Speech #960171231

Our reluctance to acknowledge the Vietnamese sponsored government and our persistence in clinging to the belief that Pol Pot is still ruling Kampuchea is preventing us from using the regime in power to distribute food. or at lease preventing us from doing that as effectively as possible. This. despite the warm welcome which the American Friends Service Committee Operation California flight received when it landed in Kampuchea. our Government is still not directly coordinating an expanded airlift food and medical supplies to Phnom Penh. This is particularly disturbing. because international relief organizations have indicated that of the 30.000 tons of rice needed to sustain the refugees. less than half that amount is getting through. This is weeks after we joined in a committed effort to make sure that those amounts would be significantly increased. Surely. a nation which can sell 45 million tons of wheat to the Soviet Union can redouble its efforts to curb the hunger of those in Cambodia and the Cambodian refugees who have fled the country. Obviously. the first order of business is for the administration to sort out who should be involved in the relief efforts and who is going to be empowered with the authority to direct them. Second. as William Lewis. a senior associate with the Carnegie Endowment has suggested. we must take active steps in the world community to see our distribution efforts through.