1 Monday, 3 November 2003

2 [Open session]

3 [The witness entered court]

4 [The accused entered court]

5 --- Upon commencing at 9.15 a.m.

6 JUDGE MAY: Lord Owen, would you stand, please, to take the

7 declaration.

8 THE WITNESS: I solemnly declare that I will speak the truth, the

9 whole truth, and nothing but the truth.

10 JUDGE MAY: Thank you very much.

11 WITNESS: DAVID OWEN

12 JUDGE MAY: Lord Owen, we have your statement, for which we're

13 grateful, and we've had the opportunity to read it. We understand that

14 you do not wish to make an additional statement, in which case, the

15 procedure will be as follows: That the Prosecution will begin by asking

16 questions. There will be a limit on the time which is available to them.

17 They will be followed by the accused. He will have slightly longer. And

18 finally, the amicus will have the opportunity to ask questions for a short

19 period. I hope very much that that should all be completed tomorrow

20 morning at a relatively early hour.

21 I understand your private secretary is in court to assist with the

22 documents.

23 Mr. Nice.

24 Questioned by Mr. Nice:

25 Q. Lord Owen, I don't intend to ask you very many questions about

1 your statement because, of course, it's self-explanatory. It, like your

2 book, are before us, and we're grateful to you for coming to give evidence

3 to enable them to be before us as documents of record.

4 If I can begin with something of an overview of your position. I

5 think it is that you would say that the accused was to some degree

6 committed to the peace process following the failure of the Vance-Owen

7 Peace Plan.

8 A. Well, the Vance-Owen Peace Plan was a -- the first detailed peace

9 plan to be presented, one of arguably four or five, and I think the --

10 Mr. Milosevic did show that he wanted the Vance-Owen Peace Plan to

11 succeed, both leading up to the meeting at Athens and then when he went

12 with the Prime Minister of Greece and the president of Yugoslavia and

13 president of Montenegro to the Bosnian Serb Assembly in Pale.

14 Q. It's undoubtedly the case, and you make this absolutely clear,

15 that both you and the accused had invested a great deal in that plan,

16 although, as I think you say, for different reasons, or potentially for

17 different reasons.

18 A. Yes. I think obviously Mr. Vance and I were -- had only one

19 objective, which was to bring peace as soon as it possibly could come, to

20 try and stop the ethnic cleansing that was continuing, and the wanton loss

21 of life that was occurring. I think it needs to be remembered that we

22 were negotiating almost the whole time while wars were raging, which is

23 perhaps one of the most unattractive aspects of the whole affair and,

24 personally extremely testing and difficult for both Mr. Vance and then

25 later Mr. Stoltenberg and myself.

1 Q. From time to time I'd like to refer to passages in your statement.

2 MR. NICE: Your Honours, I'm concerned not to interrupt the

3 testimony by having the usher putting documents unnecessarily on the

4 overhead projector. If Lord Owen could have a copy of his statement

5 before him - I know you've got it - and if I read out a passage which is

6 fairly short, it may be that it doesn't need to go on the overhead

7 projector, but I'm entirely in the Court's hands.

8 JUDGE MAY: Since this is the first time it's been referred to in

9 evidence, I think we should have an exhibit number for the statement and

10 the appendices attached to it. They can be exhibited together as a court

11 exhibit.

12 THE REGISTRAR: Your Honour, Chamber Exhibit 16.

13 MR. NICE:

14 Q. Lord Owen, if you'd be good enough, please, to go to page 3 of

15 your own statement. In the middle of that page, in the middle of the

16 second paragraph, you said this: "I believe it was a massive mistake by

17 President Milosevic not to use his undoubted power to impose on his fellow

18 Serbs in Bosnia those same settlements and had he done so it would have

19 been in the best interests of the Serbian people as a whole."

20 Does that part of your statement reflect your understanding that

21 he had the power at that time to impose on his fellow Serbs had he chosen

22 to do so?

23 A. I believe that he did have that power, but I know at times he felt

24 that didn't, but certainly I think his power over the Bosnian Serbs and

25 the Croatian Serbs were -- was strong at the time that the Vance-Owen

1 Peace Plan began to develop its momentum, really, from January 1993 until

2 May of 1993.

3 Thereafter, I think it's open to question how much power he had.

4 I would still maintain he did actually have the power to impose a

5 settlement, but there was no doubt there was much more resistance and

6 there were more independent sources of power in the Bosnian Serbs'

7 structure, particularly General Mladic, but also President Karadzic and

8 Mr. Krajisnik.

9 Q. We'll perhaps look at the next part of the chronology a little

10 later, but at this stage of seeking your assistance on some general

11 topics, do you accept that the accused was someone who was capable of

12 telling untruths and attempting to mislead people when it suited him?

13 A. Yes. I must also add that that was not a feature unique to him.

14 There was practically nobody we negotiated with who you could rely on to

15 be telling you the truth. It's one of the saddest aspects of the whole of

16 the negotiation throughout the former Yugoslavia, and it is important to

17 remember that our remit from the International Conference covered not just

18 Bosnia-Herzegovina but all aspects of the former Yugoslavia. But I don't

19 think that one could also say that in the discussions that we had with him

20 personally it was a marked feature of it, a lack of the truth. There was

21 a certain pretence going on in this whole discussion. I think the Court

22 is aware of this, but just does need to be understood. I mean, this was a

23 war of secession, it was war of -- civil war, and it was a war of

24 aggression. There were many complex aspects of it throughout. And one

25 has to remember that, for example, both, as he then was, President

1 Milosevic and the late President Tudjman did not really accept that -- the

2 decisions of the international community to recognise either

3 Bosnia-Herzegovina or the various other decisions. And so it was

4 commonplace for them to deny that their troops or their military had

5 anything to do with the Bosnian Serbs or, in the case of President

6 Tudjman, the Croatian Serbs.

7 Now, you could call that a lie, but that was, in a sense, just

8 fulfilling their obligations to the structure in which they found

9 themselves. They didn't accept the structure. They didn't believe that

10 they had any reason not to be operating across what they considered to be

11 the tranches of the regions of the former Yugoslavia.

12 Now, that was a complex question that we had to deal with all the

13 time. So there was a certain amount of knowingly lying, if you like.

14 It's not quite the same as a straight lie. I knew that they could not use

15 language other than to accept the fact that Bosnia-Herzegovina was an

16 independent country. I didn't mean to say that they agreed with it.

17 So there was a certain amount. I have a lot of other examples.

18 So I just want to qualify, the word "lie" is rather a savage word to use,

19 and at times it was used more in form rather than substance, put it that

20 way. But there was also serious lying about what was going on.

21 Q. Yes. And of course with all these people with whom it was your

22 fortune, good or bad, to negotiate, when they're thinking one thing and

23 saying another, you have to look sometimes to their actions to decide what

24 they're really thinking.

25 A. Yes. I think that's the best way to form your own judgements.

1 Actions speak louder than words.

2 Q. Yes. Could we, in your statement, turn briefly to Annex A. And,

3 Lord Owen, you'll find in the top right-hand corner some handwritten

4 registry numbers which are sometimes the easiest numbers to use, and it's

5 24829. If yours doesn't have those numbers in handwriting, I'll find it

6 for you in another way. It's the notes of the 24th of April.

7 A. My annex?

8 Q. Yes, your Annex A, and it's one, two, three, four, five, six,

9 seven -- and the usher is bringing it to you. Thank you very much. And

10 then it's the second page of that document and it's in the middle of the

11 page.

12 A. Yes, the Report to the European Community Foreign Ministers.

13 Q. Yes, I think.

14 A. Yes.

15 Q. It's the paragraph that begins in this way: "There is also an

16 added risk that the JA may get involved openly, particularly if the

17 Croatians threaten Eastern Slavonia. Although it is not certain that

18 Belgrade is yet ready for such involvement it could, however, get carried

19 along on the tide. When challenged about recent JA involvement in Eastern

20 Bosnia, Cosic, Milosevic, and Bulatovic denied it, but they knew that I

21 knew that they were involved."

22 Now, this is an example of the type of lie you've been telling us

23 of.

24 A. Yes.

25 Q. Sorry. If you're uncomfortable with the word "lie" I'll use

1 another one, but an untruth --

2 A. Yes, that's exactly the sort of example. I think, in fairness, I

3 think somewhere in my book I said that I thought that when I first gave

4 very detailed information about JA - Yugoslav Army - involvement, I was

5 not quite sure that President Cosic actually did know how much they'd been

6 involved, but I suspect he knew some aspects of it.

7 Q. And of course the underlying reality here is of the accused's

8 having knowledge of and influence or control over troops that were

9 operating elsewhere than in Serbia.

10 A. Yes. I mean, that was one of the reasons that sanctions were put

11 on Serbia and Montenegro in 1992, because it was felt that -- by the UN

12 Security Council that troops had been withdrawn from Croatia through

13 Bosnia-Herzegovina and had been deliberately left in Bosnia. I think one

14 has to admit that of the JA army, the majority of people who served were

15 people who were of Bosnian origin originally. After all, we have to

16 remember that a significant number of Serbs had lived in the region of

17 Bosnia-Herzegovina under the former Yugoslavia.

18 Q. And incidentally, I'm grateful to Mr. Vallieres-Roland for

19 pointing out that your reservation about President Cosic is to be found on

20 page 148 of your book.

21 A. Thank you.

22 Q. You make references, and I haven't immediately got the place to

23 hand but you'll recall it, to the accused acting like a drug baron is a

24 reference you make at some stage. Just lest we should misunderstand that

25 reference, perhaps you could, in a sentence or so, just clarify that for

1 us.

2 A. This was totally, I think, in the context of financial dealings

3 and the arrangements that were made in Cyprus with the Serbian Montenegrin

4 government. After all, they were under quite -- well, they were meant to

5 be serious sanctions. It's arguable how much they were operating, but the

6 initial sanctions package was not a financial package, it was dealing with

7 trade, and they had put a lot of their financial operations through Cyprus

8 and other offshore places. This made it very difficult for us, of course,

9 to bear down on them, and it was my strong belief that we would not get

10 the Vance-Owen Peace Plan accepted unless there was the threat of further

11 sanctions.

12 So the negotiations that were taking place in April, in

13 particular, and early May but particularly in April, were geared to the

14 Security Council decision to implement financial sanctions which, in my

15 view, had been delayed far too long. But nevertheless, there was a window

16 of opportunity for President Milosevic, as he then was, in particular to

17 bring to bear pressure on the Bosnian Serbs so that if they had agreed the

18 Vance-Owen Peace Plan in Bijeljina by that evening - and we got a special

19 dispensation to go over into the early hours of the next morning - then

20 the financial sanctions of the Security Council would not have applied.

21 And I believe that was a considerable pressure to focus his mind on the

22 need for urgent decision, and it was in those discussions - I think it was

23 on a Sunday in April - in Belgrade that he did persuade, with President

24 Cosic, I think perhaps President Bulatovic, but certainly it was mainly

25 President Milosevic brought to bear pressure on Karadzic and Krajisnik to

1 go to Bijeljina and support the Vance-Owen Peace Plan. And had that been

2 successful, and I believe that President Milosevic did believe at that --

3 when we said good-bye to them sort of just before lunch, that the Assembly

4 would accept it, and that would have meant that sanctions, financial

5 sanctions, would not have applied against the Serbian Montenegro. It was

6 one of the few examples in which the Security Council used the threat of

7 sanctions in an intelligent way to encourage the diplomatic negotiations.

