1 Monday, 15 December 2003

2 [Open session]

3 [The accused entered court]

4 --- Upon commencing at 9.05 a.m.

5 THE ACCUSED: [Interpretation] Mr. May.

6 JUDGE MAY: Just one moment to get us ready.

7 Yes. I'm going to start with Mr. Nice. Mr. Nice, is there

8 anything which you need to address us on immediately before the accused

9 raises some point?

10 MR. NICE: I have several points to raise to deal with, matters

11 that would typically, I think, be dealt with in private session even in a

12 fully public session. They are procedural, they deal with disclosure to

13 the accused, matters of that sort. I'm happy to do them now or after the

14 accused has made his point.

15 JUDGE MAY: We need to deal anyway with a number of administrative

16 matters but we will start with the accused since we're in open session.

17 Yes.

18 THE ACCUSED: [Interpretation] Mr. May, at the end of last week,

19 when there were no hearings, I received a decision from the Registry in

20 which I am prohibited of having any communication by telephone or any

21 visits, and I don't understand why this came about. Are you informed of

22 this? And I consider this to be in violent -- in gross violation of human

23 rights, and I would request that the matter be addressed.

24 JUDGE MAY: It's not a matter we'll deal with at the moment. We

25 will look to see what the point is, and if necessary, we'll come back to

1 it in due course. For the moment, we will deal with those matters which

2 are concerned with this particular issue.

3 Yes, you want to go into private session, Mr. Nice.

4 MR. NICE: Yes, please.

5 [Private session]

6 (Redacted)

7 (Redacted)

8 (Redacted)

9 (Redacted)

10 (Redacted)

11 (Redacted)

12 (Redacted)

13 (Redacted)

14 (Redacted)

15 (Redacted)

16 (Redacted)

17 (Redacted)

18 (Redacted)

19 (Redacted)

20 (Redacted)

21 (Redacted)

22 (Redacted)

23 (Redacted)

24 (Redacted)

25 (Redacted)

1

2

3

4

5

6

7

8

9

10

11

12 Pages 30355 to 30361 – redacted – private session.

13

14

15

16

17

18

19

20

21

22

23

24

25

1 (Redacted)

2 (Redacted)

3 (Redacted)

4 (Redacted)

5 (Redacted)

6 (Redacted)

7 (Redacted)

8 (Redacted)

9 (Redacted)

10 (Redacted)

11 (Redacted)

12 (Redacted)

13 (Redacted)

14 (Redacted)

15 (Redacted)

16 (Redacted)

17 (Redacted)

18 [Open session]

19 JUDGE MAY: Are we in open session? Yes.

20 There are two -- three matters, potentially, which we have to

21 address at this stage. The first is the extent, if any, it is appropriate

22 with this important witness to have any evidence given under Rule 89(F),

23 he dealing with the accused very substantially on conversations, some of

24 which have been in dispute, in some cases heavily in dispute. And it

25 would therefore seem to us to be appropriate that those matters should be

1 dealt with in open session.

2 We are concerned at the evidence which it is proposed to be given

3 about the conflict - I'm referring to the end of the statement - and the

4 amount of resultant cross-examination which there must be, in fairness, if

5 the evidence is given.

6 And finally, we have to deal with the admissibility of the book as

7 a whole.

8 [The witness entered court]

9 JUDGE MAY: General Clark, I'm sorry you've been brought in.

10 There is a misunderstanding. But it doesn't matter because we're going to

11 have a debate about the extent of your evidence and how much we're going

12 to admit; and unless anybody objects, it seems to me, if you don't mind

13 sitting, listening, it may be no harm is done.

14 THE WITNESS: I have no objection, Your Honour.

15 MR. NICE: Your Honour, as to the second of the points that the

16 court expressed as being a matter of concern, could the Court possibly

17 identify the particular passages which you say are concerning because of

18 the degree to which they would open up cross-examination? There's 44 --

19 JUDGE MAY: Let us deal with it in order.

20 MR. NICE: Yes.

21 JUDGE MAY: First of all, the question of live evidence.

22 MR. NICE: Yes.

23 JUDGE MAY: I can tell you we have in mind that the witness's

24 evidence should be given in live.

25 MR. NICE: Very well. It's a matter entirely for the Court. As

1

2

3

4

5

6

7

8

9

10

11

12 Blank page inserted to ensure pagination corresponds between the French and

13 English transcripts.

14

15

16

17

18

19

20

21

22

23

24

25

1 you know, when we first instituted 89(F) statements, we said we would

2 apply comprehensively in order not to take any advantage by selecting that

3 which would be given live. We're entirely in the Court's hands. For our

4 part, there are both exchanges where the previous witness, Klaus Naumann,

5 was present, which might have fallen for different consideration, and

6 there are passages where the accused is not present but other named

7 persons are. It had occurred to us those might have been stronger

8 candidates for 89(F) but we don't say any more than that.

9 JUDGE MAY: Very well. Next, the book. We've had a chance of

10 reading those passages on which you rely.

11 MR. NICE: Yes.

12 JUDGE MAY: And they amount to some 10 per cent, if that, of the

13 total pages in the book; 40-odd pages against 400-odd pages.

14 MR. NICE: Yes.

15 JUDGE MAY: And having read the statement, it seem us to broadly

16 that they cover the same material in the most important part, and the

17 others, I should have thought, were not of such significance that they

18 should be admitted. But in any event, there is the question of principle,

19 which is how right it is for a small part of a book to allow the admission

20 of the whole, which of course deals with much broader matters, and we are

21 therefore minded not to admit the book.

22 MR. NICE: Your Honour, we are, of course, in the Court's hands,

23 and it may be something that falls for better consideration at the end

24 rather than at the beginning of the evidence and cross-examination.

25 We provided you with only a limited number of pages in order, we

1 hoped, to help and to save the Chamber from the burden of having to go

2 through the totality of the book. We've considered the admission of the

3 book against the rulings that have been made under Rule 70, because of

4 course those follow on an application for limitation of evidence made by

5 us as part of the necessary Rule 70 agreements and requirements, and there

6 is an argument that examination, or certainly cross-examination, outside

7 the identified pages would be in contravention of the ruling of the

8 Chamber.

9 We considered that yesterday with both the witness, his lawyers,

10 but more importantly perhaps the United States government lawyers, and I

11 think that the view taken was that a practical approach might be to say

12 could the whole book be admitted and the witness would be happy to answer

13 questions on anything within its ambit. But if the Court is at first

14 sight and at this stage inclined towards the view that less rather than

15 more is appropriate, we, I think, are happy to go along with that and

16 await the position at the end of the cross-examination.

17 JUDGE MAY: Very well. That's the course that we will follow.

18 MR. NICE: And then finally, Your Honour said that there were

19 particular passages of the statement that might have led to broader

20 cross-examination or more extensive cross-examination that could be

21 allowed for in the time available for this witness. I'm not sure exactly

22 which paragraphs the Court had in mind, because we could consider them and

23 see to what extent we really wish them to go in.

24 JUDGE MAY: But you may wish to consider paragraphs 39 onwards,

25 which deal entirely with the conflict.

1 Now, it's a matter for you what course you want to take, but the

2 issue is if such evidence is given, what cross-examination it opens up in

3 fairness to the trial as a whole.

4 MR. NICE: Your Honour, may -- on the assumption that we go beyond

5 the first break, may I come back to that immediately after the first

6 break?

7 JUDGE MAY: Yes. And I suppose the final issue is timing. How

8 long do you anticipate you might be?

9 MR. NICE: I wouldn't have thought that my examination of the

10 witness will last very much more than one session, one ordinary

11 one-and-a-half-hour session. The statement is compact, and the witness

12 knows his material.

13 JUDGE MAY: And the witness has made himself available, as we have

14 in our order stated, for two days; is that right?

15 MR. NICE: Yes, I think so. I haven't actually technically asked

16 him when his return flight is. My oversight, but --

17 JUDGE MAY: Well, no doubt that can be done.

18 Mr. Kay, can you assist us whether you or Mr. Tapuskovic intend to

19 ask any questions?

20 MR. KAY: Your Honour, the matter so far in relation to the book,

21 in my view, it would be probably the position that we can take stock at

22 the end of the evidence to see where we are. We've often made decisions

23 at the start and ended up changing them by the finish of testimony.

24 In terms of time for cross-examination, the amici would request

25 half an hour.

1 JUDGE MAY: Thank you.

2 THE ACCUSED: [Interpretation] Mr. May.

3 JUDGE MAY: Yes, Mr. Milosevic.

4 THE ACCUSED: [Interpretation] I don't quite understand the

5 position of this witness since my understanding was that he would be

6 testifying in closed session and that you described that as a temporarily

7 closed session, and then, in the meantime, representatives of the

8 government of his country may be able to review the transcript, to approve

9 some of it, to redact some of it possibly, and only then to release it to

10 the public. I am not aware of any legal court in the world delegating its

11 authority of this kind to any government. This would be the first time

12 for any such thing to happen. Of course, you consider yourself to be a

13 legal court.

14 JUDGE MAY: We are not going to argue this point. We have made

15 our order. The reason that the government have any rights in the matter

16 at all is this, that in order to provide information to this Court, it is

17 occasionally - and I stress occasionally - necessary for governments to do

18 so, and they are allowed to do so under our Rules on certain terms, and

19 these are one of the terms which has been followed in this case.

20 Yes, Mr. Nice. Perhaps we should begin, and we will ask General

21 Clark to take the declaration if he would.

22 MR. NICE: May I diffidently remind Your Honour that you were

23 going to make some rulings. I didn't know if you intended to make them

24 before the witness started his evidence. No. Very well. My

25 misunderstanding.

1 JUDGE MAY: I think all the necessary rulings have been made.

2 THE WITNESS: Your Honours, I solemnly declare that I will speak

3 the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth.

4 JUDGE MAY: Thank you. If you'd like to take a seat.

5 WITNESS: WESLEY CLARK

6 Examined by Mr. Nice:

7 Q. It's Wesley Clark; correct?

8 A. Yes, it is.

9 Q. And General Clark, for you are indeed a general, your history is

10 set out in a summary of your life which is at tab 2 of a bundle of

11 exhibits.

12 MR. NICE: May that bundle be given a comprehensive exhibit

13 number.

14 JUDGE MAY: Yes. There is an issue as to whether tab 1 should be

15 admitted because we've not admitted it under Rule 89(F). But we'll --

16 what we'll do is we'll give the bundle a general number and we can review

17 the position at the end as to which tabs are admitted.

18 THE REGISTRAR: 617, Your Honours.

19 MR. NICE: May the witness at some stage have the bundle of

20 exhibits -- may the witness at some stage have that bundle of exhibits if

21 that's convenient.

