ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
Balkan Odyssey has been developed in the Apple Media Kit 1.2 (Apple Media Tool and Apple Media Tool Programming Environment), using a POET 2.1 database for archive management and Art of Memory's TextPak for text handling and hypertext. It has subsequently been converted to the EAD international standard for non-proprietary use on the internet. The project could not have been realised without the support of the following.
Apple Computer
Poet Software GmbH
Escom UK Ltd
ITN, in particular Nik Gowing
BBC Panorama, in particular Jane Corbin and Andrew Williams
Maggie Smart
Art of Memory, particularly Dan Crow
Domark Software, in particular Ashraf Nehru and Tony Racine
Direct Image Systems and Communications
Charlie Webster
We wish to acknowledge in particular the work of Bertie Ramcharan, for all his work in editing the ICFY papers, and to Martinus Nijhoff (PO Box 163, 3300 AD Dordrecht, the Netherlands) who are publishing these papers in book form and to whom all enquiries relating to the ICFY papers should be addressed.
Converted to EAD by Paul Watry and David Powell, November 2000.
Abdic, Fikret Leader of Muslim faction in Bihac; Muslim member of Bosnia-Herzegovina Presidency
Ahrens, Geert Chairman of ICFY Nationalities and Minorities Working Group; formerly member of EC Peace Conference on Yugoslavia
Ahtisaari, Martti President of Finland 1994--; Chairman of ICFY Bosnia-Herzegovina Working Group 1992--4
Akashi, Yasushi UN Secretary-Generals Special Representative for former Yugoslavia, 3 December 1993--
Akmadic, Mile Bosnian Croat leader; Prime Minister of Bosnia-Herzegovina 1992--3
Albright, Madeleine US Permanent Representative to the UN 1993--
Annan, Kofi UN Under-Secretary-General for Peacekeeping Operations
Babic, Milan Croatian Serb leader
Bartholomew, Reginald US Special Envoy to former Yugoslavia 1992--3
Bildt, Carl Co-Chairman of ICFY Steering Committee 1994--; former Prime Minister of Sweden
Boban, Mate Leader of the Bosnian Croats 1992--4
Boras, Franjo Bosnian Croat leader; member of Bosnia-Herzegovina Presidency
Boutros Ghali, Boutros UN Secretary-General 1992--
Briquemont, Francis UNPROFOR Commander for Bosnia-Herzegovina 1993
Broek, Hans van den EU Commissioner for External Affairs; Dutch Foreign Minister until 1993
Buha, Aleksa Bosnian Serb leader specializing in foreign affairs
Bulatovic, Momir President of Montenegro
Bush, George President of the USA 1989--92
Carrington, Peter Chairman of EC Peace Conference on Yugoslavia 1991--2
Charette, Herv de Foreign Minister of France 1995--
Chirac, Jacques President of France 1995--
Christopher, Warren US Secretary of State
Churkin, Vitaly Russian Special Envoy to former Yugoslavia 1993--4
Claes, Willy Secretary-General of NATO 1994--; Foreign Minister of Belgium until 1994
Clinton, Bill President of the USA 1993--
Cosic, Dobrica Serbian writer; President of the FRY (Serbia and Montenegro) 1992--3
Cot, Jean Commander of UNPROFOR in former Yugoslavia 1993--4
Cutileiro, Jos Secretary-General of WEU; chaired negotiations on Bosnia-Herzegovina as deputy to Lord Carrington in EC Peace Conference 1992
Demirel, Suleiman President and former Prime Minister of Turkey
Dole, Robert US Senator; Republican majority leader in Senate 1995--
Draskovic, Vuk Leader of the Serbian opposition party SPO
Eagleburger, Lawrence US Secretary of State 1992--3
Eide, Kai ICFY Ambassador; negotiator between the Croatian government and the leaders of the Croatian Serbs
Frasure, Robert, the late US Special Envoy to former Yugoslavia and US representative on Contact Group 1994--5
Galbraith, Peter US Ambassador to Croatia 1993--
Ganic, Ejup Vice-President of Bosnia-Herzegovina; Yugoslav member of Bosnia-Herzegovina Presidency, but SDA leader; Vice-President of Croat--Muslim Federation of BH 1994-- Gligorov, Kiro President of Former Yugoslav Republic of Macedonia
Goldstone, Richard Chief Prosecutor, Yugoslav War Crimes Tribunal
Granic, Mate Croatian Foreign Minister 1993--
Hadzic, Goran Croatian Serb leader
Hall, Peter Deputy to Lord Owen in ICFY 1992--3; member of EC Peace Conference on Yugoslavia; former UK Ambassador to Yugoslavia
Hannay, David UK Permanent Representative to the UN; retired 1995
Helveg-Petersen, Niels Foreign Minister of Denmark 1993--
Holbrooke, Richard US Assistant Secretary of State
Hurd, Douglas UK Secretary of State for Foreign Affairs; retired 1995
Izetbegovic, Alija Founding leader of SDA; President of Bosnia-Herzegovina
Janvier, Bernard Commander of UNPROFOR in former Yugoslavia 1995--
Jovanovic, Vladislav Former Foreign Minister of FRY; former Foreign Minister of Serbia
Jupp, Alain Prime Minister of France 1995--; Foreign Minister of France 1994--5
Karadzic, Radovan Leader of the Bosnian Serbs
Kinkel, Klaus Foreign Minister of Germany
Kljujic, Stjepan Croat member of Bosnia-Herzegovina Presidency, removed by Boban 1992, reinstated 1994
Kohl, Helmut Chancellor of Germany
Koljevic, Nikola Bosnian Serb leader; former Serb member of Bosnia-Herzegovina Presidency
Kooijmans, Peter Foreign Minister of The Netherlands 1993--4
Kozyrev, Andrei Foreign Minister of Russian Federation
Krajisnik, Momcilo Bosnian Serb leader; former President of the Assembly of Bosnia-Herzegovina
Lake, Anthony US National Security Adviser
Lanxade, Jacques French Chief of Defence Staff
Lapresle, Bertrand de Adviser to Carl Bildt; UNPROFOR Commander in former Yugoslavia 1994--5
Ludlow, David Special Assistant to Lord Owen 1992--3; representative of ICFY Co-Chairmen on Contact Group 1994
Major, John Prime Minister of the United Kingdom
Manning, David UK representative on Contact Group 1994
Martic, Milan Leader of the Croatian Serbs
Masset, Jean-Pierre Deputy to Lord Owen 1993--4
Mazowiecki, Tadeusz UN Special Rapporteur on human rights in former Yugoslavia 1992--5
Mrime, Jean-Bernard French Permanent Representative to the UN
Mierlo, Hans van Foreign Minister of The Netherlands 1994--
Milosevic, Slobodan President of Serbia
Mitsotakis, Constantine Prime Minister of Greece until 1994
Mitterrand, Franois President of France until 1995
Mladic, Ratko Commander of the Bosnian Serb army
Morillon, Philippe Commander of UNPROFOR in Bosnia-Herzegovina 1993
Nambiar, Satish Commander of UNPROFOR in former Yugoslavia 1992--3
Ogata, Sadako UN High Commissioner for Refugees
Okun, Herbert ICFY Deputy to Cyrus Vance 1992--3
Panic, Milan Prime Minister of FRY (Serbia and Montenegro) 1992
Papoulias, Karolos Foreign Minister of Greece
Perry, William US Defense Secretary
Plavsic, Biljana Bosnian Serb leader; former member of Bosnia-Herzegovina Presidency
Poos, Jacques Foreign Minister of Luxembourg
Powell, Colin Chairman of US Joint Chiefs of Staff 1990--4
Ramcharan, Bertie Director of ICFY Secretariat
Redman, Charles US Special Envoy to former Yugoslavia 1993--4; member of Contact Group
Renwick, Robin UK Ambassador to the US; retired 1995
Roberts, Ivor Charg dAffaires, UK Embassy, Belgrade, 1994-- Robinson, Michael Charg dAffaires, UK Embassy, Belgrade, 1992--4
Rose, Michael Commander of UNPROFOR in Bosnia-Herzegovina 1994--5
Rugova, Ibrahim Leader of the Kosovar Albanians
Sacirbey, Muhamed Foreign Minister of Bosnia-Herzegovina 1995--; BH Permanent Representative to the UN 1992--5
Sarinic, Hrvoe Head of President Tudjmans office; former Croatian Prime Minister
Sdouy, Jacques-Alain de ICFY deputy to Lord Owen 1994--5; French representative on Contact Group
Seselj, Vojislav Leader of Serbian Radicals and leader of Serb militia
Shalikashvili, John US Chairman of Joint Chiefs of Staff; former SACEUR
Silajdzic, Haris Prime Minister of Bosnia-Herzegovina; former Foreign Minister of Bosnia-Herzegovina
Smith, Rupert Commander of UNPROFOR in Bosnia-Herzegovina 1995--
Solana, Javier Foreign Minister of Spain
Sommaruga, Cornelio President of the International Committee of the Red Cross
Steiner, Michael German representative on Contact Group
Stojanovic, Svetovar Personal adviser to FRY President Cosic
Stoltenberg, Thorvald ICFY Co-Chairman 1993--
Susak, Gojko Croatian Minister of Defence
Szasz, Paul ICFY legal adviser; representative of ICFY Co-Chairmen on Contact Group; former deputy head of UN legal department
Tarnoff, Peter US Under-Secretary of State for Political Affairs Thomas, Charles US Envoy to former Yugoslavia 1994; member of Contact Group
Tudjman, Franjo President of Croatia
Vance, Cyrus Personal Representative of UN Secretary-General to former Yugoslavia 1991--2; Co-Chairman of ICFY Steering Committee 1992--3; former US Secretary of State
Wahlgren, Lars Eric Commander of UNPROFOR in former Yugoslavia 1993--4
Wilson, John UNPROFOR liaison officer on ICFY
Woerner, Manfred, the late Former NATO Secretary-General
Yeltsin, Boris President of Russian Federation
Zotov, Alexandr Russian Special Envoy to former Yugoslavia 1994--
