http://www.iwpr.net/index.pl?archive/tri/tri_283_1_eng.txt
Institute for War & Peace Reporting
Tribunal Update
ANALYSIS: The Courtroom Summit
Milosevic and Mesic exchange verbal punches in a re-run
of their fiery exchanges on the
eve of the Balkan conflict.
By Mirko Klarin in The Hague (TU 283, September 30 -
October 4, 2002)
Biljana Plavsic, former president of the Bosnian Serb
entity Republika Srpska, RS, may
have stolen the show last week with her unexpected and
dramatic guilty plea (see
Courtsides), but the week's highlight was undoubtedly
the three-day "Croatian-Serbian"
summit in Courtroom Number One. The summit, pitting
Slobodan Milosevic against
Stjepan Mesic, the Croatian head of state, effectively
marked the resumption of the fiery
debates they had just as federal Yugoslavia began its
descent into conflict in the early
Nineties.
At the time, Milosevic was the president of Serbia and
Mesic was the president of the
old federation who famously boasted that he would be
its last.
The former's cross-examination of the latter last week
offered valuable insights into the
content and quality of the political debate in the
early 1990s, which then involved the
fractious leaders of the six Yugoslav republics.
The arguments heard in the courtroom were identical to
those used at the time.
Milosevic and Mesic rowed about "the constituent
elements" of the old federation,
whether sovereignty and the right of secession belong
to the republic or the people and
whether the state should have been reorganised as a
"loose confederation" or a
"compact federation".
They argued again about who precipitated the break-up
of the country. Was it Milosevic
with his 1989 speech, in which he predicted "new
battles, maybe even armed battles",
or was it Croatia's late president Franjo Tudjman, when
he erased Serbs from the new
Croatian constitution a year later?
The tone of the courtroom "summit" resembled the
debates of the leaders of the six
republics a decade ago. It was, in other words,
offensive and often derogatory, although
not as bad as the exchanges of the early Nineties -
since the former was held before the
eyes of the world while the latter took place behind
closed doors. The level of argument
last week illustrated why it was so difficult to
imagine, let alone achieve, a political
solution to the Yugoslav crisis.
"We all took part in the destruction of Yugoslavia,"
Mesic admitted in a moment of
sincerity, although he placed most of the blame on
Milosevic who "was not interested in
Yugoslavia, either federal or confederal, (but) only in
a Greater Serbia built on the
remains of Yugoslavia".
Mesic said the defendant started "breaking up
Yugoslavia" in the late Eighties when he
suspended the autonomy of the provincies of Kosovo and
Vojvodina and instigated a
change of government in Montenegro, thereby taking
control of four of the eight votes in
the federal presidency, the country's collective head
of state.
With the votes of Serbia, Kosovo, Vojvodina and
Montenegro in his pocket, Milosevic
still did not have a majority, as Slovenia, Croatia,
Bosnia-Hercegovina and Macedonia
remained opposed. But he could thwart any decisions he
did not approve of. In May
1991, he temporarily blocked Mesic becoming the next
rotating head of the Yugoslav
presidency.
The most important part of Mesic's testimony concerned
the way Milosevic in 1991
acquired effective control of the federal presidency,
which was the supreme commander
of the Yugoslav National Army, the JNA.
Mesic said this huge army, then the fourth strongest in
Europe, had perceived that the
federation was in jeopardy and found a new "sponsor" in
Milosevic. As non-Serb officers
and soldiers left its ranks, the JNA became
"Serbianized", and Milosevic, through the
National Bank of Yugoslavia, NBJ, which he also placed
under his control, funded it with
foreign and domestic credits as well as federal foreign
exchange reserves.
At the same time, Milosevic controlled the leaders of
the Serbian parties founded in
Croatia and Bosnia whose members were armed by the JNA
or the Serbian secret
police, which also organised "volunteers" and other
paramilitary formations.
According to Mesic, the course of events in Croatia
indicates there was a distinct
pattern that was planned, organised and coordinated.
KOS, the Yugoslav military
counter-intelligence, provoked or invented incidents in
Serb regions of Croatia. The JNA
would then intervene with tanks and infantry nominally
to "prevent conflicts" and to
separate "the sides", even where no conflicts had taken
place.
After a time, the JNA would then retreat, leaving local
Serbs with arms and in control of
the territory. But according to Mesic, Milosevic's
primary target was not Croatia, nor
even the parts of Croatia under Serbian control.
Borisav Jovic, Milosevic's right hand in
the federal presidency, made Mesic realise in 1991 that
Belgrade was only interested in
the "66 per cent of the territory of Bosnia-Hercegovina
which used to be and will be
Serbian".
After this remark, Mesic suggested a meeting between
Milosevic and Tudjman to Jovic
to seek solutions to Serbian-Croatian conflicts through
negotiations. The initiative was
accepted and the summit scheduled for March 25, 1991 at
Tito's former hunting lodge in
Karadjordjevo. Milosevic and Tudjman decided to meet
alone without witnesses.
Last week, Mesic repeated what he had told the tribunal
about this meeting on two
previous occasions: in the trial of the former mayor of
Vukovar, Slavko Dokmanovic, and
that of the Croatian general Tihomir Blaskic.
Tudjman had returned from Karadjordjevo delighted by
Milosevic's "generosity". Tudjman
told Mesic that Milosevic had offered him significant
parts of Bosnia in which he was not
interested, as they had formerly belonged to the
short-lived pre-World War II "Croatian
banovina", or to earlier "Turkish Croatia". Warnings
that Milosevic would cheat him fell
on deaf ears.
