1 Monday 18 February, 2002

2 [Open session]

3 [The accused entered court]

4 [Defence Opening Statement]

5 --- Upon commencing at 9.30 a.m.

6 JUDGE MAY: Yes, Mr. Milosevic.

7 THE ACCUSED: [Interpretation] Before I continue where I left off,

8 I should like to give you a piece of news with respect to the business in

9 hand here. On Saturday evening, on the 16th of February, in Kosovska

10 Mitrovica, the Sveti Sava church was set on fire and the flames were only

11 put out the next morning. Albanian terrorists are in great competition

12 with the Prosecutor in the anti-Serb hysteria in Prizren. Zafir Berisha,

13 the president of the so-called veterans, that is to say terrorists, says

14 in his speech the following: "We are going to secure Kosovo for the

15 Albanians alone and nobody else." And everything is moving along in

16 conformity with the statement that I quoted, the one made by Albright and

17 the Prosecutor when they said they were engaged in the same task, doing

18 the same job.

19 Now, let me continue where I left off.

20 A strategic concept in realising global control, putting it into

21 effect and subjugating countries throughout the world, is the causing of

22 conflicts between the Slav and Muslim nations in the hope that they will

23 kill each other respectively or at least weaken each other so much that

24 control may be established over them in such a weakened state. Kosovo and

25 Chechnya in that respect are undoubtedly a link in the same chain, to

1 quote an example.

2 And with the Slav and Muslim nations, similarly, attempts are

3 being made to weaken them further by causing mutual wars or at least in

4 confrontations between the two sides. The Yugoslav peoples,

5 unfortunately, since the beginning of the last decade, that is to say of

6 the twentieth century, were a polygon for training, for trying out

7 different things and were the victims of that particular strategy.

8 In the process of realising and implementing domination -

9 economic, social, political, cultural, psychological domination - over the

10 areas of south-east Europe, the western governments, as the protagonists

11 of that process of domination, have opted for a method of national

12 conflict, to apply the method of national conflict, the goal being that

13 these conflicts should destroy the former Yugoslavia.

14 This method was applied in the case of the Soviet Union as well,

15 and in the case of Czechoslovakia it appeared to be fast and successful,

16 or rather, all the former socialist countries of a multi-ethnic

17 composition were to be destroyed by causing national tensions. That was

18 one form of a settling of accounts with the political systems that

19 prevailed at the time in those countries.

20 When it comes to the case of Yugoslavia, this method did not prove

21 to be a quick and efficacious method as it had proved to be in the Soviet

22 Union and Czechoslovakia. National tensions were not sufficiently

23 burgeoning. They had to become a national war for the country to

24 disintegrate. And the war in fact began by the fact that within the

25 frameworks of the former Yugoslavia, nationalism was incited along with

1 national hatred and national conflicts. The flames were fanned to turn

2 into a full-fledged war.

3 The civil war in Croatia between the Serbs and Croats, as well as

4 the war in Bosnia-Herzegovina between the Serbs, Croats, and Muslims, are

5 the consequence of fanning the flames of national hatred outside the

6 borders of Yugoslavia. And it is in this national hatred that a great

7 deal was invested; material, financial, the media, personnel,

8 psychological, all these investments were made. And the Yugoslav citizens

9 took place in the war which was incited outside their country without ever

10 being conscious of it, without being aware of it. And when they realised

11 what was happening, the war waged in Croatia and Bosnia-Herzegovina. And

12 some people became aware of all these facts only when the war came to an

13 end. Of course, there are some people who haven't realised the truth

14 today; that war in the territory of the former Yugoslavia is the result of

15 the will and interest of others, the great western powers, in fact.

16 The truth is that those governments sent their emissaries to

17 attend negotiations in the republics of the one-time Yugoslavia before

18 they definitely destroyed and disrupted the country.

19 During the war, in the governments of the newly-established states

20 which used to be the Republics of the former Yugoslavia, and especially in

21 the newly-formed Yugoslavia composed of Serbia and Montenegro, most of

22 those emissaries did not have as their goal to put an end to the conflict

23 and to establish peace amongst the warring ethnic groups. What they in

24 fact did was to support, to all intents and purposes, the policy and the

25 protagonists of the policy which was in their interests, that is to say

1 which was in the interests of destroying the country which had as its goal

2 secessionism, separatism, violence, its subjugation and, in short, a

3 new colonialism.

4 There were, of course, well-intentioned and honest people amongst

5 those emissaries as well, but they were in the minority.

6 The former Yugoslavia, as it stated in its Constitution, came into

7 being through the free will of the Yugoslav peoples - Serbs, Croats,

8 Slovenes, Macedonians and Montenegrins - and their right to

9 self-determination which in itself included the right to secession.

10 Later on, the Muslims were defined as a separate nation themselves

11 and to the Yugoslav coat of arms a sixth torch was added. The

12 then-socialist Republic of Croatia, with its own Constitution was defined

13 as a state of the Croatian people, a state of the Serb people and other

14 peoples living within its territory. So within Croatia itself, the Serbs

15 had the status of a nation, and this implied the right to

16 self-determination.

17 Bosnia and Herzegovina was Yugoslavia in a small form in which

18 three nations lived, and all the functions in Bosnia-Herzegovina, both in

19 the government and in parliament and in the party, were distributed in

20 such a way that they were -- that all -- the representatives of all three

21 people had a part. Bosnia-Herzegovina, Yugoslavia in small, functioned on

22 the basis and principle of the equality of peoples.

23 The borders between the Yugoslav republics were administrative

24 borders and not borders of nations, people, or state borders of any kind,

25 and no change in their status, which would be at the detriment of any one

1 of the Yugoslav nations, was not able to be implemented without those

2 peoples agreeing to it, in conformity with the Yugoslav Constitution.

3 However, with the advent of the nationalists, when they came to power in

4 Croatia, overnight the Constitution was changed against the will of the

5 equal Serb people, and overnight they came second-rate citizens.

6 The secession of Croatia became a public goal. Straight away for

7 the first time and once again after World War II, violence over Serbs

8 began who precisely in Croatia during the Second World War were the

9 victims of genocide and of the puppet nationalistic arranging of the

10 independent State of Croatia.

11 The territories in which they lived were their homeland throughout

12 the centuries, far before America was colonised, for example. The first

13 armed party formations from the days of Hitler appeared at that time in

14 Croatia. The Serbs rose up and demanded that they remain in Yugoslavia,

15 and they stopped, they barred access to their territory. These events are

16 known as the log revolution because they used logs to set up these

17 barriers. The logs were placed on the roads and in the forests and woods

18 to prevent access to their territory. And as everybody can assume, a log

19 cannot be a means -- considered to be a means of aggression against

20 anyone. A log can only be an obstacle.

21 Tensions grew, but at the same time, activities were unleashed to

22 seek a political solution to avoid a conflict. The European Community of

23 the day, later to become the European Union, sent Carrington to help. I

24 think that he did indeed wish to help. He wished to find a political

25 solution and to avoid the conflict. And these efforts would have been

1 successful had Germany not taken a radical step and prematurely recognised

2 Croatia within its administrative borders and cut across the efforts to

3 make a political solution. Croatia effected a forcible secession and the

4 conflict was unleashed.

5 In Bosnia, where tensions burgeoned, they did manage to find a

6 political solution. A plan was suggested, which Carrington's

7 representative, Portuguese diplomat Cutilliero designed and which was

8 signed by all three sides. And that was the Lisbon Agreement.

9 Unfortunately, overnight, at the suggestion of the American ambassador,

10 Warren Zimmerman, Alija Izetbegovic withdrew his signature and the

11 decision was taken on Bosnia's secession without the participation and

12 with opposition from the Serbs, that is to say, one of the three nations.

13 Therefore, this was unconstitutional and forcible.

14 The European Community, also ahead of time, prematurely recognised

15 the independence of Bosnia and Herzegovina, ignoring the will of the Serb

16 people. And this recognition, to make cynicism even -- the cynicism even

17 greater, it took place on the 6th of April, which is the date when, in

18 World War II, Hitler attacked Yugoslavia.

19 Not even then did the Serbs start any form of violence. A

20 peaceful solution was still being sought. Unfortunately, the opposite

21 side did not refrain from violence. And that these were not just, if I

22 can put it this way, incidents or events, let me remind you, and I assume

23 that this is common knowledge to you all if you do your job properly and

24 professionally, that in the Islamic declaration, its author, Alija

25 Izetbegovic, wrote the following, and I quote: "There is no peace or

1 life in common between the Islamic religion and non-Islamic institutions."

2 Otherwise, this thing about the role of the American

3 representative was confirmed several years later. New York Times, on the

4 29th of August, 1993, and it wrote that Zimmermann had prevailed upon

5 Izetbegovic to go against the Lisbon Agreement. A civil war began between

6 the Muslims and the Serbs, and later on between the Muslims along with

7 support from the Croats and Serb -- between the Muslims and Serbs with

8 Croatian support. Later on, the civil war began between the Muslims

9 themselves and the Croats.

10 Serbia strived for a political solution to the conflict, both in

11 Bosnia and in Croatia. In the Croatia, between the leadership of the

12 Srpska Krajina, the government in Zagreb, and in Bosnia between the three

13 nations in Bosnia-Herzegovina and their representatives. And throughout

14 that time, all that time without interruption, without exception, it

15 helped and assisted the peace process.

16 We strove to establish peace straightaway. I, myself, at the

17 beginning of the conflict when the Muslims in the centre of Sarajevo

18 started killing the Serbs, when tensions had grown, the Islamic conference

19 took place in Istanbul at the time, wrote a letter to the Islamic

20 conference in which I said, among others, that the conflicts must cease

21 immediately and that the Serbs and Muslims were brethren, were brothers,

22 that their conflicts were to the advantage of the foes and enemies of

23 Serbs and Muslims, only to them. And there are other elements and details

24 as well in that regard. And they were complaining amongst themselves that

25 it would be the Muslims who would lose most because there was enormous

1 number of Macedonians living in -- of Muslims living in Serbia,

2 Montenegro, and Macedonia, and that it wasn't to their advantage to step

3 out of Yugoslavia but it could do nothing because it was big-power

4 politics.

5 On the other side, we strove to ensure that amongst the Serbian

6 leadership of Krajina in Croatia, that a political solution be sought.

7 Cyrus Vance, as a representative of the international community, was a

8 great help and finally did propose to the UN Secretary-General that

9 forces, UN forces, be sent. And that was when the UN Protection Zones

10 were set up, areas were set up in all territories and in Croatia with a

11 majority Serb population.

12 I supported that plan myself and, at the time, I was criticised.

13 And you can read that -- about that in the papers dating back to that day.

14 You can find various articles. For example, the then-Foreign Minister of

15 the Republika Srpska Krajina said that Cyrus Vance had bribed me, giving

16 me $120 million that I got in Cyprus for me to agree to -- and for Serbia

17 to agree to have United Nations troops come to those territories. And it

18 was logical that Vance didn't want to accept to propose to the United

19 Nations the arrival of its troops before the leadership of Croatia, the

20 leadership of Republika Srpska Krajina and the Republic of Serbia reached

21 an agreement. So that those troops were to be successful and to have

22 general support.

23 There was a lull after that. There were no major conflicts, and

24 the Contact Group that was set up worked to find a political solution.

25 However, the Croatian army, despite the presence of the United Nations,

1 launched attacks on the Medac pocket and the crimes that followed Western

2 Slavonia. Many people were killed and nobody was held responsible or

3 accountable.