22 Q. And General Clark, without going through your personal history in

23 detail, for it's a matter of public record, does it include that you

24 graduated from West Point in 1966, from 1994 to 1996 you served as

25 Director for Strategic Plans and Policy for the Joint Chiefs of Staff with

1

2

3

4

5

6

7

8

9

10

11

12 Blank page inserted to ensure pagination corresponds between the French and

13 English transcripts.

14

15

16

17

18

19

20

21

22

23

24

25

1 responsibilities for worldwide United States military strategic planning;

2 that from 1996 to 1997 you served as Commander-in-Chief of the United

3 States Southern Command, Panama, where you were responsible for the

4 direction of the United States military activities in Latin America and

5 the Caribbean; and from 1997 through to May of 2000 you were NATO Supreme

6 Allied Commander and Commander-in-Chief of the United States European

7 Command, and in this position you commanded the Operation Allied Force

8 which was NATO's first major combat action in the area of the former

9 Yugoslavia?

10 A. This is correct.

11 Q. General Clark, your first encounter with the accused, I think, was

12 on the 17th of August of 1995 where you met him as one of a delegation

13 that included Richard Holbrooke and the late Joseph Kruzel and others,

14 including Colonel Drew and Robert Frasure; is that correct?

15 A. That's correct.

16 Q. And was this part of shuttle negotiations for a Bosnian peace

17 deal?

18 A. Yes, it was.

19 Q. Can you give us a little of the setting: What was the topics, who

20 was running it, and so on?

21 A. Richard Holbrooke was the leader of the American delegation, and

22 this was our first meeting with Serb President Slobodan Milosevic. We

23 wanted to meet each of the leaders in the Balkans and present to them the

24 general outline of what we believed to be a possible settlement that could

25 be achieved, including a settlement achieved with the presence of some

1 American troops as part of a NATO mission. And this was the first meeting

2 with President Milosevic.

3 We went to -- went to his office there in the capital of Belgrade.

4 Q. Was one of the topics who should be representing the Bosnian Serbs

5 in negotiating a peace plan; and if so, what was the accused's reaction to

6 that?

7 A. Yes. This was the question, because it had come up previously

8 that some people were talking to Karadzic, and we wanted to raise this

9 issue with Slobodan Milosevic, and so we asked him. "Should we be dealing

10 with you or should we be dealing with the Bosnian Serbs?" And then

11 President Milosevic said, "With me, of course." And as we continued the

12 dialogue, we said, "Well, why?" And the basic reason was that he could

13 deliver the peace agreement. And this -- this seemed improbable on the

14 face of it; he was the president of a different country. And he said

15 -- he said, "No. Give me the terms of the agreement, we'll have an

16 election, a referendum on this agreement." And we said, "Well, why would

17 a referendum in a different country bind the Bosnian Serbs?" He said,

18 "They will not go against the will of the Serb people."

19 Q. There came a time when you spoke to him with only one or perhaps a

20 couple of people present, I think.

21 A. That's right.

22 Q. Can you give the setting for that and then tell the Court your

23 recollection of precisely what was said.

24 A. Well, after we had this exchange, a break was taken and Ambassador

25 Holbrooke went up to visit the facilities outside. The meeting generally

1 broke up. President Milosevic stayed there. And Assistant Secretary

2 Kruzel and I approached President Milosevic as he was standing there in a

3 casual setting outside the formal meeting, and I was still wrestling with

4 the idea as to how it is that Milosevic could maintain that he had the

5 authority and the power to deliver the Serb compliance with the agreement.

6 And so I simply asked him. I said, "Mr. President, you say you have so

7 much influence over the Bosnian Serbs, but how is it then, if you have

8 such influence, that you allowed General Mladic to kill all those people

9 in Srebrenica?" And Milosevic looked at me and he paused for a moment.

10 He then said, "Well, General Clark," he said, "I warned Mladic not to do

11 this, but he didn't listen to me."

12 Q. Your understanding of what he was referring to, if you have an

13 understanding beyond the words themselves, can you give it to us?

14 A. Certainly.

15 Q. And explain, if it does have a context and understanding, how you

16 arrive at that understanding.

17 A. Well, it was very clear what I was asking was about the massacre

18 at Srebrenica. When I said "kill all these people," it wasn't a military

19 operation, it was the massacre. And this was in fact what had been in the

20 news. It had been the starting point for the international agreements

21 which led to NATO's increased resolve to see an end to the fighting in the

22 Balkans. So it was very clear what I was asking. It was also, to me,

23 very clear what Milosevic was answering. He was answering that he did

24 know this in advance, and he was walking the fine line between saying he

25 was powerful enough, influential enough to have known it but trying to

1 excuse from himself the responsibility for having done it.

2 Q. The next meeting, I think, was on the 13th of September, or a

3 subsequent meeting was on the 13th of September at the accused's lodge

4 near Belgrade.

5 MR. NICE: Paragraph 5 of the statement serving as a summary, Your

6 Honours.

7 Q. Did you have a discussion with Milosevic on this occasion with

8 expectations that he might be able to make some contact with Mladic and

9 Karadzic?

10 A. Well, we had never -- we had never expected when we went to this

11 meeting that there would be a meeting with Mladic and Karadzic. This was

12 a surprise. This was during the period of the bombing.

13 May I just ask? I have a technical problem with this computer.

14 Maybe this button was hit or something, and I don't know which button to

15 turn it back on with. Thank you.

16 We went there as part of their shuttle diplomacy, and the bombing

17 was going on. President Milosevic had been saying this bombing was bad

18 for peace, and we of course were -- the bombing was part of the pressure

19 to convince the Serbs to fall back and release the grip of terror on

20 Sarajevo. And Milosevic asked the delegation, he said, "Would you be

21 willing to meet with Karadzic and Mladic?" And Ambassador Holbrooke

22 called us aside, he said, What do you think? These men are now indicted

23 war criminals, should we meet with them in the interest of trying to stop

24 and change the situation on the ground? And the delegation agreed with

25 Holbrooke that we should do this. Holbrooke conveyed that information to

1 Mr. Milosevic, and Mr. Milosevic said, "Well, they're here. You'll see

2 them in just a couple of minutes, they're only a couple of hundred metres

3 away." We were surprised. We didn't know where they were.

4 Q. Next topic: Did you form a view as to the VJ and Serb leadership

5 receiving operational reports from the VRS? If so, what was the view and

6 why?

7 A. It was our view that the Serb military, that the VRS was closely

8 connected to the military of the -- of Yugoslavia, the VJ. We knew this

9 from electronic evidence, from reliable sources, and we even at one point

10 went and told the Serb military that they had to turn off the air defence

11 connectivity that linked the air defence system in Bosnia with that in

12 Serbia. So there was a clear connection. We knew that the Serb military

13 had been -- had been carved out of the Yugoslav military.

14 Q. And when you asked Serb military to turn off the transmission,

15 which particular Serb military leader did you address?

16 A. It was General Perisic.

17 Q. At the Dayton negotiations, did you meet somebody called Jovica

18 Stanisic?

19 A. Yes, I did.

20 Q. What was he introduced to you as?

21 A. He was introduced to me as the head of the Serb intelligence

22 service. He had been -- he'd been rumoured to be very, very influential,

23 and some people were surprised that he was at the negotiations, but there

24 he was, and we all met him.

25 Q. The military annex drawn at the Dayton negotiations, did you deal

1

2

3

4

5

6

7

8

9

10

11

12 Blank page inserted to ensure pagination corresponds between the French and

13 English transcripts.

14

15

16

17

18

19

20

21

22

23

24

25

1 with Krajisnik and ask him to review a proposed military annex? If so,

2 what happened and how was the problem resolved?

3 A. We did meet with the Bosnian Serb delegation. I did hand the

4 military annex draft to Mr. Krajisnik and ask him to consider this. I

5 told him I'd like to have an answer back in the next day or two. This was

6 early on in the negotiations. And subsequently he did give me the paper

7 back, and most of the annex was simply lined through. It had the effect

8 of completely obviating the military annex. It would have put a military

9 force into Bosnia that had no authorities.

10 Q. How did you attempt to resolve it? How was it resolved as a

11 problem?

12 A. President Milosevic had previously said that if there were any

13 difficulties, to please consult with him. I arranged to see President

14 Milosevic, said that the Bosnian Serbs had rejected this military annex,

15 and asked for his help. He said, "Just give it to Milutinovic and he'll

16 take care of it." And that's exactly what happened. A day or so later, I

17 got it back from then-Foreign Minister Milutinovic. He said, "This is

18 it." There were a couple of minor changes at the beginning of the

19 document, but all those portions which had been excised by the Bosnian

20 Serbs were restored. I thanked Milutinovic.

21 Q. And what did this reveal to you about where the decision-making

22 power lay?

23 A. Well, it revealed to me that President Milosevic was fully in

24 charge of the delegation.

25 Q. During Dayton, was time spent going over military maps of various

1 kinds, both physical and also computer?

2 A. Yes, we did spend a great deal of time on maps.

3 Q. Was one of those maps a map that you brought from America or had

4 brought from America that's on the easel beside you?

5 A. Yes. This is a military map that was used to discuss the

6 boundaries around Sarajevo and whether Sarajevo would remain a divided

7 city or not.

8 MR. NICE: A copy of that map, Your Honours, is given the marking

9 tab 5 of Exhibit 617.

10 Q. General Clark, can you, probably from where you are but with the

11 pointer that's available, explain to the Court what the accused's part was

12 in dealing with this map.

13 A. This is the map that was used in the middle of the night

14 discussion between President Milosevic and Bosnian Muslim Prime Minister

15 Haris Silajdzic. And the discussion was, this is the city of Sarajevo,

16 this is some of the high ground around Sarajevo, this is the discussion

17 about which parts of the terrain would be given back to the Muslims. And

18 as I recall the discussion, in red here -- Milosevic had this red marker

19 and he scratched things out on it, and this was a personal -- these were

20 personal scrawlings of the leaders here.

21 Q. It's a long time ago but, reminding yourself from the map, looking

22 at, for example, the vertical line closer to Sarajevo that's been crossed

23 out and the line to the east --

24 A. I think, as I recall, this is the line that President Milosevic

25 drew in right here and crossed this one out.

1 Q. And such a line would have achieved what for the Serb forces?

2 A. It would have given -- it would have been a give-back to the

3 Muslims around Sarajevo. It would have been an effort to resolve this

4 quarrel about how much ground would be given back around Sarajevo. It

5 would have been a concession.

6 Q. To what degree did the accused, in dealing with this map, have

7 personal knowledge, to what degree did he appear to need to speak to or

8 seek assistance from others with more detailed knowledge?

9 A. He appeared to have a great deal of personal knowledge and seemed

10 to have no need to speak with anyone else.

11 Q. Even when drawing these lines?

12 A. Correct.

13 Q. Next, the computer map. Did you work on a computer map with the

14 accused?

15 A. Yes, we did. It was actually at a time prior to this, as I recall

16 the course of the negotiations. It had to do with the corridor connecting

17 the Bosnian Muslim held enclave of Gorazde with the bulk of the territory

18 that was to be held by the Bosnian Muslims and by the Federation. And

19 President Milosevic came in, we looked at the terrain from various angles,

20 and we discussed the high ground and how much terrain would have to be

21 surrendered to the Federation to be able to protect a road, a sovereign

22 road out to Gorazde.

23 Q. His level of knowledge when dealing with this issue and this

24 computerised map?

25 A. He seemed very familiar with the road, the terrain, and the

1 ability to draw the lines in the right place. I remember discussions

2 about the specific area just south of Sarajevo and that road, and he was

3 not unfamiliar with this piece of ground.

4 Q. At the end of Dayton, did the American delegation intend the

5 Bosnian Serb leaders to initial the agreement; and if so, what was the

6 accused's attitude as to who should be signing?

