'Milosevic Had No Interest In the Welfare of Serbs,' Says US Ambassador

The first former United States Government (USG) official to testify in the Milosevic trial, Ambassador Peter Galbraith, did so without a US representative in the courtroom to assure he didn’t reveal state secrets. Ambassador Galbraith was US Ambassador to Croatia from 1993 to 1998. As such, he met regularly, sometimes several times a day, with former Croatian President Franjo Tudjman, and was involved in the Dayton Peace Process. He also met with the Accused.

Ambassador Galbraith provided the Court with insight into the motives and machinations of various actors leading up to Operation Storm, the Croatian assault on its Krajina territory taken by Croatian Serbs earlier in the war. Operation Storm was 'successful', re-allocating territory among the warring parties sufficiently to bring the parties to Dayton and an agreement that ended the war in Bosnia and Croatia. It also made refugees of nearly 200,000 Krajina Serbs, who fled its onslaught. Many of them still remain in refugee quarters in Serbia eight years later.

It was Milosevic’s cynical treatment of the Krajina Serbs that emerged from the background of the failed peace negotiations. In 1994, the United States, Russia, The European Union and UN initiated a process that was known as the Z-4 process to try to find a peaceful solution for territories in Croatia controlled by the self-styled Republic of Serbia Krajina (RSK). They envisaged three phases: 1) a ceasefire in Croatia; 2) economic and confidence building measures; 3) political settlement. The Z-4 Plan came out of this process. In it, Serb majority areas in Croatia would be granted significant autonomy, including the right to elect their own president, and have their own emblem, currency and “very, very substantial self-government,” according to the Ambassador.

Behind the scenes, Milosevic worked against adoption of the Z-4 Plan, despite its advantages to the Croatian Serbs. As Ambassador Galbraith testified, 'Milosevic had no interest in the welfare of Serbs that [sic] lived in Krajina. He looked at Z-4 not for what it might have done for the Serbs of Krajina . . . but as a precedent that might be applied to Kosovo.' In other words, if Croatia provided a high level of autonomy to a minority (the Serbs), then Serbia and the Federal Republic of Yugoslavia would have difficulty arguing against similar autonomy for the Albanians in Kosovo.

The failure of the Z-4 Plan, the Ambassador said, played a very significant part in Croatia’s decision to take military action to reclaim the Krajina. Tudjman, not unfamiliar with Milosevic’s objectives and motivations, realized Milosevic was the key to any resolution and that he would not support the Z-4 Plan. That knowledge freed Tudjman to accept it, knowing he would never be put to the test of implementing it.

Other factors that influenced Tudjman’s decision to launch Operation Storm, in addition to the failure of 11th hour negotiations, included the situation that prevailed on the ground at the end of July 1995. The international community was not disposed to intervene against Croatia following the recent massacre of 7000 Muslim men and boys at Srebrenica by the Bosnian Serb Army (VRS), the attack by both the VRS and the Army of the RSK on the UN safe haven of Bihac and the continuing assault on Zepa, another supposed safe area. Clearly, Serbian forces were on a rampage. The international community wasn’t going to object if Croatia did what it should have done.

Ambassador Galbraith met with Tudjman and gave him the green light, as far as the US was concerned. The US had been playing an exhausting and losing game of shuttle diplomacy between Zagreb and the RSK. With Srebrenica only weeks old and the looming possibility of a repetition in Bihac, the US would take a neutral position, the Ambassador told the Croatian President. “We expressed understanding for the situation in which they found themselves and for the fact they were prepared to expend blood and treasure to save Bihac. We were very concerned it would fall and become another Srebrenica, with four times as many people. We didn’t approve military actions and pointed out it was always a risky proposition and if Croatia got into difficulty they couldn’t expect help from the U.S. I warned President Tudjman in the strongest possible terms that he would be held accountable for protecting the Serb civilians and the UNPROFOR.”

The U.S. made one last ditch effort for a peaceful resolution the day before the military action was to be launched. With Tudjman’s agreement, Ambassador Galbraith contacted Milan Babic, RSK Prime Minister and head of the majority party in the Assembly, and asked for a meeting. They met in Belgrade, where Babic agreed to make a public statement at the Geneva negotiations next day that he accepted autonomy under the latest proposal. While he was certain he could get his party to go along, RSK President Milan Martic would only do what Milosevic told him. Milosevic was silent.

The Ambassador shuttled back to Zagreb to implore Tudjman to give the Krajina Serbs a few more days to agree. Tudjman, however, didn’t believe Babic had the clout to deliver the Krajina Serbs. Operation Storm was launched on August 3, 1995.

