1 Tuesday, 4 November 2003

2 [Open session]

3 [The witness entered court]

4 [The accused entered court]

5 --- Upon commencing at 9.03 a.m.

6 JUDGE MAY: Yes, Mr. Milosevic.

7 THE ACCUSED: [Interpretation] Mr. May, before I continue, I would

8 like to ask you whether you have considered the possibility of giving me

9 some additional time, because Lord Owen was the main international

10 negotiator for three years, and it is impossible to cover in three hours

11 even very superficially the main issues.

12 JUDGE MAY: We've considered the position as we did -- as we said

13 yesterday. You have one session, an hour and a half. I suggest that one

14 way you can save time is by keeping your questions short, concentrating

15 and focusing on them rather than lengthy questions. Yes.

16 WITNESS: DAVID OWEN [Resumed]

17 Questioned by Mr. Milosevic: [Continued]

18 Q. [Interpretation] Lord Owen, yesterday we ended the session with

19 your position about the crimes committed by the Serbs in response to my

20 statement that crimes were committed by all sides. I hope that you will

21 recollect that we had discussed those camps in Bosnia and Herzegovina and

22 that you will remember, I hope, that both you and Stoltenberg and myself

23 and other participants, Bulatovic in the first place, received assurances

24 from the leadership of Republika Srpska, that apart from prisoners of war

25 and regular prisons, there was nothing else there, and that even Radovan

1 Karadzic called on Paddy Ashdown publicly to come and see for himself,

2 which he did, after which he made a statement saying that what had

3 appeared in the press was not correct. Do you remember that?

4 A. The first part of our conversations with Dr. Karadzic I certainly

5 do remember, and they were along those lines, and we were given in our

6 negotiating sessions many assurances either about the camps or about the

7 hostages, those people who were taken prisoner. So it is perfectly true

8 to say that those issues were very frequently raised, first by myself and

9 Mr. Vance and then by Mr. Stoltenberg and myself. And it's also true to

10 say that you urged them to make sure that their practices were acceptable

11 to us and to the international community.

12 Q. And that the International Red Cross should be present everywhere

13 and that all prisoners should be exchanged on the principle all for all.

14 Wasn't that how it was, Lord Owen?

15 A. Certainly you were always keen to involve the international --

16 ICRC, and you did in fact see the head of the ICRC from time to time. And

17 I think that they did. We got very much better access to the prison

18 camps. The situation was very much worse when I first arrived in early

19 September 1992. I think it did improve, though. I must say from what

20 I've heard since, the improvements were not what we were assured -- they

21 were not as good as the assurances, put it that way.

22 Q. But my impression was, and I hope you shared it, because a long

23 time after the war information started arriving that there were various

24 violations of international law and various crimes committed in some

25 prisons, that at the time in those days the leadership of Republika

1 Srpska, I mean Karadzic, Krajisnik, Koljevic and others, even they were

2 not aware of those violations, because they assured us to that effect.

3 And my impression was that they were sincere in doing that. Was that your

4 impression too?

5 A. I think a change took place in Dr. Karadzic. In the early days,

6 in 1992 and in 1993, he seemed to have some understanding about the

7 pressure of the international opinion on human rights questions. And for

8 example, if somebody was taken prisoner, a foreign -- or somebody -- and

9 we made representations about it, he was at pains to make clear that this

10 was not hostage-taking, that this was a purely criminal matter and would

11 be dealt with in the criminal -- by the criminal procedures and that he as

12 president had no involvement with it.

13 And in those early days, I think it seemed to have a ring of

14 conviction to it, but more he was able to flout international opinion on

15 the battlefield and the more he was able to see off plan after plan, the

16 more he became, in my view, less trustworthy and more flagrant about these

17 were not just prisoners, these were hostages. And we had a lot of

18 problems with him in 1994 and early 1995 with hostage-taking, and it was

19 much more obvious that these were -- to my mind that these were political

20 hostages, they were not criminal positions.

21 But you were aware of that, and maybe -- but we could do no more.

22 We would receive these assurances from Dr. Karadzic. All I can say is I

23 couldn't agree with your view that his pledges were sincere. I think

24 increasingly that they came less -- they had carried less conviction and

25 less sincerity.

1 Q. I cannot go into any judgement as to what extent it was sincere

2 because my impression was that they were sincere. But if you remember,

3 some delegations when they came to Serbia even, they asked questions about

4 camps in Serbia. Do you remember that?

5 A. Yes. I can't say I've got a complete recall of it, but I think I

6 remember discussions about camps in Serbia.

7 Q. Do you remember that when such an absurd assertion was made I

8 denied it, not only by offering my guarantees that there were no such

9 camps, but I would offer each delegation that may raise such an issue to

10 use a police helicopter to point on the map a spot where they have

11 suspicions that there were such camps to see for themselves that there

12 were no such things. Do you remember that?

13 A. I don't, but I have no reason to doubt. At that time, I think you

14 were pretty confident about what was exactly happening in the country

15 which you were responsible for, Serbia and then the FRY. But the area of

16 Serbia Montenegro, you knew what was going on. I'm not sure -- I've never

17 doubted that.

18 Q. But surely you know full well that there were no camps in the

19 territory of Serbia and Montenegro.

20 A. The problem of professing to knowledge that I don't have, I don't

21 -- it's not an issue which came on my radar screen massively, to be

22 honest. My main focus was on camps in Bosnia-Herzegovina at that time. I

23 think that I was focusing on abuses of human rights in Croatia and Kosovo

24 and in Bosnia-Herzegovina. I was often taking up with you abuses of human

25 rights in Kosovo, and as you know, I did not agree with a lot of what was

1 happening in -- under Serbian control of Kosovo.

2 Q. Kosovo is a separate issue. It's a principled matter. I

3 considered Kosovo to be our own internal affair, and it had nothing to do

4 with the war in Bosnia and Croatia and, generally speaking, with the

5 events connected with the break-up of Yugoslavia. You knew that.

6 A. I knew that was your view. Of course, I disagreed with it. We

7 had to reach a sort of modus vivendi about that. I think you did accept

8 that the terms of reference of the London conference, which you accepted,

9 did mean that ICFY had -- the International Conference on the Former

10 Yugoslavia -- did have a locus on Kosovo, and so you never ruled out

11 talking about it, but you made it abundantly clear that you disliked

12 talking about it and didn't really consider that we had a right to be

13 involved. But we're not really here to talk about Kosovo, but inasmuch as

14 we had a dialogue about Kosovo it was the least satisfactory dialogue that

15 we had. I think you'd agree.

16 Q. We didn't discuss that at all because I considered that to be our

17 internal affair.

18 A. That's not my recollection. We did discuss Kosovo. You did often

19 say that it was your internal affair, but neither myself, Mr. Stoltenberg,

20 or Mr. Vance accepted that. But this was an area of very serious

21 disagreement between us.

22 Q. That we had disagreements over that, that is quite true, and I'm

23 not denying it.

24 Lord Owen, I should like to make the best of the time available to

25 me, which is very limited, as you can see, to raise a number of issues,

1 and I would like to ask you kindly to assist me by giving me short

2 answers, if possible.

3 First of all, regarding the nature of the war. In several places

4 in your book, you refer to the war in Bosnia-Herzegovina, as well as the

5 other wars in the territory of the former Yugoslavia from 1991 to 1995 as

6 civil and a war of secession. For example, on page 5, paragraph 1 -- I

7 have this compact disk that was given to me by the opposite side, and that

8 is why the pagination does not agree with pagination of your book, and I

9 am sorry.

10 You say that, "All wars bring evil to the surface and especially

11 the cruelty of civil wars as recorded through history. It is a fact that

12 the wars in the former Yugoslavia had elements of secessionist and civil

13 wars and this only contributed to the difficulty of making objective

14 judgements."

15 Did you experience those wars as secessionist and civil wars?

16 A. I think there were elements of aggression in it. Particularly, it

17 was not possible to classify it as a civil war once the international

18 community had accepted the independence of many of what were hitherto

19 republics in the regions in the former Yugoslavia. But I do not deny in

20 my book talking about aspects of the war that were civil wars, and I think

21 that this is one of the things that the world community never quite

22 understood, or significant sections of it didn't.

23 Q. I also think that they didn't understand, and that is why your

24 explanation is so useful, because you are the most competent person to

25 provide it.

1 In view of the fact that we established yesterday that the

2 Yugoslav People's Army was positioned throughout its territory and that

3 after the recognition of the republics, it pulled out of Croatia when the

4 Vance Plan was adopted and the UN arrived from Bosnia and Herzegovina in

5 the period we indicated yesterday and that the army of Republika Srpska

6 was formed. So in those days, there were no foreign soldiers there, at

7 least not from the Federal Republic of Yugoslavia, that is from Serbia and

8 Montenegro. I assume you remember that well. And before that, there was

9 Yugoslavia, the country was Yugoslavia.

10 A. Yes. I -- it's a complex history. I don't claim to have ever

11 fully mastered it, but it was an extremely important part of my task to

12 try to understand how Yugoslavia had come into existence, how the

13 boundaries of -- internal boundaries of the nations and regions of

14 Yugoslavia had been established, how the maps had been drawn up, and I

15 don't dissent from what you're saying, in fact.

16 Q. I'm not reading from your book, but I have a chronology of

17 documents here. But you will probably remember on the 23rd of July, 1993,

18 according to this chronology, co-chairman of the ICFY, Lord David Owen,

19 rejected the possibility of military intervention in Bosnia and

20 Herzegovina and explained it by saying that it was very difficult to

21 intervene in a situation which is not one of aggression.

22 And then your words are cited: "Though this war started partially

23 in that way, but it was always a conflict between the Serbs from Bosnia,

24 the Croats from Bosnia, and the Muslims from Bosnia."

25 That is what you said in July 1993. I assume you remember that.

1 A. I unfortunately don't recall every word that I've ever uttered,

2 but I think principally the war in Bosnia-Herzegovina was between those

3 who lived there, but it would be foolish to believe that that was the only

4 aspect of this war. There was, throughout the period that I was involved,

5 JNA forces, people who were not born in Bosnia-Herzegovina operating

6 inside Bosnia-Herzegovina and being helped and aided by the Yugoslav army.

7 And similarly, there were substantial forces from Croatia operating

8 alongside Croatian Serbs and supplying them with arms and ammunition. And

9 therefore, the two states that were bordering Bosnia-Herzegovina that had

10 previously been in the former Yugoslavia as one, namely Serbia,

11 Montenegro, and Croatia, were involved in this war and that was one of the

12 aspects of why it was a civil war. It was a civil war across the former

13 Yugoslavia as well as a civil war within Bosnia-Herzegovina.

14 And then the war had to change in terms of the international

15 community, which I think you and many other Serbs found very difficult,

16 and a good many Croats too. But once recognition had taken place, then

17 there had to be a change. These countries had to be treated as

18 independent countries.

19 We can argue about recognition, but the right of the international

20 community to declare a state which is dissolving itself, to declare

21 certain elements from it now to be independent is there in the UN Charter,

22 and that took place. And that did change the situation. Therefore, from

23 that moment on, any activity from a country outside Bosnia-Herzegovina

24 had, in the eyes of international law, was an aggression, was no longer a

25 civil war.

