Washington Report on Middle East Affairs, May/June 1998, Pages 49-50

Congress Watch

After Much Pro-Israel Posturing, Most Pending Middle East Legislation Has Little Chance of Passage

By Shirl McArthur

Several bills of interest to the Middle East made progress through Congress’s legislative maze prior to the Easter recess. However, only one of them seems likely to be enacted into law before the end of the 105th Congress.

Foreign Affairs Reform and Payment of U.N. Arrears (HR 1757). This bill has received the most publicity, and has the least chance of being signed into law. The conference committee formed to reconcile the House and the Senate versions of the bill finally issued its report, and the report was approved by the full House by voice vote on March 26. Senate action on the conference report has not been scheduled.

Nearly all of the offensive provisions contained in the bill as it earlier passed the House and the Senate were dropped from the final version as it emerged from the conference committee. However, five Middle East-related provisions remain from the earlier versions, and a new one has been added, authorizing a $38 million package of programs aimed at helping to oust Iraqi President Saddam Hussain, including $5 million to establish a “Radio Free Iraq” and $3 million to fund a U.N. effort to establish an international tribunal to indict, prosecute, and punish Saddam and other Iraqi officials.

The worst of the provisions that were kept is the one designed to restate congressional policy regarding Jerusalem as the capital of Israel. However, while the earlier versions contained language specifically reaffirming that it is U.S. policy that Jerusalem should remain the undivided capital of Israel, the conference report has dropped that language. It has, however, retained the four provisions authorizing money for the construction of a U.S. embassy in Jerusalem by May 31, 1999; placing the U.S. Consulate in Jerusalem under the supervision of the U.S. ambassador to Israel; requiring that U.S. government documents that list countries and their capitals identify Jerusalem as the capital of Israel; and allowing U.S. citizens born in Jerusalem to record their country of birth as Israel, if they wish.

The other provisions kept from at least one of the earlier versions included one authorizing $2 million for radio broadcasts to Iran in the Farsi language; the provision requiring the secretary of state to report to Congress every four months on progress in resolving commercial disputes between U.S. firms and the government of Saudi Arabia; one requiring the U.S. government to help Israel gain acceptance into a U.N. regional bloc, and to seek the abolition of certain U.N. organizations that have the temerity to occasionally criticize Israel, such as the Division on Public Information on the Question of Palestine; and finally, and to no one’s surprise, the conference report keeps the $80 million authorization for “refugee resettlement” in Israel.

Domestic politics take priority over national interest in an election year.

The reason that this bill has almost no chance of being passed into law, at least in its present form, is that the conference report also kept the language prohibiting U.S. funding for family planning organizations that perform abortions or promote liberalized abortion laws overseas—the so-called “Mexico City language.”

The White House has already said, by letter to Rep. Lee Hamilton (D-IN), the ranking minority member of the House International Relations Committee, that President Clinton will veto HR 1757 if it is presented to him. This confirms that both the administration and the Republican congressional leadership have decided that domestic politics take priority over national interest in an election year. The White House does not want to alienate its pro-abortion constituency, and the congressional leadership does not want to alienate its anti-abortion constituency.

Furthermore, House Democrats are furious at the way the Republican House leadership, especially International Relations Committee Chairman Ben Gilman (D-NY), railroaded the conference report through the House. Hamilton, who is retiring at the end of this congressional session, described in detail on the floor of the House how this happened. He said that not a single meeting of the whole conference committee took place after last July.

Instead, Gilman met with the Republican members of the conference committee and crafted a Republican conference report and brought it to the floor without consulting a single Democratic member.

Said Hamilton, “We are not deliberating, we are politicking; we are not making law, we are making political speeches.” He then proceeded to specify several objections to the bill besides the “Mexico City language,” including parts of the new anti-Saddam provision and the fact that the bill “threatens the leadership position of the U.S. in helping parties to negotiate peace” in the Middle East. Rep. Ed Torres (D-CA) joined in support of Hamilton’s objections and said, “we all know the president is going to veto this bill in its present form. So we know, in essence, this is a game and a charade…We played this game last year, it was an embarrassment to the world, and we are playing it again.”

