‘YOU CAN FOOL SOME OF THE PEOPLE SOME OF THE TIME…’

(Washington, D.C.): A stunning insight into the Clinton
Administration’s foreign policy (as well as its more general modus
operandi) was provided yesterday following Vice President Al
Gore’s meeting with Russian President Boris Yeltsin in a
sanitorium near Moscow. This session took place after Mr. Yeltsin
canceled at the eleventh hour a long-scheduled appointment in the
Kremlin — claiming that he had hastily decided to take a
two-week vacation.

The Gore-Yeltsin meeting was anxiously awaited because it
offered the first occasion for Western observers to lay eyes on
the Russian President in person since he mysteriously dropped
from public view on 26 June midstream in a hotly contested
election campaign. The fact that it was scrubbed at the very last
minute was nearly universally interpreted as evidence that
Yeltsin’s health crisis is serious, if not intensifying.

The pool reporter covering the Gore visit to Mr. Yeltsin’s
sanitarium, Reuters White House correspondent Laurence McQiullan,
described the event this way:

“The scene was shocking for
someone who had seen the Russian leader at the Kremlin in
April during a visit by President Clinton. Then Boris
Yeltsin was full of vigor, confidently joking and showing
no sign of physical limitation. This time, his
face was pale, he had lost a considerable amount of
weight and he had a hard time walking.“
(Emphasis added.)

McQiullan’s account of Mr. Yeltsin’s wooden, tenuous condition
was powerfully confirmed by the edited television footage of the
Yeltsin-Gore handshake and seated conversation.

After the meeting, however, Vice President Gore gave
an astoundingly different assessment of Mr. Yeltsin’s well-being.
He announced: “To me, he looks good. On every
score, President Yeltsin was actively engaged and seemed in very
good shape to me.”

Lifeless Al Gore, Meet Lifeless Boris Yeltsin

Now there are two possible explanations for Mr. Gore’s view
that Mr. Yeltsin is the picture of health. One is that Mr.
Gore’s own wooden demeanor makes him a poor judge of others’
vital signs.

A second and, unfortunately, more plausible explanation for
Mr. Gore’s Magoo-like characterization of Mr. Yeltsin’s physical
condition is that the Vice President fully understands
the dire implications for the Clinton Administration’s Russia
policy if Mr. Yeltsin is understood to be incapacitated.
After all, Messrs. Clinton, Gore and Talbott, among others, have
gone to great lengths to make U.S. relations with the Kremlin
conform to a cult of personality built around Boris Yeltsin. His
disappearance from the scene would not only set the stage for
instability and possibly momentous changes in Russia. It would
also leave Washington’s Russia policy adrift.

‘Seeing No Evil’ in Belgrade

Yet another example of the Clinton Administration’s propensity
to ignore inconvenient facts is in evidence as Ambassador Richard
Holbrooke — called back from Wall Street retirement to try to
salvage his misbegotten Dayton Peace accords — paid court today
to Serbian despot Slobodan Milosevic.

According to today’s Washington Post, “Holbrooke’s
main task will be to attempt to orchestrate the final removal
from power of [Bosnian Serb leader Radovan] Karadzic — twice
indicted by the court in the Hague on charges of genocide and
crimes against humanity.” The international community has
suddenly become seized with the need to oust Karadzic, lest he
disrupt already problematic elections scheduled for September.

Hence Amb. Holbrooke’s recall and his pilgrimage to Belgrade:
Slobodan Milosevic is seen as the man who will deliver the head
of Radovan Karadzic. By treating with the Butcher of
Belgrade once more, the Clinton Administration believes, it can
get the Serbs to serve up a man neither NATO nor the OSCE nor the
UN nor the Clinton Administration are willing to take by force.

This latest diplomatic mission adds further ignominy to the
Dayton process, which already stands as one of the most
opprobrious acts of appeasement since Chamberlain’s deal with
Hitler at Munich. Milosevic is indisputably the architect of the
Bosnia conflict; he was the prime mover behind the ethnic
cleansing and other acts of genocide; and he is the ultimate
Balkan war criminal. To be sure, as the Wall Street Journal
editorialized today, he generally used cut-outs like Zeljko
Raznatovic (whose nom de guerre is “Arkan”) or
General Ratko Mladic or Karadzic to maintain “plausible
deniability.” But, as the Journal noted, the bottom
line is inescapable:

“…Karadzic and Mladic have boasted about how
their forces were supported politically, financially and
militarily by Mr. Milosevic. Indeed, by no other
means could they have become more powerful and effective.
[Milosevic] also controls the Yugoslav Army, itself
directly implicated in the Bosnian war. And he continues
to protect the likes of Arkan, who is apparently immune
because his indictment would immediately implicate
Belgrade and Milosevic.

“Having granted Mr. Milosevic rights to most of
what he won so brutally, the Clinton Administration is
now proposing to give him the appearance of democratic
legitimacy by pressing through the ersatz election in
Bosnia envisioned in the Dayton agreement. Then U.S.
troops will be withdrawn. There is one man who can
guarantee the whole house of cards won’t collapse before
November, and he sits in Belgrade. That’s why
Slobodan Milosevic and his Himmler are safely out of the
reach of prosecutors.” (Emphasis added.)

The Bottom Line

Abraham Lincoln once wryly observed that while “You can
fool some of the people some of the time, and even all of the
people some of the time, but you can’t fool all the people all of
the time.” President Clinton — and his subordinates — may
hope that they can fool all of the American people for the next
four months by pretending that the Administration’s Russia
policy, its Balkan peace policy and most of its other
international initiatives are sound and progressing
satisfactorily.

Let’s be clear: Pretending that all is well with Boris Yeltsin
or that neutralizing Radovan Karadzic will save the Dayton
accords may or may not get Bill Clinton through the November
election. But no one should be under any illusion. This
foolishness risks causing grave and lasting harm to U.S.
interests. And this country’s voters are not likely long to
suffer those who tried to fool — and make fools of — the
American people.

– 30 –