1 --- On resuming at 10.43 a.m.

2 [Defence Opening Statement]

3 JUDGE MAY: Yes, Mr. Milosevic.

4 THE ACCUSED: [Interpretation] First of all a technical question.

5 Can we clarify that, Mr. May? As for my statement, you have restricted my

6 time to three hours. It is exactly quarter of eleven right now. I would

7 like to state that, already speaking in net terms of time, as for today,

8 20 minutes are missing. Please bear that in mind so that I would get

9 those remaining 20 minutes at the beginning of tomorrow's session.

10 JUDGE MAY: Yes. You will have the time which you've been

11 allocated.

12 THE ACCUSED: [Interpretation] Very well. Before I start to speak,

13 I would like to have a cassette played first. Could you please start

14 playing the tape now.

15 [Videotape played]

16 JUDGE MAY: Mr. Milosevic -- just let the tape stop for a moment.

17 Mr. Milosevic, there's no point playing this to us unless we have a

18 translation. We've got no translation of it into one of the languages.

19 THE ACCUSED: [Interpretation] Well, I assume that you can get an

20 interpretation from Serbian, because this statement of Simon Wiesenthal

21 has subtitles in the Serbian language and it won't be a problem for the

22 interpreters to read that. It's very brief. The rest of the text is

23 either in English or with a translation into English if the original is in

24 Dutch.

25 JUDGE MAY: We will make an inquiry of the interpreters as to

1 whether that's possible or not.

2 Could the interpreters let us know whether we can follow the

3 course which the accused is suggesting, translating from the subtitles?

4 THE INTERPRETER: The interpreters will do their best.

5 JUDGE MAY: Thank you. Very well. Replay the tape again, please.

6 [Videotape played]

7 THE INTERPRETER: [Voiceover]

8 "SPEAKER: I know. I know. This was written by Hermann Neuburg

9 [phoen] the East/West task. And Hitler sent him to Croatia. After the

10 war, he was sentenced in Yugoslavia to 20 years in prison, and then he

11 returned. Then he wrote a book about his conversations with Ante Markovic

12 and the rest. They said to him that we have a problem with the Serbs:

13 One-third of them have to die, one-third have to become Catholics, and

14 one-third can remain alive. That was their programme.

15 "SPEAKER: The programme objectives of the HDZ are nothing else

16 but a renewal for the Ustasha Independent State of Croatia. However, they

17 forget that this was not only a quisling state but it was also an

18 expression of the wishes of the Croat people to have their own state as

19 well as of various other factors, in this case, Hitler's Germany that

20 wanted to introduce a new order in Europe and to change borders.

21 Therefore, the independent state of Croatia was not a mere caprice of the

22 axis powers but it was also due to various historical factors.

23 "SPEAKER: I saw them all over; Munich, Paris. For them, the war

24 was not over. They never felt defeated.

25 "SPEAKER: Our friends the Serbs, who are persuading and they had

1 bitten too. They never left their Belgrade pasaluk. They never crossed

2 the Sava or the Danube. They had bitten Vojvodina after the year 1918.

3 They are biting Macedonia. They are biting Montenegro. They are well

4 into biting at Bosnia-Herzegovina, and now they have started biting

5 Croatia. Are we going to permit that? Are we Croats not capable of

6 taking to arms and, therefore, pro patrium?

7 "SPEAKER: And some people, some individuals in Croatia and

8 especially abroad who were not friends of Croatia, were saying that there

9 shouldn't have been a war, that we were also guilty of war. I was saying

10 and I say, yes, there would be no war if we had given up our aim, creating

11 a self-reliant and independent state of Croatia.

12 "SPEAKER: I think that I have fulfilled my task. There is no

13 more Yugoslavia. Thank you.

14 "SPEAKER: Regardless of where they are, to all of them, male and

15 female, young and old, jihad, on the path of God for the liberation of our

16 Muslim people here in Bosnia and wherever they may be. It is God's order

17 to us and human obligation.

18 "SPEAKER: Which held the country together now became a target for

19 those who wanted to break it apart. At a Croatian separatist rally in

20 Split in May of 1991 demonstrators strangled a young soldier of the

21 federal army and then tossed his dead body onto the street. This and

22 similar events seemed to bear out predictions by the US Central

23 Intelligence Agency.

24 "SPEAKER: The CIA said in 1990 October, that Yugoslavia faced

25 break-up, probably violent, as early as six months from the time of the

1 report, and nobody paid any attention to it in the higher echelons of

2 government.

3 "SPEAKER: By June of 1991, however, US Secretary of State James

4 Baker decided to make one attempt to prevent a disaster. He flew to

5 Belgrade, the capital of Yugoslavia, to confront leaders of the six

6 republics.

7 "SPEAKER: He said, Don't any of you take steps that are not

8 agreed on by the others.

9 "SPEAKER: However, Milan Kucan and Franjo Tudjman, leaders of the

10 Slovenia and Croatian republics, were confident that they could ignore the

11 US Secretary of State. They declared their independence just days later,

12 on June 25th. Because they could count on the support of German Foreign

13 Minister Genscher and Austrian Foreign Minister Alois Mak. The cycle of

14 violence which would destroy Yugoslavia began when Slovene President Milan

15 Kucan ordered his troops to seize customs posts on the Yugoslav borders

16 with Austria and Italy and the Slovene capital of Ljubljana. Yugoslav

17 flags were taken down and replaced with Slovenian flags.

18 "SPEAKER: The Slovenians thought they had a right to take down

19 those flags, the end of an internationally-recognised friendship. I don't

20 think that for a moment Belgrade expected there would be violent

21 resistance.

22 "SPEAKER: German Foreign Minister Hans Dietrich Genscher flew to

23 the Austrian border with Yugoslavia to join President Kucan and warned the

24 federal army against efforts to maintain control of federal borders.

25 Kucan ordered his forces to fire on Yugoslav army troops, including those

1 who carried no live ammunition. Faced with international opposition led

2 by Germany, Yugoslav President Markovic ordered the federal army to

3 withdraw from Slovenia without a serious attempt to counter separatist

4 forces. Slovene leaders conducted a masterful public relations effort.

5 Foreign reporters were kept occupied in an underground press centre, with

6 briefings that suggested that Slovene forces had defeated the fourth

7 largest army in Europe. Journalists in the press centre routinely

8 reported as news fanciful briefings from Slovene officials on various

9 battles, including some that had never happened.

10 "SPEAKER: What was going on in Slovenia, where the Slovenians

11 declared independence and set up customs posts on the road, tended to be

12 seen and portrayed on television as the Yugoslav army acting aggressively

13 against Slovenia as opposed to the Slovenians declaring independence.

14 "SPEAKER: The manipulation of the foreign press corps set the

15 tone for new wars of secession in Croatia and Bosnia. Repeatedly, the JNA

16 was described as an occupying force dominated by Serbs. The reality was

17 different, however. The army's Chief of Staff, Veljko Kadijevic, was half

18 Croatian, half Serb; air force chief Zvonko Jurijevic was Croatian, and

19 the commander of the navy, Stane Brovec, was Slovenia. If German and

20 Austrian leaders still believed that Slovenia and Croatia could be

21 separated from Yugoslavia without a wider war, the Americans strongly

22 believed otherwise.

23 "SPEAKER: Because we said if Yugoslavia does not break up

24 peacefully, there's going to be one hell of a civil war. It nevertheless

25 broke up non-peacefully. It broke up through the unilateral declaration

1 of independence by Slovenia and Croatia and the seizing by these two

2 countries, republics, of their border posts, which was an act of force and

3 which was an act that was in violation of the Helsinki principles. But

4 the European powers and the United States ultimately recognised Slovenia

5 and then Croatia and then Bosnia as independent countries and admitted

6 them to the United Nations. The real problem was that there was a

7 unilateral declaration of independence and a use of force to gain that

8 independence rather than a peaceful negotiation of independence, which is

9 the way it should have happened.

10 "SPEAKER: While most of Europe, including England, France and

11 Russia, opposed the break-up of Yugoslavia, only the Americans were strong

12 enough to oppose Germany.

13 "SPEAKER: The United States saw that Germany would have to be

14 largely responsible for the incorporation of Eastern Europe and Central

15 Europe into the West, because Germany was -- had a national interest; it

16 was its neighbour, its periphery, and it was financially the most powerful

17 country in Europe and had the resources to do it.

18 "SPEAKER: In the post-Cold War period, Germany wanted once again,

19 the evidence is very clear, to re-colonise Yugoslavia, to re-colonise the

20 Balkans. And the United States tied itself to German policy through its

21 need of German power and influence in stabilising Eastern Europe, Western

22 Europe through the exercise of dominion by the European Community, now the

23 European Union, and potentially eventually in the lands of the former

24 Soviet Union. The problem was that there was one very important country

25 standing in the way of this, and that was Yugoslavia.

1 "SPEAKER: While citizens of Croatia were initially divided over

2 whether to remain in Yugoslavia, the separatists were led by the most

3 extreme elements, remnants of the pro-Nazi Ustasha. As The New York Times

4 colonist A. N. Rosenthal would write, in World War II, Hitler had no

5 executioners more willing, no ally more passionate than the fascists of

6 Croatia. They are returning from 50 years ago from what should have been

7 their eternal grave, the defeat of Nazi Germany. Adolf Hitler considered

8 Yugoslavia to be an artificial creation of the hated Versailles treaty

9 which ended World War I. To break it up, he set up a puppet state and

10 enlarged Croatia, which also included Bosnia-Herzegovina. It was the task

11 of top Muslim leaders who, with few exceptions, collaborated with Hitler

12 and the Croatians.

13 "SPEAKER: There was in occupied Bosnia, also under German

14 patronage, a strong Muslim wing which was very anti-Western. It was

15 represented internationally by the mufti of Jerusalem. You heard of his

16 viciously anti-Western views, and he was brought to Sarajevo and mobbed by

17 enthusiastic crowds.

18 "SPEAKER: After the war ended, Croatia and Bosnia were never

19 de-Nazified. Not only were there no apologies to the Serbs, Jews, and

20 Gypsies, but attitudes remained frozen under the surface of Tito's

21 official policy of socialist fraternity amongst peoples. Following the

22 death of Yugoslavia's long-time leader Tito in 1980, right-wing emigre

23 organisations took out an advertisement on the opinion page of the New

24 York Times, stating that Yugoslavia would not survive and offering a map

25 which included all of Bosnia as part of Croatia. It was a map nearly

1 identical to the Nazi-created Independent State of Croatia. By 1990, as

2 communism was collapsing in Eastern Europe, Croatian separatists pinned

3 their hopes on a former communist general named Franjo Tudjman who had

4 been gaoled for excessive nationalism by Tito in the 1970s.

5 "SPEAKER: You know, I met him very soon after he came out of

6 communist gaol, while Tito was still alive. He had then championed the

7 racialist form of nationalism, and when he came out of prison, instead of

8 doing what you would think a dissident would do and say to hell with the

9 conformists, he said, Oh, what are we going to do with the regime? It is

10 those horrible Serbs who are repressing us and the Serbs are responsible

11 for everything and the Serbs are guilty and the Serbs began it all.

12 "SPEAKER: Tudjman received important help from outside Croatia in

13 his rise to power.

14 "SPEAKER: The German secret service was enormously active in

15 Croatia and in all of Yugoslavia, trying in the '80s to build bridges

16 between what were called the national communists, Stipe Mesic, Franjo

17 Tudjman, in Yugoslavia and the Ustasha revanchist organisations which

18 lived in the diaspora of Croatia, that is to say all of the people of

19 weight and influence who had fled the former Nazi puppet state in 1945.

20 "SPEAKER: Tudjman found it useful to make -- come to terms with

21 them and because he was running on this xenophobic platform, there was

22 really no difficulty about it. What was difficult was when he was trying

23 to sell his cause in the West. And he managed to, partly because he had a

24 very good lobby, a very effective and much more effective than the Serbian

25 lobby, and partly because he covered up his intentions.

1 "SPEAKER: Tudjman often embarrassed his most important

2 supporters, such as German Chancellor Helmut Kohl. For instance, Tudjman

3 had written a book minimising the crimes of the Ustasha and claiming that

4 the Holocaust was greatly exaggerated. 'Thank God my wife is neither a

5 Serb nor Jew,' he told one interviewer. For the national flag, Tudjman

6 chose a replica of the chequerboard emblem that flew over the Croatian

7 death camps of World War II where Serbs, Jews, and Gypsies were

8 exterminated.

9 "Tudjman's anti-Semitic views were covered beneath rhetoric

10 acceptable to the West. With the help of Ruder and Finn, a high-powered

11 American public relations firm, The New York Times found space for General

12 Tudjman's new and misleading image on its opinion page. In the article,

13 Tudjman promised that there would be no purges against the Serbian

14 population in Croatia if it separated from Yugoslavia.

15 "SPEAKER: Tudjman's racist slogan. Croatia was for the Croats,

16 that was his slogan, a racist slogan, Croatia for the Croats, with the

17 implication people who weren't Croats, and there was a very substantial

18 Serb and Yugoslav mixed variety, didn't feel that they had any

19 -- they were in fact second-class citizens, and he recognised them as

20 such.

21 "SPEAKER: A full six months before fighting broke out, Serbs were

22 purged from positions in government, news organisations and the police.

23 Their homes were dynamited in cities such as Zagreb, Zadar and Dubrovnik.

24 For the first time since World War II, Serbs in Eastern Croatia began to

25 flee across the Danube River.

