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hearing
Update on Raoul Wallenberg
Wednesday, August 03, 1983This hearing focused on the disappearance of Swedish diplomat Raoul Wallenberg, distinguished diplomat who risked his life to help grant protection to Jewish refugees in Hungary during Nazis occupation. Wallenberg’s whereabouts became unknown when the Soviets liberated Hungary. Despite Soviet declarations that Mr. Wallenberg died in 1947, many witnesses have contested this claim and have reported that he is in fact in Soviet prison. The Commissioners and the witnesses discussed the U.S. response and what further actions may be needed.
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hearing
Soviet Jewry: H. Con. Res. 63
Thursday, June 23, 1983This joint hearing by the Committee on Foreign Affairs, Subcommittee on Human Rights and International Organizations, and the Commission on Security and Cooperation in Europe examined the plight of Jews in the Soviet Union. Moscow's heightened campaign of hatred against its own citizens, in flagrant disregard of international law, was identified as a factor in whether the United States should enter into any further agreements with the Soviet Union, especially ones which involve United States security. Witnesses testifying at this hearing expressed their concerns about the continued persecution and harassment of the Jewish community in the Soviet Union. The repressive policies instituted by the Soviet regime to destroy Jewish culture, despite its commitment to the human rights terms agreed upon during the Helsinki Final Act, were outlined.
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hearing
The Assassination Attempt on Pope John Paul II
Thursday, September 23, 1982The subject of this hearing, which Commissioner Millicent Fenwick chaired, was whether or not there was the possibility of complicity, on the part of the Soviet and Bulgarian secret police, to Turkish terrorist Mehmet Ali Agca’s assassination attempt on Pope John Paul II. As per Principle VI of the Helsinki Final Act, signatory nations are to refrain from direct or indirect assistance to terrorist activities. Bulgaria and the Soviet Union were privy to this at the time of the hearing. The hearing utilized witnesses to shed light as to whether or not Bulgaria and the Soviet Union were honoring this commitment in Principle VI, which was not a guarantee, especially because of Mehmet Ali Agca’s potential involvement in a Turkish arms ring that Bulgarians supported. The hearing was part and parcel of an “essential” effort to carefully and impartially examine all evidence of possible Soviet and Bulgarian involvement with Agca.
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hearing
Soviet Involvement in the Polish Economy
Thursday, April 01, 1982Commissioner Dante B. Fascell chaired this hearing, the purpose of which was to review the record of Soviet involvement in the planning, direction, and operation of the Polish economy. Before the time of this hearing, Soviet involvement in the Polish economy had been the source of much speculation. More specifically, Poland’s economy was functioning poorly, but it was debated whether the fault of this lay more with Poland itself or more with the U.S.S.R. What was hoped to be achieved in the hearing, then, was to shed light on the issue of how Soviet involvement affected the Polish economy, specifically based on the personal experience of one of Poland’s leading economists and a former government official, Ambassador Zdzislaw Rurarz.
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hearing
THE CRISIS IN POLAND AND ITS EFFECTS ON THE HELSINKI PROCESS
Monday, December 28, 1981This hearing focused on the events in Poland, resulting from martial law, as direct violations of the human rights and other provisions of the Final Act and to determine what can be done to preserve human rights gains in that beleaguered country. It is clear now that the aim of this harsh crackdown was the suppression of the Polish workers' movement, Solidarity, as well as the rollback of the unprecedented political reforms and social renewal which that movement had stimulated during the past 16 months. Also discussed was the strategic importance of Poland to the U.S.S.R. and how these developments may show signs of vulnerabilities among the Soviet states.
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hearing
Soviet Violation of Helsinki Final Act: Invasion of Afghanistan
Wednesday, July 22, 1981Attendees at this hearing, over which Commissioner Dante B. Fascell presided, discussed the December 1979 invasion of Afghanistan by the former Soviet Union, an invasion that ran counter to international law due to Afghanistan’s status as sovereign and independent. The set of agreements that the Soviet Union signed on to in 1975 with 34 other countries (i.e. the Helsinki Final Act) incorporated rights inherent in a country’s sovereignty, refraining from the threat or use of force, the rights of peoples to self-determination, and acceptance of international conduct principles. In short, the Soviet Union’s invasion and attempted occupation of Afghanistan had struck at the very heart of these principles, and its invasion had severely damaged the international climate and greatly damaged East-West relations.
