22 



Mr. Allard. Well, I'm not sure about this, and maybe you can 

 clarify this, but I don't believe the Ukraine has agreed to the 

 START. 



Mr. Glickman. That's correct. 



Mr. Allard. So you're talking about not only the Russians, but 

 maybe the other Baltic- 



Mr. Glickman. There's one other Republic that- 



Mr. Allard. We're talking about monitoring agreements on nu- 

 clear weapon proliferation, and they won't even agree to the basic 

 nonproliferation agreements that we have, and I'm wondering how 

 we're going to work through that. 



Mr. Glickman. They want our food assistance desperately, they 

 want our economic help desperately. I mean, it's certainly worth- 

 while talking to them about it. 



I think you raise a very interesting point. I had a gentleman 

 from one of the Ukrainian parties in my office, and I pressed him 

 on compliance with the START agreement, and his response to me 

 was something like, 'Well, you don't have to worry about us. You're 

 not our enemy. Our missiles are not going to be pointed at you." 

 Kind of like, well, where are they going to be pointed at. East in- 

 stead of West, and that's not going to affect the world as well? 



I mean, there wasn't a specific threat carried out there against 

 Russia, but you know that the challenges in the future are much 

 more serious, and I just think that the nuclear threat is so great 

 that if we can somehow tie it to this — and by the way, my bill does 

 not exclusively tie it to reduction of nuclear weapons. It gives the 

 President pretty much a blank check here or carte blanche — not a 

 blank check — to try to find ways for debt reduction and other 

 things that they might be willing to do. 



Mr. Allard. Mr. Chairman, just to wind it up here, I think we 

 really need to keep the process as simple as we possibly can and 

 make it as market-oriented as we possibly can. I think most of our 

 business people are comfortable with that. I'm not sure that the 

 State Department, the military, and all these other people that get 

 involved appreciate how important it is in business to expedite 

 things because time is money, and it costs American business to 

 wait. So I hope that perhaps we can figure out ways to expedite. 



I think I agree with your initial intent of this, to try and open 

 up markets for American agriculture. We need to do it with a mini- 

 mum of regulation. 



Mr. Glickman. If I may just make one point, the heart of what 

 I'm talking about here is debt forgiveness. You see, they can't buy 

 anything else, they can't expand their markets unless they deal 

 with the existing debt the Soviet Union has. Now, we have a Free- 

 dom Support Act which is in place, and we have other things that 

 are trying to deal with new methods of assistance, and CCC has 

 some pretty good generic authorities here. But the question is, 

 what do you do with that overhanging debt now? Do we write it 

 off? We just don't worry about it? I think the American people 

 wouldn't particularly care for that. And they can't go out in the 

 marketplace very easily and buy anj^hing else. The IMF won't be 

 a very cooperative force xuiless they deal with this preexisting debt. 