1 "SPEAKER: Serbs working in Croatian cities were required to sign

2 loyalty oaths. Those who did not sign were fired; those who did sign,

3 were fired later. Serb homes, apartments, and businesses were attacked.

4 "SPEAKER: President of the Republic of Croatia, Mr. Franjo

5 Tudjman, allowed us for the first time to set up unarmed detachments under

6 the auspices of the HDZ.

7 "SPEAKER: Expulsion of Serbs in Croatia was removed by Tomislav

8 Mercep, a senior member of Tudjman's ruling party, the HDZ. Mercep would

9 later be identified by Croatian police reports as one of two Croatian

10 leaders who directed death squads that murdered hundreds of Serbian

11 civilians in Eastern Slavonia around Vukovar and Osijek in the fall of

12 1991. He received little press coverage in the West but Mercep was in

13 many ways the spark that set the fire of war in Slavonia, the disputed

14 region of Croatia where the Yugoslav war began. Mercep's co-leader of the

15 Croatian death squads was Vladimir Glavac, of Osijek. Unlike more

16 discreet members of the HDZ party Glavac made no secret of his

17 identification with the World War II Croatia Ustasha as he welcomed

18 returning Croatian prisoners of war.

19 "Feel free to say that you are Ustasha. You are and you have

20 come here.

21 "SPEAKER: Intellectuals were hailing Croatia as part of the New

22 Europe. Old and familiar forces were at work. Osijek became a magnet for

23 neo-fascist groups fighting with Glavac. They included British skinheads,

24 German and Austrian neo-fascists, and followers of the French extremist

25 Jean Marie Le Pen.

1 "SPEAKER: We'll leave for Zagreb to get orders from headquarters

2 but not from the regular Croatian army. We're going with the right wing

3 Croatian defence force. We'll leave for the front somewhere in Slavonia.

4 "SPEAKER: The United States, which soon adopted Germany's

5 approach to the Balkans, ignored recent history and offered a simple

6 explanation for the fighting which broke out in the predominantly Serbian

7 region of Croatia which was known as the Krajina. Assistant Secretary of

8 State Richard Holbrooke, who spent the early years of the Yugoslav war as

9 the American Ambassador to Germany, represented what became the official

10 American view.

11 "SPEAKER: The Serbs started this war. The Serbs are the original

12 cause of the war.

13 "SPEAKER: Those who tried to prevent the war saw it differently.

14 "SPEAKER: The Serbs in Croatia, and indeed outside Croatia, had a

15 very vivid memory of what happened in 1941 and 1942 when Hitler declared

16 Croatia a sort of independent puppet state, if you like, and the horrors

17 that went on there, and the murders of the Serbs were still -- I mean, a

18 very large number of Serbs were murdered at that time. I mean, hundreds

19 of thousands. And I think it was very understandable that when Croatia

20 declared its independence and promulgated a new constitution without any

21 safeguard for the 600.000 Serbs who still lived in Croatia, that the Serbs

22 were very perturbed about this.

23 "SPEAKER: From the beginning, the Serbs were blamed, and they

24 were partly blamed out of ignorance because nobody bothered to look back

25 at the history to put it within its historical context and to see why the

1 Serbs who lived in Krajina and the Serbs who lived in the area that is

2 called Bosnia-Herzegovina, why because of their historical experiences,

3 were so hostile to being under Zagreb or under Muslim Sarajevo rule.

4 "SPEAKER: In hope of heading off disaster, the European Community

5 organised a constitutional conference in 1991, led by respected British

6 diplomat Lord Peter Carrington, to find a compromise between those who

7 wanted to separate from Yugoslavia and those who wished to keep it

8 together. The problem was that administrative borders or internal

9 frontiers devised by Tito in 1943 left one-third of the Serbian population

10 out of Serbia, mostly in Bosnia-Herzegovina and Croatia. As Yugoslavia

11 slid towards civil war in 1991, two referendums were held on the same day

12 in Croatia. Croatians voted overwhelmingly to separate from Yugoslavia

13 while ethnic Serbs, particularly those from the Krajina region, voted by a

14 similar margin to remain within Yugoslavia. A compromise favoured by

15 European Community negotiators would have permitted Croatia to leave the

16 Yugoslav federation but would have permitted the regions where Serbs

17 formed a majority to remain in Yugoslavia or to gain substantial autonomy.

18 Serbs who lived in an independent Croatia would be guaranteed full

19 citizenship and human rights protections. In the capital city of Zagreb,

20 Croatian President Tudjman seemed reluctantly prepared to accept this

21 compromise which would have prevented a major military conflict. Germany,

22 however, announced they would recognise both Slovenia and Croatia within

23 Tito's administrative borders before the end of 1991. There would be no

24 compromise.

25 "The Serbs were bitter that the first act of a newly-united

1 Germany would be to divide the Serbs of Yugoslavia into at least three

2 separate countries. A crucial opportunity to divide Yugoslavia by

3 peaceful means was now threatened by Germany's action.

4 "SPEAKER: It broke up the constitutional conference because once

5 you go throughout the six republics' independence, those two had no

6 further influence to the constitutional conference. You will have to ask

7 the other republics whether they wanted their independence, which meant

8 that you had to ask Bosnia. And it was perfectly plain that Bosnia --

9 there was going to be a civil war in Bosnia if you did do that.

10 "SPEAKER: UN Secretary-General Perez de Cuellar sent a strong

11 letter to German leaders warning that recognition would be a disaster.

12 Germany and Austria's own ambassadors in Belgrade privately warned against

13 recognition of Croatia.

14 "SPEAKER: The Germans risked being isolated, but the pressure

15 from the -- from the Kohl party and from the huge lobby of -- Croat lobby

16 in the southern parts of Germany, and Bavaria particularly, were such that

17 it was difficult for Genscher to go on postponing the support.

18 "SPEAKER: By the time the war started, the German public had

19 already been prepared by repeated attacks on the Serbs in an influential

20 German newspaper in Frankfurt. The strident commentary of Johan Georg

21 Greismuller which favoured Croatia and reviled the Serbs - any Serbs, all

22 Serbs - reminded Peter Hanke of the way Nazi Propaganda Minister Joseph

23 Goebbels once characterised the Jewish race.

24 "SPEAKER: It was the German press in the form par excellence of

25 the right-wing Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung and its journalist that

1 fundamentally influenced German policy.

2 "SPEAKER: I remember talking to the Germans in the Foreign

3 Ministry and they said they didn't call it the Frankfurter Allgemeine

4 Zeitung anymore, they called it the Zagreb Allgemeine Zeitung. And it had

5 that reputation and it was a tremendous pressure group, and I think this

6 was a factor.

7 "SPEAKER: German support for Croatian separatists received an

8 unusual tribute: A musical thank you on Croatian state television.

9 "SPEAKER: Thank you, Germany.

10 "SPEAKER: ... public relations firm Ruder and Finn, Croatia

11 successfully used the media to manipulate a larger audience, particularly

12 Germany and the US, to gain support for its separatist agenda. This was

13 particularly evident in the reporting of the war around the resort town of

14 Dubrovnik, a favourite vacation for German tourists. Working through its

15 Washington PR firm, the Croatian government managed to convince much of

16 the world that Dubrovnik was being destroyed by the Serbs in unprovoked

17 attacks which lasted for months during the fall of 1991.

18 "SPEAKER: The public has been led to believe that the federal

19 army attack on Dubrovnik was not precipitated by anything but sheer

20 malice. However, on August 25th of 1991, Croatian forces attacked a base

21 in the Bay of Kotor and the Bay of Kotor, and they were repulsed with

22 heavy losses.

23 "SPEAKER: Yugoslav troops based in Montenegro then fought their

24 way up the coast, confronting Croatian forces near Dubrovnik.

25 "SPEAKER: Targets outside the Old City were hit, consisting

1 mostly of hotels which had been taken over as barracks and spotter points

2 by Croatian forces.

3 "SPEAKER: Contrary to news reports, there was little damage to

4 the historic Old City.

5 "SPEAKER: Yes. It has been reported some 15.000 shells rained on

6 the Old City of Dubrovnik. I counted 15 mortar hits on the main street.

7 The Yugoslav federal army could have destroyed the Old City of Dubrovnik

8 in two hours. It is not destroyed.

9 "SPEAKER: Washington Post reporter Peter Maas, who visited the

10 Old City several months after the fighting stopped, found Dubrovnik in

11 what he described as 'nearly pristine' condition.

12 "SPEAKER: There are many people who go to these scenes of mayhem

13 and adventure who don't know where they are, who don't know the languages,

14 cannot really communicate with the people, and who take press handouts

15 from the local authorities. So there is certainly an orchestrated effort

16 on the part of the Croatian and Slovenia, Austrian and German media to

17 portray the Serbs as a bunch of howling, Byzantine uncivilised

18 barbarians.

19 "SPEAKER: These impressions helped strengthen Germany's resolve

20 to lead a reluctant European Community to recognise the separatist

21 republics and thereby dismantle Yugoslavia. To overcome British

22 opposition to recognising Croatia, German Prime Minister Helmut Kohl

23 offered British leader John Major a deal which left Britain free to

24 disregard or opt out of the social provisions of the 1991 treaty creating

25 a unified Europe which was being hotly debated in the British parliament.

Blank page inserted to ensure pagination corresponds between the French and English transcripts.

1 This helped John Major politically at home but Bosnia would pay a high

2 price.

3 "The French, who needed German help to stabilise France's

4 currency, also dropped their opposition to recognising the separatist

5 republics. The United States, the only power strong enough to oppose

6 Germany, began to waiver. Deputy Secretary of State Lawrence Eagleburger,

7 who had once served as US Ambassador to Yugoslavia and spoke Serbo-Croat,

8 knew well the dangers of a wider war if recognition were extended before a

9 settlement had been reached between the different ethnic groups.

10 "SPEAKER: I think the major lesson here is that when you get

11 involved in something like this with a thousand years of history

12 underlying it all, you need to understand that once the dam breaks, the

13 viciousness can be pretty awful, on all sides.

14 "SPEAKER: In the end, here also peace would be sacrificed for

15 domestic politics. There was an American election coming up.

16 "SPEAKER: When we finally went ahead and recognised, one of the

17 reasons we did so is because it had become a major domestic political

18 issue for us here. We have particularly a large Croatian-American

19 community. And Mr. Bush lost most of them in the election that he lost

20 because they were unhappy in our having delayed as long as we did in

21 recognising Croatia.

22 "SPEAKER: While German actions encouraged the armed secession of

23 Slovenia and Croatia, it was US diplomacy, particularly through Ambassador

24 Warren Zimmermann, which helped light the spark for a war in

25 Bosnia-Herzegovina by supporting Muslim leader Alija Izetbegovic in his

1 bid for a separate state.

2 "SPEAKER: And then we were the ones that went to the Europeans

3 and insisted that they recognise Bosnia and then that we would recognise

4 all three of the new states, and that was a deal that was made, and of

5 course, it was precisely that that led to the current war.

6 "SPEAKER: This was a war that European leaders believe could have

7 been avoided.

8 "SPEAKER: The Bosnian Serbs, until comparatively recently, have

9 been in the majority in Bosnia, and then the Muslims, who had a very much

10 higher birth rate than the Serbs, became the predominant -- the majority

11 population. And this, of course, was something very hard for the Serbs to

12 swallow. And they made it abundantly plain very early on that they were

13 not prepared to accept a situation in which there was an independent

14 Bosnia under the constitution which then prevailed. And indeed under the

15 constitution which then prevailed, it was not -- it was illegal for

16 Izetbegovic to declare independence because any constitutional change of

17 that magnitude had to be agreed by all three parties.

18 "SPEAKER: Privately, European leaders worried about Izetbegovic's

19 close ties to Iran and the possibility of a Muslim fundamentalist state in

20 the heart of a newly-unified Europe.

21 "SPEAKER: Izetbegovic himself had ties to the Iranians going back

22 long before they came to power in Bosnia, really beginning not too long

23 after the Iranian revolution, came to power in 1979.

24 "SPEAKER: In his book, 'The Politics of Diplomacy' then Secretary

25 of State James Baker wrote that Ambassador Zimmermann strongly advised him

1 to recognise Bosnia. Recognition of Bosnia, however, violated the most

2 basic diplomatic norms. For a government to be recognised, it must be in

3 full control of its territory, it must have clearly established borders,

4 it must also have a stable population. Not a single one of these

5 essential conditions existed in Bosnia in February of 1992 when Zimmermann

6 made his recommendation. US intelligence analysts predicted that

7 recognition would lead to war. Even the Germans thought that recognition

8 of Bosnia would be a serious mistake.

9 "SPEAKER: We did have some different opinions in early 1992 as

10 the Americans supported the recognition of Bosnia whereas we, the

11 Europeans, believed that we should first establish a framework for the

12 whole region.

13 "SPEAKER: Lord Carrington tried to avert disaster by appointing

14 Portuguese President Jose Cutilheiro to find common ground among the

15 Serbs, Muslims and Croats before an independent Bosnia was recognised.

16 "SPEAKER: I asked him to go to Sarajevo and to Lisbon and to have

17 talks with the three parties in Bosnia to see whether or not some

18 agreement could be reached with an unitary state, I mean a state, an

19 independent Bosnian state but in some sort of federal idea in which you've

20 got the three communities to agree.

21 "SPEAKER: This set up a central government of Bosnia-Herzegovina

22 and three ethnic cantons, on the model of Switzerland.