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publication
A Thematic Survey of the Documents of the Moscow Helsinki Group
Tuesday, May 12, 1981The Moscow Public Group to Promote Observance of the Helsinki Accords in the USSR (better known as the Moscow Helsinki Group) announced its formation at a press conference for Western journalists on May 12, 1976. The first statement of the Moscow Helsinki Group publicized the names and addresses of the founding members: Professor Yuri Orlov, Group leader; and founding members Lyudmila Alekseeva, Elena Bonner, Aleksandr Ginzburg, Petro Grigorenko, Malva Landa, Anatoly Marchenko, Vitaly Rubin and Anatoly Shcharansky. (Later, ten other human rights activists joined the Moscow Helsinki Group: Sofya Kalistratova, Ivan Kovalev, Naum Meiman, Yuri Mnyukh, Viktor Nekipelov, Tatiana Osipova, Feliks Serebrov, Vladimir Slepak, Leonard Ternovsky and Yuri Yarym-Agaev.) Believing that human needs and open information are directly related to international security, the Group seeks to inform the CSCE states and public opinion about violations in the USSR of the humanitarian provisions of the Final Act. The Moscow Helsinki Group hopes that the information it provides will be considered at those international meetings (the Belgrade Conference, the Madrid Conference and similar future meetings) which are envisioned in the Final Act, under the section "Followup to the Conference," to examine the fulfillment of obligations under the Helsinki Accords. The Group called itself the Group to Promote the observance of the Helsinki Accords to stress its loyalty to the authorities and its desire to cooperate if they revealed a conscientious attitude towards their Helsinki human rights obligations. The Group members called on other CSCE signatories to create similar citizens groups, since violations of the Final Act human rights provisions are possible in any country.
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hearing
Fifth Anniversary of the Formation of the Ukrainian Helsinki Group
Monday, February 16, 1981On November 9, 1976, 10 brave men and women in Kiev organized a citizens' group to examine how the Soviet Government was living up to its Helsinki human rights pledges. Tragically, however, far from greeting this new civic endeavor, the Kremlin, in a savage campaign of official reprisal, singled out the Ukrainian Helsinki Group for especially harsh treatment. By 1981, 30 group activists were in Soviet camps, prisons, and places of exile. The four witnesses at the Helsinki Commission hearing provided expert testimony on Ukraine and the Helsinki process, and their fates gave an insight into the radically different ways in which our Government and that of the Soviet Union reacted to citizen interest in the Helsinki process.
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hearing
Review of Implementation of Basket II of the Helsinki Final Act
Thursday, March 06, 1980This hearing, which Commissioner Jonathan B. Bingham chaired, was a joint meeting of the Commission on Security and Cooperation in Europe and the Subcommittee on International Economic Policy and Trade of the House Foreign Affairs Committee. These organizations held this hearing after the establishment of a new strategy by the U.S. in its relations with the Soviet Union. More specifically, the month before this hearing, the CSCE adopted a resolution condemning the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan and the arrest and exile of Andrei Sakharov as blatant violations of the Helsinki Final Act. Commissioner Millicent Fenwick, who was also one of the sponsors of legislation creating the CSCE, proposed this resolution. Likewise, the resolution called on the signatory states of the Final Act to join in such protest and undertake such sanctions against the former U.S.S.R. as may be available to them. The hearing itself, then, focused on the current status and prospects of U.S. commercial and economic relationships with the U.S.S.R. and Eastern European countries, implementation of Basket II, efforts to promote better implementation, and the impact the Soviet violation of the Helsinki accords in Afghanistan would have on the Madrid Review Session and the CSCE process as a whole.
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hearing
The Helsinki Forum and East-West Scientific Exchange
Thursday, January 31, 1980The Committee on Science and Technology as well as the Committee on Foreign Affairs and the Commission on Security and Cooperation in Europe sponsored the hearing to examine free and open scientific exchange among the OSCE member states. Amidst the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan, Andrei Tverdokhlebov, physicist and human rights activist, gave testimony about the restrictive state of freedom of association in the U.S.S.R., its effects on the scientific community, and attempts by the Soviet Government to silence Andrei Sakharov. The witnesses and the Commissioners discussed possible non-essential travel bans on future scientific exchanges and other joint international scientific efforts.