7 A. Well, it was the intent that everyone would signal their intent,

8 their agreement with the final document. But the Bosnian Serb delegation

9 did not sign, and President Milosevic indicated that his initials were

10 adequate, that he would produce the Bosnian Serb's signature later.

11 Q. Going back to the computerised map, help us with this: In dealing

12 with that map, did he turn to the Bosnian Serbs for any assistance or --

13 A. No, he did not.

14 Q. Moving beyond Dayton to 1997, was there an incident involving SFOR

15 troops who had been placed at a television antenna to guard it indeed?

16 A. Yes, there was. There was a period of struggle around the city of

17 Brcko in which NATO troops ended up on top of a piece of high ground. It

18 so happened there was a television antenna there. We continued to occupy

19 that antenna.

20 One morning a mob showed up. President Milosevic had previously

21 told me that any time there was trouble, just call him and he could handle

22 it. I called him and I said, you're going to have to get the mob out of

23 there, they're threatening our troops, and if you don't pull them back ,

24 we'll take other actions. He said, well, no, this is just political. I

25 said no, it's not political, this is a threat against the troops. It

1 seemed that within a half hour or so, the mob disappeared.

2 Q. You addressed him. Was it regular for you to address him or to

3 think of addressing him? Was there anybody to address apart from him for

4 a problem like this?

5 A. It was clear that he still had extraordinary influence if not

6 control. It was never clear how much, but he'd always said if there was a

7 difficulty, call him, and I did.

8 Q. Paragraph 15 of the statement serving as a summary, and now

9 turning to Kosovo.

10 On the 15th of October of 1998, did you, together with Javier

11 Solana, General Naumann fly to Belgrade to meet the accused for the

12 purpose of getting signatures for an agreement about NATO overflight and

13 verification?

14 A. Yes, I did.

15 Q. Were you also going to deal with the proposed pullback of VJ and

16 MUP forces from Kosovo?

17 A. Yes, we were.

18 Q. You met the accused in Beli Dvor. By whom was he accompanied?

19 A. To the best of my recollection, he was accompanied by Milutinovic

20 and Perisic.

21 Q. How long did the meeting last?

22 A. Perhaps three hours.

23 Q. And was the upshot of that that in due course the agreement was

24 signed? And we have that at tab --

25 A. Yes. The air verification agreement was signed.

1

2

3

4

5

6

7

8

9

10

11

12 Blank page inserted to ensure pagination corresponds between the French and

13 English transcripts.

14

15

16

17

18

19

20

21

22

23

24

25

1 Q. We can found that at tab 5 in the bundle -- sorry, tab 6, beg your

2 pardon. Look at that, please.

3 Now, when dealing with this, did the accused ask Javier Solana

4 when the NATO ACTORD would be cancelled?

5 A. Yes, the accused was quite anxious to have the NATO ACTORD

6 cancelled, and he did ask that question.

7 Q. Very well. Did that lead to a discussion, or indeed an argument,

8 between him and Solana?

9 A. Yes, it did, because Secretary-General Solana made it clear that

10 the ACTORD couldn't be cancelled until there was compliance with the UN

11 directives that directed the pullback of the excessive forces that had

12 been deployed in Kosovo since February of 1998.

13 Q. How consistent or otherwise was the accused's approach to

14 Secretary-General Solana?

15 A. Well, it wasn't consistent. I mean, at first he had denied that

16 he'd made such an agreement, then he denied that there were any excessive

17 forces there or any new forces that had been deployed since that period;

18 and then, confronted with the evidence, he then relented and agreed to

19 pull those military forces back that we had mentioned.

20 Q. You spoke to him directly on the basis of information that you

21 had, and at that time he was accompanied by General Perisic, I think.

22 A. That's right. When he denied that there were any additional

23 forces in there, I simply said, "Well, Mr. President, have you heard of

24 the 211th Armoured Brigade?" We were speaking English. He said, "No,

25 I've not heard of such a unit." He then turned and spoke to General

1 Perisic in Serbo-Croatian, and Perisic answered him, and then Milosevic

2 came -- turned back, looking unhappy, and said, "All right, there is such

3 a unit." And it went this way for several different units until -- and

4 each one he subsequently agreed to pull out.

5 It was a grudging acceptance. It wasn't an acceptance of pulling

6 out of the excessive units, it was an acceptance of whatever you name,

7 we'll pull back.

8 Q. Did General Perisic take a part in revealing the accuracy of your

9 information for just the one example, the 211th, or was he taking a

10 similar role in relation to other information you provided?

11 A. He confirmed the accuracy of the other two units that we provided.

12 Q. And was one of those matters you raised a police unit?

13 A. It was, but in this case this wasn't an armoured unit so General

14 Perisic did not confirm it, and President Milosevic tried to say this

15 wasn't a unit, it was a precinct, or words to that effect.

16 Q. And did Perisic correct him on that?

17 A. Perisic wasn't able to correct on that and we were left then with

18 the issue of how many police were there and what was the -- what was the

19 increased strength of the police. And at that point, President Milosevic

20 promised that he would send us that information and give us a full

21 accounting of the police elements that were in there.

22 Q. Very well. My oversight in relation to an earlier matter on

23 paragraph 14. Very briefly let's cover that. In the summer of 1997, did

24 you have conversation with Biljana Plavsic where she told you something

25 that had been said to her by the accused about Stanisic? Just tell us

1 about that, please.

2 A. I did have a conversation with Biljana Plavsic, and she said that

3 Milosevic had offered to provide security for her through Stanisic, and

4 she rejected that offer of security.

5 Q. Thank you very much. And let's pick up the story at paragraph 18

6 of the statement serving as summary. Your next meeting on the 20th of

7 October when you returned to Belgrade to discuss --

8 [Trial Chamber confers]

9 JUDGE MAY: I was raising paragraphs 27 to 28. You may want to

10 look at those again, but you can look at them over the adjournment.

11 MR. NICE: Look at them in the sense that querying whether --

12 JUDGE MAY: The mistake is mine. I was getting ahead.

13 MR. NICE:

14 Q. So on the 20th of October you returned to Belgrade to discuss MUP

15 data that had been delivered by the FRY, and I think it was your intention

16 to press further for the withdrawal of forces. Is that correct, General?

17 A. That's correct. This was a time in which we had to work an

18 agreement to pull back the forces in compliance with the UN Security

19 Council Resolution, and I spoke with President Milosevic. I asked that

20 his generals cooperate in doing this. We had a full disclosure by the

21 military and the police of what they believed to be the KLA dispositions

22 and where their own forces were; at least, where the military forces were,

23 the police dispositions still weren't quite complete.

24 Q. Can we deal with that in just a second, but before we do, the

25 composition of the meeting and the function of the people attending, was

1 the accused accompanied by Milutinovic but also by a more personal

2 advisor?

3 A. Yes, he was accompanied by Milutinovic and, as I recall, by Goran

4 Milinovic.

5 Q. Tiny detail: The man Milinovic, what did he do in this or in any

6 other meetings that you saw him at? What service or function did he

7 appear to provide?

8 A. Milinovic had -- was present at almost every meeting we ever had

9 with Milosevic. He seemed to be a Chief of Staff. He was the note-taker,

10 he was the man who listened, who monitored, who, I guess, ensured that the

11 directions given by Milosevic were implemented.

12 Q. But he did make notes?

13 A. He seemed to make notes. I recall him having a notebook and a pen

14 there.

15 Q. Before we come to what it's going to be Djordjevic and Perisic

16 were able to tell you, was there at one stage a private meeting between

17 you and the accused where you walked to an adjoining room and spoke to him

18 about what he should do?

19 A. Yes, there was.

20 Q. Tell us about that, please.

21 A. I began the meeting with President Milosevic on the 20th of

22 October. There didn't seem to be a spirit of cooperation, and in front of

23 his advisors he seemed to be wanting to again backtrack and refuse to pull

24 the forces out and so forth.

25 I asked him to step aside, I spoke to him one-on-one, and I warned

1 him that if he didn't comply with the request of the United Nations, that

2 action would be taken against him in the form of bombing.

3 Q. His response?

4 A. His response was at first to shrug this off, and then on

5 reflection he decided that he would cooperate. He said he would ask his

6 generals -- tell his generals to cooperate.

7 Q. By his response did he indicate the ability to control his

8 generals or not?

9 A. He certainly indicated the ability to control his generals,

10 absolutely. No question about it.

11 Q. Turning now then to Djordjevic and Perisic and in that order, when

12 you spoke to Djordjevic, was there a map available?

13 A. Yes. We laid out a map in a room off the president's office

14 there, and General Djordjevic went through the map in some detail,

15 pointing out the location of each of the KLA remnants that were there.

16 Q. Also present at this meeting? Do you remember who else was

17 present?

18 A. General Perisic was there also and he then he began to talk about

19 the military dispositions that were present.

20 Q. Before we come to that, can you remember who else was present?

21 Doesn't matter if you can't at the moment.

22 A. I had with me some staff members. I had my political advisor,

23 Mike Durkee; staff assistant Colonel Dennis Dimengo; the intelligence

24 officer Brigadier General Glen Schaffer; and, as I recall, somewhere in

25 this meeting also a Major General Lukic came in, another MUP officer.

1

2

3

4

5

6

7

8

9

10

11

12 Blank page inserted to ensure pagination corresponds between the French and

13 English transcripts.

14

15

16

17

18

19

20

21

22

23

24

25

1 Q. In the course of your discussion with Djordjevic and in the

2 marking of the map, was it possible to count the number of alleged KLA

3 people concerning Djordjevic?

4 A. Yes, we added up these numbers and they totaled 410 KLA, according

5 to Djordjevic's analysis.

6 Q. Did you raise that with him; and if so, tell us what he said.

7 A. Well, I certainly did. I said that that you've forced -- words to

8 the effect, you've forced 350.000, 400.000 people out of their homes;

9 you're trying to destroy the province to get at 400 people. He said, "We

10 were within two weeks of killing them all. Why did you stop us?" And I

11 said, "Because you're targeting a civilian population and it's creating a

12 humanitarian catastrophe for your own people."

13 Q. Very well. Did you say anything further about the appropriateness

14 of otherwise of using force?

15 A. I made it clear that that wasn't appropriate, it was illegal,

16 against the law; it's not done.

17 Q. Now let's turn to Perisic who, of course, you'd recently seen

18 being slightly counter to the accused in his force analysis or more force

19 analysis about troop dispositions, hadn't you?

20 A. Mm-hmm.

21 Q. What happened with him on this occasion?

22 A. Well, he pointed out the military locations and he discussed the

23 size of the units that were out there, and so I had a very good feel for

24 the military dispositions and also how they were deployed tactically after

25 I finished the discussion with General Perisic.

1 Q. And by way of an example, how full was his information when he

2 identified a tank?

3 A. Well, it seemed to be very -- he was very forthcoming, I would

4 say. Well, we saw a couple of tanks here, and he would say, yes, that's a

5 company. Or -- I said, so if we saw a dozen vehicles here ... He'd say,

6 yes, that's a battalion. So it indicated that we were only seeing a small

7 portion of the total size of the force that was actually there.