Freedom from Religious Persecution (HR 2431). This bill is near passage by the House, but it, too, has little chance of being enacted into law. As we reported in previous issues, the bill’s sponsor, Rep. Frank Wolf (R-VA), modified his original bill in response to several objections. Subsequently, Gilman’s committee modified it further and reported it to the full House on April 1.

As with Wolf's modified bill, however, the reported bill still would establish an Office of Religious Persecution Monitoring, require the office to send reports to Congress, require specific, unilateral sanctions on those countries named in the report as engaging in religious persecution, and the bill still includes a full section detailing a broad range of sanctions against Sudan. (Interestingly, California Republican Rep. Tom Campbell infuriated Gilman during the committee mark-up session by proposing an amendment to delete the section pertaining to Sudan. Gilman summarily ruled Campbell’s amendment out of order, and it was not brought to a vote. It is worth remembering that it was Campbell who last year infuriated AIPAC by getting an amendment inserted into the House version of the foreign aid appropriations bill that reduced economic aid to Israel and Egypt by $25 million and increased the Africa Development Fund by the same amount. However, Campbell’s amendment, which would have set a precedent for transferring some of the surplus in bloated Middle East foreign aid to chronically underfunded programs, did not survive the appropriations conference committee.)

During the committee markup session, Deputy Assistant Secretary of State Alan Kreezko outlined the administration’s objections to the way the bill would corrupt U.S. immigration policy in favor of religious refugees. In the final committee report, Reps. Hamilton, Campbell, Alcee Hastings (D-FL), and Earl Hilliard (D-AL) filed formal dissenting views. Hamilton, Hastings, and Hilliard described a long list of objections to the bill, including the fact that countries found to fit the bill’s definition of religious persecutors would automatically be sanctioned. They pointed out that Indonesia, Egypt, and Saudi Arabia would surely be found in violation, and they said, “How would sanctions against Indonesia impact on jittery world financial markets?…How would sanctions against Egypt…advance the Middle East peace process? How would sanctions against Saudi Arabia impact on the presence of U.S. troops in Saudi Arabia, and advance the vital U.S. national interest in the secure and stable flow of oil from the Persian Gulf?” Campbell’s objection was that the sanctions against Sudan make no provision for unforeseen circumstances. However, theirs were voices in the wilderness, and the committee approved the bill, with only Rep. Matt Salmon (R-AZ) joining Campbell, Hamilton, Hastings, and Hilliard in voting against it.

There are signs that the dissenting voices were heard in the Senate, however, if not in Gilman’s committee. The day after Gilman’s markup session, Sen. Don Nickles (R-OK) introduced the “International Religious Freedom Act of 1998” (S 1868).

Nickles’ bill expresses and strengthens U.S. policy with respect to religious freedom, but it contains none of the objectionable features of the Wolf bill. It provides for a graduated scale of sanctions, ranging from quiet, private consultation with the offending country to the withdrawal of U.S. aid or preferential tariff treatment. Furthermore, it includes a flexible presidential waiver provision.

An interesting aspect of the Nickles bill is that Senate Foreign Affairs Committee Chairman Jesse Helms (R-NC) is one of the nine co-sponsors. We take this to mean that the Senate will likely pass the Nickles bill as an alternative to the Wolf bill. Since the Republican congressional leadership very much wants a religious freedom bill to be able to point to during the election campaign, we suspect that the Nickles bill will prevail, but perhaps not without a fight.

Iran Missile Protection Act (HR 2786). This bill, now known as the “Theater Missile Defense Improvement Act of 1998,” was reported out of the House National Security Committee on March 26 and passed by the full House on March 30. The committee drastically revised the bill since we described it in the March issue of the Washington Report.

