1 Thursday, 11 April 2002

2 [Open session]

3 [The accused entered court]

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

5 JUDGE MAY: Yes, Mr. Nice.

6 MR. NICE: General Drewienkiewicz. Your Honour, this witness is

7 going to produce a large number of exhibits. With the agreement of the

8 Registry, you're going to be provided with binders, and we'll be, I hope,

9 producing the exhibits in the order in which they appear in the binder.

10 Those binders are in the last stages of preparation.

11 The summary of this witness caused me some concern. Indeed I

12 discussed it with your legal officer before Easter when we were originally

13 hoping to call the witness. He's provided a very long and detailed

14 statement which the accused will have had, and it was my guess that the

15 accused will have been working in preparation of any questions he wants to

16 ask the witness on the basis of that statement.

17 The statement in the proofing sessions and for the production of

18 exhibits has been added to by some other passages which I've had

19 italicised, and it seemed to me that the accused would find it more

20 helpful to navigate his way around a document if it was simply a document

21 on this occasion with which he was familiar, added to by the additional

22 materials. So basically what you're getting is a very full document on

23 this occasion. You'll see when it comes. It's being copied at the

24 moment. It didn't have paragraph numbers, and I thought paragraph numbers

25 really do assist in finding our way around the document.

1 I can start the witness, though, without the document, because

2 there are quite a lot of background matters we can deal with in a

3 conventional way.

4 JUDGE MAY: Very well. We will have the witness, please.

5 MR. NICE: This really is a witness whose name ought to be spelled

6 out on the overhead projector. He tells me that even in native Poland

7 where his family came -- comes from, it's a name that is extremely

8 difficult for Poles to pronounce, and indeed he's often known as

9 General DZ, the first and last letters of his name.

10 JUDGE ROBINSON: May we use that?

11 MR. NICE: I think so, yes.

12 [The witness entered court]

13 JUDGE MAY: Yes. Let the witness take the declaration.

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

15 whole truth, and nothing but the truth.

16 JUDGE MAY: If you would like to take a seat.

17 WITNESS: JOHN DREWIENKIEWICZ

18 Examined by Mr. Nice:

19 Q. Is your name Karol John Drewienkiewicz?

20 A. It is.

21 Q. Sometimes known, because of the length and complexity of your

22 name, as "DZ"?

23 A. It is.

24 Q. Would you object if people so describe you in the course of this

25 hearing if they find that more comfortable than to use your full name?

1 A. By all means.

2 Q. General, we're going to be speaking in English, and one of the

3 problems there is that, because the material has to be interpreted, we can

4 get tempted to talk too rapidly and in particular for one to follow the

5 other without leaving the necessary break. Your evidence is going to take

6 a considerable time in chief, and you will be speaking to me.

7 One technique that can work is to turn to channel 5, the French

8 channel, leave the headphones either around your neck or on the table with

9 the volume turned down so that it's the mildest background for you but

10 enables you to know when the previous question has been translated. It's

11 a matter for you but that sometimes works. The trouble is, if you turn

12 the volume up too much, it then interferes with the other interpreting.

13 MR. NICE: Coming now are the document summaries. It's not really

14 appropriate, but the documents of this witness. I'll hand them to the

15 usher, please, for distribution. The exhibit binders will be with us in

16 about five minutes.

17 Q. General, I'm going to deal with matters in a very summary way so

18 far as background and that sort of thing is concerned. You are or have

19 been a career soldier, starting off with the Royal Engineers, landing up

20 with the rank of Major General, as we already know. Is that correct?

21 A. That is correct.

22 Q. In 1989 - paragraph 2 - 1988/1989, were you Secretary to the

23 United Kingdom Chiefs of Staff Committee, and then in due course appointed

24 as Director, in 1995, of Support at NATO headquarters, and in 1996

25 starting your association with the former Yugoslavia headquarters for IFOR

1 in Sarajevo; is that correct?

2 A. That's correct.

3 Q. In 1997, you became Commanding General for SFOR Support Command in

4 Zagreb, returning to Heidelberg in August 1997, going back to Sarajevo in

5 January 1998 as a military advisor to the Civilian High Rep for some six

6 or seven months?

7 A. That's correct.

8 Q. And then to the Staff College for a period of time --

9 A. Sorry, no. That -- that's out of sequence.

10 Q. I'm sorry. Yes. Of course it is, yes. You were due to go as an

11 instructor to the Royal College of Defence Studies. That was postponed

12 when you were seconded - this is paragraph 4 - to the Organisation for

13 Security and Cooperation in Europe, OSCE.

14 A. That's correct.

15 Q. Page 2, paragraph 6, you retired from the army and you retain a

16 position with OSCE at the moment in Sarajevo, in Bosnia?

17 A. That's correct.

18 Q. Now we'll go back to your involvement in Kosovo.

19 A. Yes.

20 Q. You started working for the OSCE in Vienna in October of 1998. At

21 that time, there had been an agreement between Holbrooke and Milosevic; is

22 that correct, as you understand it?

23 A. I understand there was an agreement, but the agreement that was

24 signed was between Bronislaw Geremek, the Chairman-in-Office of the OSCE,

25 and Minister Zivadin Jovanovic, the Minister of Foreign Affairs.

1 Q. Your function at this time, when you started working with the

2 OSCE, was as what, or to do what?

3 A. At the start, I was seconded by the British Foreign Office to the

4 UK delegation of the OSCE to assist the OSCE permanent staff in planning

5 the operation of the Kosovo Verification Mission. So at the start, I was

6 the Chief of Planning.

7 MR. NICE: The Exhibit binders have now arrived. We can

8 distribute those.

9 THE INTERPRETER: Could the interpreters please have a copy of the

10 resume -- of the summary.

11 JUDGE MAY: The interpreters are asking for a copy of the summary.

12 MR. NICE: Certainly. If it hasn't arrived, it must ... May the

13 witness have the registry copy? I understand that the summaries for the

14 interpreters are being distributed.

15 THE REGISTRAR: The bundle will be given the exhibit number 94.

16 MR. NICE: Thank you very much. Tab 1 of 94, if that could be

17 laid on the ELMO.

18 Your Honour, I see that the witness has with him, I think, a copy

19 of the summary that we are looking at.

20 Q. Is that right, General?

21 A. Yes.

22 MR. NICE: We haven't explored this as a practice, and I don't

23 know what the view of the Chamber is as to whether he should have his own

24 summary before him. It's really his statement.

25 JUDGE MAY: Mr. Kay, any objection? It's a lengthy document.

1 MR. KAY: If it's a note made by him, then of course it's

2 perfectly acceptable. If it's a note made by someone else, then a

3 distinction has to be drawn.

4 JUDGE MAY: He's got to deal with a huge amount of material.

5 MR. KAY: Yes. That's what ...

6 JUDGE MAY: If it's a statement that he's adopted ... I notice

7 there are some 299 paragraphs, 44 pages. It's asking a great deal of a

8 witness to give evidence without reference, isn't it, to some document?

9 The old rules were fine for cases in which witnesses were dealing with a

10 small amount of evidence.

11 MR. KAY: Yes.

12 JUDGE MAY: Here we're dealing with a huge amount of evidence, and

13 isn't it more realistic that a witness should be entitled to refer to a

14 statement?

15 MR. KAY: Perhaps it would help the Court if he was able to tell

16 us about his input onto the note itself, and then any ambiguities will be

17 clarified as to the document.

18 JUDGE MAY: Yes.

19 Mr. Nice, perhaps you could explore that.

20 MR. NICE:

21 Q. Yes. This document, General, just tell us, was it a statement

22 that you made originally?

23 A. This is a copy of a report which appears to be the report of a

24 Serbian government --

25 Q. No, no. Not the -- we're not looking at the document.

1 A. Sorry.

2 Q. We're just looking at your -- the document you've been looking at,

3 I think, your own summary. Are you looking at that?

4 A. Yes.

5 Q. That's what we're concerned about.

6 A. Right.

7 Q. Your summary is a statement that's been prepared how?

8 A. In June of 2000, I came here, and with all of my contemporaneous

9 notes, and went through them and, with the aid of them, described the

10 things that I had seen and the circumstances in which they took place.

11 And a statement which was a summary of I think about a six-day process was

12 put together, which I then went through line by line and agreed that that

13 was a correct shorthand version of the six days of description that I had

14 gone through with the aid of the notes that I made at the time in a number

15 of notebooks.

16 Q. And before Easter -- sorry. I'm making the same mistake. Before

17 Easter, did you come back here, expecting to give evidence then --

18 A. Yes.

19 Q. -- go through the statement, adding to it largely from handwritten

20 notes of your own, prepared while you were here, passages that typically,

21 but not always, appear in italics in the present version?

22 A. Yes.

23 Q. I think that's all I need.

24 A. Other documents were made available before Easter --

25 Q. Yes.

1 A. -- some of which I recognised as documents I had had a hand in

2 producing. Others were descriptions of meetings I had been at, which I

3 had not seen before, and I went through those, identified them where

4 necessary, and made comments that I felt were appropriate at the time.

5 That was just before Easter.

6 JUDGE MAY: Yes. Mr. Kay, is there anything you want to add?

7 MR. KAY: No, as long as the status of the document is, of course,

8 acknowledged by all.

9 JUDGE MAY: It's not the witness's evidence.

10 MR. KAY: Yes.

11 JUDGE MAY: It's merely an aide-memoire when he's trying to give

12 evidence.

13 MR. KAY: Yes. It will help us to follow the paragraphs perhaps

14 that he's referring to.

15 JUDGE MAY: And help him when he's being referred to different

16 parts of it.

17 MR. KAY: Yes.

18 JUDGE MAY: Mr. Milosevic, the issue here is whether this witness

19 should be allowed to refer to the statement which he has in front of him,

20 which you've heard him describe how he came to make it. He went through

21 it line by line. Normally, as you will appreciate, witnesses do not have

22 their summaries in front of them and give their evidence without it, but

23 because of the detail and the amount of this evidence, it may be

24 appropriate for this witness to have it in front of him to refresh his

25 memory and as an aide-memoire. It is, of course, not evidence. It's what

1 he says which is evidence. Do you want to make any observations about

2 that? Do you object?

3 THE ACCUSED: [No interpretation]

4 JUDGE MAY: We didn't get the translation.

5 THE INTERPRETER: Microphone, please.

6 JUDGE MAY: Could you put your microphone on, please.

7 THE ACCUSED: [Interpretation] What I said was it's up to you, your

8 affair.

9 JUDGE MAY: Very well.

10 THE ACCUSED: [Interpretation] Just like the several kilogrammes

11 that we've just received.

12 JUDGE MAY: Very well. Yes.

13 MR. NICE: May I, in fact, have substituted for the version, or

14 additional to the version that the witness has got, one that's got

15 paragraph numbers on it? Because I suppose his doesn't, being an earlier

16 generation. Right.

17 Q. If you'd like to just get yourself through to the appropriate

18 paragraph, please, General, which is paragraph 8. And in the exhibit

19 binder now on the overhead projector, there is tab 1, OTP reference 2790.

20 It's a document, a statement of the Serbian government, dated the 13th of

21 October, which outlines the principles of the political framework for

22 resolving the situation in Kosovo during a government session, as reported

23 by Serbian President Milutinovic, and related to the talks between

24 Yugoslavia, President Milosevic, and Ambassadors Holbrooke and Hill.

25 We have only very limited time in which to deal with your

1 evidence. Going to principle 9 and 10, what are your comments on those,

2 please?