4 After that, the situation calmed down once again. They agreed to

5 open the motorway, the highway, and there were other plans. The Contact

6 Group was working, and neither Yugoslavia nor Serbia had any special role

7 to play there because they thought, they considered that is up to the

8 negotiations of the government in Zagreb and the Republika Srpska Krajina.

9 And then Croatia, with the support of America and of the West, as

10 Holbrooke incautiously wrote in his book, carried out an offensive against

11 the Republika of Srpska Krajina. They carried out a massacre right in

12 front of the eyes of the UN forces. Nobody reacted whatsoever.

13 Hundreds of thousands of Serbs were expelled from the territories where

14 they had lived for hundreds of years.

15 Just before this last war, there were over 600.000 of them in

16 Croatia. The Clinton Administration, of course, not only approved of the

17 Storm, as this attack was called, but they were directly involved. It was

18 no secret to anyone that the Clinton Administration was not only directly

19 involved but that it had, as a matter of fact, carried out this crime.

20 I mentioned to you already that while we were sitting here, I saw

21 in the Washington Times a statement made by David Keene, President of the

22 US Conservatives, that the US was involved in the Storm, because when

23 you're accusing the Serbs in Krajina here, you never say that from the

24 moment the UN arrived, the Krajina people did not attack Croatia. That is

25 to say that since the conflict was stopped and a political solution was

1 sought, and that was at the very outset, there were no attacks by the

2 Krajina people. They were only defending their houses and their villages

3 where they had lived for centuries.

4 The opposing side says that they are going to bring in a witness

5 who is going to confirm that I did not want to give orders for the JNA to

6 withdraw until the UN forces arrived. So what? That's not true, by the

7 way, because I could not issue orders to the UN -- to the JNA anyway. But

8 I'm certainly not trying to evade the fact that I was advocating the

9 withdrawal of the JNA only when the UN troops arrived, because otherwise,

10 there would have been a massacre of Serbs as had happened in the Second

11 World War in Croatia.

12 If I'm guilty for having prevented hundreds of thousands of Serbs

13 from being slaughtered in Bosnia and Croatia, then with the greatest

14 pride, I can take upon myself this guilt. That is to say, the prevention

15 of this kind of massacre. These are also historical facts, and I think it

16 was only natural and just for me to advocate that kind of thing. And it

17 was certainly not to the detriment of the other side.

18 In this tirade that we listened to about commanding and this

19 invention command responsibility, it is senseless because it doesn't exist

20 in any body of law. It's also a major lie, a big-time lie because either

21 de jure or de facto I had no command responsibility over the Yugoslav

22 People's Army let alone through that Rump Presidency that was mentioned

23 here because even this Rump Presidency did not have a command function at

24 all because General Kadijevic said himself that he would not accept any

25 decisions made by the Rump Presidency if they did not ensure a fifth vote

1 as well out of a total of eight members of the Presidency because, as he

2 said, that was the only thing that would be in accordance with the

3 Constitution. Apparently the only thing that did not seem to be in

4 accordance with the Constitution was to defend Yugoslavia. So this Rump

5 Presidency could not give orders to the military either. The truth is

6 that nobody defended Yugoslavia. And that is also proof prove that I was

7 not commanding the army. Was I commanding the army, Yugoslavia would have

8 survived, Yugoslavia would have been preserved.

9 The army of the Federal Republic of Yugoslavia that managed to

10 defend itself and its country from NATO was a much smaller army. I

11 commanded it and they managed to do what they were supposed to do. They

12 defended the country and I commanded them. When the FRY was established

13 in April 1992, on the 28th of April, 1992, all members of the army who

14 were citizens of the Federal Republic of Yugoslavia, that is to say Serbs

15 and Montenegrins, they withdrew to the Federal Republic of Yugoslavia.

16 Those who were citizens of other republics only naturally and logically

17 remained in their republics.

18 Of course, there were exceptions on the basis of personal choices

19 that people made. There were volunteers as well, but this was a very

20 small number of people. Of course, there were some exceptions due to

21 family ties. That was only logical as well, because only until yesterday,

22 so to speak, we had been one state.

23 Afterwards, the army was commanded by the president of the FRY.

24 It was Dobrica Cosic at the time, and the Prime Minister was Jur Milan

25 Panic. They held the army in their hands, and everybody knows full well

1 that I certainly could not have influenced them because when they started

2 working together, their most important objective was how to replace me. I

3 did not have the kind of relationship that could have meant any kind of

4 influence over them.

5 As for carrying out my alleged orders to the leaderships of

6 Republika Srpska and Republika Srpska Krajina, only somebody who knew

7 nothing of the degree of vanity of Yugoslav politicians, notably Serb

8 politicians, and an intolerance towards any kind of interference by anyone

9 else can build this kind of construction concerning a plan or an

10 organisation.

11 You fabricated thousands of pamphlets. Had you only looked into

12 the newspapers from those times, you would have seen what the relationship

13 between the leadership of Serbia headed by me and the leadership of

14 Republika Srpska was like and you would have read about the bad

15 accusations that were levelled against me. Not only accusations, insults

16 as well. This was a paradox that anybody could see. We were helping the

17 Serb people on the other side of the Drina River so that they could

18 survive, but we had poor relations with the leaderships. We were

19 leftists, they were rightists. The right opposition in Serbia gave them

20 support, and they used this for their own rhetoric against me.

21 It didn't really matter to me because the people knew very well

22 that I was working in their interest. At any rate, links between their

23 leadership and the Republika Srpska and that of Serbia, calling that an

24 organisation actually is one of the most nonsensical things that could

25 have been said here. And there is so much proof of the opposite. Just

1 look at Dayton and the bitter accusations levelled against me after the

2 Dayton Accords were reached.

3 As for Karadzic's statement that you keep quoting, that the Serbs

4 do not accept that they be represented by Alija Izetbegovic in front of

5 the international community, that was an act of despair and justified fear

6 that he would take upon obligations for them because the representatives

7 did not want to take this into account in negotiations. And I read a

8 sentence to you a few minutes ago from the Islamic declaration about the

9 impossibility of co-existence with non-Islamic institutions, about the

10 position of Alija Izetbegovic. And then ask yourselves whether it was

11 possible for the Serbs, the Serb people, the Serb representatives to

12 accept that Alija Izetbegovic should represent them, especially after the

13 withdrawal of his signature from the Lisbon Agreement at the suggestion of

14 Zimmermann. After all, Zimmermann himself said that he had made a mistake

15 in suggesting this to Izetbegovic because, in this way, the war would have

16 been avoided.

17 In Geneva, in the presence of Owen and Stoltenberg, under those

18 circumstances when they did not involve the representatives of the peoples

19 of Bosnia-Herzegovina, they just kept Alija Izetbegovic as if he were

20 representing Serbs and Muslims and Croats. When they invited Tudjman and

21 me, later on Izetbegovic as well, to discuss a solution together, I had a

22 lot of trouble convincing Izetbegovic, and not only after first meeting,

23 not only after the first attempt, that they start negotiation amongst the

24 three parties, three sides in Bosnia-Herzegovina, namely, he, Karadzic,

25 and Boban. Mate Boban at that time was the leader of Bosnian Croats, and

1 Karadzic the leader of the Bosnian Serbs, and Izetbegovic the leader of

2 the Bosnian Muslims. In no way was he the representative of all of

3 Bosnia-Herzegovina. I thought that they had to resolve the problem of all

4 the constituent peoples of Bosnia-Herzegovina. I thought that the only

5 solution that would be viable would be a formula that would defend, on a

6 footing of equality, the interests of all three peoples. After all,

7 Dayton succeeded on the basis of that formula.

8 That is also why this indictment is so malicious and anti-Serb

9 because peace was concluded on the basis of a formula of an equality of

10 rights and equal regard for the interests of all three peoples, not on the

11 basis of genocide. Had this been true, that would have meant that

12 Republika Srpska had been created on the basis of genocide. And the truth

13 is but one.

14 In the civil war in Bosnia and Herzegovina, there was cruelty and

15 there was suffering on all three sides. The guilt is primarily to be

16 borne by those who carried out forcible secession and who started the

17 violence. And also the guilt should be borne by the strategists of this

18 violence outside Yugoslavia. After all, Tudjman said in Geneva in front

19 of Owen and Stoltenberg that such atrocities had never been registered

20 like the atrocities committed by the Muslims against the Croats in Bosnia

21 during their mutual conflict.

22 Owen and Stoltenberg supported efforts made to bring all three

23 sides to the negotiating table - Izetbegovic, Karadzic, and Boban - and

24 this made it possible for the representatives of all three parties to

25 negotiate.

1 Tudjman personally never criticised me, saying that I was involved

2 in supporting the Serbs in Croatia. We were in Geneva in order to help

3 the three sides in Bosnia-Herzegovina reach peace. And he also respected

4 our efforts aimed at peace and also opening a dialogue between Krajina and

5 Zagreb, also the highway. And this had just begun.

6 Tudjman also knew of my position towards the offer made by the

7 Muslim side. On their behalf, Adil Zulfikarpasic came to Belgrade to

8 convey this to me. He was Izetbegovic's mentor and sponsor. He is a

9 businessman from Zurich. This was a proposal that the Serbs and Muslims

10 in Bosnia-Herzegovina join forces against the Croats, saying that there

11 weren't even 14 per cent of Croats in Bosnia-Herzegovina and it was not

12 for them to make any decisions regarding Bosnia-Herzegovina. My answer

13 was that two peoples should certainly not unite against a third.

14 Relations between the Serbs and Croats are of great importance for

15 general relations in the Balkans and in the future I can see these

16 relations only as relations of cooperation and friendship.

17 Mate Granic, the Minister of Foreign Affairs, also knows this.

18 Not from me. He knew about that from Tudjman. And I'm sure that he would

19 have to be in a position to say this in public if his new President allows

20 him to do so. This well-known breaker-up of the former Yugoslavia, Stipe

21 Mesic.

22 Also what you said about Dubrovnik is sheer nonsense. In spite of

23 the pompous presentation here of various photographs and footage. As that

24 was going on, we were precisely in The Hague, Tudjman and I, with

25 Carrington. I said publicly that Dubrovnik is a Croatian town. The

1 bombing of Dubrovnik is an insane crime. Serbia did not have anything to

2 do with that, nor could it have had anything to do with it. Nothing

3 whatsoever with the shelling and bombing of Dubrovnik.

4 As for the Vance-Owen Plan, along with my efforts and the efforts

5 made by the Greek Prime Minister, Mitzotakis, Karadzic did sign this in

6 Athens at this conference on the 1st of May, 1993. The conference went on

7 for a few days. Then we went together to attend the meeting of the

8 Assembly of Republika Srpska in Pale. Mitzotakis, Cosic, the

9 then-President of FRY, and I. And I think that it is malicious and

10 unprofessional, I should say, to make quotations from my speeches. I held

11 two speeches, and I did my very best to have this plan accepted.

12 So then, just to take out one little excerpt that the Serbs

13 attained their objective and then you stop altogether. I said that the

14 objective in which we support them is the objective for them to be free

15 and equal where they live and that that is being accomplished by that

16 plan. This plan, since it makes it possible for them to live in freedom

17 and on a footing of equality within Bosnia-Herzegovina, should be signed.

18 And we brought up many other arguments in favour as well. That is to say,

19 that they should be free and equal where they live and that that is

20 accomplished by that plan. And that we do not support anybody's sick

21 ambitions.

