[Weekly Compilation of Presidential Documents Volume 30, Number 8 (Monday, February 28, 1994)]
[Pages 333-335]
[Online from the Government Publishing Office, www.gpo.gov]

<R04>
The President's News Conference

February 21, 1994

Bosnia

    The President. Good afternoon, ladies and gentlemen. It is now over 
15 hours since NATO's ultimatum regarding Sarajevo went into effect. 
According to NATO and United Nations commanders, at this point the 
parties are in effective compliance with the ultimatum. There continues 
to be no shelling of Sarajevo. Over 250 heavy weapons have been placed 
under U.N. control. All known heavy weapons have now been removed or 
brought under U.N. control, except for a couple of sites that should be 
brought under control within hours as the U.N. operation continues. As a 
result, air strikes have not yet been necessary.
    I spoke this morning with U.N. Secretary-General Boutros-Ghali and 
expressed my appreciation for his efforts. I again want to congratulate 
NATO, our NATO allies, and Secretary General Manfred Woerner for their 
resolve; the United Nations for its efforts and its cooperation with 
NATO; the Government of Russia for its important contributions to a 
peaceful resolution; and above all, the American military personnel and 
those from our NATO allies whose courage and skill provided the muscle 
that made this policy work. Let me review why we and our NATO allies 
took this action: to stem the destruction of Sarajevo and to 
reinvigorate the peace process.
    Now that we have brought some breathing space to the people of 
Sarajevo, we are taking additional steps on both fronts. First, we 
intend to remain vigilant. The U.N. and NATO will continue to conduct 
intensive reconnaissance and monitoring of the Sarajevo area. The NATO 
decision stands. We will continue to enforce the exclusion zone. Any 
shelling of Sarajevo or the appearance of heavy weapons in the exclusion 
zone will bring a certain and swift response from the U.N. and NATO. 
Second, we are working to renew progress toward a negotiated solution 
among the parties. A workable, enforceable solution acceptable to all 
parties is the only way to ensure a lasting solution for Sarajevo and 
for all of Bosnia.
    Negotiations among the parties are set to resume in the near future. 
American negotiators have been and will remain active in helping to 
bridge the gap among the parties. Ambassador Redman has had a series of 
intensive conversations in Europe, and this week in Bonn our experts 
will meet with the representatives from European Union countries, 
Canada, and Russia to take stock of where we are.
    The challenge for all who have been touched by the fighting in 
Bosnia, the parties to the conflict, our own nation, and the 
international community, is to build on this week's progress and create 
a lasting and workable peace for all the people of Bosnia.
    Helen [Helen Thomas, United Press International].
    Q. Mr. President, are you willing to extend the ultimatum to stop 
the killing in other parts of Bosnia and to persuade the allies and 
Russia to go along with the idea of enforcing it throughout the country?
    The President. Well, that's one of the things that we've been 
discussing this morning and that our representatives will be discussing 
in Europe this week.
    Let me say, first of all, we have to make sure that we continue to 
do what we can to protect Sarajevo. Second, we should remember that that 
option is, in effect, available now wherever there are U.N. forces, 
because if U.N. forces are brought under shelling, they can ask for 
close air support from NATO. Thirdly, if we decide to pursue this as a 
strategy, we think it is important, as we did in Sarajevo, that the 
United Nations not--excuse me, that NATO not undertake any mission it is 
not fully capable of performing. And