1 Q. That would be true if we had had troops in the territory of Bosnia

2 and Herzegovina after the recognition of Bosnia and Herzegovina, but you

3 know that we didn't have any troops in the territory of Bosnia and

4 Herzegovina. I even told you and Mr. Stoltenberg of only one exception,

5 and that is that I had sent a police platoon to the territory of Bosnia

6 and Herzegovina, that is at the Strpce railway station where a crime was

7 committed, where people were taken off the train on the Belgrade-Bar

8 railway line, to guard that station. And this was in the territory of

9 Republika Srpska, but we feared that some paramilitary units may commit

10 another crime, and they guarded that station, because it is only nine

11 kilometres of the Belgrade-Bar railway line that runs through

12 Bosnia-Herzegovina.

13 And I informed you and Mr. Stoltenberg about this. This was an

14 exception. This was a police platoon that stood guard at the police

15 station to prevent anyone from stopping the train there. This was a

16 station that trains did not stop at normally.

17 JUDGE MAY: Now, I warned you about time which you're taking up.

18 What is the question?

19 THE WITNESS: I remember the incident, and I don't think it has

20 much bearing on all of this, but it is a fact that the railway line

21 chipped into Bosnia-Herzegovina for a very small portion. I think it was

22 something like nine kilometres, maybe a bit longer than that.

23 MR. MILOSEVIC: [Interpretation]

24 Q. That was the exception, that is the presence of this police

25 platoon, and I informed you of that because there were no other Yugoslav

1 forces in the territory of Bosnia and Herzegovina. I assume you remember

2 that.

3 A. Well, I remember your interpretation, and we went over yesterday

4 why I disagree with it. I think there was a rather clever way of taking

5 Yugoslav forces into, buttressing the Bosnian Serbian army without it

6 being quite as apparent as, for example, in Croatia. In Croatia, it was

7 completely apparent at some stages in the war. Their forces were without

8 any question whole -- whole detachments deployed into Bosnia-Herzegovina.

9 You went through rather more of a subterfuge, but I do not accept your

10 interpretation that there were no people fighting in the Serb side in

11 Bosnia who could not normally be thought to have been and should have been

12 part of the JNA in -- answerable to you in Serbia and Montenegro.

13 But I may be wrong. But that was the view I held, and I held it

14 consistently, and I think there is some evidence at the time which we

15 based our views on.

16 Q. You never had any objection to the effect that any unit of the JNA

17 was operating in the territory of Bosnia and Herzegovina; isn't that

18 right? You talked to me on innumerable occasions.

19 A. Yes. Again, I want to reiterate, I don't think you did send

20 formed units from Yugoslavia into Bosnia and Herzegovina. It was much

21 more that people were serving who were not always residents in

22 Bosnia-Herzegovina, they were not people who had spent their whole life

23 there, and that there was a mixing of the two. But I -- I notice your

24 denial, and no doubt there will be evidence given in this court about this

25 matter. I can only tell you what I thought at the time.

1 Q. Did you consider those people to be volunteers, those people who

2 went there? You know very well there were many people from Sandzak

3 fighting in the army of Alija Izetbegovic in Bosnia-Herzegovina. They

4 were from Serbia, but I assume they were not sent there by Serbia, so the

5 question of volunteers is quite a separate issue.

6 A. Yes, that is a separate issue, and that certainly did happen, and

7 it is also the case, I remember in Sarajevo, being proudly introduced by

8 the Bosnian government force commander to a Serb general who had

9 voluntarily served in the army of Bosnia-Herzegovina. So this is one of

10 the reasons why this war was very complex, and they were not simple

11 questions and simple issues.

12 Q. Quite so. On page 552, you say that one of the greatest

13 historians, Thucydides, said that, "People went to war because of fear,

14 honour, and interest. Rarely are there only culprits and victims. This

15 even applies to interstate wars when wars are absolutely or partially

16 civil wars as was the case with the four wars waged in the former

17 Yugoslavia so far, we are wrong to view these matters in simplified terms

18 or to present them as a battle between good and bad guys. So it's far

19 more complex than that." Which four wars are you referring to?

20 A. Well, there was always some definition problems. There was an

21 initial war, but sometimes called the war between Serbia and Slovenia.

22 That lasted, if one thought that was a separate war, for a matter of

23 weeks, and that ended.

24 Then there was a war between Serbia and Croatia, and that was

25 highlighted, of course, by the sieges that went on and particularly the

1 long siege of Vukovar. That was the time when the sanctions and the ban

2 on the transfer of weapons into the former Yugoslavia actually hurt the

3 Croatians, and so we need to remember that. Then later, of course,

4 probably preferentially hurt the Bosnian Muslims.

5 And then there was the war between Serbia and Bosnia-Herzegovina,

6 and there was then the war which we can argue about the definition of what

7 -- whether it was purely the Republika Srpska.

8 And then there was an internal war between the Croatian -- the

9 Bosnian Croats and the Bosnian Muslims which raged in the -- on a couple

10 of occasions very badly in April of -- in the spring of -- April 1993 and

11 then broke out again in 1994, early 1994. And then you go on to the war

12 of -- over Kosovo.

13 So there is a lot of definition of how many separate wars there

14 were, but they all had a common theme in the dissolution of the former

15 Republic of Yugoslavia.

16 Q. Well, that was a united war against Yugoslavia, and that's how

17 Yugoslavia was broken up. But I don't understand where you get Serbia's

18 war with Slovenia from. It had nothing to do with the intervention of the

19 army in Slovenia. It was up to the federal government, and I assume you

20 know that at least.

21 A. I -- it's -- it's a part of history which I was not a direct

22 participant in, and I don't see much advantage in us locking on that

23 particular question. You may have a different interpretation, certainly

24 very much more knowledge than I have exactly what went on. My

25 interpretation has been that it was a war which was paving the way for

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1 dissolution, but --

2 Q. That's quite true. It was a very detrimental war, but Serbia had

3 nothing to do with that particular war, and we didn't even know that the

4 intervention would take place.

5 And as far as Croatia is concerned, well, I have here a letter

6 that I addressed to Cyrus Vance, and that was after several rounds of

7 negotiations that we had. And the letter is dated the 24th of November,

8 1991, that is to say, even before recognition took place. It was still

9 Yugoslavia that we were dealing with. And he wrote to me on the 24th of

10 November and I answered his letter on the 27th of November. I've mixed up

11 the dates. I apologise for that. But anyway, that was how it was.

12 And I say I wish to express my agreement with respect to the

13 importance of the topics you express interest for in your letter, that is

14 to say the definition of territories under the protection of the United

15 Nations forces, because without doubt, it was my personal support and

16 Serbia's support and the support of the presidents of Yugoslavia that the

17 Blue Helmets came to Croatia in the first place.

18 So I say that there in view of the fact that the definition of

19 territories on which once again an attempt was made and, unfortunately, to

20 a certain extent implemented, genocide over the Serb people, and this led

21 to large scale conflicts. The definition of territories is a de facto

22 question, and I think that the state on the ground is the only objective

23 response, because he was interested in knowing where the UN people should

24 be deployed. And I say that the overall territory, in my view, where the

25 conflicts and clashes took place should enjoy effective protection by the

1 United Nations. And I go on to explain that as the freedom and security

2 and safety of the people living there are vital to the -- their

3 existential interests, I therefore consider that every definition of

4 territory must be checked out and confirmed on the ground, that is to say

5 where the conflicts actually took place.

6 And I go on to emphasise the importance of the decisions made by

7 the Yugoslav state Presidency in this regard, in the interests of

8 understanding --

9 JUDGE MAY: I'm going to stop you. There is a limit to what the

10 witness can deal with, what any witness can deal with. What is it that

11 you want to put, Mr. Milosevic? What are you putting? You're asking the

12 witness questions.

13 THE ACCUSED: [Interpretation] I am putting before the witness

14 questions and asking him whether it is true and correct that in the areas

15 populated by the Serbs there were great -- there was great retaliation

16 vis-a-vis the Serbs, that they rebelled and that Yugoslavia, from the very

17 beginning, endeavoured to prevent the conflict there. When I say

18 "Yugoslavia," I mean the Yugoslav People's Army as well and the country's

19 federal institutions which still existed at the time, and that we always

20 strove and advocated for impartiality, and therefore wanted the UN mission

21 to arrive on the spot.

22 JUDGE MAY: Again, you're putting a whole lot of things here

23 together. The first point you put is that there was great retaliation

24 vis-a-vis the Serbs in the areas which were populated by them. That's one

25 point. And then you put that Yugoslavia, from the beginning, endeavoured

1 to prevent the conflict there, i.e., the Yugoslav People's Army. I don't

2 know if Lord Owen feels he can comment on that particular proposition.

3 THE WITNESS: I was not involved at this time, but of course Cyrus

4 Vance was a great friend of mine and we discussed the issue.

5 On the point you raised about whether you were helpful to

6 Mr. Vance in those negotiations, of course he's not alive now to answer

7 this question, but I gather that his assistant, Mr. Ambassador Okun, did

8 give evidence here, and I'm sure he would have been able to deal with

9 this. It was certainly my view that Mr. Vance felt that you had been

10 extremely helpful in those negotiations, so I don't wish to dissent from

11 that.

12 On the second round of questions, this whole business of the fact

13 that there were substantial Serb communities, not just in

14 Bosnia-Herzegovina but also in Croatia, that is an undoubted fact. And of

15 course the UN protected areas that came in as part of the plan in Croatia

16 were an attempt to deal with this issue. But the absence of serious

17 negotiations, the absence of getting agreement in Bosnia-Herzegovina which

18 would have helped settle the problems in Croatia resulted in the mass

19 exodus of Serbs from the Krajina. And I think all this demonstrates that

20 we can go over the history -- and this region has got so much history that

21 it bedevils dealing with the future. And all I can say to you is you have

22 a justified grievance, in my view, that the Western world took a view that

23 the only way to create independent countries out of the former Yugoslavia

24 was to accept the regional map of Yugoslavia as drawn up during the war in

25 1944 by, amongst others, Mr. Djilas. Now, I think that is a perfectly

1 justified grievance, and I've always made it quite clear that I think we

2 should have been readier to have made some changes to those maps in order

3 to reflect some of the long-standing settlement of individuals, Croats and

4 particularly Serbs. But that was not the decision that was made in 1991

5 by the European Union, and my book makes reference to that very fateful

6 decision.

7 But that was taken in good faith in believing it would not be

8 possible to reach agreement on any other boundaries, and probably that

9 judgement was correct, but I think it did give a grievance to the Serbs.

10 MR. MILOSEVIC: [Interpretation]

11 Q. Unfortunately, I have to hurry up.

12 Now, on page 274, you refer to Ratko Mladic and say that, "When in

13 June 1991 the Serbo-Croatian war began, he was the Chief of Staff of the

14 9th Army Corps, located in Knin. And like the other corps, this one was

15 in the process of dissolving because the officers and staff began to come

16 out and say they were Croats and step down from the JNA to join their

17 national armies. They left the military service, and in some cases, they

18 even left the country. Mostly the Serbs who stayed on in the JNA did not

19 have any freedom and many were surrounded by the Croatian army in their

20 barracks, which was one of the reasons for which the JNA reacted with such

21 force in places like Vukovar. And from that stage, we see the development

22 of a classical civil war with rifts in the army and rifts in friendships

23 between officers from the same regiment and them leaving and going to

24 fight each other." End of quotation.

25 It was the war that flared up in 1991, and you call it a classical

1 civil war, Lord Owen, don't you?