Zubak, Kresimir Bosnian Croat; President of the Croat--Muslim Federation 1994--
Alija Izetbegovic was born in 1925 and educated as a lawyer. He is one of the most enigmatic of all the political personalities in the former Yugoslavia. Of the six Presidents of the former Yugoslav republics, he is the only one who has never been a Communist, and it showed in the way he talked and thought. A question often asked is whether Izetbegovic is an Islamic fundamentalist. The answer is difficult to give in terms of 'yes' or 'no'. He is, I am sure, a deeply religious man; which allows him to take a long view of the war as a struggle for minds as well as territory; but as to whether he is a fundamentalist, very few know for certain. If he is, he hides it behind a self-disciplined portrayal of himself as a secular politician, as any dissenter learnt to do in Tito's Yugoslavia. I found that Izetbegovic's deepest feelings became apparent from time to time when he openly agonized -- unlike some Muslim leaders -- over whether to accept the compromises in various peace settlements. He had two loyalties, multi-ethnic Bosnia and his own Muslim party, the SDA, but it was religion that gave him an inner certainty and composure. As with many people who have spent time in prison for their beliefs, there is an inner toughness and a surrounding hard shell which is difficult to penetrate. In personal contact I always liked him and wanted to help him; as I got to know him I found him a perplexing personality: I would go out of my way to talk informally to him over a meal, but he kept himself to himself and was easiest to approach through his son or daughter, both delightful people who were part of his political entourage.
My favourable appraisal of Izetbegovic is not shared by others who have also spent long hours negotiating with him. Some feel he is the most difficult of all the people they had to deal with in the former Yugoslavia, manipulative and untrustworthy and that his closest advisers are shadowy fundamentalists who play on his chronic indecisiveness and make him hold out against any compromise; and yet in fairness he has had by far the most difficult position to defend and sustain. He built and rallied his much weaker army over three years and clung on to the legitimacy of his role as President of a country that has never known peace since being independent. At the same time he convinced the world that he speaks for the majority, not just for the largest group, namely the 44 per cent Bosnian Muslims, but for all those who had lived in what many believed was but a volcanic peace in Bosnia-Herzegovina even prior to the declaration of independence.
For Izetbegovic his religion is his life, and history did not intrude. Yet, there are no outward and visible signs that he is a Muslim. He, his son and his daughter dress and act as Europeans. He wanted to be President, by democratic decision, of a Muslim state accepting full multi-ethnic participation in that state. Yet he did not appear to comprehend how inflammatory it was to some Serbs and Croats for him to visit Libya in March 1991 to arrange a $50 million loan, and in July to ask that Bosnia-Herzegovina, while still part of Yugoslavia, should be an observer at the meetings of the Organization of the Islamic Conference.
Izetbegovic, Cosic, and Tudjman are nationalists if nationalism is defined as 'simply the determination of a people to cultivate its own soul, to follow the customs bequeathed to it by its ancestors, to develop its traditions according to its own instincts'. But is their nationalism a more malignant force than this? Serbian and Croatian nationalism, as it developed in the latter half of the nineteenth century, carries with it an inherent tendency to cross over into racial and religious discrimination and to ignite passions that feed on violence. Bosnian Muslim nationalism has historically been more benign, but the party Izetbegovic leads, the SDA, became ever more intolerant under the pressures of war. It was a reflection of Izetbegovic's pre-war view that the state was a means to an end, not an end in itself, that he opposed the break-up of Yugoslavia, was reluctant to press for an independent Bosnia-Herzegovina and was against recognition being granted to Croatia and Slovenia. Once nationalism had found independent expression in Croatia and Slovenia, he felt he had to establish Bosnia's independence from Serbia. Izetbegovic knew that this would lead to bloodshed. In his Islamic Declaration he warned that 'the Islamic renaissance cannot be imagined without people prepared for enormous personal and material sacrifice'.
Dobrica Cosic had been put into the role of President of the Federal Republic of Yugoslavia (Serbia and Montenegro) by Milosevic in June 1992 in an attempt to regain the support of the intelligentsia who had moved away from Milosevic. Cosic is a novelist of distinction and his writing has been very influential in buttressing the respectability of the Serb nationalists.
Cosic was a dissenter under Tito and actually protested publicly when Izetbegovic was imprisoned by Tito for his political beliefs. The Serb Orthodox Church is important to Cosic for its national identity, but I never sensed that he was a deeply religious person. Visiting him in his house in Belgrade and having a meal with him and his wife, I felt Serbian history and heartbeat were more important than religion.
As President Cosic in October and November 1992 Cosic appeared to have distanced himself from Milosevic and was ready to play an active role as President of the FRY and to give support to Milan Panic. Cyrus Vance and I encouraged him as the legitimate counterweight to Panic's flamboyance. We thought he might be ready to build a sufficient electoral power base to challenge Milosevic in the elections for the Serbian Presidency, and indeed for a short time in November it looked as if Cosic might even beat Milosevic. But illness and reluctance to become an elected politician meant that he bowed out of the elections leaving Milan Panic to put up a good performance, but lacking Cosic's identity as the father of Serbian nationalism, Panic lost. Cosic, after he was removed by Milosevic in the summer of 1992 fought back. On 2 June Cosic hit back at Milosevic in a very tough statement to the Yugoslav news agency, Tanjug, in which he comprehensively attacked the alliance between Milosevic's Socialists (SPS), and Seselj's Radicals (SRS) and also Milosevic personally. The statement was not broadcast by state TV or radio and its impact on SPS and SRS supporters outside Belgrade was therefore negligible.
Cosic's spirited defence began by recalling the platform on which he had accepted the Presidency -- constitutional reform and a democratisation of society -- and outlining how the SPS and SRS had blocked those reforms. His lack of power in the face of this coalition had meant that for some time Cosic had warned about this de facto coalition between the two parties which he faced. But he had been persuaded by 'domestic and foreign advisers' not to resign. Slowly Milosevic had taken power over the Federal Ministry for the Interior and the Federal Security Forces. Milosevic had appointed the Serbian Foreign Minister, Jovanovic, as Federal Foreign Minister, and by placing others in key Ministries was ensuring that Federal power was wholly in his hands. This had driven Montenegro to adopt an independent foreign policy, further diminishing Federal authority so that all that had remained of the Federation was the army and the burden of a cumbersome and expensive bureaucracy.
Cosic went on to offer an explanation of why Milosevic deposed him in a coup d'tat...with the prearranged support of Seselj. Milosevic, the ideological son of Stalin and Tito, could no longer tolerate Cosic's opposition to his policies and despotic self-will and, obsessed with his love of power, seized on oral reports of Cosic's discussions on 27 May with the army as preparations for a putsch, inventing the stenographer's record in a typically communist scenario of discovering a conspiracy, as a reason to instruct the SPS to vote with Seselj against Cosic. Cosic claimed there had been no stenographer's record, and challenged Milosevic to produce a copy. The deposition procedure in the Federal Parliament had been a classical Stalinist act by two totalitarian parties, which would cause great political and moral damage to Serbia and Montenegro and further diminish the nation's image. Although he had no interest in his personal rehabilitation, he called on the Federal Parliament to form a State Commission to investigate the stenographer's record. If it failed to do so, the Federal Parliament would have confirmed that totalitarianism had legitimately re-established itself in Yugoslavia in the form of the SRS and SPS.