22 When they rejected the plan, we brought pressure to bear. We

23 adopted a painful measure, painful for us and the people. As opposed to

24 their leadership, we supported the people and we carried out a blockade on

25 the Drina River. We heard stories here that this was not a blockade at

1 all. That is a sheer lie. We accepted the International Mission of

2 Monitors led by General Bo Pelnas of Sweden. There is not a single report

3 that he sent to the United Nations or with which he acquainted the

4 Yugoslav government or the Government of Serbia in which one can find

5 proof of this totally arbitrary statement here that this was not a

6 blockade, it was just some kind of form.

7 What more could you expect us to do? We even accepted the

8 presence of these monitors there. And then, of course, the opposition

9 from Serbia raced to Pale in order to give support to them, and they were

10 roasting meat together with the leadership of Republika Srpska, and they

11 were levelling the most terrible kind of criticism against me, and they

12 were supporting them in rejecting the Vance-Owen Plan.

13 And it is learning from this experience that with the enormous

14 efforts in Athens, an agreement was signed and then destroyed at Pale.

15 When a new chance prior to Dayton came up, I insisted on having a solution

16 which would eliminate the possibility of having a repeated breakdown of a

17 peace plan, and I demanded that a decision be signed that the delegation

18 was made up of three representatives of Yugoslavia and three

19 representatives of Republika Srpska. From Yugoslavia, there would be two

20 representatives of the republics - myself and the President of Montenegro,

21 Bulatovic, and Foreign Minister of Yugoslavia - and from Republika Srpska

22 also three representatives, but it also stated that if there was a

23 division of votes in that delegation, I would have the decisive vote or,

24 rather, the head of the delegation would have the decisive vote, and that

25 wasn't me. And that agreement was signed. It was signed by the patriarch

1 of the Serbian Orthodox Church, Mr. Pavle, as well. His worship Mr.

2 Pavle.

3 I took all criticisms upon myself. For all the weaknesses that

4 would -- that might exist and that the Dayton Agreement might be

5 criticised, because we saw that they did not have the strength to conclude

6 a peace because of the promises they had given through their own

7 ambitions. And I said that anything they did not like, I would accept to

8 take the blame for, but my only concern was that peace prevail. And even

9 today I think that the Dayton Agreement or the Dayton-Paris Agreement on

10 Peace was a good one and that it should be respected and not to exert

11 pressure over it as is done by the Austrian, the occupier, to the

12 detriment of all three nations, and especially and first and foremost to

13 the detriment of the Serbs and partially to the detriment of the Croats as

14 well.

15 And it is within this context that I should like to say that it is

16 quite out of place to quote the ideas of Biljana Plavsic, for example,

17 especially in the context of what Serbia did and my own role, because not

18 to ascribe it to this side and party, because everything was the reverse,

19 and it is her ideas, precisely her ideas, the ones that you quoted, that

20 in Athens during the Vance-Owen Plan negotiations, in a television

21 interview which was broadcast publicly - of course, that was not the only

22 subject that was discussed - but the director of the television was asked

23 to comment the ideas that you here quoted against me because they are

24 truly unacceptable for any civilised human being.

25 Now, how I comment those ideas, I have already said the

1 protagonists of those ideas should be in a mental asylum. She did not

2 speak to me for many years after that and now you are ascribing her ideas

3 to me. That is nonsensical, it's nonsense and everybody in Serbia knows

4 it's nonsense.

5 And now I ask myself how any serious-minded person can take

6 accusations or indictments, serious ones of this kind, and base them on

7 anybody's statement where it was said that they were on good terms with me

8 and that I said such-and-such a thing. And that -- what we say is tongues

9 wagging. It's hearsay, just rumours, and it's not serious, you can't use

10 it in any official capacity. And on many occasions I said that nobody is

11 authorised to present his views through me. I am the only person to

12 present my own views, and I do so myself and publicly.

13 So there were a series of nonsensical things bandied about here,

14 and untruths, and everything about Bosnia-Herzegovina is a pure lie

15 because I was engaged in peace there, not war. Serbia, throughout that

16 time, waged a policy of peace. We wanted to save as many lives as

17 possible, both Serb lives and Croat lives and Muslim lives. And your own

18 lives, gentlemen from the international community. How many hostages did

19 I save for you from Bosnia? How many pilots did I save? How many times

20 did Chirac call me up and ask me to help him find those people and thanked

21 me again and again when we succeeded in finding their men and they were

22 alive and well. Not to mention many of the other efforts that were

23 successful, not only with respect to peace but in order -- also in terms

24 of saving human lives

25 Srebrenica. I heard about Srebrenica from Carl Bildt. And

1 Karadzic, whom I rang up on the phone immediately afterwards to asked what

2 had happened, he swore he knew nothing about it. On the contrary, he said

3 he had ordered that the western part be protected, which was under

4 jeopardy, and that he knew nothing about the whole thing. Now, whether he

5 did or didn't, I don't want to enter into that, but what I am saying, what

6 I am telling you now is a fact. And he and Krajisnik said to me quite

7 certainly that in the Republika Srpska there were no camps, there were

8 just centres for prisoners of war where they were kept for a short space

9 of time because they were being exchanged on the basis of one for all on

10 all sides when the numbers mounted up.

11 Immediately after Srebrenica, or following those days, I saved a

12 whole Muslim brigade; 840 people. I saved them from being destroyed

13 because I approved this. They sent an emissary, pleading for their lives,

14 and I let them swim across the Drina River and avoid this total

15 annihilation. I put them in a police camp on Mount Tara for them to

16 recuperate and they were visited by the entire Diplomatic Corps. After,

17 via the Red Cross, I sent them on to Hungary. I didn't accept giving them

18 up to any side in Bosnia. I didn't do that. I said they are under my

19 protection, they have come to my territory, we are not a warring party,

20 we're not a warring side, we're not going to hand them over to anyone.

21 We're not going to hand them over to you to exchange them or Izetbegovic

22 to send them back into the army because I had no proof that they were

23 volunteers in the army. They can go through the Red Cross to Hungary, a

24 neutral country, and then each individual will be able to decide whether

25 they're going to go and stay with their relatives in America, Australia,

1 or whether they'll go back to the army in Bosnia, and so on and so forth.

2 So Serbia was not a warring party, either in Bosnia or in Croatia.

3 And that in fact enabled us to help the peace process, to stop the

4 fratricidal war, the war between brothers, between brethren, although the

5 brothers and brethren had gone a little mad. So everything we have heard

6 here is topsy-turvy. It is absurd. The truth has been reversed and

7 semi-truths are worse than lies very often.

8 Let me tell you this: We did have our police in Eastern

9 Slavonia. Yes we did. But at the time, it was peace, it was peacetime

10 right up until the end because Eastern Slavonia, the situation there was

11 solved on the basis of agreement. The authorities in Eastern Slavonia and

12 the Croatian government. But policemen were across the borders

13 exclusively in order to assist in police affairs, in the policing of the

14 area because of all the conflicts and situations that existed there.

15 They had -- there was crime, crime was rampant, and they needed assistance

16 to suppress crime, and they were there to assist in that and to prevent

17 different trafficking and the quest for criminals from Serbia who found it

18 easiest to escape across the Danube. And it is a shame and a great pity

19 that things like that are being abused.

20 We also had a police unit, following my orders, on the territory

21 of Republika Srpska, too, in the Strpce railway station. And I sent them

22 there after the crime that took place where a criminal group stopped a

23 train on the Belgrade to Bar railway line, and it is only -- it enters

24 into Bosnian territory only for nine kilometres and it is a main railway

25 line in Yugoslavia. And at that Strpce station, the train doesn't stop at

1 all because it is just a small face, a by-station so the train usually

2 runs right through it. That was the project, the Belgrade-Bar railway.

3 But 17 Muslims were taken from Prijepolje, from that train, and

4 they were killed. And later on, that was established. At first, we

5 didn't know who they were or where they were; but that was done

6 intentionally. And that is why I asked an investigation to be launched in

7 Bosnia-Herzegovina and Republika Srpska, and when they came up with no

8 results, I sent our own policemen there to find the people who had thought

9 to be the perpetrators. Some were arrested and brought to the prison in

10 Belgrade but the courts released them later on because we were unable to

11 come up with proof of their guilt. So that was the response.

12 And to see that this was not repeated, I sent a unit there to

13 protect that particular railway station, although it was not on our own

14 territory, to avoid having another train stopped and other people

15 slaughtered. And I told Stoltenberg that I have, across that border, but

16 just across the border on the territory of Republika Srpska, this group of

17 policemen because I did not trust their own people that they would be able

18 to protect the station properly.

19 So what do you want to make of that? I know that this was a way

20 to transport the conflict to Serbia. And I went to Prijepolje on that

21 very day because the people, the victims were from Prijepolje. Prijepolje

22 is a small town in Serbia. 50 per cent are Serbs and 50 per cent are

23 Muslims of their population and they live in a sentiment of co-existence.

24 They live together. There was no persecutions for all those ten years.

25 During the war in Croatia, no Croat was expelled from Serbia, or Bosnian

1 during the Bosnian war. Fifty thousand registered Muslim refugees came to

2 take refuge in Serbia, and here you are speaking, turning the tables,

3 turning everything upside down, speaking untruths and lies

4 It is below my dignity to comment on the various insinuations that

5 have been made here. You are hitting below the belt. You started by

6 showing my speech, me making my speech in Kosovo Polje and saying that I

7 used the popularity - that's how you explained it - that I gained there

8 later to become the party leader myself, where it says on the footage

9 that it was in April 1987.

10 And I was the head of the party, I became the head of the party

11 one year earlier, before that, in May 1986. And the worst thing about all

12 this is that you have it all. You have all this data and information in

13 your documents. And where you write my biography, you ought to have these

14 facts and figures, but you omitted to read them carefully. And for the

15 event in Kosovo Polje, where I did have popular support, of course, you

16 say that I made use of that to become the party head whereas I had already

17 become party head one year prior to that. I was already head of the

18 party.

19 And that's what your whole indictment is like. Everything points

20 to the fact that it is a false indictment, that the Prosecutors are

21 grasping at straws because they have nothing but some psychoanalytical,

22 layman's assertions, and they are attempting to depict me as somebody able

23 to hypnotise people into going to commit crimes. You are drawing up some

24 schematics and organisations that they have conjured up yourself and this

25 goes beyond the realm of shunned literature and trash, and you have this

1 false indictment and these absurd two indictments for Bosnia and Croatia,

2 which are unfounded, to cover up everything and to wrap it up in some kind

3 of new wrappings and lies and fabrications, whereas we, of course we

4 helped our nation, our peoples in Bosnia-Herzegovina, and we would be

5 amiss had we -- and remiss had we not done so when the people were

6 suffering. We helped them honourably to survive and to be free and equal

7 and not to seize anything from anybody.

8 And you seem to think it's fine for the Germans to help Croatia,

9 for the Americans to perform -- help in ethnic cleansing and the Storm and

10 the Mujahedins and those who cut heads off with sabres and held two Serbs

11 heads in their hands, be helped by the Muslims. So the Germans are

12 helping the Croats. And those from Saudi Arabia, hundreds of thousands

13 of kilometres away, helped the Muslims. The only things you don't find

14 logical is for the Serbs to help the Serbs, their fellow Serbs.

15 Now, is there any logic in any of this or any moral explanation

16 whatsoever? Neither in Croatia or in Bosnia did the Serbs begin war.

17 Violence was effected over them. And I'm now going to read out to you

18 just several quotations by prominent world intellectuals, and their names

19 are familiar to any educated person throughout the globe. They are

20 household names to educated people.

21 Edmond Paris of France, 1961: "Studying the balance sheet of

22 crimes, we have calculated that the Pavlovic government succeeded in

23 killing approximately 750.000 Orthodox Serbs and deport 300.000 of them.

