House Panel to Probe Iran Arms to Bosnia

House Republican leaders announced Wednesday that they will create a special investigative committee to probe the Clinton administration’s role in Iranian arms shipments to Bosnia.

House Speaker Newt Gingrich (R-Ga.) said that Rep. Henry J. Hyde (R-Ill.) will chair the eight-member panel, which will be formed as a select subcommittee of the House International Relations Committee. Hyde is a member of the International Relations Committee and is chairman of the House Judiciary Committee. He played a central role in the congressional probes into the Iran-Contra arms scandal in the 1980s.

The panel of five Republicans and three Democrats will be charged with investigating reports that President Clinton secretly gave a green light to the creation of an Iranian arms pipeline into Bosnia in 1994.

“President Clinton’s policy of virtually inviting Iran into Europe could have disastrous results for America,” Gingrich said Wednesday. “The president undertook this reckless policy hastily and then kept it secret from Congress, the American people and our European allies. We have an obligation to fully explore this policy, its formulation and execution, and the implications it will have on U.S. national security interests.”

The special committee will focus on the policy implications of Clinton’s decision, while the House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence will conduct a parallel probe into the matter to determine whether it amounted to an unauthorized covert action.

On Thursday, the House intelligence panel will hold a closed hearing to get a briefing from Tony Harrington, chairman of the Intelligence Oversight Board, a small White House agency that conducted a secret, six-month investigation into the Clinton policy. The board concluded last year that the Iran arms policy did not constitute an illegal covert action and that the administration was not required to notify Congress.

In a public hearing Tuesday before the House international relations panel, Peter Tarnoff, undersecretary of state for political affairs, confirmed the White House policy decision. But he declined to provide many details, saying he didn’t know some and that others could only be divulged in a classified briefing.

“More questions than answers were raised” by Tarnoff’s testimony, Rep. Benjamin A. Gilman (R-N.Y.), chairman of the panel, said Wednesday.

Administration officials insist that congressional leaders have latched on to the Iran-Bosnia connection simply as a partisan political issue to exploit during the presidential campaign.