CENTER URGES SENATOR HANK BROWN TO HOLD MARTIN INDYK TO SAME STANDARD AS OTHER CLINTON NOMINEES: DEFICIENT POLICY JUDGMENTS REFLECT ON QUALIFICATIONS

(Washington, D.C.): Today at 2:00 p.m., the Senate
Foreign Relations Committee will hold a hastily scheduled hearing
concerning the controversial nomination of Martin Indyk to become
U.S. Ambassador to Israel. In the chair will be Senator Hank
Brown (R-CO), a man whose service on the Committee has been
distinguished in recent years by his belief — which the Center
for Security Policy shares — that a nominee’s policy
judgments must be carefully considered in evaluating his or her
qualifications for sensitive government posts.

The Center regards the Indyk appointment as one in which it
is especially important for the Senate to scrutinize the
ambassador-designate’s views on sensitive policy issues. After
all, in his capacity as the Clinton Administration’s senior
Middle East specialist on the National Security Council, Mr.
Indyk has been intimately involved in an initiative about which
the chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, Sen.
Jesse Helms (R-NC), Sen. Brown and many other legislators have
publicly expressed misgivings: the proposed deployment of U.S.
forces on the Golan Heights as part of an Israeli-Syrian peace
agreement.

Indyk and the Golan Deployment

Martin Indyk has been personally engaged in bilateral
and trilateral discussions concerning such a deployment that have
been underway for months. As a result, he is thoroughly familiar
with the advanced state of related planning and preparations
underway in the Pentagon and the State Department in Washington
and in Jerusalem and Damascus. It remains to be seen whether he
will be candid with Committee members in response to questions
about these negotiations and associated activities.

It is certainly true, however, that Mr. Indyk has to this
point been at pains to prevent the American people — and their
elected representatives — from having an informed debate about
the wisdom of a Golan deployment until after it has become
effectively a fait accompli. For example, Mr. Indyk used a White
House meeting last December with over 100 American Jewish leaders
and others interested in U.S. Middle East policy, to denounce
efforts to stimulate such a debate, arguing that it was
“premature” to do so.

Now or Never?

The Center for Security Policy strongly disagrees. In a study
it published last October, eleven distinguished American experts
in national security matters (including five former four-star
general officers, three of whom served as members of the Joint
Chiefs of Staff) wrote:

“A U.S. deployment on the Golan Heights deserves
immediate, serious consideration by U.S. policy-makers,
legislators and the public. If such consideration is delayed
until all the details are set — until after the United
States is committed formally as part of an Israeli-Syrian
peace agreement — U.S. options will be severely
constrained. Critics of the deployment would then be
portrayed as ‘enemies of the peace process’; any effort to
change the agreed arrangements would be criticized for
risking scuttling of the Syrian-Israeli peace.

“On the other hand, if the subject is now debated and
Congress and the executive branch decide to oppose a
deployment of U.S. troops on the Golan, Israel and Syria
could take this into account in their negotiations and devise
alternative security arrangements accordingly. Such a
decision would be far less disruptive if made now than
if deferred until after a Syrian-Israeli deal is
concluded.”

Hearings are Needed, Now

On 3 January 1995, the Center for Security Policy’s director,
Frank J. Gaffney, Jr., wrote Chairman Helms expressing concern
that hearings on the Indyk nomination may be “the only vehicle
Congress gets for reviewing and expressing its concerns about the
deployment of U.S. forces on the Golan before the Nation is
committed to undertake such a deployment“. Mr. Gaffney
requested an opportunity for authors of the Center’s study to
present their findings in testimony before the Foreign Relations
Committee.

The Center reiterates that request today and directs it
particularly to Sen. Brown in the interest of ensuring that this
Clinton nomination — like those of Strobe Talbott, Sam Brown and
Derek Shearer before it — is subjected to careful evaluation
from a policy perspective, as well as on other scores.