DzCoNcNmi and I offered an amendment. which was agreed to by a vote of 99 to 0. to authorize $10 million in funds for fiscal year 1990 for the assistance of ethnic Turks who have fled Bulgaria and are resettling in the sovereign territory of Turkey. It Is unclear whether the State Department authorization bill will ever become law and efforts by the administration to find a way to provide this assistance to Turkey without using fiscal year 1990 funds have proved unsuccessful. The Senates action was taken over 2 months ago and was designed to help Turkey resettle refugees whose most urgent need is for housing. These refugees need to be moved out of tents on the border as winter draws near. Since I first spoke on the Senate floor about this issue. back in June. the estimated numbers of ethnic Turks who have been expelled by the Bulgarian Government across the Turkish border ranged from 30.000 to 45.000. When we adopted the amendment to the State Department authorization bill in July. the number of refugees had reached 130.000 to 140.000. By the end of August. that number had grown to 310.000. And during this same period of time. not 1 penny has gone from the U.S.
Keywords matched
refugees