Bill Clinton: “Oh, no. First of all, I hope that France will become integrated into the military structure of NATO, and I hope that…”

“Oh, no. First of all, I hope that France will become integrated into the military structure of NATO, and I hope that Spain will be as well, and I think we're quite close with Spain. And I hope that both will be. Secondly, I believe that more command positions should be open to Europeans, and I have supported that. That is--so, in the adaptation of NATO internally, the United States has favored the integration of France and Spain into the military command structure, has favored an independent European security defense initiative within NATO, and has favored more command positions going to French and to European officers. The particular command, the AFSOUTH Command, is--the real problem there for us right now is that right now, the AFSOUTH Command is essentially command of the 6th Fleet of the United States Navy. And except for, and maybe even including--I'd have to check the numbers--our presence in South Korea, it's the biggest single deployment of United States military assets anywhere. So if we were to divide the AFSOUTH Command, it wouldn't, from our point of view, be a sensible thing to do militarily because that's essentially the central asset of AFSOUTH. We have offered to revisit this--even that position with the French in a few years, because it may be that we decide to change the composition of what makes up AFSOUTH. But in terms of the command structure, we believe the Europeans should have more command positions. We believe the French should if they come in. And we hope that we can resume these discussions and work this out.”