world and their determination to disassociate and distance themselves from governments that perpetuate consistent and gross violations of universallyrecognized human rights. Studying Mr. Lefever's own written and spoken words, it is clear that he lacks the sensitivity and the commitment.

Third, the person who is to occupy the Office of Assistant Secretary for Human Rights and Humanitarian Affairs should have concern for the protec tion of human rights on a universal rather than a selective basis. Unfortunately, the Administration's designee in his written and oral statements has clearly emphasized that what should concern us is where human rights violations have taken place. Thus, human rights violations that occur in Communist countries merit our attention more than equally outrageous violations in other countries. This selective view surely will undermine the credibility of U.S. actions on behalf of human rights. It is unacceptable.

Fourth, how the Senate acts on this confirmation will most certainly send a clear signal around the world as to our future policies on human rights. The Senate can show that despite the conflicting voices heard on human rights concerns, the United States has not weakened its commitment nor is it going to abandon human rights as an aspect of foreign policy.

The Senate can indicate to repressive regimes of the right or left that the Congress will not allow them to repress their people, violate personal integrity, deny basic economic needs or stifle political expression unchallenged.

The Senate can signal the policymakers, diplomats and career officers alike, that there should be continued attention to and adherence of human rights concerns. The human rights standards have served to educate and raise the consciousness of our officials to human rights conditions internationally. That can be undermined if the officials concerned perceive a lack of concern.

The Senate can indicate that the Congress continues to serve as the voice of conscience of the American people. Concern for human rights has been of immeasurable help in our relations with Africa and the Third World in general. Our human rights policies have saved lives; given encouragement to indigenous human rights movements in such diverse countries as Korea, China, Soviet Union and Argentina; contributed to a climate that promotes a solidarity movement in Poland; contributed to peaceful and democratic development where otherwise extremist forces might have prevailed; and, our human rights policy emphasizes the importance of the fact that human rights have given us an important weapon in our ideological struggle with the Soviet Union.

Human rights concerns have been part of a growing international consensus. e.g., the Universal Declaration of Human Rights; the International Covenant on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights; the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights, etc. The U.N., OAS and the European Commission of Human Rights actively promote universal principles of human rights. Our support for human rights enhances U.S. influence in important international forums and with world public opinion.

Furthermore, human rights serves our long-term national interest because countries that respect human rights make stronger allies and closer friends.

The wrong signal, however, harms the individuals and groups concerned, leads to increased abuses and ultimately to unstable conditions.

In a world where arrest without warrant; detention without trial; "disappearance"; genocidal acts; torture, summary executions and internal exile are becoming more and more the rule rather than the exception, you must act forcefully. You must not allow human rights to be trivialized and set aside by this appointment. You must not allow the human rights aspirations of people the world over to be misrepresented and demeaned. Again, I respectfully urge you to vote against this nomination.

The CHAIRMAN. Thank you, Congressman Bonker.

Congressman Wilson, I understand your statement will only last 2 or 3 minutes. If so, why don't you proceed then.

STATEMENT OF HON. CHARLES WILSON. A REPRESENTATIVE IN CONGRESS FROM TEXAS

Mr. WILSON. Thank you very much, Mr. Chairman.

Mr. Chairman, I would like to point out that as far as I can remember, the last 2 years have been the only 2 years for which we have not been able to pass an appropriation bill on foreign affairs. The

reason why we haven't had an appropriation bill is very simple. The previous administration would not conduct foreign policy in a bipartisan manner, nor even with the broad support of the Democratic Party; but rather with a very narrow wing of the Democratic Party, as far as human rights were concerned.

I don't believe that the last administration could have possibly appointed a more inconsistent person than they appointed as the Assistant Secretary for Human Rights. It cost an enormous number of votes from those of us who generally supported rather heavy appropriations for foreign aid. We really believe that the United States should feed the poor of the world when we can-the poorest of the poor-but that we shouldn't make a distinction between a poor Indian in Chile and a poor Indian in Panama, for instance.

The feelings in the House run very deep on the question of human rights, as you can see from the divergent opinions expressed here today. Over the past 4 years, Members like myself who supported the foreign aid bills had to endure rather disagreeable times with the sermonizing and the preaching that went on under the past administration. I might add that their policy was ineffective because they could not demonstrate why Chile was bad but Tanzania was good, that Panama was good but Nicaragua was bad, that an election in Chile on the government is a sham, but an election in Panama on the canal is a great egalitarian exercise.

I disagree profoundly with my colleagues from the House who say that the State Department's country-by-country reports on human rights practices are a great tool. I personally would like to see them made a private matter, and I think it would greatly smooth our relationship with Latin America.

