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- <text id=93TT0895>
- <title>
- Jan. 11, 1993: A Lame Duck Soars High One More Time
- </title>
- <history>
- TIME--The Weekly Newsmagazine--1993
- Jan. 11, 1993 Megacities
- </history>
- <article>
- <source>Time Magazine</source>
- <hdr>
- THE WEEK
- NATION, Page 8
- A Lame Duck Soars High One More Time
- </hdr>
- <body>
- <p>On Somalia, the Balkans and nukes, Bush starts a fast-paced
- closing act
- </p>
- <p> For a lame duck, George Bush was flying high and fast--both
- literally and symbolically. First he logged 8,000 miles from
- Washington to Somalia, where he greeted 1993 with troops he had
- dispatched there a month ago to relieve starvation. The
- President spent New Year's Eve in Mogadishu and journeyed the
- next day to Baidoa, in the heart of the famine zone. Then,
- without so much as returning to Washington to change his shirt,
- he winged north 3,700 miles to snowy Moscow. There, he and Boris
- Yeltsin were to sign a treaty that should accomplish the truly
- radical cut in long-range nuclear weapons that had eluded so
- many previous leaders in the White House and the Kremlin. Bush
- called it "the most historic arms-control agreement ever made":
- both sides are to retire about two-thirds of their remaining
- long-range warheads, the U.S. retaining 3,500 and the Russians
- 3,000.
- </p>
- <p> As a kind of prelude, Bush spelled out for the first time
- where and when the U.S. might finally intervene in the
- blood-soaked Balkans. Diplomats disclosed a letter to Serbian
- officials in which Bush warned them not to try anything in
- Kosovo, a mostly Albanian province that the Serbs may subject
- to Bosnia-style "ethnic cleansing." If Serbia does cause a
- conflict there, said Bush, the U.S. is "prepared to employ
- military force [presumably bombing] against the Serbs in
- Kosovo and in Serbia proper." In all, it was a flurry of foreign
- policy activity that might be expected from a President
- preparing for another four years in office rather than one
- beginning his final three weeks. Bush is obviously moving to
- nail down his place in history as a foreign policy mover and
- shaker before handing his job over to Bill Clinton. "There's a
- lot of unfinished business," the President said at one point
- during his journey. "I would not be telling you the truth if I
- didn't say I have some regrets about not finishing the course,
- finishing the job. But it's been a wonderful ride."
- </p>
-
- </body>
- </article>
- </text>
-
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