June 17, 1996

Commentary: What Scandal?

By GEORGE MITCHELL

ELFAST, Northern Ireland -- On June 24, 1994, The Washington Times reported that "Croatia has become a major transit point for covert Iranian arms shipments to Bosnia with the tacit approval of the Clinton Administration."

That day, the article was inserted into the Congressional Record. The first published report of Iranian arms shipments to Bosnia had appeared two years before that, and similar reports had continued through 1993.

Every member of Congress knew -- or certainly should have known -- about the Iranian shipments.

Yet now several Congressional committees are gearing up to "investigate" them.

Why? It's simple. This is a Presidential election year. The investigations have more to do with American politics than with the Bosnian war.

What happened can be easily explained.

In the spring of 1994, President Franjo Tudjman of Croatia asked our Ambassador, Peter Galbraith, whether the United States would object to arms shipments to Bosnia through Croatia. President Tudjman made it clear that Iran would be one of the sources. After checking with Washington, our Ambassador replied that he had "no instructions." In other words, while we didn't approve, we wouldn't protest.

When these conversations occurred, the Bosnian Serbs held 70 percent of the land in Bosnia.

The Bosnian Muslims were barely hanging on.

In the United States, there was much debate about whether to lift the arms embargo, which had been imposed in July 1991.

But our European allies, with thousands of vulnerable troops on the ground, would not agree to dropping the embargo.

Helping the Bosnian Muslims was a goal that the Administration and Congress shared. That's why no one in Congress at that time investigated the Administration's decision to ignore Iran's arm shipments.

It was clear then, and still is, that the other options would have brought greater risks and fewer rewards.

Stopping the arms flow through Croatia would have damaged the new Muslim-Croat Federation and weakened the Bosnian Muslims. Lifting the embargo unilaterally would have directly violated international law and fueled the fighting.

In September 1994, only five months after Ambassador Galbraith's query, Congress passed a bill that required America to stop enforcing the arms embargo.

Everyone in the debate knew that the result would be Iranian arms flowing into Bosnia. No one offered an amendment to try to prevent it; no one even suggested it.

Iran did continue to send some arms to Bosnia. But the Administration's decision was correct: the policy worked. It helped stave off a Serb military victory and led directly to the Dayton accord. Former Assistant Secretary of State Richard Holbrooke recently said that if it were not for that policy, "the Bosnian Muslims would not have survived and we would not have gotten to Dayton."

Now the Bosnians must abide by the peace accord, which requires the withdrawal of all foreign forces, including those from Iran. They know that if they don't, the United States will not train and equip Muslim-Croat Federation forces.

I've recently returned from Bosnia. Almost every official I spoke to -- American and European, Bosnian Muslim and Croat, military and civilian -- agreed that the arms helped the Bosnian Muslims and that Iran has not achieved significant influence there.

The President's policy is deemed a success.

A review by the President's Intelligence Oversight Board found that the United States did not provide or finance arms, nor did we offer any assistance. In short, there was no covert action and no violation of the law. To argue otherwise requires a stretch of the partisan imagination.

George Mitchell, former majority leader of the Senate, currently serves as special adviser to the President on Ireland.