3 A. First of all, I only saw this document just before Easter. I was

4 certainly not aware of it and it was never drawn to my attention when I

5 was in Kosovo. That said, I note that it talks about the establishment of

6 police under local communal direction, representative of the local

7 population.

8 If this had actually been carried out, then many of the problems

9 that I observed might not have happened. And it was never, in my

10 experience, carried out nor was it ever declared that it was going to be

11 carried out.

12 Similarly, principle 10, which talks about the -- the access for

13 foreign, including forensics, experts to -- to the issue of crimes against

14 humanity and international law, this certainly does not describe the

15 experience that we discovered, that I discovered, when the forensic team

16 investigated the killings at Racak. The -- at that stage, the

17 international forensic team was certainly not allowed complete and

18 unimpeded access, which is what is described in paragraph 10.

19 Q. As to the -- I'm sorry. And as to the timetable?

20 A. The timetable which is described in this document again was not

21 made evident to the OSCE on the ground or in Vienna, to the best of my

22 knowledge.

23 Q. Tab 2, please. OTP reference 1404. The agreement of the 16th of

24 October being one, I think, of three working documents of the agreement

25 for which you have comments on two paragraphs in section 1 and section 4.

1 Section 1, paragraph 9, please.

2 A. Yes. At this -- in this document, the degree of cooperation that

3 was described in this document - and we referred to this document or I

4 referred to this document a lot in my time in Kosovo since it was, in

5 effect, the mandate of the -- of the Verification Mission - the level of

6 cooperation was described as full, and this was not, in fact, the case.

7 Specifically, when we wanted to bring in the verifiers from -- from the

8 contributing states, one of the things that slowed down their arrival was

9 the issue of visas in Belgrade.

10 Secondly, we -- when we reviewed, when I reviewed, the level of

11 medical facilities available, I recommended and it was accepted that the

12 OSCE should hire a medevac, a medical evacuation helicopter from

13 Switzerland, in fact. And there was then a request made by the mission

14 for access into -- into the air space above Kosovo so that it could come

15 and be stationed at Pristina airport. This was denied both when we first

16 asked and subsequently, so that we were never able to use the medical

17 evacuation helicopter that we felt we needed.

18 Q. And --

19 A. And this is reflected again in, I think, section 4, paragraph 6.

20 Q. Thank you.

21 A. And I was certainly present at -- on at least one occasion when a

22 direct request was made to Deputy Prime Minister Sainovic on this affair,

23 and he flatly refused the request.

24 Q. Tab 3, please. OTP reference 1426. This document, an agreement

25 to determine required measures for Yugoslavia's compliance with UN

1 Resolution 1199. Paragraph 1, on the reduction of police levels, please.

2 A. Yes. This paragraph stated that police numbers would be reduced

3 to the levels in Kosovo of February 1998. At paragraph 5, it was stated

4 that the VJ would return to barracks except for three company-sized teams,

5 which I would estimate then and now as equating to a force of about 400

6 men in total, three company-sized teams to protect communication lines in

7 specific locations. And further, at paragraph 8, that VJ and MUP

8 commanders, that is army and police commanders, were to supply weekly

9 reports of the manning, weapons, and activities, and to immediately notify

10 the KDOMs and the OSCE of any deployments that were contrary to these

11 provisions.

12 On the basis of those three statements made in the agreement, we

13 continually requested, firstly, baseline statements and, secondly, updates

14 of those baseline statements on army and police deployments. And they

15 were met in -- we never got a real baseline statement, and we very rarely

16 got statements of -- of deployments as they happened.

17 Q. I'll deal with what were and what was the history of KDOMs quite

18 shortly, but let's turn to tab 4 first. OTP reference 1428. Is this the

19 third working document of the mission?

20 A. Yes. Yes, it is.

21 Q. The basis for another agreement made on the 25th of October,

22 limiting the number of police in its checkpoints and observation posts.

23 We can see that document there. So your comment on this?

24 A. This document again was one that we referred to quite a lot. It

25 was unclear at the time, and I never found out whether it was supposed to

1 be a one-off agreement or not which only reflected the situation in

2 October of 1998, but we used it as a benchmark for seeing the level of

3 occupation of these -- of these checkpoints, and we specifically, in early

4 January 1999, did a simultaneous check of all of the locations and found

5 that the majority of them were manned at that time on a basis which

6 appeared to us to be continuous when we -- when we checked it later. So

7 it was not the case that only one-third were being manned.

8 Q. Now, that document, being dated the 25th of October, takes us

9 slightly ahead of where we've reached in your history of events. Just

10 picking it up, and very briefly, at paragraph 14. You went on a

11 fact-finding mission on the 17th of October?

12 A. Yes.

13 Q. You attended a meeting - paragraph 15 - in Belgrade. And in 16,

14 you can tell us that, at that meeting, somebody who introduced himself as

15 an Assistant Minister of Foreign Affairs and the Serbian OSCE liaison

16 person, Mrs. Ratkovic, were present?

17 A. That's correct.

18 Q. And were you the subject of requests at that meeting that you were

19 unable or disinclined to answer?

20 A. Yes. The purpose of our going to Belgrade and down to Pristina

21 was to see what the conditions were in order to plan the mission, and it

22 was very much a fact-finding mission. We were not given the authority to

23 negotiate on the specifics of the agreement, and I believe that the

24 meeting that I attended in Belgrade was intended to discuss the fine print

25 of the agreement which, as I say, I was -- I was not authorised, nor was

1 Sandrock who was with me, authorised to discuss that.

2 This was less than 48 hours after I had actually arrived in

3 Vienna, and so I was very much not in a position to do any serious

4 negotiating at that point. So we were asking questions rather than --

5 rather than discussing the fine point of the agreement.

6 Q. Paragraph 17 and what you sought in relation to safe passage or

7 clear passage.

8 A. Yes. We had quite a long shopping list of what we needed in order

9 to set the mission up quickly. It included requests for accommodation;

10 full sets of maps; identification of where there were likely to be mines;

11 a speeded-up procedure for the issue of visas, because then and later we

12 were only getting single-entry visas, which considerably hampered us; and

13 a statement on freedom of movement both for our staff and equipment we

14 wanted to bring in.

15 We also wanted to be sure that the -- the VJ and the MUP on the

16 ground in Kosovo knew that we were coming, because we were going to drive

17 down from Belgrade to Pristina the next morning, and we wanted no

18 interference over issue -- over whether or not we had the right

19 documentation or something like that, which was something we were

20 concerned about.

21 Q. Just in a couple of sentences, as you've dealt with on paragraph

22 17 and 18, satisfactory or unsatisfactory arrangements and as to visas.

23 A. We got a satisfactory arrangement as far as the people on the

24 ground being aware of who we were and that we were coming. As far as

25 visas were concerned, we continued to have problems, and it was always

1 slow, and we never got a really quick and satisfactory way of getting

2 multi-entry visas for our staff. And that would often delay the arrival

3 of key people by up to two weeks.

4 Q. Paragraph -- sorry. Paragraph 19, just one point. On arrival and

5 following discussions with, amongst others, the UK military attache, John

6 Crossland, what was your understanding or assumption about the number of

7 chains of command that you would see in operation on the ground?

8 A. At that time in October 1998, John Crossland said to me that it

9 was his understanding, having been in the area for over a year, that there

10 were two separate chains of command operating; one for the army and one

11 for the police.

12 Q. Summarising 20 through to 22 or 3, you drove from Serbia to

13 Pristina and found the reaction of the population negative and sometimes

14 threatening.

15 A. Yes, that was the case. It was particularly difficult when in

16 the -- in the towns along the way, particularly as we got closer to

17 Kosovo, that the local population were quite hostile and made gestures to

18 us as we -- as we sat at the traffic lights.

19 Q. The identifying colour of your vehicles being?

20 A. At this stage, they were white.

21 Q. Later?

22 A. Later, because we had identification problems and ended up with a

23 white vehicle being shot at as it drove into the back of a firefight

24 between MUP and the Kosovo Liberation Army, and the MUP had got a mix of

25 blue, green, and white vehicles, I recommended and it was agreed that we

1 should repaint our white vehicles into orange since that was a much more

2 distinctive colour and was useful both when the snow was on the ground and

3 when it was not on the ground. So we turned to orange.

4 Q. In Pristina - paragraph 23 and 24 - did you meet the head of

5 something called the Temporary Executive Counsel, Zoran Andjelkovic?

6 A. We did.

7 Q. Your view, rapidly, as to his true authority and power?

8 A. He introduced himself as the head of the temporary government and

9 the Executive Council, but we never managed to get any action out of him.

10 He did not appear to actually have any executive authority, and he

11 certainly never actually produced any results for us. And we felt that he

12 was simply a symbol, a figurehead. He also found -- we became aware that

13 he was summoned back to Belgrade later in October, but we never found out

14 the purpose of it, and certainly his demeanour and his ability to produce

15 results did not improve as a result.

16 Q. Paragraph 25. Was he, along with people like Ambassador Walker,

17 to be on something called the Commission of Cooperation? Was that a body

18 that existed but, in your view, withered on the vine?

19 A. Yes, that is the case.

20 Q. But of no great consequence?

21 A. Nothing ever came out of it. No action ever came out of it, and

22 so I have to say that the meetings became very infrequent because they

23 produced no result. It was -- the commission was called into being one

24 last time in early March of 1999, after an incident on the border in which

25 a serious breach of the Vienna Convention had taken place with regard to

1 some of our people and their vehicles, and so a meeting was convened under

2 this -- the authority of this group, which bore all the hallmarks of all

3 of the previous meetings; namely, it had a lot of people, it went on for a

4 long time, and produced no result.

5 Q. Tab 5, very shortly. In Pristina, were there four main Serbian

6 authority buildings: the civil administration building and the public

7 police headquarters, to which you did have access; the army headquarters

8 and the main police headquarters, to which, to your knowledge, no OSCE

9 people ever had access?

10 A. That is correct. I apologise for the scruffiness of the sketch.

11 I'd have done better if I'd realised it was going to be produced here.

12 Q. Nevertheless, there's a sketch of that, if it ever becomes

13 relevant, and we can move on in your statement.

14 We needn't trouble with the listing of representatives. They're

15 there if others want to ask about them.

16 Paragraph 29. On the 29th of October of 1998, did you drive from

17 Pristina to Pec?

18 A. I did, yes.

19 Q. Noticing, as to police presence, what?

20 A. Yes. The police presence was extensive on the ground along the

21 roads that I used, but while there were checkpoints, we were waved

22 straight through them. However, the police presence was more than I had

23 expected.

24 Q. Uniforms and markings on uniforms?

25 A. All of the police I saw wore blue uniforms, which I expected, and

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1 had the word "Policija," normally in white lettering, somewhere about the

2 uniforms; sometimes on the back, sometimes on the front. Some of

3 them - and it seemed to correspond with the fact that they were getting

4 more heavily armed as we went west towards Pec - but some of the police

5 then had the word "Milicija" on their uniforms, but again this

6 was -- these were mainly blue uniforms.

7 Q. During the drive, which I think took some five hours, what did you

8 observe about people working in the fields?