Despite the US warning to Tudjman, the Croatian military engaged in “much illegal and criminal behavior,” burning homes and killing hundreds of Serb civilians who were unable to flee in advance of the Croatian onslaught. Nevertheless, the Ambassador stood firmly behind his earlier conclusion reported in the press that Operation Storm did not constitute ethnic cleansing. On cross examination by Milosevic, he explained his concept of what constitutes ethnic cleansing: “It is a combination of military actions. It can include shelling, entry of troops into a village, and also, when people are there, executions, beatings, torture, burning houses, rape—activities intended to terrorize the population and force it to leave.” Because the people had fled in terror of what might happen, there were no people remaining to terrorize. Therefore, according to the Ambassador, there was no ethnic cleansing.

It should be noted that is not a legal conclusion. Nor is it possible to conclude ethnic cleansing cannot occur if a population of one nationality flees in fear of being harmed by the approaching army of another nationality. First, the act of fleeing cannot reasonably be called voluntary. The circumstances are inherently coercive. Second, if the result is an ethnically pure territory and no one of the former nationality is permitted to return, it begins to look like ethnic cleansing, if not part of the original intent of the operation, was embraced at its conclusion. Whether Operation Storm can be characterized as ethnic cleansing or not is irrelevant for determining criminal liability under the ICTY statute. It is also irrelevant in the Milosevic case. Nor does it reflect any position of the OTP, which has indicted General Ante Gotovina for war crimes committed under his command in Operation Storm. It is merely the opinion of one former US Ambassador.

Milosevic spent considerable time during his cross examination pleading innocent of any knowledge that war in the Krajina was imminent. During the eleventh hour attempt to reach a peaceful resolution, Milosevic was unreachable, according to the Ambassador’s testimony. Realizing his agreement was necessary to get Martic’s assent, Ambassador Galbraith asked the US Charge D’Affaires to meet with Milosevic. He was told Milosevic was on vacation and unreachable. The Ambassador expressed his disbelief to the Court: 'Milosevic must have been very cut off on top of the mountain. Everyone else in the world understood in August 1995 that Europe was on the verge of the biggest battle since WWII. How any leader could be on vacation with the fate of so many people, Serbs, at stake, I can't understand. . . . He could not have not known.'

On cross examination, Milosevic showed that Babic was able to contact him, though Babic led the Ambassador to believe he had been unsuccessful. Babic made the disclosure in his testimony before the Trial Chamber last autumn. By establishing this, Milosevic did little to help his cause. It merely shows he knew war was imminent, that he was being asked to do something to prevent it and that he did nothing.

Milosevic’s cross examination also provided a look at the U.S.’s ‘neutrality’ with respect to arms shipments to Bosnia-Herzegovina in violation of the UN arms embargo. While stating categorically that the US was not involved in arms smuggling into Bosnia in any way, Ambassador Galbraith readily admitted his country looked the other way when arms were shipped to Bosnia. “On 28 April 1994, President Tudjman asked me what would be the attitude of the U.S. if Croatia were to accede to a request from Bosnia-Herzegovina to permit arms from Iran and other countries to transit Croatia to Bosnia-Herzegovina. On instructions, I said I had no instructions, which he understood to mean that the US didn’t object and the arms shipment went forward.”

The Ambassador went on to explain that the Clinton Administration didn’t support UN Resolution 713, which imposed the arms embargo on the former Yugoslavia, because it favored the aggressor. “Serbia had all the arms of the Yugoslav People’s Army and the victims, the Bosnia-Herzegovina Government, were left undefended. The U.S. didn’t violate the arms embargo. It took the position that Resolution 713 shouldn’t be the only resolution honored when every other resolution was being dishonored mostly by the Serb side, especially requiring the protection of innocent civilians.”

The Ambassador’s testimony showed that Milosevic demonstrated little regard for innocent civilians, even when they were Serb. When he might have called Tudjman’s bluff and assured their autonomy within Croatia, he did nothing. When he might have ordered Martic back to the negotiating table to prevent Operation Storm, he did nothing. When 200,000 Serb refugees from the Krajina poured over the border into Serbia, he finally did something, as the Court heard from one of the survivors. He put them in camps, sent some to increase the Serb population in Kosovo (where they’d endure another war and another flight), and sent many men to retraining camps where they were beaten and forced to fight on the front. In light of all this, the Ambassador’s judgment seems warranted, “Milosevic had no interest in the welfare of Serbs that [sic] lived in Krajina.” Many of his co-nationals in Serbia, who ousted him from office in 2000, might want to expand on that statement.
*Other aspects of the Ambassador’s testimony will be covered in another report.