24 Also killed were 60.000 Jews, and 26.000 Romanies. And about 240.000 Serb

25 Orthodox were converted to the Catholic faith and most of them were in the

1 Bishopcy of His Worship Stepinac. So that was Edmond Paris of France

2 speaking

3 Charles Krauthammer, of America, says the following, August 1995:

4 "This week in a blitzkrieg which lasted only four days, the Croatian army

5 ethnically cleansed Krajina of 150.000 Serbs and forced them to flee for

6 their lives towards Bosnia and Serbia."

7 I hope that the interpreters are keeping up.

8 "Why is there no certain over the fall of Krajina, a region which

9 the Serbs settled 500 years ago, settled in 500 years ago, far before we

10 settled in North America? It is true they created a rebellion state in

11 Croatia. It is true that when Croatia, in 1991, separated from

12 Yugoslavia, they speeded up the war for independence within Croatia. But

13 they had good reason to enter the war. They did not wish to live under

14 the authority of people who, not so long ago, massacred their parents.

15 The Croatian state against whom they rose up from its inception in 1991

16 took over almost the same symbols - the same coat of arms and money of the

17 first Nazi puppet Croatian state dating back to World War II - according

18 to the Nuremberg laws, of a genocidal state with concentration camps and a

19 monstrous number of ethnic persecutions and the killing of hundreds of

20 thousands of Serbs."

21 Let me interrupt that quotation there. That was Charles

22 Krauthammer. For the Orthodox Christmas of that war year, in the camp of

23 Jasenovac, the Ustasha Nazis competed to see who could kill more Serbs in

24 the space of one day and one was victorious who managed to slaughter 1.300

25 Serbs on one single day. That is a historical fact as well.

1 Let me continue with his quotation:

2 "Today's Bosnia was part of that Nazi state which explains why

3 the Bosnian Serbs also called for independence. The Serbs from Krajina

4 have every reason to be afraid of coming under Croatian power and

5 authority again. This week, their fears arose again. The Croats shelled

6 Serb villages before the army launched an attack, and in that way, they

7 forced the population to flee report the United Nations observers in

8 Croatia. They, too, were fired at."

9 Where are protests now?

10 Now, what does Karlo Falconi of Italy say?

11 "The Ustashas certainly exceeded the Germans in their religious

12 racism. When they hit against the Serbs, it was not only hitting against

13 the enemy but also at someone who had betrayed the truth faith. Only in

14 Croatia half a million people were exterminated primarily because of their

15 religion rather than their race. Only in Croatia were people forcibly

16 converted from the Orthodox to the Catholic faith. In history, there is

17 not a precedent for the degree of violence that was carried out in these

18 operations. All of this really does not work in favour of the silence

19 that was kept by Pope Pious the 12th."

20 Now, what does Rajko Dolecek say in Czechoslovakia in 1993?

21 "The concentration camps in Croatia were within Jasenovac.

22 During the war, about 700.000 people were killed there, mostly by having

23 their throats slit and by having their heads broken open by hammers and

24 sledgehammers. Officers described these atrocities, and they themselves

25 were shocked by it. However, their rulers made it possible for them to

1 carry out these insane atrocities and killings. Usually it is said that

2 the Holocaust in Croatia involved 800.000 Serb lives. In the period from

3 August 1941 until August 1942, 356.000 Serbs were killed in Croatia.

4 Jacques Merlinot of France:

5 "On the basis of the figures provided by Edmond Paris, almost

6 200.000 people were killed in Jasenovac in 1941 and 1942. Only in 1942,

7 in Jasenovac, there were 24.000 children, 12.000 of which were killed.

8 Masses of Jewish children were cremated in a furnace that was turned into

9 a crematorium. And everybody knows that the Catholic church was an

10 accomplice in this crime. The high clergy of the Catholic church in

11 Croatia closely collaborated with the Nazis, headed by Archbishop Stepinac

12 of Zagreb, who supported the establishment of this new state and blessed

13 Ante Pavelic. This exists in the collective memory of the Serbs." This

14 is Jacques Merlinot of France saying this.

15 What does Philip Jenkins say from America in 1995?

16 "During the next three years, the Croats massacred Serbs and Jews

17 in such a terrible way that this even made the German officers feel awful.

18 Serbs, just like Jews, lived to see the end of the war, promising

19 themselves that they would never allow the enemy to exterminate them.

20 This can interpret the fact why, over the past four years, the Serbs had

21 to face a situation when their worst expectations came true, when the

22 massacres from 40 years ago could have happened again. There should be no

23 surprise that the Serbs took up arms rather than wait for concentration

24 camps again.

25 "And what about Bosnia? There as also historical legacy there.

1 One of the strangest facts in the Second World War pertained to the fact

2 that many Bosnian Muslims were recruited for the special units of the

3 German SS forces. However, the present-day developments are far more

4 important for the Serbs as well"

5 I'm going to skip Anita Singh. It is important but it is long and

6 I'm looking at the clock. I'm just going to quote her:

7 "Again the Serbs were victims in Tudjman's Croatia, because there

8 is a conflict raging there so cruel and so bestial that this is not really

9 news in Europe but Europe thought that this kind of thing had been

10 overcome. Jasenovac seeks an answer. Is Fascism really dead?"

11 And what does Louis Delmas of France say in 1994?

12 "Actually, there was no Serb aggression either in Croatia or in

13 Bosnia. There was no attack from the outside. What happened is fully

14 within the feeling of affiliation. This was a rebellion of the domestic

15 population that, through games of diplomacy, came to be included in new

16 states where they did not recognise themselves. That is what happened in

17 Croatia and Bosnia. There were no attacks by external attackers. The

18 republics of Krajina and Pale were therefore established. Is it difficult

19 to understand that genocide cannot be forgotten from one generation to the

20 other? The victims bear this in their blood. Few European Jews can say

21 that they did not have any relatives died in the deportations. There are

22 very few Serbs likewise, from the western part of Yugoslavia, that can say

23 that they did not have any of their relatives slaughtered by the Ustashas.

24 And if we add to this the historical exploitation of four centuries of

25 Ottoman occupation, can one be surprised over the vehemence of their

1 response over the secession of a republic which takes as its coat of arms

2 Pavlovic's emblem, Pavlovic's currency.

3 Mile Budak, one of the greatest war criminals and exterminators of

4 Serbs had many streets named after him. Now they do not hide their

5 anti-Serb feelings, and by the way, they don't hide anti-semitic feelings

6 in their books either." This is what Peter Handke wrote in 1996.

7 How can I forget the sentence from Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung

8 full of hatred concerning what is going on in Eastern Slavonia, according

9 to which Serbs in Croatia, who are Yugoslav citizens until now equal to

10 their Croatian compatriots, now according to the constitution of the new

11 Republic of Croatia that was carved up against their will become

12 second-rate citizens. They are simply annexed to the Croatian state, not

13 only the Croatian administration.

14 These 600.000 Serbs now, according to the degree of the German

15 journalist, and now he is quoting the journalist, "They must most

16 obediently, most humbly feel as a national minority now. All right.

17 We're acting on orders. There today onwards, we agree that we are going

18 to feel like a minority in our own country, and therefore, we agree that

19 your Croatian Constitution is going to treat us that way."

20 So would that be a way out if they were to say that? Who was the

21 first aggressor? What did this mean setting up a state that gave

22 supremacy to one people over another in an area where since times

23 immemorial people lived together? And this kind of development really had

24 to hit them hard, and it had to bring back to mind the persecutions from

25 Hitler's times. So who was the aggressor?

1 What did Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn write?

2 "May heaven forbid us from having a Yugoslav option. However,

3 there is a reason for their misfortune. False borders were set up. Serbs

4 were expelled from the historical region of Kosovo and Albanians were

5 brought there. And within 24 hours, the new states were recognised by the

6 power-loving West, not paying any heed to the fact that the present

7 borders were untenable.

8 And finally Patrick Bariot, and Eva Crepin in 1995:

9 "As a French citizen, I would like to refresh your memories of

10 our French history, the times when the bells of Notre Dame proclaimed to

11 France and Christiandom the tragic defeat of the Serbian Prince Lazar."

12 This is actually a reference to Gazimestan.

13 The memory of Victor Hugo, who on the 29th of August, 1876, said

14 in horror, "They are killing a people. When is the martyrdom of this

15 small, heroic people going to end?" This is an end of Hugo's quotation.

16 Did he perhaps have a premonition that this martyrdom would not

17 end in 1995?

18 As a citizen of Europe I put forward the following question: Are

19 we going to allow a people to be destroyed, a people who have been

20 shedding their blood for 600 years for the freedom and well-being of

21 Europe?

22 So on the 23rd of December, 1991, Germany formally recognised the

23 sovereignty and independence of Croatia, but the decision became effective

24 on the 15th of January, 1992. That is how the armed conflict, the civil

25 war, started in Croatia. This is unequivocally proven by the statements

1 made by Tudjman and Mesic, that they had opted for this option. Tudjman,

2 President of Croatia; Mesic, President of Yugoslavia. And when he broke

3 it up, then he was elected speaker of the Croatian parliament.

4 Tudjman speaking in public, on the square of Ban Jelacic, on the

5 24th of May, 1992, in his message to the nation said, and I quote: "There

6 would not have been a war had Croatia not wanted it, but it was our

7 assessment that only through war can we win Croatia's independence. That

8 is why we pursued a policy of negotiations. But behind these negotiations

9 we established our armed units."

10 Of course Tudjman the Croatian government could have won the

11 independence of Croatia without war, but without war they could not have

12 killed Serbs and expelled 600.000 Serbs from Croatia. That shows the

13 nature of this war, the war they are still trying to call the liberation

14 war and the homeland war there. That is the way the unfortunate people

15 who fought it feel, but this is certainly not corroborated by the

16 objectives that are shown through historical facts.

17 And on the 5th of December, 1991, Stjepan Mesic, having thanked

18 the Assembly of Croatia, the Parliament of Croatia for the confidence

19 vested in him, he says: "I think that I have carried out my task. There

20 is no more Yugoslavia." Everybody saw that. He was President of the

21 Presidency of Yugoslavia, who took a solemn oath that he would preserve

22 the integrity of Yugoslavia and its constitutional order. He comes to

23 Croatia to say that he had carried out his task, that Yugoslavia was no

24 more.

25 Many world statesmen, scholars, and even international

1 institutions voiced their opinions in this regard. James Baker, the

2 Secretary of State on the 13th of January, 1995, said before the

3 Congress -- I'm quoting Baker now:

4 "It is a fact that Croatia and Slovenia unilaterally declared

5 their independence in spite of our warnings. They used force and this

6 caused a civil war." End of quotation.

7 He particularly highlighted that the position of the United

8 States was to preserve the territorial integrity of Yugoslavia and that

9 this was advocated by 32 members of the CSC, nowadays the OSCE.

10 I quote him again:

11 "Everybody supported this. This was the right kind of policy and

12 it is a very bad thing that we did not stick to that policy longer than we

13 did." End of quotation.

14 As far as back as 1989, he cautioned that if there were to be a

15 unilateral secession, this would lead to the use of force. Unfortunately,

16 at the time when Baker, in 1995, spoke about this, he was no longer

17 Secretary of State. The Democrats came to power, as well as lobbying, and

18 the money that accompanies lobbying.

19 Again claims are being made, and we heard about this here,

20 throughout these seven months that the Serbs and even Serbia started the

21 civil war. And facts, all of them, unequivocally speak to the contrary.

