UN Official Says Serbian Support Made Sarajevo Siege Possible

It was Milosevic the Peacemaker who emerged from nearly two days of testimony by his former interlocutor Lord David Owen. At times, the proceeding seemed more to resemble a negotiating session than a criminal trial, with Lord Owen variously lecturing the Accused, agreeing with him, and concluding, 'I can't be more helpful than that to you.' Milosevic, for his part, appeared to relish the opportunity to relive the high points of his career when he was considered key to peace in the former Yugoslavia by many international interlocutors.

Lord David Owen was appointed European Commission representative for the International Conference for the Former Yugoslavia (ICFY) in autumn 1992 to help broker a peace settlement in Bosnia. He and Cyrus Vance, serving as the UN representative, drew up what became known as the Vance Owen Peace Plan (VOPP), presented to the warring parties in January 1993. While the parties reached preliminary agreement in Athens, it fell through in Pale when Radovan Karadzic withdrew his tepid support and the Bosnian Serb Assembly voted overwhelmingly against the plan. The vote was a humiliating defeat for Slobodan Milosevic, who put his considerable prestige and influence behind the plan, including traveling to Pale to address the Bosnian Serb Assembly in person prior to the vote. It was, said Lord Owen, one of the lowest points of Milosevic’s influence over the Bosnian Serbs.

Lord Owen testified at the summons of the Court, having rejected the Prosecution’s invitation. He wanted to assure the neutrality of negotiators, he told the Court, thanking them for affording him special treatment. He assured the judges, however, that the negotiator’s neutrality didn’t extend to war crimes or crimes against humanity. Both he and Mr. Vance recommended that the ICTY be established by the UN Security Council, he continued. Lord Owen pointedly stated that the two negotiators felt the Security Council was the appropriate originator because it would not insist on “absolute justice,” but would understand that can interfere with reconciliation. Nevertheless, he added, “I don’t believe in amnesty for war crimes.” The statement perhaps makes sense in the context of a diplomat struggling with the competing demands of his training in realpolitik, emerging requirements of international justice and his own conscience. His testimony reflected these conflicting tensions.

Lord Owen characterized Milosevic as the “key” to any negotiated settlement of the Bosnian war. He believed Milosevic sincerely wanted an end to the conflict, recognizing, as the Bosnian Serbs did not, that they had achieved on the ground all they were likely to obtain (70% of the territory of Bosnia-Herzegovina). While the witness praised Milosevic for his efforts to secure a settlement, he also criticized him for not going far enough. He insisted that the Accused could have cut off the supply of fuel, ammunition and weapons on which the Bosnian Serb war depended. “What was Pale?” Owen asked rhetorically. “A small number of people dependent for a very large part of their existence on the relationship with your government. . . . It gives you leverage.” When Milosevic protested that Serbia and the FRY had imposed an embargo against the Bosnian Serbs for their intransigence, Lord Owen interjected, “The question is ‘was that for real?’ Were you stopping the really sensitive supplies of military material to Mladic. . . . It is a key issue for you to explain to the Court.”

As if to restore some imaginary balance, the former negotiator then confessed that he too bore responsibility for failure to end the fighting in 1993. “I failed to mobilize the Western world . . . to interdict the supply lines.” Lord Owen had argued for military intervention to destroy bridges and highways between Serbia and the Republika Srpska. Of course, there is no equivalency here. At most, Lord Owen is claiming he failed at persuasion. Milosevic continued providing the necessities for conducting war. When lead Prosecutor Geoffrey Nice read out actual quantities of military assistance Serbia and the FRY provided to the RS, according to Mladic, he asked the witness if he was surprised. “I am surprised,” Lord Owen said. “We never knew.”

At the beginning and at several points in his testimony Lord Owen sought to emphasize that he didn’t consider any side blameless in the war; nor did he consider there was only one aggressor and one victim. The situation, he testified, was far more complex. When Milosevic sought to capitalize on this, however, Lord Owen, as if to reassert his neutrality, snapped back, “'I have accepted many selective quotations [by you] from my book [Balkan Odyssey]. . . . There is not an equality of evil doing. It is a sad fact -- and I want it to be made abundantly clear -- the Bosnian Serbs were responsible for many more cases of malnutrition, maltreatment, killing, and raping than either the Muslims or the Croats. It is an issue you have to face up to. It is understandable to defend the Serbian people, but any impartial observer in those years thought the Bosnian Serbs were offending substantially more than the others. It is why world opinion didn't strike you as impartial. It was the pattern of violence and racism they found deeply offensive. The issues need to be raised and resolved if it is to be prevented in the future.'

Lord Owen’s assessment of the character of the Bosnian Serb leadership led him to fear a massacre in Srebrenica if the VRS had attacked the Safe haven in 1993. When he telephoned the Accused he found Milosevic shared his concerns, “Milosevic was pleased I contacted him. He too was exasperated and extremely concerned that if the Bosnian Serb army entered Srebrenica there would be a massacre.” Lord Owen credited Milosevic for intervening with Mladic to stop an attack. “'I do believe you were very helpful in 1993 in stopping Mladic going in and taking Srebrenica. The record is quite clear. You did intervene. I think you were . . . aware of the great danger from the reputation of the Serbs. It would have been a very nasty grudge match.” Of course, two years later no one intervened, nor was it a “grudge match.” Thousands of Bosniak civilians and unarmed soldiers were systematically executed and buried in mass graves.