Dr Radovan Karadzic, despite having opposed my appointment, initially went out of his way to be welcoming. His English is excellent and he can be a gracious host. In 1968 Karadzic made an emotional Serb nationalist speech from the roof of the Faculty of Philosophy in Sarajevo, after which he claimed he was put under constant surveillance by the Yugoslav secret police. In 1989 he was chosen as president of the Serbian Democratic Party (SDS) -- as he tells people, because nobody else wished to take on the job. At the founding congress of the SDS, Izetbegovic was guest of honour and received the longest applause. In the summer of 1990 Karadzic and Izetbegovic went to a memorial meeting for Serb and Muslim Second World War victims on a bridge over the Drina river in Foca, and both said that 'blood must never flow down the Drina river ever again.' At the time, Karadzic was reported as saying, 'our Muslims are much closer to us [Bosnian Serbs], than many Christian peoples in Europe'. I watched as, hour by hour, that relationship deteriorated. At times one saw a flicker of the old relationship and Karadzic would call Izetbegovic 'Alija', but Izetbegovic never referred to the other man in my hearing as 'Radovan'. They talked together eventually without our presence, but it was a guarded and at times hostile relationship.
At times I fell into the trap of underestimating Karadzic. His theatrical appearances, flamboyant statements and record as a gambler gave the impression of his being a political lightweight. He is, however, not as confident as his tall, commanding stature suggests: his bitten-down fingernails are witness to an anxiety underneath. Having worked in hospitals abroad, he is a far more cosmopolitan figure than most Bosnian Serbs. He claims never to have been a true Communist and, emphasizing his churchgoing and commitment to a market economy, he began increasingly to distance and distinguish himself from President Milosevic, encouraging the press during 1994 to depict him as the heir to the Mihailovic tradition.
After an initial hesitation in April 1993 I was in little doubt that Milosevic's breach with Karadzic had by August 1994 developed many of the ingredients of a grudge match. They both wanted to be king of the Serbs. Karadzic was trying to be the successful war leader, a non Communist and a devout Orthodox Christian in the Mihailovich tradition. Milosevic was trying to be the leader who, having fought for and won all the essential Serb interests during the break up of Yugoslavia, was now bringing peace and prosperity. I saw no reason for us to be involved in their feud which was why I was opposed to not talking to the Bosnian Serbs for I could envisage circumstances where their interests might prove to be closer to ours than Milosevic's. This happened for example over Croatia. when the Bosnian Serbs did not attack the Croatian government forces in Western Slavonia when they attacked the Croatian Serbs in the spring of 1995. President Tudjman kept up a private dialogue with the Bosnian Serbs throughout the time they were not talking to President Milosevic.
Karadzic was also better than any other Serb except Milosevic at negotiating, usually keeping cool, knowing when to give ground to protect a vital interest and on occasions producing imaginative solutions. But he lacked Milosevic's boldness and self-confidence. He was very careful not to alienate his own constituency. He never allowed any difference to emerge between himself and Krajisnik, and often asked for solutions to be imposed on him, frequently claiming he would be killed by his own people if he agreed to some difficult compromise. His stance was to hold on to what he had in terms of territory and play for time. When his split with General Ratko Mladic developed in 1995 he blamed the Army for losing ground and would never have agreed at a negotiating table to reduce Serb land holdings to 49 without pressure from Belgrade.
Karadzic's especial skill, and it is a considerable one, is to deflect and defuse a hostile question with an innocent facial expression and apparent concern in his voice. When asked, 'Why are you shelling Sarajevo?', he replies, 'We're not, it's the Muslims. We're not attacking, just protecting our homes in and around Sarajevo.' He claims, 'Muslims were never our enemies. Only the Ustashas are our natural enemies. Serbs and Muslims have never clashed, and history proves this, unless a third party was involved.' Again and again I have heard him claiming, 'Serbs and Croats were never enemies before 1918, when they entered a joint state. Serbs and Croats will never be enemies once they separate their states.' He once said, 'Serbs cannot live together with Muslims and Croats. I told Owen not to dump us into the same sack like cats and dogs.'
Perhaps because we have both trained as physicians I have found it hard to believe that he could be a practitioner of ethnic cleansing and espouse such an odious philosophy, so totally at odds with the Hippocratic Oath. I initially hoped that there was more respect within the inner man for human life and dignity, but I was doomed to disillusion. He is a poet and has written four books, but despite my own love of poetry, I never talked of poetry to him. I suppose it says something that I have never wanted to talk about medicine with him either, even when we were discussing inconsequential matters. We had to socialize over meals while we negotiated but I never wanted a relationship with him of any degree of intimacy.
It will be for the Tribunal to determine what did or did not happen in Bosnia-Herzegovina in 1992, who really was in control of the Arkan and Seselj irregulars, who controlled all elements of the Bosnian Serb army and the local militia or police and who could have stopped in the detention camps, the rapes, the torture and killing of many Muslims. Yet I am satisfied that in and around Bijeljina in 1994 and 1995 the writ of the Bosnian Serb political leaders and its so-called President, Radovan Karadzic, did run and had he wanted to intervene many more Muslims could have stayed and lived in their homes in that area and not felt they had to flee to Tuzla. The same applies to Banja Luka. In both places there were few security fears and no possible chance that the Muslim population could threaten the Serb way of life. Leaving to one side the findings of the Tribunal in the Hague, the medical profession in Belgrade in my judgement should never let Dr Karadzic practice medicine again in their country.
It is for the War Crimes Tribunal to determine whether Radovan Karadzic is a war criminal. And when I heard that Judge Goldstone had issued an arrest order as Chief Prosecutor for his trial, I felt not one tinge of sympathy, looked for not one shred of justification for his conduct and when I stepped down from being Co-Chairman in June 1995 I was glad that I would not have to negotiate with him under such an order or indeed ever have to meet him again.
In Sarajevo in late December 1992, when I stayed for a few days, during private late-night meetings I managed to probe some distance behind the front that Ejup Ganic presents to the world. He is the most complex person in the Bosnian government. Ganic was born in the Sandzak in 1946. In November 1990 he was elected to the Presidency in the vacancy for a 'Yugoslav' and was made Vice-President of Bosnia-Herzegovina in 1992. Though technically representing a minority, he soon became identified as a member of the Muslim Party of Democratic Action, the SDA, and became its Vice-President in 1994.
He has one central policy objective, namely to involve the US army as a combatant in the Bosnian fight to defeat the Serbs. As he sees it, to achieve this aim -- of which he makes no secret -- he is entitled to use whatever means are necessary. To him the end justifies those means. He orchestrates Bosnian government propaganda, operating at every level in the US -- at the White House, on Capitol Hill and on the television screens in American homes. He has worked for Union Carbide in America and has had six textbooks on engineering published there, and he knows America and its people very well.
There is a doggedness about his character that shows itself in his readiness to spend much time in Sarajevo and take the risks of its citizens; but the focus of his attention and his travels is on the US. He knows that you have to spend money to be heard in America and is ready therefore to employ media consultants and use all the modern techniques of communication. He believes the Serbs listen to no one but respond to power. His message to America is simple -- 'we are the victims' -- and like all good propagandists he does not shrink from repeating the message over and over again. He authorizes publicity to depict Muslims as victims. He fears Sarajevo going off the headlines, for that will mean less pressure on US politicians to intervene. This is a very credible but ruthless strategy from the Muslim point of view and its influence is too often underrated, for Ganic's message is relayed on by Sacirbey and Silajdzic, both skilled in television and radio. Unfortunately in 1995 he had a bad car accident near Mostar and has had to have a long spell recuperating.
Fikret Abdic, though later often described as a businessman and rebel Muslim leader, was in fact a member of the collective Presidency which was the governing body of Bosnia-Herzegovina; popular as a secular Muslim, he had polled the largest number of votes. The snag was that Abdic preferred to stay during the war in the Bihac region. He talked rapidly and spoke no English; he was forthright, confident and different from the Sarajevan Muslims. He was in favour of negotiating and compromising with Croats and Serbs to achieve a settlement, and scathing about those Muslims who wanted to block any such settlement. In many ways it was easier for him to adopt this approach than Izetbegovic, for he had a regional constituency who for centuries had traded with Croats and Serbs in and around Bihac. During the Second World War Bihac Muslims had trodden an ambivalent path between the Partisans, the Croatian Ustasha and the German and Italian invaders. At this stage Abdic was semi-detached from the Sarajevo government and had no time for Izetbegovic's attitudes, believing that he was perpetuating the war, and made this unequivocally clear. I urged him to attend Presidency meetings in Sarajevo more often and to use his influence there.