23 "SPEAKER: It was the last chance, I think, of trying to preserve

24 Bosnia before the war broke out in earnest.

25 "SPEAKER: If the Lisbon plan had been adopted, British author and

1 BBC journalist Misha Glenny wrote later, 'The war in Bosnia probably would

2 not have happened.' But two days after signing it, following a meeting

3 with American Ambassador Warren Zimmermann, Izetbegovic changed his mind

4 and disavowed his signature.

5 "SPEAKER: Izetbegovic turned around and reneged, as he's reneged

6 on other things.

7 "SPEAKER: Zimmermann later acknowledged to David Binder of the

8 New York Times that Izetbegovic had reluctantly signed the agreement to

9 gain European recognition. More than a year after the bloodshed began in

10 Bosnia, Zimmermann also admitted that the Lisbon plan was not bad at all

11 but recalls telling Izetbegovic, 'If you don't like it, why sign it?'

12 "SPEAKER: Zimmermann told Izetbegovic, Look, why don't you wait

13 and see what the US can do for you, meaning we'll recognise you and then

14 help you out. So don't go ahead with the Lisbon Agreement, don't accept

15 the Cutilheiro plan, and just hold out for some kind of unitary Bosnian

16 state. So this is a major turning point in our diplomatic efforts.

17 "SPEAKER: The American administration made it quite clear that

18 they thought that the proposals, Cutilheiro and my proposals were

19 unacceptable.

20 "SPEAKER: With no agreement amongst the Muslims, Serbs, and

21 Croats with all sides mobilised for war, the European Community voted, as

22 the US insisted, to recognise Bosnia on April 6, along with Slovenia and

23 Croatia. This act, Roger Cohen of the New York Times later wrote, was 'as

24 close to criminal negligence as a diplomatic act can be.' Indeed,

25 international recognition and the outbreak of the Bosnian war were

1 simultaneous. The world put light to the fuse.

2 "SPEAKER: God is great. Allah Akhbar. Call for the holy war.

3 Holy warrior. Allah-u-ekber. God is great. Holy warrior.

4 Allah-u-ekber. God is great.

5 "SPEAKER: ... determined that we should not take sides in this

6 war by becoming a combatant, and we have held firmly to that position and

7 we plan to continue to hold firmly to that position.

8 SPEAKER: By the time US Secretary of Defence William Perry

9 testified before Congress in June of 1995 that the US was not taking sides

10 in the Yugoslav conflict, a full range of secret military assistance

11 operations to the Croatian government and Bosnian Muslim forces were

12 already underway. At a remote air field high in the mountains of the

13 Croatian island of Brac, American intelligence operatives assembled the

14 unmanned aviation vehicles, known as UAVs, for reconnaissance while

15 Croatian soldiers guarded the airport grates. Only one month before

16 Defence Secretary William Perry testified that the US was not taking

17 sides, a predominantly Serbian civilian area, supposedly under UN

18 protection, was suddenly attacked by Croatian forces. Several UN

19 soldiers were killed in what turned out to be a massacre of the Serbian

20 civilian population of Sector West. Thousands of Serbian refugees fled

21 across the Sava River from Croatia into Northern Bosnia. Croatian sources

22 put the number of Serbs killed in the attack at 1.000. Serbian Orthodox

23 Church officials stated that 5.000 civilians were killed. But there is no

24 criticism of this atrocity by American officials, including the killing of

25 UN soldiers, because the US was deeply involved in assisting the Croatian

1 military. Efforts by British and French representatives on the UN

2 Security Council to place sanctions against Croatia were repeatedly

3 blocked by America's UN representative Madeleine Albright. Six months

4 earlier, in November of 1994, the US Departments of State and Defence had

5 approved a contract between a group of retired four star generals and the

6 Croatian government.

7 "SPEAKER: The Croats paid for it but they were authorised by the

8 Pentagon.

9 "SPEAKER: I had constant reports of American officers who were,

10 quote, retired, no longer on active duty, acting as advisors to the

11 Bosnian government's military, acting as advisors to the Croatian

12 military. And they were very active on the ground.

13 "SPEAKER: The retired generals, described as high level

14 mercenaries, belonged to a private company known as Military Professional

15 Resources Incorporated, or MPRI. MPRI included such luminaries as

16 Lieutenant General Ed Soister [phoen], former head of the Defence

17 Intelligence Agency, Major General Richard Griffiths, Deputy Chief of

18 Operations in Central Europe, and most importantly Karl Vuono. General

19 Vuono and his colleagues at MPRI would be a major asset to the Croatian

20 army in its efforts to forcibly expel the ethnic Serbian population from

21 the Krajina, which was technically under UN protection in sectors north

22 and south. But the destruction of Sector West, a UN protected area for

23 ethnic Serbs, would have consequences in nearby Bosnia. Lord Owen wrote

24 that by acquiescing in the Croatian government's seizure of Sector West,

25 the US had, quote, in effect given the green light to the Bosnian Serbs to

1 attack Srebrenica and Zepa. When Muslim paramilitary leader Naser Oric

2 launched an attack from Srebrenica against the Serbian village of

3 Visnjica, this time the surrounding Serbian forces counterattacked

4 Srebrenica, entering the city.

5 "SPEAKER: It is well known to anybody who has followed this that

6 Oric was launching repeated attacks out of a supposedly demilitarised zone

7 against surrounding Serbian areas around the Srebrenica enclave, to the

8 point where, after repeated warnings, the Serbs simply could not allow him

9 to continue to do that and decided to take the town.

10 "SPEAKER: Oric and several thousand of his soldiers fled across

11 Serbian held territory to the town of Tuzla several days before Serb

12 forces entered Srebrenica and Zepa. Muslim women and children in

13 Srebrenica were placed on buses by Serbian forces and sent to safety in

14 Tuzla. But between 1 and 2.000 Muslim men were captured by the Serbs who

15 blamed them for participating in a string of massacres led by Naser Oric.

16 A Croatian soldier who claims to have fought with the Bosnian Serbs

17 testified at The Hague that he took part in the execution of 1.200

18 Muslims, although the number of bodies recovered from the site was 200.

19 UN [sic] Ambassador Madeleine Albright, however, used greatly inflated

20 numbers to describe Serbian reprisals at Srebrenica. According to the

21 International Committee of the Red Cross, thousands of Muslim men,

22 allegedly missing, were found serving in Muslim army units near Tuzla.

23 Washington Post reporter John Pomfritt [phoen] reported that 4.000 armed

24 Muslim soldiers had escaped to a town near Tuzla, yet these same soldiers

25 were still be included in official reports years later as missing Muslims

1 from Srebrenica.

2 "SPEAKER: Secretary Albright in particular was very insistent on

3 using such numbers like 8.000, 10.000 Muslim men and boys who were

4 executed in Srebrenica by the Serbs. There's simply nothing to document

5 those numbers.

6 "SPEAKER: ... that year whose records of fighters had killed many

7 Serb civilians. Other sources claim Oric knew about that proposal. The

8 subject of Oric wasn't discussed for very long. Mehovic claimed that

9 Izetbegovic referred to his meeting with Clinton.

10 "SPEAKER: Alija told us about Clinton's offer to have the

11 Chetniks enter Srebrenica and that a military intervention would follow.

12 He asked what we thought about that. We rejected this proposal because we

13 thought that this was outrageous, to murder 5.000 persons.

14 "SPEAKER: However, the idea of Clinton proposing that Serb troops

15 attack Srebrenica and carry out a massacre to justify military

16 intervention seemed utterly ludicrous, but the UN investigation shows

17 Hakija's words are not unfounded.

18 "SPEAKER: UN report delegation have stated that President

19 Izetbegovic also told them that he had learned that a NATO intervention in

20 Bosnia and Herzegovina was possible but could only occur if the Serbs were

21 to break into Srebrenica.

22 "SPEAKER: President Izetbegovic denied having made any such

23 remark. He did admit he asked for an opinion on the land exchange.

24 "SPEAKER: We then talked about an exchange. He offered to

25 replace Srebrenica by Vogosca, and we rejected that too.

1 "SPEAKER: Negotiations will include the demand, first of all,

2 that the maps be altered so that the Bosnian republic acquires Muslim

3 areas along the Drina.

4 "SPEAKER: ... episode, the Croatian army attack on the

5 predominantly Serbian Krajina region was yet to come. On August 1st,

6 1995, Croatian troops launched a massive assault on the Serbian population

7 of the Krajina, sectors north and south.

8 "SPEAKER: It was an operation of about a hundred thousand

9 Croatian military, yes. Tanks, planes, artillery; the works.

10 "SPEAKER: While officially denying any involvement in what the

11 Croatians called Operation Storm, American forces were actively supporting

12 this bloody operation of ethnic cleansing.

13 "SPEAKER: American equipment was used to jam Serbian

14 communications at a critical moment so that command and control, at least

15 in the communications sector, was blocked and then there was a documented

16 pair of raids on Serbian Krajina military facilities by US navy planes

17 flying out of Aviano which knocked out radar and other facilities.

18 "SPEAKER: The shelling of Knin was a deliberate terror

19 bombardment meant to hasten the departure of the remaining Serbs and was,

20 you know, committed against an unarmed populace. They had street cleaners

21 coming in and removing any evidence of the murders or the vandalism before

22 they brought the cameras in to show the triumphant return of the Croats

23 into Knin. So it was all very carefully planned.

24 "SPEAKER: Having denounced ethnic cleansing, American military

25 planners helped Croatia carry out the largest ethnic cleansing of the war

1 up to that point.

2 "SPEAKER: It would appear to be the largest single incident if

3 you count people affected in the first few days. It was 170.000 people.

4 "SPEAKER: That number quickly grew to 200.000 as a river of

5 humanity clogged the roads. Recently retired US General Charles Boyd

6 Deputy Commander of NATO, confirmed that the US helped plan and implement

7 the attack.

8 "SPEAKER: Croatia would not have taken its military offensives

9 that it has taken, either in Sector West or throughout the north and

10 south, throughout the Krajina, without explicit approval of the US

11 government.

12 "SPEAKER: Roger Cohen of the New York Times quoted a Croatian

13 military journalist who confirmed that General Vuono, of MPRI, met with

14 his Croatian counterpart repeatedly in the days preceding Operation Storm.

15 "SPEAKER: The tactics that they employed when they attack into

16 the Krajina was exactly the same tactics that were used during Desert

17 Storm. They were from American doctrine, attacking on many fronts with

18 lightning-type attacks, and interestingly enough, the Croatian attack was

19 called not Desert Storm but was called Storm.

20 "SPEAKER: The way they deploy and employ their forces is a direct

21 reflection of that training. So it's been very effective and it's been

22 very much a part of the official US policy.

23 "SPEAKER: Canadian UN officers identified an ethnic Albanian

24 commander, Agim Ceku, as responsible for the massacre of Serbian

25 civilians.

1 "SPEAKER: Our officers, Colonel Lesley, General Foran [phoen],

2 that were there on the ground, wanted indictments against the artillery

3 commander in particular, the commander of the operation, and even wanted

4 Tudjman, the Croatian President, indicted for his role.

5 "SPEAKER: Emma Bonino [phoen], Refugee Commissioner for the

6 European Union, noted that as many as 10.000 Serbian civilians were

7 missing from the stream of refugees who fled the Croatian attack on the

8 Krajina. Many of these ended up in mass graves.

9 "SPEAKER: When you go to the villages, you will see the

10 cemeteries, the graves without any names. Mostly it's 90 per cent.

11 "SPEAKER: Sometimes when I'm thinking about what happened there,

12 I think also about the role of the Americans in preparing our army. So I

13 really don't know how they educate our soldiers, but if it is the

14 education for democracy, they look very bad.

15 "SPEAKER: I don't think the American people have drawn that

16 correlation of those incredible war crimes that happened recently in the

17 Krajina and the fact that the Croatian army was trained and advised by and

18 virtually almost led by former American military leadership.

19 "SPEAKER: They have in fact been accomplice to a massive ethnic

20 cleansing of Serbs from Croatia who had lived there for many, many

21 centuries. It was their home. I think we need to step back and be

22 representative of the principle because we only -- not only deny our own

23 principles that way but we create more problems than we solve.

24 "SPEAKER: Three State Department sources told former New York

25 Times reporter David Binder that the green light to undertake Operation

1 Storm came from US envoy Richard Holbrooke, who flew to Zagreb to meet

2 with Croatian President Franjo Tudjman two days before the attack. At

3 first, Holbrooke insisted that he try to prevent Operation Storm, but in

4 his memoir of the Dayton negotiations, Holbrooke acknowledged that he

5 encouraged Operation Storm which drove ethnic Serbs from their homes in

6 the Krajina.

7 "SPEAKER: If you read Holbrooke's memoirs, he writes he was

8 encouraging the Croatian government in every way he could to move fast and

9 hard to get them out.

10 "SPEAKER: Having blocked UN and European peace agreements to end

11 the fighting in Bosnia, the Clinton administration encouraged a joint

12 military offensive by Muslim and Croat forces in Western Bosnia. Like

13 Operation Storm, the offensive was designed to force Serbian civilians

14 from their homes, the very ethnic cleansing the administration had once

15 denounced. In his book 'To End a War', Richard Holbrooke writes that he

16 even advised Croatian forces which Bosnian Serb cities to attack. Those

17 attacks produced nearly as many refugees as Operation Storm and an unknown

18 number of mass graves in Western Bosnia. The following year, after the

19 Dayton Accords were signed, a mass grave of Serbian civilians at Mrkonjic

20 Grad was unearthed. At the time of its discovery in 1996, it was the

21 largest mass grave the war had produced in Bosnia.

