Washington Report on Middle East Affairs, July/August 1998, Pages 57-58, 94

Special Report

Glacial Progress on Middle East Legislation

By Shirl McArthur

With the end of the 105th Congress rapidly approaching, Congress still has enacted little legislation affecting the Middle East. Two bills, only one of them major, have passed both houses and been signed into law. Several others have passed one or both houses, but are either likely to be vetoed or are unlikely to be passed in their present form.

In the meantime, the appropriations process for the fiscal year beginning Sept. 30 appears to be stalled. The House appropriations subcommittees only began their mark-up sessions in mid-June, which does not leave much time before the Oct. 9 adjournment date, especially considering that Congress is in recess the entire month of August. (The foreign aid appropriations mark-up will probably not take place until mid-July.)

The one major piece of legislation that has been signed into law is the $2.9 billion 1998 Supplemental Appropriations Act, P.L. 105-174, which provides additional money for disaster relief and “peacekeeping” operations in Bosnia and the Gulf, but not, as originally drafted, for emergency funding for the International Monetary Fund (IMF). The final enacted version contains all three of the provisions relating to Iraq that were described in the May/June issue of the Washington Report: $5 million for economic assistance to the Iraqi opposition, $5 million to establish a “Radio Free Iraq,” and a provision giving the “sense of Congress” that none of the funds made available in this act should be used for the conduct of military operations against Iraq, “unless such operations are specifically authorized by a law enacted after the date of this Act.” In addition, the act urges the president to encourage other countries to contribute to preventing Iraq from using weapons of mass destruction.

The only other measure signed into law was a “feel-good” resolution recognizing Israel’s 50th anniversary and congratulating “the State of Israel and her people for a peaceful and prosperous and successful future.”

Of the various pending bills, the one that deserves the most attention is the Freedom from Religious Persecution Act (H.R. 2431), which was described in detail in the May/June issue of the Washington Report. The bill’s sponsor, Rep. Frank Wolf (R-VA), once again modified his original bill to meet some of the objections to it, and the bill passed the House by a vote of 375-41 on May 14, with an amendment offered by Rep. Tom Campbell (R-CA) that permits the president to waive sanctions against Sudan if the president determines that national security interests justify the waiver. However, as with previous versions of the bill, the bill passed by the House 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 it still includes a full section detailing a broad range of sanctions against Sudan.

Many senators are questioning the wisdom of unilateral sanctions.

However, it appears likely that the Senate will consider Sen. Don Nickles’ (R-OK) International Religious Freedom Act of 1998 (S. 1868), rather than H.R. 2431. Nickles’ bill is considerably more moderate than the Wolf bill, but still contains some objectionable features. 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, and it includes a more flexible presidential waiver provision. Interestingly, the bill’s 14 co-sponsors include Senate Foreign Affairs Committee Chairman Jesse Helms (R-NC), Near East subcommittee Chairman Sam Brownback (R-KS), and Sen. Joe Lieberman (D-CT), who was a co-sponsor of the earlier Senate version of the Wolf bill.

Brownback chaired a hearing on the Nickles Bill on May 12, during which Assistant Secretary of State for Democracy, Human Rights, and Labor John Shattuck presented the administration’s objections to the bill. Shattuck acknowledged that the Nickles bill is an improvement over the Wolf bill in that it provides greater flexibility, but he said the bill still includes some troublesome features.

He described specific concerns about the bill’s sanctions and reporting mechanisms; its broad definition of religious persecution; its waiver provisions; its mandating of new reports without providing additional resources; and its creation of new, overlapping institutions. He said that the administration supports the goal of freedom from religious persecution, but the question is what should the U.S. response be—“every country should be treated differently.”

Developing an Acceptable Bill

Nevertheless, it appears that the State Department plans to work with Nickles and his co-sponsors to develop a bill the administration can support. During the hearing, Lieberman said he assumed that the House would pass H.R. 2431 and the Senate would pass S.1868, and that a conference committee would “blend” the two together.

However, this is not a foregone conclusion. During the hearing, two senators, Rod Grams (R-MN) and Chuck Hagel (R-NE), expressed their opposition to sanctions in general and this bill in particular. Grams even issued a press release, saying the bill could “worsen religious conditions, hurt diplomatic ties and isolate the U.S.”

During the hearing, Hagel said that he has always been concerned about sanctions, however well-intended, because they can further isolate the U.S. and “don’t pass the relevancy test.” There are indications that these are just two of many senators and representatives who are becoming more outspoken in questioning the wisdom of unilateral sanctions. Although the congressional leadership would like to have this legislation to wave before the voters in November, it is entirely possible that it will not be completed before Congress adjourns on Oct. 9.

A bill that has been of interest for some time is the Foreign Affairs Reform Bill (H.R. 1757). As described in detail in our May/June issue, this bill contains several provisions concerning the Middle East, including one regarding Jerusalem as the capital of Israel. The House passed the conference report on March 26, and the Senate passed it on April 28. It is now awaiting the president’s signature or veto.

