Bill Clinton: “The first part of your question, I have spoken to quite extensively in America. First, America did actually play a very…”

“The first part of your question, I have spoken to quite extensively in America. First, America did actually play a very major role in preserving an area of protection for the Kurds in northern Iraq for several years after the Gulf war. And we have, several times, intervened to try to help protect the Kurds and will continue to be sensitive to that. Secondly, I have said repeatedly that the slaughter of the Rwandans, the genocide in Rwanda occurred in the short space of about 100 days, and we were caught flat-footed. I feel terrible that we did nothing. And I would hope that if anything like that develops in Africa again that the United States and Russia, indeed, all the major powers of the United Nations would move aggressively to try to stop it. We should not countenance genocide or ethnic cleansing anywhere in the world if we have the power to stop it. That's not to say that we can expect all people of all different ethnic groups to always like each other and never even to fight. But when innocent civilians are subject to mass slaughter and ethnic cleansing, if we can stop it, we should. Russian Role in Balkan Peace Negotiations Mr. Kiselev. Let me ask you about the role of Russia in the Balkans peace deal more in detail. There are basically two views. Some believe that NATO was forced to turn to Russia for help because only Russia could sit down with both sides and convince Milosevic to accept the peace deal. Others believe that the West could have avoided turning out Russia and only did so out of good will and a desire to preserve Russia's role in the Balkans. What is your point of view?”