8 Q. Thank you. I may come back to that if time allows, but just this

9 then by way of general observation: At the time you wrote your book, you

10 had had no access to intelligence source material from the British

11 government or, I think, from other governments.

12 A. I make it clear in my evidence that I never saw any transcripts of

13 conversations that might have taken place between President Milosevic or

14 President Cosic and JNA commanders or the leaders of the Bosnian Serbs,

15 nor had I seen any transcripts of discussions that might or might not have

16 taken place between JNA commanders and General Mladic or Bosnian Serb

17 political leaders.

18 It's difficult to question to say now. Did that mean that I had

19 no access to intelligence information? I had on my staff a military

20 advisor, General Messervy Whiting, and I knew that when he told me things

21 it was almost certainly based on more information than I had, and

22 therefore, I took it as being an authentic source of information, some of

23 which would have been gained from intelligence grounds. So this was in a

24 way a helpful -- helpful for me to have, and I shared that information

25 with Mr. Vance and then later with Mr. Stoltenberg. So there was an

1 access point into intelligence information. But I never had -- and I

2 don't complain about that; I was an EU negotiator, I was not a

3 representative of the British government. I never had the same access to

4 intelligence communication and things which I would have had in the past

5 when I was Foreign Secretary.

6 Q. A last preliminary: Do you accept the general proposition that

7 it's difficult or impossible to understand the overall history without the

8 background of Kosovo and without the attitude of the accused to Kosovo in

9 mind?

10 A. Yes. I think it is very difficult to, and I think I have to make

11 it pretty clear, and it will not come as a surprise to Mr. Milosevic to

12 say, that though I am prepared to say that on the negotiations over these

13 specific plans he was helpful, on Kosovo we ran into a brick wall, and he

14 was not ready to concede very much, put it this way. I think sometimes we

15 got more out of him, Mr. Vance and I and then Mr. Stoltenberg and I, than

16 probably anybody else on Kosovo, but he resented the fact that we would

17 raise the subject.

18 Again, our remit from the International Conference went for Kosovo

19 issues. It didn't just restrict itself to Bosnia or to Croatia. And Mr.

20 Milosevic did not like having this discussion, and he was not as helpful,

21 to say the least, on this area as he was in some other areas. And I think

22 that one of the reasons for that was it was a very sensitive issue. I

23 think it went to the source of his power base in Belgrade and in the

24 former Yugoslavia. But he was quite clear, and of course so was the

25 international community, that Kosovo was part of Serbia, and therefore we

1 had to operate within that international reality. That was what we were

2 faced with. But nevertheless, the measure of autonomy that we were trying

3 to persuade him to give up - to give back, you could argue - to the Kosovo

4 Albanians was an essential element of bringing peace in the region as a

5 whole. And lurking over all of our negotiations was the fear that there

6 would be an outbreak of violence in Kosovo that would spread out through

7 the rest of the former Yugoslavia and indeed even possibly involve

8 neighbouring countries.

9 So it is true to say that I don't think from the moment I took

10 office to the moment I left, which was just under three years, there was

11 any time where Kosovo was not a massive issue for me personally,

12 intellectually, and in other ways. And I also spent a great deal of time

13 over it. I must say not -- to very little effect. Mr. Stoltenberg went

14 to some considerable effort to try and involve President Milosevic, as he

15 then was, in direct talks with Mr. Rugova, and at one time we thought we

16 had achieved a dialogue on this, and there was some dialogue, but it was

17 never an issue on which we made anywhere near the progress that we were

18 making in terms of implementing the initial Vance proposals over Croatia

19 or for Bosnia-Herzegovina.

20 Q. I've voluntarily limited the time I'm going to ask you questions

21 to a couple of hours, so there may be occasions where I'll ask you to be

22 comparatively concise in answers, but it's true, isn't it, in your

23 statement at pages 12 and then 8 -- the penultimate line on page 12 you

24 refer, in reference to Kosovo, to the accused being sensitive to an area

25 where this was the most indefensible behaviour. In your judgement, what

1 was his most indefensible behaviour in relation to Kosovo?

2 A. There were not basic freedoms for the Kosovo Albanians that should

3 have been there in any country. They were a minority overall in Serbia

4 and Montenegro, or in, prior to that, in the former Yugoslavia, but he had

5 taken away their measure of autonomy that was given by President Tito, and

6 there was an extraordinary situation.

7 When I first visited Kosovo, there was a completely parallel

8 education system that had sprung up, and there were many aspects of a

9 divided society in which the Kosovo Albanians refused to cooperate with

10 the Serb authorities and they did not feel that they had any of the basic

11 human rights.

12 Q. And finally on this topic under the heading that one has to see

13 the backdrop of Kosovo behind all these allegations against the accused,

14 on page 8, you found it worth observing - again on the foot of the page -

15 that the picture of support for moderation changed geographically in the

16 south of Serbia "... where support for Milosevic was strong and where the

17 proximity of the 'Albanian threat' fuelled nationalist sentiment."

18 Is that part of the same overall picture that it's helpful to have

19 in mind?

20 A. Yes, "the Albanian threat" is in inverted commas but it's

21 shorthand for a rather complex issue.

22 Q. Yes.

23 A. But there is no doubt that on the issue of Kosovo, for a very

24 substantial period, maybe the entire period in which he held office, that

25 President Milosevic spoke for the majority of Serb opinion. I mean, that

1 was our problem, that many of these nationalist views which may have been

2 objectionable, and were indeed objectionable to many of us from outside

3 the former Yugoslavia, were nevertheless popular sentiment, and the

4 feeling that the Albanians -- the Kosovo Albanians were somehow not to be

5 trusted, not to be given their basic freedoms, was fairly widespread

6 amongst particularly the constituency to which Mr. Milosevic was appealing

7 and that's on which he rose to power. He understood that rather earlier

8 than some of us fellow communist leaders at the time.

9 Q. Coming back to how it is that your judgements were assisted only

10 to a limited extent by intelligence, the indirect method that you've

11 spoken of, of course you could only make your judgements on the basis of

12 information coming to you, and it would be right, would it, to say that

13 you were unaware at the time of starting your task that the accused and

14 Tudjman may have already entered into an agreement over the partition of

15 Bosnia?

16 A. It was commonplace throughout the region for these allegations to

17 be made. So I was not unaware of the fact that this meeting was meant to

18 take place and the fact that a meeting was sometimes denied and exactly

19 what may or may not have been. But on this particular aspect of carving

20 up, to use a rather tough word, of the former Yugoslavia, former President

21 Tudjman was not the slightest bit ashamed or secretive. I mean, he made

22 absolutely clear to everybody who talked to him that he believed that a

23 substantial part of Bosnia-Herzegovina should be attached to Croatia, and

24 he didn't accept that Bosnia-Herzegovina should be made into an

25 independent country, and he took the view -- whereas Mr. Milosevic was --

1 spent less time on this issue, to be blunt, no doubt had pretty similar

2 views, but he didn't talk about it as much. He's more pragmatic. The

3 difference between the two men was very evident; one was much more

4 ideological and one was pragmatic.

5 Q. I'm just trying to find the annex I'm looking for. I think it's

6 in our document. I'll just find it. There's a document which they signed

7 effectively saying that there had been no document. Are you familiar with

8 that document?

9 A. Yes, I am familiar with that document. That was in April -- no,

10 it was in July, in Geneva.

11 Q. July, 1993. We can find it at Annex C of the documents that the

12 Prosecution has put in.

13 MR. NICE: May those documents be given a separate exhibit number

14 for good order?

15 JUDGE MAY: Are they documents which have been exhibited before?

16 MR. NICE: No, they haven't been separately exhibited. They came

17 as a filing pursuant to a court order.

18 JUDGE MAY: Yes.

19 MR. NICE: And they are in, I think, three annexes. They are

20 extracts from the witness's book and one or two other documents.

21 JUDGE MAY: Very well. They can have a Court number.

22 THE REGISTRAR: Your Honour, Chamber Exhibit 17.

23 MR. NICE: And on this occasion, if the usher be good enough to

24 place --

25 JUDGE MAY: If the registrar would come up for a moment.

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1 [Trial Chamber and the registrar confer]

2 JUDGE MAY: Yes.

3 MR. NICE:

4 Q. We see here the declaration of the 17th of July, 1993, signed by

5 the accused and late President Tudjman, saying: "All speculations about a

6 partition of Bosnia and Herzegovina between Croatia and Serbia are

7 entirely unfounded." And there's a draft of the document that can be seen

8 on the following page.

9 That's the document you recall, is it not, Lord Owen?

10 A. Yes.

11 Q. And I don't know if you've been following the trial or have heard

12 or reviewed at all the evidence that's been given either by President

13 Mesic or, more recently, by Ante Markovic about the meeting at

14 Karadjordjevo?

15 A. No, I haven't.

16 Q. But if the Chamber in due course finds that there was a meeting

17 where partition was agreed, then this document is an example of a

18 straightforward untruth, isn't it?

19 A. Yes, it would be. But in reporting the meeting of the 17th of

20 July in COREU which I think you put in as evidence --

21 Q. Yes.

22 A. -- you notice I just said, "The statement issued after the meeting

23 follows." I think I treated it in that way; I didn't consider it to be a

24 serious document.

25 Q. Your judgement about the actions of the accused had to take into

1 account the August 1994 and onward blockade. Now, as to that, I think you

2 yourself had some doubts as to whether it was being honoured. If we look

3 at your statement at page 33 - and again it happens to be at the foot of

4 the page - you say this following on a passage where you found no evidence

5 that Belgrade was supplying oil, but you then say: "I assumed that

6 Milosevic was from September 1994 onwards ensuring that key items of

7 equipment and logistical support got through to General Mladic, if for no

8 other reason than to keep Mladic apart from Karadzic and as a potential

9 ally."

10 Lord Owen, we've had quite a lot of evidence already about the

11 genuine nature or otherwise of the blockade, but can you help us with the

12 material coming to you at the time you formed this judgement to the effect

13 that at least key items were finding their way through?

14 A. I never had any evidence, and that's why I used the word

15 "assumed." You have to remember that this was an extremely complex -- the

16 world presented this decision as a total embargo on goods transshipping

17 into Bosnia-Herzegovina, but that was actually never what President

18 Milosevic, as he then was, had promised. He'd promised to ban certain

19 goods and to keep humanitarian goods. But as far as we were concerned, by

20 far the most important one was oil. Ammunition was also, of course,

21 covered, but probably the Bosnian Serb army had sufficient ammunition.

22 They also had a capacity to manufacture weapons within Bosnia, as indeed

23 all three parties had.

24 So a lot of nonsense was talked about weapons and ammunition and

25 whether -- on either side. But I have a suspicion that the most important

1 thing that he was trying to do -- not a suspicion, he made it pretty

2 clear, is he was trying to pressurise Karadzic and Krajisnik to agree to

3 what was then the Contact Group plan. We had now moved way on beyond

4 negotiators like myself or Mr. Vance or Mr. Stoltenberg. We were into a

5 plan put down by the major governments of the world; the United States,

6 the UK, France, Germany, and the United States of America. And still we

7 couldn't get -- we were not pressurising on the West, but we were

8 pressurising President Milosevic. And he did agree that this added

9 pressure of trying to reduce the amount of oil going to the Bosnian Serbs.

