely misses.

Ms. MCKINNEY. Mr. Nuhanovic.

Mr. NUHANOVIC. I would like to say something concerning this

role of peacekeeping and peacemaking or peace-imposing.

I was in the Hague tribunal speaking with the deputy prosecutor, Mr. Graham Bluett. I asked him if there was a possibility

for the tribunal to consider indicting some individuals present in

the area that in my opinion, based on what I saw there, did assist

in the war crimes. There was also—the political adviser of Mr.

Bluett said that the troops in Srebrenica had a peacekeeping mission.

So I asked the man who made this remark, I asked him, what

is the rifle in the hands of a peacekeeper used for? And he immediately replied, self-defense. I knew he was going to say that. I

asked him, is it self-defense to come with a rifle in the hands and

chase my family out of the enclave? He said no, it is an offense.

So I think they crossed the line, not in the way they should have,

but in totally the wrong way.

Ms. MCKINNEY. Mr. Durch, I find your response about shifting

the blame to member states, or accountability to member states, to

be totally unacceptable.

The fact of the matter is that the United Nations was calling the

shots. The United Nations ought to pay reparations for those that

it has damaged.

25

It is my understanding in 1961 that the United Nations did just

that with citizens of Belgium during the Belgian Congo conflict. So

now why is it that the United Nations will not pay reparations to

Mr. Nuhanovic and the other members, the survivors of U.N.

debacles where the United Nations has admitted that it was wrong

and that it was complicit in these crimes? This was left out of the

Brahimi report?

Mr. DURCH. Ms. McKinney, as I said at the beginning of my testimony, I am not speaking for the U.N. You will really have to ask

them that. The terms of reference for the report did not consider

reparations, they considered how we move forward and do operations more effectively if they are called upon to be done in the future. Our job is to try to repair the damage that everyone acknowledged had accumulated, and to move ahead from this point. I’m

sorry, it was not in our terms of reference.

Ms. MCKINNEY. That is a fundamental problem if it was not in

your term of reference.

Mr. Chairman, I am concerned about the testimony of Mr.

Nuhanovic, who says that there are thousands of bodies that need

to be buried. Certainly there is something that we can do to assist

in that situation, but I would like to ask if the United Nations is

doing anything to assist in the proper burial of the victims of

Srebrenica.

Mr. Durch?

Mr. DURCH. Ms. McKinney, I will ask my colleagues up at the

U.N. and perhaps they can communicate with you.

Ms. MCKINNEY. Thank you. Who will you be talking with, so I

can look out for that call?

Mr. DURCH. I will call Mr. Brahimi and ask him.

Ms. MCKINNEY. Thank you.

Additionally, Mr. Durch, could you tell me if United Nations

peacekeepers are ever allowed not to prevent genocide or crimes

against humanity?

Mr. DURCH. I am sorry, ma’am, I don’t quite understand the

question.

Ms. MCKINNEY. Is the prevention of genocide or crimes against

humanity inherent in the mandate of any peacekeeping operation?

Mr. DURCH. In the past year the Security Council and the Secretariat have issued reports on the protection of civilians in armed

conflict. I believe in the last—I can’t give you the actual resolution

number, but roughly in March the Security Council listed that the

protection of civilians in armed conflict, where there are U.N.

forces deployed—it listed that as a general objective or desirable

objective, within the means of those forces, when U.N. forces are

deployed.

What we wrote into the report was to take language from the

Rwanda report, actually, the Carlsson report from last December,

saying that when U.N. police forces or military forces, military

peacekeepers, are confronted with violence against civilians, they

should take action to stop it, regardless of what their mandate

says, because that is consistent with the principles of the United

Nations charter.

26

Now, you can understand that when there are 10 peacekeepers,

let’s say, and a thousand armed challengers, they are not going to

be able to do very much.

Ms. MCKINNEY. That is not the situation with respect to Mr.

Kavuraganda in Rwanda. He was one individual with his family,

and there were United Nations peacekeepers there. In fact, those

peacekeepers handed Mr. Kavuraganda over to his killers, so you

have in this instance United Nations peacekeepers who are

complicit in crimes against humanity.

What is the responsibility of the United Nations in this particular situation?

Mr. DURCH. Yes, ma’am. In that instance, that is an indefensible

action. There were many indefensible actions in the course of the

Rwandan genocide, and that is one of them.

Ms. MCKINNEY. And the United Nations to date has done nothing to assist the Kavuraganda family, yet in 1961 the precedent

has been set that reparations were paid to Belgian citizens who

were damaged by the U.N.

I just think that it is a very important tenet of whatever it is

that you are going to do or propose to the United Nations, that

damages be paid to people or redress to people who feel they have

been damaged by the U.N.

