World

Clinton Trip Deemed A Success

By CBSNews.com staff CBSNews.com staff

November 22, 1999 / 7:35 AM EST / CBS

President Clinton is back home in Washington after a 10-day European trip capped by a pre-Thanksgiving visit to Kosovo.

The president returned to the White House late Tuesday night - having flown aboard Air Force One from the U.S. air base in Aviano, Italy.

In Kosovo, Mr. Clinton was cheered by ethnic Albanians - though the reaction was more subdued when he urged an end to revenge attacks against Serbs. Mr. Clinton also had an early Thanksgiving dinner with U.S. troops.

Aides are delighted with the five-nation trip, pointing to a pipeline for Caspian oil, a new conventional arms treaty for Europe and agreement by Greek and Turkish Cypriots to resume peace talks.

During his one-day visit to Kosovo, the president brought a message of forgiveness and peace to schoolchildren and their parents, just five months after NATO bombs broke Serbia's grip on the breakaway region.

The oppression had been eased by military might, he said, but maintaining the peace would be the responsibility of the people, reports CBS News Chief White House Correspondent John Roberts.

"You can never forget the injustice that was done to you," Mr. Clinton told a gymnasium full of families. "No one can force you to forgive what was done to you. But you must try."

That line was greeted by near silence, reports CBS News Correspondent Bill Plante. It's easy to see why. The scene in Kosovo is of house after house looted and burned by Serbs, women raped, whole families murdered.

NATO launched an air war against Yugoslavia in March in response to a campaign by Yugoslav President Slobodan Milosevic to rid Kosovo of its ethnic Albanian population. Kosovo is a province within Serbia, which in turn is the dominant partner in Milosevic's Yugoslav federation.

Expulsions and killings of ethnic Albanians by Serb forces accelerated after the bombing began, and hundreds of thousands fled into neighboring Macedonia and Albania, only to return after Milosevic surrendered day-to-day control of Kosovo.

But critics on all sides say that Kosovo still has no real form of government, that the peacekeepers seem unable to prevent actions of vengeance by Kosovar Albanians.

Now some of those former refugees have turned the tables on the Serb minority they blame for their troubles, burning homes and forcing Serbs to flee the Yugoslav province. Many have gone north into Serbia proper, where Serbs are the ethnic majority. CBS News Correspondent Kimberly Dozier has details in her Reporter's Notebook.

Addressing the American soldiers at Camp Bondsteel later Tuesday, Mr. Clinton told them their presence and their varied races serve as symbols to children already familiar with ethnic hatred.

"The power of your example will show them that they do not have to be trapped in the pattern of slaughter," Mr. Clinton said.

American and U.N. military chiefs gave Mr. Clinton an overview of the caotic process of rebuilding Kosovo. The U.N. complains bitterly that it does not have enough money despite the latest pledges to build the beginnings of a civil society.

However, U.S. Secretary of State Madeleine Albright, who joined Mr. Clinton to address Kosovars, says more progress has been made in a shorter time than had been after the conflict in Bosnia.

"I think that five months after the bombing has stopped, the people that we have just been meeting with are incredibly grateful for what NATO under the U.S. lead did and while there's an awful lot to do, we, the international community, has accomplished a lot," she told CBS News.

"...Just imagine how we would feel if we had done nothing and the ethnic cleansing would be continued," she added.

President Clinton's trip set a record, reports CBS News White House Correspondent Peter Maer.

Every president is an Air Force One frequent flyer but - following his just concluded five-nation European tour - President Clinton has visited 63 countries, three more than George Bush's record. At George Washington University, presidential historian Leo Ribuffo is not surprised.

"Bill Clinton is a press-the-flesh kind of guy and it's not surprising at the end of his second term that he decided to press some international flesh when domestically his reputation is a little shaky," he told CBS Radio News.

Many observers in and out of the White House predict a Clinton farewell tour to many other countries during his last year in office.