Mr. GREGG. Mr. President, we as a nation are obviously wrestling with the issue of how to address the events presently occurring in the Middle East, specifically as they relate to Iraq . The Congress has considered taking up a resolution, which has been passed around and reviewed by many of us, but for a variety of reasons it does not appear that we are going to take such a resolution up during this week, and since we are adjourning, we will not be taking it up next week either. So I did want to make a few comments on this issue, because it is clearly the question of most significance that faces our country at this time.

I do not believe that we can address the question of how we deal with a dictator such as Saddam Hussein in isolation. We have to look at the question in the context of the other nations which surround Iraq and in the context of the history which has led us to this point. This is especially true when we deal with Iraq --or any nation in that region of the world--because the history of that region is so convoluted and involves so many crosscurrents, it being, quite literally, the crossing point of thousands of years, of generations of individuals, of numerous cultures both East and West, Bagdad specifically being the center, for literally centuries, of commerce from the east to the west and from the north to the south. As a result, it was a place where many cultures merged.

Therefore, when we as a nation, a new nation in the context of dealing with the Middle East, set ourselves down in the center of that part of the world, I think we have to be aware of the variety of forces which come to bear as a result of the historical events and prejudices and attitudes and cultures and religions that confront us there. I am not sure that we have been, really, in dealing with this issue.

For example, let's begin at the outer reaches of the question from a territorial or geographic perception. Let's look at Russia. Clearly our capacity to deal with Iraq requires our capacity to encourage support amongst other nations for our position. We have had fairly limited success in that. In fact, you might almost call this administration's approach to alliance relative to Iraq as the English-speaking approach, because, as far as I can tell, it appears to be only English-speaking countries who are supporting this administration's present policies in an open manner.

There are a few of the gulf states that have supported us, which is something we should not underestimate. But as a practical matter, I have noted with a great deal of sadness, actually, that the White House was taking great pride in the fact that yesterday it had been joined by Australia in support of its position. That's what they were heralding. We greatly appreciate Australia's support and admire them as a nation. But I think we also recognize that in the issue of the Middle East, it is not Australia that is important; it is nations such as Russia and our former Arab allies. I say former Arab allies because it appears that that is no longer the case--such as Saudi Arabia and Egypt, who are critical, and Turkey.

But in the area of Russia, for example, this administration appears to think that they can go to the Soviets--to Russia,

my mistake--and demand that Russia follow our policies in Iraq and insist on their support on Iraq , but at the same time this administration proposes an expansion of NATO. You have to recognize, if you were a Russian leader, you would find a certain irony in a request that was coupled in that terminology. Because, of course, an expansion of NATO, especially to Poland, is an expression that can only be viewed in Russia with some concern and possibly viewed by some as an outright threat.

NATO expansion is represented to us here in the United States as simply: Well, let's ask these three nice nations in Eastern Europe to join us in our alliance. But, of course, NATO is a security issue. It is an alliance made for the purposes of defending nations from threat, military threat. It is not an economic group, as everybody has noted for many years. As a practical matter, the capacity to expand NATO means that you are essentially saying to these nations that they are joining, for the purposes of their own national security, against some threat. What is the threat in Eastern Europe? Of course, the threat in Eastern Europe has always been either Russia or Germany. Since Germany is a member of NATO and is not a threat, clearly an expansion of NATO is addressing the threat from Russia. Therefore, when we ask Poland especially to join us in NATO, we are saying to Poland that we are giving you security against Russia, and clearly we are implying, certainly indirectly if not directly, that Russia may be the threat.

So you can understand that Russia might view a push to expand NATO at the same time as we are asking them to support us in Iraq as being inconsistent and a bit ironic. And it reflects, unfortunately, I think, this administration's failure to understand the linkage--and linkage is the right term--between working with a nation like Russia and our capacity to do things in the Middle East and moving forward with the NATO expansion at the exact same time. Yet, if you were to listen to the leadership of this administration, they will tell you that there is no relationship, they have no overlap on those two issues. Of course that is not true, and that is one of the reasons we are having problems with Russia.