Otherwise, you leave people like that woman I talked about in

Missouri, who have no safety net at all, to commit suicide. You

have Mr. Nuhanovic searching around for land to try and find a

burial place for I don’t know how many, is it 4,000 people, whose

bodies are stored in a refrigerator.

Mr. DURCH. Actually, I would talk to Mr. Mladic and Mr.

Karadzic about that. I would get some reparations from them first.

Ms. MCKINNEY. Actually, Mladic and Karadzic did the killing,

but it was the United Nations that turned in Nuhanovic’s family

over to them for the killing. If those instances are not addressed,

as you are trying to establish—I have read your report and I think

you did a wonderful first step, but it certainly isn’t enough.

Mr. DURCH. No, ma’am.

Ms. MCKINNEY. It is not enough to encourage me to support the

recommendations thus far.

I have many more questions, but I want to allow my colleague

an opportunity to ask some questions.

Mr. SMITH. Mr. Delahunt.

Mr. DELAHUNT. Mr. Chairman, I presume we will have a second

round. This has been very informative and very enlightening.

Let me express my sympathies to Mr. Nuhanovic. To pick up on

the comment of Ms. McKinney, I would hope that maybe this Subcommittee could draft an appropriate letter to inquire as to the

concerns that you expressed about the proper burial. Maybe that

is something we could do, Mr. Smith, Ms. McKinney, and myself,

in the form of a resolution which would hopefully prompt some sort

of a response.

Mr. Bolton, you talked about sort of multilateralism and your

confusion with the term. I want you to know I have the same confusion with the concept of the new world order that I think was

part—let me finish—maybe it was just an extension of the new

world order, multilateralism.

27

Dr. Durch, thank you for taking on a very unenviable effort. You

really deserve to be acknowledged and praised for the effort. I have

not had an opportunity to read the report, but I intend to. It is extremely challenging.

Maybe you could all help me here. I guess I would direct this

rather vague question to Mr. Charny and Dr. Durch.

As you see the problem, and I think it was you, Mr. Charny, that

indicated that in your eyes, a specific problem was the lack of ability to respond quickly. I guess I would say that if that ability was

present, in whatever form this rapid deployment force may or may

not take—and again, I direct this to both Dr. Durch and yourself— if that ability was there with 5,000 or 10,000 military personnel

available, do you believe in any way, given your review of these situations—and I might add, it is clear that the problem is in the

area of humanitarian issues, because I have no doubt that the

states that could be directly implicated, if their economic interests

were at risk, they would find a way to respond. But I guess, who

really needs Rwanda? What do they have except just a bunch of

people? And of course, you know, they are black people, they are

not Europeans.

In any event, do you think that that ability, that capacity, might

serve as a deterrent, not particularly in Rwanda but in other cases

that you are familiar with?

Mr. CHARNY. I think the best recent example I believe is the case

of Sierra Leone. I believe had a rapid reaction force been available

with a unified command, adequate troops available on short notice,

and they had been deployed, I think that would have had on the

one hand potentially a confidence-building effect on the population,

and to some extent there is an intimidation factor.

If you look at the difference between the reaction of the parties

to the conflict to the U.N. deployment and the deployment of British troops, I think what we are looking for through the existence

of a rapid reaction force is more of the latter effect; in other words,

a capable unified force, force under a unified command——

Mr. DELAHUNT. Let me interrupt you. Maybe I am not being

clear enough. Maybe I am not understanding your response.

Clearly, I think it would be more effective in terms of on-theground combat or its capability on the ground. I am talking about

its mere existence serving as a deterrence, if you will.

Have there been instances where, in your opinion, you believe

that merely the existence of this particular force may have made

a difference in the decision-making of those that were perpetrating

the kind of outrages that occurred?

Mr. CHARNY. I apologize. I misunderstood the question.

I have to say, the deterrent impact I think at least initially

would be minimal, because these conflicts are driven by local

forces, local factors, local injustices. I do find it hard to believe that

someone in Sierra Leone or in Angola would sit back and say,

whoa, there is a rapid reaction force now, and not be as aggressive

as he might have been otherwise. So I would have to say no, I don’t

see an immediate deterrent impact.

Mr. DELAHUNT. Dr. Durch, do you agree with that statement?

Mr. DURCH. I would agree with that. As you know, or I should

have made clear, I am not a big fan of an independent sort of rapid

28

reaction force. I am a fan of states getting together and improving

their ability to respond when there is a need.

Mr. DELAHUNT. Has there ever been an effort in the United Nations to have a centralized training function, and I can’t quite articulate it, but something less than an independent force where

training would occur on a rotating basis with commitments by

member nations so that the infrastructure itself, i.e., accountability, chain of command, communication, would be available?

Clearly there would be more delay, as opposed to an independent

force, but in your opinion, would that reduce the delay that Mr.