8 Q. Was his approach for the army similar to or different from the

9 approach of Djordjevic for the MUP?

10 A. He seemed to be very -- he seemed to be very forthcoming in terms

11 of the discussion of the issues.

12 Q. Did this meeting result in any pullback; if so, complete or

13 partial?

14 A. This meeting resulted in a plan for a partial pullback of some

15 forces around Malisevo, as sort of a phase 1 of a pullback.

16 Q. And did this lead to another meeting four days later on the 24th,

17 this occasion General Naumann being present?

18 A. I took this partial pullback plan. I warned them at the time that

19 I didn't have the authority to negotiate anything for NATO. I took it

20 back to NATO. I said NATO is going to take a look at it, at all the

21 information you've given, and then we'll see what happens. So it turned

22 out that General Naumann and I were sent back on the 24th of October.

23 Q. Who was present at this meeting?

24 A. At this meeting we first began with President Milosevic, and there

25 was Milutinovic there, Sainovic, Perisic, and others.

1 Q. The meeting started when and lasted how long?

2 A. It went -- the initial meeting went around 5.00, and for maybe an

3 hour. Yeah. Yeah.

4 Q. What was your and Klaus Naumann's objective?

5 A. Well, the idea was to get a real pullback of all the forces and

6 comply with the UN Security Council Resolution. We had a NATO ACTORD in

7 place, there was a time deadline we were working against here, and we

8 wanted to say in very direct terms to President Milosevic that this was

9 the time that he must pull these forces back.

10 Q. At one stage did Perisic organise a quiet meeting with you or a

11 private meeting with you?

12 A. Yes. What happened was that Milosevic said, well, you'll have to

13 go back and continue to work this with these generals. So we went to

14 Perisic first and Perisic said we're the only -- he went through the

15 disposition, we talked about how many forces could be pulled back

16 reasonably, and -- but he said that only President Milosevic could give

17 the authority to pull these forces back. And he warned us, and he asked

18 me, he said, "Please not destroy the Yugoslav military." He said, "This

19 is the last democratic institution in Yugoslavia."

20 Q. When he said that, had he made arrangements about the number of

21 people present to hear him speak?

22 A. Yes, he had. He made sure everybody else was out of the room

23 except the interpreter.

24 Q. And as a result of this, did you have hopes that you might

25 accelerate the negotiations?

1 A. That seemed to be a very -- a promising attitude, but on the other

2 hand, we recognised that Milosevic had total control of what was going to

3 be decided.

4 Q. Did you then make a decision as to whether you were going to

5 achieve a full pullback or whether you needed to take things further with

6 the accused?

7 A. At that point it was clear that we'd gotten as far as we were

8 going to get with Perisic, and so we decided to go back and see Milosevic

9 and his team.

10 Q. On this occasion -- this again back at Beli Dvor. On this

11 occasion were others present, some you were meeting for the first time?

12 A. Well, Sainovic was there. As I recall, that's the first time I'd

13 met Sainovic. The police people came in, and we assembled the whole group

14 again. This must have been around 8.00 or 9.00 at night on that Saturday

15 night, the 24th of October.

16 Q. What was the accused's initial reaction at this part of the

17 adjourned or however you describe it meeting?

18 A. Well, we said to the accused essentially that we didn't get any

19 satisfaction, or this is not enough. And I said General Naumann has an

20 idea. General Naumann and I had talked about this previously, I turned to

21 him and he said, you're going to have to pull these excess police back,

22 just pull them all back, Mr. President. That's the only way to solve this

23 problem, that's the only way to get rid of the ACTORD. All the excess

24 police out. And Milosevic looked startled, and then he excused himself.

25 He went back into another room with his team. They were in there for

1 about 15 minutes, 20 minutes, and then they came back into the meeting

2 room with us. And Milosevic agreed in principle and then he said, you'll

3 have to continue the discussions now and work out the details of this.

4 Q. With whom were you instructed to work out details?

5 A. We went back at that point to the Serb Ministry of Defence, and as

6 I recall, it was Foreign Minister Milutinovic, General Perisic,

7 Djordjevic, Lukic, and I think Sainovic was still there. He went in and

8 out, as I recall.

9 Q. Did those negotiations continue until the early hours of the

10 following morning, the 25th of October, when you returned to see the

11 accused at Beli Dvor?

12 A. That's right. These negotiations ended, I think, around --

13 between 4.30 and 5.00 on the morning of the 25th of January.

14 Q. And you saw the accused at what time, roughly?

15 A. As I recall, it was around 9.00. We had the results at that

16 point. We cleaned up, I checked back in with headquarters, and so we went

17 back around 9.00.

18 Q. And now you were now in a position to require reduction of rather

19 more than you'd originally identified as the number?

20 A. Well, the problem was -- yes, that's correct, because General

21 Naumann had given the number of excess police at 3.000. The correct

22 number was 4.000, so we had to go in and see Milosevic. He said he wanted

23 to make some changes in the agreement. We said fine, we listened to him,

24 we said now we want to make a change in the agreement; it's not 3.000

25 police, it's 4.000 police that have to be pulled out.

1

2

3

4

5

6

7

8

9

10

11

12 Blank page inserted to ensure pagination corresponds between the French and

13 English transcripts.

14

15

16

17

18

19

20

21

22

23

24

25

1 Q. Did he accept that or did he resist that?

2 A. With reluctance, he accepted that.

3 Q. Did he attempt an argument about accepting more MUP presence?

4 A. Yes.

5 Q. How did he base that?

6 A. He essentially said he wanted to stand on the original 3.000

7 figure. He said, Where did you get the information of 4.000? I said it

8 came from your own documents. He had given us the documents as a result

9 of the 15 October meeting.

10 Q. The argument to have more MUP present, was that from Milosevic or

11 from someone else?

12 A. We were only talking -- as I recall the meeting, we were only

13 talking to Milosevic at this point. There had been discussion the

14 previous night with Milutinovic about the numbers of MUP and whether they

15 could be there and be out of uniform and so forth, but on Sunday morning,

16 Milosevic presented his changes that he wanted, we considered them, we

17 agreed to some of them, we explained the rationale for the document, and

18 then we presented this change and we said you're going to have to take

19 4.000 not 3.000 out.

20 Q. During this part of the negotiations, did there come a time when

21 the accused referred to historical events going back to 1946; and if so,

22 from recollection, can you tell the Court what it was he said and what

23 effect it had on you?

24 A. We achieved agreement and then it remained to type up the

25 agreement and get it signed, and so this must have been 10.30, 11:00 in

1 the morning or something, and President Milosevic was musing

2 philosophically about this. And he turned to me and said, "General

3 Clark," he said, "We know how to handle these murderers, these rapists,

4 these criminals." He said, "We've done this before." I said, "Well,

5 when?" He said, "In Drenica in 1946." And I said, "What did you do?" He

6 said, "We killed them." He said, "We killed them all."

7 I was stunned at the vehemence with which he spoke, and I just

8 looked at him. General Naumann looked at him, as I recall, and Milosevic

9 then said -- then he qualified his statement. He said, "Of course we did

10 not do it all at one. It took some time."

11 Q. Did he say how long it took?

12 A. I don't recall him saying that.

13 Q. Very well. The agreement being retyped, as you -- or typed, as

14 you've explained, when it was brought in for signature, what did you

15 notice about those who were to sign?

16 A. That Milosevic -- I noticed that Milosevic's name wasn't on the

17 agreement.

18 Q. Did you raise that with him? What was his reaction?

19 A. I did raise it with him. He said it wasn't necessary. I said,

20 well, it is necessary, and asked him to sign it.

21 Q. Did you indeed have to press him to sign it and explain the level

22 of people that you typically dealt with in your negotiations?

23 A. I did have to press hard on this because it's been my experience

24 in dealing with leaders in this part world, and with President Milosevic,

25 that they typically didn't like to sign documents because it meant then

1 that they could no longer disavow them. And I was determined that

2 President Milosevic would sign this. We had negotiated it with him, he

3 had the authority. And had he not signed it, my concern was that he would

4 have then been able to say, "Well, I didn't really see this," and he would

5 have been able to disavow it, so his signature on that document was very

6 important because it represented his promises to NATO.

7 MR. NICE: Your Honour, this document has already been exhibited

8 as Exhibit 94, tab 3. Perhaps it can just be laid on the overhead

9 projector for the witness to see the way the signature was placed.

10 I haven't got it on the screen I think myself. I don't know if

11 the Judges see it. Yes, there it is. Thank you.

12 Q. As we can see, no place on the typed version for the accused to

13 sign. You and General Naumann required him to sign. Just show us where,

14 please.

15 A. Right. This is the signature block. This was typed up in

16 Yugoslavia, in Belgrade, there while I talked to Milosevic. And these

17 were the signatures that he wanted on there and this is what was typed on

18 there, and of course it had our names, General Naumann's name and my name

19 on it, and then this is where he signed it at our insistence.

20 Q. Thank you very much. And this document is the record of the

21 meeting on the 25th of October of 1998, and that is agreed being set out

22 in an attached statement.

23 I turn to paragraph 30, the 20th of December of 1998. Did you go

24 to Belgrade on this occasion to meet a person new to you, Colonel General

25 Ojdanic?

1 A. I did. We knew that Perisic was in trouble and, based on the

2 atmosphere in the meetings in October, I was not surprised that he was

3 replaced by General Ojdanic, and I wanted to be certain that General

4 Ojdanic understood the obligations that Yugoslavia had accepted through

5 the Milosevic document.

6 Q. Who else was present on this meeting?

7 A. Well, Mr. Sainovic was there. Apparently I wasn't going to be

8 allowed to meet with General Ojdanic without Mr. Sainovic being present.

9 Q. At the time, what was your judgement about this? What did it say

10 about the level of confidence or trust reposed in Ojdanic?

11 A. It said that Ojdanic wasn't sufficiently trusted to meet alone

12 with me with the interpreters present, that he needed the political

13 guidance of Mr. Sainovic.

14 Q. Did you raise -- really to raise with Ojdanic the presence of VJ

15 tanks north of Pristina near Podujevo?

16 A. Yes. At that point, we had already seen the evidence of the

17 violation of Milosevic's commitments to NATO. They'd already been

18 deploying tanks north of Pristina along the main line of communication

19 near Podujevo, and I raised this with General Ojdanic, and he said, well,

20 it was a training mission. Well, these weren't training missions. And

21 under the agreement, they would have had to have been notified in advance

22 and they weren't.

23 Q. In giving his answer to you, did he speak without assistance or

24 did he discuss the matter at all first with Sainovic?

25 A. Each answer that he gave me was first coached with Sainovic or

1 cleared with Sainovic.

2 Q. You made an assessment of Ojdanic. I don't know whether you made

3 it there and then at this meeting or later, but what was your assessment?

4 A. I thought he was a place-holder; someone ambitious enough to want

5 the job and maybe someone who wouldn't ask too many of the tough questions

6 that gotten General Perisic in trouble.

7 Q. Racak. Following that event, did you and General Naumann travel

8 to Belgrade on the 19th of January to meet the accused and to attempt to

9 arrange investigation of the Racak incident?

10 A. Yes, we did.

11 Q. Did you have objectives about Ambassador William Walker as well?

12 A. Yes, we wanted Ambassador Walker to remain in the country, and we

13 only wanted Milosevic to reaffirm and maintain his commitments that he'd

14 made to NATO in the 25 October document.

