“I never was for a date certain,” Mrs. Albright told editors and reporters at The Washington Times. “In Bosnia, we gave a date certain, and then we couldn’t get out and that undercut our credibility.”

She was referring to the pullout of 20,000 U.S. troops from the war-torn Balkans. The troops were sent to help enforce the 1995 Dayton peace accords that ended the Bosnia war, following the breakup of the former Yugoslavia, but stayed beyond a 1996 deadline initially set by President Clinton.