Foreign Operations, Export Financing, and Related Programs Appropriations Act, 2005

CONGRESSIONAL RECORD
SENATE
Sept. 23, 2004

FOREIGN OPERATIONS, EXPORT FINANCING, AND RELATED PROGRAMS APPROPRIATIONS ACT, 2005

Mr. DURBIN. Mr. President, I will be equally brief to commend my colleague from New Jersey, Senator Corzine, for his extraordinary leadership on this bipartisan amendment. Senator DeWine of Ohio is a cosponsor of it. It is clearly an issue we all share feeling on, on both sides of the aisle.

We learned our lesson in Rwanda. President Clinton has said that of all the things in foreign policy during his Presidency, he regrets the most that he didn't act and act quickly to confront the genocide in Rwanda. I commend not only Senator Corzine and Senator DeWine, and add my name as a cosponsor, but I also commend Secretary of State Colin Powell who has said clearly:

We concluded that genocide has been committed in Darfur and that the government of Sudan and the Janjaweed bear responsibility and genocide may still be occurring.

That word, "genocide," used by Secretary Powell, is historic. It is historic because it then places a burden on every civilized nation, including the United States, as signatories to the antigenocide treaty, to do something.

What Senator Corzine and Senator DeWine suggest, increasing the African Union monitors, is going to be critical. That is what we are doing here today. We are putting more monitors in the field, in the field where men are still being murdered, women are still being raped and murdered. The least, I really mean the least, we can do is give the African Union the tools to try to halt this genocide. I am happy to join in cosponsorship of this amendment, and I yield the floor.