2 Now, can we conclude from that the divisions and rifts in an army

3 of a country that you have described in the way you have where everybody

4 was the member of one and the same army and now suddenly they were

5 beginning to fight each other, that those are properties and traits of a

6 civil war, no other type of war. It was a civil war, in fact. What other

7 type of war could have been waged between the members of the same army who

8 had split and started fighting each other?

9 A. Well, I agree with the wording that I used in the book, not

10 perhaps surprisingly, and what you've quoted.

11 JUDGE MAY: Just one moment. There's a matter I want to say. It

12 would be helpful if the Prosecution, since you produce these documents,

13 can refer us in due course to these passages which have been referred to

14 from the CD-ROM so we can tie them up with our own copies.

15 MR. NICE: We will make arrangements. I don't think --

16 THE INTERPRETER: Microphone, please, Mr. Nice.

17 MR. NICE: I'll make arrangements, not necessarily today but as

18 soon as I can.

19 THE WITNESS: The reference, Your Honour, is page 165 and 166. .

20 JUDGE MAY: Thank you, Lord Owen.

21 Yes, Mr. Milosevic.

22 THE WITNESS: 165 and 166.

23 MR. MILOSEVIC: [Interpretation]

24 Q. Therefore, if it was indeed a civil war and a war of secession, I

25 assume it's clear that the blame for the war lies with the side conducting

1 the secession and conducting it by using force, this illegal secession.

2 So was that called in question, Lord Owen?

3 A. I think that's a gross simplification of the complex background in

4 which you were seeing substantial divisions of opinion in the governing

5 structure of the former Republic of Yugoslavia. You had, as you know very

6 well since you participated in it, a rotating Presidency, and I think many

7 of the Tito structures broke down not just with the outcome of -- with the

8 start of the war but in the months and even years before war broke out.

9 Q. I should like now, because of the shortness of time -- something

10 seems to be wrong with this microphone.

11 Anyway, I should just like -- just to round off this issue and

12 reference to Croatia: On the 16th of July, 1993, I have a notation here

13 saying that the media informed and the government of Croatia and Serbian

14 Krajina signed an agreement in Erdut binding Croatia to withdraw its

15 troops by the 31st of July from the occupied territories of Srpska

16 Krajina, Ravni Kotor, and Maslenica, the Miljevac Plateau, the Peruca

17 hydroelectric power station, and the Zemunik airport in exchange for the

18 opening up of the bridge across the Maslenica canal and the Zemunik

19 airport. And then it goes on to say that the president of the Republic of

20 Serbia, Slobodan Milosevic, as well as Franjo Tudjman, the Croatian

21 president, after the meeting held and organised by the co-chairmen of the

22 conference on Yugoslavia, ICFY, Thorvald Stoltenberg and David Owen, made

23 a statement and among other things -- I'm going to skip over this next

24 portion here and go on to point 3 -- expressing their satisfaction with

25 the solutions reached with respect to the Maslenica Bridge, Zemunik and

1 Peruca, the presidents welcome the agreement reached on the cease to

2 hostilities and consider that each individual or group violating that

3 agreement must be held accountable. They indicate the importance of the

4 agreement reached -- the presidents indicate the importance of the

5 agreement reached as an example of how issues should be solved peacefully

6 and consider it to be an important step towards normalising Serbo-Croatian

7 relations as a whole.

8 Now, then, is it true that after the UNPA zones came into being

9 that there were no cases of any kind of instances where Serb forces from

10 the Republika Srpska Krajina attacked any territory outside the protected

11 areas? And as you can see, there were very considerable violations of the

12 PA zones by the Croatian forces. But we did our best to do away with that

13 practice. Isn't that right, Lord Owen?

14 A. I think the court will need to take evidence from the various UN

15 commanders of UNPROFOR in Zagreb. That's -- you're asking a degree of

16 detail which I can't verify either one way or the other.

17 Q. Very well. Let us now move on to another topic. Let me tell you

18 of my intentions, to make it easier for you, and the topic is Greater

19 Serbia.

20 There are several places in the book and in a telegram you talk

21 about the idea of a Greater Serbia and mention my name in that regard, and

22 that was expected in view of the frightening propaganda and demonisation

23 that was going on in the Western media. And they had this construed story

24 about a Greater Serbia.

25 But on page 228, paragraph 1, in your book, you say that from that

1 time on, that is to say from the 25th of April - and you mean 1993 -

2 onwards, "Milosevic in formal terms gave up the idea of a Greater Serbia

3 and strove for an agreement under the conditions that the majority would

4 be able to accept in the UN. And in the next two years, he never wavered

5 from seeking a solution of that kind. Unfortunately, the demonisation of

6 Milosevic in the USA reached such levels that the administration Congress

7 and the media, without any difference between them, were incapable of

8 adapting themselves to this new reality and continued to say that

9 Milosevic was attached to the idea of a Greater Serbia."

10 So on the basis of the fact that I advocated the Vance-Owen Plan

11 and later on peace plans and took an active part in seeking a peaceful

12 solution, your conclusion is that from the 25th of April, I did not

13 advocate a Greater Serbia after that time. Have I understood you

14 correctly?

15 A. Yes. In the relationship to Bosnia-Herzegovina. Some people have

16 a different interpretation about Kosovo, but I believe Kosovo was part of

17 Serbia and still is part of Serbia unless and until the UN Security

18 Council makes a different delineation of Kosovo. But I believe you had

19 given up the idea that the only way to get a settlement was for that part

20 of Republika Srpska in Bosnia-Herzegovina had to be geographically linked

21 to Serbia and Montenegro. You still wanted very close linkage, but you

22 didn't, in my view, and all the plans that you supported thereafter always

23 had the Bosnia-Herzegovina's boundary maintained, the same boundary that

24 had been accepted by the Security Council in May 1992 as the definition of

25 Bosnia-Herzegovina.

1 Q. Therefore, you are saying that I was not advocating a Greater

2 Serbia from the time and point at which you became included and involved.

3 And you have no knowledge or awareness whether I had ever strove --

4 striven for that idea before. Do you have any knowledge of that or was it

5 just propaganda? Do you actually know that I was or not?

6 A. Knowledge is a difficult thing to point a specific time, but the

7 impression I had up until January of 1993 was that, all things being

8 equal, you would have preferred a division of parts of Bosnia-Herzegovina

9 and that you would have preferred a portion of Bosnia-Herzegovina to be in

10 part of Serbia and Montenegro and a portion of Bosnia-Herzegovina to be in

11 part of Croatia.

12 If you ask can I prove it, have I got factual evidence of that, I

13 have to say no.

14 MR. KAY: The passage is at 153 in the paperback.

15 THE WITNESS: I believe, Mr. Milosevic, that you are a pragmatist

16 and that in our discussions in Geneva in the start and development of the

17 Vance-Owen Peace Plan, and I think even earlier than that in your

18 discussions with Mr. Vance, I think you had come to recognise that though

19 it would have to take place over a long period of time, the Croatian Serbs

20 would probably eventually have to live within Croatia. I think you had

21 not come to that view of Bosnia-Herzegovina until some way into the

22 discussions.

23 And I think that when you met with President Mitterrand in Paris,

24 I think that was a very important meeting in that I think you realised

25 that if you could get a settlement in Bosnia-Herzegovina, President

1 Mitterrand would put the weight of France behind lifting of sanctions, and

2 indeed he gave you a specific promise that that's what he would do. And

3 from that moment on, I think you began to see a way through which would

4 satisfy your beliefs of what the Serbs needed but would not mean breaking

5 up Bosnia-Herzegovina.

6 But these are my interpretations of your views, and they may well

7 be wrong.

8 MR. MILOSEVIC: [Interpretation]

9 Q. Well, you're not quite right in so much as you have any idea of my

10 pushing the idea of a Greater Serbia, and this general term Greater Serbia

11 is a creation of the Austro-Hungarian Empire after the annexation of

12 Bosnia-Herzegovina, because everything that was Serbian was called Greater

13 Serbian, whereas nobody ever of the politicians, Serb politicians and

14 those who were within the power structure ever came out with any ideas or

15 programmes for a Greater Serbia.

16 And anyway, in that same passage and paragraph in your book, you

17 say: "As far as Milosevic is concerned, the Bosnian Serbs have protected

18 their interests, and in that sense, they have become victorious, but it

19 wasn't a Greater Serbia in the sense of a unified country from Belgrade to

20 Banja Luka and Knin, and from our January meetings in Geneva, this wasn't

21 important."

22 So you mention that in January that it wasn't a question of

23 Greater Serbia, that it was not Greater Serbia in terms of one country

24 reaching from Belgrade to Banja Luka. So you -- and Knin. So you base

25 them on propaganda waged at that time, I assume, and on the stories told

1 and bandied about by Milan Panic and not on any objective argumentation

2 that you could have had. Isn't that right?

3 A. These are pretty sweeping allegations, but the difference between

4 you and President Tudjman is President Tudjman never made any secret at

5 all that he disliked the existing map, that he did not consider that the

6 map of Bosnia-Herzegovina was correct, that it had never been an

7 independent country, shouldn't be an independent country, and he wanted to

8 go back to the old Badovan [phoen] map. Now, that was his view.

9 You did not express that view in any way in those terms, but that

10 didn't mean necessarily that you hadn't got a similar view. I can only

11 hear what you say is your view, and I've heard it more concisely than I'd

12 heard it before in the negotiations. I just -- I take note of your view.

13 Q. Yes, but Lord Owen, let's take a look just to remind you. This is

14 Cutileiro's map for the division of Bosnia according to the cantonal

15 division on the basis of the 1971, 1981 and 1991 population censuses. And

16 here we see white for the Serb territories, Croatian for the striated

17 ones, and the Muslims are the black areas. I'd like to draw your

18 attention to that.

19 So this then is Cutileiro's plan, signed by all three national or

20 ethnic communities, and we supported it ourselves, and from this it is

21 evident that at the time of Cutileiro's plan, when that took centre stage

22 we were talking about territory, the kind of territory that could not be

23 referred to as being Greater Serbia in any way.

24 That then is Cutileiro's plan, and the map accepted by the Serbs

25 and signed by Izetbegovic and Karadzic and Boban, and all that took place

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1 before the conflicts broke out. And there wouldn't have been a war anyway

2 had we stuck by Cutileiro's plan. And we can see from this and from those

3 times that there can be no mention at all of Greater Serbia. It is a map

4 within Bosnia-Herzegovina as a state, and the Serbs accepted it too.

5 Radovan Karadzic signed it. And Izetbegovic, once he had signed it,

6 withdrew his signature at the proposal of Warren Zimmermann, and

7 Zimmerman, in his book, says he prevailed upon him to do so.

8 JUDGE MAY: We must have a question. Is the point you're trying

9 to make that this plan is illustrative of the fact that you were not a

10 supporter of Greater Serbia? Is that the point that you're making?

11 THE ACCUSED: [Interpretation] This demonstrates that the

12 leadership of Republika Srpska, led by Radovan Karadzic, by its support

13 and signing of this plan had no idea of any kind of Greater Serbia. But

14 the Cutileiro plan related to --

15 JUDGE MAY: Very well. Very well. Let the -- no. I'm going to

16 stop you going on. It's time that the witness had an opportunity to

17 answer the point that you're trying to make.