Franjo Tudjman was born in 1922 in Veliko Trziste in Croatia. He joined the Partisans in 1941, yet he is never very keen to talk about this period of his life. Having fought the Fascist Pavelic and his Ustashas, he now depends on much of Pavelic's indigenous support. It was deeply provocative, even allowing for its historic links to the Serbs in Croatia, for his government to choose to adopt the same symbol that Pavelic used, the red-and-white chequerboard, for the flag of an independent Croatia. But for Tudjman I suspect his Second World War years when he fought Pavelic represent the indiscretion of youth. Far from using his Partisan past to bind up the wounds between Croats and Serbs living in Croatia, he prefers to speak with pride of having been arrested and sentenced by Tito's regime to two years' imprisonment in the early 1970s, to play up his part in the 'Croatian Spring' unrest and his imprisonment for 'hostile propaganda' in 1981. His political development probably started while he was a senior figure in JNA intelligence, watching over the very Croatians living in exile who later became some of his most fervent supporters. He left the JNA with the rank of major general in 1960. As a civilian he worked as Director of the Institute for the History of the Workers Movement in Zagreb and served on the Executive Committee of the Matica Hrvatska, the Croatian cultural society, where the Croatian intelligentsia had gathered until it was suppressed by Tito. In 1967 he published a 'Declaration on Croatian Literary Language' and then resigned from all his quasi-government posts and was expelled from the League of Communists of Yugoslavia. He was stripped of his military rank in 1981. Tudjman's nationalism is worn openly on his sleeve. His soldiers know that he is ready himself to fight for Croatia. Under his Presidency Croatia has not developed all the maturity of a true democracy -- there are, for example, very strong government controls on the press and television -- but there is no doubt that Tudjman is the genuine choice of his people to be their leader. He became Chairman of the Croatian Democratic Union (HDZ) in early 1990. In April 1990 he was appointed President by their Parliament, the Sabor, and he was directly elected President in the 1992 elections.
Tudjman's wartime leadership will be judged well by his fellow countrymen. In 1991 he held out against the Serbs and, with one-third of his country as he saw it occupied, accepted the Vance ceasefire agreement of January 1992 only as a way of gaining a pause to build up Croatia's military strength and to hit back against the Serbs. He goes through the rituals of diplomacy, pays lip service to the value of negotiations, but would strike militarily as and when he thought he could get away with it. Up to October 1995 he has chosen cleverly. Ever since he launched his January 1993 attack on the Croatian Serbs I have never believed a word he has said to me on military matters, and I think one reason why we got on was that he was perfectly aware that I ignored all of his promises to the EU, the US and the UN not to use force. There was therefore no feeling between us of resentment at being let down when he did attack across agreed ceasefire lines. Unlike Milosevic, who is a total pragmatist, Tudjman is an opportunist in the cause of Croatia. He is in many senses a Partisan general, waiting, acting, deceiving, harrying, feinting and kicking whenever there is an opening. He has one purpose in life -- to control all the territory that he believes belongs historically to Croatia -- and to that end he will use any means. He will do it with a smile, a quizzical look, or a fit of rage, indications of the seething activity that drives him on. Intensely competitive on the tennis court or around the negotiating table, he is a very skilled operator and many was the time I admired his military and diplomatic interventions for their timing, even when they ruined or set back our own plans. Croatia from 1995 will be the most ethnically pure of the Yugoslav states after which Tudjman will be content for it to join the EU.
I first met General Ratko Mladic after the fall of Jajce in the autumn of 1992. I then sought to persuade him not to take Travnik, for this would have had disastrous humanitarian consequences. Thereafter, whenever we met, he referred to his promise not to do so -- initially as emblematic of his keeping his word, and later on as a manifestation of one of his biggest mistakes, for he said he had come to believe he had underestimated the strategic significance of Travnik to the Serbs. Despite his protestations to the contrary, all that I know of General Mladic convinces me that he would have taken Travnik had he thought it was in the Serb interest to do so.
General Mladic, emerged as the dominant military figure in the region in 1992 and signalled his authority by openly declaring that might made right when he addressed a joint session of the Bosnian Serb and Croatian Serb Assemblies in Prijedor, itself the hub of ethnic cleansing and the administrative centre for a network of Serb detention camps including Omarska and Trnopolje. According to Mladic, 'the existence of the Serb Republic may be disputed in the world, but the existence of its army is indisputable. The Serb Republic exists because we have our territory, our people, our authority and all the attributes of a state. Whether they want to recognize it or not is their affair. The army is a fact.' He was not just thumbing his nose at the international community but signalling loud and clear that for him Greater Serbia had been achieved; roll it back if you dare was his challenge, and he never believed that the international community would dare. General Mladic is the authentic voice of the young Serb JNA colonels who had fought to protect, as they saw it, their fellow Serbs, first in Croatia and now in Bosnia. His pride in his new Bosnian Serb army was manifested in bringing back the characteristic hats of the Serb officers who owed their loyalty to the monarch. Mladic was in personal conversation racist in his remarks but scathing about any implication that his officers would ever condone the rape of Muslim women by his men, laughing cruelly that they would have to be sex maniacs to rape so many women. Neither Mladic nor any of his officers considered that there was an international boundary between Knin and Banja Luka. To Mladic, Serb forces were entitled to move as freely in the former Yugoslavia as they did before 1991. Indeed, for Mladic, and for many of his kind in the military, for most purposes Yugoslavia still existed. 'Safe areas' were all right as a place to 'dump' Muslims, but if they became the focus of Muslim military activity they just became another target, as he was to show over Srebrenica.
As to NATO, I sensed at my first meeting with Mladic, and never shifted my view thereafter, that he relished the thought of engaging with NATO, but on his terms. The possibility of air strikes was always included within his calculations. In one sense he wanted a real fight, believing that picking off the Muslims was beneath the dignity of the Serbs. He had that fight in August and September 1995 and, in fairness, he withstood a fortnight of precision bombing before he withdrew their heavy weapons from around Sarajevo
General Ratko Mladic was arguably, for a moment, the most powerful Serb. He was born on 12 March 1943 in Bosnia at Bozinovici, near Kalinovik, some 50 km south of Sarajevo, and both his parents had fought with the Partisans. His father was killed by Croatian Ustasha fighters in a raid on Bradina, the home of the Ustasha leader, Ante Pavelic, when Mladic was only two years old. Much has been written about how this experience made him nurse a grievance and gave him a permanent hatred of the Croats, but I found no evidence that he was particularly anti-Croat. He joined the League of Communists in 1965 after attending the Military Academy, and in the 1991 census chose as his nationality to be classified as a Yugoslav. In Pale he was quite close to Mrs Plavsic, but he eschewed too close a public identification with any politician. Whenever in discussion with me there had been an opportunity to adopt a party political position he had been careful to step back, usually with a wry smile and a remark about 'being a simple general and not a politician'. The one thing he is not is a simple general. He has had a brilliant military career and emerged from the Command Staff Academy in 1978 as an officer marked for the highest commands. Given the traditions of the JNA at that time he would not have progressed as a battalion and brigade commander so quickly if there had been any hint of his being a rabid Serb nationalist. When the Serb--Croat war started in June 1991 he was Chief of Staff of the 9th Army Corps based in Knin. Like many other corps it was disintegrating as officers and men started identifying themselves as Croat or Slovene and began to leave the JNA, either to join up with their national forces or to quit military service and in some cases leave the country. Those, mainly Serbs, who remained with the JNA did not have it all their own way and many were humiliatingly blockaded into their barracks by surrounding Croatian forces -- one reason why the JNA responded so massively in places like Vukovar. By that stage a classic civil war had developed, with the army splitting up and brother officers breaking friendships and leaving to fight each other. The atmosphere at this time is well caught in Misha Glenny's Fall of Yugoslavia. Mladic was widely judged to have fought with considerable skill in the Knin; but he also developed a reputation as a braggart. Whether he has committed war crimes will be for the War Crimes Tribunal to decide. If the Tribunal does find that there is a case to answer it will have to be a very different and powerful government in Belgrade to respond to an arrest warrant from the Tribunal and deliver Mladic up for trial, for he will be protected by the JA. Indeed, so confident is he of that protection that I doubt he is much influenced by the existence of the Tribunal.