10 But you have to put yourself in his position. He wasn't about to ensure

11 that they were defeated in war.

12 Q. We'll have to come to his position later, and in particular in

13 relation to Srebrenica, but just dealing with this general topic, you may

14 not have been aware of a national Assembly session held in Sanski Most on

15 the 16th of April of 1995, where General Mladic gave an account of the

16 degree of assistance that he'd had from the VJ. Were you aware of that

17 particular session?

18 A. I wasn't, but --

19 Q. And where he spoke that -- the Chamber's heard it and I needn't

20 trouble with you an exhibit that's familiar to the Chamber. It's Exhibit

21 427, tab 54, where he spoke of infantry ammunition in terms of thousands

22 of tons and of which 42 per cent was supplied by the Yugoslav army,

23 artillery ammunition 34 per cent provided, matters that of sort.

24 Now, does that level of support come as a surprise to you if it's

25 true?

1 A. Was that between September 1994 and --

2 Q. And onwards, yes.

3 A. -- those quantities came across.

4 Q. Yes.

5 A. I'm surprised, but we never knew. It was extremely difficult.

6 You have to remember what was -- we were asked to do this mission by

7 various governments, and we did it with, I think at the most ever 200-plus

8 men, total inadequate facilities, one of the most difficult borders

9 between Serbia and Montenegro that you could possibly ask, and we were

10 never sure how much was going across the Drina, we were never sure whether

11 they were ferrying at night, whether there was even a tunnel under the

12 Drina. We didn't know whether the lorries that were humanitarian -- we

13 tried to have them inspected by UNHCRs and our own people independently,

14 but we were doing our best in very difficult circumstances. But of the

15 fact that it seemed to have some effect on oil, at one stage oil came to

16 the Bosnian Serbs from Croatia, at the connivance of the Croatian

17 government. So you were into a pretty messy business.

18 Q. Yes. And --

19 A. I -- I mean, I simply don't know how much, but I never had any

20 illusion myself that some supplies were getting through.

21 Q. Just to round this off, there was a meeting, we may turn to it for

22 other purposes later, but it was after you were out of office, at

23 Dobanovci, on the 25th of August, and it's 469, tab 20, but again I

24 needn't trouble you with it. It's a meeting of the accused and various

25 other senior FRY officials, in the course of which, from stenographic

1 notes, the accused was reported as saying - and it's on page 11 of the

2 document - that the blockade was merely a formality and that aid flowed

3 daily. That rather fits with your suspicions and you wouldn't be

4 surprised to have learnt that from his lips at that time?

5 A. No. Of course he didn't tell me that. He said that it was being

6 religiously followed, I mean scrupulously followed, but I don't really too

7 much want to get - if the Court will allow me - into commenting on issues

8 that took place when I was not holding the office of an EU negotiator

9 but --

10 Q. Of course.

11 A. -- I made it clear one of the reasons why I wanted to have

12 interdiction from the air of Bosnian Serb army supply lines was that I

13 believe we would never get real pressure on them until we disrupted this

14 linkage between Serbia and Bosnia. And I argued at every level throughout

15 my period in office that the only one way we could get to use legitimate

16 UN peacemaking pressure was to move on from the no-fly zone to the

17 implementation of the no-fly zone and that was to take out targets on the

18 -- which would have meant roads, bridges, and other supply lines,

19 railways, so as to impede the flow of supplies - ammunition, and other

20 things - from the JNA to the Bosnian Serb army. After all, these people

21 had been colonels and generals together. They had very close links.

22 General Mladic with various generals in the JNA, and there was no doubt

23 that this was going on.

24 I didn't know, as I've told you already, how much President

25 Milosevic was authorising this, turning a blind eye to it, or

1 masterminding it. I had to deal with the situation as I confronted them

2 around the negotiating table. That was our problem. But we were not

3 naive. We knew that oil was coming in -- I mean, at one time oil was

4 coming in when there were sanctions meant to be applied into Montenegro in

5 Bar. And the sanctions were being broken all the time. Oil sanctions

6 were meant to apply to Serbia but oil was flowing across from the former

7 Yugoslavia and the Republic of Macedonia, and we could -- we had UN

8 monitors on the hills counting the oil trucks going from Montenegro into

9 Serbia and counting the number of railway trucks with oil that were going

10 through. And it was not too far in the imagination to believe that having

11 came into Serbia, they were going then into Bosnia. And at one stage we

12 knew and indeed accepted that oil was going through Bosnia - this was the

13 time when there was the restriction from September 1994 - to the Croats,

14 to the Croatian Serbs. But this we again tried to have -- monitor those

15 oil lorries and have tachographs and a variety of different things to try

16 and ensure that it was not loaded off into the Bosnian Serbs.

17 But --

18 Q. There's a limit to how efficient that could be because they could

19 do it in the middle of the night.

20 A. Exactly, and they could fill it up with water and go out. There

21 were all sorts of devices which were possible to do it. Nevertheless, was

22 this a pressure on Karadzic and Krajisnik and Mladic during this period?

23 And I think it was one of the pressures, but it was not enough. And that

24 was my problem with President Milosevic, is it was fine to be talking and

25 helping in some respects on negotiating front in a negotiating room, but

1 that was not enough. He was in charge of a government that could put real

2 serious pressure on them to stop doing what they were doing, to stop

3 shelling Sarajevo, to stop interfering with humanitarian convoys, to stop

4 ethnic cleansing.

5 Now, my problem was that I couldn't even persuade the Western

6 governments to bring this pressure. But I remain of the view that if we

7 had, after Pale, the rejection of the Vance-Owen Peace Plan, that we had

8 interdicted the Bosnian Serb army supply lines, and I think we could have

9 had support in Serbia and Montenegro for this to be done, that if

10 President Milosevic had either done it himself or acquiesced in our doing

11 it, then we would have brought peace to Bosnia two years earlier with

12 massive saving of life --

13 Q. Yes.

14 A. -- and much reduced ethnic cleansing.

15 Q. Lord Owen, we'll be touching that topic again before very long.

16 A word or so first, however, about the accused's influence over or

17 control of the JA, as you notate it. Just as with sanctions, this is

18 something that you could never know about. You could guess about, you

19 could infer about, but ultimately that issue may be for others and, so far

20 as necessary, this Court.

21 A couple of tiny points -- not tiny points. Your book reveals how

22 it was that -- your statement, how it was that the accused appointed

23 Mladic and also appointed Mrksic. Do you remember those two facts?

24 A. Yes. I suppose they are facts. I hope they are. I worked on an

25 assumption. The indication, the evidence I had for it was again by word

1 of mouth that I made that assertion in the book and I believed it. I

2 acted as if I believed that was the case. I hope it's correct.

3 Q. Thank you very much. On the same topic, and briefly, at page 4 of

4 your statement and about a third of the way down the page, you say

5 this: "The FRY and the Governments of Serbia and Montenegro always

6 claimed, however implausible at times, that they did not control Serb

7 forces in Bosnia or in Croatia but that they were ready to use their good

8 offices."

9 It's clear from the way you write that that you were satisfied

10 that they indeed could control them.

11 A. Yes. I've made it quite clear that I think the Bosnian Serb army

12 could not have survived it's fight from the moment that Bosnia-Herzegovina

13 was recognised as an independent country by the Security Council if they

14 had not been supported by the former Yugoslavia. And if those -- if that

15 support had been cut off, if when President Milosevic, as he then was,

16 President Cosic and President Bulatovic had gone to Pale and had told them

17 that if you do not agree to this, then there will be no supplies crossing

18 the Drina or in any way at all, you will be completely cut off, I believe

19 they would have signed up for the Vance-Owen Peace Plan.

20 But I have to say to you that whereas I was spending my time

21 urging Mr. Milosevic to effectively impose a peace settlement, I was also

22 encouraging the Western governments to impose a peace settlement, and they

23 had ruled out the imposition of a peace settlement, and the then US

24 Secretary of State, in his statement of February 1993, having just

25 recently taken office, made it clear that there couldn't be in principle

1 an imposition of a peace settlement. So the Western world was operating

2 on the basis that around this table were rational, reasonable men who

3 could come to a negotiated settlement, and they were being told by their

4 negotiators there's no way these people will come to a negotiated

5 settlement unless you put pressure on them and serious pressure which must

6 not exclude the use of military force.

7 Now, the pressure could have come from and should have come from

8 President Milosevic and Serbia in the interests of Serbs, but it also

9 should have come from the West.

10 Q. Lord Owen, you will appreciate that it's not our function, and I

11 wouldn't even presume to enter into a debate about the political process.

12 We can accept that you feel severely let down by what happened in the

13 early part of 1993, but of course at the end of the exercise,

14 responsibility for what happens lies with the actors on the ground,

15 doesn't it, even if there had been shortcomings by international

16 diplomacy.

17 A. Yes. I think the responsibility is a shared responsibility but I

18 think that the greatest responsibility were the people who had lived in

19 the former Yugoslavia to have behaved differently, and there is no way

20 that you can use the delay over getting a negotiated peace settlement --

21 and of course it was eventually imposed in August, July and September of

22 1995. There is no excuse for what was done to their fellow countrymen, if

23 you like, in the various ways which the Court hears. So I don't say this

24 in any way whatever to act as justification or as explanation of their

25 conduct.

1 Q. Keeping an eye on the time and the number of questions I have left

2 to ask, very briefly, in the nature of things, paramilitaries are less

3 well documented and less visible than perhaps other groups. You express,

4 on page 10 of your statement, a view about Arkan whom you seem to put in

5 the category of a paramilitary. You were satisfied that paramilitary

6 groups were acting and they were acting out of Serbia?

7 A. The view I took about Arkan I took when I was a private

8 individual, before I took this office, and I had said publicly that I

9 considered some of what was being done then in 1991 and 1992 outrageous.

10 And it was -- so I'm really taking a view I took of somebody before I took

11 the pledge, so to speak, to be impartial.

12 But you could not be neutral over war crimes or crimes against

13 humanity, and that was one of the difficulties that we faced as

14 negotiators. We tried to separate the two out, but you have to remember

15 that I recommended that this Court, with Mr. Vance, should be established.

16 And we also recommended that we should stay outside this process, although

17 of course every member of the ICFY were under instructions to give any

18 evidence to the court, once it was established, on these questions and to

19 try to concentrate on our prime task, which was to bring the parties in

20 some way to an agreement amongst themselves.

21 Q. As to the police, you had experience or knowledge of the incident

22 covered on page 9 of your statement where the Serbian police raided the

23 Federal Interior Ministry building. Cosic reacted in a way that you found

24 to be more responsible, but nobody was brought to book.

25 That reflected in your judgement, did it, the accused's control

1 over the police and his ability to let them off?