18 Lord Owen, if you want to comment, please.

19 THE WITNESS: Well, I think that this is a perfectly reasonable

20 view for Mr. Milosevic to put forward. This demonstrates that my timing

21 of his conversion against Greater Serbia, or maybe he never had the

22 Greater Serbia, it's evidence that it's reasonable for him to put it

23 through, because it is true, of course, that they did accept the Cutileiro

24 plan. The Cutileiro plan, when you look at it again, you can see has the

25 problems of whether it could have provided a cohesive government for

1 Bosnia-Herzegovina. But I'm not against what Ambassador Cutileiro tried

2 to do, and much of that is reflected in the provincial map of

3 Bosnia-Herzegovina which was the ten provinces that was the basis of the

4 Vance-Owen Peace Plan.

5 So this may be and you're certainly open to convince people that

6 you were never in favour of Greater Serbia and this would be part of that

7 evidence. I understand that. That doesn't mean that I am personally

8 accepting your interpretation of that history. I think there was an

9 aspiration held not just by you but by many Serb nationalists that there

10 could be a different map, and of course theoretically there could have

11 been. And at various stages in the negotiations, President Izetbegovic

12 himself became quite interested in a Muslim state within the confines of

13 Bosnia-Herzegovina. The exact shape of it was never discussed if for no

14 other reason than it was beyond the terms of reference the International

15 Conference on the Former Yugoslavia. Our terms of reference given to us

16 in August 1992 were to find a peace settlement within the internationally

17 accepted boundaries of Bosnia-Herzegovina. And I have already indicated

18 that I think that was a remit which was unnecessarily rigid and they ought

19 to have been prepared to look at boundary changes much earlier.

20 But this is all the history. It's obviously important, but it

21 also is a history when I was not in office and I therefore can't add more

22 to what lay behind the Cutileiro map.

23 MR. MILOSEVIC: [Interpretation]

24 Q. Lord Owen, certainly it was possible to draw many other kinds of

25 maps. This was drawn by the three parties with the assistance of

1 Ambassador Cutileiro. But the very fact that Radovan Karadzic and the

2 leadership of Republika Srpska signed up to it, and this meant an

3 independent Bosnia-Herzegovina and division into cantons which under no

4 circumstances has anything to do with an idea of a Greater Serbia is

5 surely sufficient proof that that idea was not at the basis of the

6 policies pursued even by Republika Srpska and even in those days of the

7 Cutileiro plan. Before the war, before the outbreak of any conflict,

8 before anyone was killed. Isn't that certain? Isn't that correct?

9 A. You're a great one for asking leading questions, Mr. Milosevic,

10 but I do not deny that if you were making your case which you have never

11 believed in Greater Serbia, if that is the case, this is a concrete

12 evidence that certainly my statement that you only really accepted that it

13 had gone in April 1993 might be wrong and that you had accepted it was a

14 lost cause earlier than that.

15 I can't be more helpful than that to you, and you are perfectly

16 entitled -- this is the whole issue of this court, is that you must be

17 given and are being given a fair trail and you must be able to make your

18 case. And you may be able, when you come to give your own evidence, to

19 develop this. I'm not standing in your way on this issue. I put my view

20 in April 1993. Perhaps that was too narrow a view of somebody who had

21 only come into the detailed negotiation since September 1992.

22 Q. But I am emphasising here that as you see, even Radovan Karadzic

23 did not advocate a Greater Serbia because he is the one who signed it.

24 The leadership of Republika Srpska signed the Cutileiro plan.

25 A. But, Mr. Milosevic, you and I know that Mr. Radovan Karadzic

1 signed many things, and if we took on the basis that everything he signed

2 was his intention and what he wanted, then of course we wouldn't be in

3 this mess. The fact of the matter is that he consistently took positions

4 in one forum which were different from positions he took in other forums.

5 It is perfectly possible to have signed this map as part of a view

6 and later wanted to bring together all those areas in the Cutileiro map

7 that are white, which represent Serb majority areas, and to bring them

8 into one republic.

9 I also think it's perfectly possible that Mr. Radovan Karadzic at

10 one time had seen Republika Srpska linked to Serbia and then, as he grew

11 more and more confident of his position, wanted to keep Republika Srpska

12 outside Serbia because he didn't share much of your own ideology. It's

13 not for me to go into the mind of Mr. Radovan Karadzic, but I think I am

14 entitled to say that I am allowed to have the utmost skepticism of

15 documents that are signed by Mr. -- Dr. Radovan Karadzic.

16 Q. Very well. Your skepticism is something you're entitled to, but

17 you remember that when the Federal Republic of Yugoslavia was formed in

18 April 1992, a declaration was adopted in which the Federal Republic of

19 Yugoslavia declared urbi et orbi that it had no territorial claims towards

20 any one of the former Yugoslav republics. When it adopted its own

21 constitution, the constitution of the Federal Republic of Yugoslavia, that

22 is, when Serbia and Montenegro formed the FRY. I am sure you know that.

23 A. Yes, but you would not then follow the logic of that declaration

24 and recognise Bosnia-Herzegovina, and you know we spent many hours

25 discussing why you would not recognise Bosnia-Herzegovina. And had you

1 done so, I think if Serbia and Montenegro had recognised the government of

2 Bosnia-Herzegovina, it would have made life much easier in the

3 negotiations, even though you would have qualified it that the government

4 should be formed on a different basis. But I don't want to go through

5 your time on this issue, but you made that declaration, but you didn't

6 follow its logic, which was the recognition of Bosnia-Herzegovina under

7 international law.

8 Q. Surely first the political settlement needed to be found in

9 Bosnia-Herzegovina first. You yourself say that the government had

10 control over only 10 per cent of the territory. Who could treat as a

11 partner a government that has control over only 10 per cent of its

12 territory? We insisted on a political settlement which would equally

13 protect the interests of all three peoples and their agreement. And later

14 on, when peace was achieved, do you remember that Izetbegovic and myself,

15 benefiting from hospitality of President Chirac in Paris we normalised

16 relations, he recognised the continuity of Yugoslavia as Tudjman did

17 before him at our meeting in Athens. Unfortunately, the new authorities

18 threw that all overboard and requested that Yugoslavia be readmitted to

19 the UN, but that's another matter.

20 So when things were settled, when the parties had agreed, when the

21 interests of all three nations were recognised, there was no dispute. Up

22 until then, things were at issue. Wasn't that logical, Lord Owen?

23 A. Well, that was how you saw it, but as you know, the Contact Group

24 attempted for many months to get you to recognise Bosnia-Herzegovina, and

25 you used all those arguments that you've used now to refuse to do so and

1 said that you would not do it until there had been a final settlement. So

2 you have stayed consistent to your arguments, but there were many of us

3 who thought that a recognition of Bosnia-Herzegovina with the

4 qualification about the government would have been a way of putting to

5 rest, if you like, the propaganda which, as you see it, of Greater Serbia.

6 Certainly I believed it was in your interest to make that

7 qualified recognition.

8 Q. But that government that you are speaking of committed the

9 greatest crimes against the Serbs in those days, that very government. It

10 wasn't a Serbian, Croatian and Muslim government, it was a government that

11 had committed the greatest crimes against the Serbs in those days, even

12 though you say that Serbs crimes were greater. But anyway, that will be

13 established.

14 That was the government responsible for the greatest crimes

15 against the Serbs and against the Croats, for that matter, in the period

16 that you just mentioned in 1993 and 1994.

17 JUDGE MAY: I wonder if we're going any further forward by going

18 over this topic in that way. Have you got something else you want to ask

19 the witness? Because time is running out.

20 MR. MILOSEVIC: [Interpretation]

21 Q. I quite agree with your quotation that I was eager for Serbs in

22 Bosnia-Herzegovina and Croatia and anywhere else to protect their vital

23 interests and nothing beyond that, and those interests are protected if

24 they are treated on an equal footing. But I hope you will agree that the

25 notion of equality implies that if Serbs are equal, then the others have

1 to be equal too, and vice versa.

2 So please tell me, did I ever ask for the Serbs living anywhere

3 more than that they should be equal with all the other peoples throughout

4 all the conversations we had over a period of three years?

5 A. This word "equal" is a tricky word. I'm not trying to be too

6 pedantic, but it is my belief that if we had had more goodwill, we could

7 have arrived at a solution in which the Croats in Croatia would have been

8 able to continue to live there. And although this -- we are focusing here

9 on Bosnia-Herzegovina, it does need to be remembered that one of the

10 biggest ethnic cleansings in the whole of the Balkans during this period

11 was that involving Serbs who had to flee Krajina in the early summer of

12 1995 and that, when we talk about this whole complex of problems, we have

13 to recognise that one of the biggest failures was the failure to ensure

14 that the ordinary citizens in Croatia who were Serbs were entitled -- were

15 able to continue to live there.

16 Now, we did devote quite a lot of time to that issue, and we were

17 never able to make the Croatian Serbian leaders show the degree of realism

18 which was necessary to protect their own people. And there were

19 occasional leaders who were ready to do that, but -- so you -- I don't

20 think I can help you any further than that. I think you were trying to

21 protect and ensure equal citizenship for Serbs in Croatia through the

22 UNPAs and the initial Vance Plan, but they themselves didn't help

23 themselves.

24 I mean, the months that we spent in 1974 -- 1994, 1995, trying to

25 get an economic agreement was one in which was extremely frustrating in

1 which it was very difficult to get an understanding in Zagreb of the

2 necessary concessions that were necessary, and also in the Knin. And in

3 many ways, the Knin leadership showed less understanding of the rights and

4 of the -- their obligations to their own citizens, and they got -- the

5 consequence was this mass ethnic cleansing of Croat Serbs.

6 Q. Now that you yourself have touched upon that topic again, I shall

7 just read to you a quotation from Thorvald Stoltenberg in September this

8 year when he was there on a visit, and who refers to those events that you

9 mentioned just now. He says: "In the negotiations between Knin and

10 Zagreb prior to the Operation Storm, in which Franjo Tudjman took part

11 too, I suggested that SAO Krajina remain within Croatia but with the right

12 to self-determination. Both sides accepted the proposal, but the reply

13 was valid for only a couple of hours, because Tudjman was already

14 preparing orders for an offensive with the acquiescence of the Americans.

15 I note that the UN did not know of the preparations of the Croats nor of

16 the approval of the White House for the Storm. When the offensive

17 started, I felt cheated, and what I said is the only truth."

18 This is what Mr. Thorvald Stoltenberg said. Is that true, Lord

19 Owen?

20 A. I don't know, but it wouldn't surprise me if that was said by

21 Thorvald Stoltenberg. Thorvald was my partner in the negotiations as the

22 UN representative once Cyrus Vance stepped down, and he was a remarkably

23 honest, straightforward political leader, and he was at great pains to

24 make clear, particularly when he was the UN representative responsible for

25 UNPROFOR and was in Zagreb, as well as being co-chairman of the

1 International Conference on the Former Yugoslavia, great pains to make

2 clear the obligations of the world and the UN to the Croatian Serbs and

3 that they should be treated fairly. And I'm afraid by then it was very

4 clear that President Tudjman had won the heart, if you like, or the

5 intellect or whatever it was, he had won the -- around the Americans to

6 his point of view and that was a reality. But again, it was in

7 desperation that they didn't find it possible to get a dialogue and a

8 settlement in Bosnia-Herzegovina, that they came round to accepting that

9 the Croatian armed forces would tilt the balance of power inside

10 Bosnia-Herzegovina, which is what they did in the fighting that took place

11 in the summer of 1995. And if you're looking for the realism that came

12 out, that eventually in the Bosnian Serbs led to Dayton and your own

13 participation in Dayton, one has to admit that part of that came from the

14 defeat of the Serbs by the Croatian army in Western Bosnia.