In May 1992 Milosevic was personally responsible for promoting Mladic above many more senior people to command Serb forces in Bosnia-Herzegovina. He was appointed a Lieutenant-Colonel General in August 1992 and a Colonel General in June 1994. On a number of occasions he has made quite absurd claims, such as that he would bomb London, which have had to be disowned by his political masters. But these bravado statements are calculated to boost the morale of his peasant soldiers, who see him as a hero. He often visits the front line, and in September 1994 near Bihac was injured and nearly caught by Bosnian government forces. On these visits he sleeps, eats, drinks and talks with his men in their dugouts. Yet the same man can conduct a serious debate in Geneva or Belgrade on the strategies of Clausewitz and the lessons of the 1991 Iraq war. He is well informed on all NATO weapons systems and studies their capacities with great attention. Public bully, private calculator -- these are but elements in his complex make up. He is purported to have watched in May 1992 as the house in which he had lived with his brother was burnt down, an experience which helped to harden his Serb identity. His remarks about Muslims are often racist, about Croats and Muslims contemptuous. Our conversations were dignified, with none of the bombast he unleashed on others, but I found little evidence of a softer inner side to his character, though I do believe the story that he is devoted to his wife and son. After his 23-year-old medical student daughter's suicide I commiserated with him in terms of my own son's childhood leukaemia, which was fortunately cured. For a brief spell we were fathers first and foremost; but within minutes we were back to a wary confrontation and mock jocularity. He never lowered his guard in the many hours of conversation I had with him. He wanted a Serbia extending in one continuous territorial swathe to include Trebinje, Pale, Bijeljina, Banja Luka and Knin, with Montenegro and possibly Macedonia. If it was called Yugoslavia so be it, but I suspect he would have preferred it to be called Serbia. He attends the Orthodox Church ceremonies that have become a feature in Pale, but I suspect out of duty rather than conviction. He never appeared afraid of NATO air strikes or US threats to lift the arms embargo. Probably he would have welcomed both as getting the politicians off his back and allowing him to wage war with the gloves off. He assesses the UN capabilities and the consequences of any defiance and then decides when to back off and when to confront. The prospect of continuing the fighting into the twenty-first century is one he views with total equanimity. He has not yet been tempted by any of Milosevic's offers to hold higher rank within the JA. When he defied Milosevic over the VOPP in Pale in the early hours of the morning on 6 May, and as Milosevic stormed out, defeated, to drive back to Belgrade, Mladic used a football analogy, saying with a grin: 'It's fantastic, just like during Real Madrid's best days' -- a remark well judged to appeal to his countrymen, who remain football crazy.
On Friday 3 June in Geneva I had a two-and-a-half-hour conversation with General Mladic. The meeting was private, with just his chief military aide and his interpreter present. My main object was to try to ensure that Mladic saw the issues in a wider international perspective and to give him an opportunity to raise questions. He also saw General Galvin in the US Embassy that same day. In fact, most of the input from Mladic came in the form of questions. As I had found before, in these sort of talks he is quiet and unassuming and there is none of the bravado and boasting of some of his public performances. My impression was that he was calculating carefully the advantages and disadvantages of signing a map with a 49 per cent--51 per cent split. He would, I think, have preferred the cessation of hostilities under discussion with Akashi in Geneva to coincide with the signing of the map, but he did not rule out signing a cessation of hostilities agreement first. I was convinced that for the first time since I had been talking to Mladic he would listen to a serious threat to impose this settlement.
Mladic's whole stance was one of absorbing information and giving little away. He clearly now understood much more English and admitted that he had been trying to master the language with, he claimed, little success. My overall impressions were of a man who was beginning to count the cost of this war, prompted by his daughter's suicide as well as the daily toll of deaths among his own troops. When he professed that the map was a matter for the politicians I scoffed at that, and I think I did get through to him when I argued that he could not shuffle this responsibility off on to the politicians, that he owed it to his own troops to be involved and to share the responsibility for a painful and difficult withdrawal. We ended up agreeing that it often required more bravery to forge a peace than to continue to wage a war. It was important to get this message through to Mladic because he is obsessed with demonstrating his bravery, to the point of barbarity. Slitting the throat of a pig in front of the Dutch Commander in Srebrenica to prove he was the braver of the two is but one example. Mladic is not a madman, but he conducts his battles on two different levels: on one he is an intellectual, on the other a barbarian.
I met Gojko Susak, the Croatian Minister of Defence, on the morning of 21 April en route to Belgrade. He was born in Western Herzegovina and was fiercely anti Communist. He was devoted to Tudman and had raised a lot of money for him and the Croatian nationalist cause while running a highly successful chain of pizza restaurants in Canada. There was no pretence with Susak and I found I could do serious business with him. He did not bother to pretend that Croatian government forces were not inside Bosnia-Herzegovina fighting with the Bosnian Croats.
Haris Silajdzic of all the Bosnian Muslim leaders had the closest formal links to Islam for he had been counsellor to the Reis-Ul-Ulema, the head of the Muslim faith in Yugoslavia. Born in 1945 in Sarajevo, he graduated in 1971 in Benghazi at the Faculty of Arabic and Islamic studies and has published a number of articles on Islamic themes. He spent a year studying in Washington for his doctoral thesis on US--Albanian relations and shares with Ejup Ganic a good insight into American attitudes. I believe that for all the intensity of his manner and the way he can be disruptive and difficult in negotiations, alternately cold and passionate, he is a democrat. He showed this when he was appointed Prime Minister and started to clamp down on the Muslim mafia that was starting to hold sway in Sarajevo. It needed courage to take on these well-armed thugs and he did not shrug their challenge off but faced them down. Lives were lost in that struggle, and it would have been hard to engage in it if there had not been a commitment to a democratic civil life at his core. Those whom I respected in the UN who dealt closely with him in Sarajevo thought he was genuinely trying to counter some of the undemocratic practices that had grown up during the war.
In private Silajdzic is a quiet and thoughtful man who agonized over the choices involved in settling for peace. He developed a close relationship with Granic, the Croatian Foreign Minister, and seemed to get on well with the US envoy Redman. His influence on Izetbegovic appeared to wane in 1994 and he seemed to resent Sacirbey's influence. He signed the Washington Accords and in many senses was their architect on the Muslim side. Privately he was more realistic than Ganic about the likelihood of the Clinton administration actually delivering military support. Perhaps I deluded myself when at times I detected a wish in Silajdzic to be more flexible at the negotiating table than prudent self-interest or ambition allowed. We were destined to be at loggerheads in public over the reasonableness or unreasonableness of the Bosnian Muslim negotiating side, but I never lost respect for this somewhat melancholic man, or for the acuity of his mind and his public support for a multi-ethnic Bosnia.
Milan Panic was a 63-year-old Californian who spoke English with a Serb accent and Serbo-Croat with an American accent. He had defected from Yugoslavia in 1955 during an international bicycle race when he had been a successful racer. He always claimed that 'I bicycled to freedom' and arrived in the US with two suitcases and $20, from which he soon became a millionaire. His present company was worth half a billion dollars.
He was Prime Minister Panic when I met him in London on the first day of my being Co-Chairman of the ICFY at the end of August 1992. He was flanked by the former US Senator Birch Bayh, who was acting as his legal adviser, and another American, the former US Ambassador to Belgrade. My first reaction to Panic was ambivalent. Part of me was a bit dismissive, and yet another part liked his ebullience and frankness. Panic once told Mme Simone Veil the less I know about the history of the Balkans the better I feel. I kept saying to myself: 'this guy is head of a large pharmaceutical company and you cannot do that if you are a mere buffoon,' but many thought he was something of an unguided missile. Certainly he was unlike any Prime Minister I had ever met before or was likely to meet again. Always eager to please, he offered an opportunity of fresh Serb thinking and an effervescent mind in the midst of the many old Communists still in power in Belgrade.
During the Presidential election in Serbia in 1992 Vance and I tried to persuade Panic to drop his own ambitions but to provide the energy and ideas behind Cosic. It is arguable that had Cosic not developed a recurrence of prostate trouble those close to him would have persuaded him to stand. Given the eventual result which Panic achieved I believe that Cosic could have beaten Milosevic.
Momcilo Krajisnik is a Bosnian Serb leader of considerable significance. The leader of the Bosnian Serb Assembly, who, as the war ground on, became in effect joint leader of the Bosnian Serbs. Krajisnik claims to be a devout Orthodox Christian; he is rich and, according to Mladic, a corrupt businessman. He speaks no English but talks quietly, and the Bosnian Muslim leaders trust him far more than they do Karadzic. He has a single-mindedness and a rigidity which are both infuriating and admirable. He owns two houses in Sarajevo and its outskirts, which made him an impossible negotiator when we came to the city itself, refusing to give up any territory and adamant that the Serbs must have a slice of Sarajevo of a size and content that no Muslim leader could ever accept.
