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Did HRC negotiate borders in Kosovo? (con.t)

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The end of my post was cut off somehow.  It reads:


Her foreign policy advisor Richard Holbrooke was in charge of that effort for the Clinton Administration, but I have never read that HRC was involved as part of an official negotiating team. 

Does anyone know?

I wonder.  Given the recent news about Kosovo claiming independence I am curious whether she is trying to associate herself with real-time, unfolding international events by taking more credit than she could possibly deserve for the results of the negotiating team.  Holbrooke was the negotiator back then.


Comments (9)

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As I wrote on the other thread, Clinton is clearly referring to asking other countries to take in refugees from Kosovo, not negotiating Kosovo borders. Can you really be so obtuse as to misread her statement so completely??? Sorry if this sounds harsh, but come on!

Yes, I know you are all in a feeding frenzy to find additional reasons to hate Hillary, because she has the gall to remain in the race and all that, but next time how about doing a minimum of due diligence and trying to verify whether what you are alleging is even remotely true? If you only Googled "hillary clinton" kosovo refugees, and you'd have your answer. It's fairly clear she was active on behalf of the refugees.

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Thank you. It never occurs to some people that they might research the topic BEFORE they post it. Of course if they do that though, the disengenuous act fails - "Gosh, I was just wondering..."

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Please enlighten me by finding an article to that effect. I am not trying to take credit away from HRC, to the contrary, I have not found an article explaining it. She may well have been the driving force behind the entire policy...I don't know.

I'll freely admit that I'm not dwelling on this, but was surprised to hear her slip that one in the debate.

Your reply seems amazingly vitriolic! And since when can people not ask a question?

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As per your "sage" recommendation, I did just as you asked and googled "hillary clinton kosovo refugee" and found articles related to her efforts for relocation of Kosovo refugees once in the US. This is somewhat different than negotiating terms with foreign governments.

One article describes her visit to the border in 1999, "Mrs. Clinton toured the refugee camps at Stenkovec, where about 20,000 ethnic Albanians have huddled since being pushed out of Kosovo. Friday, for the first time in more than a week, Macedonian officials allowed refugees to cross the border without papers, the U.N. High Commissioner for Refugees said."

She toured.

Her statement in the debate clearly said, "...negotiate on matters such as opening borders for refugees during the war in Kosovo" That implys that she was directly involved in negotiations with UNHCR, and the Holbrooke mission on behalf of the US.

After googling many other search strings (holbrooke kosovo hillary clinton; holbrook border negotiations envoys; etc) I was unable to find anywhere a mention of her official participation in negotiations. And, if she had played such a great international role it seems that we would have heard more about that before now to support her claims of 35 years of experience. To me, it seemed odd to only hear about this now that Kosovo was once again in the news.

As for knowing everything, and doing research before posting, well, I think I did make an effort, and will freely admit that I don't know everything about her role. You all might try to do the same.

Thank you. HRC's claim thus appears to be no more than the usual spin.

We are not looking for reasons to hate her (Me at least). In fact I was excited when I heard she was running. I fully planned on supporting her, but she keeps giving me reasons to dislike her. I have never been as politically engaged as I am now, but I know nasty tactics when i see them, and thus far in all my research I have found very little to justify her attacks on Obama. I know this is a campaign, but he is doing just fine with sticking to only attacking her on honest differences.

Like it or not your candidate dose have lots of questionable history, and he still dose not bring up anything specific. Dose he mention the history? Yes, but he doesn't rub our noses in it, instead he lets us look into it ourselves and make our own decisions. You feel like we are attacking her? Well that is too bad, if she would stop the lies and stop misleading we may not have reason to come and post this negative stuff in defense of our candidate.

The reality is that I keep trying to find reasons to LIKE her. However every time she gives me one she turns around and pulls nasty stuff, and then during the debate doesn't even have the courage to stand up to the things she said on the trail until she is pushed into it.

The fact is most Americans are so disillusioned by politics that even when we follow them we wouldn't see a good candidate if they bit us on the ass. We make excuses for the best of a nasty bunch. We could be wrong, Obama could be a snake in the grass, but I can't find the proof. Mistakes sure, but you know, many of them are mistakes I may have made in my life too.

I hate to say it Bev, but from your posts it seems you don't even need a reason to hate us. All of us in a great big generalization.

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Here is an article from TIME Magazine that supports Clinton's claim about Kosovo


TIME MAGAZINE

CLINTON EXPERIENCE DEBATE
By KAREN TUMULTY, MICHAEL DUFFY AND MASSIMO CALABRESI Thu Mar 13

WHAT SHE SAYS
"I negotiated open borders to let fleeing refugees into safety from Kosovo," Clinton has asserted when asked to identify an example of her foreign policy experience.

Clinton's shorthand version of her role in the 1999 refugee crisis in Macedonia is accurate but oversimplified. She did discuss open borders with the President and Prime Minister of Macedonia on May 14, 1999. (Borders between that country and Kosovo had been opening and closing for weeks.)

She did support requests for economic help that the Macedonians were making. But keeping the borders open was a key U.S. diplomatic project at the time, and her initiative was but a part of the larger effort. During the NATO war with neighboring Serbia that spring, the fate of Kosovars fleeing Serbian ethnic cleansing was a pressing issue on the international stage. If a flood of refugees overwhelmed Macedonia, a wider regional war could erupt. No one, however, wanted to leave the Kosovars to the mercy of the Serbs. So finding a temporary home for them was crucial.

