Mr. HAMILTON. Mr. Fraser, thank you very much for your contribution to the subcommittee deliberations.

The next witness will be Congresswoman Abzug.

STATEMENT OF HON. BELLA S. ABZUG, A REPRESENTATIVE IN CONGRESS FROM THE STATE OF NEW YORK

MS. ABZUG. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.

I have a statement which I would like to have made a part of the record.

Mr. HAMILTON. Without objection, your statement will be inserted in the record.

Ms. ABZUG. As many of you know, I have consistently opposed our involvement in Cambodia. The Congress is not responsible for this involvement. War in Cambodia, as we all know, was brought there by executive decision in 1970-first with our troops, then with our bombs and then with our dollars. We wanted a beachhead in our Vietnam fight and we have succeeded very sadly in practically devastating that whole country.

MEETING IN CAMBODIA

I went to Cambodia last week expecting to see a continuing war, expecting to see a weak government unable to rally the forces to conduct any meaningful fight against the other side. I saw exactly that, and I found out a great deal by talking with the general who I understand is in the process of being removed or leaving-General Fernandez-by talking directly with the Prime Minister and questioning even Lon Nol about the corruption in his own army and his own government. The officials do not deny this corruption, but they claim they are making some effort to do something about it.

However, I was not prepared for the degree of devastation which has been visited upon those people essentially by our giving the military aid which allows that devastation to continue. We have all heard of the many refugees in that land but never did I fully realize that the refugees were at least half of the Cambodian population. Never did I realize, until I saw it, the degree of misery that we have brought to those people the starvation, the despair, the uprooting.

I went to the Hotel Cambodiana which is right near the center of Phnom Penh and there were thousands of huddled masses with nothing to look to and nothing to do and nothing to expect except the hope of getting a little bit of rice. I was almost unable to speak at the picture of devastation.

REFUGEE CAMP

I then went to another refugee camp on Route 4 on my way to an artillery unit at the front. The same thing. The only difference was that they had outdoors a little bit of surrounding atmosphere to make it appear that there was some chance for life.

At the front I talked to an artillery unit about a half a mile away from the firing. There I found that there was not the morale for continuing the kind of war that we are talking about. The soldiers told me that when fighting began, the troops deserted. In their own unit where

there had not yet been significant fighting, soldiers remained only until others began to flee.

There is a great deal of demoralization at the center. In Phnom Penh itself it is difficult to determine that the nation is at war. We were not there as the people were bombed, so of course we did not see that. But otherwise in Phnom Penh there appears to be normal activity. People are just proceeding in their usual routines and not being mobilized to conduct any kind of significant defense of their area. Mr. McCloskey will go into the details in terms of the forces and so on, I won't take the time now.

BLOODBATH THERE TODAY

I merely wish to point this out. It is argued that we must give military aid because if we do not there will be a bloodbath. One thing we did discover, there is no greater bloodbath than that which is taking place presently and can only take place with our military assistance. The casualty figures are a minimum of 5,000 per month on the Khmer side and maybe double that on the Khmer Rouge side let alone the number of civilian casualties which have been estimated to be anywhere from 7,000 and up per month.

So by all estimates one can calculate casualties at 15,000 per month or, as some more objective observers have indicated from time to time in various newspapers and other places, up to 25,000 per month. I ask you whether 3 more months of military assistance is not the creation by this body of the bloodbath that people talk about. That means roughly 75,000 more persons.

SUFFERING GREAT

What the people in Cambodia are suffering from is military activity which is dislocating them from their homes, which is preventing them from finding the ways to live and grow any food, creating starvation among the masses of the people. I find it very ironic that anyone of the group that visited Cambodia-and I sympathize with the tortures. that we have all been through-could suggest that the way in which we can help is to give military assistance which would cause further destruction in that country. I ask you, as I have asked a number of other people in this Congress, suppose we were asked to address either 75,000 or 100,000 of those Cambodians who may very well lose their lives or be maimed by our military assistance for the next 3-month period. If you got these Cambodian men, women and children together in front of the Capitol and they said to you, "Why do I have to die?" or "Why do I have to be wounded?" or "Why should my dreams be shattered?" or "Why should my body be mangled?"-What would you tell them? That we are doing it in order to avoid a bloodbath?

OUTCOME CERTAIN

When we first came back it was suggested that there was very little hope in the war itself, that the Khmer Rouge undoubtedly were going to be victorious and that military aid should be given to permit time for negotiations. Well, that hope-if it ever was real-has long since gone. The U.S. Ambassador Dean now admits there is no chance of

saving the Lon Nol regime although he had not quite said that when we saw him. Secretary Kissinger, who is reputed to be unenthusiastic about the negotiation situations, is unwilling to get involved, not even in the question of negotiating the transfer of power. He still talks in terms of military strength.