22 "With Muslims and Croats on the offensive in Bosnia during the

23 summer and fall of 1995, the US military began to intervene openly against

24 the Serbs. All that was needed was an incident in one of the safe zones.

25 On August 28th, 1995, yet another explosion occurred in the Markale

1 marketplace in Sarajevo, killing scores of innocents and providing a

2 pretext for NATO bombing.

3 "According to the London Times, French and British investigators

4 determined the shell came from Muslim-held positions in Sarajevo, but this

5 time an American officer overruled their finding.

6 "SPEAKER: Now what's significant at this time is exactly within

7 hours after this, NATO, this incredible air armada that was pulled back,

8 cocked, locked, ready to go, the minute this was -- like it was

9 orchestrated in part of a play, this mighty arm of NATO air launched

10 forward and started attacking Serbian positions. They were waiting for

11 that very excuse.

12 "SPEAKER: I have studied Markale I and Markale II for a long time

13 and at the scene and I've talked to a number of people who were involved

14 in the investigations of both, and I am completely persuaded that those

15 two explosions were caused by Muslim forces.

16 "SPEAKER: Bypassing the UN Security Council, which had the legal

17 authority to act in Bosnia, the US had already picked out Bosnian Serb

18 targets, some of them supplied by Muslim commanders.

19 "SPEAKER: We entered the war, took the side of the Muslims and

20 became their air force, bombing the Serbs on this supposed atrocity

21 created by the Serbs where everyone that was on the ground said it was

22 created by the Muslims, which, by the way, is the oldest trick of war.

23 And we fell for it.

24 "SPEAKER: Selective media coverage of the war had created

25 tolerance, if not enthusiasm, for a US military intervention from the

1 American public.

2 "SPEAKER: What amazed me was that American doves, liberals, my

3 allies from the anti-Vietnam days, the sort of people I thought I could

4 count on to oppose reckless American military intervention, were all

5 screaming for military intervention. They were the biggest hawks of all.

6 "SPEAKER: For the Clinton administration, intervention in Bosnia

7 represented a chance to justify the continuation of NATO, an American

8 dominance in Europe.

9 "SPEAKER: NATO's very problem in the early 1990s was simply that

10 the mission for which it was designed had come to an end. It was designed

11 to protect Western Europe from an aggressively expansionist Soviet Yukon.

12 "SPEAKER: The logic would go: You've got to expand NATO, and the

13 only reason to keep and expand NATO is to have a mission. Where is the

14 mission? Bosnia, Balkans. The Balkans had become hostage to an American

15 power concept which is to keep Europe down and America up.

16 "SPEAKER: Senior military officers were amongst those most wary

17 of administration policy.

18 "SPEAKER: I think the mess we have today is a result of political

19 errors. I think we were all too quick to recognise these individual

20 republics as they declared their independence and asked for recognition.

21 We failed to think through the history of this region. And so it's a

22 little -- a little strained to have that political context and then ask

23 the military to go solve the problem."

24 JUDGE KWON: Mr. Milosevic, before you move on, could you tell us

25 the source of this tape, also as to it is originally one tape or, rather,

Blank page inserted to ensure pagination corresponds between the French and English transcripts.

1 a compiled one?

2 THE ACCUSED: [Interpretation] Well, as you can see, these are all

3 statements exclusively taken from Western sources, and once again

4 exclusively from very prominent personalities which they undoubtedly gave

5 and made, and this is a compilation which just briefly illustrates the

6 whole picture in view of the very limited time that I have at my disposal.

7 JUDGE KWON: If could you later submit to us the programme --

8 names of the programme later, in due course, together with the tape.

9 THE ACCUSED: [Interpretation] I have a lot of original tapes, and

10 it won't present a problem for me to look through them and do that.

11 Now, with respect to international law, in the crisis in

12 Yugoslavia, the sole international legally protected subject was

13 Yugoslavia itself, as a member of the United Nations and the sole bearer

14 of the international legal subjectivity, as a legal subject. So that in

15 that territory, there were no wars. There was just one single war, and

16 that was the war against Yugoslavia. And that war, the fans of that war

17 were flamed [as interpreted] and directed by the greatest power in the

18 modern day world, with reliance on its internal allies, the nationalist,

19 separatist nuclei along with the dominant presence of those forces who

20 were vanquished during World War II.

21 That war used all possible means at its disposal; media,

22 political, military, et cetera. That war, first and foremost, was led by

23 a media campaign that went on for decades. It abused the monopoly over

24 the world information media. Then with a foreign policy intervention

25 which was directed towards the creation of independent states from the

1 Yugoslav -- former Yugoslav republics and the terrible economic campaign

2 against the Federal Republic of Yugoslavia, that can only be qualified as

3 genocide, which went on for many years. And finally, we see the military

4 aggression that took place in 1995 against the Republika Srpska and in the

5 Storm onslaught which we saw a moment ago, along with the participation of

6 NATO forces in the largest possible ethnic cleansing ever recorded, and in

7 1999 against the Federal Republic of Yugoslavia itself.

8 This large-scale media campaign, political, economic, and military

9 campaign to break up Yugoslavia and to restructure the Balkans into new

10 spheres of interest were -- they used manipulations on genocide of Serbs

11 that crowned this false indictment and have great pretentions for it to

12 perform a historical task, and that task being that the basic aim is the

13 last intervention in history. That is to say, through a sort of legal

14 procedure and by legal means to transfer falsehoods and manipulation into

15 the truth.

16 It is necessary for the protagonists of the crimes and those

17 responsible for breaking up Yugoslavia over the decades and who were

18 responsible for the crimes should free them, rid them of their

19 responsibilities and then use this judgement as a historical truth in

20 itself. And that is why I should like to say that this illegal Tribunal,

21 Court, does not exist in a legal framework but exclusively in the media

22 framework, because it in itself represents a means of war and part of the

23 crime that is being perpetuated against the Serbian people.

24 However, this war is being waged with greater or lesser intensity

25 against other peoples as well throughout the world. The victors in the

1 Cold War had said that they are entitled to establish world hegemonism and

2 they've coined that concept; they don't want to make the world a better

3 place to live in, more humane, more legal, but the first post-war decade

4 clearly showed that this was a concept and means to rule over other

5 countries and their natural resources and human resources and that in fact

6 it was a form of new colonialism.

7 And this process that started with the breakdown of the Berlin

8 wall is not a finished process. It is ongoing and is attended by enormous

9 confusion, this sphere of law and legality, history and philosophy, and a

10 new world order is being seen more and more as world chaos, whereas the

11 first post-war Cold War phase has been aborted. These are even

12 assessments by Western experts and the destruction of Yugoslavia ranks

13 among those as well.

14 The messages, such as Clinton's message to the effect that the

15 Serbs were responsible for causing two world wars - that means that the

16 Germans were not responsible for any world war - have the ability to

17 pacify reality and threaten to become a model for shaping the future.

18 This message, launched by the President of America as a world leader - and

19 when I say a world leader, I mean America, not Clinton himself - can be

20 used as a metaphor for a whole decade of a campaign of lies. And I think

21 the only competition to that is what we have been hearing from the

22 opposite party this morning and from the material they have tendered. And

23 that message, the message that I'm talking about, is particularly absurd

24 and unhonourable if we know that it was precisely in those two wars for

25 which, according to Clinton, it was the Serbs who were responsible, it was

1 precisely the Serbs with enormous victims, went hand-in-hand with that

2 same America which was 50 years later to assess that Yugoslavia, and

3 especially Serbia, was standing in its way to realising its new interests

4 and that a free and independent Yugoslavia could not be incorporated into

5 those interests and that with its successful development and

6 freedom-loving spirit, it set a bad example to others and that is why it

7 had to be broken up and turned into a Third World country and, even worse,

8 to send it right back to the Stone Age. And that is why there is nothing

9 more pertinent to the Serbs and Serbia and everybody else, all other

10 freedom-loving people.

11 The great task is to combat lies. And I think that this illegal

12 Tribunal of yours here is quite contrary to the ideas of the people who

13 created it, and despite the restrictions in broadcasting the court process

14 and distorting information, it is part of the decade-long demonisation of

15 the Serbs and a mirror for the perpetrators of crimes against Yugoslavia.

16 This might seem to be paradoxical, but in the historical sense, we have

17 two contradictions here contrary to the ideas of the people that set this

18 Tribunal up. They -- but I would like to have the truth returned to my

19 people and the whole freedom-loving people.

20 This indictment is completely false because in Croatia and in

21 Bosnia it was not a case of aggression but it was a civil war. That is

22 the first point.

23 The second is that in both cases, for the Serb people in Croatia

24 and for the Serb people in Bosnia, it was a defensive war, a war of

25 defence.

1 And a third point according to which the indictment is false both

2 formally and materially is because it accuses Serbs, and I as its

3 president, for the civil war in Croatia and the civil war in Bosnia,

4 whereas Serbia was not at war nor was the Federal Republic of Yugoslavia

5 at war, either with Croatia or with Bosnia-Herzegovina. And it is

6 precisely the Presidents of Croatia and Bosnia, Tudjman and Izetbegovic,

7 the President of the Presidency of Yugoslavia at the time, Stjepan Mesic,

8 it was they who started this war against Yugoslavia and thereby a war

9 against the Serbs, the citizens of Croatia and the citizens of

10 Bosnia-Herzegovina first of all by violent means that were contrary to the

11 constitution by an act of secession and then an armed attack against the

12 Serb population. And the violence in Croatia, in fact, began far before

13 independence was ever proclaimed.

14 In this regard, let me say at the outset that I'm not challenging

15 that Serbs helped the Serbs in Bosnia and in Croatia to survive at all.

16 It would -- what is absurd is something that to you seems be logical:

17 That the Americans, the Germans, the Vatican, Iranians, Austria, Turkey,

18 the Afghanistans, et cetera, were helping the Muslims and Croats, but it

19 was not logical to your mind for the Serbs to help Serbs survive on their

20 own threshold, in front of their own front door.

21 We heard here that we financed and helped the Serbs. The Serbs

22 helping the Serbs. And that seems to be a crime. Why, then, is it not a

23 crime that, for example, the Vatican provided money through the Vatican

24 bank for the purchase of weapons for Croatia, by the same token? And

25 then, as Serbia helped the Serbs, I am a criminal, and as the Vatican

1 helped the Croats to perform secession by violent means, the Pope remains

2 the Holy Father.

3 And we helped them to prevent a repeat of the genocide that was

4 conducted over the Serbs in that same region during World War II by those

5 same forces but under the auspices of Hitler and Mussolini during that

6 time, when we saw three Ustashas, for example, taking thousands of Serbs

7 to be slaughtered without anybody standing up to them. And in this

8 regard, both Serbia and I personally invested all my powers and strength

9 in achieving peace, and that is why I said that this particular indictment

10 -- I said this several months ago when you opened the trial, that it was

11 absurd, because Serbia and I myself deserve recognition for working for

12 peace in the area and not as a protagonist of war.

13 Therefore, in view of the fact that Serbia and the Federal

14 Republic of Yugoslavia was not a party in the civil war, not even

15 conceptually or legally or de facto can it be accused of something that

16 went on there. The Security Council ultimately was the sole organ to

17 secure peace and security in the world and assessments about this were not

18 voiced in any of its resolutions or any decisions or public stance with

19 regard to the war in Bosnia-Herzegovina nor did it name the Federal

20 Republic of Yugoslavia as the aggressor. It did not point to Yugoslavia

21 as the aggressor.

22 On the other hand, for example, on the 4th of February, 1994, the

23 Security Council adopted a precedential statement cautioning Croatia that

24 it will have to take the consequences unless it withdraws its military

25 units from Bosnia-Herzegovina within the space of two weeks, and then

1 condemnation of Chancellor Kohl who says Croatia promised not to intervene

2 militarily but it did not keep its promise and that is a scandal that we

3 must condemn. So those were the condemnations. They were verbal in

4 character whereas Yugoslavia, although without any foundations whatsoever,

5 was exposed to sanctions, and of course military intervention in the long

6 run and ultimately, whereas the civil war in Bosnia-Herzegovina started at

7 the time when a majorisation was conducted and a rump referendum accepted.

8 You heard what Lord Carrington had to say about independence. It was

9 held without the Serbian people, despite the fact that the constitution in

10 Bosnia-Herzegovina did not stand, and that that republic was formed for

11 three constituent peoples.

12 JUDGE MAY: Mr. Milosevic, we have a message from the interpreters

13 that they're finding it difficult to keep up. Could you bear them in mind

14 when you're speaking, please.

15 THE ACCUSED: [Interpretation] Very well. The quotation I made was

16 brief, so I hope they didn't have too much of a problem. But as I was

17 saying, there was a temporary recognition of a state established on the

18 basis of a decision which had no legitimacy whatsoever because it was not

19 supported by all three peoples, and the decision represented a great

20 threat to the fact that the Serb people in Bosnia-Herzegovina should

21 become peoples of the second order within a Muslim fundamental state. You

22 saw a moment ago what the Mujahedin looked like, how many thousands had

23 gathered there in that place, in that new battlefield which was open for

24 the first time in Europe. And you were also -- you have also seen many

25 other things that have been accessible to you, but I'll return to that in

1 due course.

