Madam Speaker, I rise today in support of House Concurrent Resolution 154, which I introduced. The purposes of this measure, they’re very straightforward.
First, it is to put this Congress on record as being skeptical, to say the least, about the Russian Government’s views and positions regarding the murder of the Russian dissident and writer Alexander Litvinenko in November of 2006. We must keep in mind that Litvinenko, as a former agent of the Russian Security Service, was in a position to speak with credibility when he charged high level officials of the Russian Government with involvement in assassinations and organized crime and the use of state-sponsored terrorism for political purposes in the 1999 bombings of several Russian apartment buildings. We note that Mr. Litvinenko’s poisoning with the radioactive material known as Polonium-210 raises some interesting general facts. Polonium-210 is not produced, nor commercially exported to Britain where Mr. Litvinenko was murdered. Indeed, as Mr. BERMAN pointed out, 97 percent of the world’s production of Polonium-210 takes place in Russia. And indeed, after the poisoning of Litvinenko in London, British investigators were able to track traces of the material to passenger aircraft serving the London to Moscow route. Furthermore, the British investigation into the murder has found that Litvinenko had met with three visitors from Russia prior to the detection of the radioactive poison in his body. The British authorities are now, in fact, seeking to prosecute a Russian citizen who currently resides in Russia for his involvement in the murder.
The second purpose of this measure, Madam Speaker, is to point out that Polonium-210 would prove to be a dangerous weapon that Islamic radicals could use seeking to inflict large numbers of civilian casualties, not just to murder an individual. Therefore, as the dominant producer of this material, it is incumbent upon the Russian Government to ensure the security from proliferation of the Polonium-210, and this resolution indeed makes that case.
Madam Speaker, in closing, I note that former Deputy Secretary of State Strobe Talbott appeared before our Foreign Affairs Committee last October and said the following when asked about this case, and I quote. ‘‘Many of the people running Russia today come from Security Services, the secret police. There has been a long and unbroken tradition of the use of murder as a means of controlling Russian society. And I can tell you that our British colleagues believe that they have at least a prosecutable case that goes very, very close to the seat of power in Moscow.‘‘
Madam Speaker, the perpetrators of the 1999 apartment building bombings in Russia probably hope that the passage of time would cover their tracks and that people would forget and move on. That appears to be the case in Moscow with this case as well, unfortunately. So the question before our President and this Congress is the following: Will that be allowed to happen in the Litvinenko case as well? I urge my colleagues to support this resolution to keep in mind that the people of Russia live with this kind of threat every day. Their government is aggressively working to take back control over the economy, over their livelihoods, their access to uncensored news and their personal freedoms.
So, Madam Speaker, I hope that the House passes this resolution.