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Claims Clinton is Misleading or Uninformed
WASHINGTON (Reuters) — A congressional chairman accused Clinton administration officials Friday of either misleading Congress or being uninformed when they testified Tuesday that U.S. forces would be out of Bosnia by about Dec. 14. Chairman Benjamin Gilman complained that the officials gave his House International Relations Committee that testimony less than 24 hours before the Defense Department said some of the U.S. and other NATO peacekeepers would be in Bosnia a month or longer after that.

Gilman, a New York Republican, made the complaint in letters to Secretary of State Warren Christopher and Defense Secretary William Perry. "I can only surmise that either my colleagues and I were misled last Tuesday or (the officials) are not fully informed about planning with regard to the withdrawal of U.S. forces from Bosnia,'' Gilman wrote. "In either event, the administration has jeopardized its credibility with the Congress on a vital foreign policy matter."

Gilman asked Christopher and Perry to tell the committee what administration policy was on withdrawing U.S. forces from Bosnia, and to check for "any other testimony that may have misled the committee."

Undersecretary of State Peter Tarnoff and Thomas Longstreth, director of the Defense Department's Bosnia Task Force, said in response to questions about reports that U.S. troops may be in Bosnia longer than a year that U.S. policy would have them out earlier.

"Our policy ... is to have all U.S. forces out on or about the 14th of December," Tarnoff told the committee.


Representative Benjamin Gilman
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