22 The war in Bosnia-Herzegovina was brought to an end by the Dayton

23 Accords. The former Yugoslavia was represented through the

24 representatives of Croatia, Yugoslavia -- the Federal Republic of

25 Yugoslavia, Bosnia-Herzegovina, and the international community was

1 represented by the host country but also all the contact group members

2 were represented as well. With the highest degree of responsibility, I

3 say that, as far as the establishment of these two entities is concerned,

4 where a war had been raging until then, perhaps the most important role

5 that was played was the role of the Federal Republic of Yugoslavia, and

6 that is what I had been striving for.

7 Other participants in the Dayton negotiations shared this feeling,

8 and they said this publicly as well. This was also the view of the host

9 country, the United States of America. Nowadays, it is not only that this

10 support is being forgotten, this support that I had enjoyed in pursuing

11 this policy that was aimed at peace, but all the efforts made by the

12 Federal Republic of Yugoslavia and Serbia and I personally are being

13 neglected, although this was crucial, I should say. Also the results of

14 these efforts are being overlooked.

15 Responsibility for the war is being sought on that side that had

16 advocated peace. Before the eyes of the entire world, there is an

17 inversion. The instigators of war are accusing the protagonists of peace

18 for war, and thanks to their powerful international positions, they are

19 playing the roles of both Prosecutor and Judge. As for me personally,

20 they are accusing me and condemning me in advance precisely of their own

21 warmongering policies and the consequences of these policies that they had

22 been pursuing themselves and that I had opposed to the best of my ability

23 by advocating peace.

24 This simple truth can be overlooked nowadays only by those who

25 have the interest not to see this. And of course, those who are bombed by

1 lies and who are exposed to such media manipulations that they have

2 accepted lies as the truth and the other way around. Of course, this is

3 not the first time in history that truth and justice are losers, but it is

4 the first time in history that the war against truth and justice is being

5 waged by a new weapon and that is the mass media. In the struggle against

6 truth and justice, this weapon is more lethal than all of those that were

7 used until now. And if this weapon is being used by the most powerful

8 country in the world and also the bloc of the most powerful countries in

9 the world, then of course their opponents are condemned to being on the

10 losing side. And journalists, if they do not support truth and justice,

11 are very often paid for what they do and in this way they also become

12 killers and mercenaries.

13 The decision to establish the International Tribunal for the

14 former Yugoslavia is illegal because the Security Council does not have

15 the right to do this. It is a very unusual Tribunal. It was established

16 for wars that were being waged on the territory of the former Yugoslavia ,

17 as if this were the only war waged at all, or at least in this point in

18 time.

19 Only, in this point in time, in the second half of the twentieth

20 century, hundreds of smaller local wars were waged and international

21 tribunals were not established for them. And indeed why not? Why was the

22 first tribunal of this nature formed because of the conflicts on the

23 territory of the former Yugoslavia? Why? Was this resistance to those

24 who had instigated the war become so great and so visible? Was it because

25 external involvement in this Yugoslav war was so obvious? Or perhaps

1 because of those who were involved perhaps they thought the results

2 achieved were not sufficient. I think it is for all these reasons.

3 It was so obvious that there was opposition to those who

4 instigated and caused the war and also that there was such a great degree

5 of external involvement. But it is also because the results they achieved

6 were not successful. That is why the participants in the war in the

7 former Yugoslavia are being tried as if they were the only participants in

8 the only war in the world.

9 I'm not questioning the decision to bring to justice those who

10 killed, slaughtered children, old people, various other victims. However,

11 perpetrators are being sought even amongst those who had worked for peace,

12 as in this case. I claim that this is because the inspirers of war were

13 not happy with the outcome of the war and not happy with the resistance

14 that was put forth. They thought it would be negligible. And if it were

15 to be more than negligible, then its protagonists were to be killed and

16 arrested.

17 The formation and survival of the Federal Republic of Yugoslavia

18 is part of that resistance to the -- those who inspired the disintegration

19 of the former Yugoslavia, war within it, the suffering of millions of

20 Yugoslav citizens. That is why, immediately after the conflict in

21 Bosnia-Herzegovina, when it came to a close, that tensions were raised in

22 the Federal Republic of Yugoslavia, following the same principles upon

23 which these tensions started in the former Yugoslavia and began to be

24 created and to function in this latest one.

25 We are talking about inciting national hatred and intolerance.

1 And I think that I have clearly stated and presented before you the

2 historical facts and the background upon which the crime against

3 Yugoslavia was committed. And when we're talking about Kosovo, when it

4 comes to the question of Kosovo, the state organs acted in similar fashion

5 to the conduct that was seen by the state organs in other European but all

6 other countries, not only in our times, in our day and age, but in our

7 civilisation in general. This reaction on the part of Yugoslav state

8 organs was in keeping with the Yugoslav Constitution and in keeping with

9 similar experience or identical experiences of other states. It was

10 treated by the Western governments as violence over the innocent Albanian

11 population in Kosovo, and, therefore, as a cause for the intervention of

12 the international community to protect that innocent Albanian population.

13 And that is what happened. This intervention over a criminal

14 state that allegedly jeopardised the Albanian population on part of this

15 territory came in the form of the NATO pact aggression in a way which

16 introduced into the life of our planet a new form of warfare based on the

17 use of the latest technological achievements of our civilisation, and this

18 aggression resulted in enormous human casualties.

19 I saw on television that the CNN said that they were not showing

20 Milosevic's photographs because they are too gruesome for the public.

21 That was their official explanation. They don't want their public to see

22 their crimes, and thereby they only confirm that they are in the service

23 of crimes and in leading their own public astray. They are afraid of

24 having their own public seeking for the responsibility of their own

25 culprits. They don't know how to explain to their own public that

1 allegedly they protected Albanians by bombing maternity wards in Belgrade

2 or that they were allegedly protecting the Albanians when they bombed a

3 convoy of Albanians in Kosovo and Kosovo towns and villages.

4 And the media that are not informing about this are finding it

5 difficult to take -- are finding greater links with bin Laden's terrorists

6 and the drug trafficking Mafia and links to their money. On the 16th of

7 February, therefore, that is to say a few days ago, the Daily Telegraph

8 writes: "Extremist Albanians who want to create new conflicts in the

9 south of the Balkans are spending millions of pounds that they earned

10 through the sale of Afghanistan heroin --" once again, Afghanistan is

11 mentioned -- "on the European market for the procurement of weapons."

12 The Daily Telegram, referring to reports of the Vienna UN

13 headquarters for drugs control, writes that in Austria, Germany and

14 Switzerland, there is more and more heroin coming in from the enormous

15 stockpiles that exist in Afghanistan and where amassed by Al Qaeda and the

16 Taliban. And where does the KLA get its heroin from? What do you think?

17 The Albanian drug traffickers are endeavouring to take control over the

18 European heroin market, which is worth several billion pounds per annum,

19 and I quote the Daily Telegraph.

20 Rebels of the KLA in Macedonia are part of a network controlled by

21 criminal organisations of these three countries but they also exist in

22 other countries as well claim the Western intelligence reports from

23 Kosovo. In Macedonia and Switzerland, they say that the Albanian bands

24 last year used part of that money that they earned through the sale of

25 Afghanistan heroin for the procurement of weapons for Albanian insurgents

1 in Macedonia who, last autumn, handed in their weapons to NATO. This is

2 becoming evermore evident but the CNN is escaping the truth. And it is

3 logically in line with the fact that three Albanians have been convicted

4 of terrorism and Sulejman Selimi, Kadar, and Usomi [phoen] Ustaku, they

5 are the names from the KLA. They were amnestied, pardoned and received

6 high ranks in the new SS Skanderbeg division which is now called the

7 Kosovo Protection Corps.

8 Now, why should CNN report on all this and disturb the citizens of

9 America because they are going to fare the same way they did on the 11th

10 of September. Just as nothing is said about how many Italian soldiers

11 fell sick and died because of the depleted uranium that was thrown on

12 Serbian Kosovo. And this was confirmed by an observer in Rome. It was

13 confirmed three years later because the army would not provide facts and

14 figures. The situation in other armies is even worse. But this is

15 something that is being kept from the citizens because it jeopardises the

16 interests and profits of those who are amassing riches on the basis of

17 that. They have to explain to their soldiers that there are patriotic

18 reasons for them to travel far from their country to kill other people's

19 children, and even go to other countries that have never done anything to

20 harm them and who were always -- who were even their allies in both the

21 World Wars and that they are doing this for patriotic reasons.

22 They do not want to inform on the fact that an Albanian held in

23 prison because on the 15th of February, 2001, along the Podujevo-Pristina

24 road by the Livadice village, he blew up a busload of Serbs, full of Serbs

25 that were escorting KFOR. Many people were killed and injured. But this

1 man has been released from prison.

2 I hope that world public opinion will be able to put the parts of

3 this jigsaw puzzle together, including the part of this Tribunal.

4 As for Yugoslavia, violence is still being waged against it and

5 all means are being resorted to.

6 JUDGE MAY: Yes. It's now 11.00. That would be a convenient

7 moment. We'll adjourn for half an hour. Half past eleven.

8 --- Recess taken at 11.00 a.m.

9 --- On resuming at 11.30 a.m.

10 JUDGE MAY: Yes, Mr. Milosevic.

11 THE ACCUSED: [Interpretation] As nobody is quoting the UN

12 Secretary-General reports dating back to 1992, for example, which confirm

13 what I've been saying, I'm going to just read out a brief quotation. I

14 have to make good use of my time, save my time. I have the original of

15 that.

16 [In English] [Previous translation continues] ... "on the 28th/

17 29th of May, took place in direct contravention of instructions issued by

18 JNA leadership in Belgrade. Given the doubts that now exist about the

19 ability of the authorities in Belgrade to influence General Mladic, who

20 has left JNA, efforts have been made by UNPROFOR to appeal to him directly

21 as well as through the political leadership of the Serbian Republic of

22 Bosnia-Herzegovina. As the result of these efforts, General Mladic agreed

23 on 30th of May to stop the bombardment of Sarajevo. While it is my hope

24 that the shelling of the city will not be resumed, it is also clear that

25 the emergence of General Mladic and the forces under his command as

1 independent actor apparently beyond the control of JNA, complicates the

2 issue raised in paragraph 4 of Security Council Resolution 752. President

3 Izetbegovic has recently indicated to senior UNPROFOR officers at Sarajevo

4 his willingness to deal with General Mladic but not with the political

5 leadership of the Serbian Republic of Bosnia-Herzegovina."

6 [Interpretation] If we were to read all these things, the

7 situation would be much clearer. The picture would be much clearer

8 because it has been made a caricature of, distorted in a caricature

9 fashion. And when it comes to Yugoslavia, that it was the resistance that

10 Yugoslavia set up is not only borne out by history and the events in

11 Kosovo but also the fact itself that the victims of that brutal aggression

12 were not only the citizens of Serb and Montenegrin nationality but

13 Albanian nationality as well, though the bombing was allegedly to punish

14 the policy of a country which jeopardised the Albanian majority. But

15 there are always victims in war. They are usually women, children, the

16 elderly and sick and the part of the population that has least to do with

17 the reasons of war and which are the tragic result, for the most part.

18 This is a general rule. It was true in Croatia and in Bosnia and in Iraq

19 and in New York and Washington and in Belgrade and everywhere else.

20 The informed part of the world knew that the bombing of Yugoslavia

21 was retaliation by the NATO pact for the independent policy Yugoslavia

22 waged; and the uninformed part of the world was informed that it was a

23 just punishment of what the Serbo fighters did over the innocent Albanian

24 majority seeking human rights, national rights, civic rights, although

25 they had all those rights over and above all world standards. And this is

1 something that we have proof and evidence of, of which I have set out a

2 few.

