Speech #940013949

President. in the course of the Congressional Study Missions visit to South Vietnam. I hope my colleagues will have an opportunity to see first hand the massive humanitarian problems confronting the Vietnamese people. As fighting intensifies throughout the countryside. each new day produces more refugees. orphans. and civilian war casualties. It is apparent that as the war drags on. the refugees who are fleeing their homes face the same tragic problems which existed before the ceasefire agreement. The refugees may be new. but they are leaving behind the same old battles of the same old war. While the full extent of the wars impact upon the land and people of South Vietnam will perhaps never be known. it is apparent that as the ceasefire war continues. more and more refugees and displaced peoples will be added to the grim legacy of the Indochina war. Last month. the Subcommittee on Refugees. of which I am chairman. released the text of a preliminary report on humanitarian problems in South Vietnam and Cambodia2 Years After the Ceasefire. In the report. the subcommittee estimated that since the Paris Agreements. 1.413.000 refugees were displaced in South Vietnam818.000 in 1973. and 594.000 in 1974. The ceasefire war raging in South Vietnam is clearly as dangerous as the old war. When the 1973 and 1974 toll of wounded and killed civilians Is added to the official accounting of military casualties. 339.822 Vietnamese were killed or wounded in 2 years of fighting. In Cambodia. the refugee situation in Phnom Penh and the countryside defies accurate description. Nevertheless. from recent newspaper reports it is painfully clear that the humanitarian problems of the Cambodian people grow more desperate each day. The Cambodian Government has virtually lost control of the countrysideleaving thousands of refugees without adequate food or shelter. What little food is getting through to the capital has not prevented widespread malnutrition. nor in some cases. starvation. Despite our Governments announcement yesterday that the United States will begin airlifting food into Phnom Penh. the plight of the Cambodian people requires more than the airlifting of food.