UNITED STATES:ON THE day that dozens of US cruise missiles rained down on Serbia in an attempt to punish Yugoslav president Slobodan Milosevic for the country's campaign against ethnic Albanian separatists in Kosovo, first lady Hillary Clinton was far from the White House war room: she was touring ancient Egyptian ruins.
In her bid for the Democratic presidential nomination Hillary Clinton has touted her experience in the White House as preparation to lead in a time of crisis. "Ready on Day One," has been her slogan.
But an initial reading of some of the more than 11,000 pages of Clinton's schedules from her days as first lady, released yesterday by the National Archives and the William Jefferson Clinton Presidential Library, shows that often she was far from the site of decision- making during some of the pivotal events of Bill Clinton's presidency.
Mrs Clinton, who was an attorney and first lady of Arkansas before moving to the White House, frequently claims more than 30 years' experience in public life, contrasting herself with Barack Obama's slimmer resume - he served several years in the Illinois legislature and was elected to the US Senate in 2004.
"The schedules do help illustrate Hillary Clinton's extensive and exhaustive work as a public servant and her role as an influential advocate at home and around the world on behalf of our country," Clinton campaign spokesman Jay Carson said in a statement. But documents from her first lady office threaten to undermine her claim to have played a major role in Clinton's foreign policy decisions.
For instance, when Nato launched air strikes against Serbia to punish then-Yugoslav president Slobodan Milosevic for the country's assault against ethnic Albanian separatists in Kosovo, Mrs Clinton toured Egyptian ruins, including King Tut's tomb and the temple of Hatshepsut. She dined at the Temple of Luxor, and stayed at the Sofitel Winter Palace Hotel there.
Presidents of three Balkan states signed a peace agreement in Dayton, Ohio, in November 1995, ending years of violence in the former Yugoslavia. Mrs Clinton's file lists no public schedule for that day, but indicates she was in Washington.
The documents follow a conservative organisation's freedom of information request and subsequent lawsuit. The records cover the almost 3,000 days that Mrs Clinton was in the White House, and detail meetings, trips, speaking engagements and social activities.
Bruce Lindsey, a Little Rock attorney and long-time Clinton confidant, vetted the pages. National archives staff checked the documents for information sensitive to national security and law enforcement.
Almost one-third of the pages have redactions, most of which the archives said were made to protect the privacy of Mrs Clinton's associates.
Christopher Farrell, director of investigations and research with Judicial Watch, the organisation behind the two-year-long legal effort to win the documents' release, said he doesn't anticipate finding any "smoking gun"within the reams of pages. He said Mr Lindsey "has enormous discretion" to redact information damaging to Mrs Clinton.
Hillary Clinton was present in the White House, however, for at least one significant event of the Clinton presidency. On November 15th, 1995, when President Clinton is said to have begun his affair with White House intern Monica Lewinsky, she was in the White House, according to her schedule.
- (Guardian service)