Bill Clinton: “I think it's important that we keep the date in mind at the end of this mission, because this mission, just like the one…”

“I think it's important that we keep the date in mind at the end of this mission, because this mission, just like the one before it, can't go on forever. And I think--right now, I think it's better for us not to speculate about what happens after that. What I'm concerned about is that there is all this rather frenetic looking at what happens next June, to the exclusion of looking at what happens today and tomorrow. That is, we wouldn't even have to worry about this if every day between now and next year everyone involved gave a 100 percent effort to implementing the Dayton peace accords, to doing the economic reconstruction, to setting up the common institutions, to resolving the police and the local election issues, to dealing with the war crimes issues. And what the United States has tried to do is to get our allies there to focus on implementing Dayton in an aggressive way. And one of the things that came out of the Summit of the Eight was that each of the countries expressed some interest in being given, in effect, almost primary responsibility for each separate element of the Dayton accords. Then, as we get along toward the end of year, we could take another look and see whether--what's the security situation going to be next June, and how can we best take care of it? But I don't think that this particular mission at this level should continue. We cannot occupy this country forever.”