15 Q. Surely it resulted from our peace efforts, Lord Owen.

16 A. No. I think the reality was that even General Mladic had to face

17 up to the fact that the Serbs were by then beginning to lose the war, that

18 the fact that the West tolerated the Croatian army fighting overtly inside

19 Bosnia-Herzegovina meant that the balance of force had tilted against the

20 Bosnian Serbs and the Croatian army was helping not just the Croatian

21 Serbs but also the Bosnia-Herzegovina government forces. So that the --

22 when you came to the NATO bombing in August, end of August and September,

23 early September, there had been a very different balance of forces in

24 Bosnia-Herzegovina, and I think that meant more realism from General

25 Mladic.

1 It nevertheless took him two weeks of bombing before he came right

2 round to it. But you know these areas better than me. I was no longer a

3 participant, I was just a very interested observer.

4 Q. That was the choice between war and peace. What would have

5 happened if Yugoslavia had got involved like Croatia had? Then the whole

6 of the Balkans would have gone up in flames, and that precisely was the

7 greatest contribution made to achieve peace, and that is how the Dayton

8 Accords were reached. And after all, to be quite honest, Serbia made the

9 greatest contribution to those accords, because without Serbia there

10 wouldn't have been any Dayton Accords. Isn't that correct, at least?

11 A. Yes. I think that is undoubtedly true. I also think you are

12 correct in saying that if the Serbia and Montenegro, the FRY, if their

13 armed forces had crossed into Bosnia-Herzegovina, then we would have had a

14 very bloody war.

15 Q. So we made the option of peace.

16 A. Yes. I believe you wanted peace. Yes, I've said already from

17 April 1993 onwards you supported all the different propositions. What I

18 wished you'd done is made it, your verbal support for peace, you had made

19 that into a -- the military pressures and economic pressures that we

20 talked about yesterday which could have brought a peace very much earlier.

21 I believe you put up with the Bosnian Serbs' obstruction of peace for two

22 years -- two and a half years too long.

23 Now, some --

24 Q. Lord Owen, let us be correct in dealing with the facts. I do

25 believe that you are a person who is correct with facts.

1 Now, look at those peace plans. The Cutileiro plan was dated

2 March 1992. The Serbs adopted it. Then for a long time there was

3 nothing. But there's an entire correspondence that I don't have time to

4 go into where Serbs insist in communication with Carrington and Cutileiro

5 that the negotiations continue even though Izetbegovic withdrew his

6 signature. So the plan was March 1992, then the Vance-Owen Plan in May

7 1993, and surely it follows from this -- or it appears that you are

8 reproaching me for not having resorted to some more drastic measures in

9 favour of the Vance-Owen Plan as if I had abandoned it but in fact you

10 abandoned it. And I don't mean you personally but I mean the

11 international community. The Vance-Owen Plan was abandoned in the first

12 place by the Americans, or rather they didn't even support it. They

13 didn't want to support it. Isn't that true? And they made it known to

14 the Serbs that they didn't consider the plan to be a good one. And then

15 we from Belgrade acted as Don Quixote who advocated the plan which was

16 being undermined by the international community and among that community

17 the largest world power. Isn't that true or not?

18 A. There's a great deal of truth in that.

19 Q. Now, tell me, please, Lord Owen, when was the plan that you named

20 "Invincible," after the carrier, that we referred to as the

21 Owen-Stoltenberg plan? Anyway, it doesn't matter what its name was. When

22 was it, though, do you remember?

23 A. Yes. In September 1993.

24 Q. In September 1993. In May there was the Vance-Owen Plan. All our

25 efforts and pressures. It is immediately abandoned and already in

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1 September the Invincible Plan is put on the table and again the Serbs

2 accept it. There was the red zone, during which we are bringing pressure

3 to bear from May until September, but then the international community

4 abandoned the plan, appears with the Invincible Plan which again the Serbs

5 adopt and the Muslims reject. Wasn't that right?

6 A. No, I don't think the international community abandoned the plan.

7 The European Union took over the plan of three republics and called it the

8 European Action Plan and increased the percentage of territory for the

9 Bosnian government from 33 -- 30 per cent to 33.3 per cent, and that plan

10 was on the table in December 1993, and we've earlier referred yesterday to

11 the fact that that was probably one of the best opportunities for a peace

12 settlement, which might have been much easier to bring reconciliation than

13 even the Dayton plan. I think the boundaries have been established

14 between the Muslim -- predominantly Muslim republic and predominantly

15 Croatian republic would have given a great deal more stability to

16 Bosnia-Herzegovina.

17 But that was not agreed, and the agreement there was a difference

18 of about 0.5 per cent of territory between Mr. -- Dr. Karadzic and

19 President Izetbegovic, in Brussels. Then came the Contact Group plan in

20 September -- sorry, in July of 1994, and then Dayton in 1995, all of which

21 you can say that you agreed with, but in order to get agreement, we had to

22 have agreement on the map, and there the Bosnian Serbs were at times

23 difficult to the point of blocking, and a settlement which would normally

24 have been accepted by reasonable rational people.

25 Q. Lord Owen, I agree with you. It was crazy even to imagine for a

1 plan to fall through for -- because of 0.5 per cent of territory. It is

2 absolutely beyond common sense. But something must have been behind it.

3 But this is why I'm referring to this chronology. There's the Cutileiro

4 Plan in 1992, then the Vance-Owen Plan in 1993, then the Invincible Plan

5 in September 1993, then the Action Plan Kinkel-Juppe, or rather of the

6 European Union, then the contact group, then Dayton. The Serbs accepted

7 the Cutileiro, Invincible, they accepted the Action Plan of the European

8 Union, and they accepted Dayton.

9 Therefore, to be quite fair towards the leadership in Pale, they

10 accepted four peace -- [French on English channel] -- isn't that correct,

11 Lord Owen?

12 A. [French on English channel]

13 JUDGE MAY: We're getting French on the English channel. Can we

14 try again?

15 THE WITNESS: Shall I answer, Your Honour?

16 JUDGE MAY: Please.

17 THE WITNESS: You are making -- you're aligning your own support

18 for all those plans with the position of the Bosnian Serbs. The Bosnian

19 Serbs rejected the Vance-Owen Peace Plan in Pale. The Bosnian Serbs did

20 accept the Cutileiro Plan, the Bosnian Serbs did accept the plan on HMCS

21 Invincible and many of us believe that President Izetbegovic, when he was

22 returning to Sarajevo, was going to argue for its acceptance as well, but

23 the EU Action Plan never reached final agreement. There -- we could not

24 impose a settlement, and we were trying to get the two sides to agree.

25 The Croats were agreed to it. Indeed they had agreed to all these plans,

1 but the area of difference, as you say, was not 0.5 per cent, and it was

2 within the power of Karadzic and Krajisnik to have made that adjustment.

3 And as you say, it was crazy that they didn't.

4 And then in Dayton, as I understand it, you were given the casting

5 vote in the delegation of the Serbs, and you did reach agreement.

6 MR. MILOSEVIC: [Interpretation]

7 Q. Will you let me just make a correction. I didn't prevent the

8 voting of the Serbs from Bosnia, but having learnt from some very bitter

9 experiences that both you and I are aware of, before we went after Dayton,

10 I drew up an agreement. And this is the agreement which was final and

11 which you are probably familiar with. It was signed by Karadzic and

12 Koljevic and Plavsic and Krajisnik and Kosic - I don't know what he was -

13 Prime Minister Buha, and Mladic. And on the Yugoslav side, Lilic,

14 Milosevic, Bulatovic, Kontic, the Federal Prime Minister, a second

15 Bulatovic, the Defence Minister, and the Chief of Staff. And also by the

16 Serbian Patriarch Paul.

17 Why? Because I didn't wish a repetition of Athens and the

18 Vance-Owen Plan rejection, and because I wanted to have a document in my

19 hands which would provide for the possibility of a final adoption of what

20 is adopted in Dayton, that there can be no review of it. And should the

21 votes be divided, because it was 3-3, three from Republika Srpska and

22 three from Yugoslavia, then I would have the casting vote. Because in the

23 three, of which I was one, my vote would be decisive. And this was

24 precisely to avoid the dangers that we have referred to. You are surely

25 aware of that. I didn't prevent them from voting, but in Dayton, an

1 agreement was reached which was feasible and which in relative terms

2 protected the interests of all three nations. Isn't that so, Lord Owen?

3 A. Yes, I think it is. It's not entirely a joke when I say that I

4 wish that you'd had a casting vote in Athens and that we had had the

5 patriarch of the Serbian church there to witness that.

6 JUDGE MAY: We're going to adjourn now. Mr. Milosevic, we've

7 considered your time, which is now up, but as an act of grace, you can

8 have another quarter of an hour when we come back.

9 We will adjourn. Twenty minutes.

10 --- Recess taken at 10.30 a.m.

11 --- On resuming at 10.57 a.m.

12 JUDGE MAY: Yes, Mr. Milosevic.

13 THE ACCUSED: [Interpretation] If I understood it correctly, Mr.

14 May, you've given me an additional 15 minutes; is that right?

15 JUDGE MAY: That's right.

16 MR. MILOSEVIC: [Interpretation]

17 Q. Lord Owen, with respect to these plans, and I seem to feel that we

18 need to clarify this question of an Action Plan that you referred to a

19 moment ago. I should like to remind you of one of your quotations from

20 the book. 407 is the page of the English version which I have on the

21 compact disk, where you say the following: "There had now been four lost

22 peace initiatives [In English] the Carrington Cutileiro plan before the

23 war -- before the war started, the Vance-Owen Peace Plan, the Invincible

24 package, and now the EU Action Plan. Most Europeans I judged felt any

25 further effort while the US remained on the sidelines was doomed for it

1 allows the Muslims to escape the necessity of compromise inherent in any

2 negotiation."

3 [Interpretation] Do you therefore consider that for the lack of

4 success of the Action Plan of the European Union it was predominantly the

5 Muslim side that was to blame, including the United States?

6 A. No, I don't believe that. I think that President Izetbegovic

7 faced an extremely difficult issue on agreeing on a map which was

8 effectively defining a Muslim republic, predominantly Muslim republic,

9 which was part of the essence of the new structure that we were on. We'd

10 abandoned the provincial structure which you could argue was based on the

11 cantonal Cutileiro, the provincial Vance-Owen Peace Plan, we were now

12 going for a recognition that there would be three autonomous areas within

13 Bosnia-Herzegovina.

14 And on that map, we were accepting that these three enclaves in

15 Eastern Bosnia were very tightly drawn. We'd expanded the areas a bit.

16 We'd got a link, a road link, through to Gorazde, and we got Zepa and

17 Srebrenica together, but they were very tight. So in Eastern Bosnia,

18 there was a real serious problem for President Izetbegovic in convincing

19 his own people.

20 And secondly, there was a real problem -- sorry. That was in

21 Eastern Bosnia. And there was, secondly, a real problem in Western Bosnia

22 where he did need, I think, more territory. And as I say, the person who

23 had the territory was Dr. Karadzic and the republican Serbian leaders.