He more than even General Mladic was responsible for the Pale Assembly rejecting the Vance-Owen Peace Plan which Karadzic had signed only a few days earlier in Athens in May 1993. I had not spent enough time with him and thereafter I tried to correct this in a number of private and intimate meetings which helped soften Krajisnik's persistent hard line on Sarajevo.
I first met Muhamed Sacirbey in the early evening on Tuesday 11 August. He was the Bosnian government's representative to the UN. It proved to be the first of many meetings. He is an attractive, intense but hard-nosed young man, at that time desperately trying to represent his country out of his own law offices, his desk and floor piled high with files. Clearly no professional diplomat, he was angered -- as he had every right to be -- by the world's lack of response to his country's plight.
While he liked much of what had been reported to him of what I had said, he did not agree when I reiterated that I could not see any way in which the UN arms embargo would or should be lifted. While I admitted that it was discriminatory against the Muslims now in 1992 as it had been against the Croats in 1991, in that the Serbs in Bosnia had large supplies of equipment and ammunition, no Security Council, I argued, could be seen to fuel the fire by lifting the ban. I also distanced myself from the idea of attacking Serbian bridges on the border or doing anything to take the battle outside the borders of Bosnia-Herzegovina, as he had suggested in a powerful article in the {itl}New York Times{nml} a few days before.
We parted on good terms and I felt for him, representing a new country in such a desperate situation, a basic sympathy which has never left me. He was to develop into a powerful representative with a brilliant sense of public relations, putting, as he was bound to, a spin and a slant on his government's actions which often made life difficult for me in the negotiations. But he was always more astute in his political judgement than many in the New York diplomatic community would give him credit for. His direct line to President Izetbegovic allowed him to circumvent his Foreign Minister, which did not endear him to his colleagues but made him a more strong representative to deal with. Despite some harsh criticism of me over the years I remain an admirer of what he is doing for his country now as Foreign Minister.
President Slobodan Milosevic was born in August 1941, the son of a Serbian Orthodox clergyman of Montenegrin origin. His parents separated when he was young and both later committed suicide. A crucial figure in his life is Mirjana Markovic, his wife, for they are extremely close personally and politically. A Belgrade magazine carried pieces from her diary. She writes about nature and about her family, reminisces about the delights of Yugoslavia in the 1960s and 1970s, and also discusses politics, with occasional virulent attacks on nationalist leaders like Karadzic, Plavsic and Seselj. She is a professor at the Faculty of Natural Sciences and Mathematics of the University of Belgrade. A Marxist theorist, as is obvious from her words, she helped found the League of Communists Movement for Yugoslavia (SK-PJ) in 1990, which later became part of JUL (the Yugoslav United Left), and members of her party are increasingly in posts of influence where one might have expected to see members of Milosevic's own party. Milosevic joined the League of Communists in 1959 and graduated from Belgrade University's Law Faculty in 1964. He was involved in ideological and political activities with the League of Communists, was economic adviser to the mayor of Belgrade and worked in the Information Department of Belgrade city government, where he learnt his media skills, which are formidable. Above all he understands the power of television. He was director general of the enterprise 'Tehnogas' from 1970 to 1978 and then president of a Belgrade bank from 1978 to 1982, a period during which he travelled to America and elsewhere, acquiring fluent English along the way. Thereafter he returned to full-time officialdom in the League of Communists: head of the party organization in Belgrade in 1984--6, he was party chief for the entire republic from 1986 to 1989.
Milosevic first became identified in the minds of the general public with Serbian grievances with his criticism of the amount of money the central government demanded of them in comparison with the other republics. This public profile was suddenly raised in April 1987 when Milosevic twice visited the Serbian community in Kosovo, who were complaining about their plight as a minority and about being beaten up by the local Albanian police. On his second visit Milosevic became uncharacteristically emotional, proclaiming: 'No one will be allowed to beat you! No one will be allowed to beat you!' He then, with manipulative skill, set about getting Serbian politicians thought to be soft on the Albanian question voted out of their positions. Riding the wave of nationalism, he overturned the provincial Communist leadership and insisted that Belgrade must be able to exercise effective control over Serbia's two autonomous provinces of Kosovo and Vojvodina. As a popular hero, 'Slobo', he began to draw large audiences and in November 1988 he addressed a Belgrade rally of around a million people. By this time he was speaking for most Serbs, and he had a knack of poking fun affectionately at Tito. 'Even before his death the system didn't function, Tito functioned. After his death nothing has functioned and nobody has been able to reach agreement on anything.' He understood that Tito had spawned mechanisms for inertia and then filled the vacuum with his own initiatives.
On the question of what powers should be held by central government and what by regional or national grouping, Milosevic has clear views: he is a centralist. But we, coming from outside Serbia, had to recognize that there is a wide diversity of views on devolution even among democratic politicians in our own countries. For example, many British MPs believe a legislative parliament for Scotland would only whet the appetite for secession, while others think that it would reduce the appeal of the Scottish nationalists and enhance the unity of the United Kingdom. In the US some hate any federal powers, wanting power to stay with the states. Tito's autonomy package for Kosovo was more far-reaching than most other examples of devolution in the world, and it will be hard for Milosevic ever to agree to return that degree of power from the centre. He might prefer eventually to relinquish part of Kosovo to Albania.
There is a ruthlessness and a pursuit of power for its own sake about Milosevic that underpins the pragmatism that otherwise seems so neatly to characterize Milosevic's political personality. He has no affection for the trappings of power: he lives modestly and does not seek for the present to be the President of the FRY -- indeed, he seems to like sending someone else to do the boring job of representing the FRY officially. He is content to manipulate people and events.
In his study upstairs in the Serbian Presidency in the heart of Belgrade his desk was piled high with paper, but the appearance downstairs in the reception rooms was of controlled calm. A considerate host, he always appeared to have plenty of time: meetings were long and were usually accompanied at his insistence by lunch or dinner. At the Elyse he was not in the least overawed by his surroundings. If he noticed any slight in the absence of any French minister at the airport, it was brushed aside as only showing bad manners, or as he liked to say 'an absence of style'.
The private man is not a racist, nor is he paranoid about the rest of the world. Only once over the years did he make an aside which offended me on racial grounds, and he checked himself as he said it. Proud of Serbia, he gives vent to a paranoia about the international community in public almost as an obligatory jibe, but even so not to an excessive degree. Milosevic carries his nationalism lightly and it does not intrude in an offensive manner in conversations with foreigners. He has used nationalism for the purpose of gaining and holding power but his economic attitudes are those of a man fully conscious of international realities. His wife said words to the effect: 'I gather from my husband that he has failed to convince you that he is not a nationalist. I will tell you why he is not. I would never have married or stayed married to him if he was a nationalist.' Personally I do not believe that he is a nationalist, or even was one in the late 1980s, but rather that he played the nationalist card to gain and hold power. It is somewhat bizarre that Mira Markovic had been arguing the case for reconstructing Yugoslavia ever since it fell apart while her husband is widely believed to have been the chief instigator of its break-up. She has encouraged her husband to think in terms of Yugoslavia or, as some diplomats refer to it, 'the Y-word'. She had a shadowy influence on Milosevic in the late 1980s and early 1990s but is now playing a public and decisive part in pulling her husband back from the nationalistic 'Serbia first' stance that went to his head in the late 1980s and early 1990s. Her broader view that reintegration is what Serbian nationhood should be all about will be reflected ever more strongly in his policies. In 1994 she visited and talked to Muslims in the Sandzak on behalf of her party. She is openly championing a return to a confederal relationship. The realist in her probably accepts that, after the fall of the Krajina, Croatia has gone for ever, but I suspect she still hopes that the Muslims in Bosnia-Herzegovina will hive off from the Croats in the Federation and that the Former Yugoslav Republic of Macedonia will be linked economically and eventually politically to Serbia and Montenegro. It is not possible to anticipate where Milosevic will lead his country without also analysing the views of his wife. Fortunately he does not take much note of her economic views and shows every sign of wanting his country to have a market economy.
Milosevic knows America well and will talk knowledgeably about Democrat and Republican politics and the changing importance of the New Hampshire primary. When in Athens in 1995, I flew back to Belgrade in a Yugoslav plane which had just flown in the FRY Ambassador to Greece, Milan Milutinovic, who became Foreign Minister in August 1995, and the former chairman of the US Democratic Party in New Hampshire, Chris Spiro, who had just seen Milosevic.During a chat in the airport he claimed that at a recent meeting with President Clinton he had told him that the last thing they wanted was for Bosnia to become a campaign issue in New Hampshire and urged a peace before campaigning started in the autumn of 1995. I hoped that this domestic need would concentrate Clinton's mind so as to cut a deal over the heads of his foreign policy advisers, and this is what appeared to happen in August 1995 when he sent his National Security Adviser around Europe with a package that at last had political realism within it.