2 During the war in Bosnia-Herzegovina, in Serbia and Montenegro but

3 predominantly, of course, in Serbia, from the wartime clashes several

4 thousand citizens of Bosnia-Herzegovina took refuge amongst whom there

5 were several tens of thousands who were Muslims. Now, if it were true

6 that Serbia were the aggressor, then so many thousands of Bosnian Muslims

7 would never have got the idea of taking refuge in Serbia proper. Even

8 some Muslim military units, when they were facing the Serbian army,

9 crossed the Drina River to find salvation in Serbia itself. And Serbia

10 did not send them back but it behaved in a very humane manner towards

11 them; it fed them, it clothed them, it looked after them and then enabled

12 them, via the International Red Cross, to go to other third countries.

13 On one such occasion when I approved a whole Muslim brigade,

14 numbering 850 people, to go across the Drina River and find salvation in

15 Serbia, I wrote a letter to Izetbegovic. I'm not going to read out the

16 whole of that letter but just a small passage from it in which I said:

17 "Your soldiers were not greeted here as enemies, as foes, but as human

18 beings, as neighbours who, through force of circumstance, had entered the

19 flames of war against their will. You know full well that we offered them

20 hospitality in Yugoslavia, to hundreds of thousands of refugees and tens

21 of thousands are your own compatriots. And all of them have the same

22 treatment and our care is afforded to them. More courage is necessary to

23 conclude peace than to start a war. I entreat you to make such a decision

24 in the interests of your own peoples and the people living on the

25 territory of the former Yugoslavia. Just as I would like to ask General

1 Ratko Mladic and the leadership of Republika Srpska to cease the war and

2 to cease hostilities with the representatives of your army."

3 That's the kind of letter that I sent to General Mladic as well.

4 The Serbs in Croatia - let us go back to that broader area; the

5 Serbs in Bosnia, in Republika Srpska, in Krajina, Serbs in Serbia and

6 Serbs in Yugoslavia - not in a single phase of the Yugoslav crisis brought

7 into question or challenged the right of the Croatian people or the Muslim

8 people or any other people, constituent people of Yugoslavia, to their

9 right to self-determination. And this undoubtedly includes the right to

10 secession.

11 The war in Croatia and Bosnia, therefore, had no sense nor did it

12 have any reason in furthering this right to self-determination and the

13 secession of the Croatian people because nobody challenged that right at

14 all. Its sense and meaning was in the crimes perpetrated over the Serbs,

15 in expelling 600.000 Serbs -- Carrington mentions that figure himself so I

16 don't want to change it. So at least 600.000 Serbs from their territories

17 in the then-administrative, non-state borders of the Republic of Croatia.

18 And in Bosnia-Herzegovina, the meaning and sense of the war was in

19 expelling the Serb people and making them second-rate citizens within

20 Bosnia-Herzegovina, which was conceived as a future Islamic republic.

21 In addition to the quotation that, as far as I was able to see

22 wasn't properly interpreted, it was too fast and I don't mind that, on

23 Banja Latic Terriga [phoen] in 1992 what was said was, and I quote:

24 "There would have been no war had Croatia not wished for war." But we

25 assess that it was only through war that we could achieve the independence

1 of Croatia. That is why we waived a policy of negotiation, and behind

2 those negotiations, we set up our armed units. Had we not done so, we

3 would not have reached our goal.

4 And Stjepan Mesic, whom you saw on your screens on television a

5 moment ago for a very brief period, says in the Croatian Sabor, or

6 parliament, and he was the then-president of the Presidency of Yugoslavia,

7 on the 5th of December, 1991, stated the following, his famous line: "I

8 think I have fulfilled my task; Yugoslavia exists no more."

9 Now, if to that you add the well-known fact of the Islamic

10 declaration by Alija Izetbegovic in which he says that among -- between

11 the Muslim religion and non-Muslim states and institutions there can never

12 be peace between the two nor can there be co-existence, and you were able

13 to see them calling for a holy war, the jihad and all the rest of it, then

14 I think that everybody -- you -- who needn't even be well-intentioned but

15 if they are honest must be quite clear on what it was all about. So it

16 was not the Serb who brought into question the right of any constituent

17 peoples to their self-determination. All we considered then and we

18 consider today is that the right of self-determination also belongs to the

19 Serbian people and that everything that was taken away from them by force,

20 by violation of that right does not hold water in terms of international

21 law and legality and cannot be recognised under any pressure whatsoever.

22 As for this false indictment, it deprives the Serbs of all human

23 rights, including the right to life, the right to self-defence, because in

24 Croatia and in Bosnia-Herzegovina, the Serbs defended the areas where they

25 had been living for centuries.

1 Charles Boyd, who we saw in another statement awhile ago, the

2 Deputy Head of the US forces in Europe, he wrote in Foreign Affairs

3 September/October 1995, I'm quoting: [In English] "The popular image of

4 this war is one of unrelenting Serb expansion. Much of what the Croatians

5 called the 'occupied territories' is land that has been held by Serbs for

6 more than three centuries. The same is true of most Serb land in Bosnia

7 where the Western media frequently refer to as the 70 per cent of Bosnia

8 size by rebel Serbs. In short, the Serbs were not trying to conquer new

9 territory but merely to hold onto what was already theirs."

10 [Interpretation] Now the 23rd of July, 1993, the co-chairman of

11 the International Conference on the former Yugoslavia, Lord Owen, when

12 rejecting the possibility of a military intervention in

13 Bosnia-Herzegovina, which is what Clinton's hawks and paid lobbies

14 insisted upon all the time, that rejection of military intervention is

15 something that he explained in the following words, I quote: "It is very

16 difficult to intervene in a situation which is not aggression." And he

17 adds: "That was always a conflict between the Serbs in Bosnia, the

18 Muslims in Bosnia, and the Croats in Bosnia." And the former US Secretary

19 of State Henry Kissinger, in his article in the Washington Post on the

20 17th of May, 1993, says, inter alia, again I'm quoting, that: "In

21 Bosnia-Herzegovina, there is a civil war going on, that there is not a

22 Bosnian ethnic group, and that the international community made a big

23 mistake by recognising that republic." He says that this is a three-fold

24 civil war, not an invasion of a neighbouring state against a sovereign

25 state. Croatia and Serbia support their compatriots in Bosnia. The most

1 irresponsible mistake in the current Bosnian tragedy was the international

2 recognition of the Bosnian state under the authority of the Muslims.

3 There is the precedent of the premature recognition of Slovenia and

4 Croatia by Germany and in this way the international community created all

5 the new-founded states in the territory of the former Yugoslavia and so

6 on.

7 So I quoted two Americans and one Brit, and not to say an

8 Englishman because David Owen is Welsh, but there are many others, other

9 Americans, Britons, Russians, Frenchmen, Russians, Indians, Germans,

10 Italians who publicly stated what the true state of affairs was. Many

11 will have the opportunity of personally testifying here, as opposed to the

12 practice of false witnesses and secret witnesses that the other side has.

13 I quoted only these three persons in order to make my assertion

14 undisputed; that the truth about the civil war had to be well known to

15 those who were the actual decision-makers. However, the resounding

16 cannonades of the media war made it impossible for the truth to come

17 through. You saw on these films part of it, and I would like to show that

18 this was a very well-organised and very well-paid, well-financed

19 propaganda.

20 Since I do not have time, I'm going to illustrate this by one

21 example, linking it precisely to what you saw in the film concerning the

22 engagement of Rudder and Finn. A special role in demonising the Serbs was

23 played precisely by that company in different periods. A paid -- there

24 was a paid representative of Muslims and Croats in Bosnia.

25 James Hart, the director of Rudder Finn boasted by these

1 sensational reports that led to a dramatic increase in the support of US

2 intervention in Bosnia-Herzegovina, as he said to a French journalist

3 Jacques Merlinot in April 1993, he was proud of how his firm manipulated

4 the Jewish public opinion. This was a major success because the Croatian

5 President Tudjman was, as he said, very careless in his book 'The Horrors

6 of War', and he could have been accused of anti-Semitism for that.

7 And the Bosnian President Izetbegovic also had serious problems

8 with his image because his book 'The Islamic Declaration' shows that there

9 is far too great support to an Islamist fundamentalist state. Even more

10 so as the past of Croatia and Bosnia is indeed marked by cruel

11 anti-Semitism and that is what Hart admits and speaks of the tens of

12 thousands of Jews who went missing in Nazi camps. And that was a reason

13 why Jewish organisations and individuals should not have much patience for

14 the Croats and Muslims in Bosnia. And he said: "For us it was a

15 challenge to totally reverse such a position, and we did this

16 masterfully." How masterfully they succeeded.

17 You see, if-- Roy Gutman wrote stories in Newsday about the

18 alleged Serb death camps - he indeed won a Pulitzer Prize for this - but

19 it was eventually established that all of this was a lie. And then Hart's

20 people were in a position to mobilise some of the main Jewish

21 organisations, the American Jewish Committee, B'nai B'rith, the Anti-Libel

22 League, and the US Congress. And he says that this was an incredible

23 success when the Jewish organisations came into the game on the side of

24 the Bosnians. Then we could immediately, he says, turn the Serbs into

25 villains in the entire game. And when Merlinot asked him, "Well, you did

1 this but you didn't have any proof for it, didn't you? You did not know

2 whether this was true." And he answered him -- because he said,

3 "Actually, everything you had was just this Newsday article." And his

4 answer was, "Our job is not to check out information. We had a job to do

5 and we did it. We are not paid to moralise."

6 However, it is quite clear that Rudder Finn was not that

7 successful because, as they had put it, masterfully carried through all

8 these promotion tricks. What made the efforts of this firm effective is

9 the receptiveness of the Western media. They were going along with the

10 suggestions of those who were making political moves in Washington, Bonn,

11 the Vatican, and they themselves were creating an anti-Serb atmosphere

12 many months before the Rudder Finn campaign. However, Jewish

13 organisations did not accept this story because they were simply gullible

14 and only because of this masterfully executed job by Rudder Finn; this was

15 also due to the interest they had. They wanted to repel the fury of the

16 Arab states, the Muslim states to anyone, and in this case it was

17 deflected to the Serbs. And that is how they repaid the Serbs for the

18 protection of Jews in the Second World War, in which in the occupied

19 territories of the Balkans it was only Serbs in Serbia who, at the cost of

20 their own lives, managed to protect them from pogroms. And they

21 themselves know that. They are ashamed of that, at least those who talked

22 to me. And I hope that some of them are going to testify about this here.

23 Precisely because of this enormous help given to the Jews and also this

24 brotherhood between peoples, not states. That was between the Serb people

25 and the Jewish people.

Blank page inserted to ensure pagination corresponds between the French and English transcripts.

1 JUDGE MAY: Mr. Milosevic, the time has come to adjourn. We will

2 break now for 20 minutes.

3 --- Recess taken at 12.15 p.m.

4 --- On resuming at 12.37 p.m.

5 JUDGE MAY: Yes, Mr. Milosevic.

6 THE ACCUSED: [Interpretation] So this practically monopolistic

7 communications stream was assisted by some well-paid humanitarian groups,

8 such as Doctors Without Borders; peaceful groups, Women Wearing Black,

9 Human Rights Watch, the Human Rights Committee, along with other

10 organisations.

11 You saw in this film George Kenney, who was in charge of the

12 Yugoslav desk at the State Department. He says the genocide indictment

13 was repeated so many times in relation to Bosnia that proof became

14 irrelevant. The American administration, he says, has no proof of any

15 genocide, and anybody who reads the newspapers can see that there is a

16 lack of evidence regardless of endless speculations. That is blood

17 chilling.

18 Another person who writes about this very extensively in his book

19 To Kill the Nation, is Michael Parenth [phoen], and I gave you this book a

20 couple of months ago. I don't know if you paid any attention to it, but

21 it does contain a great deal of information.

22 However, in order to illustrate how history is falsified and how

23 lies are promoted, I'm going to show you yet another tape, a very short

24 one, only a few minutes, so that you can see how this was done and what

25 the effects were.

1 Could you please have the tape played. In the meantime, I'm going

2 to explain to you -- you're going to see at the very beginning that on the

3 compact disk, 'The Chronology of the Twentieth Century', when you open the

4 year 1992, then on it, at the very beginning, the symbol for the year 1992

5 is this forged story about the so-called death camps in

6 Bosnia-Herzegovina.

7 Please play the tape now.

8 [Videotape played]

9 THE ACCUSED: [Interpretation] That's the CD I mentioned, 'The

10 Chronicle of the 20th Century'.

11 Now, when you look at the various years, 1992, you click 1992 and

12 here's the image. It is this fabrication that entered history. You open

13 it and this is what you see; about concentration camps.

14 [Videotape played]

15 "SPEAKER: Here is Thomas Deichmann [phoen]. He was the German

16 journalist who first raised suspicions about these famous ITN pictures.

17 He is saying, Look at some newspapers. Most of the Western media. Not

18 only is there no real difference in opinion on foreign policy matters, but

19 even the same phrases are repeated. You see the same pictures with the

20 same captions again and again. The ITN pictures bothered Deichmann.

21 Looking at them one night, his wife noticed something: ITN claimed the

22 Bosnian Muslims were imprisoned behind barbed wire. Why, she wondered,

23 was the wire attached on their side of the fence? They could pull out the

24 nails. Deichmann smelled a rat. He suspected the photos had been

25 fabricated. He suspected special camera angles, tricky editing. He

1 wanted to go to Trnopolje to see for himself, and there he saw the

2 concentration camp that never existed.