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publication
Profiles: Helsinki Monitors
Monday, December 10, 1979In May of 1976, a group of Soviet citizens dedicated themselves to promoting compliance by their government with the humanitarian provisions of the Helsinki Final Act. Collecting and disseminating information on violations of those provisions, these human rights activists thereby expressed their stated conviction that "the issues of humanitarianism and free information have a direct relationship to the problem of international security." Respect for human rights in the USSR, they held, is a precondition for the development of a solid East-West detente. After hearing about the work of the Helsinki Groups on foreign radio broadcasts, many ordinary Soviet citizens began sending the Group information on human rights violations in various areas of the USSR. In this way, the Groups became catalysts, drawing together the disparate strands of Soviet dissent. Group reports reflect these varied concerns: conditions in labor camps and psychiatric hospitals; the problems of religious and ethnic minorities; emigration difficulties; and denials of economic rights. The CSCE Commission translates and compiles these Group documents in its series of "Reports of the Helsinki Accord Monitors in the Soviet Union." Encouraged by the success of the first Helsinki Group in Moscow, other such groups were organized in the Ukraine, Lithuania, Armenia, and Georgia. In Moscow, two allied groups were formed to deal with more specific issues: the Working Commission on the Use of Psychiatry for Political Purposes, and the Christian Committee to Defend the Rights of Believers. In recognition of the sacrifice, dedication, and successful work of all these groups, the Commission on Security and Cooperation in Europe nominated all their members for the Nobel Peace Prize in 1978 and 1979. During the past two years, other allied groups have emerged: the Initiative Group for the Defense of the Rights of Invalids in the USSR; the Group for the Legal Struggle and Investigation of Facts about the Persecution of Believers in the USSR of the All-Union Church of the Faithful and Free Seventh-Day Adventists; and the Catholic Committee to Defense the Rights of Believers in the USSR. With the addition of these new committees, an even broader spectrum of human rights issues and interests in the Soviet Union is now represented. At the present time, there are 66 men and women in the Helsinki Monitoring Groups in Moscow, Ukraine, Lithuania, Georgia and Armenia. Currently, 26 people have joined the Christian, Catholic and Adventist Committees, the Working Con-miission on Psychiatric Abuse and the Initiative Group for Invalids. For this compilation of biographical information on the present members, the Commission is indebted to the following for their assistance: ORGANIZATIONS AND PUBLICATIONS Amnesty International, Bulletin d'Information, Comite pour I'application des accords d'Helsinki en Georgie, Committee for the Defense of Soviet Political Prisoners, ELTA Information Service, Helsinki Guarantees for Ukraine Committee, Keston College, Khronika Press, Lithuanian-American Community of the U.S.A., Inc., Lithuanian Catholic Religious Aid, National Conference on Soviet Jewry, Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty, Smoloskyp, Student Struggle for Soviet Jewry, the Ukrainian National Information Service, the Union of Councils for Soviet Jews, Washington Street Research Center. INDIVIDUALS Mr. Victor Abdalov, Mrs. Lyudmila Alekseeva, Gen. and Mrs. Pyotr Grigorenko, Ms. Dina Kaminskaya, Mr. Ambartsum Khlagatyan, Mr. Michael Meerson, Rev. Aleksandr Shmeiman, Mr. Konstantin Simis, Ms. Veronika Stein, Mr. Valentin Turchin, and Ms. Lydia Voronina, Ms. Yulya Zaks.
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hearing
Implementation of The Helsinki Accords Vol. XI – Religious Persecution In U.S.S.R. & HR Violations in Ukraine
Thursday, June 07, 1979The first part of this hearing, led by Commissioner Dante B. Fascell, focused largely on the imprisonment of Russian Pastor Georgi Vins, who had spent eight of the last thirteen years in prison simply due to his occupation. Repression of this Baptist minister exemplified such repression of other Baptist clergymen by the U.S.S.R., whose denomination in the country dated back to the early 1900s. However, in 1965, the Soviet Baptist movement split into the recognized and legitimated all-union Council of Evangelical Christians, and the dissident reform Baptists, making the latter the first Soviet dissident human rights group. The second portion of the hearing discussed Ukrainian political retribution and dissidents, exemplified by the cases of witnesses who had all been political prisoners in the Eastern European country.