Mesic said Milosevic also double-crossed the Croatian
Serbs, promising them "one
state" with all the other Serbs, while in reality he
needed them only as an "initial fuse"
for his Bosnian campaign.
According to Mesic, the list of those Milosevic cheated
included the Serbian and wider
Yugoslav public, the JNA and the international
community. They all were deluded by
Milosevic's claims that he was "fighting for
Yugoslavia... while in reality he was breaking
Yugoslavia by all means available".
In his testimony, Mesic added new elements to the
portrait of the accused provided in
the Kosovo phase of the trial by some of the
international witnesses, such as Lord
Ashdown, ambassador William Walker and General Klaus
Naumann. He described
Milosevic as a man who "subordinated everything to his
war objectives" and "used his
associates as disposable items (discarding) them once
they served their purpose".
Asked by the head of the prosecution team, Geoffrey
Nice, whether he ever noticed that
Milosevic had showed compassion either for his own
people or others, Mesic replied, "I
never, ever, saw any sign of emotions in him. All he
had were goals that he was
implementing."
Mesic's testimony, the first by an acting head of state
in The Hague, provoked a fierce
reaction from the defendant, who began acting as though
he possessed compromising
information that could discredit the witness. He
alluded to Mesic's "activities" with an
unidentified "third party" with whom he was in prison
in the mid-1970s, accusing him of
being a secret police collaborator who personally
ordered "liquidations" and kidnappings
of policemen and Serbs and was involved in people
trafficking.
Mesic laughed at these accusations, noting that "the
accused obviously had great
imagination" and that he was no more involved in
"liquidations" as he "was involved in
Lincoln's assassination".
Milosevic offered no proof for his allegations.
Instead, he moved onto political matters,
claiming Mesic bore responsibility for Croatian army
crimes in Bosnia in 1993, as he
was president of Croatia's parliament at the time.
Again he had no success - Mesic
saying the post carried no executive power.
Judge Richard May interrupted Milosevic to ask what was
the relevance of
Croatian-Muslim conflict in Bosnia for the indictment
which accused him, Milosevic, of
crimes in Croatia. After that, Milosevic charged Mesic
with "double treason", claiming he
betrayed both Yugoslavia, while head of the
federation's presidency, and then Tudjman
and his Croatian Democratic Union, by leaving the
latter.
This first claim prompted Mesic to elaborate on some of
his earlier remarks about the
state of Yugoslavia in the early Nineties. The witness
said at the time "everybody was
dissatisfied with Yugoslavia" and that the "status quo
could not be maintained ". Croatia,
Slovenia, and later Bosnia and Macedonia, had suggested
"a confederal model" but
Milosevic had not wanted to hear about it, insisting on
a "compact federation". This was
unacceptable to everybody else, as Mesic said they knew
they would have followed "the
destiny of Kosovo and Vojvodina" in being placed under
a Serbian "special regime".
Responding to the second claim, Mesic said he parted
ways with Tudjman and the HDZ
in early 1994 over their war policy in Bosnia, their
privatisation methods and their
resistance to the establishment of the rule of law.
The judges and audience then found themselves
transported back to the start of the last
decade, to one of the federal presidency or republican
presidents' meetings, otherwise
known as "travelling summits". They were forced to
listen to long exchanges of
accusations between the defendant and the witness over
the sovereignty of the former
Yugoslav republics, the right of peoples to
self-determination and the pros and cons of
confederal and federal systems.
The next item on the "courtroom summit" agenda were the
actual crimes. The
persecution of Serbs in Croatia, Milosevic said, began
in the late Eighties and Mesic
was president of "the first Croatian government that
terrorised Serbian population".
Milosevic said it started when "Serbs were erased from
the [Croatian] constitution" and
"the Cyrillic alphabet was discarded". The Serbs were
then fired en masse and other
discriminatory measures applied. Finally, they were
kidnapped, killed and detained in
camps, which the defendant said once numbered over 200.
He accused Mesic also of
responsibility for attacks on the JNA.
Mesic denied Serbs in Croatia were terrorised or put in
camps, though admitted that
some abuses and crimes had gone unpunished.These issues
needed addressing, he
added, but were not an excuse for the destruction of
Vukovar, Dubrovnik and other
Croatian cities. Mesic said this was exactly what the
JNA and paramilitary formations
sent from Serbia and Montenegro did and these units
were "under the control of the
accused".
Mesic missed no chance to address Milosevic as "the
accused" and seemed to take
special pleasure in doing so. The only thing Milosevic
and Mesic agreed on was that
"the criminals should be punished". But they could not
agree "who the criminals were".
On several occasions, Mesic stressed that Milosevic was
on trial and not him. Milosevic
replied, "That is exactly the problem", claiming it was
a case of a "mistaken thesis".
Milosevic obviously believed Mesic ought to have been
sitting in the dock. Remarking
that Mesic had testified against Tudjman and the HDZ,
and had recently stated that
General Janko Bobetko should be delivered to The Hague,
Milosevic accused the
Croatian president of "working for this illegal court"
in order to avoid having to give any
account of his own criminal responsibility. Declaring
this question "inappropriate", Judge
May concluded "The Hague summit" of the former
president of Serbia and the current
president of Croatia.
Mirko Klarin is IWPR senior editor at the war crimes
tribunal and editor-in-chief of
SENSE News Agency.
Serbian News Network - SNN
[EMAIL PROTECTED]
http://www.antic.org/