Charny expressed concern about in terms of terminating at the incipient stage, if you will, these outrages?

Mr. DURCH. Yes, sir, it would have a contribution. There are two

separate problems, though. One is stopping an ongoing tragedy,

which I think we try to make clear—and certainly I believe—is the

job of a coalition of willing national states who have banded together to do something. The United Nations is never going to be

in a position to be able to stop a war, but those coalitions often

want to hand off to someone, whether it is in Somalia or Haiti or

Sierra Leone or East Timor. They want to do the job of creating

initial order, and then hand off to someone to do the longer term

reconstruction task.

Mr. DELAHUNT. Usually it is the United Nations.

Mr. DURCH. Yes. If there were stronger regional organizations

outside of Europe, then certainly that would be a preferred option.

But even in Europe, even with Kosovo and Bosnia, we find a mixture of the U.N. and Europe’s organizations sharing responsibility

for trying to put the place back on its feet.

The second case, then, is either taking such a hand-off or implementing a peace accord where you have a nominal peace but you

may have challenges built into it. Now, if you have—right now

there are national peacekeeping training centers in places like

Canada, Malaysia, and in the Nordic countries and in Austria, but

these are for traditional border monitoring kinds of missions, observation missions.

What the report is urging countries to do, either on a north-south

basis or a south-south basis, is to really enhance cooperation, to

promote interoperability, and to give the U.N. enough resources so

they can develop doctrine—just simple handbooks, things countries

can use to then have a common playbook. We do think that would

improve the ability to respond when the Council gets what we hope

are better-informed assessments of conflicts and accords, that they

would then be able to move a little faster.

The people we talk to who try to do this for a living say that anywhere between 2 to 3 months, if nothing has happened after an accord has been signed, then everyone begins to think nothing is

going to happen and maybe we can get away with backing away

from it. The momentum of the peace is really lost.

So if it does take 6 months to deploy, that is bad. What we have

set are the first benchmarks ever set for the deployment of peacekeeping operations. We would like to see a traditional operation

like the one between Ethiopia and Eritrea on the ground in 30

days, and we would like to see more complex ones in 90 days.

Mr. SMITH. Mr. Delahunt.

29

Mr. DELAHUNT. One final question. Is it possible to expand your

terms of reference, your mandate, to review the issue of reparations?

Mr. DURCH. I can certainly raise that point.

Mr. DELAHUNT. Part of that, I presume, would be the United

States, which has to pay its dues in a timely fashion.

Mr. DURCH. There is that.

Mr. SMITH. Thank you, Mr. Delahunt.

Let me ask Mr. Bolton, what is the current role of the U.N. military staff Committee in overseeing U.N. peacekeeping operations,

and what should that role be? Anyone else who would like to speak

on that, Dr. Durch or Mr. Charny, may. What should the role be?

Mr. BOLTON. I’m sorry Mr. Delahunt had to leave. He did raise

a point that I wanted to respond to with regard to a comment that

President Bush made about the new world order.

I think the President has made it clear since he raised that that

what he had in mind was trying to describe the post-Communist

world; not to imply that in fact some new world order existed, but

that the Cold War structure had broken down.

The response to your question is that, fundamentally, the Military Staff Committee has, and has had, almost no role. During the

Persian Gulf crisis we did use it I think effectively to provide limited military briefings to other members of the Council and other

members of the United Nations, but that was really a one-time

proposition.

My argument is that if there is to be a substantial enhancement

of any kind of military capability, that the role of the Military Staff

Committee envisioned, as it was, flowing from the authority of the

five permanent members, has to be implemented, and that the

Brahimi report or other recommendations that would lodge any

kind of substantial military authority beyond traditional peacekeeping in the Secretariat is a derogation of the authority of the

membership of the U.N. in general, and specifically of the five permanent members. It would be contrary to the intent of the drafters

of the Charter, and would be adverse to the interests of the United

States.

Mr. SMITH. Dr. Durch?

Mr. DURCH. As far as I know, the Military Staff Committee is not

utilized for anything substantive at this time. There are options

under the charter for the Security Council to establish subsidiary

advisory groups if it wishes to.

The problem with the Military Staff Committee, I guess, is that

it is an original item of the charter that was really designed to prevent and, if necessary, provide strategic direction to fight World

War III if the Nazis ever came back, or something of that nature.

In the 1940’s, the system got so far as to make some plans for

joint military operations. This thing would kind of replicate the

combined Joint Chiefs. Since then, I guess more by tradition than

explicit authority in the charter, the notion of peacekeeping has

arisen that is managed within the Secretariat as kind of a working

political substitute.