24 The person who had the least territory, given that they were the majority

25 population -- not the least territory but the lesser territory than the

1 Serbs was the Bosnian Muslims, and I think it was not unreasonable to get

2 that 0.5 per cent out of the Bosnian Serbs.

3 And you stayed late that night, and I think you left Brussels

4 thinking that Karadzic and Krajisnik would come up with this extra 0.5 per

5 cent the next day, and they didn't. And I think that was -- that was

6 their call, really. They had to move a bit on both those two rounds of

7 territory to get the EU Action Plan agreed in Brussels.

8 Q. Yes, without doubt. And I think that you and I and everybody else

9 couldn't have even supposed that something could have been started on the

10 basis of 0.5 per cent of the territory. That was quite clear.

11 But I reminded you of this quotation of yours precisely because it

12 speaks about this position taken by the US allowed the Muslims to avoid,

13 to sidestep the need for a compromise, which was necessary in the

14 negotiations. So that was the point of the quotation I selected from your

15 book.

16 A. Well, on that I agree, and I had been advocating privately for

17 quite awhile that the format of these negotiations, European Union and

18 United Nations, was insufficient and that we had to involve the United

19 States. And I had been -- I advocated in the subsequent months that we

20 should do more through NATO, and I was a strong proponent of the Contact

21 Group Plan which would allow the EU representation to be subsumed in the

22 membership of Britain, France, and Germany, the Contact Group. But the

23 crucial extra element in addition to the Russian Federation of the Contact

24 Group, to make it five, was the United States. And from that moment on,

25 the United States became a partner on the negotiations.

1 The Contact Group Plan was actually very little different from the

2 EU Action Plan, and indeed not much different from Dayton, to be honest.

3 The 51 per cent for the Republika Srpska was there in all of these plans,

4 the EU Action Plan and before HMCS Invincible. Now, the 51 per cent began

5 to be something which the Americans accepted and then they had the

6 Croat-Muslim federation. So I do believe it was crucial to involve

7 President Clinton's administration, and from that moment of the formation

8 of the Contact Group Plan we began to be more coherent in our own Western

9 position. And in order to do that, as I say, we had to make the EU

10 representation come through its three largest countries, and I think that

11 was realism.

12 Q. Yes, that was realism and that isn't at issue. But what I would

13 like to do now is go over certain questions having to do with the fact

14 that you speak about certain errors, mistakes that led to the civil war

15 and the premature recognition of Croatia and Slovenia, among other things.

16 Is it without doubt, Lord Owen, that it was only in Yugoslavia

17 that all the nations, all the ethnic groups, realised their right not to

18 be broken up into different states and that they could live in one state,

19 all the Serbs, the Croats, the Muslims, and that life in that one area of

20 Yugoslavia, one country Yugoslavia, had a series of advantages for the

21 citizens living in it on different levels, and why did states form a

22 European Union anyway? So I don't suppose you're challenging that.

23 A. No, I think it would have been easier if the former Yugoslavia had

24 not dissolved.

25 Q. Well, that's precisely what I'm talking about too. The former

1 Yugoslavia was an advantage and advantageous to all its nations or ethnic

2 groups, and I assume you are aware of the fact that a series of states,

3 international organisations, personages supported Yugoslavia's integrity

4 and strove at the beginning of the Yugoslav crisis to safeguard its unity,

5 to preserve it.

6 A. Yes. That was the position of the United States, and President

7 Bush Senior and also under Secretary of State James Baker, and that was

8 also the position of the European Community.

9 Q. I'm sure you also know that the European parliament on the 9th of

10 June, 1991 adopted a resolution on Yugoslavia which did not support the

11 unilateral acts of secession on the part of Slovenia and Croatia.

12 A. I'm not actually aware of it, but if you tell me so, I have no

13 reason to disbelieve it, and it would be consistent.

14 Q. And do you know that the Council of Ministers of the European

15 Community and the European Council, also organs of the European Community

16 supported the territorial integrity of the SFRY, and on the 26th of March,

17 1991, the European Community proclaimed a declaration on Yugoslavia in

18 which it stressed that, "A united and democratic Yugoslavia had the best

19 chances of becoming integrated harmoniously into the new Europe," and I'm

20 quoting that from that particular declaration.

21 A. Yes, that's correct.

22 Q. Do you also know that the Council of Ministers of the OSCE meeting

23 in Berlin on the 19th of June, 1991 adopted a declaration too? Amongst

24 other things, it expressed support to the territorial integrity and unity

25 of Yugoslavia.

1 A. Yes.

2 Q. And now as we're talking about this about-turn, let me remind you

3 of what you say in your book, in actual fact the English version on my

4 compact disk on page 46, paragraph 1, right after your appointment, and

5 you write about that, you say: "On Sunday we went off to London by car

6 and stopped on the way to have tea with Peter Carrington at his farm in

7 Buckinghamshire. As always, Peter was relaxed, but in his voice while he

8 was talking and saying how the European foreign ministers behaved towards

9 him, there was a certain sharp note. There was no doubt that the decision

10 made by the EC on recognition of December 1991 he considered that to be

11 treachery, betrayal. And while he presented the chronicle of events, I

12 asked myself out loud --" this is what you say -- "What could they do to

13 me? And he laughed." And you go on to quote him: "Don't worry. Nothing

14 much remains that they could do."

15 So Carrington considered that this recognition put paid to the

16 peace efforts; isn't that right?

17 A. Yes. He wrote to that effect in a letter putting his views on

18 record more formally, and so did Cyrus Vance and so did the

19 then-Secretary-General of the United Nations, Perez de Cuellar. So the

20 three people most involved in the peace process at that time all opposed

21 the European Union -- European Community's decision to recognise,

22 believing apart from the merits of the Slovenia and the Croatian question

23 is that it would be inevitable that they would move on quickly to what

24 they considered to be a premature recognition of Bosnia-Herzegovina; and

25 that is exactly what happened, and I believe it was a very serious

1 mistake.

2 Q. I would even go as far as to say tragic, Lord Owen, and I'm sure

3 you'd agree with that.

4 Now, do you remember a statement made by James Baker on the 13th

5 of January, 1991 before the American Congress when he said that, "The fact

6 was that Slovenia and Croatia unilaterally proclaimed their independence.

7 Despite our warnings they resorted to force in order to take over the

8 border crossings, and this gave rise to a civil war." That is what James

9 Baker said at a hearing before the US Congress on the 13th of January,

10 1991.

11 A. I'm not aware of it but I have no reason to doubt that that's what

12 he did say.

13 Q. And I'm sure you'll remember Cyrus Vance's statement on the 9th of

14 February, 1995, when he said the premature recognition of the former

15 Yugoslav republics was a terrible mistake.

16 A. That was his view, and he held it right until he died.

17 Q. "What should have been done was to keep to The Hague agreement,

18 which did not allow for recognition of the former Yugoslav republics while

19 an all-embracing solution was found. This was not respected, and I think

20 it was a terrible mistake," and that is a quotation of him. Do you

21 remember that?

22 A. I was aware of it, and I agree with it.

23 Q. Lord Carrington, in the Vienna weekly Profile says the following,

24 speaking about attempts to reach peace. He said, "In that business I

25 helped Cyrus Vance who was the main negotiator. The negotiations

1 developed well and we were almost -- we had almost reached a solution to

2 Krajina and Slavonia. However, at that point the European Community at

3 the end of 1991 decided to recognise Slovenia and Croatia." And he goes

4 on to say that, "The behaviour and conduct of the European Community

5 toppled the peace conference," and I'm quoting him there. And I go on to

6 quote, "Croatia, by being recognised, got what it wanted. So did Slovenia

7 and they no longer had the desire for continuing the peace conference.

8 And what is more important, this same thing should have been enabled for

9 others, Bosnia-Herzegovina, in the first place. But Alija Izetbegovic did

10 not opt for anything other than independence, although it was clear to him

11 too that this kind of option would mean war. Hans Dietrich Genscher

12 wanted to have international recognition of Slovenia and Croatia.

13 Practically all the rest were opposed to that."

14 Then he goes on to criticise the journalists, Lord Carrington

15 does, and says he was being blamed for being pro-Serb. And his answer to

16 that was, "That's senseless, that's nonsense. It wasn't easy to say who

17 was good and who was bad. When the Croats proclaimed their independence,

18 they did not allow the Serbs in their own country, and there are 600.000

19 of them, to have any guarantees whatsoever. It was understandable,

20 therefore, that the Serbs were concerned over this if we bear in mind the

21 Croatian and Muslim Ustasha conduct during World War II."

22 Do you remember that?

23 A. No, I don't. You must be responsible for that quote, and Lord

24 Carrington's perfectly capable of being responsible for his own quotation.

25 Q. And do you remember something that the Diplomatico published

1 about, that Chancellor Kohl, at a summit meeting in Brussels on the 29th

2 and 30th of June, 1991, in fact, that is to say four days after Slovenia

3 and Croatia had declared their secession, although it wasn't a topic on

4 the agenda, called for the instantaneous recognition of those republics.

5 A. I'm certainly aware that that was his view, but exact words I

6 don't know.

7 Q. And do you know what was going on on the 16th of December, 1991,

8 at the EU summit where Genscher stated --

9 JUDGE MAY: Just a moment. There's no point, really, asking the

10 witness about matters that he can't deal with. Now, you've had your

11 quarter of an hour. You can ask a few more questions providing they're

12 relevant and they're matters which Lord Owen can answer. Mere propaganda

13 on your side isn't going to help us.

14 THE ACCUSED: [Interpretation] I am not engaged in any kind of

15 propaganda. What I'm trying to do is to speak about the facts.

16 JUDGE MAY: Yes. And you will have the chance to do that when you

17 give evidence, of course, but the only point is to ask a witness questions

18 which he can actually deal with.

19 MR. MILOSEVIC: [Interpretation]

20 Q. Well, on page 556 and 557 of your book, you say that, "Lord

21 Carrington and Perez de Cuellar, in letters, drew attention to the fact

22 that premature recognition of Croatia could fan the flames of the crisis

23 to Bosnia-Herzegovina, and a step -- they went a step further." And you

24 say the following in paragraph 1 on that page, 556, 557: "The mistake

25 that the European Community made to recognise Croatia could have been

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13 English transcripts.

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1 overcome had the situation not been complicated by the recognition of

2 Bosnia-Herzegovina regardless of the consequences. The USA at the end of

3 the December 1991 were opposed to the recognition of Croatia and became a

4 very active advocate of recognition of Bosnia-Herzegovina in 1992, the

5 spring of that year. However, we need not have considered this to be

6 unavoidable nor was it logical to carry on and recognise

7 Bosnia-Herzegovina. Internal Yugoslav republic composed of three large

8 constituent nations with very different attitudes and positions with

9 respect to independence. Therefore, they went from one mistake to the

10 next."

11 But the price that was paid was human lives, Lord Owen. So

12 therefore, as you yourself linked up the wars that you describe and call

13 it one war, a war against Yugoslavia, a war in which Yugoslavia was

14 dissolved, would that be right?

15 A. I think it was a profound error to go ahead with the recognition

16 of Bosnia-Herzegovina just because you'd recognised Croatia and Slovenia.

17 And certainly to do so in the absence of a substantial UN peacekeeping

18 force in the country prior to recognition. So you could have at least

19 reduced the dangers of war breaking out.

