Call for Constitutional Reform in Bosnia by Chris Smith (Congressional Record, MAY 12, 2009)

"Mr. Speaker, I rise in strong support of H. Res. 171, a powerful statement calling for meaningful constitutional reform and strengthened U.S. engagement in Bosnia. I want to thank Chairman Berman for authoring this legislation, and I am very proud to be one of the cosponsors (...) Mr. Speaker, efficient and rational arrangements to unite the multiethnic country and enable it to be fully incorporated into NATO and the EU can only mean a major reform that abolishes the “entity” voting system so that the vote of every Bosnian citizen will be of equal weight (...)

Mr. Speaker, as chairman or Co-Chairman for 12 years of the Commission on Security and Cooperation in Europe, known around here as the Helsinki Commission, and CoChairman of the Bosnia Caucus with my friend and colleague from Missouri, and chairman of the House Human Rights Committee for 8 years, I've had the opportunity to chair numerous Bosnia hearings and author congressional resolutions on Bosnia, including H. Res. 199 on the Srebrenica genocide (...) 

My most recent trip to Bosnia was in July of 2007, and I joined relatives of those killed, murdered--massacred--in the Srebrenica genocide in a ceremony interring hundreds of the approximately 8,000 Bosnian Muslims who were killed in what the U.N. euphemistically designated to be a “safe haven.'' It wasn't. The ceremony was solemn, it was holy, and it was numbing. Reis Ceric, the Grand Mufti, gave a very powerful talk, a sermon, to all of those who had gathered. Reis Ceric is a great man of peace and faith, and, I'm honored to say, a good friend. Dr. Haris Silajdzic, the President of Bosnia, is likewise a good friend, and spoke very eloquently about the huge loss of life, the importance of justice as well as about the future. Seeing hundreds of caskets with exhumed victims left an indelible impression on me."