3 The fact that they asked for Kosovo's secession from Serbia and

4 that they set up a terrorist organisation to implement that secession, the

5 KLA, the infamous KLA which slaughtered everything that was Serb,

6 Montenegrin, and Albanian as well, that is something that has been hidden

7 from the world public and every other public. The truth is quite

8 different.

9 For example, the Marianne, the French daily, this month asks how

10 the West allowed bin Laden to set up his network in the Balkans and how

11 6.000 Islamic fanatics from Algeria, and you know what they're doing in

12 Algeria towards the Algerians themselves, from Saudi Arabia, Ethiopia and

13 so on fought in Bosnia, that Izetbegovic wanted to effect a large

14 Muslimisation and that the KLA was the second stage of the same project.

15 It was the so-called Green Transversal. The line from Bosnia via Sandzak,

16 stretching to Kosovo and Metohija.

17 The American representative for the Balkans, Gelbard, at a press

18 conference held at the Hyatt Hotel in Belgrade on the 20th of February,

19 1998 said, and I quote: "We are profoundly concerned and energetically

20 accuse terrorist actions -- condemn terrorist actions and groups in

21 Kosovo, particularly the KLA. It is without doubt a terrorist group that

22 we are dealing with here."

23 He added that this was something he knew enough about to be able

24 to assess. But at that time, obviously he wasn't made aware of the secret

25 plans of his bosses and the activities of the alliance for this Balkan

1 operation which advocated an all-out war against Yugoslavia, and as a

2 civil servant, he was sent to take up the post of ambassador in Indonesia,

3 right the other side of the world. The future will show that Yugoslavia

4 was a polygon, a model. Like the countries of the former USSR, where the

5 main point of confrontation was Russia and the Ukraine and that Ukraine be

6 included into the NATO pact by 2000.

7 That is why Albright herself said -- and this is in Michael

8 Mendelbaum's book, September 1999, that the most important thing that they

9 did was Kosovo. And Professor Michel Kosodoski, on the 10th of April,

10 2000, said that Kosovo bands were financing -- financed by organised

11 criminals and that at the time of Rambouillet, there was a report being

12 prepared on the links between the Afghanistan and Albanian drug

13 trafficking bands and groups. It is common knowledge that fighters from

14 Kuwait, Saudi Arabia, but also Germany, Afghanistan, and Turkey were

15 training the KLA.

16 Diana Johnson on the 23rd of January, 2000, in an article, says

17 that when the judgement decides on crimes, says that Abramovic looked at

18 Albright -- Holbrooke and others to develop Clinton's doctrine of a

19 so-called humanitarian war, and this was to cover up crimes with the aim

20 of effecting strategic interests and he included Thaci in Rambouillet as a

21 pawn.

22 So that is the same Abramovic who in January, back in January 1986

23 went to China to prevail upon them to sell Islamic rebels in arms.

24 I should like to draw the attention of the world public to a

25 detail that is rather a good example. The Albania Abdiju Ekrem and Kopula

1 Shpend, who were tried in the year 2000 because, at the demand of Saudi

2 Arabia, a Saudi Arabian, Abdiju Laha Duja Hyem [phoen], the head of the

3 World Bureau for the Islamic Appeal, cooperative of bin Laden, organised a

4 Mujahedin brigade which was called the brigade of the 35 Saudi Arabians,

5 Ethiopians and 110, including Albanians as well, and we were able to

6 dismantle them.

7 After they were arrested and condemned in the year 200, in 2001,

8 the new authorities, and we know under whose orders I've already spoken

9 about that, they were pardoned, amnestied. After that, we see the advent

10 of the 11th of September, and this was directly connected to this Abdiju

11 Ekrem . He otherwise in Saudi Arabia itself, in 1996, was taken to trial

12 and spent one year in prison because, like his co-fighters from Kosovo and

13 Afghanistan, he had serious backers, powerful backers. And this man Ekrem

14 Abdiju in 1992 in Bosnia-Herzegovina, formed the same kind of Mujahedin

15 brigade in Tesajn, Abu Bekir Sadik was its name. I omitted to show

16 photographs that I mentioned of the heads that were severed and the man

17 holding up the severed heads.

18 So the informed part of the world knew that the bombing of

19 Yugoslavia was retaliation for the policy of independence that Yugoslavia

20 was waging, and the uninformed part of the world was informed that this

21 was just reprisal for the terror of the Yugoslav, allegedly, authorities

22 and the Serb authorities over the Albanian minority.

23 In order to hide the truth that it was retaliation for the Western

24 governments, for the fact that Yugoslavia was not listening to the Western

25 powers and that Serbia was not listening to them and not only was the

1 truth masked but a lie was almost perfectly launched, saying that the

2 aggression was a just thing and a necessary thing over the protagonists of

3 Serb violence towards the Albanians. So a large part of the uninformed

4 world, or I might even say the whole of the uninformed world believed

5 that, by bombing Yugoslavia, justice was being done and that the Yugoslav

6 and Serb authorities were led by the protagonists of crimes and that they

7 should be downtrodden.

8 But when it comes to me, to this should be added personal, the

9 element of personal hatred on the part of those politicians whom I stepped

10 forward and stopped them subjugating Yugoslavia and Serbia and stopped

11 them in the realisation of their plan, the plan that they implemented in

12 all other East European countries, including, of course, Albania, Bulgaria

13 and so on and so forth at the beginning of the last decade of the last

14 century. They did so ten years earlier. And of course to ascribe -- to

15 add to their frustrations, because of the task that was not achieved and

16 the ambitions that were not achieved on the part of those who were given

17 those assignments and failed to carry them out, because even at that

18 time everything that took place should have taken place in Serbia, too.

19 There is much proof and evidence of this of which I have submitted a few.

20 And so for ten years, they tried to overthrow me and finally they

21 succeeded in an unchivalrous and dirty manner by launching threats and by

22 bribery to subjugate Serbia. So this factor of personal hatred is also

23 something that must be added because where can you have greater

24 confirmation that, in addition to all these state reasons, historical,

25 political, strategical and other reasons, when it comes to me, there is

1 personal hatred, the element of personal hatred, and in a savage way, my

2 whole family is still under attack.

3 I have been speaking for three days about the political,

4 strategic, and historical reasons. Now I'll only spend three minutes to

5 speak about that personal hatred that is being manifest in this cowardly,

6 savage attack -- in these cowardly and savage attacks on my family; my

7 wife and my children.

8 My wife, who is a university professor and was a university

9 professor at a time when I didn't delve in politics at all, whose books

10 have been published and translated in Russia, China, the United States,

11 England, France, Germany, Greece, Italy and so on and so forth, Spain,

12 translated into over 30 languages throughout the world, and they are

13 testimony of the superhuman efforts, public efforts of an intellectual

14 against war, against national conflicts, against violence and primitivism

15 and who served to her honour, especially because they were written during

16 the time of those events and not from the distance of time. And she is

17 the subject of the most savage media campaign, with the most grievous lies

18 and fabrications being bandied about; forgeries and slander.

19 My daughter, who never dealt with politics, was forced to stop

20 working, and she lives -- continues to live in an isolated fashion because

21 she cannot take the violence against her and all the rest of us.

22 And against my son, the media are exerting a horrific campaign,

23 although he has in -- at no time been in conflict with the law or morals.

24 And he is also always considered a good comrade, a person with a high

25 sensitivity for solidarity. He helped everyone, did everything he could.

1 He has this avalanche of media hatred come down on his head, and he has

2 left the country and, with him, his newly-established family, his young

3 wife and small son.

4 This lack of honour and cannibalism has not been noted in Europe

5 to date. CNN even published such lies that my son has golf terrains, that

6 he has a series of pizzerias and a drug trafficking group. This is

7 infamous. It was always a shame to raise your arm against women and

8 children, no matter how much you hate somebody; yet more proof that

9 this personal hatred is something that is generally known.

10 During the NATO aggression, they tried to kill both me and my

11 entire family. They bombed the residence with a few cruising missiles in

12 a wave of several seconds. And you know full well that, according to

13 international law, and according to US law, the murder of a foreign head

14 of state is a crime. And then on that day when they did the bombing, in

15 that house I received the President of the Parliament and the Foreign

16 Minister, and those who were following this could see their cars entering

17 the residence compound and leaving it.

18 I saw on CNN the other day General Clark, now resigned, retired,

19 that -- saying that my house was a legitimate military target because

20 allegedly underneath the residence there was a command centre, an

21 underground command centre, which is an infamous lie.

22 This house was used by the late President Tito as his residence

23 from the Second World War onwards, and there was never a command centre

24 there nor was there any kind of underground area there. In the middle of

25 the garden is the house itself and underneath is nothing. It did not even

1 have a single square centimetre of bulletproof glass. I did not have

2 bulletproof glass in my house, in my office when I was President of

3 Serbia or when I was President of Yugoslavia. I see that the new

4 authorities and my successor in Serbia placed bulletproof glass very fast

5 so that nobody would kill them.

6 This house did not have any kind of underground premises. Both

7 Clark and his co-workers at NATO had to know about this because they had

8 available to them all the information about Tito's former generals, from

9 the JNA, from Slovenia, Croatia, Bosnia, Macedonia, those who worked with

10 him, those were on duty in that house, those who were closer to him than

11 Serb generals were.

12 So is more proof required or greater proof than these two sets of

13 proof; trying to kill me and my family? And I spoke of the strategic and

14 political reasons for three days, but in addition to this, there is this

15 cowardly, undignified personal hatred.

16 After these three minutes, perhaps it wasn't even three minutes,

17 perhaps it was only two minutes, let us go back to what I'm being charged

18 with here.

19 I've been charged with a crime here that was committed by others,

20 primarily those outside Yugoslavia, those who invented this Tribunal and

21 who invented this prison so that they would not be held responsible for

22 violence over people, for breaking up a country, for civil war amongst its

23 peoples. With the assistance of this Tribunal that they set up

24 themselves, they accused me of this because I opposed their violence and

25 advocated the preservation of the country. Their prestigious position in

1 international relations and their enormous power are being used not only

2 for supremacy in the world but also for cruel retaliation for everyone who

3 opposes their might. That is the core of this trial and that is the true

4 face of this justice. I am here before this false court so that they

5 would not be -- so that they would not be facing a true court.

6 I have nothing to defend myself from. I can only be proud and I

7 can only accuse my accusers and their bosses. They are free men, but they

8 are not truly free. I, arrested, imprisoned, am nevertheless the free.

9 My name is Slobodan, with a capital "S," which means "free" in my

10 language.

11 Could you please have this tape played.

12 JUDGE MAY: How long is it likely to be Mr Milosevic?

13 THE ACCUSED: I beg your pardon?

14 JUDGE MAY: How long is it likely to be, this tape?

15 THE ACCUSED: Altogether, I will finish within the time you said

16 that is available for me. It means up to 1.00. So I had no the

17 opportunity to check everything with this. I have no facilities in the

18 prison for that. But within the time given to me, I have to finish. I

19 have understand what you decided.

20 [Interpretation] I have another video cassette to play after this

21 one, but that would also fit into the time allotted to me.

22 [Trial Chamber and Court Deputy confer]

23 JUDGE MAY: There's apparently some difficulty about playing this

24 tape immediately. We'll take ten minutes. Have you got another one? You

25 said you have another one to be played.

1 THE ACCUSED: [Interpretation] No. I want this one to be played

2 first.

3 JUDGE MAY: I don't know. Let's consider.

4 THE ACCUSED: [Interpretation] Because this one is directly related

5 to what I have been saying this morning.