But finally. I would appeal to this committee to give this administration their human rights advocate. No one has questioned Mr. Lefever's integrity; no one has questioned his intellectual equipment; they have only questioned his philosophy. Given the fact that opposition to the past administration's human rights policy made it impossible to bring a foreign operations appropriation bill to the floor, I respectfully request that the Senate give Mr. Lefever's approach of quiet diplomacy a chance.

I would point out to my friends with a differing viewpoint from mine, that Mr. Lefever is not the only man in the United States that believes human rights can best be achieved by using less pyrotechnics and more diplomacy. The President can certainly find others to represent his policy, but I can assure you he is not going to appoint Pat Derian as Assistant Secretary for Human Rights, no matter what my friends say.

I will simply leave it at that.

The CHAIRMAN. Thank you very much, Congressman Wilson. Congressman Harkin.

STATEMENT OF HON. TOM HARKIN, A REPRESENTATIVE IN CONGRESS FROM IOWA

Mr. HARKIN. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.

Mr. Chairman, listening to the previous testimony, I was struck by one thing. We seem to be focusing on Mr. Lefever. I submit to you

and members of this committee that this issue transcends Mr. Lefever, that the vote that you will take, whether to approve or disapprove of Mr. Lefever's nomination, will have a profound effect on individual human lives throughout the world. The vote to approve or disapprove Mr. Lefever, I believe, will have an effect on whether some people will live or whether some people will die. I believe it will have an effect that some people will be imprisoned, some will be free. Some will have access to a trial, others will be tortured and disappear.

Last night I was privileged to meet for the first time and to have dinner with Jacobo Timerman, an individual on whose behalf I know you, Mr. Chairman, and others have worked in the past to free from the Argentinian jail in which he was placed. He said something at the dinner last night that struck me. He said, "The main effect of human rights laws and human rights efforts is that it saves lives, as it saved mine."

So I think that as you deliberate on this, I know that you and other members of this committee will keep that in mind, that it goes beyond Mr. Lefever. It will send a message that will ripple throughout the world, whether or not he is approved or disapproved.

Mr. Chairman, I want to focus my remarks this morning on the human rights policy and on an aspect of it that has not heretofore been brought up. There are many aspects to a human rights policy. Setting an example by the way we foster human rights in our own society is of course one way. It is in fact indispensable if we are to possess any moral authority in the international arena.

Of course, we must also be strong economically and militarily so that we can pursue all of our various interests, including our human rights interests in the world.

I share those concerns with the Reagan administration and with Mr. Lefever in particular, but those two elements do not constitute a human rights policy. The bottom line, if you will, the indispensable element of a human rights policy is linkage. A government whose human rights observance we would like to see improved must know that if it does not change, it will suffer in its bilateral and its multilateral relations with the United States. U.S. economic and military assistance, as well as U.S. votes in international banks must be linked to a government's human rights policy.

Of course, the policy of linkage is not absolute. It must, and it will, vary according to the strategic position of a specific country, as well as according to a country's history and stage of development.

I believe that human rights should be the cornerstone of U.S. foreign policy; but without the concept of linkage, our human rights policy has no teeth, and becomes empty rhetoric.

The administration has stated on occasion that the concern for human rights has not diminished, only that the methods have changed. From now on we are told the United States will press its concerns quietly, through quiet diplomacy. But I submit that that is a bogus issue. The issue is not public or private diplomacy, it is the linkage between our rhetoric and our actions.

Under the law-and I would submit, Mr. Chairman, it is the law passed by Congress, not the previous administration or the administration before that, but the law as passed by this Congress, the House and the Senate-under these laws, governments know that if they do

not do X or if they do Y, then the United States will do Z. That is linkage.

In the past, U.S. linkage coupled with international action and scrutiny, I believe, has helped to moderate some of the worst violations, averted torture, imprisonment, assassination, and terrorism in some instances, and I believe this linkage has promoted the restoration of democracy in others. I mention as a few the Dominican Republic, Ecuador, Peru, Zimbabwe, and Nigeria, just to cite a few. I would also mention, Mr. Chairman, that the very basis of the Helsinki Accord is linkage.

Look what has occurred in the short time that this new policy-the new policy of not having any linkage has been announced. On February 27 the Argentine Government detained for a time the country's most prominent and respected human rights leaders. In Guatemala, the military moved into Indian communities and carried out wholesale massacre of unarmed Indian peasants. In Spain a fascist coup was attempted against the government of King Juan Carlos. The South African military, 3 days after Secretary of State Haig's pronouncements putting international terrorism above human rights, launched a raid against South African civilians in Mozambique.

Now, what the Guatemalan military, an obscure fascist colonel in Spain and the South African military all shared was a belief that there would be no change, no change in U.S. relations as a result of their

actions.