20 One of the problems was that the United Nations at that stage were

21 having difficulty in getting sufficient number of troops from contributing

22 countries to uphold the United Nations Protected Areas, four of them, in

23 Croatia. So in a way, our problem was, which was there throughout the

24 whole of this crisis, this marvelous habit of politicians making

25 rhetorical commitments in the Security Council not backed up by the forces

1 and the resources on the ground. And that, unfortunately, has been the

2 story of the former Yugoslavia and no more so than over Srebrenica where

3 we gave the impression of being able to protect people without having the

4 qualities.

5 There is not the fault of the United Nations. The United Nations

6 is frequently used as being the overall umbrella to blame. The blame has

7 to be on the Security Council at the time, and in particular its permanent

8 members.

9 Q. Lord Owen, you mentioned General Morillon, and from what you write

10 about him, I have gained the impression that you have a good opinion of

11 him. Is that right?

12 A. Yes, I have.

13 Q. I'm sure you know that he testified in the French parliament, and

14 I have here the authentic text, L'audition de Generale Philipe Morillon

15 October 1992, 1993, et cetera, et cetera, in the French parliament, and as

16 Mr. Nice asked you some questions about Srebrenica, although you said you

17 weren't there at the time and you didn't want to go into it but he

18 insisted upon it, in this document he says: "I did not waiver in stating

19 and writing that Mladic had fallen into a trap in Srebrenica. He expect

20 resistance which he didn't encounter. So I don't think he expected the

21 massacre to take place, but in that regard he underestimated the amassed

22 hatred. I do not believe that he ordered the massacres. However, I don't

23 know. That is my personal opinion."

24 And it is also my personal opinion and I can't believe it. You

25 too have met General Mladic, so I assume that you can't believe that he

1 could have ordered a dishonourable thing of that kind.

2 A. I'm afraid here we come to a very serious disagreement. It's not

3 job to claim or make a speculation as to what happened in Srebrenica in

4 1995, but it is certainly my job to tell you, Mr. Milosevic, and the Court

5 that I don't share that view of General Mladic. I think there was many

6 different elements in the character of General Mladic which made him a

7 very ambivalent personality to determine, but I do not consider that it

8 was beyond General Mladic's record of behaviour to have been complicit in

9 massacres of Muslims. I believe he was a racist, I believe that he had

10 many quite irrational attitudes to the Muslim population, and I believe

11 that his record as a general demonstrated that there was a callousness and

12 a brutality about the man that would have allowed him to make decisions.

13 Whether he did or not I do not know, and I'm not prepared to speculate.

14 But as to his character, I would not be a character witness for General

15 Mladic's inability to conduct or to -- to -- I'm searching for a word

16 which is not necessarily conduct but to acquiesce in a massacre of

17 Muslims.

18 Q. Well, Lord Owen, I quoted Morillon and said that I too don't

19 believe that he ordered the massacre, and that is what Morillon says, that

20 he doesn't believe it either. But let's move on.

21 Speaking about what you knew from 1993 or, rather, what he knew on

22 the basis of 1993 and Morillon's testimony in parliament and the amassed

23 hatred, Morillon adds: "I informed Belgrade too. I went to see Milosevic

24 and told him this is what is going to happen. He helped me. What I --

25 that I had won that battle then that was thanks to the position taken by

1 Milosevic, but New York was also kept au courant."

2 So I assume you know about that as relating to 1993.

3 A. Mr. Milosevic, I made it quite clear, and many people don't like

4 me saying it, but I do believe that you were very helpful in 1993 in

5 stopping General Mladic going in and taking Srebrenica. And I rang you up

6 personally. You were also under many representations of other people, and

7 I believe the record is quite clear that you did intervene and you were of

8 considerable help in that situation. I think you were well aware of the

9 great danger for the reputation of the Serbs. If they had gone into

10 Srebrenica, there would have been very bitter street fighting. The grudge

11 match that existed around Srebrenica between -- over Bratunac and others

12 would have spilled over into a very, very nasty scene.

13 And I do not know what representations if any were made to you in

14 1995 or what were the circumstances. As I say, I was no longer a

15 negotiator. But I think it is the most shameful single episode to have

16 occurred in Bosnia-Herzegovina, the massacre around Srebrenica in 1995,

17 and inasmuch as I must have in some ways contributed to that by not

18 alerting enough people, by not being -- making it more and more apparent

19 how dangerous the situation was, I deeply regret it. But I can only tell

20 you I opposed the safe area policy from beginning to end. I considered it

21 was a fraud. I said so. I made it clear to ministers. I opposed the

22 joint action plan in 1993. I earned the very considerable animosity of

23 the United States in doing so. I think it was a disgraceful decision.

24 Every single member of that Security Council, when they passed the

25 resolutions on safe areas, knew that they were not going to provide

1 sufficient troops. They knew that the UN generals had said that there

2 should be a minimum of 35.000 new troops in order to conduct that policy.

3 We did not provide those troops, and we are in part responsible for that

4 appalling massacre.

5 Q. I completely share your opinion about that. And there was nothing

6 more shameful that could have happened or anything that was so detrimental

7 to the people who were the victims but also to the detriment of the Serbs.

8 And that is why I am interested in seeing that what happened in 1995 is

9 dealt with and light thrown on it as clearly as possible.

10 JUDGE MAY: Now, you have five minutes left.

11 THE ACCUSED: [Interpretation] Very well, Mr. May. Yes, I am

12 bearing that in mind, that you very generously gave me some more time

13 today.

14 MR. MILOSEVIC: [Interpretation]

15 Q. Now, as to this testimony before the National Assembly of France,

16 Philippe Morillon presents his views about another issue that you touch

17 upon in your book and your statement. And Marileno Daubaire [phoen], a

18 deputy, asked him, "Do you consider - yes or no - that there existed the

19 aggressor and the victim of the aggression and that the victims were to be

20 protected?" And General Morillon said, "No. I was present and I

21 experienced and lived through that crisis from its very start in April 192

22 and I always refuse to believe that there was the aggressor and the victim

23 of the aggression. And because of that, the Bosniaks criticised me for a

24 long time."

25 As opposed to Philippe Morillon, you yourself were not in

1 Bosnia-Herzegovina at the beginning of the war but you came some six

2 months later, but nevertheless on the basis of your own experience and

3 knowledge, can you say that you agree with General Morillon with respect

4 to that assertion of his?

5 A. I think it is two simplistic to see the war in Bosnia-Herzegovina

6 as being one of aggressors and victims. I've made it quite clear that I

7 think there was evil done on all sides by all parties. The political

8 leaders demonstrated a lack of compassion, of consideration, and readiness

9 to compromise on all sides. But nevertheless, there is a danger in trying

10 to be fair in apportioning an equality of guilt, in trying to determine

11 that all were equally at fault. That, in my judgement, was not the case.

12 I said it yesterday and I say it again. In trying to make that very

13 difficult judgement as to how many -- you know, what was the balance of

14 fault, what was the balance of horror, what was the balance of

15 inconsiderate behaviour, I think the Bosnian Serbs come out the worst. I

16 they are followed by the Croatian Serbs, and then by the Muslim leaders

17 and troops.

18 Q. You mean the Bosnian Croats.

19 A. Sorry. Bosnian Croats. Yes, sorry. The Bosnian Serbs were the

20 first, in my view, in the scale of bad behaviour. Secondly were the

21 Croatian Serbs -- the Bosnian Croats, sorry, and the second were the

22 Bosnian Muslims. But -- you know, I'm not God. I'm not here to apportion

23 these things, I'm just giving my overall estimate because of this tendency

24 for a propaganda war with each side claiming that only they were the ones

25 who were fair-minded, only they were the good people, only they were the

1 reasonable ones. Unfortunately, it's necessary, it seems, to form some

2 judgement on this whole affair, but we are better looking at individual

3 episodes, but it was one of the problems that things were never quite what

4 they seemed. On the face of it, crimes looked as if they could be

5 associated with one element, but there was a good deal of agent

6 provocateuring, so you had to have a skeptical view as to who was

7 responsible for any particular thing. But I think your fellow Serbs did

8 not do the reputation of the Serbs worldwide any good by their conduct in

9 Bosnia.

10 Q. As you're mentioning those incidents and the erroneous image, let

11 us take the explosion at the Sarajevo Markale marketplace on -- in 1994,

12 on a Saturday. That was one of the turning points in that particular war,

13 and the Serbs were blamed for it. Isn't that right? Whereas you, on page

14 419, speak about the fact that a delegation of the Bosnian government

15 which was to have negotiated - and this took place afterwards - did not

16 appear at the Sarajevo airport. "Rose was angry, furious. He went to the

17 Bosnian Presidency to try and persuade President Izetbegovic and his

18 military commander General Delic to come and attend the meeting. And

19 those around General Rose never hid the fact that at the meeting he said

20 to the leaders of the Bosnian Muslims that he had just received technical

21 information indicating that a mortar shell did not come from the area

22 under Serb control but from the Muslim part of town.

23 "If this information were to be circulated by the media, the

24 outcome would be completely different, and if the -- Izetbegovic tries to

25 withdraw from the negotiations, he, Rose, would feel duty-bound to conduct

1 the preliminary evidence of the investigation conducted by the UN."

2 That is something you write about on page 419 of your book. "If

3 the government negotiating team does not attend the meeting on the 17th of

4 February at the airport, he would convene a press conference." And that

5 is the end of your quotation. So the knowledge that the Muslims shelled

6 their own people was something that was not brought to light but used as a

7 method of coercion despite of the fact that public opinion was engulfed by

8 an anti-Serb hysteria. Isn't that right, Lord Owen?

9 A. Well, you are partially correct, but unfortunately, you have not

10 completed the story. At the request of Dr. Karadzic, and indeed it was

11 inevitable anyhow, there was a full-scale independent inquiry of that

12 particular mortar incident, and the UN inquiry that was established by

13 Boutros Boutros-Ghali came to the conclusion that they could not pinpoint

14 who was responsible, whether the shell had been -- mortar had been fired

15 from a Muslim army controlled area or whether the Bosnian government

16 forces or whether from a Serb forces. But where you are correct in saying

17 is that in the early stages, the preliminary evidence did point to it

18 coming from an area of Sarajevo controlled by the Bosnian government

19 Muslim forces, and it was in a most extraordinary situation to live with

20 watching NATO and the European Union all ready to make decisions on the

21 automatic assumption that this had been fired by the Bosnian Serbs. And

22 that was, as I say, never proven, nor, however, was the converse proven,

23 that the original impression that it had come from the Bosnian government

24 Muslim forces. So it's left as an unsatisfactory episode, but in the

25 diplomacy of that period it was extraordinarily important that the United

1 Nations retain their integrity and their impartiality and it is to the

2 great credit of General Rose that, despite endless public criticism, he

3 refused to do so. And I think it needs to be said in this court that many

4 UN personnel lost their lives in Bosnia-Herzegovina and in fighting for

5 impartiality and in fighting against very powerful forces. At that time

6 there was a readiness amongst the European Union, which I must say I was

7 not proud of, and of NATO, to come to one conclusion and that was that

8 this was totally the fault of the Bosnian Serbs.

9 But nevertheless, again the background which NATO had to face and

10 the European Union had to face is that day after day, there were shells

11 landing in Sarajevo from Bosnian Serb mortar sites, and guns firing into

12 it. I myself stayed with General Morillon and were woken in the middle of

13 the night by artillery fire directly on the UN headquarters in Sarajevo.