You had your own testimony here from CIA Director William Colby, Assistant Secretary of State Philip Habib, and others, all of whom made it clear, I think, that the guarantee of any appropriations would not produce any kind of settlement. Even Hugh Scott seems to question whether or not there has to be some change in the top of the Government before anything can be done. Lon Nol, even though his remarks I think have been misinterpreted, has made it clear that he does not intend to resign although his own party members are urging him to step down.

WHY BLOODBATH WOULD BE

What is the bloodbath that we are talking about? I think that Lon Nol and his supporters who are considered collaborationists by the Khmer Rouge are in jeopardy and I think that efforts have to be made to fly them to safety. If this is done, there may be much less of a bloodbath. But you have to remember that this is a civil war in which brother fights brother, largely at the instigation of the United States. Therefore, what we have to do is to find the way to utilize our involvement there to arrange for an orderly transfer of power.

MORAL OBLIGATION

I think we do have a moral obligation, Mr. du Pont; we conducted that war; it is our war. We have influence there and we have a responsibility. If the concern that we have is to limit as much as we can any kind of bloody aftermath, then we have to make provisions to bring Prince Sihanouk and other concerned parties who can negotiate a peaceful transition of power instead of continuing the war which is destroying the Cambodian people.

I think that it is foolish and naive to suggest that we should not now interfere in a political and a diplomatic way. We have already interfered in a military way. What do you think the military aid has been but direction and support of a government that has represented only a small clique?

When we unsettled Cambodia's Government, when we participated in unseating Mr. Sihanouk, we interfered. You may not have, I may not have, but the executive branch of this Government interfered. By sustaining an unpopular and corrupt Government, we have interfered.

ROLE OF CONGRESS IMPORTANT

I think the Congress could bring a breath of fresh air to the American public, overwhelmingly opposed to this kind of interference, if we showed the capacity to say: This is a terrible situation; we are sorry for what we have done there. We now recognize our responsibility to help those people live, to stop raining death on them, to bring peace there, to stop the killing. We are going to try to see to it that the people who are winning that war will share power and

not kill off their adversaries. We are going to make an appeal to them and involve other nations with us in making that appeal, so that Sihanouk or whoever else might be helpful will be consulted.

It is silly to pretend that the opposition forces have no representatives. There are many leaders in that national front that can indeed represent varied interests. We should try not only to provide for the safety of those who are presently in government but also to provide a way in which those who wish to leave Cambodia can do so.

FOOD AND MEDICAL SUPPLIES NEEDED

It is important that we have a distribution of food and medical supplies for those people. The survival of human beings is very much our responsibility regardless of how the transfer of power takes place, because we have devastated the Cambodian society. We have destroyed their capacity to build a country or to grow their own food. I think we should deliver food and medicine through international organizations. It has to be done in a such a way that the food reaches civilians and refugees, not just the soldiers as before. To continue to talk about military aid is ridiculous, I think it is callous. I think it is absolutely obscene at this stage in the history of Cambodia.

I have never been more moved by human misery and suffering and I would not give one more penny to impose another day's suffering upon those people. Food and medical supplies, I think we must find the way to deliver to them. Military aid has to be cut off immediately and we have to restore some order to the chaos that we have created there.

[The prepared statement of Congresswoman Abzug follows:] PREPARED STATEMENT OF HON. BELLA S. ABZUG, A REPRESENTATIVE IN CONGRESS FROM THE STATE OF NEW YORK

Mr. Chairman, I appreciate the opportunity to come before you this morning to comment briefly on an Administration request to remove the ceiling on U.S. aid to Cambodia and specifically to appropriate $222 million more in military aid.

This is incorporated in H.R. 2704, introduced February 4 by Mr. Morgan of Pennsylvania and Mr. Broomfield of Michigan at the request of the Administration. That bill was referred to the Foreign Affairs Committee, where it is now pending.

This bill would remove the ceiling that Congress has set on aid to Cambodia. That ceiling, incidently, was not some afterthought. Indeed, the Foreign Aid Authorization bill came to the House floor in December without any Cambodia ceiling in it. It was only added after Mr. Conte took leadership in offering the amendment and then beat back two efforts to weaken it on the floor.

In conference, the total amount of military aid approved was $275 million for Cambodia for fiscal year 1975-$200 million under the ceiling and a special $75 million available under the draw down authority. Now, only a few weeks later the Administration is requesting another $222 million-an 80 percent increase!

