 Let me begin by saying that if anyone thinks there is a simple solution to this problem that you know very little about this problem. This is enormously complicated, enormously difficult, and there are honest and sincere people on all sides of this issue. Let me begin my remarks by quoting an interview that took place that was written up in Newsweek on April 13th. And as many of you know, the German government is currently a coalition government of the majority of Social Democrats working with the Greens. And the foreign minister happens to be a member of the Greenspelling, his name is probably pronouncing it one, but I think it's Jacques de Fichel. So let me quote from the interview that he gave to Newsweek, and he quotes, I am a member of the Green Party and I'm sitting here giving an interview in NATO headquarters. I never dreamed about that, but we cannot accept Milosevic's policies and bow our knees in front of this ethnic cleansing. I became a student radical, a real lesson. I never was a pacifist because I was fighting a revolution. I was against Vietnam because I always thought Vietnam was a colonial war, but my generation asked our parents, this is Germany, asked our parents, quote, why could the Holocaust happen in Germany? And why didn't you resist? This is the question we have to ask ourselves now, and Newsweek said. You see, I direct parallels to the Nazi era, and then he responds. I see a parallel to that primitive fascism. Obviously, the 30s are back and we cannot accept that. And then later on in the interview, the question is, aren't some people in your party, the Green Party, unhappy with your position on Kosovo? Answer. Obviously, there are many pacifists who cannot accept it. But on the other hand, my generation was brought up with two experiences. The first is never again war. And the second is never again Auschwitz. It means standing up against genocide. It's a contradiction, but we have to live with it. If we accept below this as a winner, it would be the end of the Europe I believe in, end of quote. I think where Mr. Fisher, Herr Fisher is coming from is very close to where I am coming from. I have spent my entire life fighting against war and have opposed virtually every United States intervention. And yet we are standing here today, wrestling with this terrible situation. For those good friends of mine, many of them, sincerity is not in question. Who say they detest war? They are called as I am about the bombing of civilian areas in Belgrade. Who say, stop the bombing, bring the troops home. Then I ask you to think about what happens to the 800,000 men, women, and children who have been pushed out of their homes. What do you do to a war criminal who has led, for the first time in modern history, the organized rape as an agent of war of tens of thousands of women? What do you do to a butcher who has lined up people and shot them? Do you say to them, you have won? Mr. Belosovic, we are not going to stand up to you. We are going home. And if you do that, what do you think happens next? Do you think he says I won this war? That's the end of it. Anyone who understands anything about the history of this man understands that is not the case. So as a member of Congress, as your congressman, these are the issues that I have to deal with. Now having said that, what's the alternative? And I disagree with Congress. Some say that the best way to address this issue was to line up 500,000 NATO troops and march in and throw that bastard out of possible once and for all. But there is a problem with that too. The casualties would be in my view. There would be a guerrilla warfare taking place for years and years. And having gone through the Vietnam War and having protested the Vietnam War, no, I don't want to see American troops brought into the quagmire of another Vietnam and thousands and thousands of men and women coming home in body bags. So that's where I find myself saying no civilized society cannot reward and tolerate ethnic cleansing that is bad for now and bad for the future. No, I do not want to see our young men and women and young men and women in Europe and young men and women in Yugoslavia getting killed in a ground war. That leaves very little parameter for movement. What do you do? Well, I don't know what you do, but I tell you what I am doing and what I am trying to do. Yesterday I returned from a very short weekend in Vienna, Austria, most of which was spent in a conference room in a hotel. And the reason that I was in Vienna was that I joined a delegation of 11 members of the United States Congress, conservatives and progressives, who went to this meeting in Vienna to urge Russian leaders of the Duma to take a leading role in trying to resolve this problem. Some of us have believed from the very beginning that Russia, who is Yugoslavia's strongest ally, could play an important role in getting Milosevic to withdraw his troops. And the meeting that we had was a very positive meeting. And let me just briefly tell you what came out of it. What came out of it is a joint agreement that we are going to take to the United States Congress. I think we have a chance to pass it. They are going to take it back to the Russian Duma, and they have told us that given the fact that we have three leaders and three major factions, it's going to pass there. And what does this agreement say? It says essentially a few basic things. It says that in a simultaneous manner that NATO should stop its bombing of Yugoslavia, that Yugoslavia should begin the withdrawal of troops from Kosovo and that the cessation of military activities of the Kosovo Liberation Army should also take place. And the first demand that we made of Yugoslavia and the United States was the release of all prisoners of war. And to be very honest with you, I would have two days ago, I thought that I was going to Belgrade with the delegation to bring back the POWs. Thankfully, Jesse Jackson did that, and that's a step forward. We think now, we think now that the response of the United States should not be saying that that's a PR trick. We should immediately release the one Serbian POW that we have. Our agreement also stressed that the million people or 800,000 people who have forcibly been ejected from Kosovo should be able to return to their home. It also stressed that I want to remind you, this is a document signed by the leaders of the Russian Duma who told Milosevic that he must withdraw his troops from Kosovo. And then the very difficult issue of the nature of the international peacekeeping force that would be maintained. NATO originally was very firm in saying it must be NATO. And some of us said, well, wait a second, what you're really asking of Milosevic is to accept the power that defeated him in a war right in the middle of his country. Why don't we be a little bit more flexible in the agreement that we reached is that the nature of the international peacekeeping force should be determined by the Security Council of the United Nations. In consultation with Macedonia, Albania, Yugoslavia and the recognized leadership of Kosovo. And what we also agreed upon is that the United States Congress and the Russian Duma would do our best to make these things happen. I should tell you that I was really impressed and delighted by the, the hate, not the behavior, but the attitude of the leaders of the Russian Duma. They were prepared, in my view, to try to do the right thing. And I think we have made a mistake as a country by not going out to those people early. And I'm delighted to see that the President today has been meeting with some of these Russian leaders. Let me just conclude by saying this. I don't believe that there's an easy solution. And I think even of all of the things I was on the phone today with the White House telling them that I am very concerned about what I see as a lack of flexibility as it's what I am beginning to test, to test, is the desire not to end this war on the project. I was simply to humiliate those of it and that is war. Okay? But this is a complex problem of what we are going to try to do in the next few days is to put as much pressure as we can on the White House. So we think our friends in the Russian Duma will be the same in Russia to have the NATO people and Yugoslavia sit down to negotiate the ceasefire with the simultaneous withdrawal of Yugoslavian troops and to begin the difficult negotiations establishing the armed peacekeeping force and the political future of Kosovo, which will have to be self-ruled.