Milosevic was not a European social democrat in December 1989 and he made no bones about why: 'I really see no reason why any society, if it is not thoroughly tyrannical, should prevent a diversity of political views and organizations . . . However, if this so called political pluralism is used as another term to supplant Yugoslavia and socialism then we in Serbia are against it.' He showed his ruthless side when he manipulated federal authorization for JNA tanks to be used on 9 March 1991 nominally to crush street demonstrations in Belgrade but in reality in a failed attempt to have martial law declared. He never hesitates to ensure, when he wants to, that his view monopolizes the media. On the other hand, he has been content to forgo the non-stop personal publicity that usually accompanies autocratic power. It is a clever way of exercising control.
His appeal to many people in Serbia initially was not rooted solely in ethnic nationalism: in 1991 he was also popular because he stood against the absurd bureaucracy of Tito's time. Milosevic's leadership was seen to be competent and not corrupt. He chaired a group of experts, the 'Commission for Questions of Social Reform', which proposed market-oriented reforms and the stimulation and streamlining of the self-management system; but its recommendation was not the elimination of state functions, rather changes in their 'mentality and style'. The goal was a mixed economy with social ownership and public production, not the continental social market model. Nevertheless it was sufficiently different and coherent in comparison to Tito's failed economic model that it attracted support from the younger technocrats. When faced by criticism Milosevic can bridle and quickly deride alternative viewpoints, but he can also be changing his attitude as he talks. For someone who built a reputation campaigning against bureaucracy he has created an immense one, not of pens behind desks but in the large and well-armed militia which now rules over Serbia. It is strong enough to keep opposition political parties in their place, strong enough to act as a counterforce to a greatly depleted army and well placed to destroy the mafia that now flourishes on the corruption that surrounds sanctions.
On almost every occasion that we met I would at some stage raise Kosovo, and when I did I knew I was striking a jarring note. Over Kosovo the polite mask sometimes broke and we would be into an ugly confrontation. It was as if he knew this was the area of his most indefensible behaviour on which he was personally vulnerable, and he would sometimes turn snarling on me or anyone who raised it. I suspect none of those close to him ever did confront him. Yet once we had confronted each other he would soon return to a courteous dialogue, almost as if he welcomed someone standing up to him. It was on Kosovo that Milosevic had risen to power and in the process had spoken for almost all Serbs, who genuinely believed Tito had sacrificed their interests for the sake of keeping the Albanians quiet. In part over Kosovo Milosevic broke up the Carrington plan for autonomy because it mirrored that for the Krajina; yet Milosevic will know that Kosovo could be his undoing after the fall of the Krajina in 1995. I have often likened him to someone who has jumped on to the tiger of nationalism and is finding it difficult to get off again without the tiger eating him.
One aspect of Milosevic's character is his readiness to regard individuals as disposable: to use them and then discard them. Just as he had risen within the Communist Party on the back of his friendship with Ivan Stambolic and then brushed him aside, so he still brooks no opposition. Perhaps when the wars in Croatia and Bosnia-Herzegovina are over Milosevic will allow some relaxation of police powers, some genuine dissent, even move towards social democracy. But history is against such a benign transformation. If he is to avoid a malign fate, he needs to remember, and recite to himself each day when shaving, Lord Acton's famous dictum: 'Power tends to corrupt, and absolute power corrupts absolutely.'
GLOSSARY
APC Armoured personnel carrier
Badinter Commission EC Peace Conference and ICFY Arbitration Commission
BiH Bosnia and Herzegovina
Bosniacs Old label for mainly Bosnian Muslims, recently revived by the Muslim Bosniac Organization and used in constitution for Croat--Muslim Federation of Bosnia-Herzegovina
BSA Bosnian Serb army
Carrington Conference EC Conference on Peace in Yugoslavia, 1991--2
CFSP Common Foreign and Security Policy (European Union) Chetniks Serb nationalist movement founded in the nineteenth century which fought against the Germans, the Ustashas and the Partisans during the Second World War; during the wars from 1991 used by Croats and Muslims as a contemptuous term for Serbs
CINCSOUTH Commander in Chief South (NATO)
COHA Cessation of hostilities agreement
COREU Official telex correspondence between EC/EU capitals
CSCE Conference on Security and Cooperation in Europe; now Organization on Security and Cooperation in Europe
DS Democratic Party (Serbia)
EC European Community (to 31 October 1993)
ECMM European Community Monitoring Mission
EU European Union (from 1 November 1993)
FAC Foreign Affairs Council: meeting of EC/EU Foreign Ministers
Federation of Bosnia-Herzegovina Muslim--Croat federation established under Washington Accords, March 1994
FYROM Former Yugoslav Republic of Macedonia (provisional name in UN)
FRY Former Republic of Yugoslavia (Serbia and Montenegro)
HDZ Hrvatska Demokratska Zajednica: the Croatian Democratic Union (Croatia, Bosnia-Herzegovina)
HV Hrvatska Vojska: the Croatian army
HVO Hrvatsko Vijece Odbrane: the Croatian Defence Council (the army of the Bosnian Croats)
ICFY International Conference on the Former Yugoslavia
ICRC International Committee of the Red Cross
JA Acronym used in diplomatic circles for Yugoslav army, the army of Serbia and Montenegro and successor to the JNA
JAP Joint Action Programme launched by US, UK, France, Russia and Spain, May 1993, Washington
JNA Jugoslovenska Narodna Armija: the Yugoslav Peoples Army
NAC North Atlantic Council
NATO North Atlantic Treaty Organization
NDH Nezavisna Drzava Hrvatska: the Independent State of Croatia, the Second World War fascist state run by the Ustasha leader Ante Pavelic
NFZ No-fly zone
OIC Organization of the Islamic Conference
Opstina District of local government in Bosnia-Herzegovina
OSCE Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe; formerly CSCE (see above)
Partisans Titos army during the Second World War, which fought against the Germans, Ustashas and Chetniks
PFP Partnership For Peace: NATO cooperation arrangements with former Warsaw Pact members
RS Republika Srpska: the Bosnian Serb Republic
RSK Republika Srpske Krajine: the Republic of Serbian Krajina
Sabor Parliament of Croatia
SACEUR Supreme Allied Commander, Europe (NATO)
SAM Sanctions Assistance Mission
SDA Stranka Demokratske Akcije: the (Muslim) Party of Democratic Action
SDS Srpska Demokratska Stranka: the Serbian Democratic Party (Bosnia-Herzegovina, Croatia)
SHAPE HQ Supreme Headquarters Allied Powers Europe (NATO)
SPO Srpski Pokret Obnove: the Serbian Renewal Movement (Serbia)
SPS Socialisticka Partija Srbije: the Socialist Party of Serbia
SRS Srpska Radikalna Stranka: the Serbian Radical Party
Tanjug Yugoslav press agency
UN United Nations
UNCRO United Nations Confidence Restoring Operation (successor of UNPROFOR in Croatia)
UNHCR United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees
UNMO United Nations Military Observer
UNPA United Nations Protected Area (Croatia)
UNPROFOR United Nations Protection Force (Croatia, Bosnia-Herzegovina, Macedonia)
UNSCR United Nations Security Council Resolution
Ustashas Movement led by the Croatian fascist Ante Pavelic, head of the NDH, the Croatian puppet state of Nazi Germany; used during the wars from 1991 by Serbs and Muslims as contemptuous term for Croats
VOPP Vance--Owen Peace Plan
WEU Western European Union
WG Working Group of ICFY