Mr. SMITH. In the Brahimi report the statement is made, ‘‘the

Secretariat must tell the Security Council what it needs to know,

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source levels for a new mission. It must set those levels according

to realistic scenarios that take into account likely challenges to implementation. Security Council mandates in turn should reflect the

clarity that peacekeeping operations require for unity of effort

when they deploy into potentially dangerous situations.’’ Did your panel find that that was not the case, that there was

a lack of candor or realistic assumptions as to what would be needed?

Mr. DURCH. I think repeatedly what the system has tended to do

is self-censor, partly in response to private communications from

member states that say, look, we cannot go there, you cannot go

here, you cannot go somewhere else with the analysis.

We think that it is important that the Secretariat have the capability and the will, have the capability to give the Secretary General the will to really do serious threat assessments, serious assessments of the problem on the ground, so that the Security Council

has no excuse but to say that it has been very well informed of

what it might be getting peacekeepers into before they go ahead.

I think that is actually vital.

Mr. SMITH. Before Mr. Bolton answers, were there any

peacekeepings in the past, like Srebrenica, like the debacle in the

Balkans, that were used to look back and say, this is where we

were, with a snapshot in time, this is what the recommendations

were, that is where the assumptions were flowing?

Mr. DURCH. Certainly we were aware of and paying close attention to the Rwanda and Srebrenica report, but also watching the

situation unfold in Sierra Leone as kind of the last and latest example of the old system in operation whereby forces are sort of

trickled in.

But one should also emphasize here that the other thing about

Sierra Leone, the Sierra Leone operation, was that the U.N. had

nothing to do with negotiating that accord, as it had nothing to do

with negotiating the terms of reference for the Kosovo deployment.

So that is kind of the other side of the coin, that really, people

that know about the capabilities and the limitations of the tool

should be actively involved in the run-up to the settlement that

asks for U.N. implementation assistance, and that therefore the Security Council should be made specifically aware of what the limitations are.

Mr. SMITH. Mr. Bolton?

Mr. BOLTON. I think the record of the Secretariat is mixed in this

regard. There have been unquestionably cases where the Secretariat and sometimes even the Secretary General himself said,

‘‘this is not going to work. I don’t have the resources to do this, and

I don’t think it is doable, anyway.’’

The result—and I am just thinking specifically about the case of

the weapons internment program around Sarajevo and the weapons exclusion zone, where Secretary General Boutros-Ghali on several occasions said he did not think UNPROFOR as constituted

was capable of undertaking the tasks that the Security Council

gave it. The Security Council members went ahead and gave it the

tasks anyway.

In that sense, there is no doubt—and I think it is a mistake not

to assign blame to the member governments, because it is freVerDate 11-MAY-2000 17:43 Feb 27, 2001 Jkt 069536 PO 00000 Frm 00034 Fmt 6633 Sfmt 6633 F:\WORK\IOHR\H092000\69536 HINTREL1 PsN: HINTREL1
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quently their unrealistic expectations, and indeed, to a certain extent, their own domestic political constraints or pressures that induced them to give the United Nations responsibilities which it

cannot handle or for which the member states are not willing to

give it resources, but which look good domestically.

I can say on any number of occasions I have seen that discussion

in the State Department where people say, why can we not just

give this to the United Nations, as if there really is a ‘‘there’’ there.

There is not a ‘‘there’’ there. The ‘‘there’’ is the countries, and unless the countries that are members of the Security Council make

the conscious decision to implement what they are saying, it should

be no surprise that the U.N. deployment fails.

Mr. SMITH. Let me ask a question with regard to the rapid deployment force idea. No one ever knows the exact numbers, 15,000,

or who knows if it is going to be a 30,000 over time contingent— but it seems to create questions about the analysis that would be

needed to support the informational and analytical needs of the

Secretary General and the members, when you have such a force

ready to be deployed. Earlier, Secretary Bolton admonished us that

there should be no intelligence-gathering capability.

How do you configure such a force that does everything except

what is also a very important component of any force, and that is,

eyes and ears, intelligence gathering? How is that perceived going

forward? Will there be the equivalent of the CIA in the future so

those troops could operate, if they are configured, in a way that

achieves the mandate and saves lives?

Mr. DURCH. Mr. Smith, we are not advocating in the report a

CIA for the U.N. There is so much open source information that

is generated within the system and by U.N. NGOs in the field and

by the U.N.’s own people that is simply not brought together and

analyzed for purposes of looking ahead and anticipating problems

that I think you could do quite well with open source information

and selective requests for classified data as needed.

We were not in a position to advise those who would form the

military units, the effective military units to go into the field, how

they should do their intelligence, but we did make a note that the

U.N. should get over its aversion to allowing or encouraging field

units to have good intelligence capabilities.

Those are going to have to come from the states themselves deployed with the units. They should work together beforehand so

they can act effectively in the field.

But obviously, you need to know what you are getting into. You

need to know how it is changing when you are there. If you don’t,

you can get into trouble, and that has happened. So we encourage

that, but we encourage an open source capability within the U.N.,

and cooperation on the part of states for field deployments.