9 A. The journey was remarkable in that there was nobody in the fields

10 whatsoever, and this being October, I would have expected people to have

11 been working in the fields, particularly since the area that I drove

12 through was a mainly agricultural area. There was only one place where I

13 met or saw an Albanian outside of his house, and he was driving a tractor

14 within a village, and he was in quite a hurry to move on so was

15 disinclined to stop and chat to me.

16 Q. Did you, in fact - paragraph 31 - get directed by him to a family

17 home?

18 A. Yes.

19 Q. And this is on the eastern edge, I think, of Decani.

20 A. That's correct.

21 Q. You approached Pec from the south?

22 A. Yes. I went to Pec and then turned south and drove south down the

23 Pec-to-Prizren road; and within Decani, where there had been a lot of

24 destruction, I turned east and went to the eastern edge of the village,

25 where I found a family that was prepared to open their doors and show me

1 what state they were living in.

2 Q. Your observations, please.

3 A. Throughout the whole village of Decani, all of the courtyard gates

4 were closed, locked, barred, and bolted, in effect, or if they were open,

5 it was because they were destroyed to some degree; they had been forced

6 open.

7 The family that I met who were prepared to let me into their

8 courtyard and talk to me were living in one downstairs room of their house

9 because the roof of the house had been burned, and so they -- and the

10 windows were out, and so they were living in this one room with plastic

11 over their windows. I was able to speak with them because one of the

12 family spoke some German and I speak German.

13 Q. Same journey but now on the Pristina-Pec road, what observations

14 did you make, with your military experience, of damage there?

15 A. Throughout the journey, there was a constant -- there were

16 constant signs of any position from which anyone could possibly have taken

17 cover in order to dominate the road had been knocked down. In particular,

18 walls -- the walls that were between a village and the road, perhaps 100

19 or 200 metres from the road, those walls had all been knocked down. So

20 the walls that were parallel to the road, that might have afforded cover,

21 had generally been knocked down systematically. You would expect that to

22 be done by forces that were concerned for their safety and worried about

23 being ambushed.

24 Q. Did you make another observation - paragraph 33, I think something

25 you added in the time you were here before Easter - did you make another

1 observation about bridges and the military significance of what you saw or

2 didn't see about the bridges?

3 A. Yes. I was particularly struck by the fact that all of the

4 bridges were standing, and obviously this was in contrast to my previous

5 experience in Bosnia. And as an engineer, I'm well aware of the benefits

6 that having a good road system, well-bridged, gives to a force which has

7 superior mobility to the people it's fighting. So given that the Yugoslav

8 forces were quite mobile, I was surprised that no attempt appeared to have

9 been made to knock any of the bridges down by the insurgents in order to

10 reduce the mobility of the Yugoslav forces. It would certainly have

11 reduced the ability of the Yugoslav forces to move rapidly from one area

12 to another, and therefore would have reduced their capability to a

13 degree. From this, I concluded that, certainly at this stage, the UCK,

14 the Kosovo Liberation Army, did not have the resources or the expertise to

15 demolish bridges.

16 Q. Thank you. Your impressions of Pristina and its inhabitants,

17 please. Paragraph 34.

18 A. Yes. It was certainly bustling when we arrived in October 1998;

19 however, as you walked around the place, you noticed that a lot of people,

20 and in particular, those who were dressed in the distinctive dress of the

21 Kosovar Albanians, appeared rather cowed and did not make eye contact with

22 us as we walked around.

23 Q. Linked to that general observation, and from contact with Serbs,

24 what did you judge their -- what was your reception by Serbs or, indeed,

25 by Kosovar Albanians at that time?

1 A. The general degree of reception we got was welcoming, really from

2 all sides, because we got the impression that there was a very real

3 feeling that NATO bombing had been imminent and that that risk had passed

4 with the agreement to deploy the Kosovo Verification Mission. So they

5 were really quite pleased to see us at most levels, certainly at official

6 levels.

7 Q. On the 21st of October, you returned to Vienna, being appointed

8 one of the deputy heads of mission on the 2nd of November, coming back to

9 Pristina on the 23rd of November?

10 A. That's correct. And in between those times, I was in Vienna,

11 putting together the plan to deploy the Kosovo Verification Mission and

12 starting to procure equipment and to call forward individuals who had been

13 offered by the nations.

14 Q. Itself a major logistical exercise, I think.

15 A. Yes, particularly because the OSCE deploys missions by putting

16 them together on an individual-by-individual basis. It's not like a

17 military unit where you've got, you know, a hundred people with vehicles,

18 with rations, with radios, with tentage, able to drive down the road or

19 get into a transport aircraft and get off the other end and start to be

20 effective. We had to procure every vehicle, every radio, we had to

21 procure the accommodation they were going to live in --

22 Q. Right.

23 A. -- and so on. So it was much more tedious and slow.

24 Q. Two things from paragraph 37, or one perhaps: The primary role of

25 the OSCE, KVM in relation to verification and elections, please.

1 A. Yes. Stemming directly from the original agreement, the role was

2 to liaise with the relevant authorities, to supervise an election, and to

3 conduct arms verification and verification of forces in the field.

4 Q. The framework of the organisation - paragraph 38, but only in

5 summary - was that there were a number of deputy heads of mission, each

6 with an appointed liaison function allocated by Ambassador Walker?

7 A. That is correct. I was given the job of Deputy Head of Mission

8 for Operations, but other deputies were given the task of liaising with

9 the Serbian authorities, specifically, liaising over police, liaising with

10 the Albanian community, and so on.

11 Q. We can just note that you've listed the people concerned and go

12 straight to paragraph 43. There was no appointment, in relation to police

13 and justice, until a later stage, namely, late December 1998?

14 A. That is correct. There was something of a hiatus over the

15 appointment of the deputy who was to be principally responsible for

16 policing matters. As a result of that, the nomination that was accepted

17 by the OSCE didn't take place until late December, and the individual

18 concerned arrived quite late in January. So until then, I found myself

19 dealing with police matters as well, despite the fact that it wasn't quite

20 what I thought I was going to be doing.

21 Q. And that then brings me to the conclusion of the end of paragraph

22 45. Having this additional role thrust on you, were you able to form a

23 view about the level of cooperation between the police and the VJ?

24 A. Yes. As I said, it is -- it was not originally my job, and it

25 came my way because nobody else was doing it and it interfaced with what

1 we were doing with the Yugoslav army anyway.

2 And in doing so, it became increasingly apparent that what the

3 police were doing was to an increasing extent interlocked with what the

4 army was doing. And so over the period that I was in Kosovo, it became

5 clear to me that the police and the army began to function more closely

6 for operations rather than operating as two separate bodies with two

7 separate chains of command. So their chains of command seemed to coalesce

8 over the period that I was there.

9 Q. Paragraph 47 and on. In your role as Deputy Head of Mission -

10 Operations, assisting Ambassador Walker, were you also to absorb what were

11 the various KDOMs?

12 A. Yes. That was the --

13 Q. And so could you just explain what they were, and very briefly,

14 because it will probably save time, run through the substance of the

15 paragraphs that deal with which KDOMs were absorbed and which weren't.

16 A. Yes. The KDOMs were called the Kosovo Diplomatic Observer

17 Missions, and they were set up as, in effect, forward outposts of the

18 various embassies in Belgrade which reported directly back to the various

19 embassies in Belgrade and operated on the ground. They were put together

20 quite quickly in the late summer of 1998 and were primarily military

21 people who were simply ordered through national channels to go to Belgrade

22 and then deploy from Belgrade. They -- their mandate was limited simply

23 to reporting, and they were on the ground in some strength in October 1998

24 when I first arrived.

25 The biggest player in this was the US-KDOM which, as I have said,

1 reported in a straight line -- was commanded, in effect, by the US

2 embassy. There was a UK, a British KDOM reporting to the British embassy,

3 and then we later saw a French, a Russian, and a Canadian KDOM of varying

4 sizes.

5 They had good vehicles, good communications, but they didn't

6 really cooperate with one another. They certainly didn't coordinate

7 particularly well when I first saw them in October, and so you tended to

8 either see -- see five of them or none. The --

9 Q. As to -- sorry. Yes.

10 A. Of the -- the intention was that as the Kosovo Verification

11 Mission was built up, that the KDOMs would be folded into and taken over

12 by and absorbed within the Kosovo Verification Mission. This happened to

13 a degree. We absorbed the UK-KDOM and the French KDOM and the Russian and

14 the Canadian KDOM over various periods of time. The US-KDOM built up to

15 about -- first to 60 and then to about 120, and we absorbed some of the

16 US-KDOM but not all, and a proportion of the US-KDOM remained independent

17 all through our time in Kosovo.

18 There was also an EU-KDOM which, again, remained independent

19 although it was not very big.

20 Q. And as a result?

21 A. The result of all of the KDOMs was, frankly, a degree of

22 inefficiency, because they -- while we talked to them, we didn't totally

23 share all information, they not with us, and it tended to confuse the

24 issue. The reason given for the US-KDOM keeping some people as dedicated

25 was to assist Ambassador Hill in his diplomatic efforts, and in order to

1 do that, about 30 were kept as the remnant of the US-KDOM.

2 Q. Paragraph 52. The police structure in the province was a five

3 regional structure -- I beg your pardon. The structure of the province

4 was five regional, but the police had seven; is that correct?

5 A. Yes. This was because some of the areas were of a size - long and

6 thin - that would make it difficult to -- to get to places if they were

7 all being deployed from one central location.

8 Q. So the five police units -- or the seven police units were,

9 please?

10 A. There was one for each of the five regions, but then one of the

11 regions which was long and thin had Pristina in the north and Urosevac in

12 the south, and so a separate police force was based in Urosevac and

13 another one was at based at Djakovica.

14 Q. Thank you. The other four regions apart from Pristina being

15 Prizren, Pec --

16 A. -- Mitrovica and Gnjilane.

17 Q. Did the KVM establish five Regional Centres?

18 A. Yes. We mirrored the administrative backgrounds to the greatest

19 extent possible because obviously there were regional officials that we

20 needed to deal with, and so we followed the existing regional boundaries

21 to the greatest extent possible. And then below the regional level at

22 each -- we intended to establish a smaller centre subordinate to the

23 Regional Centre at each opstina. We called those coordination centres.

24 The idea simply was to have so many people on the ground that

25 whenever something happened, we would always have people within a few

1 minutes to be able to get there, or patrol based on a very local area so

2 that they built up their knowledge of the area and established good

3 working relations with the people in the area.

4 Q. Paragraph 54 and just in general. At that stage, night-time

5 patrolling by the KVM easy or difficult?

6 A. It was dangerous because, having decided we would have orange

7 vehicles, that only worked in the day. And obviously all vehicles at

8 night are black, and therefore, we were, I was, reluctant that we should

9 patrol at night until the situation stopped being as volatile as it was.

10 The result was that, it being winter with only about 10 hours of daylight,

11 there was a lot of patrolling in the day by the Kosovo Verification

12 Mission and really not very much at night. And I think both -- both sides

13 took advantage of this.

