(24 Feb 1999) English/Nat
President Bill Clinton said on Wednesday he regrets having to continue air attacks against Iraq but blamed Saddam Hussein's regime for trying to achieve a symbolic victory by shooting down a U-S plane.
On Wednesday U-S planes attacked targets to the south of Baghdad in the latest of a series of skirmishes between planes enforcing the no-fly zone and Iraqi air defence gunners.
Clinton also said the U-S and its allies were right to allow the two sides in the Kosovo peace talks more time to come to an agreement.
The president made his comments during a joint news conference with President Jerry Rawlings of Ghana.
He laid the blame for the attacks by U-S and British war planes squarely at the door of Saddam Hussein.
SOUNDBITE: (English)
"And I regret this, you know I regret this I wish he would stop doing that, I wish you would make an agreement with the United Nations to let the inspections go back. We have shown that we are not interested in hurting the Iraqi people, we have been for broader rules for meeting the non-military needs of the people of Iraq and we will continue to work at that. But these little encounters, each of them so far has been relatively small, are as a result of the fact that we are still, not withstanding the fact that the inspectors aren't there, bound to enforce a no-fly zone which still exists under the U-N resolutions."
SUPER CAPTION: Bill Clinton, US President
Clinton also defended the decision of the group of countries overseeing the Kosovo peace process to extend the deadline for the two sides to reach an agreement.
SOUNDBITE: (English)
"What they did in the peace talks was to reach an agreement that they had gone as far as they could but they did not want to give up and disintegrate into violence. So when we agreed to extend we were basically agreeing to what both parties wished to do. It seems to me that if your objective is to get people to get together to make peace and they say we think this is what we need, I think that's the right thing to do."
SUPER CAPTION: Bill Clinton, U.S President
The Serb and ethnic Albanian delegations will meet again in France next month.
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