3 "Examining things on location, Deichmann saw what had been done.

4 The reporters, Penny Marshall and the others in her crew, were in a

5 barbed-wire enclosed space near a transformer station and barn. From

6 there, they took pictures of refugees who were walking around quite freely

7 outside the fence. During this visit, Deichmann made a drawing of the

8 buildings and people as they appeared on the day the ITN crew filmed at

9 Trnopolje. There was a barn and a transformer station, a refugee centre

10 building, an open-air reception area, a recreation area near the refugee

11 centre, the fenced-in area from inside which the ITN crew did their

12 filming, and the barbed wire and chicken wire which was portrayed as

13 evidence of a death camp at Trnopolje.

14 "After the conversation with the Red Cross representative, we

15 passed a group of new refugees. They were being registered by the civil

16 authorities. Ms. Marshall chose not to set up her cameras and film in

17 this open area. Instead, she and her crew manoeuvred into a

18 partly-enclosed space used as a storage area for wheelbarrows and the

19 like. The dilapidated fence had chicken wire on the bottom and a few

20 strands of barbed wire on top to discourage theft. Our crew filmed the

21 ITN people as they manoeuvred into this area through a hole in the broken

22 down fence, then we followed and both crews set up within the enclosure,

23 filming the refugees wandering around outside. There were heaps of

24 material in barrels and we kept stumbling over them while trying to set

25 up. Ms. Penny Marshall tried to talk to the nearest refugees but in vain

1 since she didn't speak Serbo-Croatian. People searched for someone who

2 could speak English. Someone in front of the crowd of refugees said,

3 Here, this one speaks English, pointing to go Mr. Mehmed in the overalls.

4 Mr. Bozanic, from the Yugoslav crew, filmed Penny Marshall's conversation

5 with Mehmed. Later, the following was shown on Yugoslav TV, with

6 Mr. Bozanic supplying an informal translation of the English conversation.

7 "'No, no. They're very nice,' says Mehmed. Mehmed adds --

8 "SPEAKER: Do you feel safe here?

9 "SPEAKER: He feels very safe here and, except for the heat,

10 everything was fine.

11 "SPEAKER: This man is very thin, insisted the reporter, and

12 Mehmed said.

13 "SPEAKER: The people are not the same.

14 "SPEAKER: ... cameras behind barbed wire. She was in position.

15 Now she searched the crowd for that perfect look. She wanted a star for

16 her story, the story she would sell the world. You will see her

17 conversation with Mehmed from our camera's angle once again. To make it

18 clearer this time, here is a little diagram showing the position of the

19 two crews. The ITN people are the blue circle on the left. We are the

20 red circle on the right. Because the film crews were a yard apart, we

21 filmed the same shots from a slightly different angle. Sometimes we

22 filmed the ITN people as well. Ms. Marshall is interviewing Mehmed.

23 "SPEAKER: Hello.

24 "SPEAKER: My name Mehmed.

25 "SPEAKER: Now did you come to be here?

1 "SPEAKER: I think it's very fine [inaudible]. It's very hot.

2 "SPEAKER: Outside.

3 "SPEAKER: No, no. Inside.

4 "SPEAKER: [inaudible].

5 "SPEAKER: No, no, no. Inside.

6 "SPEAKER: Why did you come here? Are you a fighter? Are you a

7 fighter?

8 "SPEAKER: No. No.

9 "SPEAKER: They came to your house and took you.

10 "SPEAKER: Yes, yes.

11 "SPEAKER: Do you feel safe here?

12 "SPEAKER: I think it is very safe but it's very hot. Other

13 things, it's very --

14 "SPEAKER: This man is very thin.

15 "SPEAKER: He is very thin, but I think that is -- [inaudible].

16 All the people is not the same. [inaudible] I think it's refugee camp

17 [inaudible].

18 "SPEAKER: Where are the women and the children?

19 "SPEAKER: The women and children [inaudible]

20 "SPEAKER: Every day during school holidays.

21 "SPEAKER: It's not a prison. It's refugee camp.

22 "SPEAKER: Where do you want to go?

23 "SPEAKER: Home.

24 "SPEAKER: Do you still have a home?

25 "SPEAKER: [inaudible] [indiscernible]

1 "SPEAKER: Very thin one to the right.

2 "SPEAKER: The raw material was all there. Back in her editing

3 room, Marshall and her associates saw just how beautiful this raw material

4 could be. Perfect for fabricating a death camp. Give me the lower mask,

5 upper, right, left. So just as the terrible fighting in Bosnia had

6 deprived these unhappy men of their homes, now Ms. Marshall's pictures,

7 which circled the world, cost them their legs as well.

8 "Allow us to demonstrate how Marshall doctored the pictures to

9 make them suitable for use by newspapers and magazines. We'll illustrate

10 by repeating the process. Stop on those two. Now, give me a still shot.

11 Now give me the Nouvel Observateur underneath. Notice the difference in

12 the camera angles. Remember, their crew was shooting more to the left,

13 which is why our camera picked up three men, where their camera picked up

14 two.

15 "Let's go back to the live picture, do the doctoring the way they

16 have done it. Go to the guy in the blue shirt. Stop. Give me the right

17 mask, please. Blow it up. Now add the fellow on the right, the one in

18 black and white. Now kill the colour on the blonde one. Now fade out.

19 That's it. Fade out with the short zoom lens. Move our picture back and

20 below give me the Nouvel Observateur picture. Blow up Nouvel Observateur.

21 "Scan. Compare. Bingo. One Nazi nightmare.

22 "Give me the live picture shot again, the shot where they push

23 Fikret towards Penny. The right and left mask. Upper and lower. Blow it

24 up. Now give us Humanitage image. Give me the live picture again. Upper

25 and lower. The left and right mask. Blow it up. Give me the magazine

1 Novo with Welt's picture.

2 "The spin-doctors of this world still didn't trust their readers

3 to get the message, so they made it perfectly clear. They added World War

4 II Nazi concentration camp snapshots, complete with real barbed wire.

5 "SPEAKER: In the US, Bill Clinton and George Bush competed over

6 who was the most horrified by the revelations of Serbian so-called

7 atrocities proven by the pictures taken at Trnopolje. Referring to these

8 clips during the pre-election campaign in 1992, Bill Clinton demanded that

9 George Bush immediately bomb the Serbs. Not to be outdone, during a TV

10 speech, George Bush compared the refugee camps with Nazi death camps."

11 JUDGE KWON: Mr. Milosevic, again could you give us the source of

12 this film?

13 JUDGE MAY: Was that -- was that a Yugoslav film that we saw

14 there?

15 THE ACCUSED: [Interpretation] These are witnesses. Some of them

16 are Yugoslavs, others are not. This man Deichmann, as you know, is the

17 editor-in-chief of the magazine Novo, which was the first to doubt this

18 and go there. You know that Paddy Ashdown spoke of those camps, but when

19 he was invited by the authorities of Republika Srpska to visit the spot,

20 he was unable to find any camps there.

21 JUDGE MAY: Do we take it that the compilation was made by you and

22 your team?

23 THE ACCUSED: [Interpretation] Yes. You may take it that this was

24 prepared for me by my assistants, but these are facts, because there are

25 innumerable witnesses who can prove that this was an open refugee centre

1 where one could come and go freely. You also heard this man Mehmed saying

2 that he felt very safe there and that the only thing that was bothering

3 him was the August heat.

4 I would like to remind you, however, that when I quoted those

5 people - I'm referring to Kissinger, Owen - I did this in order to show

6 that those who were pulling the strings knew very well what this was

7 about. It was not about the truth but about interests. The civil war in

8 Yugoslavia was started when the survival of Yugoslavia was evidently

9 contrary to the strategic interests of the USA, the Catholic church,

10 Germany, and others. That Vatican knew what consequences could be

11 expected can be seen from the Papal letter of 1 May 1991 where he speaks

12 of the collapse of communism and says that this could give rise to

13 grievous conflicts and much sorrow. And he asks for international

14 structures to consolidate in order to intervene and arbitrate in the

15 conflicts arising among nations. After the breakout of the war in

16 Bosnia-Herzegovina in 1992, the Vatican asked for military arbitration by

17 the West, and it is evidently what they meant.

18 This is the Encyclo Sentissimo Anno [phoen], published in Milan in

19 1991.

20 There is no dispute that Germany and the Vatican were the first to

21 recognise Croatia as an independent state. All this, however, especially

22 the military intervention against the Serbian people in Republika Srpska,

23 could not have taken place without the leading role of America in the form

24 of Clinton's administration which will go down in history because of the

25 crimes that took place on the European continent after World War II

1 against German -- against the allies they had had in both wars, for

2 American policy, Islamic extremism was given precedence, especially

3 because of their role in destabilising the former Soviet Central Asia

4 where there are large reserves of oil. And also because Islamic

5 extremism, unconventional weapons for destroying the future of Russia and

6 partly China, and it is well known that Chinese leaders spoke of the green

7 transversal from China to the Adriatic Sea, and that is because the

8 easiest and cheapest way to break down the anti-Islamic American extremism

9 is because Serbian interests could be neglected. They didn't count.

10 After the 11th of September, I am no longer sure that even American lives

11 were taken seriously by Clinton.

12 I cannot say precisely how many of those thousands of Mujahedins

13 reviewed by Izetbegovic, as we saw on the tape, took part later in the

14 terrorist activities against America, but I can say that under Clinton,

15 America allowed Iran and Saudi Arabia to arm these murderers. Clinton's

16 policy opened up a new European war theatre for Islamic fundamentalism.

17 It was the forerunner of the next step, which was the 11th of September.

18 I have here - I do not want to waste time by giving it to you now

19 but I will tender it - a source which is not Serbian but Croatian; from

20 the gaol in Busovaca, a list of Mujahedin who are in prison, taken

21 prisoner by the Croatian army, coming from Algiers, Tunisia, Pakistan,

22 Kuwait, Saudi Arabia, Qatar, Turkey, and so on and so forth. Military ID

23 cards, photo copies of these. One of these was a general. His name was

24 Ganed Gamal, from Egypt. From a Special Purpose Unit of the Supreme

25 Command, the Special Purpose Units were the ones who mainly perpetrated

1 the crimes for which the Serbs were blamed later.

2 However, I have no illusions that the Prosecutor will accuse

3 Holbrooke and Clinton for the ethnic cleansing of thousands of Serbs from

4 Croatia and mass murders or 550.000 Serbs from the Muslim Croatian

5 federation, part of which is in Republika Srpska and part of whom are in

6 Serbia, but I believe that the judiciary of the USA and its citizens

7 cannot easily overlook the facts that show that they are the ones who

8 opened up the door -- opened up the way to September 11th. And they will

9 be called here to answer my questions and explain some facts.

10 When speaking of this, I wish to point out that I'm speaking of

11 Clinton's Administration because I believe that the previous

12 Administration would not have perpetrated such a crime against the Serbs

13 regardless of the strategic interest they had. They would not have gone

14 so far, and they would have stuck to political means. I base this on the

15 statement made by Secretary of State Baker before the American Congress in

16 1995, who said: "It is a fact that Slovenia and Croatia unilaterally

17 declared independence in spite of our warnings. They used force to take

18 the border crossings, and this led to civil war." He says that the

19 position of the USA, the standpoint of the USA, that the territorial

20 integrity of the -- of Yugoslavia should be preserved was supported by 32

21 states of the OSCE, and it is unfortunate that we did not adhere to that

22 policy longer than we did. It was the Clinton administration that changed

23 that policy. And we also heard Powell at the end of the film. But we

24 also heard Holbrooke, who obviously tried to keep up with his boss and his

25 statement about the Serbs being to blame for two world wars. There is no

1 doubt that Holbrooke, as the American ambassador in Germany, played a key

2 role in incorporating German standpoints into American policy.

3 And as we heard on the film, there were eminent Americans and

4 those who implemented Clinton's policy and the genocide over the Serbs.

5 We saw his role in the attack on the Krajina and on the western part of

6 Republika Srpska.

7 For almost an entire decade, those who developed the strategy, the

8 strategy called Belgrade Cradle of Evil, in Europe, not taking into

9 account what was really happening in the Balkans but how it should be

10 presented to public opinion. However, not everyone was obedient, and I

11 think that history will not be altered here. They will not be successful

12 in that, just as the NATO crimes on Kosovo were not successfully denied by

13 Madam Del Ponte when she said that there was no basis for an investigation

14 against NATO, because the key issue, the issue of human conscience and

15 accepting falsehood as truth will always be present.

16 The role of Germany in the collapse of Yugoslavia is well known,

17 and that is why I will not go into detailed explanations. However, I

18 would like to point out the special role of their interests as well as the

19 role of the Catholic church and the role of Genscher's and Kinkel's party

20 which was founded by Frederich Naumann who published a book in 1915 called

21 'Central Europe' as a project for organising a large part of the European

22 continent around Germany as the centre. Later on, he published a book

23 about Bulgaria and Central Europe in which he envisages a territorial

24 contact after the victory in World War II. It was Naumann who said that

25 the Serbs were a factor that was constantly upsetting the balance there.

1 What they were really upsetting was the achievement of Imperialist goals

2 at the expense of their own freedom. And the situation is the same today.

3 Attempts are being made to falsify history, and this is what Holbrooke

4 advocated.