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hearing
Implementation of The Helsinki Accords Vol. X – Aleksandr Ginzburg On The Human Rights Situation In The U.S.S.R.
Friday, May 11, 1979CSCE Chairman Dante Fascell presided over this hearing on the human rights situation in the USSR. Aleksandr Ginzburg,a Russian human rights activist who had finally been released from the Gulag Archipelago and subsequently returned to his family, testified. The hearing also focused on the repression and imprisonment of members of the Moscow Helsinki Monitoring Group, a Russian human rights advocacy organization whose work focused on pressure in support of the Helsinki Final Act. The hearing gave Ginzburg a platform to candidly discuss the as human rights abuses taking place in the USSR.
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hearing
Implementation Of The Helsinki Accords Vol. VIII – U.S. Compliance: Human Rights
Tuesday, April 03, 1979Commissioner Claiborne Pell and others in attendance, in this series of hearings, looked at their own country’s record on the Helsinki Final Act of 1975. This hearing signified the first time that a state belonging to the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe (OSCE), or the “Conference,” had looked at its own record in such a manner, taking into account criticism by other signatories and private domestic monitoring groups, no less. This series of hearings’ purpose was to ascertain progress accomplished, learn what more needs to be achieved, and proclaim a reaffirmation of the U.S. commitment to the Helsinki Final Act’s full implementation.
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publication
Reports of the Helsinki Accords Monitors in the Soviet Union
Wednesday, November 01, 1978This volume is the third compilation of selected documents emerging from the Helsinki accord monitoring groups in the Soviet Union published by the Commission on Security and Cooperation in Europe. In a sampling of reports written between late 1976 and the summer of 1978, it is intended, as in the previous compilations, to illustrate the broad range of human rights concerns of the various monitoring groups whose common goal is the furthering of Final Act implementation in their own country. Efforts to promote CSCE compliance in the Soviet Union began in May of 1976 when 11 human rights activists in Moscow, led by Yuri Orlov, formed the first Public Group to Promote Observance of the Helsinki Agreements. Inspired by its example, other Helsinki groups were formed in Kiev, Vilnius, Yerevan and Tbilisi. Additional independent organizations with more narrowly defined focus, such as the Christian Committee for the Defense of Believers' Rights and the Working Commission on the Abuse of Psychiatry for Political Purposes, also emerged. Today, more than 50 group members, representing a broad spectrum of religious, ethnic and professional affiliations, are actively documenting human rights violations and engaged in promoting implementation of the Helsinki accord. While maintaining their individual identities, Soviet monitoring groups have frequently collaborated in their efforts to promote human rights. When the Lithuanian and Ukrainian groups were formed, for example, the Moscow group sponsored a joint news conference to publicize their creation. The Christian Committee, composed of four members of the Russian Orthodox Church, has written appeals on behalf of Adventists, Jews and Baptists. On occasion, two or more groups have issued joint declarations and other documents. Ordinary Soviet citizens, learning of the Helsinki groups via Western radio broadcasts, have traveled thousands of miles from remote regions in order to present documented evidence on human rights violations. Similarly, monitoring group members have journeyed great distances to conduct interviews and related research. Representatives of the Moscow group, for example, were sent to the northern Caucasus and to distant Nakhodka to visit Pentecostal communities desiring to emigrate. The representative documents of the Soviet Helsinki monitoring groups reproduced here address a wide range of human rights concerns: repressions of group members, violations of the rights of ethnic minorities, difficulties of emigration from the USSR, problems of religious believers and difficulties of current and former political prisoners. Economic concerns are also treated in several documents in the compilation. The Soviet monitoring groups carry out their work in an extremely repressive environment. Although 20 members of these organizations have been arrested and imprisoned, many new members have joined. Frequently, documents have been confiscated by the KGB. During a search of Orlov's apartment in Moscow, for example, material documenting persecution of parents advocating religious practices for their children was removed. In another case, Aleksandr Ginzburg's residence was searched and information on the health of seriously ill political prisoners was seized. The documents of the Soviet Helsinki monitors are truly a testament to their strength, courage and dedication. Their long-range goal -- the achievement of a humane society based on respect for law -- has yet to be realized. But already they have attained a moral victory in gaining the attention and respect of private and governmental groups throughout the world.