2 A. At that time, relations between President Cosic and President

3 Milosevic were extremely bad. This was public knowledge that this raid

4 had taken place. It was described in a variety of different newspapers

5 from Belgrade. So one was relying on, I suppose, reports from newspapers,

6 interpretation, and of course I also saw the views of the various EU

7 ambassadors in Belgrade, and I was fortunate in that sense that I had a

8 fairly wide coverage of reporting what was happening in Belgrade, but

9 nobody quite knew, I think, exactly what was happening. But President

10 Cosic was extremely angry about it.

11 Q. Here was an extraordinary illegal act in your judgement aimed at

12 covering up files that may have revealed war crimes, and the only person

13 who could have given immunity to the offenders was the accused.

14 A. I don't want to be pedantic but it is not my judgement to make

15 judgements on things. I said, but many assumed that they were desperate

16 to remove any incriminating files from the 1991/1992 period relating to

17 possible war crimes. That's the wording I use, which comes from my book,

18 and I think I can safely say I was one of those who assumed it too.

19 Q. You make another reference - I can't track it down immediately -

20 to the accused's militia being the people who guarded the fuel trucks as

21 they crossed Serbia.

22 A. Uh-huh.

23 Q. Was it your understanding that the accused had a direct control

24 over a militia or militarised police?

25 A. I believe that there were at times arguments about how much direct

1 loyalty he could rely on. I think it was possible to sometimes maybe that

2 the JNA were independent and didn't always take everything that came from

3 President Milosevic, but I certainly took the view from watching it

4 closely that the police were under his direct control and that he built up

5 them into more like a militia in order that he had a counterbalance to a

6 somewhat more independent, at times, JNA.

7 Q. You advised against the holding of elections in December because

8 you were quite satisfied the elections wouldn't be fair. You link this to

9 the fact that the accused was really a propagandist who had control of the

10 media, didn't you?

11 A. Well, again, Mr. Milosevic was extremely clever in the way he

12 operated, and to some extent that was an aspect which he inherited from

13 President Tito, where after all it was widely felt through the 1950s and

14 1960s that Yugoslavia was freer than many of the other communist countries

15 whereas I think in fact they had a more sophisticated system.

16 As far as Mr. Milosevic is concerned, he didn't get too fussed

17 about what the Belgrade intellectual press said or even too much the fact

18 that for quite a lot of this time there was a Belgrade television which

19 was independent of him, was not controlled by him. What he fussed about

20 was who controlled television and newspapers out into the country as a

21 whole, which is where his support lay, and on that there was not a free

22 press and there was not accurate, impartial television or radio reporting.

23 So it is true to say I -- I view these so-called elections with

24 profound skepticism and felt that the EU should not -- or the European

25 Community, as it then was, should not send monitors. Nevertheless, I

1 hoped that Prime Minister Panic, as he was, would beat President Milosevic

2 in the election, and it's an open secret that I would have much preferred

3 that President Cosic stood and I think might have -- well, certainly run

4 President Milosevic close in Serbia, but he was not able to do so from the

5 health grounds. But it was not -- it was not a fair and free election,

6 no, nor were any that took place while I was there.

7 Q. And just to round this part of my questions off, these

8 characteristics, a man controlling the military, militarised police, a man

9 able to tell you straightforward untruths, a man with a subtle approach to

10 propaganda, and a man who we must judge by his actions is the man you had

11 the fortune, of one of many, to deal with.

12 A. Yes. I mean, he was a communist, not on a Soviet model, but he

13 was not a democrat. He didn't make too much secret of that. He came out

14 of a system, he adapted it and modified it. Yugoslavia had already

15 changed and modified his structure but it was basically authoritarian,

16 yes.

17 Q. By the end of 1992, the Serbs, it might be said, had got as much

18 as they could ask for by force. You, I don't think, were aware of a body

19 called the Council for Harmonisation. Were you aware of that?

20 A. No.

21 Q. It's a body for which we've got the stenographic notes.

22 MR. NICE: Your Honour will recall that it was produced through

23 the witness Lilic, that they were sent away for translation, that they'd

24 come back with a draft translation and the final translation has yet to

25 come before us. There's one page of that that I'd like to put before the

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13 English transcripts.

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1 witness, if I may. It will, I think, in its finally translated form be

2 Exhibit 469, tab 44, and if it could be laid on the overhead projector.

3 Lay my copy on the overhead projector. I'll read it from here. Thank

4 you.

5 Q. Now, this is the accused speaking on the 9th of January of 1993.

6 MR. NICE: Top of the page, please, Usher. Little bit. Thank

7 you, that's fine.

8 Q. And he says: "Let me interrupt you. Paspalj said that

9 there had to be integrity of the Serbian people. We de facto have that

10 because objectively and according to all our relations such as political,

11 military, economy, cultural and educational, we have that integrity. The

12 question is how to get the recognition of the unity now, actually how to

13 legalise that unity. How to turn the situation, which de facto exists and

14 could not be de facto endangered, into being de facto and de jure.

15 Accordingly, the road which would lead us to de jure leads through a

16 'small labyrinth.' We would never allow the change in a de facto

17 situation, but through that 'small labyrinth' we would achieve some

18 things, if not in half a year then in a year, if not in a year then in two

19 years. What do we gain? We gain that we would have fewer casualties and

20 in that way we would save our people. We have to sacrifice everything for

21 the people except the people itself."

22 Now, if we then turn, Lord Owen, to your statement at page 12, and

23 it may be that you were looking for the passage yourself, in the passage

24 that follows your expression of confidence that he was working towards a

25 settlement, you also say this: "I have little doubt that Milosevic was

1 telling Karadzic privately that by appearing to agree with our map, he

2 could nevertheless expect to change it later on through pressure on the

3 ground and that the three separate provinces, where the Serbs would have

4 had a majority - but which we had deliberately refused to make contiguous

5 - could over time, as a result of Serb pressure, be joined together."

6 Now, I'm sorry you haven't had a chance to look at the translated

7 part of the words of the accused, but would you accept the suggestion that

8 having got by force everything that they wanted, it simply remained for

9 the accused to get what was de facto to be de jure by negotiation?

10 A. No, I don't agree with you because you didn't go on to say, after

11 you ended your quote from me joined together. I said, "I believed,

12 however, having seen the development of General Shalikashvili's detailed

13 planning for NATO forces, that we would have sufficient well-trained

14 forces on the ground to prevent that happening." But I don't deny the

15 sentiment that you've expressed and your interpretation of that comment

16 alleged to have been made by then-President Milosevic. I'm sure this was

17 happening.

18 But we were involved in a serious battle. Behind the courtesies

19 and the normal diplomacy, he knew that I knew many of the things he was

20 doing, and I know that he knew that I was also trying to do other things.

21 Q. Of course.

22 A. And that, it seems to me, probably explains why he was not

23 prepared to pressurise beyond the point of formally discussing it, because

24 he feared that we were at that stage, having NATO with over 60.000 troops

25 coming in. This is not a minor force that was going to come in. And the

1 complexities of this plan of ten provinces and of trying to weld

2 Bosnia-Herzegovina together had by then been given by the United States of

3 America, to their credit, and other EU countries, the serious backing of

4 NATO. And I think we would have outwitted them.

5 But what we were dealing with was a battle of intellectual wills

6 underneath the polite conversation. I knew perfectly well that no plan

7 that we put on table would be faithfully implemented by any of the parties

8 and the only hope was that we should have a strong imposition force to

9 ensure that it maintained. And I think that President Milosevic knew that

10 was in place, and he was also watching American public opinion and seeing

11 the opinion in the West. And therefore, if there was a delay over a plan,

12 he didn't mind. The facts were created on the ground all the time. More

13 ethnic cleansing, more definite things. I don't think he ever gave any

14 impression otherwise than he was a loyal Serb. He was looking after Serb

15 interests. The thing was he was much more intelligent than the others.

16 He knew that he could get away with more. But I think he did think that

17 he could get away with more than he would have got away if their plan had

18 been -- not just that plan, the EU action plan or the Contact Group plan,

19 you name it. They were all going to be backed by serious force after --

20 by about March of 1993. We'd accepted that we couldn't do this just with

21 UN forces.

22 Q. I take it from your answer that you would accept that he may have

23 harboured long-term ambitions for Serb areas to be united?

24 A. He was a pragmatist. Only he could answer that, and I think he

25 certainly wouldn't rule it out. It was certainly possible to believe that

1 Republika Srpska would go into Serbia and Herceg-Bosnia, as the Croats

2 would call it, would go into Croatia longer term. But against that, I

3 think at times President Milosevic was telling them that the world had

4 moved on, that this was -- the type of world we were in was that the West

5 would not give -- would not allow Bosnia-Herzegovina to be partitioned.

6 In my heart, I think he was intellectually at least -- had come to

7 recognise that Republika Srpska would stay outside Serbia but would be so

8 closely linked that to all intents and purposes, for as far as the average

9 Serbian citizen is concerned, they would be linked but there would be

10 always absence of a formal link. But I don't know.

11 Q. Finally on this topic, at page 26 and 7 of your statement, but

12 you'll remember it if you will permit me to summarise it. Aleksa Buha,

13 the Bosnian Serb Foreign Minister, you report as always being deeply

14 skeptical of Milosevic's view that the Bosnian Serbs could live with the

15 Muslims in one state, as envisaged in the Vance-Owen Plan.

16 On reflection, do you think that Milosevic's stated view that they

17 could live together was for short-term purposes only and that ultimately

18 he would have sought a different resolution?

19 A. No, I don't. It is my view that President Milosevic -- no doubt

20 Mr. Milosevic you see now is not fundamentally racist. I think he is a

21 nationalist, but even that he wears very lightly. I think he's a

22 pragmatist. And it is a fact that Muslims have lived -- live in Serbia.

23 There are areas of Serbia where there are substantial Muslim groups. If

24 we exclude Kosovo and the Sandzak area, and in Belgrade itself there are a

25 substantial number of Muslim people who have lived there throughout. And

1 I think you have to recognise that there are old communist Yugoslavs who

2 do object very strongly to the ethnic nationalism and that the -- some of

3 the communists were opposed to nationalists. Certainly some of their

4 ethnic -- ethnic racist attitudes, and I would include President

5 Milosevic's wife in that, and I would include himself.

6 I can only tell you honestly what I think. I do not think he was

7 part of that view that they were like cat and dog and couldn't live ever

8 together. I think he wanted the Serbs to be in the majority, and they

9 wanted them to be following a Serb -- Serbian government so that he wanted

10 majority Serb areas, but do I not think personally - but I may be wrong,

11 and this is always one of the problems we had in dealing with these people

12 was to get what was their real motivation - but I have to say I do not

13 think that he was one of those who wanted all Muslims out of Republika

14 Srpska any more than he wanted all Muslims out of Serbia. I don't think

15 he was an ethnic purist.

16 Q. Indeed you make the point that his ambition was for the retention

17 of personal power, and you use the analogy of riding the tiger of

18 nationalism and finding it difficult when he -- to get off it in order not

19 to be bitten by it.

20 A. Yes. And of course he was eventually bitten by it.

21 Q. Lord Owen, I see the time, and I'm going to move, I think,

22 straight to Srebrenica, and I'll come back to other questions that I would

23 ask.

24 MR. NICE: Lord Owen is giving full answers, I don't want to cut

25 him short but, Your Honour, I'll have to budget my time accordingly. So

1 things will be a little out of order because I must cover Srebrenica first

2 and I'll deal with other matters later.