YWCT Yugoslav War Crimes Tribunal, formally entitled the International Tribunal for the Prosecution of Persons Responsible for Serious Violations of International Humanitarian Law Committed in the Territory of the Former Yugoslavia since 1991
Z4 Plan Zagreb Four Plan: plan by the US and Russian ambassadors to Croatia and two ICFY ambassadors
Abdic, Fikret Leader of Muslim faction in Bihac; Muslim member of Bosnia-Herzegovina Presidency
Ahrens, Geert Chairman of ICFY Nationalities and Minorities Working Group; formerly member of EC Peace Conference on Yugoslavia
Ahtisaari, Martti President of Finland 1994--; Chairman of ICFY Bosnia-Herzegovina Working Group 1992--4
Akashi, Yasushi UN Secretary-Generals Special Representative for former Yugoslavia, 3 December 1993--
Akmadic, Mile Bosnian Croat leader; Prime Minister of Bosnia-Herzegovina 1992--3
Albright, Madeleine US Permanent Representative to the UN 1993--
Annan, Kofi UN Under-Secretary-General for Peacekeeping Operations
Babic, Milan Croatian Serb leader
Bartholomew, Reginald US Special Envoy to former Yugoslavia 1992--3
Bildt, Carl Co-Chairman of ICFY Steering Committee 1994--; former Prime Minister of Sweden
Boban, Mate Leader of the Bosnian Croats 1992--4
Boras, Franjo Bosnian Croat leader; member of Bosnia-Herzegovina Presidency
Boutros Ghali, Boutros UN Secretary-General 1992--
Briquemont, Francis UNPROFOR Commander for Bosnia-Herzegovina 1993
Broek, Hans van den EU Commissioner for External Affairs; Dutch Foreign Minister until 1993
Buha, Aleksa Bosnian Serb leader specializing in foreign affairs
Bulatovic, Momir President of Montenegro
Bush, George President of the USA 1989--92
Carrington, Peter Chairman of EC Peace Conference on Yugoslavia 1991--2
Charette, Herv de Foreign Minister of France 1995--
Chirac, Jacques President of France 1995--
Christopher, Warren US Secretary of State
Churkin, Vitaly Russian Special Envoy to former Yugoslavia 1993--4
Claes, Willy Secretary-General of NATO 1994--; Foreign Minister of Belgium until 1994
Clinton, Bill President of the USA 1993--
Cosic, Dobrica Serbian writer; President of the FRY (Serbia and Montenegro) 1992--3
Cot, Jean Commander of UNPROFOR in former Yugoslavia 1993--4
Cutileiro, Jos Secretary-General of WEU; chaired negotiations on Bosnia-Herzegovina as deputy to Lord Carrington in EC Peace Conference 1992
Demirel, Suleiman President and former Prime Minister of Turkey
Dole, Robert US Senator; Republican majority leader in Senate 1995--
Draskovic, Vuk Leader of the Serbian opposition party SPO
Eagleburger, Lawrence US Secretary of State 1992--3
Eide, Kai ICFY Ambassador; negotiator between the Croatian government and the leaders of the Croatian Serbs
Frasure, Robert, the late US Special Envoy to former Yugoslavia and US representative on Contact Group 1994--5
Galbraith, Peter US Ambassador to Croatia 1993--
Ganic, Ejup Vice-President of Bosnia-Herzegovina; Yugoslav member of Bosnia-Herzegovina Presidency, but SDA leader; Vice-President of Croat--Muslim Federation of BH 1994-- Gligorov, Kiro President of Former Yugoslav Republic of Macedonia
Goldstone, Richard Chief Prosecutor, Yugoslav War Crimes Tribunal
Granic, Mate Croatian Foreign Minister 1993--
Hadzic, Goran Croatian Serb leader
Hall, Peter Deputy to Lord Owen in ICFY 1992--3; member of EC Peace Conference on Yugoslavia; former UK Ambassador to Yugoslavia
Hannay, David UK Permanent Representative to the UN; retired 1995
Helveg-Petersen, Niels Foreign Minister of Denmark 1993--
Holbrooke, Richard US Assistant Secretary of State
Hurd, Douglas UK Secretary of State for Foreign Affairs; retired 1995
Izetbegovic, Alija Founding leader of SDA; President of Bosnia-Herzegovina
Janvier, Bernard Commander of UNPROFOR in former Yugoslavia 1995--
Jovanovic, Vladislav Former Foreign Minister of FRY; former Foreign Minister of Serbia
Jupp, Alain Prime Minister of France 1995--; Foreign Minister of France 1994--5
Karadzic, Radovan Leader of the Bosnian Serbs
Kinkel, Klaus Foreign Minister of Germany
Kljujic, Stjepan Croat member of Bosnia-Herzegovina Presidency, removed by Boban 1992, reinstated 1994
Kohl, Helmut Chancellor of Germany
Koljevic, Nikola Bosnian Serb leader; former Serb member of Bosnia-Herzegovina Presidency
Kooijmans, Peter Foreign Minister of The Netherlands 1993--4
Kozyrev, Andrei Foreign Minister of Russian Federation
Krajisnik, Momcilo Bosnian Serb leader; former President of the Assembly of Bosnia-Herzegovina
Lake, Anthony US National Security Adviser
Lanxade, Jacques French Chief of Defence Staff
Lapresle, Bertrand de Adviser to Carl Bildt; UNPROFOR Commander in former Yugoslavia 1994--5
Ludlow, David Special Assistant to Lord Owen 1992--3; representative of ICFY Co-Chairmen on Contact Group 1994
Major, John Prime Minister of the United Kingdom
Manning, David UK representative on Contact Group 1994
Martic, Milan Leader of the Croatian Serbs
Masset, Jean-Pierre Deputy to Lord Owen 1993--4
Mazowiecki, Tadeusz UN Special Rapporteur on human rights in former Yugoslavia 1992--5
Mrime, Jean-Bernard French Permanent Representative to the UN
Mierlo, Hans van Foreign Minister of The Netherlands 1994--
Milosevic, Slobodan President of Serbia
Mitsotakis, Constantine Prime Minister of Greece until 1994
Mitterrand, Franois President of France until 1995
Mladic, Ratko Commander of the Bosnian Serb army
Morillon, Philippe Commander of UNPROFOR in Bosnia-Herzegovina 1993
Nambiar, Satish Commander of UNPROFOR in former Yugoslavia 1992--3
Ogata, Sadako UN High Commissioner for Refugees
Okun, Herbert ICFY Deputy to Cyrus Vance 1992--3
Panic, Milan Prime Minister of FRY (Serbia and Montenegro) 1992
Papoulias, Karolos Foreign Minister of Greece
Perry, William US Defense Secretary
Plavsic, Biljana Bosnian Serb leader; former member of Bosnia-Herzegovina Presidency
Poos, Jacques Foreign Minister of Luxembourg
Powell, Colin Chairman of US Joint Chiefs of Staff 1990--4
Ramcharan, Bertie Director of ICFY Secretariat
Redman, Charles US Special Envoy to former Yugoslavia 1993--4; member of Contact Group
Renwick, Robin UK Ambassador to the US; retired 1995
Roberts, Ivor Charg dAffaires, UK Embassy, Belgrade, 1994-- Robinson, Michael Charg dAffaires, UK Embassy, Belgrade, 1992--4
Rose, Michael Commander of UNPROFOR in Bosnia-Herzegovina 1994--5
Rugova, Ibrahim Leader of the Kosovar Albanians
Sacirbey, Muhamed Foreign Minister of Bosnia-Herzegovina 1995--; BH Permanent Representative to the UN 1992--5
Sarinic, Hrvoe Head of President Tudjmans office; former Croatian Prime Minister
Sdouy, Jacques-Alain de ICFY deputy to Lord Owen 1994--5; French representative on Contact Group
Seselj, Vojislav Leader of Serbian Radicals and leader of Serb militia
Shalikashvili, John US Chairman of Joint Chiefs of Staff; former SACEUR
Silajdzic, Haris Prime Minister of Bosnia-Herzegovina; former Foreign Minister of Bosnia-Herzegovina
Smith, Rupert Commander of UNPROFOR in Bosnia-Herzegovina 1995--
Solana, Javier Foreign Minister of Spain
Sommaruga, Cornelio President of the International Committee of the Red Cross
Steiner, Michael German representative on Contact Group
Stojanovic, Svetovar Personal adviser to FRY President Cosic
Stoltenberg, Thorvald ICFY Co-Chairman 1993--
Susak, Gojko Croatian Minister of Defence
Szasz, Paul ICFY legal adviser; representative of ICFY Co-Chairmen on Contact Group; former deputy head of UN legal department
Tarnoff, Peter US Under-Secretary of State for Political Affairs Thomas, Charles US Envoy to former Yugoslavia 1994; member of Contact Group
Tudjman, Franjo President of Croatia
Vance, Cyrus Personal Representative of UN Secretary-General to former Yugoslavia 1991--2; Co-Chairman of ICFY Steering Committee 1992--3; former US Secretary of State
Wahlgren, Lars Eric Commander of UNPROFOR in former Yugoslavia 1993--4
Wilson, John UNPROFOR liaison officer on ICFY
Woerner, Manfred, the late Former NATO Secretary-General
Yeltsin, Boris President of Russian Federation
Zotov, Alexandr Russian Special Envoy to former Yugoslavia 1994--
Zubak, Kresimir Bosnian Croat; President of the Croat--Muslim Federation 1994--
| [ previous ] | [ top ] | [ next ] |