Although the bill consolidates and streamlines foreign affairs agencies and authorizes $926 million in arrearage payments to the U.N., both of which are strongly desired by the administration, the bill also includes language prohibiting U.S. funding for family planning organizations that perform abortions or promote liberalized abortion laws, language objectionable to some of the women’s groups that have been among President Clinton’s strongest supporters.

In a press release urging Clinton to sign the bill, House International Relations Committee Chairman Benjamin Gilman (R-NY) said that he understands that the decision on whether or not to veto the bill is being made in the White House rather than the State Department. If that is true, and considering that in the Clinton White House political gain always takes precedence, it is likely that Clinton will veto the bill. Since the Senate passed the conference report by the narrow margin of 51-49, a veto would likely be sustained.

As expected, the Iran Missile Sanctions Bill (H.R. 2709) passed the Senate on May 22. The bill, which was passed by the House last November, 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.

The bill also includes the text of the unrelated bill, which the Senate had already passed, implementing the Chemical Weapons Convention treaty. On June 9, the House agreed to a minor amendment inserted by the Senate changing the effective date of sanctionable actions, so the bill is before the president for signature.

The White House and the State Department have objected to combining the two bills and also that the sledge-hammer approach of sanctions does not help diplomatic efforts with Russia and China, and they threatened to recommend that the president veto the bill. Nevertheless, since the bill passed both houses of Congress by large margins, and since the sanctions portion includes a waiver provision, it is possible that Clinton will not want to pick this particular fight with Congress and will sign the legislation.

Sanctions Reform Accelerates

During May and June, several things happened that cumulatively increased the impetus in both the Congress and the executive branch to re-examine U.S. sanctions policy, especially the tendency over the past few years to slap unilateral (and counter- productive) economic sanctions on countries committing some offense as defined by Washington. As a result, more attention has been focused on the “sanctions reform” bills introduced in the Senate by Sen. Richard Lugar (R-IN) as S. 1413, and in the House by Reps. Lee Hamilton (D-IN) and Philip Crane (R-IL) as H.R. 2708, which were described in some detail in the May/June issue of the Washington Report. The bills would establish procedural guidelines and informational requirements before unilateral economic sanctions are considered by the Congress or imposed by the president. The effect would be to slow down the imposition of unilateral sanctions by requiring assessments of the sanctions’ costs compared with their intended gains. The bills also include a “sunset provision” that would automatically terminate the sanctions unless specifically reauthorized.

In early May there were increasing signs that the Clinton administration was about to waive the sanctions required by the Iran-Libya Sanctions Act (ILSA), under a provision allowing a “national interest” waiver, for the investments in Iran’s South Pars gas field by France’s Total, Russia’s Gazprom, and Malaysia’s Petronas. This prompted the Senate’s leading sanctions proponents, Senate Banking Committee Chairman Alfonse D’Amato (R-NY) and Foreign Relations Committee Chairman Jesse Helms (R-NC), joined by 12 other senators, including Majority Leader Trent Lott, to write to Clinton urging him “in the strongest terms” not to grant the waiver. On May 14, at a hearing on U.S. policy toward Iran (see below), Near East Subcommittee Chairman Sen. Sam Brownback (R-KS), who apparently has no foreign policy convictions of his own and simply parrots whatever is dictated by Helms and the Israel lobby, sharply questioned Assistant Secretary of State Martin Indyk about the rumors that a waiver was imminent, saying that he could not see how granting a waiver would be in the U.S. national interest. This made Indyk uncomfortable, because, he said, the decision had not been made, but he proceeded to explain—not to Brownback’s satisfaction—why the waiver would be justified.

Then, on May 18, the same day as the EU-U.S. summit in London, at which U.S. sanctions policy was expected to be a main topic, Secretary of State Madeleine Albright announced that the waiver would be granted, under section 9c of ILSA, which applies to individual projects. The Europeans had wanted a waiver under section 4c, which would have amounted to a blanket waiver for European investments in Iran, but appeared to be satisfied with the more limited waiver. The final agreement, negotiated with the EU by Under Secretary of State Stuart Eizenstat, who is leading the administration effort to develop a coherent sanctions policy, commits the Europeans to increase their efforts against terrorism and the spread of weapons of mass destruction, in exchange for the ILSA waiver.

The other major events in May were the underground nuclear tests conducted by India and Pakistan between May 11 and 30. Under the “Glenn amendment” to the Arms Export Control Act, named after the amendment’s sponsor, Sen. John Glenn (D-OH), these tests automatically required the president to impose a wide range of economic, commercial, and military sanctions on the two countries.

This automatic triggering of sanctions against India and Pakistan, which most foreign policy experts agree is both counter- productive and contrary to U.S. interests, may in the end prove to be the extra push needed for Washington to get serious about developing a rational sanctions policy. Already there had been some grumblings in both the House and the Senate about how sanctions have been hurting U.S. interests, especially agricultural interests. Rep. Jerry Moran (R-KS) took to the floor of the House to say that “our farmers continue to suffer the consequences of foreign policy decisions that shut them out of markets around the world.” He pointed out that wheat imports by North Korea, Cuba, Iran, and Iraq, all under U.S. unilateral sanctions, have doubled since 1995, and “these growing markets are off-limits to U.S. producers.”