3 A. I'll try to be shorter in my replies.

4 Q. The civilians of Srebrenica and all the other safe areas were

5 entirely blameless individuals, weren't they?

6 A. Sorry?

7 Q. The civilians in Srebrenica were just imprisoned by force of

8 circumstance. They hadn't done anything to merit the catastrophe that

9 happened to them.

10 A. I think that's a very big leap. Those are certainly your words.

11 They're not words I would use.

12 Q. Very well. Well, can they be blamed, the civilians, for anything

13 that befell them?

14 A. It's not my job to apportion blame, but the basic facts of life

15 are that a lot of this fighting, this village-on-village fighting as you

16 see in almost any civil war, and if you start trying to believe that there

17 are one side that is completely pure and one side that is completely

18 wrong, you usually get unstuck. But you certainly get unstuck in the

19 former Yugoslavia if you work on that assumption. And it's been well

20 recorded and ought to be -- and I don't really see it's my responsibility

21 here, but there were a number of grudge matches which had developed in the

22 villages in and around Srebrenica between different groups, Muslims and

23 Serbs, as there had been in the rest of Yugoslavia between Muslims and

24 Croats or Serbs and Croats. I -- it's very difficult to --

25 Q. Well --

1 A. I'm not here to challenge your statement, except to say I don't

2 put those words into my mouth. Nobody was blameless, or very few were

3 blameless.

4 Q. Very well. If we look at your statement on page 3, please. I

5 know this is --

6 A. I mean, I could just add one thing to it.

7 Q. Yes.

8 A. The people of Srebrenica were -- suffered appallingly for being in

9 that particular situation. It was one of the worst humanitarian crises,

10 and I describe in my book how they had typhus and had all forms of

11 illnesses, and the WHO report on what they -- the privation and the

12 horrors that the average person had to put up with when no doubt the

13 average person was blameless, was absolutely outrageous. I don't want to

14 detract in any way from the horrors that those people had to put up with

15 almost continuously from 1992 to 1995.

16 Q. Thank you. On page 3 of your statement, where you set out your

17 letter to the British Prime Minister of the 30th of July of 1992, you say

18 this at the top of the page: "I believe that a few of the bigger cities

19 currently under attack such as Sarajevo and Gorazde should be reinforced

20 by air with troops acting under the authority of the UN --" we will deal

21 with that in detail. "If these actions were taken within days, then

22 Bosnia would not be completely overrun by Serb and Croatian forces, and a

23 peace settlement could then be negotiated. If no action is taken now,

24 there will be virtually nothing left of Bosnia for the Muslim population

25 to negotiate about."

1 Probably self-explanatory, but what -- did that prophesy disaster

2 for places like Sarajevo and Gorazde?

3 A. That was written before I became a UN negotiator at which time, I

4 have to be the first to admit, I didn't know anywhere near as much about

5 the complexities as I later came to believe. At that time, I also thought

6 that the Muslims were not just the victims but were, if you like, totally,

7 totally set upon in every possible way. I think I changed my views a

8 little bit about that, as I record, when I arrived in Sarajevo to be told

9 that Bosnian government forces had just shot up a UN humanitarian convoy.

10 So things looked perhaps more simple than they were when you were

11 sitting just as a member of parliament in -- I was no longer a member of

12 parliament, but a citizen in London; but nevertheless, the sentiment

13 behind it I stand by totally and absolutely, and by the time I came

14 involved, it was about 65 per cent and very soon 70 per cent of

15 Bosnia-Herzegovina territory was controlled by Serbs. And at one stage

16 when the Croats were acting very strongly and regaining territory, I think

17 it's true to say that President Izetbegovic probably -- rule ran. I mean,

18 the government controlled 10 per cent of Bosnia-Herzegovina.

19 There were times when we worried that the Muslim population and

20 the government in Sarajevo would be completely wiped out, when it looked

21 as if the Croats might have withdrawn their forces from Central Bosnia and

22 the Serbs would then divide the east and west Bosnia-Herzegovina. That

23 would have been very, very damaging. And it was, of course, throughout

24 that time too a fear that these Eastern enclaves in Eastern Bosnia would

25 be overrun.

1 Q. And of course the Bosnian government opposed demilitarisation

2 because it had real fears?

3 A. Yes. Well, you've no doubt you've gone through -- the first

4 Srebrenica agreement was a very strange agreement and I think was very

5 well described by Kofi Annan, who was then the head of the peacekeeping,

6 in a memo that he wrote at the time. It was almost -- the UN saw the

7 agreements that were about demilitarisation as being agreements between

8 the parties, and that's probably the right way to look at it. But the

9 world thought that the UN had taken on the responsibility of protecting

10 the people of Srebrenica.

11 That's a fairly well-known UN document which you probably had

12 before you which Kofi Annan wrote on the 23rd of April, 1993, explaining

13 to General Wahlgren what was on and followed, I think -- it says, "The

14 following refers to our telecoms and to Lord Owen's handwritten message

15 today about what exactly UNPROFOR has undertaken in Srebrenica."

16 Q. We're trying to look, or I'm trying to look with you, if we can,

17 at the state of mind of the people who were to become the victims but also

18 at the state of knowledge of the accused.

19 If we move broadly chronologically, we find on page 22 of your

20 statement a retrospective view of yours given on the 8th of June of 1993,

21 when you were speaking to a Foreign Affairs Council in Luxembourg. And at

22 the foot of this page, looking back, obviously, to a -- to some degree

23 over time, you say: "His problem and ours is that Karadzic and Mladic are

24 like cats licking the cream; they believe that Republika Srpska is a fait

25 accompli. An additional problem is that Republika Krajina, after their

1 referendum, is going to link up, having as the capital of the new Republic

2 of Serbs in Bosnia and Krajina, Banja Luka. General Mladic will then

3 formally control not just the Bosnian Serb army but the Croatian Serb

4 forces as well ... returning to Knin where he's built his reputation."

5 Now, this was a perception you had of the military and local

6 political leadership of a fairly -- bloodcurdling may be the wrong -- but

7 fairly terrifying kind, isn't it, for any who were resident there.

8 A. Yes.

9 Q. And the knowledge was as available to you as it would have been to

10 the accused and, although obviously only partially informed, as it would

11 have been to the residents. Would that be correct?

12 A. I think they lived in constant fear, the Muslim citizens in

13 Srebrenica. They were through most of the period, as I say, surrounded by

14 hostile Bosnian Serb forces, and for some reason I think that there was

15 probably more fear there, and certainly the privation was far worse than,

16 for example, in Sarajevo or any other towns that were surrounded.

17 Q. Indeed I think that the privation in terms of health and disease

18 you suggest was targeted privation, yes?

19 A. Yes. There's no doubt that shelling took place on water supplies

20 to try and disrupt them. That happened in Sarajevo too, but it was more

21 successful, put it this way, in Srebrenica. Srebrenica is a very small

22 place. But the effect of the siege was far worse, I think, in Srebrenica

23 than anywhere, and they must have lived with this. So it was perfectly

24 understandable that they didn't want to give up arms. And we had to

25 grapple with this problem, at least General Morillon had to. Initially he

1 had tried to get both sides to agree to total demilitarisation. And of

2 course in a sense that is what a safe haven internationally means and what

3 the ICRC was advocating when they talked about safe havens. And in that

4 way you make it less likely that there will be any attack in if there can

5 be no attacks out, so you have a completely balanced situation.

6 But that -- in order to do that credibly, the UN should have been

7 prepared to put in a substantial force into Srebrenica so that they would

8 have been able to defend any breach to either party. They would have been

9 the impartial force that held Srebrenica peaceful. That required many

10 more troops than the Canadians or, then later, the Dutch.

11 Q. Can we look at the accused's state of knowledge, first from page

12 36 of your statement, and -- I would ask it go on the overhead project. It

13 will make it easier for those in the public gallery.

14 JUDGE MAY: Mr. Nice, it's after the usual time for the

15 adjournment, but it doesn't matter; we started late. But when you get to

16 a convenient moment, we'll break.

17 MR. NICE: If it will be convenient to do this next passage and

18 the next paper exhibit I would be grateful. Then we'll come to a sensible

19 point. Just on the overhead projector, please.

20 Q. You said this in respect of your 18th of April 1993 telephone

21 conversation with the accused to whom you spoke about your anxiety

22 that: "Despite repeated assurances from Dr. Karadzic that he had no

23 intention of taking Srebrenica, the Bosnian Serb army was now proceeding

24 to do just that. The pocket was greatly reduced in size. I rarely heard

25 Milosevic so exasperated and also so worried. He feared that if the

1 Bosnian Serb troops entered Srebrenica, there would be a bloodbath because

2 of the tremendous bad blood that existed between the two armies."

3 You then set out the history of how the Bosnian Serbs held the

4 young Muslim commander in Srebrenica, Naser Oric, responsible for the

5 massacre near Bratunac in December of 1992 in which many civilian Serbs

6 had been killed.

7 Milosevic believed it would be a great mistake for the Bosnian

8 Serbs to take Srebrenica and promised to tell Karadzic so. and he

9 expressed doubts about getting Canadian troops in but thought he might be

10 able to negotiate UN monitors. You then arranged to meet him at Lor

11 [phoen].

12 In Annex G and towards the -- sorry, towards the foot of this

13 page, you say this: "I would particularly draw attention to the report

14 which I read on the 16th of April indicating that an attack on Srebrenica

15 on the 12th of April was of a different character and pointed towards some

16 JNA involvement with the Bosnian Serb army. It was this report in

17 particular which convinced me that I should speak directly to President

18 Milosevic."

19 So putting those two things together, evidence coming to you of

20 JNA involvement four days before and a conversation where, you summarise

21 it, fear of a bloodbath if the army entered Srebrenica. That's a correct

22 summary of the position?

23 A. Yes, that's correct.

24 Q. Before I move from this page and just to save time, there's one

25 sentence I would be grateful for your elaboration on. It's the immediate

1 following sentence at the foot of this page and the top of the next. You

2 say: "There are also perhaps some parallels in what happened in and

3 around Sarajevo in July/August 1993 for what happened in July 1995."

4 It must be my mistake for not immediately following that, but

5 could you just --

6 A. I rather lost you. Where is that?

7 Q. That's at the foot of page 36 and it then goes over to 37.

8 A. Sorry to have to say I'm not sure I understand that either.

9 Q. You don't, and I quite understand how these things happen. We'll

10 take it no further.

11 But -- well, if you think about it over the break which we're

12 shortly to have, perhaps you would let us know. It would be helpful.

13 Can I take you back then, as I said, to the last document before

14 the break, with the Court's consent, to your Appendix G, and it's several

15 pages through Appendix G --

16 A. I'm sorry. My assistant has just passed me a note. She was

17 involved in all this at the time, she's rather better than me. There's a

18 typo here. I think "Sarajevo" should be "Srebrenica."

19 Q. All right. Thank you very much.

20 A. Which then is more explicit and clear.

21 Q. Yes.

22 A. Sorry.

23 Q. Certainly. If we can go then to your Appendix G, Lord Owen, and

24 again if you got the page numbers at the top right-hand corner, the

25 handwritten page numbers and they run back to front, registry numbers,

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1 it's page 24750, which is --

2 A. This is annex G.

3 Q. Your annex G, and it's about 10 pages in or 8 pages in. I can

4 hand you a copy, if necessary.