Mr. SMITH. Let me just ask—I think the word you used, Mr.

Bolton, was ‘‘platonic.’’ We shouldn’t necessarily assume that the

best interests of mankind are pursued by the U.N. Security Council. I saw that when I was arguing in the eighties, along with the

Administration, for corridors of tranquility for Ethiopia during one

of the major famines, and I was flabbergasted by the insensitivity

of some members of the Security Council and others, including the

ambassador, from Ethiopia to the U.N., about that situation. It was

32

indifference that I was not prepared for. It certainly was a wakeup call for me.

When it comes to any future operation either by rapid deployment forces or in the current mode, perhaps enhanced and made

better, where will the final decision be made? Will it still be the

Security Council, or will that decision-making migrate somehow

into the executive branch, for want of a better word, the SecretaryGeneral?

There certainly are precedents once you go down that road. We

have a War Powers Act here in the United States, and it is not

worth the paper it is written on, because time and again an executive will deploy, and it is a matter of what do you do once the deployment has happened, because obviously now men and women

are in harm’s way. Maybe it is even a good deployment.

The point is, Dr. Durch, did the Panel suggest that the Security

Council retain the absolute power to make that decision? You do

talk about doing advance work in anticipation of the Security

Council resolution. Does that also mean that there might be an advance deployment?

Mr. DURCH. Advance preparation, yes, in anticipation of a Security Council decision, but all decision-making on moving that force,

deploying it, remains strictly with the Security Council.

Mr. BOLTON. I think, Mr. Chairman, the question really goes to

the core of the U.N.’s capability for large and complex missions. I

think that the inherent political difficulties in the Security Council

and the manifest weaknesses of the Secretariat over the years—

and I think these would apply whether the Brahimi report’s recommendations were implemented or not. It cautions against U.N.

involvement in massive, complex operations.

Again, I don’t really think this is a question of capabilities, as

Mr. Delahunt was asking before. In Sierra Leone, the Washington

Post reported recently about the dispute at the top of the command

of the U.N. forces in Sierra Leone between the Indian commander

and two of his senior subordinates, who were Nigerians.

I am not taking sides in that dispute, but I think what is clear

is that the Nigerian officers were representing what they believed

to be the larger interests of Nigeria in West Africa. I understand

why they are doing that. There are forces in—political and military

forces in West Africa, some of which support that role and some do

not.

But I don’t think better training would have made the Nigerian

officers less willing to advance Nigerian interests, or the Nigerian

government less assertive in trying to use the U.N. peacekeeping

force there and elsewhere to advance them. Those are issues of politics and national policy, they are not issues of capability.

Mr. SMITH. Let me ask Mr. Charny, in your testimony you obviously spoke about the rapid deployment force. What happens in situations like Chechnya or any other matter of ‘‘internal affairs,’’ socalled, that is trotted out by the offending country?

In that case, there were 80,000 people killed in the Chechen war,

and untold thousands in this second war. How do you see such a

force working in a context like that? Or is that something that remains a problem?

33

Mr. CHARNY. In my mind, it simply remains a problem. There is

no obvious solution to an issue like that. We have already—I am

not as naive, perhaps, as Mr. Bolton would suggest. I know that

the idea of any standing force for the United Nations right now is

politically a rather tough sell, both in the United States and indeed, in many other countries.

So I think the only way you ever get anywhere near such a concept is to maintain Security Council oversight and authorization of

such a force. Therefore, by definition, that means if there is an internal conflict in Russia or, as there may well be in the next decade, serious internal conflicts in China, you are not going to see a

rapid reaction force, even if it existed, zipping off to the far west

of China to deal with ethnic tensions there, or possibly serious

human rights violations, or whatever. It simply isn’t going to happen. I recognize that.

Nonetheless, we have to also recognize that as an issue, because

what it means is that if you have deployments, you do tend to have

these deployments in failed states, weak states, states which simply do not carry much political weight. Again, I think that is a reality that would have to be accepted or worked around in the political forum.

Mr. SMITH. Just two final questions.

Dr. Durch, in the report, you say that the total cost of the DKPO and related support offices for peacekeeping does not exceed $50

million per annum, or roughly 2 percent of the total peacekeeping

costs. Your panel recommends that that be substantially beefed up.

Could you elaborate on that? How much do you think is needed

to get the job done adequately?

Mr. DURCH. As we speak, the Deputy Secretary General of the

U.N. is heading up a working group that is trying to come up with

an implementation plan based on the recommendations in the report. When that plan is drafted, they will carefully cost that out.

So I don’t have numbers that I could give you.

Even if one were to, in hypothetical terms, double the number of

folks trying to give support to peacekeeping at headquarters, you

would be talking about maybe another 50 million at best, and the

U.S. share $12 million a year.