14 Q. Paragraph 56. Briefly, please, explain the last sentence of that

15 paragraph which follows on from a meeting you had with Sean Burns, head of

16 US-KDOM. The last sentence speaks of threats to kill made by the KLA.

17 Can you just help us with that?

18 A. Yes. It was our understanding that one of the reasons why there

19 was no agreement with the Albanian -- the Kosovo Albanians, which we hoped

20 would have matched the -- the agreement that had been already signed in

21 Belgrade in October was that there was a publicly -- a publicly-known

22 threat that any Kosovo Albanian who did a deal with Ambassador Hill or

23 with anybody else in the international community to restrain the

24 activities of the Kosovo Liberation Army would be killed. And certainly

25 there was then no agreement with the Albanian side at any level, and this,

1 I believe, was a factor.

2 Q. In paragraph 57, you deal with an administrative delay to the

3 establishment of KVM that you believed to be intentional, but I needn't

4 trouble you with the detail of that. You can answer questions about it if

5 asked.

6 Can we then move, in paragraph 59, to the structure that enabled

7 you to -- and others at the head of the mission to pick up reports.

8 A. Yes. Firstly, in -- set -- in choosing somewhere to operate from,

9 and we obviously needed big premises, sort of bank premises were

10 typically -- banks or hotels were typically good buildings, and in order

11 to do this, contracts had to be set up and agreed. And this took a long

12 time and certainly was not done as quickly as possible, and this was

13 another of the factors in delaying everything. And most of the -- since

14 most of the property was owned -- was owned by the state, these contracts

15 all went back to Belgrade, and again all of this took longer, and we never

16 really detected any -- any wish to do this more quickly or to expedite the

17 process.

18 In setting ourselves up to work on the ground, at each level, at

19 the Regional Centre level and at my level in Pristina, three people were

20 appointed; one to deal with the VJ as a liaison officer on a daily basis,

21 one to deal with the MUP, and one to deal with the Kosovo Liberation

22 Army. These people were -- were specially selected as our -- the best

23 people we had because we relied on them very much for their view of what

24 might happen next.

25 Q. You've set out the names in your statement. I'm not going to ask

1 you to give all those names at this stage.

2 Paragraph 63. I think your general pattern in meetings was to

3 have notes taken for you. Is that correct?

4 A. Yes. Firstly so that I could remind myself later, and obviously I

5 would pass copies of those -- the notes of the meeting to the Head of

6 Mission and the deputies so that we kept as coordinated as possible. We

7 obviously met at the beginning of each day, but from -- from those

8 meetings at the beginning of each day, several of us would go away with a

9 shopping list of things to do, and it was important that we kept everybody

10 else informed of what was going on. So notes were taken, and the record

11 was circulated as quickly as possible.

12 Q. The position -- paragraph 64, the position in Pristina, so far as

13 MUP liaison was concerned, was that there was a daily 9.00 meeting at the

14 police station.

15 A. That's correct.

16 Q. Typically what happened?

17 A. The normal -- in fact, almost -- on almost every occasion, the

18 meeting was a list of a police view of what had happened over the past 24

19 hours, which tended to be, "An attack took place by the UCK at this place,

20 shots were fired," and so on. And there was not an ability to discuss

21 what the police deployment was. This was asked for but was very, very

22 seldom given. Nor were future -- future changes to deployment ever

23 notified in advance. So it was not an information exchange, and it was

24 certainly not the sort of meeting that we had anticipated we would be

25 going to.

1 Q. Paragraph 65 and 6, a word or so about Sreten Lukic, please.

2 A. Sreten Lukic identified himself as the police general in Kosovo,

3 and he generally regarded himself above dealing with liaison officers. I

4 managed to get into his presence on occasion, but it was a rare thing for

5 anyone to be allowed into the presence of Lukic, and one certainly was not

6 able to have discussions of substance there.

7 Q. I think your view at the time, based on military experience and

8 possibly experience of communist regimes, was that the Serbian authorities

9 would probably have been creating daily situation reports.

10 A. Yes, that is correct. We certainly did, and we felt that this was

11 taking place with the people with whom we met. Typically at meetings,

12 long lists of -- were read selectively from pre-prepared reports, which

13 appeared often to be a report of what had been happening over the past day

14 or days.

15 Q. Tab 6, please. Thank you. OTP reference 1439, a document you had

16 not seen, I think --

17 A. Yes, that's correct.

18 Q. -- until shortly before Easter of this year. A document headed

19 "The Republic of Serbia, Ministry of the Interior, Police Station Pec,

20 dated the 28th of December, 1998." Your observations on it?

21 A. I have not seen this before when I saw it just before Easter, but

22 it certainly supports my view that there were daily situation reports

23 generated by the Serbian authorities, but if you read this, you'll find

24 that its purpose is to show what the OSCE is doing rather than actually

25 assist the OSCE. So we were described in terms, if not of enemy forces,

1 certainly not of friendly forces.

2 JUDGE KWON: General DZ, are you able to read Serbian?

3 THE WITNESS: No, I'm afraid not, so I've relied on the

4 translations.

5 JUDGE KWON: Thank you.

6 MR. NICE:

7 Q. Paragraph 68, the Fusion Centre. Couple of sentences, please.

8 A. The Fusion Centre was our attempt to bring all of the different

9 strands of -- of information and fact that were reported and to try to use

10 them to create an overall picture and then to try to work out what might

11 happen next. In other words, to identify trends. It was also the formal

12 basis on which the Head of Mission would decide whether or not we were

13 dealing with formal compliance or non-compliance to the OSCE/FRY

14 agreement, because we were very concerned that individuals on the ground

15 should not, in effect, be able to declare whether or not an incident was

16 compliance or non-compliance.

17 We certainly felt at the start that there would be relatively few

18 incidents that would amount to formal non-compliance and that this was a

19 prerogative that should be dealt with at head-of-mission level so that he

20 could then formally put the opinion together that went to Belgrade and to

21 Vienna to say that, "This is so bad that I formally --" "I," the Head of

22 Mission, "declare it to be non-compliance."

23 In order to do this, the facts as seen from Pristina were put

24 together overnight, every night, by the Fusion Centre, and this was

25 referred to loosely by us as "the Blue Book," which was circulated to the

1 Head of Mission and his deputies for his morning meeting.

2 Q. I think that on the 18th of November, Ambassador Walker told you

3 that General Dusan Loncar had been appointed coordinator --

4 A. Yes.

5 Q. -- for the FRY liaison to OSCE; is that correct?

6 A. Yes, it is. My impression was that Loncar was appointed because

7 Andjelkovic was being ineffective. There was also a connection between

8 Loncar and Walker in that Loncar had dealt with Walker in Eastern Slavonia

9 when Loncar was there and Walker was the UN head of the -- the head of the

10 UN mission there.

11 Q. We may have to take things in a little more summary form because

12 of time, General, but paragraph 70, your judgement or your opinion about

13 General Loncar?

14 A. Loncar was very well-informed. He certainly appeared to have good

15 communications with people in the field and was generally one of the first

16 to know when something happened. He also seemed better able to get

17 decisions from Belgrade, and either as a result of a telephone call, or he

18 sometimes said to me that he had just spent the night driving up to

19 Belgrade and driving back down.

20 Q. Your attitude towards meeting the KLA was that you, I think,

21 because of your particular function, preferred not to. We'll explain that

22 in a second. You first met them in January of 1999, I think, KLA

23 commanders.

24 A. Yes. I felt that it was not going to be helpful to my relations

25 with the senior Serb officials for me to be seen with KLA commanders, who

1 were known to use television quite skillfully, and so I didn't want to be

2 seen in a compromising position with them, and I had got people whose only

3 job it was to deal on a day-to-day basis with them. It was also the

4 impression that was around from the turn of the year that Walker was

5 perceived, certainly by the Serbs, as being anti-Serbian, and therefore he

6 increasingly became reluctant to deal with the Serbian authorities.

7 Q. We'll move on to paragraph 73. I don't think I need trouble you

8 with 72. 73. I think you were due to meet Serbian Chief of Staff Perisic

9 in Belgrade on the 27th of November, or thereabouts, but in fact you

10 discovered he had been dismissed.

11 A. That's correct, and the meeting went ahead with General Ojdanic.

12 The purpose of the meeting was to seek a baseline of where everything was

13 and what the deployment of the VJ was in Kosovo, to get a detailed

14 statement that we could use as the basis for our verification and

15 subsequent inspections. This never actually arrived, and we ended up

16 having to base our knowledge, such as it was, on an arms-control document

17 that had previously been made available to the OSCE in a different

18 context, but it was agreed that that should be used by us.

19 Q. However, from that meeting, did you make discoveries about

20 intended and undertaken military training?

21 A. Yes. One of the issues was how many people were out of barracks,

22 how many soldiers were out of barracks, and at this point it was stated

23 that normal training outside barracks would be -- would now be undertaken

24 and that soldiers would be rotated in and out of Kosovo; that is, soldiers

25 stationed outside Kosovo would be moved into Kosovo, and soldiers

1 stationed in Kosovo would be moved out of Kosovo. In that context, I said

2 that it was important that we knew what the training areas were, and were

3 told: "Noted."

4 It appeared, in the end, that these training areas were not formal

5 training areas that actually existed as military lands on any map but that

6 they were simply training over open land, and quite often training very

7 close to villages where a KLA presence was known to be. And of course, if

8 you drive past in a tank and someone shoots at you, you're then able to

9 respond in self-defence. And the way this training was carried out was

10 certainly intimidating to the local population, and as our time in -- as

11 we spent longer in Kosovo, the degree to which training started to take

12 place outside barracks increased on a quite dramatic scale.

13 In terms of rotation of people, I discussed this at the time and

14 said that while this was feasible, it would need to be verified so that we

15 knew that when X people went out, X people came in. And this was not used

16 in order to increase troop strengths in Kosovo, which obviously was one of

17 the factors in the October agreements. And therefore, I attempted to set

18 up a mechanism for being there when this happened, and this was flatly

19 refused at the time.

20 Q. I think you sought a meeting with a Pristina Corps Commander on

21 this topic, Pavkovic, and that was refused.

22 A. That's correct. I said if -- basically said to Ojdanic that if

23 this is below his level, then can I please talk to the man on the ground

24 whose job it is, and was told that no, I couldn't.

25 Q. Before we part from paragraph 78, you've told us about the

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1 cooperation between the MUP and the VJ and the strengthening of the

2 command link.

3 A. Yes.

4 Q. What was your view, nevertheless, about --

5 A. My --

6 Q. -- or otherwise of chains of command?

7 A. Yes. The chain of command -- from the time that Ojdanic took

8 over, the chain of command links between the army and the police seemed to

9 strengthen gradually. I had been given the impression in conversation

10 that the predecessor, Perisic, had been keen to retain some space between

11 the actions of the army and the actions of the police, but over my time in

12 Kosovo, there appeared to be a stronger link developing as time went on.

13 Q. Paragraph 82, perhaps. No, I don't think I need trouble you with

14 that. Yes, I need. It was at the meeting on the 4th of December, in

15 Pristina, that Loncar - paragraph 84 - made criticisms of KVM?

16 A. Yes. This was a meeting at which, rather than try to work out

17 what we were going to do next, we had a long list of everything that had

18 happened that had been bad since October, and my point there was that we

19 had not been on the ground in October, despite the agreement having been

20 signed, and that my intention was to talk about how we were going to work

21 in the future rather than trawl over the history of it.

22 Q. Loncar, on one occasion, I think, answered the telephone.

23 A. Yes. And in explaining to us that he needed to stay on the

24 telephone rather than just simply say, "I'll ring you back later," he

25 said, "It's Sainovic." So it was clear to me that he was being rung up to

1 be given instructions, but having taken the phone call, there was no

2 reference to it when we returned to the meeting.

