Lilic Challenges Milosevic on Kosovo Strategy

Tensions rose between Milosevic and former Yugoslav president Zoran Lilic as they briefly sparred in court over how Serbia and the Federal Republic of Yugoslavia (FRY) should have acted to control violence in Kosovo and end the 1999 NATO bombing. It was one of the few subjects that provoked disagreement between the two former allies in three days of testimony marked by an astonishing degree of deference to Milosevic’s assertions (See June 18, 2003 CIJ report “Milosevic Demonstrates Power in Lilic Cross Examination”). By the time the Kosovo conflict attracted worldwide attention in 1998, Lilic had completed his term as president of the FRY and had lost a bid for candidacy to the Serbian presidency left vacant by Milosevic in 1997. Lilic told the court that Milosevic and his wife Mira Markovic helped to thwart his candidacy through their control over party leadership and state media, as well as alluding to the existence of “ballot irregularities.” Despite this, Lilic had remained within the Socialist Party of Serbia (SPS) ranks and assumed the role of deputy prime minister of FRY, which he held throughout the Kosovo conflict.

Never directly stating that Milosevic made incorrect (or illegal) decisions, Lilic nevertheless conveyed to the court his impression that the war in Kosovo could have been avoided or brought to a speedier conclusion, had Milosevic followed his suggestions. He told the court that he had personally advocated a policy of “eliminating” the Kosovo Liberation Army (KLA) early in 1998, when it was organizationally and numerically weak. In Lilic’s mind, this was to be followed by a series of confidence building measures between Kosovar Serbs and Kosovar Albanians at all levels of society. He expressed regret that Milosevic took neither suggestion.

As deputy prime minister, Lilic undertook two fact-finding missions to Kosovo in May and November 1998. During the first trip, he was reportedly told by the head of the Serbian state security service, Jovica Stanisic (who was arrested and brought to the Tribunal last week), that some Serbian reserve police forces were illegally seizing property of Kosovar Albanians. He conveyed this information to Milosevic and to Serbian interior minister Vlajko Stojiljkovic, who reportedly exclaimed in frustration that “in the end, all Albanians should be killed.” Stanisic also reportedly told Lilic that there was no unity of command governing the actions of the Yugoslav Army (VJ) and the police forces (MUP) deployed in Kosovo at that time, and complained that the VJ wasn’t offering the proper logistical support to the MUP forces.

The proper coordination of VJ and MUP activities was both a constitutional and a practical concern at the time, and continues to be a major area of contention in the trial. According to the FRY Constitution in force at the time (it has since been amended), the MUP could be subordinated to the VJ only in situations of war, the immediate threat of war, or states of emergency. Otherwise, the role of the VJ was limited to operations within a narrow belt along national boundaries and along communication lines. Survivor witnesses have testified to the participation of both VJ and MUP forces in the commission of war crimes and crimes against humanity at various places and times in Kosovo. Much evidence suggests that MUP forces were reporting directly to Milosevic during the Kosovo conflict, and that an alternative military chain of command was created, bypassing the VJ chief of staff, General Momcilo Perisic.

The prosecution introduced into evidence a strongly worded July 1998 letter from Perisic to Milosevic charging him with bypassing the VJ chain of command, subordinating the VJ to unqualified commanders, illegally ordering the VJ to supply MUP with equipment and goods, ordering the VJ to perform unconstitutional tasks, creating a separate and personal chain of command for the VJ unit known as the “Guard’s Brigades,” and promoting officers without reference to law, principle, or criteria of qualification. It is a powerful document speaking to several central claims in the prosecution’s Kosovo case.

Milosevic heaped scorn on Perisic’s letter in court, calling it imbecilic and a “smoke-screen.” He stated that the letter had been written because Perisic was conducting espionage and needed to justify himself to “external tutors.” This is not the first time Milosevic has accused disfavored top officials with spying; Stanisic was himself charged with being a CIA operative before being ousted from the MUP in 1998. Lilic permitted himself a smile at the allegation: “I would have arrested [Perisic] myself if he had been spying.” The letter set the scene for the first significant disagreements between Lilic and Milosevic: “I can hardly agree,” said Lilic quietly, “that [the letter] is a smokescreen.”

This is important support for the descriptive accuracy of Perisic’s letter coming from another insider, and will be used by the Court when deciding what evidentiary weight to give the document. Of course, what was and wasn’t constitutional within that description of facts on the ground must be established by more than Perisic’s own evaluation. On direct examination, Lilic addressed particular points brought up in the letter, agreeing that Milosevic had overstepped his authority in giving commands to the Guard’s Brigade unit outside of the supervision of the Supreme Defense Council, a body made up of the Presidents of Serbia and Montenegro and the President of FRY.

Milosevic claimed constitutional authority for his personal command, and asserted that the unit was mostly ceremonial in nature and only ever used to protect the head of state. In a typical move, Lilic did not openly disagree with Milosevic’s claims (none of which has evidentiary value, since Milosevic is not himself testifying). Instead, he undermined the authority of Milosevic’s positions by sidestepping: Lilic suggested that the military principle of unity of command was breached by the separate command for the Guard’s Brigade (avoiding the constitutional issue), and claimed he didn’t know what the unit was used for since he was no longer a member of the Supreme Defense Council at the time.