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hearing
Implementation Of The Helsinki Accords Vol. VI – Soviet Law And Helsinki Monitors
Tuesday, June 06, 1978This briefing discussed the repression against human rights activists in the Soviet Union. Chairman Fascell and Commissioner Leahy oversaw the testimony of several American lawyers representing imprisoned members of the Moscow-Helsinki Group detailing the abuses committed against their clients. Numerous documents from Soviet citizens were also submitted to the record documenting the Soviet authorities’ violations of the Helsinki Accords’ human rights provisions.
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publication
Soviet Law and the Helsinki Monitors
Tuesday, June 06, 1978Between February 3, 1977 and June 1, 1978, twenty Soviet citizens active in the defense of human rights in five different Republics were arrested and imprisoned; two others, traveling abroad on Soviet passports, were stripped of their citizenship and denied the right to return to the USSR. All are members of the Public Groups to Promote Observance of the Helsinki Agreement in the USSR (the Soviet Helsinki Watch) or, in the case of two men, of its subsidiary Working Commission to Investigate the Abuse of Psychiatry for Political Purposes. The twenty-one men and one woman are being punished under a variety of different criminal charges. Their "crime," however, is identical: political dissent, expressed in the non-violent, open effort to spur Soviet authorities to implement the human rights and humanitarian undertakings of the August 1975 Final Act of the Conference on Security and Cooperation in Europe (the Helsinki Accord.) The following study by the staff of the U. S. Commission on . Security and Cooperation in Europe examines the workings of Soviet law and criminal procedure as applied in these cases of political dissent. It discusses the guarantees of Soviet law, including international covenants ratified by the USSR, against arbitrary arrest and unfair trial and compares those to the practices used against the Helsinki Watchers. From the study it is evident that those guarantees -- both substantive and procedural -- have been repeatedly violated in the persecution and prosecution of the twenty-two human rights activists. The violations uncovered range from improper conduct of pre-arrest house searches through illegally prolonged pre-trial detention to unlawful denial of the rights of the defense at the trial. This pattern of official conduct toward free, but dissenting political expression is not new in the Soviet Union. In the treatment of the Soviet Helsinki Watch, however, it has been systematic and can be termed, without question, a gross and intentional violation of both the pledges in the Final Act and the safeguards promised by the Soviet Constitution, Criminal Codes and Codes of Criminal Procedure.
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hearing
Implementation of the Helsinki Accords Vol. V – The Right to Citizenship in the Soviet Union
Thursday, May 04, 1978Commissioners Fascell and Pell, along with other commissioners and witnesses, discussed the plight of the witnesses themselves (musicians Mstislav Rostropovich and Galina Vishnevskaya). More specifically, these musicians, an acclaimed cellist and an opera singer, respectively, both arbitrarily had their citizenships revoked by Soviet authorities, without a fair trial (i.e. a right to an appeal, a hearing, and a right to a defense). These individuals’ predicament underscored similar situations of other Soviet citizens whom the government had revoked the citizenships of, a practice that the U.S. Supreme Court has classified as “cruel and unusual punishment.”
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hearing
IMPLEMENTATION OF THE HELSINKI ACCORDS VOL. IV - REPORTS ON SOVIET REPRESSION AND THE BELGRADE CONFERENCE
Sunday, June 05, 1977In light of first anniversary of the creation of the Commission on Security and Cooperation in Europe, this hearing focused on the work and the plight of courageous individuals who utilized the Helsinki accords as instruments for advancing international respect for human rights. In particular, the hearing delved into the case of Anatoly Shcharansky, one of the most courageous spokesmen of human rights in the U.S.S.R., faces treason charges as groundless as they are ominous. The Soviet decision to hold a show trial for Shcharansky with phony evidence and counterfeit witnesses combined with the earlier arrest of members of Helsinki monitoring groups in Russia, Ukraine, and most recently, in Georgia, were in violation of the Helsinki accords.
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hearing
Implementation of the Helsinki Accords Vol. III – Information Flow, And Cultural And Educational Exchanges
Tuesday, May 17, 1977In this hearing, Commissioner Dante Fascell and others discussed the impact that the Helsinki Accords had on easing and expanding the flow of ideas and information across ideological and international frontiers. The rationale for this hearing, which consisted of three mornings of testimony, was that, while the Commission has had a long and storied history of hearing and discussing the movement of people, one goal of the Helsinki Accords is to diminish the obstacles that keep the views of others out, which are also the borders that restrict freedom of movement for people.
