Bill Clinton: “As you know, we had a good, long dinner tonight. And we talked about only two subjects; we talked about Russia and…”

“As you know, we had a good, long dinner tonight. And we talked about only two subjects; we talked about Russia and Bosnia. We spent the first half, perhaps more than half the dinner, on Russia. And I basically gave a report about what I would be doing in Russia, and they gave me their advice about what we could do to strengthen the process of reform, create a system of support for people who had been dislocated economically, how we could build a better partnership with Russia and have the kind of future we want, with Russia being a great nation but a nonaggressive one. And it was very, very helpful. I mean, they had very keen insights, and a lot of them had just been there, so it was helpful. Then we talked about Bosnia at some length. And I urged that we stay with the present communique, the present policy, which gives us the right to ask the U.N. for permission to use air strikes if Sarajevo continues to be shelled. We discussed some other options and agreed that we would have another discussion tomorrow about it. So I can't say that there was any conclusion reached except that I do believe we'll stay with our present policy. I think the language in the communique will stay in, and we'll have some other discussions about it tomorrow morning. Bosnia”