5 One for the overhead projector in any event.

6 And what we can see --

7 A. This is a report of what I dictated -- a conversation that I'd had

8 with President --

9 Q. Correct.

10 A. -- Milosevic, yes.

11 Q. And four lines down you recorded at the time: "President

12 Milosevic was pleased that I had contacted him. He too was exasperated

13 and was extremely concerned that if the Bosnian Serb army entered

14 Srebrenica, there would be a massacre," now -- because of the bad blood

15 and so on.

16 May we take it that that was actually his stated position at the

17 time, because it finds the expression in a document that you would have

18 obviously written very carefully?

19 A. I dictated that that afternoon, after the conversation. So I

20 would stand by it as being an accurate description of what he said.

21 Whether he used that word, I can't vouch for, but I would have thought

22 very likely.

23 Q. Thank you. And so we have in the spring of 1993 recognition on

24 the part of the international negotiators, the accused, and the victims

25 that the citizens of Srebrenica were vulnerable to a bloodbath or to a

1 massacre if the army were to enter?

2 A. Yes.

3 MR. NICE: I don't know if that would be a convenient moment.

4 JUDGE MAY: Yes, that's a convenient moment. We will adjourn now

5 for 20 minutes.

6 Lord Owen I must formally warn you, as we warn all witnesses, not

7 to speak to anybody about your evidence until it's over, please.

8 Thank you. Twenty minutes.

9 --- Recess taken at 10.43 a.m.

10 --- On resuming at 11.07 a.m.

11 JUDGE MAY: Yes, Mr. Nice.

12 MR. NICE: I think Lord Owen is concerned that a document he read

13 from should probably be exhibited.

14 JUDGE MAY: Yes.

15 MR. NICE: We will deal with that in some way or another.

16 JUDGE MAY: We're getting copies made and we will deal with it in

17 due course.

18 MR. NICE:

19 Q. We stopped in the spring of 1993. The history of what happened in

20 1994 is available from the documentation generally. Without taking time

21 on it, at Annex B of your annexes, and about four sheets into Annex B in

22 your -- or you -- of the 22nd of July of 1994 dealing, I think, with

23 Sarajevo, to which I'll try to come later, but in paragraph 3 a reflection

24 of the unchanging position is set out where you simply say: "The key is

25 as always -- as key as always is Milosevic. He understands power, and he

1 will only pressurise the Bosnian Serbs further if the Contact Group

2 convince him that they are serious."

3 He remained the key, and he was only go to do things when

4 compelled if they were against his interests. Would you accept that?

5 A. Sorry, compelled?

6 Q. If against his interests, he would only do things if compelled or

7 if he could see it as such was coming?

8 A. Yes.

9 Q. If we move on to the early part of 1995 and to your statement at

10 page 41, right at the end of your statement. You said this in the last

11 paragraph on that page: "On the 25th and 26th of May, a further second

12 round of air strikes by NATO against Bosnian Serb targets produced

13 widespread UN hostage taking and the French argued in the Contact Group

14 for regrouping UN forces into defensible units but did not propose

15 abandoning the safe areas. It was well known by all the permanent members

16 of the Security Council that the so-called safe areas were very vulnerable

17 and the most vulnerable of all to Serb attacks was Srebrenica."

18 And again this is something known to you, known to everybody

19 effectively?

20 A. I think anybody who had been following the wars in the former

21 Yugoslavia and the history of it from newspapers, not from any special

22 source, must have been aware of how vulnerable Srebrenica was.

23 Q. Indeed, I think we'll possibly hear evidence from other people,

24 but for example, the Venezuelan ambassador, Aria, who was leader of the

25 non-aligned group had been saying for a long time how vulnerable these

1 places were?

2 A. Yes. He was very critical of the resolutions about the safe areas

3 right going back to April 1993, and then in particular, of course, what I

4 describe in my evidence as the worst decision that was taken in all my

5 time, the safe area implementation as part of the joint action plan in

6 May/June of 1993. I mean, what the Court has to understand is that

7 nowhere -- everybody knew that insufficient troops had been put in blue

8 berets or blue helmets, and that is also made very clear in this document

9 which I made reference to which has now been put before the Court, by Kofi

10 Annan. I mean, he actually specifically says we understand, of course,

11 that 145 peacekeepers cannot be expected to resist a full scale invasion

12 by the Bosnian Serb army and that should heavy artillery shelling occur

13 UNPROFOR will take shelter like everyone else.

14 Q. And on page 42 of your statement right at its conclusion you set

15 out another peace of generally understood intelligence where recording the

16 subdued mood of the foreign affairs council to whom you'd been speaking

17 you say this in the last six lines: "The only area of controversy emerged

18 when I said it was unwise in their statement to mention the need to

19 protect the safe areas when it was obvious that UNPROFOR was already

20 unable to defend all six safe areas."

21 That was the position.

22 A. Yes. And I go on to say -- and this was to preempt a discussion

23 held in the Security Council, because the then-Secretary-General

24 Boutros Boutros-Ghali had in my view rather courageously put in front of

25 the Security Council an option to come out of the -- some of these

1 so-called safe areas and to acknowledge the fact that we were not able to

2 protect. But the Security Council again preferred the rhetoric to the

3 reality. It was easier for them to go on ascribing to a policy despite

4 the fact that they had not given the resources to it to ensure that it

5 could be fulfilled. So this poor unfortunate people of Srebrenica were,

6 as far as the world is concerned, nominally living in safe areas, safe

7 havens, call them what you will, and they'd never been safe from the

8 moment the term had been applied to Srebrenica.

9 Q. Your statement ends at the next sentence: "Later the Security

10 Council adopted the same position over the safe areas as foreign affairs

11 council and I stepped down from ICFY on the 12th of June fearing that

12 Srebrenica and Zepa as well as Gorazde were indefensible and never had

13 been less safe."

14 I'll come back to what happened there shortly, but if you could

15 briefly go to your appendix G, Lord Owen, just after the page we were

16 looking at before the break where the accused was quoted with the word

17 massacre. We come to a report to you from John Wilson of the 16th of

18 April of 1993. So I'm tracking back to an earlier position.

19 JUDGE MAY: What is the Registry page.

20 MR. NICE: Registry page 24747. And it's at paragraph 5 of that

21 where you -- where to you your colleague or subordinate reported that the

22 Serbs had reduced the Srebrenica pocket to a relatively insignificant

23 military threat having a number of options available to them. Contained

24 what is essentially a concentration of Muslim civilians. To use this

25 civilian population as a bargaining tool to secure the release of Serbs

1 from Sarajevo and Tuzla. Finally to complete military action against the

2 pocket by capturing the city. It's difficult to judge Mladic's assessment

3 as to whether the risk of further military action might provoke

4 international intervention. He probably assesses he can complete his

5 strategic aims without the need to actually assault the city. It's

6 assessed he will contain the pocket and use the population there as a

7 bargaining tool. He is however, unlikely to agree to surrender terms

8 including free passage for Muslim soldiers from the pocket.

9 Then paragraph 6, second sentence -- well, first sentence: "The

10 Muslims have no military options. They may be prepared to participate in

11 the bargaining process. It's more likely they will seek to maintain the

12 situation as an issue in the world media."

13 So that really sets out the absolute start limitation of options

14 for the residents of Srebrenica, doesn't it?

15 A. Yes. Perhaps it helps the Court to know that John Wilson was a

16 brigadier in the Australian army, acting as a UN military officer attached

17 to the ICFY to advise myself and Mr. Vance.

18 Q. So you stepped down, but at the moment of your stepping down, if

19 we can survey the position. The accused never showed himself to be

20 frightened of anyone, did he?

21 A. I think he had a very considerable respect for Cyrus Vance.

22 Whether that was to be called fright, I don't know. I think he -- he

23 didn't lightly cross Mr. Vance, and I think there was a genuine belief

24 that they had reached an agreement over Croatia, and I think he wanted --

25 I don't think -- when on rare, rare occasions Mr. Vance got angry with

1 him, I think he -- it meant something.

2 Q. If we can move from the international people with whom he was

3 dealing to his fellow Serbs in one position or another. There were none

4 there of whom he was frightened?

5 A. Who was frightened?

6 Q. Of the accused. He wasn't frightened of any of his fellow Serbs.

7 He may have been --

8 A. No, no, no.

9 Q. -- perturbed by them or irritated by them but he was never

10 frightened of them?

11 A. No, he was never frightened of them.

12 Q. That includes Mladic?

13 A. Well, I've tried to describe his relationship with General Mladic,

14 and I'm not sure I made a very good fist of it because, frankly, I don't

15 frankly know, but it was full of ambivalence. I think that -- I mean, the

16 best I could say is for the accused and I don't think there's any reason

17 for me to try to put myself in a position that I wish everything to be

18 said against him. That is not my view. My job was to use him as a

19 bargaining counter to try to encourage him to persuade the Serbs of

20 courses which they didn't like. And I think that it's got to sort of

21 understand that a negotiator has to try to put themselves in the position

22 of the people you're negotiating with and I used to try to ask myself why

23 is he not using his power which I think he has, and repeated occasions

24 when he knew perfectly well that their position was absurd, that it was

25 not going to -- Karadzic or Krajisnik or even Mladic, that it was not

1 going to stand, he would not -- he would argue against them, but at the

2 end of the day he would, "Well, it's up to you."

3 Q. But he's -- I'm so sorry -- but he --

4 A. Either he did that because -- I mean, there are those who think

5 this is all an elaborate conspiracy, that we were all duped, that we were

6 led to believe -- that it was all coded, that Karadzic and Krajisnik were

7 allowed to be the tough, hardened at these things, he was the amenable

8 person. This is a perfectly reasonable explanation on one side of that.

9 Against that was the day-to-day contact in which you felt that if it

10 wasn't too costly for the Serbs, and I mean by that the overall Serbs of

11 which he identified with, the Serb cause, then he was in favour of

12 compromise. And I think in that sense he had come to a judgement that

13 these peace plans, as I say, could be tolerated, could be accepted by the

14 Serbs. Why didn't he force it through? Because it meant offending the

15 nationalists in Belgrade as well as in Pale.

16 I think that if you asked me whether he was frightened about

17 anybody, he would be much more the nationalists in Belgrade than ever in

18 Pale or in Krajina, and I think that was the problem. We were never sure

19 how much he was responding to his constituency, which was a nationalist

20 constituency in Belgrade.

21 Q. Passing just to remind us, in your book you described the accused

22 as being ruthless in his pursuit of power and treating people as either

23 disposable or dispensable but to the same effect?

24 A. Yes. I think history shows that to be the case. But the power --

25 the source of power that he had was nationalist opinion, and he had risen

1 to power on the nationalist view of Kosovo. He had seen the opportunity

2 to turn the issue of Kosovo against his then own leader, Stambolic, and I

3 think -- I haven't pronounced it correctly, but I think you have to keep

4 coming back. He's a pragmatist. He's interested in power. He therefore

5 has to take account of what is the source of his power. The source of his

6 power are nationalist leaders able to collect both votes and also powerful

7 people, and how much, therefore, he had to take account of them -- of

8 course he was a nationalist. Most Serbs are nationalists. The question

9 is therefore was that a limitation on how far he was prepared to go in

10 pushing the Bosnian Serbs and the Croatian Serbs? I can't answer that

11 question, I'm afraid. I wish I -- no question did I ask myself more and

12 no question did I try to use.