We think that probably great strides can be made, in other

words, in improving the planning, the backstopping, the recruiting,

all of these things to get ready to go into the field, for a relatively

modest amount of money.

Mr. SMITH. Do you know when those specs are going to be developed?

Mr. DURCH. I am sure they are aiming to give them to the General Assembly in this session, so sometime later this fall.

Mr. SMITH. The report focuses on expanding the role of the international civilian police. Obviously, once the peacekeepers leave, or

as they are transiting, out a good police force is needed to keep the

order.

Could you expand on the recommendations that have been made

by the Panel with regard to those areas?

Mr. DURCH. Yes. We don’t view the U.N. international civil police

as the replacement for the peacekeepers, and until now only in two

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sponsibility. That is East Timor and Kosovo. Elsewhere they are

monitors of the local police behavior.

We think you really need to do more, that you really need to try

and configure the mandate such that you can retrain the local police and judiciary according to modern principles of democratic policing; in other words, to make them—help them contribute to the

security situation and to the development of a society—rather than

go back to being politicized thugs—as one component of peacebuilding.

What we hope is that when a mission departs, the peace-building

components—the unarmed components of the mission, the electoral

people, people who work with civil society, the folks who try and

jump-start some reconstruction and generate voluntary long-term

funds to kind of segue into development—will leave behind a stable

situation so everybody can exit and leave behind something better

than they found when they got there.

Mr. SMITH. I recently sent staff to the Kosovo training center to

try to ascertain how well or poorly that was working. Do you have

any feedback as to the efficacy of the training that is going on in

Kosovo?

Mr. DURCH. For the police?

Mr. SMITH. Yes, for the police.

Mr. DURCH. Not immediate feedback. The basic problem is that

there is not sufficient capacity within the system to implement

more than a basic screening program in advance of deployment.

There are nine personnel in the civil police unit at U.N. headquarters. They have the responsibility of vetting all of the 8,000

people who deploy. They are trying to vet them before they come

up to missions to make sure they have minimally competent people. They are also supposed to be doing doctrine and drafting budgets and writing strategy. You simply cannot do all that with nine

people.

We think that with the increases for those folks that we recommend, they will be able to do a little bit better.

The lack of experience with executive policing is another problem, and at the moment you get police from very different traditions brought together, with very different sets of procedures that

they are used to operating under, and different law codes, maybe

from 40 or 50 different countries to make up a force of that size.

We hope that the kind of regional training that we are recommending, as well as the small core of 100 folks that could go out

early to provide that training and be ready to go in advance, could

remedy these kinds of problems that we face right now.

Mr. SMITH. Thank you.

Ms. McKinney.

Ms. MCKINNEY. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.

Dr. Durch, I understand that after I had left the room, you made

a commitment to go back to those who wrote your terms of reference to ask that they include reparations in your terms of reference. Is that the commitment that you made?

Mr. DURCH. I said that I would certainly get back to the folks

at the U.N. about the question of reparations. I can’t commit them

to doing something, as you understand.

35

Ms. MCKINNEY. I understand you can’t commit them, but you

can commit yourself. So is it my understanding that you are making a commitment to go back to them and raise the issue of reparations with them to be included in your terms of reference.

Mr. DURCH. I will certainly raise the issue. The Panel’s work is

finished. This issue would have to be addressed by some sort of a

follow-on effort.

Ms. MCKINNEY. Okay. Many of our panelists have talked about

getting the politics out of politics. I don’t know if that is possible.

The Brahimi report talks about making sure that the information stream from the Secretariat to the Security Council is a continuous flow of information, but I would say that that is politics.

In the Rwanda report on the now infamous cable sent from General

Dallaire up to New York, a decision was made by DPKO Chief Kofi

Annan to not transmit the contents of that cable to the Secretary

General, Boutros-Ghali, or to the Security Council.

In fact, the Rwanda report says, ‘‘Annan’s and Risa’s instructions

to UNIMR and the caution which dominates those instructions

show that they did realize that the cable contained very significant

information. However, they did not brief the Secretary General

about it, and the Security Council, which a week before had conditioned its continued support for UNIMR on progress in the peace

process, was not informed.’’ The decision to not inform the Secretary General and the Security Council was a decision that was made by the Assistant Secretary General, or whatever the appropriate title is, by Kofi Annan,

who was in charge of DPKO. That was politics. That was a political

decision that was made to withhold critical information and vital

information that could have saved hundreds of thousands of lives.

That decision was made by that one man, perhaps in collusion with

others, because I cannot believe that a decision of that importance

would be made with just one person.

Is there anything in your recommendations that can keep politics

out of political decisions?

