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Politics : PRESIDENT GEORGE W. BUSH -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Krowbar who wrote (536954)	2/7/2004 1:19:26 AM
From: Hope Praytochange	Respond to of 769670

Clark Papers Show Pressure Over Kosovo By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS Filed at 12:35 a.m. ET WASHINGTON (AP) -- Clinton administration officials urged an end to the Kosovo war in the summer of 1999 so that the conflict would not hurt Al Gore's coming presidential campaign, Wesley Clark, then NATO commander, says in newly released papers. The papers from Clark's 34 months as NATO's top military officer show that throughout the war, Clark clashed with top officials in the Clinton administration, including senior officers in the Pentagon, The Washington Post reported for its Saturday editions. In a January 2000 interview, Clark told NATO's official historian, ``There were those in the White House who said, 'Hey, look, you gotta finish the bombing before the Fourth of July weekend. That's the start of the next presidential campaign season, so stop it. It doesn't matter what you do, just turn it off. You don't have to win this thing, let it lie.''' No officials involved were named in an interview transcript in the National Defense University's special collections library in Washington. Clark could not be reached for comment, Clark campaign spokesman Matt Bennett said Friday night. The papers document pressures and the conflict's final months, when many in Washington worried it was dragging on too long and Clark was among a few officials calling for a larger NATO role in the war. On June 10, 1999, Yugoslav President Slobodan Milosevic agreed to the West's demands for the pullout of all Serbian forces and deployment of Western peacekeepers in Kosovo. Sandy Berger, the national security adviser to President Clinton at the time, said any implication that the White House wanted to rush to end the war for political reasons was ``categorically and completely false.'' Gore, through a spokesman, declined to comment directly. Leon Feurth, his national security adviser at the time, said that while Gore was against preparing for a ground war, he supported continuing the bombing as long as necessary to win. Gore ``was prepared to take a political hit'' on such issues, he said.