15 Q. The meeting was in Beli Dvor. How long did it last?

16 A. This meeting in Beli Dvor lasted seven hours.

17 Q. Milosevic was accompanied by whom on his side?

18 A. I recall Mr. Milutinovic and Mr. Sainovic.

19 Q. Was one of the topics you raised in this long meeting the

20 possibility of the then-ICTY Prosecutor Louise Arbour being permitted

21 access to investigate the Racak massacre?

22 A. Yes. This was the first topic that we raised.

23 Q. The accused's reaction to it?

24 A. He employed several different lines of reaction. First he

25 reminded us that he had never agreed to the jurisdiction of the

1

2

3

4

5

6

7

8

9

10

11

12 Blank page inserted to ensure pagination corresponds between the French and

13 English transcripts.

14

15

16

17

18

19

20

21

22

23

24

25

1 International Criminal Tribunal inside Yugoslavia. We then said you've

2 promised to cooperate with the ICTY. Then he said there was no massacre,

3 and then he said, well, there were bodies. And then we continued to

4 persist. He said that Ms. Arbour could come as a tourist. First he said

5 she couldn't come, then she could as a tourist but she'd have to be

6 escorted, then she'd have to be escorted by the minister of justice. She

7 couldn't investigate anything. Then she could look at the bodies but she

8 could only look at them with other people present.

9 Q. As these proposals were made, did you relay them to Justice Arbour

10 for her reaction?

11 A. Yes, I did. I called her several times, in each case affirming

12 her opinion of the various offers that Mr. Milosevic made.

13 Q. How did your exchanges with the accused on this topic end?

14 A. Essentially it came to the point that he was not offering her a

15 satisfactory opportunity to come and do the investigation, and he

16 continued to dance around the issues and failed to comply with what was

17 required. So I posed it to him in very simple terms. I said, if you

18 don't want her to come, just say so, if you don't want her to come.

19 Otherwise, let her come, give her the authority to do the investigations

20 properly. He said, no, he didn't want her to come.

21 Q. Turning to Ambassador Walker, the accused's attitude in relation

22 to him, how was it resolved?

23 A. Milosevic continued to say that Ambassador Walker had violated his

24 responsibilities as a diplomat by labelling this as a massacre and that it

25 was the decision of the Serb government that he had to leave.

1 Q. Did you have a discussion, or a short exchange in any event, with

2 Milutinovic about this during a break?

3 A. Yes. By this time, as I recall, Milutinovic was no longer the

4 foreign minister of Serbia but he was the president of Serbia and

5 Milosevic had moved up to be president of Yugoslavia. But Milutinovic

6 said, on the side, he says, "Now this is going to be -- you could get a

7 compromise on this. This is -- listen to what -- what President Milosevic

8 is saying, he's saying in essence it's the will of the government. So

9 he's offering a compromise. He might not -- he might give in on this."

10 Q. In the event, there was any conclusion to this part of the --

11 A. No, there wasn't. There was not a conclusion other than the fact

12 that Milosevic seemed to be determined that Walker must leave.

13 Q. So far as the October agreements -- commitments were concerned,

14 what was the accused's attitude; compromising or uncompromising, what?

15 A. Milosevic told me, he said, "I'm not going to comply with these

16 agreements. I warned you that we would 'defend ourselves,' and so we're

17 not complying with these agreements."

18 Q. Your reaction to that? What did you tell him?

19 A. Well, I explained to him that his actions went well beyond any

20 reasonable defence, they were disproportionate, they violated the

21 agreements, and I said that "If you persist in this, NATO is going to tell

22 me to start moving aircraft." In other words, implying that he was not

23 living up to his terms of the agreement and NATO would then invoke the

24 ACTORD.

25 Q. Did you in your exchanges with the accused take a strong line,

1 make reference generally to what he was doing to his country?

2 A. Yes, I put this in terms that he could understand what the

3 consequences would be for him and his international position. I said

4 that, "NATO is going to be asking -- these leaders are going to be asking

5 what is it that you are trying to do to this country? You forced

6 professors to sign loyalty oaths, you have crushed democracy, you have

7 taken a vibrant economy, you've wrecked it. They're going to be asking,

8 what kind of a leader are you?"

9 Q. What did that lead the accused to say and do?

10 A. Well, President Milosevic became very angry and he then -- he

11 claimed that there were no loyalty oaths, that Serbia was a democracy, and

12 he accused General Naumann and me of threatening him. He -- he said, "You

13 are the war criminals."

14 Q. Did you try and calm him down?

15 A. Yes, I wanted to get back to rational discussion, and so he did

16 calm down, but we never made any more progress.

17 Q. And at one point in this meeting did you refer back to something

18 that you understood the accused had said to Ambassador Holbrooke?

19 A. Yes. Holbrooke had told me that Milosevic had said at one point

20 that Kosovo is more important than his neck. And I asked Milosevic to

21 confirm that, and he said, "No, that's not correct, I said it's more

22 important than my head," meaning that that was the centre of Serbian

23 civilisation, and that's -- that was the essence of what he was saying,

24 that that was the key to his political future.

25 Q. On the earlier occasion there had been reference to what happened

1 in 1946. Was there any further reference to that?

2 A. I believe there was.

3 MR. NICE: Your Honour, I'm three paragraphs short of the place

4 you've asked me to start a reconsideration. We've been going just an

5 hour. I don't know if that would be a convenient moment.

6 JUDGE MAY: Yes. We will take the break now.

7 General Walker --

8 THE WITNESS: It's General Clark, sir.

9 JUDGE MAY: I'm sorry, General Clark. We have to warn all

10 witnesses, as we do, not to speak about their evidence until it's over.

11 Could I do the same with you. We understand that you're giving a lecture

12 tonight on international relations. Of course that's fine, but formally I

13 must, of course, tell you not to discuss the case during it.

14 THE WITNESS: Of course.

15 JUDGE MAY: Yes. We'll adjourn now. Twenty minutes.

16 --- Recess taken at 10.32 a.m.

17 --- On resuming at 10.57 a.m.

18 JUDGE MAY: Yes Mr. Nice.

19 MR. NICE:

20 Q. Paragraph 36 in the statement serving as summary. General Clark,

21 when were you first aware of any FRY forces being involved in an offensive

22 in Kosovo?

23 A. Well, we started to see indicators of this and we began to hear

24 the indicators in January. We had already seen the forces violating the

25 agreement, we knew it was just a matter of time. As I said, in late

1 December we saw the forces moving out, we continued to see more forces

2 deployed.

3 Q. What about the Podujevo area? And what did you learn of and when

4 there?

5 A. Well, these were the first ones moving out in December 1998 that I

6 had warned General Ojdanic about on my visit down there, on about the 20th

7 of December of 1998 and -- and then we continued to see those forces

8 deployed out there. They manoeuvred around. And as far as we could

9 determine, what they were doing is they would go around a village, they

10 would stir up trouble, they would look for opportunities to use force, use

11 their guns, heavy guns and so forth.

12 Q. Again, and from memory if you can, of course, any elements of any

13 particular armoured brigades that you can bring to mind as having featured

14 at this time?

15 A. We continued to watch the 211th Armoured Brigade because it had

16 been pulled out. We had seen it in there earlier, it came back in to the

17 border and then began to deploy inside Kosovo again.

18 Q. And as to the Pristina Corps did you notice anything or were you

19 informed of anything as to its level of arms?

20 A. Well, we saw it being reinforced. It was the command and control

21 headquarters for the province and we saw reinforcements added to it so

22 that it became much more capable.

23 Q. Did you form a judgement as to the degree to which it had been

24 enlarged?

25 A. It may have been doubled in strength. It had a lot of additional

1 forces with it.

2 Q. Did you get to learn of something called a Joint Command? And if

3 the answer is yes, can you indicate your source of knowledge in the most

4 general terms, and what you understood that to be.

5 A. Well, I had two general sources of knowledge. First I had

6 received some kind of an indication when I'd first met Sainovic, and the

7 accused had introduced him as being someone who was in charge of this.

8 And then it was clear from other reliable sources that there had actually

9 been a joint -- some kind of a joint police and army headquarters

10 established to be able to deal with the region and that Sainovic had some

11 kind of a role in that. Perhaps a role that enabled him to undercut the

12 authority of the General Staff.

13 Q. What purpose could you see in the use of the Joint Command?

14 A. Well, first it was necessary to -- it would have been necessary to

15 coordinate the military and police activities on the ground, but it served

16 an adjunct purpose as well because it avoided the direct control of the

17 armed forces by the General Staff, and just following on from the comments

18 that Perisic had made to me, I assumed that there were still elements

19 within the General Staff which might have not been under the full

20 political control of President -- then President Milosevic, then thus

21 enabling him to bypass whatever resistance there might have been.

22 Q. In early March of 1999, did Secretary-General Solana give you some

23 instructions as to what you were to do so far as General Ojdanic was

24 concerned?

25 A. Yes. We continued to see the build-up of these forces and I

1 brought them to Solana's attention. He said okay, you got to call and ask

2 him -- tell Ojdanic to stop bringing those troops in. See if you can give

3 him a warning to stop doing it so it doesn't escalate the crisis further.

4 And I did call Ojdanic, and I told him we were watching what he was doing,

5 I asked him not to do this. He replied that -- that we were causing him

6 to do this, that he was doing this in self-defence against the threat of a

7 NATO invasion. And of course there was -- there was no possibility of

8 NATO invasion at that point.

9 I told Ojdanic that he shouldn't do it. He said that there were

10 forces coming in to Macedonia. I explained that these forces weren't

11 sufficient for an invasion and warned him that he was violating the

12 October 1998 agreement, that I had met with him on the previous December.

13 Q. With what military or other objective was the build-up of troops

14 consistent in your then-judgement, General?

15 A. All of this was consistent with the plan that we'd heard rumoured

16 to seek the final solution to this problem in 1999.

17 Q. Seek the final solution by what --

18 A. That is to say by using a large-scale ethnic cleansing operation

19 against the people in Kosovo.

20 MR. NICE: Your Honour, in light of the Chamber's observations

21 about paragraphs 39 to 45, with your leave I will deal with the first

22 sentence of paragraph 39 and with paragraph 41, subject to laying a

23 foundation for knowledge, and not the balance. I don't know if that will

24 be acceptable to the Chamber.

25 JUDGE MAY: It is simply a question of the extent of

1 cross-examination which is to be let in by it, but that's the only point

2 that we make.

3 MR. NICE: I quite understand that and we're grateful for the

4 concern that the Chamber has expressed through that question to me.

5 The first sentence of paragraph 39 is a simple point. Paragraph

6 41 is a matter of pattern evidence, pattern connecting between one

7 conflict and another, and I will be seeking first the witness's account of

8 his knowledge for that sort of material.

9 JUDGE MAY: Yes.

10 MR. NICE:

11 Q. General, on what day or approximately what day, in your judgement,

12 did the Serb offensive begin?

13 A. Either Friday the 19th or Saturday the 20th, as NATO could best

14 determine.

