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The Milosevic trial: Damning admissions by former British Liberal Party leader Lord
Ashdown
By Paul Mitchell
27 March 2002
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Lord Paddy Ashdown was the first Western leader to appear as a prosecution
witness in the trial of former Yugoslav President Slobodan Milosevic. He will in all
probability be the only one to do so.
Ashdown was leader of the Liberal Democrat Party in Britain during the 1990s and
will become the United Nations High Representative in Bosnia in May.
In April 1999 Ashdown said Milosevic was the �central problem� in Yugoslavia,
repeating Western statements that the civil war in Kosovo had only one
source�Milosevic�s genocidal policies. He called for Milosevic�s indictment at the
International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia (ICTY) and one month later
Milosevic was indicted for war crimes.
Ashdown was called by the prosecution to give an eyewitness account of his four-day
visit to the Suvo Reka Valley in Kosovo in September 1998. There he states that he
saw 16 burned out villages and spoke to villagers hiding nearby who all told him
similar stories�of how the Yugoslav Army had told them to leave their villages
before shelling and looting them.
Ashdown said he then consulted with British officials, who agreed the Yugoslav Army
action was against the Geneva Convention and could be considered a war crime. On
the last day of that September 1998 visit he handed Milosevic a pre-prepared letter
from British Prime Minister Tony Blair telling him to stop the �excessive and
indiscriminate use of force� in Kosovo. In the courtroom at The Hague trial, Ashdown
turned to Milosevic and said, �I said to you that if you took those steps and went on
doing this you would end up in this court. And here you are.�
Milosevic has defended the Yugoslav Army action, saying it was involved in a
counter- insurgency campaign in Kosovo against a terrorist organization, the Kosovo
Liberation Army (KLA). He insists that anti-terrorist operations are standard practice
in all Western countries and the �war against terrorism� has dominated Western
policy since the September 11 attack on New York.
Therefore Ashdown�s admission to the court that the KLA was a terrorist organisation
was a setback for the prosecution. It prompted Milosevic to remark that Ashdown
was the first witness to admit that fact. Ashdown also admitted to have seen
substantial quantities of small arms being smuggled across the border from
neighbouring Albania. Last year he had written that the �KLA rebellion in 1998� had lit
�the fuse which led to war and NATO�s intervention�.
Whilst admitting that Yugoslav forces were engaged in a counter-insurgency
operation, Ashdown�s indictment of Milosevic was that the response to the KLA was
an over-reaction. The Yugoslav Army went in to �shoot cattle, burn houses, break the
stoves in those houses, urinate on those houses,� he said, comparing this to an
�indiscriminate scorched earth policy of a kind not seen since the days of the
German occupation�.
Ashdown then drew an unfortunate contrast with the British Army, saying it �has
never used tanks, artillery, looting and burning to drive people out of their homes,
and if we did we would be before this court�. When Milosevic tried to answer this
statement by raising the British Army�s role in Northern Ireland he was stopped by
Judge Richard May because his reference to Bloody Sunday was deemed too
�political�. Milosevic was referring to the well-known incident when a peaceful civil
rights march in 1972 was met by indiscriminate British gunfire that left 14 civilians
dead. General Sir Michael Jackson, who led the British forces in Kosovo, was a
captain and adjutant to the Parachute Regiment during Bloody Sunday. Ashdown
himself served as a soldier in Belfast in 1970 and has written of how the army �arrive
as heroes to the oppressed, but soon become the enemy who keeps them from their
political ambitions.�
At the trial Ashdown tried to prove Milosevic had a worked-out plan to carve up the
Balkans by referring to the dinner he, Ashdown, had with Croatian President Franjo
Tudjman in May 1995. Tudjman sketched a map of Yugoslavia on a menu and drew
a line through Bosnia- Herzegovina saying that in 10 years time one part would
belong to Croatia and the other part to Serbia. According to Ashdown, Tudjman and
Milosevic seemed to have reached an agreement, but he did not give any direct
evidence of Milosevic�s involvement. Nor did he say if he ever called for Tudjman�s
indictment.
This story is of dubious pedigree in that it bears a somewhat remarkable similarity to
a famous event some 50 years earlier. In October 1944, Joseph Stalin met with
Winston Churchill to discuss post-World War II Europe. Sliding a slip of paper
suggesting a 50:50 split of the Balkans across to Stalin, Churchill wrote, �There was
a slight pause. Then he took his blue pencil and made a large tick upon it, and
passed it back to us. It was all settled in no more time than it takes to set it down.�
More important in some respects than the veracity of the events described by
Ashdown is the fact that he should cite the late Franjo Tudjman at all as a reliable
source. The evidence of Tudjman being an advocate of ethnic cleansing is not
disputed. He served two jail terms in Tito�s Yugoslavia for promoting Croatian
nationalism and was an admirer of the Ustashe Nazi collaborators in World War
Two. In his book entitled Nationalism in Contemporary Europe, Tudjman argued that
Bosnia-Herzegovina should form part of Croatia because �together they comprise an
indivisible, geographic and economic entity�.
After Bosnia declared independence in 1992 and a civil war broke out, audiotapes
record Tudjman talking about �cleansing� the area around Baranja. In 1995, having
rearmed in contravention of a UN arms embargo, and with secret US support,
Croatia launched Operation Storm, a bloody offensive resulting in at least 250,000
Serb refugees fleeing out of the Krajina region and establishing Croatian control over
much of Bosnia. It remains the greatest single instance of ethnic cleansing in the
Balkan conflict.
