Speech by Sen. Bob Graham (D-Florida), June 6, 2002

Speech by Sen. Bob Graham (D-Florida), June 6, 2002

Mr. GRAHAM. Mr. President, offering this amendment was for the purpose of affording our colleagues an opportunity to express their strong opinions and to indicate to the American people the great importance of the relationship between our Nation and the peoples of Colombia for our mutual well-being. As our colleague from Minnesota has just said, this is an issue that deserves full debate.

Given the hour of the night, given the fact that it is my hope that when this matter reaches conference, the Senate conferees will look carefully at the proposals that our House colleagues have already adopted to allow the use of Department of Defense-funded equipment in the war against terrorism as well as the counternarcotics war, I will ask to withdraw the amendment and hope we will have an opportunity at a future date to have a full debate on the United States relationship with Colombia.

As of June 19, 2002, this document was also available online at http://thomas.loc.gov/cgi-bin/query/R?r107:FLD001:S55163