I am not saying that the new administration promoted these occurrences; far from it. But by abandoning in a very noisy way the policy of linkage, I believe the administration must share some of the responsibilities.

Mr. Lefever, in his statements, has made it very clear that he opposes linkage. In testimony before Congressman Bonker's subcommittee in July 1979 he stated: "It should not be necessary for any friendly state to pass a human rights test before we extend normal trade relations, sell arms, or provide economic or security assistance." Further, Mr. Lefever said: "Economic and military aid should be given or withheld to encourage sound external policies but not to reform domestic institutions or practices, however obnoxious they may be."

Mr. Lefever stands for a policy that in my judgment is not only immoral, but also strategic folly. Human-rights-violating governments are nearly always unstable allies. They are unstable allies because they are unstable governments. A systematic pattern of gross violations, indiscriminate murder, and torture is enormously destructive of a country's economic, political, and social institutions.

By pursuing a policy of human rights linkage. the United States may be able to encourage the reforms, including a respect for human rights, which enable a government to survive and forestall a revolutionary dynamic. But if we do as Mr. Lefever suggests, and do nothing and say nothing except privately, we also risk losing the affection of the people of a country, as I believe we did in Iran, and we risk having to face a virulently anti-American government.

On the other hand, an activist human rights policy with linkage. makes it more likely that even if a government changes, the interests of the United States would be secure because the United States would still enjoy good will among the people.

Finally, Mr. Chairman, if we abandon a real human rights policy. we will lose one of our best political and diplomatic tools in our ideological battle with the Soviet Union.

The world already knows America's record on human rights compared to the Soviet Union, but that tool will be useless and have no credibility unless the United States is ready to address human rights violations in allied countries with the same standards and with the same sanctions that we do in Communist countries.

In closing, Mr. Chairman, because Mr. Lefever has no concept of the strategic or political importance of linkage in the human rights efforts of American foreign policy, I find his nomination to the position of Assistant Secretary of State for Human Rights and Humanitarian Affairs to be particularly inappropriate.

I urge the Senate to advise a "no" on his nomination.
Thank you.

[Congressman Harkin's prepared statement follows:]

PREPARED STATEMENT OF HON. TOM HARKIN

Thank you for offering me this opportunity to testify. Mr. Chairman. It is an honor to be here. I wish to commend you for devoting your time to exploring fully the responsibilities of the Office of Assistant Secretary for Human Rights and Humanitarian Affairs and the qualifications of Mr. Ernest Lefever for that office. Mr. Chairman, as the sponsor of the original legislative effort in the Congress to limit U.S. foreign assistance to gross violators of human rights and as one who has actively supported a strong human rights policy, I am profoundly disturbed by the appointment of Ernest Lefever to the position of Assistant Secretary of State for Human Rights and Humanitarian Affairs.

The Secretary of State, the U.N. Ambassador, and other Administration spokesmen have made it clear that human rights violations by our allies are no longer a priority concern to the government of the United States. Dictatorships around the world now believe that repression and abuse of their citizens will not stand in the way of cordial relations with the United States including U.S. financial backing and military aid. The appointment of Ernest Lefever is the clearest sign that past human rights policies have been repudiated.

In response to this new policy, a wave of terror, repression and adventurism has taken place. The most lawless and brutal elements within Army and security forces have been emboldened, and military dictators have declared war on political, religious, and social opposition.

Already this year, the Argentine Government detained for a time the country's most prominent and respected human rights leaders (February 27, 28). In Guatemala, the military has moved into Indian communities and carried out wholesale massacres of unarmed Indian peasants (winter 1981). In Spain, a right wing fascist coup was attempted against the government of King Juan Carlos (February 23). In El Salvador, Major D'Abuison, who has attempted several ultra-right wing coups against the government, boasts openly of backing in the new Administration. The South African military, three days after Secretary of State Haig's pronouncements putting international terrorism above human rights, launched a raid against South African civilians in Mozambique (January 30).

These events did not occur accidentally. They occurred in the context of explicit U.S. denial of concern about torture, assassination, and arbitrary arrest. The Administration, and Mr. Lefever in particular, would have us believe that concern for human rights has not been diminished: only the methods have changed. From now on, the United States will press its concerns privately through quiet diplomacy.

But that is a bogus issue. The issue is not public or private diplomacy; it is linkage. What the Guatemalan military, an obscure fascist Colonel in Spain, and the South African military all shared was a belief that there would be no change in U.S. relations as a result of their actions.

Under the Carter Administration, governments learned that if they did not do "X" or did do "Y", the United States would do "Z". That is linkage. In the past, U.S. linkage coupled with international action and scrutiny helped mod