It is equally a reason that we are having problems with our former Arab allies. Just yesterday or the day before yesterday--I lose track of the calendar here when we go to Egypt--but the Arab League met in Cairo, and they endorsed the French and Russian proposal, which was essentially a restatement, to a marginal degree, of the Iraqi proposal, as a league. The Arab League endorsed that as a league. Why would they do that? Because the Arab League essentially is dominated by Egypt, which has been our ally and which certainly, in many ways, is a friend of our Nation. I am a great admirer of the Egyptian people. They have certainly worked hard as a nation to try to bring about a constructive result, or progress in the Middle East in their relationship to Israel ever since President Sadat and through the present leadership in Egypt.

You wonder why the Arab League would openly endorse the French and Russian program? Essentially, they do it because of the situation that presently exists in Israel and Palestine, the fact that the peace process is, for all intents and purposes, dead. Yet, if you were again to listen to this administration, as the Senator in the chair has pointed out in a number of conferences that we have had, this administration's attitude is that there is no relationship between the peace process in Israel and Palestine and the question of Iraq . Of course, there is. They are intimately related. In fact, if we were able to make progress or to get back on line the process of peace between Israel and Palestine, we would probably relieve dramatically the tension in that part of the world and it would inevitably lead to having support from Egypt and Saudi Arabia, the key allies, on the issue of how we address Iraq .

So the failure of this administration to understand, again, the linkage between those two issues is a failure of fundamental proportions in their capacity to address the Iraq issue.

The third area that this also reflects is the issue of Turkey. Turkey is not discussed a great deal in our Nation and it should be discussed more because Turkey is a unique and special nation in relationship to ourselves. Throughout the cold war, Turkey was essentially the front line. It was a nation which did not really ask for much, yet gave us its alliance and its assistance. We have truly, as a nation, and this administration, as an administration, has truly treated Turkey poorly. This goes to the issue of Cyprus and it goes to the issue of Greece. Yet if you were to ask this administration, what is the relationship between the Turkish-Greek issue and the Cyprus issue and the capacity to deal with Saddam Hussein, they would say that there is none, that there is no relationship there. That is maybe why they have abandoned the effort to bring to resolution that very critical issue of international importance. Yet we find today that Turkey, again, is hesitant to allow us to use its bases in order to address the Iraq issue.

So, three major elements of the capacity to address the Iraq issue in a coordinated and effective way are tied to a variety of different historical and geographic and national and

international confrontations, which this administration either, No. 1, doesn't appreciate or, No. 2, is actively ignoring. As a result, our capacity as a country to unite a coalition which can effectively address Saddam Hussein has been undermined.

Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent for an additional 10 minutes?

The PRESIDING OFFICER. Without objection, it is so ordered.

Mr. GREGG. Most critical, of course, to this is the issue of how we deal with Iran and the fact that, once again, this administration has failed to reflect effectively on the policy dealing with that nation. Iran, as we recognize, has been dominated by a fundamentalist leadership which has viewed its purpose as promoting an aggressive religious philosophy internationally. It has viewed the United States as its enemy in this undertaking. But this fundamentalism cannot survive forever. It is much like when we confronted the Communist leadership after World War II and President Truman and President Eisenhower recognized that, through the process of constructive containment, we would be able to bring down that system of government because it would fall of its own weight because at some point, after a certain period of years, the fundamental flaws of that system and that philosophy would simply undermine it and decay it from within. And that is true also of the fundamentalist movement in Iran.

The Muslim religion is an extremely powerful and great religion, and it is a religion that is based on some very wonderful precepts. But the fundamentalism that captured a certain element of the Muslim believers is, as it is practiced in Iran, inherently self-destructive. If we are able to contain Iran but at the same time encourage within Iran the more moderate elements, we will, over a period of time, see, I believe, a collapse of the fundamentalist energy from within and a rising of a state which will be responsible. But this administration has passed over a series of opportunities to promote that option, which has been unfortunate.