3 Q. Paragraphs 86. Loncar identified areas of concern: the Decani

4 area, which was said to be heavily mined; Malisevo, which was said to be

5 tense and said to be the centre of KLA activity, from which residents had

6 been driven; and Podujevo. Correct?

7 A. Yes. The first two, Decani and Malisevo, are in the west of

8 Kosovo and had been areas where there had been a lot of violence over the

9 summer.

10 Podujevo was new to us, and this was important because it was

11 north of Pristina, on the Pristina-to-Nis road, and was essentially the

12 umbilical cord between Pristina and the rest of Serbia. And there started

13 to be opportunistic action by the Kosovo Liberation Army moving forward to

14 dominate the road and to carry out random shootings at vehicles on the

15 road, which was obviously of great concern to General Loncar.

16 It was certainly the fact that positions which had been

17 established by the VJ in the summer and which had been vacated as a result

18 of the October agreement by the VJ when the VJ had gone back to barracks

19 were gradually being occupied by the Kosovo Liberation Army, and General

20 Loncar was obviously very concerned that we should go and get the Kosovo

21 Liberation Army to move out and to not adopt this opportunistic action.

22 Q. I think he was also interested in the way KVM would describe and

23 even denounce the KLA.

24 A. Yes. He always referred to them as "the so-called KLA" and as

25 "terrorists." I attempted to not use quite such emotional language and

1 tended to refer to them as "the insurgents," which I felt described them

2 in a way that was accurate but not emotional.

3 Q. By this time, in December, you say in paragraph 89, the KVM were

4 not yet engaged in regular contact with the KLA, but that was to come

5 later, you being short of vehicles at the time --

6 A. That's correct.

7 Q. -- so short of vehicles that, some six weeks after the signing of

8 the agreement, you were still not verifying in the way that you had been

9 required to do.

10 A. That's correct, and it goes back to the need to build up the

11 mission. We had to go to the vehicle manufacturers and say, "How many

12 vehicles have you got on your outpark? Can we buy them quickly?"

13 Q. We needn't trouble with the details on that.

14 JUDGE MAY: Is that a convenient moment? It's now 11.00.

15 General Drewienkiewicz, during this and any other adjournment,

16 would you please remember not to speak to anybody about your

17 evidence - that does include members of the Prosecution team - not until

18 it's over. Thank you very much.

19 We'll adjourn for half an hour; half past 11.00.

20 --- Recess taken at 11.00 a.m.

21 --- On resuming at 11.30 a.m.

22 JUDGE MAY: Yes, Mr. Nice.

23 MR. NICE:

24 Q. I think on the 9th of December you went and made an inspection of

25 the Pristina Brigade barracks; is that correct?

1 A. That is correct, yes.

2 Q. Tell us about that in a couple of sentences.

3 A. I started off by telling General Loncar I was going to do this and

4 asked him if he wanted to come with me, and he said no, he wouldn't. So I

5 took a group of verifiers to the barracks. We got as far as the front

6 gate and said, "We are coming in to make an inspection," and that was

7 denied. So we waited at the gate of the barracks, and eventually the base

8 commander came to the -- to the barracks gate and we discussed the need to

9 do inspections. I explained to him that this was important in view of the

10 various agreements that had been made, and he said that he was not

11 remotely interested in it.

12 I stayed there for an hour and a half, during which time we

13 continued not to be allowed in. Eventually, we gave up and drove round

14 the barracks very visibly taking photos over the wire to attempt to

15 establish the level of equipment actually held in the barracks.

16 Q. Yes. And then on the evening, that evening, you went to a

17 meeting, I think, in a restaurant, the top floor of the OSCE in Pristina?

18 A. Yes. This was a major meeting between the Head of Mission and

19 Deputy Prime Minister Sainovic with General Loncar and myself also

20 present. The purpose of the meeting was to attempt to speed up the

21 process of getting KVM requests approved and facilitated, and it had no

22 effect at all. Deputy Prime Minister Sainovic rejected all the requests

23 and -- and read out a long list of complaints, of his concerns about what

24 the international community was doing. He specifically said that we

25 should stop supporting the Kosovo Liberation Army and that the

1 international community should cut off monetary support for the Kosovo

2 Liberation Army from the western banking system.

3 There was no doubt in my mind that the person who was senior on

4 the Serbian side was Deputy Prime Minister Sainovic. And my eyes met the

5 eyes of General Loncar at several moments when Deputy Prime Minister

6 Sainovic was haranguing the international community, and I noted that

7 General Loncar was grimacing at some of the more outrageous statements.

8 Q. Bo Pellnas was your liaison to the government --

9 A. That's correct.

10 Q. -- in Belgrade, and paragraph 93, very briefly, he, I think,

11 identified Sainovic as the person you were to deal with. And just as a

12 slightly earlier, out of sequence matter, I think in November -- 23rd of

13 November, Walker had written a particular letter of request to which you

14 attached some significance.

15 A. Yes. This was a letter which I had had a hand in the drafting of

16 in which it was specifically stated what Walker proposed to do in order to

17 fulfil his mandate. This letter was written to Milosevic because it was

18 felt that he was the correct level to deal with. There was subsequently

19 complaints from Sainovic that Walker should have not been so forward as to

20 send that particular letter, but that was what happened.

21 Q. And I think your overall impression about Walker and his access to

22 the accused was what?

23 A. Walker felt that he should have been granted more access to the

24 accused. Walker felt that he was being fobbed off with people at a lower

25 level when there were issues that should rightly have been dealt with at

1 the highest level. The result was that those people that Walker dealt

2 with were able or quite often claimed that a particular request was above

3 their -- above their level of competence, which obviously would have been

4 avoided had Walker had more regular access to the accused.

5 Q. Ninety-six and then 94. You organised the inspection -- or 95 and

6 94 -- or 96, to follow the pattern described to Ojdanic on the 27th of

7 November, and you waited two weeks, I think, before going to Prizren to

8 inspect the barracks there.

9 A. Yes. I was concerned that we should not attempt to do anything

10 before there had been an opportunity for orders to be passed down chains

11 of command and indeed for discussions to take place, and so it was not

12 quite two weeks before we actually went and attempted to do our first

13 inspection. Again, prior to doing the inspection, I had a meeting in

14 Pristina where again we -- we wanted to lay down the modalities for doing

15 the inspections.

16 Q. Thank you. Paragraph 98. On the 14th of December, there was a

17 ceasefire breach.

18 A. Yes. This occurred close to the Albanian border, broadly between

19 Prizren and the Albanian border. We first got reports via Loncar's office

20 that several terrorists had been killed, and this information came to us

21 via Bo Pellnas's office in Belgrade as well, who got it from Sainovic.

22 At that point, the KVM were invited to go and see what had

23 happened. We contacted the KVM at Prizren and told them to get some

24 people down there. The patrols went to the scene of the action and got

25 there several hours after it had happened, obviously in the daylight. The

1 patrols, my people, were able to confirm that there had been a firefight

2 in the area which had appeared to have been in the hours of darkness, in

3 the early hours of that morning. My people were taken to three specific

4 locations where they observed dead bodies and a lot of equipment.

5 The action appeared to have been between a Kosovo Liberation Army

6 resupply column which had walked into a VJ position which was an ambush.

7 The KLA were fired at, and they then withdrew and eventually 34 KLA

8 members were killed in -- over the period of the ambush. And it was

9 reported that nine Albanians, nine Kosovo Liberation Army members, had

10 been taken prisoner, including one female. The patrols photographed the

11 bodies which were in three broad locations but were given no sight of the

12 prisoners.

13 At a later date, the prisoners reoccur in the --

14 Q. Yes.

15 A. -- in the statement. But shall I leave it at that for the

16 moment?

17 Q. Leave it -- all right.

18 A. At the time we concluded, and I still believe that this was a

19 legitimate ambush, but we did have some concerns that not all 34 of the

20 people that were killed were killed during the ambush or whether this was

21 a subsequent hunting down and killing. But it was a fact that most of the

22 Kosovo Liberation Army people that we photographed were wearing KLA

23 uniforms. And we subsequently were told that there had been 145 people in

24 this resupply column. That was consistent with the number of backpacks

25 and the like that were found at the scene and was subsequently confirmed

1 by the accounts of the KLA who had been taken prisoner.

2 Q. Paragraph 101, Prizren was advised of this incident by the Brigade

3 Commander, Bozidar Delic.

4 A. Yes. He -- he was seen by us -- this brigade commander was seen

5 by us as the man on the ground whose forces were most constantly in -- in

6 contact with -- with the Kosovo Liberation Army, having clashes with

7 them. And we -- we felt he was one of the more skilled brigade

8 commanders. It was a difficult area, and we felt he did know his job.

9 Q. He had contacts with the KLA, which in your judgement were

10 different in quality from the contacts or non-contacts --

11 A. Yes. By "contact" I mean not meetings with but fights with. His

12 forces fought with.

13 Q. Yes.

14 A. Further east, in the Urosevac area, there appeared to be a far

15 lower level of military activity, and the -- the VJ and MUP forces

16 appeared to have far -- far less contact and hence experience in dealing

17 with the Kosovo Liberation Army. And it is my view that this is one of

18 the reasons why events at Racak got out of hand, because it is, in my

19 view, quite possible that the commander on the ground was not as

20 experienced as the man in the Prizren area.

21 Q. Paragraph 102. Same day, 14th of December, a shooting at the

22 Serbian Panda Bar in Pec where four teenage Serbs were killed and seven

23 wounded. But your view, formed from an experience on the ground at the

24 time, as to how that came about was what?

25 A. At the time, the two incidents were placed in -- were linked by

1 observers on the ground. Not by us but by people that were describing

2 what was going on. Because the ambush took place in the early hours of

3 one morning and later that day this bad event took place in Pec, it was my

4 view that the two were -- were not connected, that it was a coincidence

5 that it happened, because the view that this was an attack laid on by the

6 Kosovo Liberation Army in response to their being ambushed on the border

7 about 12 to 14 hours earlier to my mind indicated a level of command and

8 control that they simply didn't have.

9 Q. Right. Then briefly, 104. On the 15th, you asked Loncar for

10 access to the prisoners. He confirmed that he had them but didn't tell

11 you where they were and didn't indicate that you would be allowed access?

12 A. That is correct.

13 Q. He accused - 105 - the United States of supplying the KLA with

14 weapons, giving as evidence of that --?

15 A. That among the weapons that had been found at the ambush site,

16 there was a weapon with an infrared site, in other words, a night site.

17 This became a very ill-tempered meeting and became very confrontational

18 between Loncar and Walker, with Loncar accusing the United States of

19 arming the Kosovo Liberation Army, Walker having nothing to do with the

20 statement, and it just became -- it degenerated into a shouting match.

21 Q. Paragraph 107. On the 19th of December, at a meeting where

22 Colonel Kotur was asked about a VJ armoured unit south of Podujevo --

23 A. Yes. This relates to a unit which left its barracks, ostensibly

24 for training, and moved first to a small grass airstrip south of Podujevo,

25 which is north of Pristina, and then the intention was announced that it

1 would carry out out-of-barracks training on a training area. And since

2 all of the area west of Podujevo was known to be villages where mainly

3 Albanians lived, I stated at the time, and stated repeatedly, that to go

4 manoeuvring in that area, to do driver training in that area in armoured

5 vehicles, was bound to lead to trouble and would be provocative, and so I

6 strongly advised him not to do it.