14 So there was a background history. And though that particular

15 episode there was a danger of the impartiality and integrity of the

16 international community being damaged, fortunately it was not, and the

17 establishment of the fact was they couldn't conclude who had fired it, but

18 they knew that there were too many heavy weapons in placements around

19 Sarajevo which had been endlessly firing into Sarajevo, and they had to

20 go. And so an ultimatum was put on General Mladic that those forces had

21 to be withdrawn, quite correctly.

22 And General Mladic refused to withdraw them. That was the

23 reality. He rotated them round out of Sarajevo and then back in through

24 other roads. And it was only when the Russians at initially our

25 instigation but then very quickly and quietly moved their forces, UN

1 forces committed in Croatia, around through into Sarajevo and reinforced

2 that part of the area of Sarajevo to give reassurance to the Serbs, and

3 then your own generals forced General Mladic to start to withdraw his

4 troops -- to withdraw his heavy weapons. And we managed to establish an

5 exclusion area in Sarajevo and eventually to have, for quite a number of

6 months, peace in Sarajevo with very few scattered incidents. But it soon

7 broke down.

8 I only go into that in some detail. They things -- the facts are

9 very difficult to establish, but what I've said I believe to be an

10 accurate interpretation of a very difficult ten-day, 14-day period.

11 JUDGE MAY: Mr. Milosevic, you have had past your time, but you

12 can ask one last question.

13 MR. MILOSEVIC: [Interpretation]

14 Q. If it's just one more question, and as you are talking about my

15 political positions, Lord Owen, I noted down that you said yesterday with

16 precision what I was expressing was the majority Serb opinion. What else

17 should I have represented except the majority opinion of the people who

18 had elected me?

19 A. Well, Mr. Milosevic, whether or not you were elected in the

20 Western democratic sense is open to some argument, but nevertheless, at

21 times there has never been any doubt in my mind that you were the chosen

22 leader of the Serbian people. You represented majority opinion. So I'm

23 not going into the electoral process, but I do believe you did represent

24 for a substantial period of time the views of the Serbs.

25 That puts a very special responsibility on a political leader to

1 sometimes be prepared to lead his public opinion against their views, to

2 tell them the truth, to lead -- to take a minority position. And I think

3 that my great regret is that you did not take on that view, that Serbian

4 nationalist view, particularly over Kosovo but on some other aspects of

5 this dispute, and I don't think it is sufficient as a justification to say

6 I was acting always on behalf of majority opinion. Democracy is not

7 purely and simply a continuous referendum in which leaders are meant to

8 represent the opinion of the majority. It is extremely important that

9 they are prepared to stand, at times, for views and opinions that

10 represent minority. And what is right internationally and what is right

11 in international law should be upheld, and I think that you had a

12 responsibility to uphold those international laws even if that was not

13 what was accepted by majority Serb opinion.

14 I'm sorry if I end on a sort of lecture note, but the reality of

15 political leadership through history is that some of the greatest acts

16 have been when leaders have been prepared to run against their own public

17 opinion.

18 JUDGE MAY: Mr. Kay.

19 THE ACCUSED: [Interpretation] May I --

20 JUDGE MAY: It's Mr. Kay's turn. We'll deal with any exhibits you

21 have at the end.

22 Yes.

23 Questioned by Mr. Kay:

24 Q. Lord Owen, I'm going to ask you some questions now based on our

25 Court Exhibit C18, which is your book Balkan Odyssey, so I'll be taking

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1 pages from that.

2 And if we could turn to chapter 3 at page 94, which is the section

3 dealing with the Vance-Owen Peace Plan. And this is in January of 1993,

4 you having entered the peace process in September of 1992. And in that

5 period from the September to January, obviously you researched the

6 background, information, had meetings to decide a course of action that

7 you were going to put to the principal parties involved. That would be a

8 correct summary, wouldn't it?

9 A. I hope so.

10 Q. Looking at the plan at page 94, we see there what were the

11 constitutional principles, defining Bosnia-Herzegovina as a decentralised

12 state and then giving substantial autonomy to provinces but denying an

13 international legal character to those provinces. So the point was on

14 your peace plan at that moment was the recognition that the international

15 community had already given that Bosnia-Herzegovina was going to remain a

16 recognised state. There was no backtracking on that issue, and it

17 certainly wasn't possible to backtrack on it by then.

18 A. No, that's correct. That was the terms under which we were set up

19 from the London conference. And anyhow, that was international law.

20 Q. Yes. Within that decentralised state, you weren't going to

21 identify the particular ethnic groupings of the provinces that were going

22 to be contained within.

23 A. No. We didn't -- we didn't ascribe an ethnic basis in the names

24 or in our own description, but nevertheless it was always obvious, given

25 the situation in the former Yugoslavia, that people would claim that

1 certain provinces were or were not likely to have majorities within it.

2 Q. In January of 1993, at that stage the Bosnian Serbs were in the

3 most powerful position.

4 A. Yes. They occupied about 70 per cent of the territory.

5 Q. The recognition of the peace plan at that stage would have made

6 them give up substantial gains that they had made of a military nature

7 over the previous year.

8 A. Yes. They were being asked to withdraw from something like 23 per

9 cent of the territory of Bosnia-Herzegovina. So it was a very substantial

10 reversal of the product of war, if you like, or of ethnic cleansing, and

11 it was to be done by negotiation without being forced. So it was -- it

12 was ambitious, there's no doubt about that.

13 Q. At page 97 of the book, you make it clear that you were asking a

14 victor to give up a larger proportion of land, which is something very

15 unusual in a historical context.

16 A. Yes. They would have to retreat from about 38.6 per cent of the

17 territory which they occupied.

18 Q. And you challenged any critics of that peace plan to recall in

19 history any episode similar where a controlling force could have been so

20 generous.

21 A. Right, that's true. I can't think of any case where they had

22 been.

23 Q. Putting this into context in relation to Mr. Milosevic in

24 Belgrade, for him to adopt the support of that plan, you would probably

25 recognise would have represented a considerable political challenge for

1 him in dealing with the Bosnian Serb leadership.

2 A. Yes, I think I did, but we were asking not just him. At that

3 particular time President Milosevic was president of Serbia and we were

4 also involving the authority of the president of the FRY, President Cosic,

5 who was a well-known nationalist, and also President Bulatovic from

6 Montenegro.

7 Q. At this stage when the peace plan was unveiled, if we look at page

8 99, you mention there that there was great criticism by Izetbegovic,

9 President Izetbegovic, as to the plan itself, and there was the use of a

10 propaganda machine on his part to reflect that he was almost being bullied

11 within this process to accept less than he was entitled to.

12 A. Well, actually, we had heard that the Bosnian Muslims had accepted

13 the plan. In fact, I think it was former Ambassador Zimmerman who had

14 been told that. And we also got that impression. But it's true, of

15 course, that they then did, sensing the new incoming American

16 administration, thought for some strange reason that this plan was soft on

17 the Serbs, they were naturally enough wanting to try and get more

18 territory.

19 Q. You've come to the point that I was going to deal with next, that

20 in fact your view was, if we look at page 100 of the book, that there was

21 a certain degree of misrepresentation by the US State Department

22 encouraging Izetbegovic to ask for non-negotiable territory against the

23 Bosnian Serbs almost as a means of causing a failure of the peace plan.

24 A. I don't think it was really deliberate. I think it was they

25 didn't understand the plan. They didn't understand the history at that

1 time. They were a new administration taking office, but there were

2 people, of course, who did understand it, but there was a very strong

3 feeling amongst some people in New York and elsewhere, and Washington,

4 that we had been too generous to the Serbs.

5 Q. You write at page 100 that Vance and Okun had been complaining of

6 US misrepresentation of your intentions and the details of the plan.

7 A. Yes. That's true.

8 Q. And some of the feelings behind this were believed to be because

9 the Russians supported the plan and the US was wary of a Russian-backed

10 initiative.

11 A. That may have been a factor. That may have been a factor.

12 Q. And again when we consider Mr. Milosevic's political history, he

13 of course was a communist, he was from a socialist party, and his

14 government had good relations with Russia.

15 A. They were beginning to be a bit strained, but yes.

16 Q. Yes. But that was a future within it.

17 A. Yes. There was a -- I don't think the Russian Federation at that

18 time were as supportive as the Serbs, as sometimes the Serbs thought they

19 should be as fellow Slavs, but nevertheless, I think it was a tribute to

20 the then Russian Federation foreign secretary Mr. Kozyrev that he did try

21 to be fair-minded throughout this whole period, and I think the Russian

22 Federation played an extremely helpful path right up to the Dayton peace

23 conference and beyond in working with NATO in implementing the plan.

24 Q. To be bold about this, there is a lot of tub thumping that's been

25 going on, but political interests were also being served by the states who

1 were looking at these affairs externally.

2 A. We don't live in a perfect world.

3 Q. Thank you. If we turn to page 102, given the difficulty of this

4 plan as it was to be received by the Bosnian Serbs, Mr. Milosevic's

5 backing to that plan was an important key on your behalf.

6 A. Yes. At that time in January, we didn't have his total support,

7 but he was acting helpfully in trying to -- he saw what we were trying to

8 do, establish the principles of the cooperation, and I think somewhere in

9 the book I mention that he came up with the idea of merging two principles

10 and presenting nine principles instead of ten or --

11 Q. It's the middle of page --

12 A. He provided the basis for a compromise which Karadzic could say

13 that he proposed eight principles, the co-chairman proposed ten

14 principles, and we had now settled for nine principles, and it was a

15 rather ingenious suggestion, which we were grateful to accept from

16 President Milosevic.

17 Q. It's the middle of page 102. "Milosevic suggested over lunch the

18 face-saving formula."

19 A. Right.

20 Q. And again, you were obviously able to recognise that there were

21 important political consequences for him as well in helping put forward a

22 plan that was contrary to the aspirations of the Bosnian Serb leadership

23 at that time.

24 A. Yes. You have to remember that most of the opposition parties

25 supported Dr. Karadzic, including some of those who later went on to be

1 leaders of the Federal Republic of Yugoslavia after President Milosevic

2 lost the election.

3 Q. And to balance this, back in Belgrade you were aware again of his

4 need to carry this through the politicians in Belgrade in Serbia.

5 A. Up to a point. This was not a working democracy as we know it in

6 the West, but he had to take account of the criticism of his plan that was

7 coming whether it was coming from Draskovic or Seselj or any of the other

8 leaders.

9 Q. One of your ways of assessing his commitment to this plan was the

10 understanding from the evidence that Karadzic then began to try and sell

11 the plan to his constituency.

12 A. Well, it would certainly have helped if he had.

13 Q. He was trying to represent it as being a victory on his behalf.

14 A. The plan.

15 Q. Yes. His acceptance of it.

16 A. Karadzic?

17 Q. Yes.

18 A. No, no. It was quite the reverse. Karadzic was hedging his bets

19 on the plan throughout and saying this would be a great defeat for the

20 Serbs, that they would have to give up all this territory and that they

21 were giving up territory which had industrial locations on it, that they

22 were giving up precious territory. Karadzic reversed it, Karadzic never

23 accepted the plan and he didn't want it. And you know, the reality of

24 life is that Dayton gave the Serbs six per cent more territory than the

25 Vance-Owen Peace Plan gave th