Mr. DURCH. I don’t think there is any way you can keep politics

out of political decisions. The U.N. is a very political organization,

as are governments, democracies in particular. But what we hope

can come of implementing the recommendations in the Brahimi report is better informed decision-making, better capacity for analysis, less chance for things to fall through the cracks.

Ms. MCKINNEY. This January 11 cable didn’t fall through the

cracks. I need to correct myself, the Chairman reminds me that I

misspoke. I wanted to make sure that I am perfectly clear, that we

want to take the politics out of peacekeeping decisions.

This was a peacekeeping decision about what was going on in

Rwanda at the time. The current Secretary General, who was then

chief of DPKO, chose not to turn over vital information to the Secretary General or to the Security Council.

So I rephrase my question: How is it possible to keep politics out

of peacekeeping decisions?

Mr. CHARNY. Maybe I can jump in and try and address this. I

think—I am certain that probably the one thing that the four of us

would agree on is that it is impossible to take politics out of this

process. It is by definition a political process.

36

Refugees International wants to see more humanitarian values,

if you will, humanitarian criteria inserted into that political process. But a political process is inevitable, and no reform that any of

us is suggesting is going to create a perfect system. There are always going to be individuals who make major errors that have

major humanitarian consequences.

We don’t live in a perfect world. There would be no way to design

a system, neither in the U.N. nor, quite frankly, in the U.S. Government, that would prevent incorrect decisions from being made.

Hindsight is 20/20. It is very easy to look back on any particular

circumstance and say, if X had only done this, then things would

have been different.

I think—again, it is not my role on the Panel to defend the U.N.,

nor, I believe, is it Dr. Durch’s. There is some attempt to have better accountability. This rash of reports that you are seeing is an

attempt to—in the most transparent way that the U.N. is capable

of to own up to some of the errors that have been made. But to

take politics out of peacekeeping is impossible.

Ms. MCKINNEY. I would suggest that accountability, yes, and the

rash of reports that has been written, and the four apologies that

were given in 6 weeks, they are a step in the right direction, but

it is not nearly enough.

I am driving right now my car on Firestone tires, and I am afraid

that I might be the next victim of Firestone. Those people who

made the decisions in all of the various offices to ignore the information that was coming through their offices about the problems

of Firestone tires, particularly on Ford Explorer cars, are pretty

much—I would say that the United Nations is about in that same

league right now.

But there is one big difference. That is, people, individuals who

have been harmed, are holding Firestone accountable. If the United

Nations sets itself up as accountable to no one and above every aspect of the law, then there is no possibility of reparations, of that

accountability meaning something.

So that is why this is critical. We can have an intellectual conversation about how we are going to take the politics out of peacekeeping decisions, but until the people who made those decisions

that failed are held accountable and made to pay, just in the same

way as Firestone and Ford are going to have to pay, then I would

say that we don’t have real accountability.

That leads me to my next question, which is about the recommendation for one-stop shopping for military and police officers.

I am concerned about the impact that this one-stop shopping will

have on my ability to exercise scrutiny over what my government

and its subcontractors do.

For instance, I can see in this recommendation or this set of recommendations the ability for private military companies that were

formerly known to be mercenary companies, but now they have gotten a fancier name, to become the subcontractors of the U.N., and

the U.N. then fight wars and do other things that I would have no

ability to understand or ferret out or understand the decision-making process that resulted in a particular deployment.

Could you talk to me about transparency and decision-making

and accountability in the process, so, one, we don’t have soldiers

37

going to places like Cambodia infecting people with AIDS, to make

sure that the soldiers—it is alleged that in Sierra Leone the Nigerian soldiers are mining as many diamonds as the RUF; so we

don’t have headlines like this, ‘‘Split in U.N. Sierra Leone Mission.’’ Could you just sort of talk to me about accountability and transparency in the decision-making process so these things that are

going wrong right today won’t happen, and that I can have confidence in the decisions that are made by the U.N., the DPKO and

the Security Council?

Mr. DURCH. Okay. I think with the one-stop shopping, you are

referring to the 100 military observers that are on call for mission

setup?

Ms. MCKINNEY. For instance, you recommend that each country

have a central person or office that handles the military and that

handles the policing.

Well, it is my understanding that—for instance, we have the

Haliburton Company, which has as its subsidiary Brown & Root;

we have MPRI. They are these private military subcontractor organizations that are doing—right now that are doing the work, subcontracted by DOD and by the Department of State, and they are

in charge of whatever it is that the U.N. needs in terms of providing police in Kosovo or helping to set up military bases in the

Great Lakes, whatever it is.

My question is, it appears to me that your recommendation encourages that kind of centralization and that kind of mercenary operation over which I as a Member of Congress would have no oversight. That bothers me. That concerns me.

Mr. DURCH. Okay. I think what you are referring to is the use

by governments like the United States of subcontracting places like

Dyn Corp for recruiting police, et cetera.