Rather belatedly, British Foreign Office Minister Tony Lloyd explained to a
Parliamentary Committee in 2000, that the Balkan region was dominated by Tudjman
�and if anyone deserved to appear before the war crimes tribunal alongside
Milosevic, it was him. I regret to say, however, that he did not.�
According to the report published by the same committee, it was Milosevic who�with
the encouragement of the West�went to the Bosnian Serb Parliament in 1993 to
persuade it, unsuccessfully, to accept the Vance-Owen plan. Drawn up by another
Liberal Democrat leader, Lord David Owen and US envoy Cyrus Vance, the plan
envisaged Bosnia being divided up into 10 autonomous provinces or cantons based
largely along ethnic lines. Of Milosevic, Owen said he was �heading towards leading
Serbia back into the European family. I have no doubt of that.� Milosevic was also,
�used as an instrument to bring about Dayton��referring to the Dayton-Paris Accord
that divided Bosnia into two areas�a Croat-Muslim Federation and Bosnian Serb
Republic two years later.
In the midst of all this, Ashdown was dining with Tudjman, a guest of the British
government, at a banquet in London to commemorate the 50th anniversary of the
defeat of Japan in World War II.
At the trial, Milosevic drew attention to the extraordinary level of activity that
Ashdown�the leader of a small opposition party in Britain�displayed in the Balkans.
As a young man, Ashdown served in the Royal Marines and the Special Boat
Service�the navy�s equivalent of the SAS. Afterwards he is supposed to have
worked for the British intelligence service MI6, whilst serving as First Secretary of
the
British mission to the United Nations in Geneva. Towards the end of his career as
Liberal Democrat leader in the late 1990s, he made several expenses-paid trips to
Yugoslavia courtesy of George Soros�s Open Society Institute. The pro-capitalist,
free market institute operates mainly in former Stalinist countries and boasts of the
�exceptional levels of cooperation and coordination� between Western institutions in
the Yugoslav election campaign in 2000, which led to the overthrow of Milosevic.
What service did he perform for the Soros foundation and the British government?
Although he poses as protector of the Kosovars and a humanitarian envoy�he gave
evidence to The Hague with tears in his eyes�Ashdown will be remembered as the
most bellicose and consistent advocate of a full-scale ground war and occupation in
the Balkans. A recent Economist article entitled Paddy Ashdown, latest proconsul:
Must outsiders run the Balkans indefinitely? (a proconsul was a military governor in
the Roman Empire) described Ashdown�s calls for a stronger military presence in the
early 1990s in the Balkans when European governments �dithered�.
In 1999 Ashdown warned the British parliament about the conflict in Kosovo. He said
there would not be a �durable and sustainable peace� unless the Western powers
established �by law or in fact, an international protectorate.� He explained that,
�Rambouillet is one way to do that, but if Milosevic will not agree we shall do it
anyway. The only way to do that and to secure peace is to have troops on the
ground.�
Last summer�as the threat of civil war grew in Macedonia�Ashdown said, �If the
West is to extract peace out of this witches brew, it will only be by taking the
initiative.� He called for a �third major NATO deployment� and �a wider regional
settlement�a Dayton for the southern Balkans and an end to the practice of solving
its problems through conflict and piecemeal resolution. I hope that the British
government will lead the way towards the West playing a more proactive role�
Ashdown speaks at The Hague as an advocate of imperialist militarism in the
Balkans and elsewhere. In 2000, he published an article in the Independent
newspaper calling for a European rapid-reaction force. Ashdown argued: �Yet today
Europe undoubtedly is a power, even a superpower. It has the world�s second most
powerful currency and arguably the world�s biggest single market. And so it has an
economic space to protect and interests to pursue. That is why it speaks in most of
the world�s fora with one European voice ... where its vital interests and powers can
be affected. It is why Europe has to care about what goes on around its borders (as it
did with regard to the Balkans) and why, sooner or later, we are going to wake up to
the fact that we cannot rely any longer on the US� willingness to risk its young
citizens� lives and its taxpayers� money bailing out Europe in its own backyard.�
In February this year Ashdown complained about George W. Bush turning the US
into a �lone star nation� and insisted that September 11 was a temporary plaster over
growing cracks in US-European relations. �It is simply inevitable,� he wrote, �that the
competition for spheres of influence and trading advantage between these two is
bound to increase�unless we can provide a framework which manages that
competition and guards against outright confrontation.�
These statements show Ashdown is well aware that self-interest and spheres of
influence are the raison d��tre of Western policy makers and that his claims to a
humanitarian impulse for Britain, the US and Europe in their conflict with Milosevic is
rank nonsense. When General Michael Jackson assumed control of KFOR troops,
he told the media, �[We] will certainly remain here for a long time so that we can also
guarantee the security and energy corridors which traverse this country.�
Yet Ashdown was bold enough to answer Milosevic�s accusation that the West has
tried to �enslave the Balkans� ever since the First World War with the statement, �I
have heard some fantastic conspiracy theories from you, but I think this is one which
will exceed all others. The idea that it is some great conspiracy of hegemony by
Western powers to run other countries is I think so far-fetched that I cannot even
believe you believe it.� His ability to do so with a straight face is testament to the
depth of hypocrisy routinely employed by imperialist politicians and a priori apologia
for his coming role as the new High Representative in Bosnia.
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