Clinton Gets No Break From Kosovo
By KEVIN GALVIN - AP
YULEE, Fla. (AP) - President Clinton played a round of
golf and went biking with the first lady Wednesday on a secluded plantation in northern
Florida. But it wasn't all fun in the sun for the commander in chief.
Clinton received his daily security briefing on the Yugoslavia campaign, called
the Italian prime minister and named Nobel laureate Elie Wiesel a special envoy to
Macedonia to check up on refugees from Kosovo.
``He will stay in touch, as you've already seen today,'' White House press
secretary Joe Lockhart said. ``But it's important from time to time to take a chance to
get away.''
Any president vacationing during a military conflict opens himself to questions
about priorities. President Bush was criticized for taking two weeks off to golf and fish
during the build up to the Persian Gulf War.
Bush told reporters as he headed to his summer home in Kennebunkport, Maine, in
1991 that ``what you don't want to do is appear to be held hostage in the White
House.'' But Clinton's vacation site offered one advantage over the coast of Maine:
there was little chance any media pictures would be taken of his leisurely pursuits on the
densely wooded, 7,500 acre White Oak Plantation located 20 miles north of Jacksonville.
The vacation was planned long before release of a report on China's espionage
was released Tuesday by a special committee led by Reps. Christopher Cox, R-Calif., and
Norman Dicks, D-Wash. But Jim Nicholson, the Republican National Committee chairman,
said through a spokesman that it was appropriate Clinton was vacationing at a nature
preserve: ``He's joining the ostriches with his head in the sand the day after the Cox
committee exposed the worst case of espionage in U.S. history under his watch.''
The White House has stressed that most of the spying detailed in the report
occurred in the 1980s, when Republicans held the presidency, and Lockhart noted that
Clinton spoke to the report in Texas on Tuesday. ``I don't think there's any worry
on our part about the appearances here,'' he said.
Clinton and first lady Hillary Rodham Clinton arrived Tuesday at the private
wildlife conservation area inhabited by giraffes, cheetahs and white rhinos. The Clintons
were traveling without daughter Chelsea, who is still in school at Stanford
University. The president's Labrador, Buddy, did make the journey. White Oak is
located off an unmarked dirt road about 20 miles north of Jacksonville and sports a
nine-hole golf course and a swimming pool, as well as 14 dwellings. The Clintons were
staying at Roseland, a two-story, cedar paneled, five-bedroom house. ``It offers it all,
with the ability to get away from what they're normally faced with on a work day,''
Lockhart said. The president brought a bagful of books to help pass the time,
including ``Sudden Mischief'' by Robert Parker and Carl Hiassen's ``Lucky You.''
Clinton spoke with Italian Prime Minister Massimo D'Alemma for about 30 minutes
on Tuesday night about the NATO campaign against the forces of Yugoslav President Slobodan
Milosevic. After receiving his briefing Wednesday morning from a National Security
Council staffer traveling with him, he called Wiesel, a Holocaust survivor and author, and
asked him to travel to Macedonia on May 31.
``He wants to get a sense of the conditions there and have a chance to talk to
some of the refugees about the conditions on the ground,'' Lockhart said. Wiesel will
report back directly to Clinton after his trip.