5 When we bear all this in mind, the expansion of Islamic

6 fundamentalism, and I quote: "The bloody borders are to extend from

7 Indonesia and Somalia to Bosnia." This is what Huntington wrote in his

8 book 'The Clash of Civilisations and The Remaking of the World Order',

9 published in New York in 1996. And when we look at this and compare it to

10 Vatican and the Pope's project, the interests of Germany and, above all,

11 America as the only superpower, it is evident that in the whole world

12 there is no other example of a small nation being drawn into the interests

13 of all the great powers.

14 In spite of that, it was hard to destroy a big and respectable

15 European country, one of the co-founders of the UN, as Yugoslavia was, and

16 it proved to be impossible without the use of force and without a major

17 crime. That is how the war was produced, the war of which all the

18 Yugoslav peoples were the victims. And the Serbian people were victims on

19 a global scale because they were declared to be guilty.

20 That war had the same genocidal character just like the wars waged

21 against Serbia during the Second World War by Ustashas and the rest, and

22 Carrington knew this full well. In his interview to the Vienna journal

23 Profile on the 1st of December, 1993, he said that he was being accused of

24 being pro-Serbian, and he says that is simply nonsensical. It was not

25 easy to say who was the good one and who was the bad one. When the Croats

1 proclaimed their independence, they did not give the Serbs in their own

2 country - and there are 600.000 of them - any guarantees whatsoever.

3 It was therefore understandable that for this reason the Serbs

4 were very worried. First of all, if we bear in mind the villainy of the

5 Ustashas during World War II. And then he says again: "We almost had a

6 solution to the Krajina and Slavonia problem. But at that particular

7 point, the European Community at the end of 1991 decided to recognise

8 Slovenia and Croatia. Croatia received what it wanted, Slovenia did too,

9 and they no longer had the desire for the peace conference to be

10 continued. And what is more important is that, for that same matter, we

11 should enable the same for others. Bosnia-Herzegovina in the first place.

12 But Izetbegovic opted for independence, although it was quite clear to him

13 too that an option of that kind meant war. Hans Dietrich Genscher wanted

14 international recognition for Slovenia and Croatia. Practically all the

15 others were opposed to this."

16 And the New York Times on the 14th of April, 1993, had this

17 following brief news item: Interviewed in the United Nations building,

18 Cyrus Vance said that what he called premature recognition of Slovenia and

19 Herzegovina by the USA had led to the war, the war that was an ongoing

20 one.

21 Editor-in-chief of the New York Times, Rosenthal, in his

22 leading article in December 1994 said that during the winter of 1991 and

23 1992, the Western countries, by their acts, brought woe to the Balkans.

24 And this led to the fact that a civil war was imminent in

25 Bosnia-Herzegovina where the Muslims were never a nation but just an

1 administrative unit in Yugoslavia. And he goes on to say that the

2 conflict in Yugoslavia was caused precisely by the premature recognition

3 of Yugoslavia under the pressure of Croatia and that the independent

4 Bosnian state was set up as a result.

5 Lord Owen, on the 12th of November, 1995, in an interview to the

6 Spanish daily El Paz, said, "I have great respect for the United States,

7 but in recent years, the diplomacy of that particular country is

8 responsible for the prolonged war in Bosnia. Had Washington supported the

9 peace plan in 1993, a great number of dead would have been avoided. So

10 this is not one opinion but it is the facts that I wish to point to," and

11 that is the end of the quotation.

12 I'm going to skip Cyrus Vance on other occasions, but I will just

13 mention an explanation given by the one-time Greek Foreign Minister

14 Saminos who was present at the meeting of the European Community on the

15 16th of December, 1991, and who on the 20th of November, 1992, at

16 Elostiroskipous, [phoen] explained what was going on. The German Foreign

17 Minister Genscher said, Saminos said on the 16th of December in the

18 evening, that what was unavoidable was that if 11 of us vote for a united

19 Yugoslavia that on the 15th of January, Germany in 1992 will certainly

20 recognise Slovenia and Croatia as independent states. And that is in fact

21 what came to pass. That's what happened. All the other international

22 communities, the Americans later on accepted German policy, says Saminos.

23 And the story goes on, as we know it. Maastricht and a unified

24 European foreign policy, the great powers, the French and the English, had

25 as Saminos said who took part in the meeting, representing Greece, had to

Blank page inserted to ensure pagination corresponds between the French and English transcripts.

1 accept the German blackmail. And Bulan Erdjevic [phoen], the former

2 Turkish Premier said that Yugoslavia should have been preserved and that

3 Turkey had to try to stop the disintegration of that particular federation

4 in the Balkans. Erdjevic blamed Germany and Austria in part for the

5 disintegration of Yugoslavia.

6 "Yugoslavia was our exit to Europe, a region in which we had very

7 good relations in the Balkans. It was our way out towards our possible

8 expansion in the Third World," said Bulan Erdjevic. And Muntas Ozal,

9 another case in point, the Foreign Minister of Turkey, said, "We believe

10 that the Germans made a mistake because the former Yugoslavia was a model

11 for co-existence among different nations. Europe made a mistake, having

12 destroyed that model, and now we can see what the result of that was."

13 Elizabeth Copp, the former Minister in the Swiss government, and

14 an expert in the field of federalism, says the following: "I never

15 understood this. It was a mistake and it was the mistake of one man and

16 one foreign policy, a foreign policy, a man which I respected, Hans

17 Dietrich Genscher. The international community is responsible for having

18 recognised those states without solving the minority question beforehand

19 and without going about it in a coordinated way. This had to have had a

20 tragic end, and this was a big mistake made by Germany and the rest."

21 Kissinger says, in the Welt an Zontag on the 8th of September,

22 1996, a German paper: "The recognition of an independent Bosnian state in

23 1992 did not cause the birth of the country but led to a civil war." And

24 we have heard here that it is I who caused that civil war.

25 The Bosnian Muslims, in fact, that their extremist part and their

1 leadership worked against the Muslims in fact, in view of the number of

2 Muslim countries. It was their detriment because it was the purposes of

3 the big powers, and especially America, and this was a screen for their

4 different behaviour towards Muslims and Muslim countries generally with

5 respect to the way in which the big powers conducted themselves. The

6 leaders of the Bosnian Muslims objectively played out their interests

7 because the Bosnian Muslims lived in peace with the Serbs. They lived a

8 normal life. And with the kind of policy they were waging, they did en

9 masse and deliberately proclaim them to be casualties. They betrayed

10 them. And so -- and there were a large number of Muslims in the Serbian

11 army. They didn't join the army to kill the Muslims, I'm quite sure, but

12 to defend themselves from a common evil, which was Islamic extremism which

13 was seen to be a powerful weapon to destabilise the region and, in future,

14 more and more the European continent as a whole.

15 I have a very good illustration here, a document, which in very

16 concrete, specific terms, and clearly, testifies to how this Islamic

17 fundamentalist policy on the part of Izetbegovic and his party was opposed

18 to any kind of peace at all which would have emerged in the tripartite

19 peace negotiations at the Conference on Yugoslavia under the leadership of

20 Vance and Owen and then Owen-Stoltenberg later on. This is a letter from

21 the head office of Izetbegovic's party. It is signed by the secretary,

22 Hasan Cengic, on their memorandum and paper with a stamp and seal. The

23 20th of the January, 1993 is the date. And it was addressed to the Party

24 of Democratic Action, that is to say their leadership, in Trebinje in the

25 territory of Republika Srpska.

1 And the subject, it says: "Instruction about the moving out of

2 Trebinje." And then it says: "As the situation in Bosnia-Herzegovina is

3 becoming from one moment to the next with regard to security and safety

4 more complicated, especially after the acceptance of the Geneva documents

5 by Karadzic and his clique in Pale, it is necessary in order to have the

6 aspirations of all Muslims fulfilled, that our country,

7 Bosnia-Herzegovina, be strengthened and the following measures are to be

8 undertaken in the terrain of the Trebinje municipality. First, via our

9 activists who animate all Muslims, especially the prominent ones and the

10 wealthier ones, to leave Trebinje as soon as possible and to move to

11 Montenegro. Secondly, their property, mobile and immobile, partially to

12 sell, et cetera, et cetera. And third, to exercise pressure and force

13 against Muslims who do not act in conformity with this order and

14 instructions.

15 There is more but I have to save time. It says, with respect -

16 "Selim Alikum" - the Secretary of the SDA, Hasan Cengic. I will tender

17 this document so you can see it. And it is on the basis of this that this

18 Municipal Board of the SDA, working in Republika Srpska in Trebinje,

19 freely issues its own invitation in which it states the following: "The

20 Serbo-Chetnik armada, together with his leader Karadzic, is trying to

21 prevent us in our holy intentions and then our tricking the public at

22 large in Geneva and shows falsely the loyalty of the Trebinje Muslims to

23 the Serbo-Chetnik dictatorship and their loyalty to Republika Srpska and

24 their military clique."

25 And then he goes on to ask everybody to move out of the area. And

1 as a minimum, the minimum we're asked for is that all Muslims should leave

2 the so-called army of Republika Srpska forthwith and that it is our duty

3 in sharing the fate of our entire people, a nation together with their

4 families and our families and the rest of the citizens, that we should

5 leave for Montenegro, et cetera.

6 It goes on along those lines. Does this remind you of the same

7 practice in Kosovo? Whether it does or not, all I can say is that I

8 believe that the general public must associate this with what happened

9 there straight away.

10 So how can somebody serve in an army which is engaged in genocide

11 against his own people? I don't say that this doesn't -- that this means

12 that there were no war crimes. There were, of course. War crimes existed

13 on all three sides. But this does mean that it was not the policy nor was

14 an atmosphere of that kind created, nor did that kind of atmosphere exist

15 in a broad sense.

16 The victims and casualties of war against Yugoslavia were the

17 innocent people from all three nations, all three ethnic groups. They

18 were pushed into these conflicts and clashes because of foreign interests,

19 other people's interests, but along with the full cooperation of their

20 mindless leaders who led them to their death.

21 In Croatia and in Bosnia-Herzegovina, the war was imposed. In

22 Croatia, it was with confidence that they placed themselves under the

23 protection of the United Nations and a political solution, because what

24 they were promised was that they would be protected and that the problem

25 would be resolved through political means. Up until the arrival of the

1 United Nations, they were defending themselves. This was necessary

2 defence. But from that time on, no military activities were undertaken on

3 their part.

4 I have here the notes from the 31st of December, that is to say

5 the New Year between 1991 and 1992. Cyrus Vance came to see me, and he

6 got my full support to send the blue helmets into Croatia and along the

7 borders between Croatia and Bosnia-Herzegovina. And that in fact at the

8 same time represented an indirect recognition by the international

9 community of the direct involvement of Croatia in the events and

10 occurrences in Bosnia-Herzegovina. And we gave not only verbal support

11 when he came to visit me but also did so officially by an official stand

12 on the part of the government.

13 And when in Geneva from the 10th to the 13th of January, 1992, it

14 was already quite clear that the plan would be adopted, the Muslim forces,

15 on the 16th of January, no less, attacked the Serb municipality of

16 Bratunac and launched a general offensive and perpetrated the massacre

17 over the Serb population there. Otherwise, in the environs of Bratunac,

18 70 Serb villages were set fire to and the population slaughtered.

19 Perhaps this map is a best illustration of how the problem is

20 approached. It is Mr. Nice's map, and it shows Croatia and where the

21 territories were, the territories which the Serbs had allegedly lived on

22 and had allegedly seized. But what this map does not show, he didn't

23 think of showing that it is precisely those territories which were the UN

24 protected zones, and that I assume that the United Nations Security

25 Council, at the proposal of the Special Envoy Cyrus Vance, did not make a

1 decision to establish these protected zones until a political solution had

2 been arrived because the Serbs had seized some sort of territory from the

3 Croatian state but because a political solution had to be found. That's

4 why it was done. And they all expected a political solution. Carrington

5 spoke of this, and I quoted him a moment ago. He said that it was

6 imminent.

7 Now, as far as the Serbs in Bosnia-Herzegovina are concerned, they

8 accepted the plan to hold a peace conference in Yugoslavia according to

9 the Cutilheiro plan, as it was called. That happened before the clashes

10 and conflict broke out. It was my stand and the official position of

11 Serbia itself that any agreement which is reached by the three constituent

12 peoples we would be happy to accept. And in visiting Turkey, I spoke

13 about this. I had separate visits with the president of the republic,

14 Mr. Ozal and the Prime Minister, Mr. Demirel, because I considered that it

15 was not up to us to meddle in those affairs. They undertook the

16 negotiations, they found their own solutions. The only thing we did

17 consider was, and this proved to be correct, that the essence was in a

18 solution which would guarantee the interests equally of each of the three

19 constituent ethnic groups.

20 And in my talks with Vance on the 4th of March -- this was

21 publicised in the press and was clearly -- I clearly said to him that a

22 political solution based on a consensus of three equal constituent nations

23 can only represent a basis for defining the status of that republic. And

24 I came out in favour of, on that occasion and that's what they wrote

25 about, for a conference on Bosnia-Herzegovina to discuss the issue.

1 And finally, this was the fifth round, the plan was signed. It

2 was popularly known as Cutilheiro's plan. I'm not going to dwell on that

3 particular plan now because my time is limited. But I do wish to stress

4 that the vital element in that particular plan was the transformation of

5 Bosnia from an unitary into a complex state form made up of three

6 constituent entities which would prevent any majorisation or domination by

7 any individual national group or ethnic group or two groups over a third

8 group, et cetera. So the Serbs did accept this plan. They did accept an

9 independent, autonomous Bosnia precisely with this element of equality;

10 that all three ethnic groups should be equal within the state.