15 Q. In the course of your statement you deal with -- it happens at

16 paragraph 41 but don't refer to that, please. You deal with the pattern

17 of events, a typical pattern of events where the VJ and other units came

18 to be involved. Before I ask you for what that pattern was, can you

19 explain what your sources of information were in the most general terms so

20 that we can understand how you could form this judgement?

21 A. I got this from both the news media and other reliable sources.

22 So it was a combination of information.

23 Q. And what was the pattern of involvement of the VJ, the MUP, and/or

24 other units?

25 A. It seemed consistent with an earlier pattern that we had observed

1 over the decade of the conflict in the former Yugoslavia. Namely that the

2 military surrounds an objective, it blocks it, it prevents reinforcement

3 or exit. The police then go through, they arrest people by name if they

4 have particular information, that they search for. The paramilitaries

5 then go in and threaten people and rob them and so forth, and then people

6 are thrown out of their homes afterwards, all under the control of the

7 authorities.

8 Q. The pattern that you've identified, was it something in your

9 judgement as a soldier that could have happened with or without the

10 knowledge of the local VJ or the local MUP?

11 A. Could not have happened without the coordination of the VJ and the

12 MUP, and based on what I'd seen of the army, it had to have happened with

13 high-level command and control because this was still a disciplined force.

14 Q. I want to return to one topic you dealt with earlier and ask you a

15 couple of further questions about it. It's the air defence system. You

16 will remember telling the Chamber, that's paragraph 6, how you once told

17 Perisic to turn off the transmission system. Can you amplify what you've

18 already said about the air defence system, describing in a sentence what

19 your judgement was of its nature, contrasting it with or comparing it with

20 air defence system cooperation of, say NATO countries or the United

21 Kingdom and the United States, something like that?

22 A. Well, this was an integrated air defence system that was put

23 together coherently, laid out on a single template with various regional

24 reporting nodes and a dispersed early warning radars and target

25 acquisition radars and a certain number of missile launching sites and so

1 forth. And it was a leftover from Yugoslavia, and it was still fully

2 operational so it indicated to me that this was as though there had never

3 been a separation between the VRS and the VJ; it was simply an integrated

4 air defence system.

5 Q. How would that compare with, say, information sharing between

6 allies such as the United Kingdom and the United States, something like

7 that, in general terms without saying anything that would be revealing

8 about particular relationships current at the moment?

9 A. Well, under NATO agreements, countries delegated their air defence

10 to NATO but it was still under a sovereign agreement. So there was data

11 sharing between nations but it was data sharing over national systems. So

12 there was an international system on top.

13 So what you've got right here is what was formerly a national

14 system that had never been disestablished, it was still there in the case

15 of Yugoslavia. Integrated. That means all the pieces would fit together.

16 Information would flow back and forth. As far as we could tell, it was

17 seamless.

18 Q. And the significance of this, what does it -- and what does it

19 reveal about the relationship between the two armies concerned?

20 A. Well, as we looked at this, our reliable information seemed to

21 suggest that the separation of the two armies was -- it was political but

22 it wasn't substantive. In other words, that what had happened is that

23 when these two armies separated, as best we could figure this out,

24 soldiers who had lived in the republic -- in Bosnia-Herzegovina were taken

25 out of the VJ, but the officers were shuffled in a general sense. Some

1 officers volunteered to serve there apparently, others didn't. The

2 training was still done, as far as we could determine, inside and by the

3 VJ. Officer assignments were controlled by the VJ, and promotions and pay

4 were subject to the control of the VJ.

5 Q. Yes. I'm more concerned about being specific to the air defence

6 system, its integrated nature. What does that reveal about the connection

7 of the two armies?

8 A. It meant that there was an integrated control of the system so

9 that decisions to fire or decisions to turn on radars and so forth were

10 likely to have been made by Yugoslavia, not by the Serbs themselves in

11 Bosnia.

12 MR. NICE: Your Honour, I just now deal with the present position

13 so far as exhibits are concerned. If the summary of General Clark's

14 background may become tab 2. For the time being we pass over tab 3, but

15 I'd just ask the witness this as a fact.

16 Q. You wrote the book "Waging Modern War." Have you become aware

17 since writing it of any corrections communicated either to you or to your

18 publishers?

19 A. No. No.

20 MR. NICE: There's a chart that shows passages that the

21 Prosecution have asked the Judges to have in mind from that book, and

22 indeed at tab 4 -- at tab 3, you have, I think, the excerpts from the

23 book, Your Honours.

24 JUDGE MAY: But the question is this: We're not going to admit

25 that. Do you want -- sorry I don't understand the position. Are you

1 saying that the book -- that the accused is free to cross-examine on any

2 part of the book? That is not as I had understood the position.

3 MR. NICE: No, Your Honour, that's not what we're seeking,

4 especially in light of what Your Honour was saying this morning. So that

5 even the extracts, it may be, don't need to be produced.

6 JUDGE MAY: No, most certainly not because it seems to me there is

7 an unfairness in producing extracts which in any event are being given in

8 evidence largely.

9 MR. NICE: Certainly. At tab 5 I said there was an interest in

10 the exhibit from a museum. There is letter which doesn't need to become

11 an exhibit but can be distributed. Alternatively, it could become part of

12 tab 5, the map. It comes from the MacArthur Museum of Arkansas Military

13 History, and it explains the only change made to the map is the addition

14 of a pencil accession number, which it identifies. So it may be that this

15 letter could become part of tab 5, particularly if the Chamber is prepared

16 to accept the copy version of the map as tab 5 in order to allow the

17 original to return to the museum.

18 JUDGE MAY: Let's deal with that now

19 [Trial Chamber confers]

20 JUDGE MAY: Yes, we will accept the versions that we have; the

21 original can return to the museum.

22 MR. NICE: I'm grateful.

23 JUDGE KWON: Mr. Nice, there are two maps in tab 5, one of which

24 isn't dealt with.

25 MR. NICE: I think the actual exhibit, if that's what you're

1 referring to, is a map and an overlay. I haven't got my own copy at the

2 moment, but I think you'll find that is original map without markings.

3 JUDGE KWON: This is different.

4 MR. NICE: I'm sorry. What you have, I think --

5 JUDGE MAY: The second appears to be an unmarked version of the

6 first.

7 MR. NICE: That's right, because the exhibit itself, which is on

8 the easel, is a map with a plastic transparent sheet on top of it on which

9 markings have been made, so what you see in your two maps is the original

10 and the version as effectively marked by, says the witness, the accused.

11 Your Honour, looking at the exhibits, tab 6 has now been produced

12 as well.

13 That's all I ask of this witness at this stage.

14 General Clark, you'll be asked some further questions.

15 JUDGE MAY: Before you begin, Mr. Milosevic, there are some

16 matters the Trial Chamber has to decide.

17 [Trial Chamber confers]

18 JUDGE MAY: Mr. Milosevic, before you begin cross-examining, you

19 should know that there are parameters in this case beyond which you cannot

20 go. We've already made an order which restricts the scope of

21 cross-examination. I'm not going to go into the reasons for it again. It

22 is limited to the statement which the witness has given, which means that

23 you are restricted in a way that you are not restricted with other

24 witnesses, because then you're allowed to ask any relevant matters.

25 You're restricted in this case to the witness's evidence. So you can give

1 -- ask him questions, of course, about what he's said here but not about

2 other evidence. He's given no other evidence against you apart from the

3 matter which General Clark has dealt with here.

4 So your cross-examination in this case is limited.

5 We have refused to admit the book. It's not part of the evidence.

6 We therefore will not allow some free-ranging cross-examination through

7 it, but you may, if you are entitled to do so, and that will be a matter

8 of relevance, you can, if you wish, ask General Clark about passages of

9 the book which are related to his evidence, and that largely will be --

10 not entirely will be the matters which are already underlined.

11 So subject to those matters, of course you may conduct your

12 cross-examination, but you will be stopped if you go beyond those

13 particular bounds.

14 We've considered the time that you should have. We have in mind

15 that you should have some two and a half hours, if you so wish, to

16 cross-examine, and it's now for you to begin.

17 THE ACCUSED: [Interpretation] Mr. May, I don't understand at all

18 how you can limit my cross-examination to two and a half hours.

19 JUDGE MAY: Well, we would look at the time that we've given you.

20 It will be subject to others' convenience, but also if you use the time

21 properly and you want extra time, we would, of course, consider extending

22 it, but it depends on your use of it and it seems to me two and a half

23 hours should be adequate to deal with the limited matters which the

24 witness has given in evidence.

25 THE ACCUSED: [Interpretation] Very well, Mr. May. I see now that

1 you're introducing some restrictions linked to the witness's book, and the

2 witness's book is linked to the credibility of this witness, which means

3 that I couldn't question the witness even in relation to matters that have

4 to do with his credit. Is that what it means or am I after all allowed to

5 ask certain questions along those lines?

6 JUDGE MAY: You know exactly what you've been allowed to do. You

7 must ask questions within those limitations.

8 THE ACCUSED: [Interpretation] Very well, Mr. May. You will

9 probably allow me to ask at least some questions.

10 Cross-examined by Mr. Milosevic:

11 Q. [Interpretation] General Clark, in your book you say that the NATO

12 military action Yugoslavia in the spring of 1999 could not be called a

13 war.

14 JUDGE MAY: I don't think we're going to have that debate. That's

15 precisely what I've been talking about. You're not allowed a free-ranging

16 discussion about the NATO action. You're limited to the evidence which

17 the witness has given.

18 THE ACCUSED: [Interpretation] Mr. May, a fundamental question here

19 relates to the NATO strike against Yugoslavia. You're not allowing me to

20 ask the witness about the war against Yugoslavia, of which he was in

21 command, then I don't know really what you're letting me ask him about.

22 JUDGE MAY: Yes. The witness hasn't given any evidence about that

23 war. He has -- the Prosecution have chosen to call him on a limited

24 number of issues, and he has given evidence about a limited number of

25 issues. We will have to look elsewhere for evidence about those broader

1 issues which, if relevant for us to consider, you want to put in front of

2 us. You can't do it through this witness.

3 MR. MILOSEVIC: [Interpretation]

4 Q. General Clark, is it true that in an interview that you gave for

5 The New Yorker on the 17th of November, you said that the war that you

6 waged was technically illegal?

7 JUDGE MAY: Now, that is precisely the point. He's given no

8 evidence about the legality of the war. He's not gone into that in his

9 evidence. Now, concentrate on what evidence that he's given here and

10 you'll be allowed to ask the questions, but you can't go into these

11 broader questions with this witness. If they're relevant, we'll hear them

12 from another one.

13 THE ACCUSED: [Interpretation] I cannot understand, Mr. May, what

14 you are allowing me to ask this witness about. You're not letting me ask

15 him anything.

16 JUDGE MAY: Let me explain. The general has given evidence about

17 a series of meetings that you had with him. You yourself had with him in

18 1995, including comments which you have made. He has given evidence about

19 further meetings in -- at a time leading up to the events in the Kosovo

20 indictment. He has given evidence about meetings after Racak. Now, those

21 are all things, and they are meetings at which you were present, upon

22 which the witness has given evidence and you can cross-examine. The other

23 matters are dealt with, insofar as they are dealt with, by other

24 witnesses, and you can ask them about it. But as far as this witness is

25 concerned, and I thought it was plain, you can ask him about his evidence,

1 you can ask him about the statement he's made here, and your

2 cross-examination will be so confined.