7 In the event of subsequent --

8 Q. Shall we move on a little?

9 A. Yes.

10 Q. 109. You asked Loncar, on the 20 of December, for defined limits

11 of a training schedule, and you never received those.

12 A. That's correct. Again, I was of the view that if units were to be

13 allowed out of barracks to train, that we should be informed of where they

14 would train and what the limits of the area they would train on. That

15 would have been perfectly normal practice in a normal context, and that

16 was the sort of detail I was asking for. And again, I never got those.

17 Q. And then 110. You travelled to the area, you met a Major

18 Drankovic, who was engaged in some apparent training, you asked him what

19 his boundaries were, and he told you --

20 A. And again, he produced a map and very broadly waved his hand over

21 it and said, "Well, this is the training area." And I said, "Well, that

22 area clearly includes a lot of areas which are populated by Kosovar

23 Albanians. Most of these villages are villages where only Kosovar

24 Albanians live. If you carry out your training next to those villages,

25 then it's quite likely that you will provoke an incident." And he said,

1 "Yes. Well, in that case, we shall exercise our right of self-defence,"

2 and that was really the end of that meeting.

3 Q. 24th of December - paragraph 112 - a VJ column, with the MUP, left

4 Pristina.

5 A. Yes. This was the first major moment at which a really

6 significant force came out of the barracks in Pristina and went up to the

7 area west of Podujevo and attacked the area -- the positions that had

8 originally been occupied by the VJ in October, which had subsequently been

9 pulled out of by the VJ and which the KLA had infiltrated into over the

10 course of the succeeding weeks. The purpose of that column was to attack

11 the KLA in that position, which it did.

12 Q. Paragraph 113. You noticed it on its return towards Pristina and

13 you noticed its composition.

14 A. Yes. This was a column that was returning to barracks at the end

15 of the day, and within the column, the VJ vehicles and the MUP vehicles

16 were mixed up together, and I felt that was odd at the time because it

17 indicated to me that they were all one composite unit rather than units

18 that were separate. I would have expected the VJ to be one column and the

19 MUP to be another. But to have one police vehicle, then two VJ vehicles,

20 then one police vehicle, indicated that they were all operating under one

21 command, in my view.

22 Q. And on that day, you had a meeting -- or there was a meeting or

23 meetings between Ambassador Walker, Loncar, Sainovic, and yourself --

24 A. Yes.

25 Q. -- during one of which something was said about further military

1 action.

2 A. As a result of this -- well, in the course of this meeting, it was

3 stated that this was the last of the military action that would be

4 required.

5 Q. Thank you. On the same day, a phone contact by Colonel Mijatovic?

6 A. Yes. Colonel Mijatovic was the police liaison, and a routine

7 phone call, ringing to say, "Should we have our normal liaison meeting

8 between the liaison officers?" He said, "No, no, no. We don't need to

9 even have a liaison meeting this morning because there's nothing going

10 on." And since the attack on the village of Gornja Lapastica was actually

11 going on at the time, only 30 minutes to the north, this clearly

12 undermined his credibility in future dealings.

13 Q. Paragraph 117, same day, meeting with Lukic to establish a rapport

14 and to discuss the level of MUP forces in Malisevo, you proposing a

15 reduction. His reaction?

16 A. Yes. Malisevo was quite a long way to the west and had got a very

17 substantial police presence there, which was more of a garrison than a

18 police station, and the presence of those police in those numbers was

19 acting as a deterrent to any of the Albanians going back to the village.

20 And so I was trying to persuade him to reduce the level of presence and

21 the way it operated, which was very aggressively, in that area. And Lukic

22 said no, he would not reduce the presence, and I got the firm impression

23 that this was a decision he could make, that he was deciding he would not,

24 but he did not indicate he would have to clear this sort of proposal with

25 anyone more senior.

1 Q. Paragraph 119 is a meeting -- was it the first meeting you had

2 with Walker and the KLA, I think at night?

3 A. Yes. This was on the afternoon of the 25th of December, when the

4 situation again started to be tense and started to flare up. Walker and I

5 went up to Podujevo, and Walker decided that he would personally go and

6 see the local KLA commander, which was a departure from what had been the

7 practice up until that moment. So we went into the village where the KLA

8 were and a meeting took place, and this was really the point at which we

9 started to leave liaison officers with the KLA in order to communicate

10 things to them rapidly, using our communications.

11 Q. 120. You refer to the fact that on the 29th of December, the

12 situation report - which I don't think we've actually got produced, but

13 you've actually seen it - recorded the situation was quiet, when there

14 were five murders, and you say that should compare with what happened a

15 month earlier, when one killing would have excited interest.

16 A. Yes. I think this is simply a comment, looking back on it, that

17 what was regarded as almost commonplace by the end of December was very

18 seriously more violent than the situation only about three weeks earlier.

19 Q. 121. Sainovic was seen in Pristina, but not to make contact with

20 you or the KVM?

21 A. Yes. We got the -- no. I was told by Loncar that he often had to

22 go and see Sainovic, and then within an hour I might see him again, he

23 having seen Sainovic, and so it was clear that Sainovic was not in

24 Belgrade but in Pristina. But Sainovic did not take the opportunity to

25 ever go and see Walker or deal directly with the Kosovo Verification

1 Mission. Loncar continued to be the intermediary.

2 Q. And then relations finally broke down --

3 A. Yes, indeed.

4 Q. -- Sainovic and Walker after Racak.

5 MR. NICE: Next Exhibit, please, tab 7.

6 Q. General, we're going to have to deal with exhibits, which will, of

7 course, remain with the Chamber, to consider as swiftly as we can, because

8 they can consume a lot of time.

9 This is a document that I think you hadn't seen until --

10 A. That is correct. This is the Serbian version of one of the

11 meetings between General Loncar and myself in December, and I only saw it

12 before Easter, but I do recall the meeting, and I think the significant

13 aspect of this meeting is that it is faithfully recorded in that I was at

14 this stage using the words "disproportionate use of force" when we were

15 discussing the actions of the Yugoslav forces in the area west of

16 Podujevo. I did this because there had already been instances of the FRY

17 forces using heavy weapons against villages which were known to contain

18 civilians, and there had been instances both of heavy mortars being used

19 and of tank main armament, in other words, the sort of -- the

20 100-millimetre shell that a tank will fire through its main gun rather

21 than simply using its machine-gun.

22 Q. We see your use of "disproportionate" five lines up from the

23 bottom of the first page, but otherwise you think it's a faithful

24 account --

25 A. Yes, indeed.

1 Q. -- a faithful account of the meeting? Thank you. Was any

2 permission given to you - I think this may be dealt with as well -- to

3 visit the --

4 A. No.

5 Q. -- captives?

6 A. There were regular requests to have contact with the KLA who had

7 been captured in the border ambush, the nine, asking if we could go and

8 see them and check on their condition, and this was constantly denied.

9 Q. Paragraph 125. As things were deteriorating - and we're now in

10 late December - in Podujevo, an elderly Serbian man had been shot, I

11 think.

12 A. Yes. This led to a discussion in Walker's office between Loncar

13 and Kotur at how the recovery of the body should take place. We were

14 concerned about it because we knew that this was a largely Kosovar

15 Albanian village, and therefore to send in a large force of police and

16 army would aggravate the situation.

17 As I recall it, the Serb had been -- had been firing at Albanians

18 himself and had then been shot in something that was quite local. And

19 there was a plan that was described by Loncar, saying that about 15

20 vehicles of various sorts were going to be sent in in order to recover the

21 body, and we were arguing that a smaller delegation would be less

22 provocative and would allow the incident to be defused more rapidly.

23 We thought we had reached an agreement that the recovery of this

24 body, which was clearly important, would be carried out in a low-key way,

25 and we were discussing things like what the exact number of vehicles was,

1 which vehicles were going to lead, was it going to be ours or -- which we

2 felt it should be.

3 And as we were going through this discussion, the telephone rang,

4 and we were told that in fact this operation had gone ahead as originally

5 conceived, that a large number of police with armoured vehicles had

6 entered the village and a firefight had erupted in the village. So this

7 caused Walker to lose patience with General Loncar and basically said what

8 was the point of us trying to work out this sort of detail, to try and

9 keep a lid on the violence when, in fact, operations were going on behind

10 our back, in effect.

11 The meeting became ill-tempered. Kotur, in the course as we were

12 all leaving, turned to me and said, "Police; you just can't trust them."

13 And was saying, "Well, the left hand doesn't know what the right hand is

14 doing." Loncar was adamant that the police were using their own chain of

15 command, but it was my impression that this was not the case.

16 Q. Because? And that would have required independent actions by the

17 police --

18 A. Yes.

19 Q. -- commander in --

20 A. The point was that everything in this area was done with the -- in

21 the presence of the VJ, who were manning the heavy weapons on the high

22 ground. And therefore, to carry out an operation without the knowledge

23 and cooperation of the people who were there to give you support from

24 heavy weapons if you needed it would have been most unusual.

25 Q. You had five or six days of home leave between the 30th of

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1 December and the 31st -- and the 6th of January of 1999.

2 Then we come, I think, to the next exhibit, please. Tab 8. OTP

3 reference 1567. This is an OSCE daily report, summarising the activities

4 of a day when you were still on leave, but, nevertheless, you can help us

5 with it?

6 A. Yes.

7 Q. In particular, it's the Racak area that I think on page --

8 A. Yes. This report is the first indication in an OSCE report that

9 the police were stepping up levels of activity in the Racak area, and it

10 specifically mentions an observation point in the mental hospital which

11 had excellent fields of view to the west towards Racak and the road that

12 runs west from Stimlje through Suva Reka through the Dulje Heights, which

13 was an area where clashes between the UCK and the security force -- the

14 Yugoslav security forces took place.

15 Q. We haven't yet had any evidence, I think, about Racak. Yours will

16 be the first.

17 A. That's correct.

18 Q. We're going to -- when we see the plans, either through you or

19 through another witness, we'll find that the mental hospital is a

20 significant feature on the road there, isn't it?

21 A. Yes. It is on the south-west outskirts of Stimlje. And so as you

22 look west from the mental hospital, you can see over the open fields to

23 the west, which -- and to the south, which takes you to Racak.

24 Q. Next exhibit, please, tab 9. Another OSCE report three days

25 later. 6th of January, covering the 5th.

1 A. Yes. This is the first report in which we saw a report of a

2 policeman wearing what's described as a grey jumpsuit in the Decani area,

3 and it is also the first -- so this is the first sighting of the special

4 police unit which we believe carried out the action at Rogovo in late

5 January.

6 It also, on Racak, describes the food situation there as being

7 critical, and that was certainly reflected by the -- my discussions with

8 the UNHCR who were moving food into that area at various times over this

9 period.

10 Q. You just immediately look at page 2 of the document. Just --

11 that's the passage in the Pec district.

12 A. Yes.

13 Q. Alternative MUP clothing, one policeman seen wearing a grey

14 jumpsuit is set out.

15 A. Yes.

16 Q. Thank you very much. Paragraph 137. You started to receive, on

17 the 8th of January, reports about roadblocks.