Mr. Chairman, as you know, I had the opportunity two weeks ago, along with several of my colleagues, to visit Cambodia and South Vietnam. I made no secret of the fact that I went to South Vietnam and Cambodia opposed to any further military aid there. I expected to find a continuing war to which I have been opposed since its inception. I was not prepared, however, for what I was to find on this visit. The degree of human misery, corruption, and political repression caused by American support of the Thieu and Lon Nol governments, quite frankly, exceeded anything I had seen on a brief visit to South Vietnam two years ago. I have come back with the deepened conviction that we must extricate ourselves from that quagmire immediately. We are not doing the

Cambodians any favor by continuing to pour in arms and perpetuating the carnage.

But, people ask me, what about our commitments? Won't we be breaking our word and creating distrust of U.S. intentions?

The record shows that the Congress has never made a commitment to the survival of any government in Cambodia. The Administration may have made a unilateral commitment, but this Congress never joined in. Under close questioning by members of the Foreign Affairs Committee in November, 1970, when the first request for U.S. military aid to Cambodia was made, then Secretary of State Rogers repeatedly said that U.S. military assistance to Cambodia was not related to any SEATO commitment. It was, in fact, not related to any treaty commitment. It was tied to the withdrawal of U.S. troops in Vietnam and the success of the Vietnamization program, both of which have now been completed. For example, Mr. Kazen asked: "Mr. Secretary, just exactly what is our commitment to Cambodia at this time?" Secretary Rogers replied: "Really, we have no commitment. We have no treaty obligations with Cambodia."

We don't have a legal commitment to Cambodia. Certainly the Congress has no commitment to a war that was started illegally by the Nixon administration and continued without regard for the will of Congress or the American people. What we have, basically, is a month to month lease. The Administration asks us for money, we appropriate it, or we cut it, or we refuse it. Any time Congress wants to terminate the arrangement it can. Last December we in Congress said we would pay $275 million for military aid to Cambodia for the fiscal year ending June 30th. Now, the Administration is back, asking for that 80 percent increase. But we don't have to agree to it. There is no commitment. If they can convince us on the merits, fine. But not by speciously arguing some sort of commitment.

Well, we're told, maybe you don't have a commitment, but you have a "moral obligation." I'm not quite sure what that means. To whom do we owe our moral obligation? Is it to General Lon Nol and the narrow group of people around him who hold power and run a corrupt regime? What morality binds us to that small group of men?

If we are told that we have a moral commitment to the Cambodian people to continue the war, they may wish we hadn't cared so much. Since 1970, the United States has dominated Cambodia, first with our troops, then with our bombs, then with our dollars. During that period, more than half of all Cambodians have become refugees with 60,000 new refugees in January of this year. By official count, civilian casualties in Cambodia during 1974 averaged 7,000 per month for a total of 84,000 (Kennedy Subcommittee, January 27, 1975 report). Will sending more arms to be used by both sides carry out some sort of "moral obligation" or will this just inflict more pain and suffering?

But, others argue, think of the terrible bloodbath that will occur if we stop sending arms to Cambodia. We must prevent that from happening. I know we are all concerned about bloodshed, and are aware of the possibilities of violence in a rapid change of government in a wartime situation. But let's look at the record. When our delegation was in Cambodia, we were told by U.S. officials that FANK claimed 4,260 Cambodian armed forces personnel had been killed in the first 50 days of this year-just about the same number who were recruited in the same period. Some 15,000 people were wounded in the countryside in January and February. According to estimates of our embassy, about 30,000 people were killed or wounded in two months. Other more dispassionate observers report killed and wounded on both sides, including civilians, total about 25,000 a month. In the bill now before you, the Administration proposes to fund that war until June 30. Based on the experience so far this year, 100,000 people who are alive today in Cambodia will be dead or wounded by July 1. Is this not a bloodbath? And this carnage has been going on in Cambodia since 1970.

Just imagine yourself addressing a crowd of those 100,000 Cambodian men, women and children in front of the Capitol and someone shouts up the question: "Why do we have to die or be wounded, with our hopes and dreams shattered, our bodies mangled?" What can you tell them? That you are doing it so you can avoid a bloodbath? This argument defies reality and common sense.

For awhile we were told that this new military aid was to "stimulate negotiations." That hope-if it was ever real—is long since gone. Even the U.S. Ambassador, John Gunther Dean, admits that there is no chance of saving the Lon Nol regime. Secretary of State Kissinger, unenthusiastic about the negotiation situation, is unwilling to even get involved in negotiating the transfer of political power which is inevitable. He still talks in terms of military strength. Yesterday, 52-900-765