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I think that's very important. So we're reviewing----
    Q. Well, wouldn't it be an irony, though, to have killing go on in 
other parts and just protect----
    The President. Oh, yes. Well, we're very concerned about the 
prospect that maybe the weapons could be moved out of the Sarajevo area 
and transferred to another area. We're quite concerned about that. I 
believe that the United Nations Commander on the ground, General Rose, 
has been pretty clear and forceful about that, too, as he has been about 
everything. I think he's making a real difference there.
    Q. Mr. President, Bosnia's Ambassador to the United Nations has 
expressed fears that the weapons that are being moved out of Sarajevo 
are being taken to other battlefronts. Do you see any evidence of that? 
And if so, is there anything that can be done to prevent it?
    The President. Well, we're doing what we can to discourage it, 
obviously, and we believe that others will, including the Russians. And 
keep in mind, I think General Rose on the ground will take an aggressive 
attitude about that. And remember, as I just said to Helen, we now have 
operative right now a resolution to NATO which we supported, which gives 
the U.N. commanders the option at the present time, if they're under 
shelling, to call in NATO close air support.
    Q.  Mr. President, given your apparent success in this, how do you 
answer those who will now say to you and to other NATO leaders who may 
perhaps have been not as enthusiastic as you have been about such an 
operation, ``Why not sooner?''
    The President. Well, I would say, first of all, when we got the 
first approval ever for NATO out-of-area operations last summer, that 
resulted in immediately a reduction in the shelling of Sarajevo and the 
casualties, and then they built back up. So we've been working on this 
for some time. Even before then, we received permission to enforce a no-
fly zone. So we've been working on this for some time.
    I think that we finally had a consensus among our allies--and I have 
to compliment them--and which included, as I have said many times, NATO 
members who had troops on the ground there, unlike the United States. So 
I think that the main thing we need to do now is to build on this and 
figure out how we can use it to make a permanent peace.
    Andrea [Andrea Mitchell, NBC News].
    Q. Mr. President, how can you build on this diplomatically? What can 
the United States now bring to the peace talks? You've always said that 
it has to be determined among the parties, but once you have a bottom 
line from the Bosnian Muslims, is there some new initiative, some way to 
push it? And might the Russian involvement on the ground lead to more 
Russian involvement in the diplomacy, as well?
    The President. Well, I would hope it will. President Yeltsin and I 
have been discussing this, as you know, intensely, both through our 
representatives and directly. And I talked to him again yesterday. I 
hope that they will be intensely involved in this. I think it is 
important that all of us who are prepared to stick with this and who 
have made the same commitment, that if there is an agreed-upon peace 
will help to implement it, really push for that kind of peace. On the 
other hand, I think it is equally important that we not pretend that we 
can impose a peace that the parties disagree with, that they do not 
freely accept. So that's the delicate line we'll be walking, and that's 
what our people will be discussing this week in Europe.
    Wolf [Wolf Blitzer, Cable News Network].
    Q. Mr. President, if the United States now is much more actively 
engaged in working with the Bosnian Government to achieve some sort of 
peaceful settlement, won't that bring additional responsibilities to the 
U.S. Government if the Bosnians do go forward and make major 
concessions? Specifically, how committed are you to dispatching some 
25,000 U.S. military peacekeepers to try to enforce an agreement?
    The President. Well, I have said since February of 1993, since 
shortly after becoming President, that if the parties themselves freely 
and clearly adopted a peace agreement which the United States felt was 
an enforceable one, that we would do what we could through the United 
Nations and through NATO to support the implementation of it as long as 
we had fewer than half of the

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troops there and as long as we were convinced that we had a fair chance 
to implement it. We're not committed to any specific number of troops, 
but I think we should, and that's been my position all along.
    Q. You first talked of air strikes some 13 months ago. Do you now 
feel personally vindicated by the events of the past couple of days and 
week?
    The President. To be honest, I haven't given any thought to that. 
Let me just say generally, in a situation like this, first of all, it's 
a complicated, heartbreaking situation. I want the United States to play 
a role in stabilizing that part of the world, so the conflict doesn't 
spread, and in bringing an end to the humanitarian tragedy.
    I believe that the policy that I have advocated is and has been the 
right one. But I also fully recognize that, unlike our allies that I had 
to convince to go along with the policy, we did not have troops on the 
ground there. We did not have people who could be easily outnumbered and 
killed quickly. So I have to say a strong word of appreciation to our 
allies in NATO for the work they have done, as well as a strong word of 
appreciation to General Rose and to, generally, the renewed vigor of the 
United Nations forces in Bosnia, because they knew they would be at some 
risk if this policy ultimatum had to be carried out.
    Thank you.

Note: The President's 48th news conference began at 12:10 p.m. in the 
Briefing Room at the White House. In his remarks, he referred to 
Ambassador Charles E. Redman, U.S. Special Envoy to the International 
Conference on the Former Yugoslavia, and Muhammed Sacirbey, Bosnian 
Ambassador to the United Nations.