Clinton Defends Arms-to-Bosnia Policy

President Clinton said Thursday that he sees no inconsistency between a U.S. foreign policy that seeks to punish other nations which trade with Iran yet secretly has permitted Iranian arms to flow to the Bosnian Muslims.

“There is no linkage,” Clinton said during a press conference with German Chancellor Helmut Kohl. Clinton said that the arms flow was a key factor in helping create the conditions that brought about a truce in Bosnia and brought the warring factions to peace negotiations in Dayton, Ohio, last year.

He added that he is hopeful legislation now in Congress to punish nations that do business with Iran will provide enough flexibility so that U.S. international relationships will not suffer.

“We will do everything we can to implement it in a way that is sensitive to the partnerships we have with our friends and the honest disagreements that we have,” Clinton said.

Meanwhile, a former director of the Central Intelligence Agency was said to have told Congress that the CIA station chief in Croatia had said he was asked by the U.S. ambassador there to help him signal the Croatian government that the United States would look the other way while an Iranian arms pipeline to Bosnia was created.

Former CIA Director R. James Woolsey told the Senate Intelligence Committee in closed session that the spy agency’s Zagreb station chief reported to CIA headquarters that U.S. Ambassador Peter Galbraith had asked for his help in making sure that the Croatians got the message that the United States was going to allow the Iranians to smuggle arms. Committee Chairman Arlen Specter (R-Pa.) described Woolsey’s previously classified testimony during a public hearing Thursday.

In April 1994, Clinton decided that the United States would not object to Iranian arms shipments in violation of a United Nations arms embargo of the Balkans. The State Department ordered Galbraith to tell Croatian President Franjo Tudjman that he had “no instructions” about how the United States would respond to such shipments--diplomatic code for saying that there would be no response. But Tudjman--who had asked Galbraith for the U.S. reaction--was still confused by the “no instructions” response.

The following day, Tudjman again asked both Galbraith and Charles Redman, at the time the chief U.S. negotiator in the Balkans crisis, what the “no instructions” statement meant. Redman replied that the United States didn’t want to have to say no to the arms.

But Woolsey’s testimony suggests that Galbraith was so concerned about the confusion among the Croatian leadership that he recruited the CIA to help get the message across. If he did so, Galbraith would have gone further than he had been instructed by Washington. The action also may help explain why the station chief began to fear that Galbraith and other U.S. officials might be involved in an unauthorized covert action to facilitate Iranian arms shipments.

Woolsey testified that he reported to three State Department officials, including both Secretary of State Warren Christopher and Deputy Secretary of State Strobe Talbott, about Galbraith’s conversations with the station chief and was told that Galbraith would be instructed again not to go beyond his original “no instructions” orders.

Specter said Woolsey testified that “my conclusion of all this was that very definitely my station chief should not assist in doing what the ambassador said.”

Specter revealed Woolsey’s statements as Talbott testified in defense of the Iran arms policy by saying that it was critical to the survival of an independent Bosnian Muslim government.

“We bought time for a combination of American diplomacy, [allied] air power and Croatian and Bosnian military victories to reach an historic peace agreement under U.S. leadership at Dayton,” Talbott said.