Bill Clinton: “Let me answer the question carefully. The reason I have never said that is that I wanted to define our mission and have…”

“Let me answer the question carefully. The reason I have never said that is that I wanted to define our mission and have the mission be defined in the way that we did in Haiti. We defined our mission in Haiti, and we said, okay, this is when we think we will complete our mission, and we did it. And then we said the United Nations would complete its mission with the next Presidential election, which occurs early next year. In Bosnia, I wanted to make sure that we had a clear notion of what our mission was. Yesterday, General Joulwan, who is our NATO Commander, came in with the national security team, and we had a very extended session about the plans that are now being developed, which, of course, cannot be finalized until we get a peace agreement, because the nature of the map and the nature of the agreement among the parties will determine in part the nature of the commitments that the United Nations and that NATO will have to make. But our commanders believe we can complete our mission in a year. That's what they believe. Before I make that pledge to the American people, I want to know what the peace agreement is finally, and I want to have a very high level of confidence that I can make that commitment and keep it. But it looks like we're talking about a commitment in the nature--in the range of a year.”