Bill Clinton: “Well, when I announced that we would pursue the political objective a few weeks ago, I also said we would stay there and…”

“Well, when I announced that we would pursue the political objective a few weeks ago, I also said we would stay there and complete our mission. Our mission there is to deliver the humanitarian supplies and to keep the lines of communications open. We stood down from patrolling the roads when the voluntary cease-fire was announced in Somalia, to try to let things calm down and to try to get the political process going. Now that there is a political process, as always is the case, there's also a lot of maneuvering in a quasi-military sort of way. We cannot allow that to undermine the humanitarian mission, and our people cannot be expected, our young soldiers there cannot be expected to just sort of hunker down and stay behind walls. It almost puts them at greater risk. So we have to go out now and make sure the ordinary conditions of the U.N. peacekeeping mission are continued even in Mogadishu. And that's what we're doing. Mr. Russert. The Secretary-General of the U.N., Boutros Boutros- Ghali, said that unless you disarm the warlords and the clans and put together and fashion a political settlement before you leave, the mission will have been a failure.”