3 So you can begin, for instance, by asking about the meeting in

4 August 1995 with Mr. Holbrooke and various other people. You can ask

5 about that, if you wish, if you challenge. If you don't challenge the

6 witness's evidence here, why then there's no need to cross-examine him.

7 THE ACCUSED: [Interpretation] Mr. May, of course I challenge the

8 testimony of General Clark, because he has distorted the facts to a

9 maximum degree, and I will show that, but it is absolutely not clear to

10 me --

11 JUDGE MAY: You better get on with it. Put the questions. You

12 make these allegations, the witness should have the chance to answer them.

13 General Clark -- just a moment. You've just made an allegation of

14 a sort which a witness should have the opportunity of dealing with.

15 General Clark, the accused alleges to us that he challenges your

16 evidence. Of course he's entitled to do that. But what he does say is

17 that you've distorted the facts about which you've given evidence. He

18 makes that allegation. Perhaps you would like to answer the allegation.

19 THE WITNESS: Well, Your Honour, I gave the testimony to the best

20 of my recollection. The facts are exactly as I recollect them, and those

21 are the facts I gave the Court.

22 JUDGE MAY: Yes, Mr. Milosevic.

23 THE ACCUSED: [Interpretation] Mr. May, just in order to clarify

24 the basic attitude towards me in relation to this witness, is it in

25 dispute that General Clark was in command of NATO during the war against

1 Yugoslavia? And is it disputed that that was his most important role in

2 everything that related to Yugoslavia? And is it in dispute that you're

3 not allowing me to ask him anything at all about that?

4 JUDGE MAY: That's right. Now, ask questions -- if you wish to

5 ask questions, concentrate on those matters that you've been told about

6 several times. Now, what we're doing is wasting time going over this.

7 You've heard the ruling, and you must abide by it, and you're taking up

8 your time, you see, arguing.

9 THE ACCUSED: [Interpretation] So I cannot ask him anything at all

10 about the war waged by NATO against Yugoslavia. Is that what you're

11 saying?

12 JUDGE MAY: Yes.

13 THE ACCUSED: [Interpretation] Well, Mr. May, that really is an

14 example showing that this is truly nothing more than a farce.

15 JUDGE MAY: Well, if you've got no questions for the witness, you

16 needn't ask them, but if you want to, you must get on with it now. I also

17 restrict your comments too.

18 THE ACCUSED: [Interpretation] Very well. Very well, Mr. May. I

19 will move on to questions that you will allow, though I think this is

20 scandalous that you are not allowing me to ask General Clark --

21 JUDGE MAY: That's exactly what I meant when I said you must

22 restrict your comments and not waste time.

23 MR. MILOSEVIC: [Interpretation]

24 Q. General Clark, you started your testimony with your biography;

25 isn't that right?

1 A. That's correct.

2 Q. In your biography, your CV, I see that you were involved - and I

3 don't know how to put it - in some indirect relationships with your former

4 president, Clinton.

5 THE WITNESS: Your Honour, I don't understand what the question

6 is.

7 JUDGE MAY: Don't -- General, if you don't understand a question,

8 you don't have to answer it.

9 MR. MILOSEVIC: [Interpretation]

10 Q. Very well, General. Were you for many years a very close friend

11 of your former president, Clinton?

12 JUDGE MAY: What is the point of all this? Now, you've been told

13 to answer the questions -- I mean, to ask relevant questions which the

14 witness can answer. That's not such a question.

15 THE ACCUSED: [Interpretation] Mr. May --

16 JUDGE MAY: May I point out to you you have yet to challenge once

17 a specific point in the witness's evidence.

18 THE ACCUSED: [Interpretation] Mr. May, it is relevant because in

19 the CV, it is stated that he only knew his former president superficially,

20 whereas he personally told me in Holbrooke's presence that they were very

21 close friends from Arkansas, that they went hunting together, that they

22 consult one another about everything. So it's quite different from what

23 is represented in his CV, and I want to establish that the witness is not

24 telling the truth starting from his CV.

25 JUDGE MAY: Yes. The witness -- you can ask the witness about

1 that. It's a conversation you allege you had with him.

2 Perhaps, General, you could just deal with that.

3 THE WITNESS: Your Honour, I did not tell President Milosevic that

4 I was a close friend of President Clinton. I've never been hunting with

5 President Clinton, and I did not and do not consult with President Clinton

6 about everything.

7 My relationship with President Clinton was formal, it was correct.

8 He was the president of the United States, I was an officer in the United

9 States army. I worked, during the time I was involved in the Dayton

10 negotiations, with the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, and as the

11 Supreme Allied Commander Europe, I had a dual reporting chain. I reported

12 through the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff to the secretary of

13 defence, and I reported to the NATO Military Committee and to the NATO

14 Secretary-General.

15 MR. MILOSEVIC: [Interpretation]

16 Q. So you are denying that in that building that you call a hunting

17 lodge, when Holbrooke, you, and I were walking around, that both you and

18 Holbrooke were speaking about your direct and close relationships with

19 President Clinton. So you're saying that you didn't say that and that we

20 didn't talk about that?

21 A. Your Honour, I have no recollection of any such conversation, and

22 I've never told anybody that I had a direct and close relationship with

23 President Clinton.

24 Q. You even spoke about hunting wild geese. Do you remember that?

25 A. Your Honour, I recall in the early days of the shuttle

1 negotiations that on one occasion President Milosevic, Ambassador

2 Holbrooke, and I went for a walk around the lake. During that period of

3 time, I talked about duck hunting in the state of Arkansas. It had no

4 relation to anything to do with President Clinton. It was no more than a

5 social conversation intended to further the course of negotiations to seek

6 an end to the fighting in Bosnia.

7 JUDGE MAY: Mr. Milosevic, I point out that in the CV which we

8 have in front of us in the exhibits, I may be wrong about this and I'll be

9 corrected if I am, but in it I think I can see no mention of President

10 Clinton. It certainly mentions Little Rock, but I can't see any other

11 mention at all, contrary to what you assert.

12 THE ACCUSED: [Interpretation] Because it is contrary to what I am

13 saying. What I'm trying to say is that at the time he was saying

14 different things from what is now in the CV. Of course he's now denying

15 that. But we can move on.

16 MR. MILOSEVIC: [Interpretation]

17 Q. General Clark, you said that we met for the first time in August

18 1995, and at the time, your delegation was complete. You remember that.

19 Kruzel and Frasure and Drew and the others, they were all there; isn't

20 that right?

21 A. Your Honour, in August of 1995, with the US delegation, we met

22 with Milosevic for the first time, as I recounted in my testimony.

23 Q. Is it true that this was the beginning of efforts to -- to

24 initiate comprehensive negotiations on peace in Bosnia?

25 A. Your Honour, this was the -- my first involvement in peace talks

1 aimed at bringing an end to the fighting in Bosnia. However, there had

2 been many efforts, as I'm sure the Court is well aware, for many years, to

3 end the fighting in Bosnia.

4 Q. But that was the first direct involvement of an official American

5 delegation headed by Holbrooke; isn't that right?

6 A. Your Honour, to the best of my knowledge, that was the first

7 engagement of Ambassador Holbrooke. It was my first engagement, it was

8 the first time the delegation was involved. Previously, Ambassador Redman

9 had been involved with something called the Contact Group peace plan, as I

10 recall.

11 Q. Apart from Redman, who was involved through the Contact Group, Bob

12 Frasure came to see me too, and he was a member of your delegation when he

13 came, wasn't he?

14 A. Your Honour, I have no direct knowledge of the specifics of

15 Ambassador Frasure's visit with Milosevic, but I do recall hearing that

16 Ambassador Frasure had previously met with Milosevic.

17 Q. Very well. Since you have no direct knowledge about it, though I

18 doubt it as you were all very well-informed, do you at least recollect

19 that at that meeting -- that the meeting was imbued with a spirit of

20 identical intentions, that is between those of Serbia and your delegation,

21 and that was to achieve peace. At least, that was what you were saying.

22 Isn't that right, General?

23 A. Your Honour, at the time of the meetings in August of 1995, we

24 were sounding out each of the factions and the participants in the

25 fighting in Bosnia in an effort to find a way to end the fighting there.

1 It was at that time unclear what President Milosevic's role might be, and

2 that was the purpose of the meeting.

3 Q. You came to see me precisely for me to assist in achieving peace

4 in Bosnia as soon as possible with the help of the authority enjoyed by

5 the Republic of Serbia and me personally. Isn't that right, General?

6 A. Your Honour, we came to see Mr. -- the accused because we wanted

7 to determine what his position would be on the strategic plan that we

8 developed for trying to end the conflict and whether he could in fact

9 provide a constructive role. We thought that he was going to be a factor,

10 perhaps the dominant factor, in whether or not we could achieve peace, and

11 we didn't know whether he would provide a constructive role or some other

12 role.

13 Q. General Clark, do you remember that for several months prior to

14 your inclusion there was a Contact Group plan on the table with Serbia,

15 the government of Serbia, and I personally had supported and insisted on

16 this Contact Group plan being adopted, and that plan implied a separation

17 of the entities in Bosnia-Herzegovina in the proportion 51/49 per cent.

18 Do you remember that?

19 A. Your Honour, over the previous period of time a Contact Group plan

20 did emerge which called for a 51/49 division of the country. To the best

21 of my knowledge, the Serbs had never agreed to this plan. It was unclear

22 to me personally what Milosevic's role might have been in proposing it,

23 supporting it, or encouraging others to support it. What we knew was that

24 the plan had not succeeded.

25 We also knew that Yugoslavia still had a major if not dominating

1 role in continuing the conflict against the Bosnian Muslim forces and

2 Croat forces, that there were heavy weapons used, that the logistics

3 seemed -- chain seemed to go back to Yugoslavia, and so it was unclear to

4 me what Milosevic's role might have been during this period.

5 Q. Very well, General Clark. It's quite clear to me what you're --

6 you wish to explain here, but let us go back to the meeting. That was the

7 first meeting that you had in the territory of the former Yugoslavia,

8 wasn't it? As a delegation.

9 A. Your Honour, this was our first meeting in the former Yugoslavia

10 with the then-head of Serbia.

11 Q. At that meeting, you presented a plan to me. You said that you

12 were leaving already on the following day and that you would be talking to

13 the leadership in Sarajevo headed by Izetbegovic; is that right?

14 A. Your Honour, that is correct.

15 Q. Do you remember that I suggested to you and that I cautioned you

16 not to go, as you had intended to go, via Mount Igman because there isn't

17 a proper road there? There's only a footpath there basically. It's very

18 dangerous. My suggestion to you was that you should take the normal road.

19 Do you remember that?

20 A. Your Honour, I don't remember all the ins and outs of this

21 dialogue. What I do remember is that we had asked the accused to assure

22 that we could get through on the normal road, that we wouldn't be stopped

23 by checkpoints and other things. And I do recall that the accused was

24 able to contact immediately, I believe it was General Mladic, at least

25 that's the impression that we were given, that I took from the meeting,

1 and he came back and said that he could not ensure that we could have an

2 unrestricted passage in at that time on the normal routes.

