HENNIKER, N.H., Jan. 25 (UPI) -- Wesley Clark said Sunday he was fired as NATO Supreme Commander because he clashed with a Republican defense secretary over stopping ethnic cleansing.
Clark, a retired four-star Army general now running for the Democratic presidential nomination, said he was fired by then-Defense Secretary William Cohen, a Republican serving under Democratic President Bill Clinton, because they clashed directly over the need to use force to end Serbian ethnic cleansing in Albanian-majority Kosovo.
"I had a belief that the United States should prevent ethnic cleansing in the Balkans and he didn't agree with that," Clark told his audience at New England College in Henniker, N.H., United Press International reported.
Clark said President Clinton sided with him, and then later "the Pentagon got even."