Mr. Speaker, next week following the NATO conference in Prague, President Bush is scheduled to meet with President Putin in St. Petersburg, Russia. It is expected that the two leaders will discuss such vital issues as the war against terrorism, the policies in Iraq, safeguards against weapons of mass destruction, and expanded energy cooperation between the United States and Russia. I would urge Mr. Bush to include on the agenda the continuing conflict in Chechnya.
At this time, the Russian Government and its people are still recovering from the horrific events of last month, when a group of armed Chechen terrorists seized approximately 700 hostages in a Moscow theater and threatened them with execution if the Putin Administration did not withdraw its forces from Chechnya. After three days of terror, Russian special forces captured the theater, apparently killing all the terrorists. In the preliminary gas attack to neutralize the terrorists, over one hundred hostages lost their lives. This terrorist attack was appropriately condemned by the Bush Administration, and we all sympathize with the innocent victims of this attack.
But Mr. Speaker, this does not mean that we should not step back and seriously examine the circumstances that have driven some elements of the Chechen resistance to such suicidal extremes.
Perhaps it is because the Russian military, in its drive to suppress Chechen separatism, has employed means which virtually guaranteed to drive a despairing civilian population into the arms of a radicalized resistance. In the three and a half years since the war reignited when Chechen militants invaded neighboring Dagestan, the Russian military has embarked on a campaign of carnage, destruction, and looting against the civilian population. There are credible and ongoing reports of atrocities committed by members of the Russian military – indiscriminate shelling and bombing, murder, assault, rape, torture, arrests and “disappearances,” kidnaping and holding civilians for ransom. It is imperative that military personnel who commit such egregious human rights violations face criminal charges but the Russian military and judicial system has yet to demonstrate its commitment to bring such criminal actions to account.
Nor should we have any illusions about some elements among the Chechen fighters, who have murdered hostages, kidnapped civilians for ransom and used them as shields during combat operations, and embarked on a campaign of assassination against fellow Chechens who work for the Russian civil government in Chechnya. And, as Deputy Assistant Secretary of State Steve Pifer testified before the Helsinki Commission, “We have seen evidence of individuals or certain factions in Chechnya who are linked to international terrorist elements, including Al Qaeda.” Without a doubt, war criminals and terrorists should be brought to justice, wherever they are and whomever they serve.
In the wake of the attack on the theater in Moscow, President Putin has hardened an already uncompromising position against the Chechen fighters. But, it should be clear that the Russian scorched-earth policy against Chechnya and the Chechen people is not bringing peace to the region. Rather, such policies are sowing the dragon’s teeth of hatred and conflict for generations to come.
The distinguished Newsweek commentator Fareed Zakaria recently wrote:
Terrorism is bad, but those fighting terror can be very nasty, too. And the manner in which they fight can make things much, much worse. It is a lesson we had better learn fast because from Egypt to Pakistan to Indonesia, governments around the world are heightening their repression and then selling it to Washington as part of the war on terror. Russian officials called the Chechen fighters “rebels” or “bandits” until recently. Now they are all “international Islamic terrorists.”
Secretary of State Colin Powell continues to call for the observation of human rights and a political settlement in Chechnya, while consistently and properly supporting Russia’s territorial integrity. But as the Danish Foreign Minister, Anders Fogh Rasmussen, recently summed up the issue, “We, of course, support Russia in the fight against terrorism ... but it is not a long-term solution to the Chechnya problem to launch a military action and bomb the country to pieces."
In addition, the war in Chechnya has affected thousands of refugees, who have fled the constant carnage. In September of this year, I and 10 other colleagues from both the House and Senate wrote President Putin regarding the plight of the internally displaced persons escaping Chechnya to the neighboring province of Ingushetia. We urged the president to resist the forcible return of internally displaced persons seeking refuge in Ingushetia, elsewhere in the Russian Federation, or to any location where the security situation is unstable and proper housing unavailable. However, I have recently learned of 300 Chechen families who are currently facing expulsion from Ingushetia and are seeking refugee status in Kazakhstan. I hope the Russian Government will not expel these individuals, but instead will take all possible actions to alleviate the situation for the many innocent victims of the brutal violence.
Mr. Speaker, I strongly urge President Bush to include these important issues in his talks with President Putin when they meet in St. Petersburg.