13 At one stage, President Cosic, in, say, October 1992, looked like

14 an alternative source of nationalist power. It lasted for a very short

15 time. At one stage, Karadzic, I think, saw himself as king of the Serbs.

16 At one stage Mladic became a very powerful Serb who President Milosevic

17 even in Belgrade had to take account of, because Mladic was appeal across

18 to a constituency in Belgrade, in Serbia itself.

19 Q. Of course your answers lead me to a lot of questions and I must be

20 careful in my use of time. Just very briefly, since you mentioned

21 President Cosic and the earlier period, it's right isn't it that Cosic had

22 warned those in Moscow that the reasonableness mask had dropped from the

23 accused's face and he must be fought openly? And your respect for Cosic

24 is probably such that that's a view of his you would not disagree with?

25 A. No. I supported President Cosic. But let's be clear about it.

1 President Cosic was a straight-out nationalist in a way I that I think Mr.

2 Milosevic is not. President Cosic was. But on the other hand he was a

3 man who saw because of his sense of history, because of his -- you know,

4 he had at one stage defended President Izetbegovic when he had gone to

5 prison.

6 I think that Cosic understood that what was happening to the

7 Serbian people was dire and that they had done terrible things. It was

8 very interesting how upset he was when he travelled to Pale for the Pale

9 meeting in May at the scenes of devastation in the villages and towns, and

10 I think he began to realise before that that terrible things had been done

11 by the Serbs that didn't do any good to the Serbian people's reputation,

12 honour, or integrity, and I think that, therefore is an important aspect

13 amongst nationalist opinion. Some of them were beginning to question

14 themselves almost, what they'd supported, what they'd unleashed.

15 Q. Lord Owen, can I take you back to a couple of previous answers,

16 back in the period of early 1995, though. You said of the accused that he

17 wasn't going to ensure that the Bosnian Serbs were defeated at war, but it

18 is -- sorry. He wasn't going to ensure that they were defeated. Is it

19 also the case that he had the ability to and probably had the intention to

20 ensure that they were not defeated, in your judgement, looking back?

21 A. Well, I think myself he grew increasingly worried about the policy

22 of letting Karadzic and Krajisnik head for the buffer, so to speak, and I

23 think that he'd already probably come to a conclusion that the Croatian

24 Serbs had to be reconciled to living within Croatia, and I think that he

25 had come to accept that. And I think it's an important thing to remember

1 that he was not operating on one front. He was operating on the Croatian

2 front as well and having to deal with the Krajina Serbs who of course were

3 all linked but who were also fiercely independent. And Mladic -- no,

4 sorry, Martic began to be quite impervious to any logical form of reason

5 of the and I remember scenes in which he was -- Mr. Milosevic was

6 exasperated beyond measure. And when dealing with Mr. Krajisnik, who

7 again was an interesting figure and quite powerful, he's obdurisic on the

8 issues around negotiations over Sarajevo. Now, again you can claim this

9 is all part of well-orchestrated things and we were duped and that there

10 was no real anger expressed in these meetings, but I've been around a long

11 time. I don't believe that. There was exasperation. There was anger.

12 But again there was always this refusal force it, to force agreement, to

13 impose it, and the question is why.

14 Q. Lord Owen, you told us before the break that if he had enforced

15 the interdiction on Bosnian army supplies, the war would have ended years

16 earlier and thus before Srebrenica.

17 A. If the West had interdicted from the air, I believe it would have

18 done. President Milosevic had the forces in the JNA to simply stop them

19 going across the Drina and across the roads.

20 Q. Done it himself or acquiesced in your dealing with it.

21 A. Yes. Absolutely. I personally strongly believe that. And should

22 have done it, and if he had done it, it would have saved the Serbian

23 nation from a very large amount of grief and it would have alleviated some

24 of the appalling horrors that had started from 1991 and 1992.

25 And I think it was a great error from the standpoint of the

1 Serbian people, and it's important to remember the Serbian people have got

2 a long, proud history, and it's a great mistake for the world to blame all

3 Serbs for what's been going on. It's not the case.

4 Q. So that by the beginning of 1995, the international community

5 wasn't disposed to control the flow of support to the Bosnian Serbs. On

6 your analysis, there was a split between Mladic and Karadzic so that he

7 may not have had the power let alone the will to control what was

8 happening.

9 A. Who?

10 Q. Karadzic. So far as Mladic was concerned. There was a

11 recognition by the accused and everybody else that massacre or a bloodbath

12 was a real possibility. The only politician who was able to influence, by

13 the control of supplies, was the accused. Would that be correct?

14 A. Yes. I think the -- in Belgrade, his power -- his ran --

15 personally I think he had become less influential. I mean, there was a

16 time when I first started in the early part, you felt that President

17 Milosevic issued orders to Karadzic and Krajisnik, and they came and they

18 went. Gradually, they, particularly after the quote which you gave of

19 them like cats licking the cream, once they'd been shown that they could

20 flout, first of all, all the different peace plans, and particularly after

21 having flouted the Contact Group plan of the five powerful nations, I

22 think they began to think that they could get away with anything and,

23 therefore, probably were not listening as much as they might have been

24 earlier on to even President Milosevic.

25 Q. He was the only politician of those we've identified who could

1 have dried up the supplies that were going to support the Bosnian Serbs

2 and to support Mladic?

3 A. Yes. He controlled Belgrade. He was still the most powerful

4 figure in Belgrade. He wasn't just nominally president, he was an

5 all-powerful president, yes.

6 Q. And the reason I asked you whether he was afraid of anybody, even

7 of Mladic, is this -- I realise these events are after your departure from

8 office -- but if Mladic had done something that the accused had

9 disapproved of, he would have no trouble in remonstrating with him, would

10 he?

11 A. No, he would have remonstrated with him. Would it have had any

12 effect on Mladic, that is a different question.

13 Q. He wouldn't have any anxiety or embarrassment about complaining of

14 what Mladic had done if what Mladic had done was wrong in his, the

15 accused's, eyes.

16 A. No. I think that's -- I think that is true. And -- but you need

17 to understand Mladic's character. I think that by then he was probably no

18 longer even accepting the authority of the head of the JNA in Belgrade.

19 Q. You see, we've had -- we've got material, and although some of the

20 material is material that I can't at present deal with openly, some of it

21 is material that I can deal with openly, showing that in August of 1995,

22 by which time, of course, Mladic's connection with the Srebrenica massacre

23 was known, in August 1995, at a meeting of the Supreme Defence Council,

24 Mladic organised a meeting of all the Serbs, and those meetings were held

25 on the 25th and 28th of August at Dobanovci, and at none of those meetings

1 did the accused raise or challenge Mladic about what had happened at

2 Srebrenica. If he had objected, you would have felt, from your knowledge

3 of the man, that he would have been able to speak about it.

4 A. Yeah. I think if he had been -- if he had made representations to

5 Mladic not to do something, but whether he would have raised it in public

6 in a meeting like that, I'm not sure, I wouldn't put too much weight on

7 that. He might do it -- it's a very difficult thing for me now, the area

8 you're going into, and almost I feel I ought to ask the Judges, really. I

9 mean, I --

10 JUDGE MAY: Lord Owen, it's up to you. If you think you can

11 answer properly, of course do so, but it does sound fairly hypothetical, I

12 must say.

13 MR. NICE: I'm not going to take it any further.

14 THE WITNESS: The reason I asked to be a witness of the court is I

15 do think there are roles for international negotiators in the future and

16 which we have to protect, and I think that we shouldn't get -- at least, I

17 don't think it's a good thing to get too far away from what is -- what

18 happened during my period as an international negotiator. If I then go

19 into hypothetical things about what I think about what happened after I

20 left, I think I start to abuse the impartiality that I had during this

21 period. And I'm not afraid of doing it, but I also in this particular

22 situation really don't know. I mean, I don't know whether any of -- my

23 successor Carl Bildt or anybody, made representations to General Milosevic

24 [sic] as I did in 1993. I don't know whether that happened. I don't know

25 what pressure was urged on him when the situation began to deteriorate in

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1 Srebrenica.

2 Of course there had been a breakdown in the negotiations which

3 many of us had got a great deal of hope for between President Milosevic

4 and Ambassador Fraser of the United States, and that may have been a cause

5 a frustration.

6 So I don't know the dialogue that was going on between negotiators

7 and other governments with President Milosevic.

8 JUDGE ROBINSON: I would say, Lord Owen, if you have to speculate,

9 don't answer.

10 THE WITNESS: Sorry, I --

11 JUDGE ROBINSON: I would say if you have to speculate, then don't

12 answer.

13 THE WITNESS: Yes. That would be speculation, and therefore I

14 prefer not to answer.

15 MR. NICE:

16 Q. Can I move on with the last question on this topic but in fact

17 going back to 1993, you had no doubt in 1993, I think, that the accused

18 did intervene with General Mladic to stop him taking Srebrenica at that

19 stage. That was your view.

20 A. That was my view. And I was very grateful for it.

21 MR. NICE: Your Honour, I suspect that I've taken the two hours I

22 asked for - I haven't checked my watch exactly - and I do have several

23 more questions and I would be grateful for an opportunity to ask some of

24 them but I'm entirely in the Court's hands.

25 JUDGE MAY: I think you've got about ten minutes.

1 MR. NICE:

2 Q. Lord Owen, I will be selective in the other topics I ask you

3 about. But very briefly on Sarajevo, your clear understanding of Sarajevo

4 was that this was a medieval siege, that the city could have been taken

5 pretty well at any time but that it -- it suited those attacking it not to

6 take it.

7 A. Yes.

8 Q. There was, at an early stage, and we can see this but I won't take

9 people to it, at page 39 of your statement, the intention to negotiate a

10 swap of territory, one part for another. So does that really make the

11 siege of Sarajevo part of the overall scheme of ethnic cleansing, in your

12 view?

13 A. There definitely was a focus on trying to negotiate over Eastern

14 Bosnia when we got into the question of what would happen about Sarajevo

15 in the union of three republics. And the humanitarian situation by then

16 in July in Srebrenica had again deteriorated. Not quite as bad as it had

17 been in March and April, but it was still very bad.

18 And therefore it was an issue on which the parties were ready to

19 talk, and they did talk. And there was very detailed negotiation and

20 discussion of it.

21 Had Krajisnik and Karadzic, who by then were the key element on

22 the question of Sarajevo, been ready to come forward with what was by any

23 standards a modicum of movement to allow the capital city to exist where

24 the majority were very clearly Muslims, then it might have been possible

25 for President Izetbegovic to have made more concessions over some of the

1 eastern enclaves.

2 But the frightening part of the situation was that we could not

3 get that degree of movement. And again, in these talks too, President

4 Milosevic is -- was intelligent enough to know that the position that

5 Karadzic and Krajisnik were adopting, of wanting to have a Serb

6 stranglehold on all three roads coming into Sarajevo, was quite

7 unrealistic, and he said so, but we still couldn't shift them. And

8 therefore, the maps that came out ducked the issue of Sarajevo by putting

9 it under UN administration and left it for one side, if you like, for a

10 year or two, and kept these enclaves obviously vulnerable and potentially

11 still dangerous.