11 There's a statement of Radovan Karadzic. It was carried after the

12 signing of that agreement, and he says: "Every one of us lost any

13 possibility of domination and got the possibility of not becoming a

14 national minority." So what kind of Greater Serbian ambitions can anybody

15 speak of here?

16 It is interesting, actually. At that very same point in time, the

17 spokesperson of Izetbegovic's SDA party, because Izetbegovic is one of the

18 signatories of the Cutilheiro plan, confirmed -- and the spokesperson's

19 name is Irfan Ajanovic, and I quote: "Confirmed that the SDA is pleased

20 with this last agreement concerning Bosnia." And as for the possibility

21 of the Serb Assembly to reject the Cutilheiro agreement, Ajanovic stated

22 that that would have been an insane thing that would come from the Serb

23 laboratory. And I quote him. "In that case, it's going to be quite clear

24 as to who is deceiving the international community and the chairman of the

25 Conference of Bosnia." End of quotation.

1 Of course, at that time, little did he know that this insane thing

2 would come out of the Muslim laboratory and that the Serb party -- that

3 the Serb side would show maturity, political maturity, and wisdom.

4 Very soon after the signing, Izetbegovic faithlessly withdrew his

5 signature, and we saw that in the testimony on the tape. He did that

6 after talking to Warren Zimmermann, the US Ambassador in Belgrade, and he

7 was talked into it by Zimmermann. So this plan of salvation went down the

8 drain before there was any conflict between them and a civil war began.

9 Cutilheiro himself, surprised by Izetbegovic's decision, said on

10 that occasion, "They obviously decided on a war option, and therefore,

11 they have a great responsibility to assume." Regrettably, the warlords,

12 and we see this here today, ascribe responsibility to the Serbs and to me

13 personally, of course. So the absurdity is complete.

14 After the renewed attempt made towards the end of 1992, I have a

15 note on a meeting with Vance on Owen on the 6th of January, 1993, in

16 Belgrade. My statement is there. I'm convinced that there is no way out

17 of the crisis without respecting the equality of rights of all three

18 peoples in Bosnia-Herzegovina and therefore I believe that the only way

19 out is an immediate cessation of hostilities. And after that,

20 negotiations about the principles that are a basis for respecting the

21 rights of all three peoples. That is the only which in which long-lasting

22 peace can be established. It is our duty to support all peaceful

23 solutions that can lead to peace in this area.

24 That support was confirmed in Geneva as well. And we saw from

25 many elements, and also from the statement made by Owen, and I quoted it,

1 that Izetbegovic rejected the Vance-Owen Plan because of the American

2 position with regard to the plan, and that is why Owen asked the Americans

3 and Clinton to exercise pressure on Izetbegovic. And even Kinkel on the

4 4th of February, asked the President of the United States to render his

5 support in this peace plan, cautioning against the negative effects if

6 this peace plan were not to be adopted. However, this support did not

7 come, and it can be seen from the document I quoted a few minutes ago that

8 it never crossed their minds to do anything else but to have a unitary

9 Bosnia-Herzegovina conceived as a fundamentalist state. And it is not

10 only that the Islamic declaration says what it's supposed to be.

11 So in the war against Yugoslavia, the ethnic heterogeneity of

12 Yugoslavia was abused. And in Bosnia, which everybody called a

13 small-scale Yugoslavia, it could always have been abused.

14 I can say that from the Berlin Congress in 1878 until the bombing

15 of the Serb positions by NATO in 1995, foreign interference in Bosnian

16 religious and ethnic conflicts always assumed the proportions of a

17 humanitarian intervention. Foreign troops always came to Bosnia under the

18 guise of doing good to the indigenous population. And it was always

19 imperialist objectives and global strategies that were in the play,

20 really.

21 So if what was really wished for was to prevent ethnic and

22 religious conflicts in Bosnia, what had to be upheld all the time was this

23 sensitive ethnic balance and the equality of rights of all three peoples.

24 Equality of rights means that all of the three Bosnian Herzegovinian

25 nations' peoples should have the status of a constituent people that can

1 exercise their sovereign rights and their own interests within the state

2 entity of Bosnia-Herzegovina.

3 Even according to Izetbegovic's words in Brussels and later

4 according to Cutilheiro's plan, this plan did include certain political

5 autonomies of every one of the political entities within

6 Bosnia-Herzegovina. And conversely, statehood and full autonomy do not

7 allow for any people in Bosnia-Herzegovina to be reduced to the status of

8 a national minority. The best proof of this is the Dayton Accords

9 themselves. There could have been no peace when this balance was

10 disturbed. And when outvoting was encouraged. However, peace was

11 achieved in Dayton through the recognition anew of the right of each and

12 every three peoples to form this joint state and entities within

13 Bosnia-Herzegovina. That was the necessary prerequisite and yet

14 sufficient prerequisite without which this agreement could not have been

15 brought to a successful end.

16 However, it's not only Izetbegovic who was fickle. Obviously, it

17 was the European Community too. Because precisely here in The Hague, at

18 the Peace Palace on the 7th of September, 1991, there was a ceremonial

19 inauguration of the Conference on the former Yugoslavia, and this was

20 pursued by the European Community, and there was a declaration that

21 includes the categorical statement that the community, I quote, "Will

22 never recognise changes of borders that were not established by way of

23 peaceful solutions."

24 I don't have time to quote the positions we held then because time

25 does fly. However, all of them say, and I said personally, many things.

1 And there is the position of Serbia, there is the position of Yugoslavia,

2 and all of this speaks in favour of advocating the equal treatment of all

3 three peoples. I have here all these statements. There will be time for

4 us to bring them to the fore.

5 We supported five plans. And the European Ministerial Conference,

6 at that conference, the last sentence I said: "Gentlemen, the very moment

7 you take an equal attitude [in English] to all actors in the Yugoslav

8 drama, you will take the decision on peace."

9 [Interpretation] That was the position of Serbia. That was my

10 position. That was the position that, in my opinion - and that is what I

11 think today as well - was the only one that was principled in this entire

12 affair.

13 So it was not disintegration that was going on in Yugoslavia.

14 This was unlawful secession, violent secession that gave rise to the first

15 crimes that were committed in spite of the inviolability of borders and

16 other principles enshrined in the UN Charter and the final act of

17 Helsinki. So in fact, the alliance of external and internal protagonists

18 actually opted for secession as the form of liquidating Yugoslavia.

19 Actually, in this alliance, the right of peoples to

20 self-determination, it was said, it did not pertain to peoples but to

21 territories, as if the administrative borders, contrary to international

22 and domestic law, were borders of sovereign states. And then they linked

23 the right to self-determination to people after all, then yet again this

24 did not apply to the Serb people. Yugoslavia as a state came into being

25 through the union and free will of its own constituent peoples. Even the

1 coat of arms of Yugoslavia, until the late 1960s, consisted of five flames

2 that symbolised the five peoples; the Serbs, Croats, Slovenians,

3 Macedonians and Montenegrins. And then, when the Muslims got the status

4 of a constituent people, then in the late 1960s, a sixth flame was

5 included in the coat of arms of Yugoslavia. So that became part of the

6 coat of arms 20 years after the new Yugoslavia was established, in order

7 to symbolise the sixth constituent people that were proclaimed then. This

8 was actually the Muslim ethnic community.

9 This German success in the campaign of recognition for the

10 independence of Slovenia and Croatia, not to refer to newspaper articles

11 now, however, Lord Carrington, in his letter to van den Brug, who was

12 chairman at that time because the Netherlands was then presiding the

13 European Community, they called it the bell that tolled for the country,

14 and also he said that this was a spark that could set Bosnia and

15 Herzegovina on fire.

16 External political intervention selectively favoured the right to

17 self-determination. In the case of Yugoslavia, the states of the European

18 Community stimulated an anti-European concept of the establishment and

19 creation of states, and they stimulated trampling upon norms of

20 international and domestic law.

21 The French President, Francois Mitterrand, in his statement on

22 television on the 3rd of September in 1992, said that the international

23 community bears part of the responsibility for the conflicts in

24 Yugoslavia. He expressed his regrets that Europe, in the case of

25 Yugoslavia, did not want to defend existing legal norms, and so on and so

1 forth. It was clear to him that force was used, not the law, and that is

2 why he expressed that regret. Unfortunately, too late.

3 In the meantime, the world public opinion already at the very

4 outset of the Yugoslavia crisis had certain prejudices imposed upon them.

5 Geopolitical ones, cultural ones, civilisational differences between the

6 East and West, and that this border was somewhere between Serbia and

7 Croatia. Nobody abided by the norms of international law. Just like

8 Hitler. In the 1930s, his platform was, Who pays any attention to the

9 treaty of Versailles now? This is just a piece of paper from some French

10 castle.

11 We saw, 50 years later, precisely by a move made from that very

12 same centre, the spectre of fascism and of the Ustasha idea emerged again.

13 And also, half a century later, the independent State of Croatia as a

14 fascist creation and the free and independent Republic of Croatia was

15 created with the assistance of the Vatican factor, the German factor, and

16 with the maximum assistance of emigres, Croatian emigres. Nobody

17 concealed this; you saw it in that film, Croatia paid them back. That

18 song, "Danke Deutschland," and in the island of Brac, they erected a

19 monument to Hans Dietrich Genscher, still alive, and he was then Foreign

20 Minister of Germany. The Vatican themselves made their role quite clear.

21 Therefore, this so-called indictment for the war in Croatia and

22 Bosnia is just as bad as the one for Kosovo, the previous one. The reason

23 is quite simple: You do not have the truth in your hands, and you have

24 to invent things, manipulate things, present half-truths, bring forth

25 false witnesses. However, at this point in time, one thing does not seem

1 clear, and that is that the actual truth is being unravelled and that the

2 truth is coming to the fore regardless of historical forgeries - and I

3 have given examples of that - and regardless of claims that are based

4 precisely on these interests rather than on the actual state of affairs.

5 In spite of unequivocal arguments that I have presented and that

6 you should be aware of too if you believe that you are discharging your

7 duties conscientiously, you accepted such accusations as it says here. It

8 says: "Slobodan Milosevic took part in the joint criminal enterprise as

9 mentioned in paragraphs," et cetera, et cetera. "The aim was to forcibly

10 expel the Croat and other non-Serb population from one-third of the

11 territory of the Republic of Croatia, a territory for which he planned to

12 become part of a new state under Serb domination," and so on and so forth.

13 In spite of all these facts and during those years, as a matter of

14 fact before these crimes were committed, in the presence of the United

15 Nations, we encouraged the normalisation of relations between Knin and

16 Zagreb, and we thought that through this normalisation the way would be

17 paved for a political solution. For example, on the 30th of November,

18 1994, the government of the Republic of Srpska Krajina, at its meeting in

19 Knin, adopted the package of agreements with the Republic of Croatia, and

20 according to the Prime Minister, once again unequivocally showed that they

21 were in favour of a policy of peace and cooperation with the international

22 community.

23 And then again, on the 11th of January, 1995, at the UNPROFOR base

24 at the Zagreb airport, Pleso [phoen], again a new round started, a round

25 of talks between the delegations of the Republic of Croatia and the

Blank page inserted to ensure pagination corresponds between the French and English transcripts.

1 Republic of Serbia Krajina concerning various measures. Talks are being

2 held behind closed doors and Lord Owen and Thorwald Stoltenberg are

3 present as well. Borislav Mikolic [phoen] heads the Krajina negotiating

4 team and the head of the Croatian delegation is Hrvoj Saranic [phoen].

5 The same month, on the 24th in 1995, Stoltenberg comes to see me,

6 and together we state that, through the efforts of the Contact Group, the

7 peace process will be accelerated, and we supported this normalisation of

8 relations between Knin and Zagreb, and so on.

9 It is not possible to refer to all these elements, but there is no

10 doubt that what was stated here is untrue and a total forgery.

11 JUDGE MAY: Mr. Milosevic, the time has come to adjourn.

12 THE ACCUSED: [Interpretation] Just one thing. I am really sorry

13 that in the conditions that I am in and, therefore, I have to make

14 handwritten notes for what I am going to say here, I cannot assess how

15 much time I need for presenting - how should I put this? - in the roughest

16 possible terms just to touch upon certain issues. So I'm looking at my

17 remaining notes, and I really don't think that the remaining 20 minutes

18 will suffice, the ones that you allocated to me originally.

19 JUDGE MAY: What we'll do is give you half an hour tomorrow

20 morning. That should be sufficient.

21 THE ACCUSED: [Interpretation] Mr. May, wouldn't it be possible for

22 you to give me the first morning session, the one hour and a half from

23 9.00 until 10.30 so that I try to compress it all into that hour and a

24 half? A lot of time was spent here on many very insignificant matters,

25 and I believe that this is significant.

1 [Trial Chamber confers]

2 JUDGE MAY: We'll give you three-quarters of an hour. That should

3 be sufficient time to make your points. You will have had rather longer

4 than the three hours which we allocated; much longer, it may be noted,

5 than the Prosecution.

6 If the registry could come up, please.

7 [Trial Chamber and registrar confer]

8 JUDGE MAY: We'll rise now.

9 --- Whereupon the hearing adjourned at 1.47 p.m.,

10 to be reconvened on Friday, the 27th day of

11 September, 2002, at 9.00 a.m.