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(s)Elections See other (s)Elections Articles Title: From Bad to Verse for Hill FROM BAD TO VERSE FOR HILL By SELIM ALGAR, NY Post Correspondent March 31, 2008 -- SARAJEVO, Bosnia - The Bosnian girl who famously read a poem to Hillary Rodham Clinton during her 1996 visit to the war-torn country is shocked - and her countrymen infuriated - that the former first lady claimed to have dodged sniper fire that day. Emina Bicakcic, now 20 and studying to become a doctor, told The Post she stood on the tarmac at the air base in Tuzla, greeted Clinton and even had time to share the lines of verse she'd written - all without fear of attack from an unseen enemy. "I was surprised when I heard this," Bicakcic said, referring to Clinton's assertion that she braved snipers upon landing, ducking and sprinting to military vehicles. Other Bosnians said they had one of two reactions to Clinton's debunked action-hero account of her visit: laughter or anger. "It's an exaggeration," said former acting President Ejup Ganic, who was present during Clinton's visit. "No one was firing. There were no shots fired." Sema Markovic, 22, a student, said she has long respected Hillary as a strong leader but was angered by her remarks. "It is an ugly thing for a politician to tell lies,' she said. "We had problems for years, and I don't like when someone lies about them. It makes us look bad." Clinton has since admitted she "misspoke." Bicakcic, asked if she feared any threat of violence that day, said she felt just the opposite. "No," she said, speaking at her home in Sarajevo, the Bosnian capital. "I was just excited. I wanted to look [Clinton] in the eye and say, 'Thank you.' " And Clinton, she said, seemed far more interested in her poem than in dashing for shelter. "She was really listening," Bicakcic recalled. "She was drinking in every word of my poem." Her poem begins with the words, "Peace has come." Bicakcic said she was reluctant to criticize Clinton's account of that day because of a deep appreciation for the US role in ending Bosnia's bloody nightmare. A picture of the girl's meeting with the then-first lady - signed and inscribed by Clinton - has become a treasured family heirloom. Still, Bicakcic admitted that she is not supporting Clinton in her contest against Barack Obama. "I'm staying neutral," she said, declining to discuss the issue further. "I have very mixed emotions about it. It's a difficult situation for me." Former acting President Ganic said that while the war with Serbia had largely ended by the time Clinton visited, he was still nervous about hosting such an important foreign figure, which meant more security and, ultimately, less risk for the former first lady that day. "We were nervous, so we cut down the ceremony," he recalled. "You don't mess around with your key friends. There was a little bit of risk, but it was not like that. She didn't run." A worker at the airstrip where Clinton landed said the surrounding hills that could have harbored snipers were far too distant to pose any real threat to the first lady. He said that he found her false account hard to stomach and that it unnecessarily revived difficult memories. Many Bosnians - still confronted with bullet-scarred and burned-out buildings from Sarajevo to Tuzla - said their very real experiences with violence should not serve as cheap fodder for Clinton's political ambitions. "It was a horrible lie," said 29-year-old Midhat Efendira. Like most Bosnians, he expressed a deep appreciation of Bill Clinton for his role in ending the war. But he found Hillary Clinton's remarks intolerable. "It was a low blow," he said. "She did it to gain sensational publicity." Efendira said that Bosnians are closely following the US presidential race and that Hillary's remarks have damaged the formerly untouchable Clinton name in the country. Sead Numanovic, the deputy editor-in-chief of Bosnia's largest newspaper, Dnevni Avaz, laughed at Sen. Clinton's account of the alleged sniper fire and her claim that she "misspoke." "My first thought was, she must be kidding," he said. "When someone threatens your life, you don't make a mistake." Numanovic said his paper has not even bothered to cover the story. "We don't have space for someone's lies," he said. "Why is she so stupid? It doesn't portray her as a real leader." Some Bosnians contrasted Clinton's jaunt to the truly dangerous visits paid by now-deceased former Pakistani Prime Minister Benazir Bhutto and former Turkish Prime Minister Tansu Ciller in 1994. In an effort to call attention to Sarajevo's plight, the two female heads of state donned flak jackets and were driven throughout the heart of the bullet-riddled city at the height of the conflict. Two days after their visit, 69 people were killed in a mortar attack on a central market. Editor Numanovic summed up his opinion of the Clinton "sniper fire" controversy with a little dig at US culture. "I guess there has to be a little bit of Hollywood in everything," he said with a laugh.
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