18 A. Yes. This was the first action that involved Serbian civilians in

19 the area south of Pristina, to the south and to the south-west, and these

20 roadblocks of local vigilantes, many of them wearing masks over their

21 faces, effectively closed off all communication between Pristina and any

22 area to the south. So it actually cut all communications between Pristina

23 and Skopje.

24 Q. The explanation paragraph, 138, by the "authorities," being what?

25 A. It was described to me as being a spontaneous civilian

1 demonstration which was protesting against government inactivity against

2 the KLA. The -- I went out to see what exactly was happening on the

3 ground and found myself watching Serb paramilitaries driving around in

4 Golfs with their black ski masks on, carrying Kalashnikovs and would move

5 to an area and then harangue the local civilians to get them, to persuade

6 them to erect a roadblock. And this organising of roadblocks was seen by

7 me at a couple of locations.

8 The interesting thing was this was one of the few moments when

9 civic disorder took place and the police were not present to deal with it,

10 because quite -- there were normally enough police present to be able to

11 deal with any civil disorder, but the police were noticeably absent at

12 that stage.

13 Q. Paragraph 140. I don't think I need to trouble with that.

14 A. No.

15 Q. Paragraph 141. On the 8th of January, during a meeting with

16 Loncar --

17 A. Yes. This was a meeting, one of the regular meetings I was having

18 with Loncar, and in the course of it there was a telephone call which

19 Loncar took and then -- and he said, "There has been an incident." And

20 shortly after that, the police colonel, Colonel Mijatovic, entered the

21 room and said that three policemen had been killed in the area of Dulje,

22 which is in the high ground between Suva Reka and Stimlje, quite close to

23 Stimlje, and that there had been a daytime ambush of a police patrol and

24 that these three policemen had been killed in that ambush.

25 This is significant because it was the biggest daytime attack by

1 the Kosovo Liberation Army that we had witnessed upon the police and was

2 clearly a serious escalation.

3 Q. Yes. Now, let's move to the next exhibit, which is tab 10, OTP

4 reference 1580, a document again you hadn't seen until recently.

5 A. Yes. This is the description of that meeting. And the meeting --

6 as you say, I had not seen this document before the period just before

7 Easter of this year, but the purpose of the meeting was a follow-up to the

8 roadblocks established by the paramilitaries, and --

9 Q. Just for good order, we make sure we don't go too fast, if the

10 first page of it is on the overhead projector, we can see just a little

11 bit further down there's your name and the way you're being recorded as

12 expressing concern over the roadblocks and so on. Can you carry on?

13 A. Yes. The other point that I brought up was that we were getting

14 evidence from our people on the ground that the Yugoslav army was looting

15 property when it was searching areas, and I was making the point that this

16 was not acceptable and would -- would bring their forces into disrepute

17 and that this should be investigated and proper instructions issued to

18 make sure that didn't happen.

19 We were then talking about the number of VJ that were out of

20 barracks, and my point there was that the original agreement that we were

21 still, as far as we were concerned, adhering to was that three company

22 positions were allowed but that the area south of Podujevo had now been

23 established as a fourth location at which there was a strong VJ presence

24 out of barracks.

25 Q. May we go to page 5 of the exhibit, please. This meeting, I

1 think, was interrupted, wasn't it?

2 A. That's correct. And this is the moment which --

3 Q. Paragraph 6.

4 A. Yes, six. That's during the discussion. "During the discussion,

5 Loncar was informed over the telephone that three policemen had been

6 killed, two seriously injured, between Suva Reka and Stimlje. Loncar said

7 with concern that we will use tanks and the army and not the police in our

8 search for the killers in order to find them."

9 It is certainly of note that that was what was stated. I did not

10 specifically react to that because he was clearly distressed, and I did

11 not take that as -- as a declaration of intent but, rather, that --

12 because it was a very serious incident, that they would take all steps

13 necessary to track down the killers. And that was, in my mind, a -- a

14 natural reaction in the circumstances.

15 Q. Before we pass from this exhibit, just a little bit further down

16 the page, I think, or thereabouts, you've had the experience, interesting

17 or otherwise, of seeing, after the event, what other people were writing

18 about you. You see their observation here that you were using the KVM in

19 respect of promotion, something to that effect.

20 A. Yes.

21 Q. I don't think you need protest too much about any of that as a

22 Major General at the time but to just tell us what was his position.

23 A. Well, I think my -- my reaction to this was to be somewhat upset,

24 having actually been in the Balkans for 22 of the 28 months preceding,

25 since October 1996. I felt that I was there because the OSCE knew me and

1 trusted me as being someone who was quite good at dealing with civilian

2 organisations. I did feel that at the time I was sensitive to the -- the

3 local situation, and I felt that we should be taking every measure

4 possible to prevent the situation from spiralling upward and out of

5 control, and this was really why I had -- I had been prepared to go and

6 join this mission at six hours' notice, at a time when I thought I was

7 about to go to a more normal teaching job. So it wasn't how I saw it.

8 Q. Well, we needn't cover that. Paragraph 143, and the next exhibit,

9 which is tab 11, OTP reference 2794. It is a press release that was put

10 out, condemning that ceasefire breach.

11 A. Yes. This is important, because it was often alleged that we did

12 not condemn the actions of the insurgents when they -- when they carried

13 out actions but we only condemned the actions of the Yugoslav forces. And

14 I think this is quite clear as stating it strongly condemns an

15 unacceptable breach of the ceasefire in that the three police were

16 killed. Further down: "The KVM considers that such terrorist attacks and

17 breaches of ceasefire undermine attempts to reach a political solution of

18 the conflict."

19 So I think this was a very clear statement which was in no way

20 sympathetic to the insurgents.

21 Q. Deal very briefly, in summary, negotiations, paragraph 144, over

22 the VJ prisoners over the next five days.

23 A. Yes. The --

24 Q. And then -- again, I don't think we need the detail of that.

25 A. I think the point here was that we invested a lot of effort into

1 getting the -- securing the release of the eight VJ soldiers who were held

2 prisoner by the Kosovo Liberation Army. There were many moments when we

3 thought that the army and police would storm the position. We literally

4 interposed ourselves between the two sides and attempted to talk the

5 situation down. I personally slept on the floor of my office for three

6 nights in order to be there if telephone messages were received, and

7 eventually, as a result of extensive negotiations, the release of those

8 eight soldiers was -- was secured, and we were able to bring them off the

9 mountain and hand them over to their families.

10 Q. Next exhibit, please, tab 12, OTP reference 1582. Just to deal

11 with the reporting structure, there were daily reports and there were also

12 summarising periodic reports. Would that be right?

13 A. Yes, that's correct. This periodic report is really dealing with

14 a specific highlight describing firstly the meeting between Principal

15 Deputy Head of Mission Keller, who was the French Deputy Head of Mission,

16 to Walker, and Deputy Prime Minister Sainovic in which the strong

17 day-to-day control that Sainovic appears to have exercised comes out, I

18 think.

19 We also, in this, describe the state of VJ forces out of the

20 barracks, which we equated to the equivalent of about six companies,

21 remembering still that the agreement called for only three.

22 Q. Yes. Can we just find that in the document, please.

23 A. Yes. If we go to page -- paragraph 4 --

24 Q. Thank you. Yes.

25 A. -- second subparagraph, paragraph 4, states that KVM patrols

1 report a battalion-sized VJ deployment in the area of Podujevo. It is

2 that battalion-sized deployment by which we would mean about three

3 companies, to be in addition to the three that were authorised. So those

4 three plus the original three make the six that I referred to.

5 Q. Then the last page of the document, in case people want to track

6 this at any time, records the KVM force at 682 by this time.

7 A. Yes.

8 Q. 149 deals with the exchange of the eight VJ for nine KLA.

9 A. Yes. And at that point, the tension certainly did reduce and

10 there were the beginnings of indications that the VJ and MUP forces were

11 starting to return to barracks, particularly in the area around

12 Mitrovica. So at the time, this was seen as an encouraging sign and was

13 certainly the result of a lot of hard negotiation on the ground.

14 Q. However, you received a report which was perhaps less encouraging

15 or more discouraging.

16 A. Yes. This was a telephone call from the American military attache

17 in Belgrade, who reported that he had observed an armoured column on its

18 way on the main Belgrade-to-Nis road, which by this stage had passed Nis

19 and by this stage was within 20 miles of Kosovo. Our concern - because

20 this was when we were in the middle of attempting to get the eight VJ

21 soldiers off the top of a hill where the KLA were holding them - was that

22 this was going to seriously complicate the situation if extra forces

23 started to appear from outside. And I brought this up with General Loncar

24 and was assured by him that they were not going to cross into Kosovo. And

25 I said, "Fine, but you're really not sending the right message in

1 deploying these sort of units so close to Kosovo when we are trying to

2 bring this situation to a negotiated solution."

3 Q. Next exhibit - but we won't be looking, I think, at any part of it

4 particularly - is an eight-page document, tab 13, OTP reference 2795.

5 This is a report on the ambush and subsequent hostage-taking incident of

6 the 8th and 9th of January. It gives a chronology of the capture and

7 negotiation surrounding the release of the eight VJ soldiers, which we've

8 taken this morning in summary because we want to deal with it in that

9 way. This report was prepared by whom, General?

10 A. It was prepared by one of the liaison officers who worked directly

11 for me, and was prepared on my instruction because it was important that

12 we just reminded ourselves of the chronology of this thing, because by

13 this stage, we were really all quite tired and there was a danger that we

14 were going to forget where we were, quite frankly. And so -- yes.

15 Q. If we need to look for detail of that exchange, we can probably

16 find it in this document.

17 A. I remember using this at the time as my aide-memoire, and it was a

18 document that was constantly updated, and this is the final version of it,

19 but it certainly reflects how we felt at the time on the ground.

20 Q. Exhibit tab 14, a daily report this time for the 11th of January

21 but covering the 10th.

22 A. Yes. This --

23 Q. Now, the passage we particularly want to look at relates to the VJ

24 MUP full-scale combat potential. Can you just take us to that, if you can

25 find it. Certainly it's covered on the assessment in the first --

1 A. Yes. I think it must be the assessment. Let me just ...

2 Q. We see on the first page: "Tensions remain high in the Stimlje

3 area as a result of the two ambushes."

4 A. Yes. Sorry. I've got it now.

5 "Tensions remain high in the Stimlje area as a result of the two

6 ambushes against MUP patrols within the last three days. Strong VJ and

7 MUP forces remain in the area. A report of increased VJ logistical

8 support moving into the area indicates that the VJ are 'repaired' --" by

9 which I think it means "prepared" "-- to remain deployed for an extended

10 period."

11 And then Pec is different.

12 Q. Right. That was --

13 A. The report also describes places where the KVM, in trying to get

14 to investigate events, was having its freedom of movement beginning to be

15 curtailed. And again, this is one of the early indications of it.

16 Q. Next exhibit, please. Tab 15, OTP reference 1584. A short

17 addendum to the daily update.

18 A. Yes. This was an irregular report put out if there was a feeling

19 that we needed to just get everybody aware of an increase or a change in

20 the security situation, and so given that the VJ and the MUP were

21 increasing their activity, this was put out to make sure everybody was

22 aware of it.

23 Q. Tab 16 deals with - OTP reference 1586 - deals with a meeting

24 between yourself and General Loncar on the 11th of January.