6 [Trial Chamber confers]

7 THE ACCUSED: [Interpretation] It had been rewound. I don't see

8 that there is any reason why it cannot be played immediately.

9 JUDGE MAY: Mr. Milosevic, we don't want to waste any time. So

10 can you go on with your speech for ten minutes and we'll then -- or you

11 can play the other tape, whichever you choose.

12 THE ACCUSED: [Interpretation] Oh, no. I'm going to wait for the

13 cassette to be played. At any rate, we're going to fit into your time

14 frame.

15 JUDGE MAY: Very well. We'll adjourn for ten minutes, but you

16 understand that we'll finish by 1.00, whatever.

17 THE ACCUSED: [Interpretation] What does he need ten minutes for to

18 play a cassette? I really don't understand.

19 JUDGE MAY: There's a technical problem, he can't play it

20 immediately.

21 --- Break taken at 11.55 a.m.

22 --- On resuming at 12.12 p.m.

23 JUDGE MAY: Yes. Let the tape be played now.

24 [Videotape played]

25 "Two years later, much of Yugoslavia was in flames. A small war

1 in Slovenia led to large and more bloody conflicts in Bosnia-Herzegovina.

2 Moreover, European nations, the United States and Middle Eastern states

3 were backing different factions in these outbreaks of civil war.

4 Publicly, Western diplomats blamed irresponsible ethnic leaders of the

5 different Yugoslav republics for the bloodshed, including Milan Kucan of

6 Slovenia, Franjo Tudjman of Croatia, and Slobodan Milosevic of Serbia,

7 certainly no innocents among the warring parties. Privately, however,

8 European Community envoy Lord Carrington and UN mediator Cyrus Vance were

9 furious at Germany's Foreign Minister Hans Dietrich Genscher. France

10 would later call the conflict Mr. Genscher's war because of Germany's push

11 to recognise separatists in Slovenia and Croatia.

12 "'Vance argued that recognition would take away the diplomatic

13 leverage that he had to try to bring the conflict in Croatia to an end and

14 could possibly result in Bosnia blowing up.'

15 "The former German Foreign Minister claimed that his government

16 did not support the break-up of Yugoslavia until fighting began.

17 "'We held a strong position for the unity of Yugoslavia, as I

18 said, but we saw the will to keep it together vanished more and more under

19 the pressure of military events.'

20 "In fact, however, since the 1960s, Germany's intelligence arm,

21 the BND, was deeply involved in the training of Croatian separatists led

22 by the pro-Nazi Ustasha who fled to Germany after World War II and

23 participated in a number of terrorist actions against embassies and the

24 government of Yugoslav communist leader Josip Broz Tito.

25 "'In the early '60s, the BND decided to cooperate fully with the

1 Ustasha. This became plain to see after the so-called Croat Spring in the

2 beginning of the '70s. After Tito's death, they accelerated their

3 efforts, together with the Ustasha, in order to disintegrate Yugoslavia

4 into several smaller states.'

5 "Germany's crucial role in supporting Croatian separatists is

6 confirmed by Anton Duhacek, the former director of Yugoslav

7 counterintelligence, who was himself a Croat.

8 "'The Germans wanted an absolute and complete subordination of

9 Croatian intelligence that would carry out all that the Germans wanted.

10 And the Germans promised that this would be in the interests of the future

11 independent free Croatia.'

12 "On the surface, Yugoslavia seemed better off than its east

13 European neighbours in the 1970s and 1980s. The US considered its

14 independent communist leader, Josip Broz Tito, an asset in the Cold War

15 with Moscow. It Yugoslavia's economy was propped up with western loans

16 even after Tito's death in 1980. The carefully-staged 1984 Olympics in

17 Sarajevo offered the world the impression of a peaceful multi-ethnic

18 country working together. Veteran observers, however, could see trouble

19 below the surface.

20 "'I think the first hint I got of a violent break-up was when I

21 made a tour of all of the republics in 1983 and I heard a lot of sort of

22 separatist sentiments in several of the republics, especially Slovenia and

23 Croatia, but not only, and some very threatening remarks were made in the

24 course of my conversations about what "we" would do to "them" and so on.'

25 "By themselves, neither Slovenia nor Croatia had the diplomatic

1 or military power to actually separate, to challenge Yugoslavia's federal

2 army, which was the fourth largest in Europe. But Germany provided not

3 only diplomatic support but also weapons, even after an international arms

4 embargo.

5 "'And I wrote a story about it, which was called The blockade's a

6 Joke, and so I went and started checking the ports like Split and the

7 ports along the Dalmatian coast, and as best I could, checking the stuff

8 that was coming across the borders, and there was no limitation.'

9 "'We saw a Croatian MG-21 shot down in the Krajina, which the

10 Croatians said came from the former Yugoslav air force stocks. In fact,

11 it was clearly from East German air force stocks - it had the East German

12 radar warning receivers on board - so we knew that, that these weapons

13 were coming from the former East German stocks. They were, if you like,

14 slightly disguised in the sense that they didn't look like West German

15 weapons but they are coming from West Germany, obviously with the West

16 German government's blessing. There can be no other way in which heavy

17 weapons can be supplied like this.'.

18 "While separatist forces were being armed, Germany was, at the

19 same time, warning the Yugoslav government of Ante Markovic not to use

20 force against separatists. Ante Markovic, who was himself a Croatian,

21 presided over a divided government which was unable to stand up to German

22 pressure or rally his government for the challenges ahead.

23 "'He never lined up, you know, coalition support; he always flew

24 solo. So, you know, he could be welcomed in the White House, and was, but

25 he didn't have any backing at home. So in that sense, he was a real

1 failure and a disastrous one in that he preserved the fiction that

2 Yugoslavia was holding together.'

3 "The Yugoslavia federal army, which held the country together,

4 now became a target for those who wanted to break it apart. At a Croatian

5 separatist rally in Split in May of 1991, demonstrators strangled a young

6 soldier of the federal army and then tossed his dead body onto the street.

7 This and similar events seemed to bear out predictions by the US Central

8 Intelligence Agency.

9 "'The CIA said in 1990, October, that Yugoslavia faced break-up,

10 probably violent, as early as six months from the time of the report. And

11 nobody paid any attention to it in the higher echelons of government.'

12 "By June of 1991, however, US Secretary of State James Baker

13 decided to make one attempt to prevent a disaster. He flew to Belgrade,

14 the capital of Yugoslavia, to confront leaders of the six republics.

15 "'He said, Don't any of you take steps that are not agreed on by

16 the others.'

17 "However, Milan Kucan and Franjo Tudjman, leaders of the Slovenia

18 and Croatian republics, were confident that they could ignore the US

19 Secretary of State. They declared their independence just days later, on

20 June 25th. Because they could count on the support of German Foreign

21 Minister Genscher and Austrian Foreign Minister Alojz Mock.

22 The cycle of violence which would destroy Yugoslavia began when

23 Slovene President Milan Kucan ordered his troops to seize customs posts on

24 the Yugoslav borders with Austria and Italy and the Slovene capital of

25 Ljubljana. Yugoslav flags were taken down and replaced with Slovenian

1 flags.

2 "'And the Slovenes thought they had a right to take down those

3 flags. The end of an internationally recognised friendship. And I don't

4 think that for a moment Belgrade expected there would be violent

5 resistance.'

6 "To avoid violence, Yugoslav army General Andreja Raseta had

7 phoned Milan Kucan privately to let him know that many Yugoslav army

8 troops, responding to this challenge of federal authority, were not even

9 carrying live ammunition.

10 "'But in fact, the Slovenes had prepared themselves. They were

11 getting a lot of encouragement from across the way, from Vienna and from

12 Germans too, and they foresaw that they could make a very big

13 international case by having what they called a war of independence. It

14 was nothing of the sort.'

15 "German Foreign Minister Hans Dietrich Genscher flew to the

16 Austrian border with Yugoslavia to join President Kucan and warned the

17 federal army against efforts to maintain control of federal borders.

18 Kucan ordered his forces to fire on Yugoslavia army troops, including

19 those who carried no live ammunition. Faced with international opposition

20 led by Germany, Yugoslav President Markovic ordered the federal army to

21 withdraw from Slovenia without a serious attempt to counter separatist

22 forces. Slovene leaders conducted a masterful public relations effort.

23 Foreign reporters with kept occupied in an underground press centre with

24 briefings that suggested that Slovene forces had defeated the fourth

25 largest army in Europe. Journalists in the press centre routinely

1 reported as news fanciful briefings from Slovene officials on various

2 battles, including some that had never happened.

3 "'What was going on in Slovenia, where the Slovenians declared

4 independence and set up customs posts on the road, tended to be seen and

5 portrayed on television as the Yugoslav army acting aggressively against

6 Slovenia as opposed to the Slovenians declaring independence.'

7 "The manipulation of the foreign press corps set the tone for new

8 wars of secession in Croatia and Bosnia. Repeatedly the JNA was described

9 as an occupying force dominated by Serbs. The reality was different,

10 however. The army's Chief of Staff, Veljko Kadijevic, was half Croatian,

11 half Serb. Air force chief Zvonko Jurjevic was Croatian, and the

12 commander of the navy, Stane Brovet, was Slovenian.

13 "'The federal army had held Yugoslavia together under Tito

14 without creating any protests about human rights. Tito insisted on an

15 ethnic balance and, in the localities, it was composed of the people of

16 that area. It was absurd to call it an army of occupation. And we should

17 have - we the West - should have recognised that until there was an agreed

18 arrangement for a dissolution of a state which had been Yugoslavia and

19 which might take years or decades or perhaps be impossible, until then it

20 had to be recognised that these were internationally recognised

21 frontiers.'

22 "If German and Austrian leaders still believed that Slovenia and

23 Croatia could be separated from Yugoslavia without a wider war, the

24 Americans strongly believed otherwise.

25 "'Because we said if Yugoslavia does not break up peacefully,

1 there's going to be one hell of a civil war. It nevertheless broke up

2 non-peacefully. It broke up through the unilateral declaration of

3 independence by Slovenia and Croatia and the seizing of these two

4 countries, republics, of their border posts which was an act of force and

5 which was an act that was in violation of the Helsinki principles. But

6 the European powers, and the United States ultimately, recognised Slovenia

7 and then Croatia and then Bosnia as independent countries and admitted

8 them to the United Nations. The real problem was that there was a

9 unilateral declaration of independence and a use of force to gain that

10 independence rather than a peaceful negotiation of independence which is

11 the way it should have happened.'

12 "While most of Europe, including England, France, and Russia,

13 opposed the break-up of Yugoslavia, only the Americans were strong enough

14 to oppose Germany. In a decision that would have far-reaching

15 consequences, however, the Americans decided to back away from this

16 challenge. George Kenney, who would later resign in protest over policy,

17 was running the US State Department's Yugoslavia desk at the time.

18 "'Our marching orders were to keep the US out, to avoid taking

19 any responsibility for a solution to the conflict. The analysts could see

20 that the problem would get a lost worse. They also saw that the Europeans

21 weren't going to be able to handle it.'

22 "Historically, the United States had supported a multi-ethnic

23 Yugoslavia over a seventy-year period to stabilise the region and serve as

24 a barrier to German expansion. In reality, Yugoslavia, a union the south

25 Slavic peoples, would never have come together in 1918 without American

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1 support from US President Woodrow Wilson. For centuries, the region had

2 been colonised by Austro-Hungary in the Turkish Ottoman empire. The

3 Austrians, under the Habsburg Monarchy, used a policy of divide-and-rule

4 to maintain control, keeping the Slovenes, Croatians, Serbs and Muslims at

5 each other's throats instead of uniting them in their common interests.

