Las Vegas Sun

March 28, 2024

Reid headed for Bosnia

WASHINGTON -- Sen. Harry Reid left today for a nine-day trip to Bosnia.

The Nevada Democrat had been scheduled to meet with Commerce Secretary Ron Brown in Croatia before Brown's plane crashed today, his office said today.

Reid will meet with U.S. troops, as well as leaders of the warring factions, so he can advise his colleagues in Congress on how much money to appropriate for the peacekeeping mission this year.

"We hope to find out how we're spending our money," Reid said. "The Pentagon wants members of Congress to go to see what is being done in terms of the money being spent. We're spending hundreds of millions of dollars there."

Reid, who sits on the Senate Appropriations Committee, will join Senate Democratic Leader Tom Daschle of South Dakota and Sen. Orrin Hatch, R-Utah, on the trip. In addition to Bosnia, Serbia and Croatia, the senators will visit Albania, Macedonia and Slovenia.

Reid originally opposed sending U.S. troops to Bosnia, "but they're there and I have to be supportive," he said.

Reid said so far the mission "is going OK, but springtime and summertime could be a different world." With the warmer weather, "usually people start to get restless" and war becomes more likely, he added.

Reid said he is concerned that U.S. troops will be drawn into combat. "That's what we don't want," he said.

He added that his trip is "not going to have a great impact on whether the Serbians or the Croatians or the Bosnians do some type of guerilla warfare. But we are going to meet with the leaders of each of those countries and tell them that we're serious about maintaining the peace and hear what they have to say."

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