25 A. Yes. Again, this is one I did not see until March of this year,

1 but this was our last meeting in the five-day process of getting the eight

2 soldiers off the top of the hill. And again, reference is made to

3 everything being done at the behest of Deputy Prime Minister Sainovic.

4 Q. That's on page 2, I think you'll find, and also 3. Is that

5 correct?

6 A. Yes, that is. We wanted to resolve the problem in a peaceful

7 manner, in a manner agreed upon in yesterday's discussions between Vice

8 Premier Sainovic and Keller and Hill, Hill being the American ambassador.

9 Q. Thank you. Exhibit tab 17, a report for the period covered by the

10 12th of January in our report from the OSCE again.

11 A. And the point of note here is the KVM patrols from Pristina and

12 Prizren confirm the increase of VJ activity in the Stimlje area. Movement

13 of armoured vehicles, including tanks, have been observed.

14 Q. Page 2, paragraph 4. So this is all in the Racak build-up,

15 really, isn't it?

16 A. That is correct, yes.

17 Q. Can you recall the state of concern or anxiety by OSCE at that

18 time?

19 A. Yes. At this point, we were covering in some strength the area in

20 the west, the three counties in Kosovo in the west, which were the areas

21 where the fighting had been worst in the summer. We were not in great

22 strength in the rest of Kosovo, in the east of Kosovo, because that was

23 not an area where there had been big problems or a very large KLA

24 presence. And so as we built up, we were putting down a field presence in

25 the areas in order of priority.

1 The area of Racak and Stimlje were not actually yet in an area

2 where we had got very substantial coverage. As events deteriorated in

3 that area, we put more people into the area, but it was happening in an

4 area where our coverage was less good than it was in the west, in the Pec

5 and Decani area, where the problems had been worst, and therefore, where

6 we had gone to in greater strength most early.

7 Q. The next exhibit is tab 18. This is another meeting, this

8 time -- sorry. It's a meeting evidenced by the Serbs and not seen by you

9 until very recently.

10 A. That is correct, and this again simply describes the situation as

11 it was seen by another member of the Kosovo Verification Mission on the

12 11th of January.

13 Q. Because although you were present at this meeting --

14 A. No, I wasn't.

15 Q. No, you weren't present. This is Nikolaev.

16 A. Yes, correct. I think it's useful really only in describing the

17 situation as seen by others than myself on the 11th of January.

18 Q. Consistent or inconsistent with your own --

19 A. It's entirely consistent.

20 Q. It's available for that purpose of checking, then, if required.

21 Paragraph 160. The nine KLA prisoners were, I think, exposed to a

22 visit by your deputy or one of your liaison officers, Ciaglinski?

23 A. Yes, that's correct.

24 Q. And although we may hear from Mr. Ciaglinski himself, reported

25 back to you was what?

1 A. This referred to the nine KLA who had been taken prisoner in

2 December in the border ambush, and in the course of this, in January, we

3 were told that they could now be seen and identified and spoken to,

4 provided it was done by someone who was entirely discreet, and that was

5 why I sent Richard Ciaglinski, who is someone with whom I dealt with

6 daily.

7 Ciaglinski travelled immediately to Nis and saw the nine

8 prisoners. They stated - and this confirmed what we had learned up until

9 then - that they had been part of a resupply column of the KLA that was

10 moving supplies from Albania into Kosovo. They stated that they had been

11 recruited quite reluctantly and had gone to Albania and been given no more

12 than two days' training before they were sent on the supply mission. They

13 had been armed but had not had very much training on how to use their

14 weapons, so that when they walked into the ambush in the middle of the

15 night, they simply dropped their weapons and ran.

16 The conversations that Ciaglinski had with them, which were

17 consistent, said that about 90 had run away and that about 40 had been

18 killed or captured, and Ciaglinski had revisited the prisoners at a later

19 date, and of course these were eventually handed over in a response to the

20 handing over of the eight VJ soldiers subsequently.

21 Q. And indeed after Racak, as it happened?

22 A. Yes. It occurred to me that I was surprised that there had not

23 been media use made of the fact that these KLA prisoners were actually

24 extremely reluctant and had been -- had not been described as such,

25 because, in my view, it would have very substantially damaged the

1 Albanian -- the KLA image at the time. But the media at the time, I'm

2 sure you can recall, was that the VJ forces were fighting an implacable

3 enemy rather than these groups of scared boys.

4 Q. Tab 19, please, the OSCE report for the 13th of January. And

5 we're interested in seeing how things were developing in the Racak area.

6 A. In Stimlje, yes.

7 Q. It's on the second page, I think.

8 A. Yes. I'm having difficulty.

9 Q. Humanitarian activity, second paragraph.

10 A. Yes. Yes, I've got it.

11 Q. It's now being reported --

12 A. Yes. Pristina Regional Centre visited villages in the Stimlje

13 area following reports that residents had left and taken to the hills.

14 Verifiers found 50 people in Belince, 350 in Racak, and 680 in Malpolje,

15 all of which are in the area around Stimlje.

16 Q. Did that cause any concern to the OSCE, to have this number of

17 people taking to the hills, or was this standard behaviour of --

18 A. It was quite normal by this stage that when there was major

19 activity by the Yugoslav forces, that the residents would move out of the

20 area and be given shelter by neighbouring villages. And so this had

21 happened before - it had happened in the summer - and was relatively

22 commonplace. It obviously was of concern because we were talking all the

23 time to the UNHCR, passing this sort of thing on so that they could be

24 helped in providing food relief and that sort of thing.

25 Q. On the same page, second line of "Security Situation," we can see

1 a reference to a tank firing 50 to 60 main armament rounds. Again, is

2 that a concerning manner or par for the course?

3 A. Yes. Well, a tank carries about 40 to 50 rounds in its turret,

4 and so if tanks are firing 50 to 60 rounds, it means that they are doing

5 more than simply responding to a situation with an aimed shot. So again,

6 this indicates to me a very disproportionate response to small-arms fire.

7 Again, one could argue that if you saw exactly where the person was firing

8 at you from and you had a tank available, you might fire one round at that

9 position, but to fire the entire contents of your turret in that direction

10 is very, very disproportionate and would not be allowed in any normal

11 security situation that I'm aware of.

12 Q. Thank you. Paragraphs 165 and 166. You went, on the 13th of

13 January, to a KLA camp in Stari Trg, waiting for Walker, and held a media

14 conference --

15 A. This was in connection with the release of the eight VJ soldiers

16 and really just describes the mechanism by which we were in one place and

17 Walker was in another, with everybody in telephone contact with one

18 another, while the release of the eight VJ soldiers was finalised.

19 Q. As a reflection of your approach, when the VJ -- the KLA woman, if

20 she was a spokesman or other official, attempted to describe the men as

21 prisoners of war and saying they had been treated correctly, you used

22 different terminology, saying that they were soldiers who had been

23 detained?

24 A. Yes. I didn't want to find myself being quoted as agreeing that

25 these were prisoners of war, because that would certainly have given a

1 flavour to the conflict that I didn't think was at that stage justified,

2 and so I only referred to them as soldiers who had been detained or held

3 against their will.

4 Q. And at paragraph 167, you were able to see that when the soldiers

5 were released, they appeared to have been assaulted, with bruises and

6 black eyes showing --

7 A. Yes.

8 Q. -- terrified of their situation?

9 A. They were certainly very frightened, and it was only when we were

10 able to indicate to them that we were -- you know, we were there to take

11 them back that they began to realise that they were not going to get

12 harmed in any way.

13 Q. Very well. Exhibit 20 -- tab 20. I beg your pardon. A

14 substantial OSCE report, of which probably one of the lines we want is

15 unhappily copied in a fold in the paper, but I think you've been able to

16 work out what you think it says in context.

17 A. Well, the summary starts: "It was --" I think: "It was

18 broadly --" or no. I think it's: " ... generally a quiet day."

19 Q. Or evenly "really," I suppose.

20 A. Yes. "... though there has been much VJ influence on our area of

21 operations because of the Serbian New Year celebrations," I think it is.

22 But I think to see the date on that, which is the 14th of January,

23 and note that we were thinking it was a quiet day, I think indicates that

24 there was not a sort of constant crescendo in the Stimlje and Racak area.

25 Things were happening all over the place that we were responding to, of

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13 English transcripts.

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1 which events in Stimlje and Racak were part of, but they were certainly

2 not seen as the main focus of our activity at that stage.

3 Q. 169 and 170 we can perhaps deal with this way: that on the 15th of

4 January, there was a report brought to you in the course of a meeting,

5 about bad things happening in Stimlje. You sent Maisonneuve to

6 investigate and received a report that a KVM member had been wounded in

7 the Decani area, where his vehicle had been fired upon, so you had to go

8 and deal with that as an emergency.

9 A. Yes. These were two completely separate incidents, one in the

10 Stimlje area and the other much closer to where we were in Pec, in

11 Decani. And at the time I sent Maisonneuve, whose area Stimlje was not,

12 but it was just over from his area, and so he knew it quite well. So I

13 told him to go and see what was going on in Stimlje, and I went and

14 attempted to sort out the aftermath of having two of our people wounded in

15 Decani.

16 Q. Exhibit 21, please. Again, this is a one-page document being an

17 OSCE press release dealing with the deliberate shooting at your vehicles

18 at Decani on the 15th of January and setting out how it was that the KLA

19 forces in the area had acknowledged that it was their forces that were

20 responsible for the shooting and the wounding and that it was due to a

21 misunderstanding.

22 A. Yes. This came out sometime later, as you see from the date, 21st

23 of January. At the time that we had our two people wounded, it was not

24 clear who had perpetrated it, and I was very suspicious of everybody at

25 this stage and so was -- was quite convinced it could have been either --

1 either of the parties in this particular dispute.

2 As a result of a lot of discussion with the Kosovo Liberation

3 Army, they eventually admitted that it was their people, and eventually we

4 then said, "Well, you should admit it publicly," and we gave them a day in

5 which we wanted them to publicly state it, and they did not feel able to

6 do that. And so at that point, we -- we issued a statement in which we

7 said that this had happened, and it was the Kosovo Liberation Army were

8 responsible for it, but it took us five days to track that one down. And

9 of course, while all this was going on, other things were happening

10 elsewhere.

11 Q. All right. 172: On the 15th of January, Ciaglinski and others

12 were having discussion with the MUP in the Decani area.

13 A. Yes. This was -- this is the detail of the shooting and the

14 wounding of the two verifiers, and I think this -- I think I've covered

15 this in broad detail.

16 Q. And 173, we come to Racak itself.

17 A. Yes.

18 Q. What happened on the 15th of January was that it appears there was

19 an offensive in the village, and according to you, information coming to

20 you, VJ tanks and Pragas were sighted on the hills around the village.

21 A. Yes. This was an operation that started in the morning of the

22 15th and involved firing not only into Racak but into several other

23 villages in the area and consisted at first of tanks and Pragas, which are

24 anti-aircraft artillery which was used in -- heavy anti-aircraft cannon

25 which were used in a ground role and were very rapid firing, being used to

1 fire at Racak and other villages in the area, and it appeared to those who

2 were around and who heard it described that the VJ were firing from the

3 hills, and the police, the MUP, were then going in on foot on the ground.

4 And you can only do this if -- if the people who are going forward are

5 confident that the people who are doing the covering fire are fully aware

6 of your actions on