Once more, Lord Owen testified about his part in failing to prevent what everyone seemed to agree was a foreseeable massacre. His contribution was not alerting more people to danger, a failure he deeply regrets. The witness testified that he had been strongly opposed to the Safe Area policy, calling it a “disgraceful decision.” 'Every member of the Security Council [who voted to establish the Safe Areas] knew it was not going to provide sufficient troops. They knew that the Secretary General said 35,000 troops were needed. They didn't provide them and in part are responsible for that appalling massacre.”

Milosevic quoted a statement by Philippe Morillon to the effect that he didn’t believe General Ratko Mladic, Commander in Chief of the VRS, could have ordered massacres at Srebrenica. 'You have met General Mladic,” Milosevic told the witness. “I assume you cannot believe it either.' But Lord Owen responded, 'Here we come to a very serious disagreement. . . . I don't share that view of General Mladic.. . . It is not beyond his record of behavior to have been complicit in a massacre of Muslims. I believe he was a racist. He had many controversial attitudes about Muslims. He had a callousness and brutality about him. I would not be a character witness for General Mladic's inability to acquiesce in a massacre of Muslims.'

Lord Owen’s testimony on Srebrenica was important for the Prosecution’s contention that Milosevic shares guilt for genocide because he was part of a joint criminal enterprise which included Mladic and Karadzic, and, given what Milosevic knew about Mladic, a genocidal massacre was a reasonably foreseeable consequence of the enterprise. The Tribunal has yet to give a definitive ruling on what legally constitutes genocide, notably here for actors who do not necessarily share a genocidal intent, but, nevertheless, with knowledge of their compatriots' genocidal intent, make the mass killing possible.

In his opinion, Lord Owen testified, Milosevic was not a racist or a nationalist. While he was ruthless in his pursuit of power, he was also a pragmatist, a much preferable negotiating partner than the true believers in Pale. As matters developed, he could accept that Bosnian and Croatian Serbs would not be unified in one state with their mother country because of the realities of international politics – at least for the time being. But his co-nationals in Bosnia were not so easily swayed, particularly after taking and holding 70% of Bosnian territory by force without credible international opposition.

Lord Owen testified that the relationship between the Bosnian Serbs and their protector in Belgrade varied over time. Initially, he said, Milosevic’s control was very strong. After the Bosnian Serbs defied Milosevic by refusing to ratify the VOPP, his influence waned. But it was not a continuous slide downwards. The September 1994 FRY embargo of goods to the RS was Milosevic’s attempt to reassert control. By summer 1995, following NATO airstrikes on Bosnian Serb positions and reversals on the battlefield, Milosevic’s influence once again increased. The Prosecutor must have welcomed Owen’s testimony on this point, since it shows he had significant influence over the Bosnian Serbs when they attacked and overran the safe haven of Srebrenica, followed by the massacres. It is far from a direct linkage, however.

Milosevic looked for some of Lord Owen’s demonstrated ‘neutrality’ when he asked about Croatian ethnic cleansing of the Serbian Krajina. Lord Owen obliged to the extent he could: 'One of the biggest ethnic cleansings was that involving Serbs who had to flee Krajina in the summer of 1995. One of the biggest failures was to insure that ordinary citizens in Croatia who were Serbs were entitled to continue to live there. . . . I was never able to get Croatian Serbian leaders to show a degree of realism necessary to protect their own people. I don't think I can help you further.'

Nor was Lord Owen able to help Milosevic in blaming Bosnian Muslims for failure of the peace process. 'I was trying to understand the viewpoint of the Bosnian Government. President Izetbegovic was under siege in his capital city. The nation with the biggest population group was pushed into 10% of the territory. There were still camps holding Muslims hostage in appalling conditions. There was continued shelling and sniping. All of which he felt with some justice that the world was ignoring. Of course he couldn't agree to freeze the present position. It was unfair in every particular.'

While he referred several times to the 'civil war,' when pressed by Milosevic, Lord Owen said it had elements of a civil war, but also involved fighters from Serbia, Croatia and the Yugoslav Army (VJ). . 'I don't accept there were no people fighting on the Serb side who were answerable to you.' He held this view consistently, he said.

By the end of Lord Owen's testimony, Milosevic's role as peacemaker appeared more ambiguous than the Accused might have hoped. Lord Owen characterized him as a leader who, perhaps to protect his own power, failed to use the power he assuredly had over the Bosnian Serbs to stop the war before tens of thousands more people were killed. Indeed, though aware of the brutality of which the Bosnian Serbs were capable and intervening to stop a feared massacre at Srebrenica in 1993, Milosevic continued to provide the means for them to carry out that massacre two years later. To preserve his own power, Milosevic played with fire -- and many thousands of innocent people got 'burned.'