At a Senate hearing on May 21 on Iraq sanctions (which added nothing to the debate over U.S. policy toward Iraq, except the acknowledgment by all concerned that the international sanctions regime is collapsing), Senators Conrad Burns (R-MT) and Chuck Hagel (R-NE) took the opportunity to attack the whole idea of unilateral sanctions. Burns was most concerned about the “crisis on the northern plains” created, in part, by limitations placed on U.S. farmers by various sanctions. He emphasized that “sanctions do not work.” Hagel’s point was broader, but equally strong. He said that “enforcing sanctions is not a foreign policy,” and “whenever we start throwing sanctions on people, it has consequences.”

Finally on June 3, in the House, International Relations Committee Chairman Benjamin Gilman (R-NY) agreed to hold a hearing on the effects of economic sanctions on U.S. policy interests. Gilman strongly defended all the congressionally imposed sanctions, including the Glenn amendment and the not-yet-enacted religious persecution and Iran missile sanctions bills. He even went so far as to threaten to tighten the waiver provisions of ILSA, as a consequence of the waiver granted to the South Pars investors. However, to his credit, Gilman did not stack the witness list in favor of his view, as has been known to happen. In opening statements, Lugar and Hamilton, who is ranking minority member of the committee, gave strong pitches for S. 1413 and H.R. 2708. Committee member Doug Bereuter (R-NE) presented a contemporaneous, impassioned attack on sanctions, repeating many of the points made by Hamilton, Burns and Hagel. He said that sanctions are costing the U.S. $20 billion per year in lost exports.

Eizenstat was the administration witness, and he, too, expressed support for the Lugar/Hamilton bill, although he said he had some concerns about some of the details. He said that sanctions could be a useful foreign policy tool, but only if they were designed with full flexibility, so that the president could tailor a response to meet a particular situation. As might have been expected, only Patrick Clawson, from the Washington Institute for Near East Policy, which follows Israel’s lead, supported unilateral sanctions (although he agreed that multilateral sanctions are better). He said that “U.S. sanctions on Iran have imposed costs on the U.S. economy, but those have been small compared to the benefits.”

As a result of all this heightened interest in the damage that unilateral sanctions are inflicting on U.S. interests, it is considerably more likely that the Lugar/Hamilton bill, or something like it, will be enacted before this congress adjourns in October. On June 8 Lugar announced that he intended to attach the text of S. 1413 to one of the appropriations bills—probably the defense appropriations bill—which must be passed before adjournment.

Four Feel-Good Resolutions

Prior to the Memorial Day recess, three non-binding resolutions passed the House and one passed the Senate, but none have yet been voted on by the other body. The Senate bill, S. Res. 188, sponsored by Sen. Patrick Moynihan (D-NY) and co-sponsored by 56 senators, concerns Israel’s pariah status at the U.N., attempting to accomplish by legislation what Israel has been unable to accomplish by its behavior. The bill gives “the sense of the Senate” that the U.S. should support Israel’s efforts to enter a U.N. regional group and should “insist that any effort to expand the U.N. Security Council also resolve this anomaly,” whatever that may mean.

The House is still considering its companion bill, H.R. 3236, and received comments from the State Department. We have been unable to learn what the State Department said, but imagine that it pointed out, in very diplomatic language of course, that this is a stupid resolution.

The three House resolutions concerned Afghanistan (H.Con.Res. 218), Algeria (H.Res. 374), and extradition for “perpetrators of Palestinian terrorist attacks against U.S. citizens” (H.Con.Res. 220). The Afghanistan resolution, sponsored by Rep. Doug Bereuter (R-NE), includes 11 provisions that call upon all warring factions and national powers to participate in intra-Afghan dialogue; encourage a role for Afghan leaders of all factions and ethnic groups in the U.N. negotiating effort; urge the nations of the region to cooperate in the peace process and to stop providing military assistance to the factions; and call for the expulsion of known terrorists from Afghanistan. In addition, the resolution recognizes the need for emergency assistance as a result of the Feb. 4, 1998 earthquake.

The Algeria resolution, sponsored by Rep. Steve Chabot (R-OH), condemns the Armed Islamic Group “and any other terrorist groups”; urges the U.S. government to work closely with the Algerian government to bring about political and economic reforms; and encourages the EU and the Algerian government to further their cooperation against terrorism.

Of course, the “American victims of terrorism” resolution, sponsored by Rep. Jon Fox (R-PA), received the most publicity. House International Relations Committee Chairman Gilman even issued a press release hailing its passage and taking credit for “managing consideration of the measure.” The resolution expresses the sense of the Congress that the U.S. should demand the prosecution of all suspected perpetrators of Palestinian terrorist attacks against U.S. citizens and should seek the Palestinian Authority’s cooperation in the prosecution of these cases. The resolution also says that “the suspects should be tried in the U.S. unless it is determined that such action is contrary to effective prosecution.” (An identical companion bill, S.Con.Res. 100, was introduced in the Senate by Sen. Arlen Specter [R-PA] on June 2.)

Shirl McArthur, a retired foreign service officer, is a senior consultant with Bruce Morgan Associates, an international research and consulting firm in the Washington, DC area.