If you are going to contain Iraq , then you must understand that in the process of containing Iraq , you must neutralize Iran as a threat to the region. Because if you were to eliminate Iraq as a force within their region, you would create a vacuum into which a fundamentalist Iran would step and be a threat to its neighbors of even greater proportions--greater proportions--than Iraq is. So, reflecting adequately on how we deal with Iran, and approaching Iran as part of the solution to how we deal with Iraq , is critical, critical to the capacity to take on the Iraqi issue. Yet this administration, in my opinion, has once again left the ball on the side of the field when it comes to understanding or pursuing that course of action.

So, where does that leave us? Unfortunately, where it leaves us is with a 19th century dictator who has 20th century weapons of mass destruction, in Saddam Hussein, an individual who lives by a code which is horrific to the sensibilities of a civilized world. It is a code that follows in the course of people like Adolph Hitler and Mussolini and others, who sought to promote themselves in the name of some cause which was really just superficial to their own megalomania.

But our capacity to address Hussein and to be able to deal with the situation in Iraq is fundamentally undermined by our inability, one, to focus on the situation with an international alliance and, two, to have the capacity, because we do not have an international alliance, to take action which will end up being definitive.

So we find ourselves with this administration stating that we are building up an arms capability to make an attack on Iraq without an alliance supporting it with a stated objective that nobody understands, because Secretary Cohen has said that a military attack will not replace Saddam Hussein, and the President said it is not our goal to replace Saddam Hussein. Secretary Cohen has stated that a military attack will not eliminate the weapons of mass destruction, and we know that to be the case. So what is the result of the military attack?

There is no clear understanding as to what it is. It will not be that Saddam Hussein is replaced. It will not be that the weapons of mass destruction are eliminated. It will not be that the alliance we had in the gulf war of 1991 are being reinstated. I have no idea what the conclusion of a military attack would be.

I think the unintended consequences of it will be dramatic. Some may be positive. We may successfully eliminate some weaponry that might otherwise be used against our neighbors. Some may be horrific. We may find that Saddam Hussein uses his weaponry in some other theater or some other place. It may even be here in the United States. But those are unintended consequences, because there appears to be no intended consequences.

Literally, there are no intended consequences. If the intended consequence is not to replace him and the intended consequence is not to destroy the weapons, what is the intended consequence of military action? I don't know what it is. Therefore, before we go forward with a resolution in this body--and I understand that we are not going to do that this week--before we go forward with a resolution in this body, I believe we have to bring some definition to the purpose of the process.

I believe, first, we have to recognize and we have to retouch our allies and our friends and people who should be our allies and our friends. We have to go back to Russia and understand their concerns. We have to go back to Turkey and understand their concerns. We have to go back to Egypt and understand their concerns. We have to go to Israel and talk about the need to get the peace process started again and to return to the concepts of Rabin as versus the concepts of Netanyahu.

More important, we, as a nation, have to know what is our purpose and what is our goal.

I believe our purpose and goal should be, first, to create a united approach on this to bring into the effort an alliance which is broader and more substantive than what we presently have, something more than an English-speaking alliance.

Second, it must be to remove Saddam Hussein and his government. We should have as our stated goal and purpose of any military action that we intend to have a democratic government in Iraq .

And, third, it should be that the weapons of mass destruction are destroyed; not that they will survive, but that they are destroyed.

These should be our goals, and I hope as we move down the road to considering the issue of what we do in Iraq and before we move forward with military action that we at least get some clarity of the process, hopefully along the lines I stated.

I appreciate the patience of the Chair, and I especially appreciate the patience of the Senator from Iowa.

Mr. GRASSLEY addressed the Chair.

The PRESIDING OFFICER (Mr. Santorum). The Senator from Iowa.

Mr. GRASSLEY. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent to speak in morning business for 10 minutes.

The PRESIDING OFFICER. Without objection, it is so ordered.