When Clinton arrived in the middle of the situation in that May, diplomats on the ground expected an ineffectual high-profile visit. But they were wrong. "She was quite at ease and professional," says a diplomat who served in the Macedonian capital, Skopje, at the time. Clinton visited refugees in camps on the border and held talks with the Macedonian leadership.
When the Prime Minister complained about American companies terminating textile contracts with local firms, Clinton promised to urge the businesses to change course. Five weeks after her trip, Clinton returned to the country with a pledge from Liz Claiborne to support textile manufacturing there.

THE BOTTOM LINE: In the case of Macedonia, Clinton engaged in personal diplomacy that brought about change. But securing the return of American business partners is not the same as the opening of borders to thousands of refugees. That accomplishment was a result of broader U.S. and European efforts during the war.

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Here's some confirmation on Hillary's record in Ireland, too.

Nobel Prize winner for the Irish Peace Agreement, Tony Blair, Sinn Fein (IRA) and Ian Paisley Prime Ministerof Ireland confirmed Hillary's work in Ireland.

Re: Hillary: I helped bring peace to Northern Ireland

Statement from John Hume former MP MEP, founder of the SDLP and an architect of the Good Friday Agreement. He is the only person to win the Nobel Prize for Peace, the Ghandi Peace Award and the Martin Luther King Peace Prize.

"I am quite surprised that anyone would suggest that Hillary Clinton did not perform important foreign policy work as First Lady. I can state from firsthand experience that she played a positive role for over a decade in helping to bring peace to Northern Ireland.
She visited Northern Ireland, met with very many people and gave very decisive support to the peace process. There is no doubt that the people of Northern Ireland think very positively of Hillary Clinton's support for our peace process, due to her visits to Northern Ireland and her meetings with so many people. In private she made countless calls and contacts, speaking to leaders and opinion makers on all sides, urging them to keep moving forward.
Anyone criticizing her foreign policy involvement should look at her very active and positive approach to Northern Ireland and speak with the people of Northern Ireland who have the highest regard for her and are very grateful for her very active support for our peace process."


Inez McCormack, first female president of the Irish Congress of Trade Unions:
"Hillary Clinton took risks for peace in asking me and others to bring women and communities from both traditions to affirm their capacity to work for common purpose and to assert, when there was no public dialogue which supported it, that working for common purpose on the basis of mutual respect was the core of effective peace building. She used her immense influence to give women like me space to develop this work and validated it every step of the way. This approach is now taken for granted bit it wasn't then. She told us that if we take risks for peace, she would stay with us on that journey. In my experience, it took hard work, attention to detail and a commitment of time and energy which she delivered steadily and where it was needed over the last decade."


Baroness May Blood of the House of Lords, who worked for many years as a community leader in Shankill area of West Belfast
"The First Lady sent the message that the work and influence that grassroots women were undertaking within their communities was just as important as anything else that was taking place. I witnessed her building new confidence in women at the grassroots level and their statue grew within Northern Ireland as a consequence. All of a sudden they were being taken more seriously. The message we were also told by Hillary Clinton
was that this work needed a political focus."

Geraldine McAteer, Chief Executive of West Belfast Partnership Board
"As First Lady, Hillary Clinton was extremely supportive of the peace process in Northern Ireland, and in particular, of the women who live here. In her visits during the peace process negotiations she met with women from a range of backgrounds and she recognized there was a real need to strengthen and support the voices of women in the post conflict context and get the needs of women and communities to the forefront of the new political agenda. She recognized that this would be best done through building the skillls of women here. Through her Vital Voices Conference in September 1998, I and others were able to develop our skills for the betterment of our communities."
News reports:

2007: Hillary honored for her work on the Northern Ireland Peace process. Irish American Magazine named Hillary "Person of the Year", celebrating "her work on the Northern Ireland peace process". [Irish American Magazine, April/May 07]

2007: Hillary met with Irish leaders who wanted to 'pay their respects to Hillary' for her work on behalf of peace in Northern Ireland. Martin McGuinness and Ian Paisley recently traveled to Washington on behalf of the fledging Northern Ireland government, and they specifically requested two personal meetings: one with President George W. Bush and one with Senator Hillary Clinton. They wanted to "pay their respects to Hillary" for her long and varied role in promoting and working for peace in Northern Ireland. [Guardian, December 8, 2007]. As McGuinness put it, "these are wonderfully exciting times for all of us back home, not least because of the contributions made by President Clinton and Mrs. Clinton." [AP, December 7, 2007].

1999: Northern Ireland Secretary: `Hillary is one of the essential reasons' Ireland had peace. An August 1999 issue of Talk Magazine quotes Northern Ireland Secretary Mo Mowlam: "Hillary is one of the essential reasons we've had 18 months of relative peace. Without her we would have no economic boom."

1999: Hillary made frequent trips to Northern Ireland where she was 'not just in the humdrum affairs of state...but in the nitty gritty of the political scene' "A few years back the notion of an American First Lady speaking out on any aspect of life in Northern Ireland would have been taboo. Now it is accepted that not just this First Lady but also her husband make frequent trips to the North, and that they become involved not just in the humdrum affairs of state such as opening a new training center or mouthing niceties at a conference, but in the nitty gritty of the political scene too." [Irish Voice, May 25, 1999]

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