12 Q. But of course the answer you gave earlier about the accused being

13 in a position, had he by his own actions or by acquiescence with

14 international action, withdrawn support for the Bosnian Serbs applies to

15 Sarajevo as much as it does to anywhere else.

16 A. Yes. Again it would have meant forcing them to negotiate the more

17 reasonable path which he himself was ready to acknowledge should be the

18 case.

19 Q. And for whatever reason --

20 A. So he would spend hours with them trying to persuade them to do

21 it. Sometimes without him. He would himself spend quite a lot of time in

22 private conversation with President Izetbegovic and with President

23 Tudjman. I mean, we almost became watchers of the negotiation. Our

24 technique was to get them to talk and then get the -- they were

25 negotiating in what was then Serbo-Croat, and we would encourage them to

1 talk directly and get the interpreters to be very quiet, push our chairs

2 back, and then even leave them alone.

3 This -- by then, the only hope was that these characters who all

4 knew every street in Sarajevo would be able to come to an accommodation.

5 Q. The underlying reason for this is something of course the Chamber

6 may have to deal with, but if we can look at Appendix G to your statement,

7 please, and the speech that you were unable to deliver, which can be found

8 at registry number 24758 and following, and I'm just looking at 24756, the

9 third page of that, Lord Owen, I think.

10 Your view in April 1993, and it's in the middle of the page, was

11 still to this effect: "For there is no future for the European continent

12 if might can be shown to win and a Greater Serbia emerges at the barrel of

13 many guns. Anyone who believes in Belgrade that after a few months we

14 will relax these economic and political pressures and acquiesces in the

15 taking of territory by force is making a massive misjudgment."

16 Two topics here. Your focus is on the people in Belgrade. Your

17 reference is to "Greater Serbia emerging at the barrel of many guns." Was

18 it your belief at this time that underlying whatever successful or failed

19 negotiations there were, there was a continuing desire by military force

20 to create a Greater Serbia?

21 A. Yes. I mean, from my point of view, this is an extremely

22 interesting speech which I'd forgotten that I'd written - I'd written

23 every word of it - I didn't deliver, and I think it accurately reflects my

24 views at the time and therefore is helpful perhaps for the Court, but

25 you're totally right, that was my view.

1 But we need to put this in context. This was before I had met

2 with and negotiated with President Milosevic in the period up to

3 Bijeljina, and it was at that time, I think it was the 23rd of April or --

4 that I formed the view that Milosevic was now ready to accept that there

5 would not necessarily be a link between Republika Srpska and Serbia, but

6 that he could get for the Serbs what they needed, in his judgement,

7 through the Vance-Owen Peace Plan and then through the EU the union of

8 three republics, the EU action plan and like that, which was all basically

9 all part of the same family.

10 The Vance-Owen Peace Plan was a unified Bosnia-Herzegovina, and

11 that was in a way surprising that he was still prepared to accept that.

12 Of course with the proviso that he thought that they would gradually merge

13 and get more territory and that sort of thing. But I believe that he did

14 thereafter, as far as Bosnia is concerned, accept that world opinion was

15 not going to probably ever accept that it came into Serbia and Montenegro.

16 He still intended to keep Kosovo firmly part of Serbia, and I think he

17 perhaps at that stage had not yet accepted that the Croatian Serbs would

18 have to live in Croatia. I think that was more something he came to

19 accept towards 1994, although you could argue that his agreement to the

20 Vance initial proposals, he knew that it would eventually happen but it

21 would just take time.

22 And this is a person who has obviously thought through all of this

23 carefully, President Milosevic, but I think that there was a period when

24 he was a Greater Serbia supporter and believed he could get away with it.

25 Then he became aware of the pressures of the international community. On

1 Bosnia, I think in April 1993 he began to accept that he wouldn't get that

2 full picture.

3 Q. And if we can look, as I think I'm probably coming to the end --

4 A. Then we went to Athens and then we went to Pale.

5 Q. Yes. I'm afraid I don't have time to go into those --

6 A. No.

7 Q. But if you look on the next, the right-hand page, Lord Owen, just

8 another detail from the same speech, which as you say has the advantage of

9 contemporaneity about it, second paragraph, fourth line, "The petrol and

10 oil that fuels the Bosnian Serb army comes from Montenegro and Serbia.

11 Essential supplies come across their frontier. The Yugoslav army that was

12 meant to have totally withdraw in the spring of last year never broke

13 contact with the Bosnian Serbs. In recent months we have had convincing

14 evidence of a far greater involvement in terms of personnel, equipment,

15 and strategy.

16 "It is an elaborate charade that Belgrade is not involved in the

17 war in Bosnia and Herzegovina, and it is a claim that I believe convinces

18 no one in this Council."

19 A. Well, I agreed that then. I agreed it all through the period I

20 was a negotiator, and I believe it now.

21 Q. And if -- if -- there's a document we won't go to because of time

22 but that the Chamber has seen, the 30th session of the National Assembly,

23 addressed by the accused partly in public and partly in private, where he

24 is seen to be saying that they can obtain in peace what had been their

25 objectives earlier in war, if that's the interpretation on that session.

1 That wouldn't surprise you that he should be sticking to original plans

2 but to get them by other means?

3 A. I'd need to look at the document, and I'd need -- I think you're

4 taking me into the area of speculation and --

5 Q. In which case I flag the issue up for the Chamber and I shan't ask

6 you more about it.

7 MR. NICE: Your Honour, I suspect that's my time and I don't wish

8 to trespass.

9 JUDGE MAY: I think that's probably it, yes.

10 MR. NICE: In which case one -- perhaps --

11 Q. Yes, I'm reminded, in your interview on the Breakfast with Frost

12 programme you made it quite clear that support was coming from Serbia and

13 Montenegro. We can see that in one of the annexes. It's in your

14 documentation.

15 A. Yes. It was once again a time when I publicly argued for bombing

16 the Serbs, you could say, and I risked my role as negotiator. In fact, it

17 caused condemnation from them and they said how could they be asked to

18 negotiate with somebody who was advocating that I should interdict their

19 supply lines. And I still went on and had the most successful

20 negotiation. So for a negotiator, there is a balance. You can get away

21 with a certain amount of advocacy of military action as a pressure, but it

22 reduces your credibility or if you're -- reduces your acceptability to

23 some extent by doing it, but again, it was for the same reason. It was

24 because those supplies were fuelling this war, and they had to be broken,

25 either by a political will decision by President Milosevic in Belgrade or

1 by the Western world interposing military force to stop it happening.

2 Q. Lord Owen, you make the point in your materials that we asked you

3 to come as a witness for the Prosecution and that you declined. I'm sure

4 you will understand that we can't force the Judges to call witnesses, and

5 we have had to ask you ourselves. We're obviously grateful that you've

6 come, and I think you can also probably confirm that in coming to give

7 evidence you haven't restricted yourself in any way by seeking

8 confidentiality or any matters of that sort. You've simply given the

9 evidence being master, as you judge it, of when it becomes appropriate to

10 seek guidance from the Chamber on when material shouldn't be given.

11 A. I hope that's the case. I hope I haven't damaged the concept. As

12 you know, I did argue that negotiators should be treated in a special way

13 and I'm grateful to the Court for giving me that special treatment in the

14 sense that I hope it's a demonstration to Mr. Milosevic but also to the

15 Serbs generally that this -- that a negotiator is there, given a certain

16 amount of trust by them, and that you shouldn't damage that process.

17 We're going to need negotiators in the future. We need to have some

18 understanding of how they handle this next problem of -- but as I said,

19 I'm impartial but I'm not neutral on the questions of weapons -- of -- of

20 crimes against humanity or war crimes, and I want to make it clear because

21 Mr. Vance is not here, unfortunately has died, a great American diplomat

22 and fine man. He never doubted that we had to have some investigation of

23 what had gone on, and he and I both recommended that this Court should be

24 established by the Security Council, and the reason why we wanted it by

25 the Security Council was we thought that at a time of their choosing the

1 Security Council would understand that you need reconciliation in these

2 sort of wars and there comes a point where the pursuit of absolute justice

3 can actually damage reconciliation and it's for the Security Council to

4 determine when that position is reached. But I don't believe you can ever

5 amnesty anybody who has been given an arrest warrant by a criminal court.

6 I think that has to go through to judgement.

7 Q. Lord Owen, we're grateful to you for coming and giving evidence in

8 this way. Thank you.

9 JUDGE ROBINSON: Lord Owen, I have a question to ask you. I want

10 to take you back to the first part of your testimony when, in discussing

11 the question of the influence and control of the accused, you said that

12 the police were under his control more like a militia and that they

13 operated as a counterbalance to a more independent JNA.

14 So two questions: First, what factors led you to the view that

15 the police were under the control of the accused; and secondly, your

16 reference to "a more independent JNA" I take to mean that, in your view,

17 the accused had less control over the JNA. So what factors led you to

18 that view?

19 THE WITNESS: Well, on the first point, I think you saw the way

20 the police responded to President Milosevic in just the day-to-day visits

21 to Belgrade and Serbia and Montenegro. But in particular, you saw it in

22 the -- his decision to have this ban on certain goods going into Republika

23 Srpska or the Bosnian Serb part of Bosnia-Herzegovina, and he entrusted

24 almost all of that to the police to run. And you -- I got the firm belief

25 that he controlled that process. At various times, I think both Mr.

1 Stoltenberg and I felt that there was a resistance to this policy, and we

2 didn't know where it came from, but we felt that it might be the JNA.

3 And you may remember that in some evidence that I've given, there

4 was reporting of two helicopters incidents, one I think in October of 1994

5 and one in February 1995, of a helicopter flight in the area of Republika

6 Srpska, which had come in from Bosnian Serb territory and almost, by

7 definition, was likely to be JNA helicopters.

8 Now, in the investigation of that, again he used the police, and

9 the way he used the police, you got the feeling he was doing that because

10 he trusted them. And we never got to the complete bottom of it, but the

11 first one might well have been. The second one was pretty clearly a

12 medevac evacuation that hadn't been reported. But in the depth of -- I

13 mean, President Milosevic took the allegations that this was a breach

14 pretty seriously, and of course if he hadn't, then there would not have

15 been a suspension of even the limited suspension of sanctions that have

16 been discussed. So I think that was the main case.

17 As far as the JNA was concerned, again I was never relying on

18 direct information. I just got the feeling from some of the military

19 reporting on our side that they were detecting tensions between the JNA

20 and Belgrade, and there was a strong feeling that Mladic had loyalties

21 which he could draw on in the JNA. You know, fellow officers, being with

22 them. But he was -- General Mladic was a popular general. He was

23 somebody who slept with the soldiers in the trenches. He was a soldier's

24 soldier in that sense, and this was one of the problems. He was building

25 up all the time an independent power base with the support of the Bosnian

1 Serb forces but you got the feeling that radiated out into Yugoslavia and

2 you could say that subsequent events have slightly shown that that is the

3 case. The protection that was put around president -- General Mladic was

4 much more than might be done for quite a number of other generals. So h