6 "'The Habsburg empire kept going and held down a large of what we

7 came to call Yugoslavia and there was no possibility of a Slav

8 get-together until after the First World War when the Austro-Hungary

9 Empire collapsed and the peoples came together and decided to unite.'

10 "With American support, Yugoslavia was founded in 1918 and

11 survived German attempts to divide it up during World War II. When

12 Yugoslavia's communist leader Josip Broz Tito broke away from the Soviet

13 Union and the Eastern Bloc in 1948, the US stepped in with

14 military assistance as well as international until loans to prop up a

15 buffer state between the West and the communist-dominated Warsaw Pact. As

16 the Cold War came to an end, however, Washington declared a new world

17 order which emphasised economic competition rather than anti-communism.

18 "'So once that containment of the Soviet Union began to disappear

19 as a need with the decline in after mid-'80s, Gorbachev's reforms, the

20 NATO Warsaw Pact, talks about reducing arms and force build-up, all of

21 that led up to Yugoslavia being essentially irrelevant in its defence

22 posture. And by early 1989, the Americans were really quite explicit.

23 The ambassador, new ambassador to Yugoslavia from the United States,

24 informed the Yugoslav government that the US position was no longer

25 needed, that it was no longer did -- Yugoslavia was no longer

1 strategically important to the United States and Western defence.'

2 "Yugoslavia had become expendable. International loans were

3 called in, causing triple-digit inflation. The Federal Government was

4 forced to acquire austerity measures from the different republics.

5 "'Particularly those requirements that led Slovenia as a republic

6 and eventually and other republics to rebel against what was being called

7 economic reform in the constitutional level.'

8 "Any American efforts to preserve Yugoslavia would also put

9 Washington and on a collision course with Germany when German leaders

10 were enjoying their first taste of real political power since World War

11 II. Moreover, US President George Bush had declared a special

12 relationship with Germany, the kind America used to have with England.

13 "'The United States thought that Germany would have to be largely

14 responsible for the incorporation of Eastern Europe and Central Europe

15 into the West because Germany had a national interest. It was its

16 neighbour, its periphery, and it was financially the most powerful country

17 in Europe and had the resources to do it.'

18 "'In the post-Cold War period, Germany wanted once again, the

19 evidence is very clear, to re-colonise Yugoslavia, to re-colonise the

20 Balkans, and the United States tied itself to German policy through its

21 need of German power and influence in stabilising Eastern Europe, Western

22 Europe, through the exercise of dominion via the European community, now

23 the European Union, and potentially eventually in the former lands -- in

24 the lands of the former Soviet Union. The problem was that there was one

25 very important country standing in the way of this, and that was

1 Yugoslavia.'

2 "While citizens of Croatia were initially divided over whether

3 to remain in Yugoslavia, the separatists were led by the most extreme

4 elements, remnants of the pro-Nazi Ustasha.

5 As the New York Times columnist A.M. Rosenthal would write, 'In

6 World War II, Hitler had no executioners more willing, no ally more

7 passionate, than the fascists of Croatia. They are returning from 50

8 years ago from what should have been their eternal grave, the defeat of

9 Nazi Germany.'

10 "Adolf Hitler considered Yugoslavia to be an artificial creation

11 of the hated Versailles Treaty which ended World War I. To break it up,

12 he set up a puppet state and enlarged Croatia, which also included

13 Bosnia-Herzegovina. As its leader, he appointed the fanatical Croat

14 Ustasha Ante Pavlic. Pavlic had helped plot the assassination of King

15 Aleksandar, Yugoslavia's first constitutional monarch, in Marseille,

16 France, in 1934.

17 "And it was the Germans, the German Nazis who picked up this

18 dreadful Ustasha leader who had made quite clear that he favoured Hitler's

19 solution to be applied, which -- Hitler's final solution to the Jews to be

20 applied to the Serbs. He made no secret of it.

21 "Simon Wiesenthal, who tracked Ustasha fugitives for decades,

22 along with other Nazi war criminals, told an interviewer, 'I must admit I

23 am obsessed by the criminal character of the independent State of

24 Croatia. Even the Germans were appalled by the crimes committed in it'

25 "How many men, women and children died there? Hitler's special

1 envoy to the Balkans, Herman Neubaher, wrote: 'Leaders of the Ustasha

2 boast that they have slaughtered 1 million Orthodox Serbs. On the basis

3 of official German reports, I estimate the number to be three-quarters of

4 a million.'

5 "Most of these Serbian civilians perished in the notorious

6 Croatian camp Jasenovac, which straddled the Sava River between Croatia

7 and Bosnia. The extermination of Serbs, Jews, and Gypsies in Sarajevo

8 was the task of top Muslim leaders who, with few exceptions, collaborated

9 with Hitler and the Croatians.'

10 "There was in occupied Bosnia, also under German patronage, a

11 strong Muslim wing which was very anti-western. It was represented

12 internationally by the Mufti of Jerusalem, who heard of his viciously

13 anti-western views, and he was brought to Sarajevo and mobbed by

14 enthusiastic crowds.'

15 "After the war ended, Croatia and Bosnia were never de-Nazified.

16 Not only were there no apologies to the Serbs, Jews and Gypsies, but

17 attitudes remained were frozen under the surface of Tito's policy of

18 socialist fraternity amongst peoples. Following the death of Yugoslavia's

19 longtime leader Tito in 1980, right-wing emigre organisations took out an

20 advertisement on the opinion page of the New York Times stating that

21 Yugoslavia would not survive and offering a map which included all of

22 Bosnia as part of Croatia. It was a map nearly identical to the

23 Nazi-created independent State of Croatia.'

24 "By 1990, as communism was collapsing in Eastern Europe,

25 Croatian separatists pinned their hopes on a former communist General

1 named Franjo Tudjman who had been gaoled for excessive nationalism by Tito

2 in the 1970s.'

3 "'You know, I met him very soon after he came out of communist

4 gaol, while Tito was still alive. He had then championed the racialist

5 form of nationalism, and when he came out of prison, instead of doing what

6 you would think a dissident would do and say, 'To hell with the

7 communists,' he said, 'Oh, it had nothing to do with the regime, it's

8 those horrible Serbs who are oppressing us and the Serbs are responsible

9 for everything and the Serbs are guilty and the Serbs have done it all.'

10 "Tudjman received important help from outside of Croatia in his

11 rise to power.

12 "'The German secret service was enormously active in Croatia and

13 in all of Yugoslavia trying in the'80s to build bridges between what

14 were called the national communists, Stipe Mesic, Franjo Tudjman, in

15 Yugoslavia and the Ustasha revanches organisations which lived in the

16 diaspora of Croatia, that is to say, all of the people of weight and

17 influence who had fled the former Nazi puppet state in 1945.'

18 "'Tudjman found it useful to come to terms with them. And

19 because he was running on this xenophobic platform there was really no

20 difficulty about it. What was difficult when he was trying to sell his

21 cause in the West, and he managed to partly because he had a very good

22 lobby, very effective and much more effective than the Serbian lobby, and

23 partly because he covered up his intentions.'

24 "Tudjman often embarrassed his most important supporters such as

25 German Chancellor Helmut Kohl. For instance, Tudjman had written a book

1 minimising the crimes of the Ustasha and claiming that the Holocaust was

2 greatly exaggerated. 'Thank God my wife is neither a Serb nor a Jew,' he

3 told one interviewer. For the national flag, Tudjman chose a replica of

4 the checkerboard emblem that flew over the Croatian death camps of World

5 War II where Jews, Serbs, and Gypsies were exterminated.

6 "Tudjman's anti-semitic views were covered beneath rhetoric

7 acceptable to the West. With the help of Ruder and Finn, a high-powered

8 American public relations firm, the New York Times found space for General

9 Tudjman's new and misleading image on its opinion page. In the article,

10 Tudjman promised that there would be no purges against the Serbian

11 population in Croatia if it separated from Yugoslavia.

12 "'Tudjman declared that Croatia was for the Croats. That was his

13 slogan, a racialist slogan, "Croatia for Croats," with the implication

14 people who weren't Croats, and there was a very substantial Serb and

15 Yugoslav mixed variety, didn't feel that they had any -- they were, in

16 fact, second-class citizens and he recognised them as such.'

17 "A full section months before fighting broke out, Serbs were

18 purged from positions in government, news organisations and the police.

19 Their homes were dynamited in cities such as Zagreb, Zadar, and Borovnik.

20 For the first time since World War II, Serbs in Eastern Croatia began to

21 flee across the Danube River.

22 "'Serbs working in Croatian cities were required to sign loyalty

23 oaths. Those who did not sign were fired. Those who did sign were fired

24 -- fired later. Serb homes, apartments, and businesses were attacked.'

25 "'[Text subtitled]'

1 "Any doubt that Tudjman himself issued orders for the expulsion

2 of Serbs in Croatia was removed by Tomislav Mercep, a senior member of

3 Tudjman's ruling party the HDZ. Mercep would later be identified by

4 Croatian police reports as one of two Croatian leaders who directed death

5 squads that murdered hundreds of Serbian civilians in Eastern Slovenia

6 around Vukovar and Osijek in the fall of 1991.

7 "He received little press coverage in the West, but Mercep was in

8 many ways the spark that set the fire of war in Slavonia, a disputed

9 region in Croatia where the Yugoslav war began. Mercep's co-leader of the

10 Croatian death squads was Branimir Glavas of Osijek. Unlike more discrete

11 members of the ruling HDZ party, Glavas made no secret of his

12 identification with the World War II Croatia Ustasha as he welcomed

13 returning Croatian prisoners of war.

14 "While some French intellectuals were hailing Croatia as part

15 of the new Europe, old and familiar forces were at work. Osijek became

16 a magnet for neo-fascist groups fighting with Glavas. They included

17 British skinheads, German and Austrian neo-fascists and followers of the

18 French extremist Jean Marie Le Pen.

19 "'[Text subtitled]'

20 "The United States, which soon adopted Germany's approach to the

21 Balkans, ignored recent history and offered a simple explanation for the

22 fighting which broke out in the predominantly Serbian region of Croatia

23 which was known as the Krajina.

24 "Assistant Secretary of State Richard Holbrooke, who spent the

25 early years of the Yugoslav war as the American ambassador to Germany,

1 represented what became the official American view.

2 "'The Serbs started this war. The Serbs are the original cause

3 of the war.'

4 "Those who tried to prevent the war saw it differently.

5 "'The Serbs in Croatia, and indeed outside Croatia, had a very

6 vivid memory of what happened in 1941, 1942 when Hitler declared Croatia

7 as an independent puppet state, if you like, and the horrors that went on

8 there and the murders of the Serbs were still -- I mean, a very large

9 number of Serbs were murdered at that time. I mean, hundreds of

10 thousands. And I think it was very understandable that when Croatia

11 declared its independence and promulgated a new Constitution without any

12 safeguard for the 600.000 Serbs who still lived in Croatia, that the

13 Croatian -- the Serbs were very perturbed about this.'

14 "From the beginning, the Serbs were blamed and they were partly

15 blamed out of ignorance because nobody bothered to look back at the

16 history to put it within its historical context and to see why the Serbs

17 who lived in Krajina and the Serbs who lived in the area that is called

18 Bosnia-Herzegovina, why, because of their historical experiences, were so

19 hostile to being under Zagreb or under Muslim Sarajevo rule.'

20 "... deteriorated greatly by 1989, symbolised by the stormy

21 relationship between Slobodan Milosevic, the new leader of Serbia, and

22 Warren Zimmermann, t