Lilic, while not a constitutional expert, was nonetheless asked to give evidence about Perisic’s charges of systemic illegality. On the issue of presidential military promotion powers, Lilic said only that there were “different interpretations” of what was constitutionally permitted. Certainly, the FRY president had the power to ceremonially promote each class of cadets graduating from the military academy, and the Supreme Defense Council had the power to promote generals, a power understood as involving the participation of the VJ chief of staff.

Perisic’s letter complains that officers were promoted without his knowledge, undermining the principles of subordination and unity of command necessary for effective (and accountable) military operations. Milosevic, in his typical cross-examination style, asserted as incontrovertible fact exactly that which was most in question, asking rhetorically what promotions Perisic could possibly have had in mind, since the Supreme Defense Council accepted all of the chief of staff’s proposals. Lilic deflated the circularity of the argument: “I imagine [Perisic] was referring to promotions and transfers the Supreme Defense Council didn’t know of.” Milosevic asked whether any such secret promotions occurred. “Not in my term,” said Lilic.

According to Lilic, Perisic was forcefully advocating that a state of emergency be declared in Kosovo in 1998, a move that Lilic supported and that would have bestowed constitutional legitimacy on the use of the VJ troops for MUP policing functions. Lilic told the court that Kosovo in 1998 “had all the characteristics” of a state of emergency, without ever being called one. Asked why Milosevic never declared a state of emergency, Lilic suggested two vague but intriguing factors: 1. Milosevic’s political relationship with Serbs in Kosovo, and 2. the possible deleterious effect such a declaration may have had on international political negotiations. Neither idea was clarified further. Milosevic didn’t hesitate to give his own explanation for the decision, simultaneously providing one of the most surreal moments of irony yet seen in this most surreal of trials: such a state of emergency, he said, might have created conditions that would have compromised the civil liberties of people living in Kosovo.

The court has requested that a constitutional expert be provided to help clarify what was and was not permissible about the VJ/MUP cooperation in Kosovo at the time. Prosecutor Geoffrey Nice agreed, while notifying the court that most qualified scholars in the region simply have been too afraid to testify, a reminder of the continuing delicacy of the rule of law in the Balkans. He also reminded the judges that this topic could be addressed by former Constitutional Court judge Dr. Ivan Kristan, some of whose prospective evidence was recently excluded by the court as insufficiently disinterested (see May 23, 2003 CIJ report). What is clear even without expert evidence is that General Perisic considered his troops’ involvement with the MUP illegal. “You ordered me to supply the MUP,” he wrote in his letter to Milosevic: “you are not authorized to command this and I am not authorized to respond.”

Milosevic insisted that the VJ operated within constitutional boundaries despite the absence of a state of emergency or an imminent threat of war. He took the opportunity to read a military aide-memoire from the time, reminding soldiers of special obligations to protect POWs, women and children. To the charge that the army supplied the police with equipment, Milosevic responded righteously: “technical equipment” no longer needed by the VJ was logically transferred to the MUP in order to save lives. Similarly, some MUP units logically were housed in army barracks for their own protection from terrorist attack. Judging from his response to Perisic’s letter, Milosevic will need to be reminded in his defense that he cannot establish the constitutionality of VJ activities in Kosovo simply by insisting they were legal.

The ultimate importance of Lilic’s testimony may lie less in his responses to specific questions and more in the documents - Perisic’s letter among them - introduced through his testimony. However, his frustration with Milosevic’s responses to the crisis in Kosovo also holds important clues about the general atmosphere of the Serbian and Yugoslav leadership at the time. Lilic insisted that political officials never planned illegal attacks in Kosovo (and elsewhere), and that international humanitarian law was of utmost concern to Milosevic and others. At the same time, however, he discussed his detailed verbal and written reports to Milosevic after his fact finding missions in Kosovo, and testified that Milosevic was receiving information about events on the ground from both the state security and public security divisions of the MUP, from the VJ, and from civilian authorities. This is a strong refutation of a claim Milosevic made during the Kosovo portion of the trial, when he dismissed evidence of his knowledge of crimes by stating that the President could not be expected to know details from the ground.

At a meeting following his June 1998 mission, Lilic told interior minister Stojiljkovic: “one day we, our children and our children’s children will be ashamed of being Serbs” because of the activities of some of the reserve MUP units. Lilic countered two of Milosevic’s courtroom assertions in a similarly revealing mode. Milosevic claimed that he had accepted a plan for an end to NATO bombing negotiated early in the airstrike campaign by Lilic, serving as a special envoy, and former German Chancellor Helmut Kohl. In evidentiary terms, the court may or may not find it important to the case that an avenue to end the conflict was open but refused by Milosevic. For Milosevic’s political legacy, it is indisputably important, and the episode emerged as a personal wound to Lilic during the testimony. In response to Milosevic’s repeated assertions that he had taken Lilic’s advice, Lilic finally said: “Please stop saying you had agreed to what I had suggested.” In response to the idea that Milosevic had taken the best possible route towards ending the Kosovo conflict and protecting Serb interests in the region, Lilic was even more strikingly direct: “There are fewer Serbs in Kosovo now than in the prisons of The Hague.”