3 Q. General Clark, it's exactly the other way around. I'm going to

4 remind you. First of all, I'm not the one who went out in order to get

5 into contact with anyone. It's my chef de cabinet, Goran Milinovic, who

6 went out. I never left the room; I went on talking to you. Do you

7 remember that?

8 A. Your Honour, I don't remember the specific details of who left the

9 room or who didn't at that point.

10 Q. All right, General Clark. How come you don't remember that Goran

11 Milinovic brought a fax containing written guarantees from General Mladic

12 that you would not be stopped anywhere and that you can pass along the

13 normal route? That is what we discussed for a long time, because he came

14 back a few times in order to establish the exact wording of this guarantee

15 so that it would be absolutely certain that nobody would stop you, because

16 Holbrooke explained that it would be a great shame for the delegation if

17 anyone stopped them anywhere. I assume you should remember that. It was

18 the first meeting. Is that right or is that not right?

19 A. Your Honour, I don't have any recollection of this specifically.

20 I do remember that there was discussion about the route and that we were

21 unable to get satisfactory guarantees that we could go through it and that

22 that's subsequently why we decided we would go the Mount Igman route. I

23 don't have any recollection of the details other than that there was some

24 conversation with Mladic. That is to say that there was a report that

25 someone had had a conversation with Mladic. We didn't see that. We

1 stayed in the room. Who might have had that conversation and what was

2 carried back and forth and so forth, I don't recall.

3 Q. Don't you remember that you were given this guarantee into your

4 very own hands in writing that you would not be stopped anywhere and that

5 Holbrooke refused this out of his very own vanity and that's why four of

6 your men got killed on Mount Igman in the accident because the APC

7 tumbled? You cannot remember that, General Clark? Four of your fellow

8 members of the delegation got killed then because of your vanity.

9 A. Your Honour, I can assure you I was never given any guarantee in

10 my very own hands that we could travel on the normal routes. I have never

11 seen such a document. I have no recollection of it whatsoever. Of course

12 I remember the tragedy on Mount Igman. I think it's regrettable that it

13 wasn't possible to go in on the normal routes. And at the time, I viewed

14 that as a political decision by someone in an effort to delay our ability

15 to consult with the Bosnian Muslim authority, President Izetbegovic, and

16 Prime Minister Silajdzic.

17 Q. General Clark, this is really something that an honourable man

18 should not allow himself to say. You know full well the effort that we

19 made --

20 JUDGE MAY: Mr. Milosevic, this is all by way of comment. You've

21 heard what the witness has said. You challenge it. It doesn't seem to me

22 we're going to get very much further and not by sort of abuse of that

23 kind.

24 MR. MILOSEVIC: [Interpretation]

25 Q. And do you remember at least, General Clark, that I was the one

1 who categorically suggested to you not to go via Mount Igman by any means,

2 to take the road around? And that is why we made every effort in order to

3 obtain this guarantee for you. Do you remember that we -- that I

4 categorically advocated that, that you take the normal route, not the path

5 across Mount Igman, and that that is why every effort was made for you to

6 obtain this guarantee. You are speaking under oath here, and we have

7 witnesses about this.

8 A. Your Honour, we're talking about what I remember and what I don't

9 remember in some kind of a meeting. In this meeting, I don't remember any

10 of this emotion, I don't remember the sort of extreme efforts that the

11 accused is presenting here. I remember an ongoing discussion about

12 whether or not there were assurances that we could in fact get through the

13 checkpoints without being stopped. I recall the conclusion was that we

14 could not. I'm not sure who the conversations were alleged to have taken

15 place with, but I don't have these specific recollections. What I

16 remember is the conclusion of the meeting, and at the conclusion of the

17 meeting we determined that if we were going to consult in Sarajevo, we

18 would have to do so without going through the checkpoints.

19 Q. You decided not to go there out of vanity, not because you did not

20 get a guarantee. Isn't that right, General Clark? That's why your

21 friends got killed.

22 A. Your Honour, this is incorrect.

23 Q. All right, General Clark. Let us move on to other questions now.

24 You said that you were surprised that I was advocating that Serbia

25 play the main role in the negotiations. Isn't that right? Is that what

1 you said a few minutes ago?

2 A. Your Honour, my statement was when the accused said that we should

3 deal with him rather than Bosnian Serbs, the question then that struck me

4 was how is it that he could be so certain, and what legal mechanisms did

5 he have to be so certain that if a referendum were held on the peace

6 agreement inside Yugoslavia that it would apply to the Bosnian Serbs, the

7 leaders of a faction in another country. I was not certain and unclear as

8 to what his authority was over these people. It wasn't clear to me that

9 he had that authority, certainly not legally, and that was the basis for

10 our questions. His answer was, of course, that they would not resist the

11 will of the Serb people, and then I took advantage of the opportunity to

12 ask him personally that if it wasn't a matter of legality, then it was a

13 matter of influence and therefore what was the basis that we should assume

14 he had influence over these people if he couldn't have prevented the

15 killing of innocents at Srebrenica.

16 Q. General Clark, you've got everything mixed up now, but let us work

17 our way through this, detail by detail, and then we're going to clarify

18 it. Do you remember that precisely because Serbia, and I personally,

19 advocated the achievement of peace, and we conducted marathon negotiations

20 with the leadership of Republika Srpska that included the entire

21 leadership of Yugoslavia, Serbia, Montenegro, and Republika Srpska, and

22 the patriarch of the Serbian Orthodox church was present there, His

23 Holiness Pavle.

24 We reached agreement to establish a single delegation for the

25 peace negotiations, because this was in the interest of the entire Serb

1 people, both in the Federal Republic of Yugoslavia and Republika Srpska

2 and all other people who live in the territory of the former Yugoslavia.

3 Do you remember at least that?

4 A. Your Honour, over the several years of the conflict, we had seen

5 the accused's role as ambiguous; on the one hand seeming to encourage

6 conflict, and on the other hand seeming to at times support peace.

7 During the period when we began the negotiations, he seemed to be

8 attempting to portray himself as someone in favour of negotiations. And

9 in response to our challenge about his influence, the next time we saw

10 him, he reached into his pocket and he pulled out what we came to know as

11 the patriarch's letter, which was the idea that there would be a single

12 delegation that would be comprised of six people and that he would have

13 the controlling vote on this delegation. What went into the completion of

14 this, whether or not there were negotiations and how extensive they were,

15 we have no direct knowledge, I have no direct knowledge of that, but I do

16 recall the patriarch letter.

17 Q. General Clark, first and foremost, this was no letter of the

18 patriarch. There was an agreement reached between the leadership of

19 Yugoslavia, the leadership of Serbia, the leadership of Montenegro, the

20 leadership of Republika Srpska. In the presence of the patriarch we all

21 signed this letter, including the representatives of Republika Srpska and

22 the representatives of the Federal Republic of Yugoslavia, and finally it

23 was signed by the patriarch too because in this way he wanted to attach

24 importance to it and to bless this agreement.

25 THE ACCUSED: [Interpretation] After all, this agreement does exist

1 here, so during the break could you please get a copy of this out for

2 General Clark to see, because he is even twisting that.

3 JUDGE MAY: Mr. Nice, could you try and find it for the accused.

4 Now, what are you alleging that General Clark has twisted?

5 THE ACCUSED: [Interpretation] He's twisted everything, Mr. May.

6 He's twisted everything. He's twisted the fact that Serbia was the main

7 factor that advocated peace all those years, that Serbia made every effort

8 to have this peace achieved, and that in very, very intensive negotiations

9 this was precisely attained, that is that Serbia be actively involved in

10 the peace process, and the result of that was this agreement which

11 includes the patriarch's signature. Had this not happened --

12 JUDGE MAY: The General should be able to deal and can only deal

13 with what he knew himself about the Serb negotiating side.

14 General Clark, can you assist us as to what you knew of the

15 position on the other side in -- we are now talking about August 1995, as

16 to the composition of the other side or anything of that sort?

17 THE WITNESS: Yes, Your Honour. I do recall this letter. We

18 called it the patriarch letter. Of course it was an agreement, and it's

19 the agreement that the accused used to demonstrate that he was the person

20 who should be consulted and was the lead for the negotiations. We called

21 it the patriarch letter for short because it was signed by the patriarch,

22 among others, that's all.

23 MR. MILOSEVIC: [Interpretation]

24 Q. General Clark, then why did Serbia and why did I personally

25 advocate having a single delegation? Wasn't it in order to have a

1 guarantee that the peace agreement would be reached? Isn't that right,

2 General Clark?

3 A. Your Honour, I believe that the single delegation was the response

4 to the challenge that Ambassador Holbrooke presented in the first session

5 that we had where we asked him who should we consult with; should we

6 consult with the Bosnian Serbs or you? President Milosevic at the time

7 said, "You should consult with me, of course." And this is the piece that

8 I have testified about in my opening testimony. This letter merely

9 established the fact that he would have the ability to control the Bosnian

10 Serb delegation should there be disagreements.

11 Q. General Clark, even what you said just now is not true, because I

12 had advised you to talk to the leadership of Republika Srpska. Achieving

13 a single delegation was, for us, a question of life itself, of peace, of

14 attaining guarantees that peace would be achieved. If you want to

15 remember this, and if you want something to jog your memory, which is

16 obviously not your intention, I suggested to you precisely that you should

17 talk to the leadership of Republika Srpska and that Serbia and the Federal

18 Republic of Yugoslavia would give their maximum support to all peace

19 efforts. At that time, we trusted you. At that time we really believed

20 that you were interested in peace. Wasn't that the way it was, General?

21 A. Your Honour, what I remember of the first meeting was I don't

22 remember President Milosevic telling us we should not talk to the Bosnian

23 Serbs. What I do remember his saying was that he was the appropriate

24 person to lead the peace discussions.

25 JUDGE MAY: I think his suggestion was that he advised you,

1 General, to speak to the leadership of the Republika Srpska. Did he do

2 anything like that?

3 THE WITNESS: Your Honour, whether the accused advised us to speak

4 to them or not, I don't recall. At the time, they were both indicted war

5 criminals, and so it wasn't our desire to speak to either Karadzic or

6 Mladic.

7 MR. MILOSEVIC: [Interpretation]

8 Q. Now millimetre by millimetre, slowly but surely, General Clark,

9 you are approaching the terrain of the truth. You did not want to accept

10 my suggestions to talk to the leadership of Republika Srpska, and you

11 explained this by saying that you did not want to talk to individuals who

12 were indicted for war crimes. Is that right or is that not right, General

13 Clark? That is just what you've said.

14 A. What I just told you is my view. What I remember of the

15 conversation at the time, Your Honour, was we asked the accused, "Should

16 we be dealing with you or should we be dealing with the Bosnian Serbs?"

17 He said, "You'll deal with me, of course." And he said, "Give me the

18 terms of the peace agreement and we'll hold a referendum on them." I

19 don't remember what other sideline of the conversation there might have

20 been. I don't recall whether he would have ever said, "By all means talk

21 to the Bosnian Serbs." The main thrust of the conversation was to

22 establish him in a position of power and control over the process. That's

23 what I took from the meeting, that's what I've testified about.

24 Q. Well, didn't you say just a few minutes ago that you did not want

25 to talk to the leadership of Republika Srpska because you said that you