It no longer directs Defense Department officials to meet with Russian officials to determine the extent of Russian cooperation and assistance in developing Iran's ballistic missile capability, and to determine the extent and technical nature of that capability. Nor does it prohibit the obligation of $3 million in FY ’98 cooperative ballistic missile defense projects with Russia until the U.S. president certifies to Congress that Russia is fully cooperating in providing this information.

The bill still authorizes additional appropriations for research, development, test, and evaluation of specified missile defense systems, radars, networks, and related activities. It also directs the secretary of defense to report to Congress on the Iranian ballistic missile threat in the Middle East and Persian Gulf regions, and to identify other actions that could be taken to counter threats “posed by ballistic missiles deployed by Iran and other nations.” The bill also authorizes $10 million “to be available to improve interoperability of the Israeli Arrow tactical ballistic missile defense system with U.S. theater missile defense systems.”

While many of the pending Middle East-related provisions are little more than pro-Israel posturing, this bill is likely to be passed into law now that it has been modified to meet administration objections that it could harm U.S. policy objectives in Russia. By retaining the provision that, in effect, further subsidizes Israel’s Arrow program, the bill ensures continued support from Israel’s loyal congressmen, further increasing its chances of passage.

The Iran Missile Sanctions Bill (HR 2709). As we have previously reported, last November the House passed HR 2709, which would require that sanctions be imposed on any “foreign person” found to have transferred goods or technology, or provided technical assistance or facilities, that contributed to Iran’s efforts to acquire, develop, or produce ballistic missiles. As with the original version of HR 2786 (see above), this appears aimed at Russia and China as well as Iran. The administration objected that such a sledge-hammer approach does not help its diplomatic efforts with either.

As passed by the House, the bill also includes the text of the unrelated bill (S 610), which the Senate had already passed, implementing the Chemical Weapons Convention treaty. This irritated both the White House and the State Department, who said that, if the bill passes both houses of Congress in that form, they would recommend that the president veto it.

We therefore expected that the Senate would ignore HR 2709, consider its own version of the bill (without the Chemical Weapons Convention implementation bill attached), and wait for the House to pass S 610, which technically is still pending.

To our surprise, on April 3 Senate Majority Leader Trent Lott (R-MO) asked for and received unanimous consent that the full Senate consider HR 2709 no earlier than May 20 and no later than May 22. Furthermore, the consent agreement included a stipulation that the only amendment in order would be one offered by Sen. Carl Levin (D-MI) relating to the date of behavior subject to sanctions. This move frankly is confusing, and we will look forward to seeing what happens.

Saddam Hussain War Crime Prosecution Bill (SConRes 78). This is the concurrent resolution introduced by Sen. Arlen Specter (R-PA), which we described in our March issue. It says that the president should call for the establishment of a U.N. commission to establish Saddam’s “criminal culpability,” and calls for the U.N. to form an international tribunal to indict, prosecute, and imprison Saddam “and other Iraqi officials.” This resolution was passed by the full Senate on March 13. Theoretically, it next goes to the House for consideration and passage. However, the House much earlier (November 1997) passed a similar resolution, sponsored by Gilman. Since these resolutions are non-binding, and since each house of Congress now has had the opportunity to vent its outrage against Saddam Hussain, it is possible that neither the House nor the Senate will take any further action on the other’s resolution.

Violence in Algeria (H Res 374). This resolution was introduced by Rep. Steve Chabot (R-OH), and co-sponsored by Rep. Alcee Hastings (D-FL), in early March. It condemns terrorist groups and perpetrators of violence and other crimes against the human rights of Algerians, calls on the government of Algeria to take all necessary and legal steps to stop the violence and to enter into a dialogue with nonviolent opposition elements in Algeria, and urges the U.S. government to continue to work closely with the Algerian government to bring about political and economic reform as well as the full restoration of law and order in Algeria.

We assumed that Gilman would not put this resolution high on his priority list. However, surprisingly, his committee considered it on April 1 and agreed to seek its consideration by the full House. Although the resolution will probably die in the Senate, the fact that it will likely pass the House is a positive development.