Ms. MCKINNEY. Absolutely. That is exactly what I am talking

about.

Mr. DURCH. That is a chain that flows up through governments

and then to the U.N. It is not something that the United Nations

is governing directly.

Ms. MCKINNEY. So the United Nations will not then be subcontracting, say, for instance, to DyneCorp or to MPRI directly?

Mr. DURCH. Well, it is a question of whether you are talking

about fighting forces or you are talking about logistical support.

Ms. MCKINNEY. I am talking about all of it.

Mr. DURCH. Let’s talk for the moment about logistical support in

terms of what the U.N. does. It does have long-term what they call

systems contracts with the civilian logistical elements of places like

Dyn Corp or places like Brown & Root, who can provide efficient

food contracts or longer-range lift or those kinds of logistical support with civilian folks, civilian contractors. In the military, you

would have military support units doing it. It is less expensive to

do it with civilian contractors, especially in some of the less dangerous areas that the U.N. operates.

So there are those contracts. They allow the U.N. to respond faster than having to go out for bids for 60- or 90-day-tenders to get

basic supplies and transport and equipment for their operations.

So they have, for example, a standing contract at the moment

with Toyota to provide 4-Runners or Land Cruisers on relatively

38

short notice for operations in sort of the hundreds and thousands

of units. Even so, it takes maybe 18 weeks for those to be delivered. So it is an effort at efficiency from the U.N.’s perspective.

In terms of the training of troops or the training of police folks,

that is, and using the private sector to do that, that is a matter

for governments themselves. I don’t think the U.N. does that directly.

Ms. MCKINNEY. Is that something that you could pose to your

people? I would like to know if the United Nations is subcontracting or is contracting to Dyn Corp and MPRI directly now.

Mr. DURCH. All right.

[The information referred to is available in the appendix.]

Ms. MCKINNEY. Mr. Chairman, I think I have concluded.

Mr. SMITH. That pretty much concludes the hearing.

I just want to note for the record that we did have an extensive

hearing back in May, on May 5 of 1998, in our Subcommittee. We

assembled a very powerful panel of people, including from the

United Nations and the Belgian parliament, to focus on the Rwandan killing.

We paid special attention to the New Yorker expose that had

been done on the so-called ‘‘genocide fax.’’ Maybe I will ask one

final question of Dr. Durch, because we tried and failed to some extent to get very specific information with regard to who knew what

and when, the whole line of authority.

Obviously, when any panel looks at something, they try to reconstruct where the failures were in order to learn from them, and

perhaps—although I don’t think it is going to happen here—to hold

to account those who dropped the ball, which led to massive

slaughter.

The information we had was overwhelming. Refugees International testified at that hearing, as did many, many others. What

about the genocide fax? Will that never again happen under the

recommendations that are being suggested by your panel, so that

there is more than just one set of eyes, so that a merely political

perspective does not prevail?

When General Dellaire, your eyes and ears on the ground in

Rwanda, says that something is imminent, as was pointed out by

Holly Burkhalter, who had testified that day as well, you listen.

Our own embassy had clear and compelling reporting about this.

Killings like this do not happen usually without a large number of

people at least being suspicious, if not having some timely information that could prevent or mitigate it from happening. Yet, have we

really learned from it?

Dr. Durch, I wonder if you might want to take a stab at that,

and Srebrenica. Look at these profound, preventable mistakes that

were made. We are all human, we are all prone to error. But it

seems to me that to ignore that kind of information, and then to

be—in Kofi Annan’s case—kicked upstairs rather than held to account, something is wrong. If you could respond to that.

Mr. DURCH. Yes, sir, I would hope that the kinds of structural

changes that we recommend would prevent that sort of thing from

happening again.

There was a combination of the information—the analysis at the

Secretariat that we hope to have to look forward, and what we call

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integrated mission task forces to plan and implement operations,

where you would actually co-locate people from many departments

of the U.N., the refugee people, the military, the police folks, the

logistics people, and sharing information that comes in from all

their different feeds.

So if you had three different groups with three different views

on the ground of danger arising, that would go straight to that

group and everyone would know what was going on.

I think it would be much more difficult to drop the ball in that

case.

Mr. SMITH. Unless any of our panelists have anything further, let

me just thank our very expert witnesses for their information. It

does help this Subcommittee. We do have prime jurisdiction, as you

know, over the United Nations and the State Department. Obviously, peacekeeping comes under that. This helps us to do our job

better.

Please stay in contact with us as we go forward, because we do

want to be very much a part of the process to reform and hopefully

to improve the efficacy and responsiveness of peacekeeping.

Thank you very much. The hearing is adjourned.

[Whereupon, at 1:08 p.m., the Subcommittee was adjourned.]

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A P P E N D I X

SEPTEMBER 24, 1999

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