Balkan ghosts

 

Balkan ghosts


By Helle Dale

So much has happened in theworldsincethe Balkan wars of the 1990s that the international community seems to have lost sight of the fact that the wheels of justice are still turning to bring Serbian and Croatian war criminals to justice. Even as we have debated the worth of the International Criminal Court, actual prosecutions of real crimes against humanity in the former Yugoslavia have slipped from public view.
    This week, Judge Theodor Meron, president of the International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia, was in Washington for consultations and in New York to argue at the U.N. Security Council for continued full funding for bringing criminals to justice. 
 
    "What worries me is that the international community becomes blase to the idea of the court. People get tired and they don't pay up their dues," he says. Judge Meron, a mild-mannered man, speaks with evident passion. As a Holocaust survivor from Poland, erstwhile resident of Israel and a U.S. citizen, his deep commitment to see the tribunal to its rightful and just conclusion is highly understandable.
    "After half a century of doing nothing, we have shown that credible trials are possible. We have created a body of war crimes jurisprudence as well as a body of procedural international law. This is an important legacy for the future."
    As we have witnessed many other horrors in the intervening years, a reminder may be in order.
    For three years in the early 1990s, the war that raged between Bosnians desiring independence and Serbs refusing to allow them to part from the former federation of Yugoslavia resulted in horrendous war crimes committed by all sides. Detention camps sprung up, civilians were shelled, millions of people were driven from their homes, more than 20,000 women were systematically raped, 200,000 people were killed, and men of military age were murdered and buried in mass graves.
    In Croatia, which had declared independence in 1991, Serbs attempted to keep control of the Vukovar region, bombarding the town for three months solid in 1992. Later Croatian troops swept through the Serb-controlled region of Krajina, forcing tens of thousands of Croatian Serbs to flee from their homes toward Serbia proper.
    In Kosovo, in 1999, then-President Slobodan Milosevic of Serbia attempted yet another ethnic cleansing campaign against the Albanian population there, burning houses and murdering residents to drive the population out and replace it with Serbs. After NATO finally intervened and bombed Serbia to stop this action, Albanian refugees came back and their leaders in turn drove 100,000 Kosovar Serbs from the province. Europe had not seen crimes against humanity like these since World War II.
    With strong support from the United States, the International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia was set up in 1993 by the U.N. Security Council. An ad hoc institution, it was later given jurisdiction over the prosecutions of the Rwandan genocide as well, an even more horrific event that took place approximately at the same time, costing more than 1 million people their lives.
     The Yugoslav and Rwandan tribunal is designed to go out of business when its work is done, which the United Nations has decided will be 2008. There is already a freeze on the hiring of law clerks, which according to Judge Meron is premature.
     The highly publicized trial of Mr. Milosevic is only now entering the defense stage, which the accused insists on conducting himself. After 35 prosecutions and 17 guilty pleas, there are still 33 prosecutions pending, and 20 wanted war criminals are still at large — mainly suspected of hiding in Serbia — including two of the most famous, Radovan Karadzic and Ratko Mladic. And it's not just the suspects that are missing. According to Judge Meron, Belgrade continues to drag its feet on delivering documents and opening archives. This contrasts with the Bosnians and the Croats, who are largely cooperating with the tribunal.
    Judge Meron has an idea for speeding things up. "I am going to propose in my monthly report to the Security Council that the future of prosecutions is in national courts ... I want to establish a special war crimes chamber at the court in Sarajevo to try people who had committed crimes in Bosnia-Herzegovina." He would like to do the same for Croatia.
    However, he says, "Belgrade has shown such a lack of cooperation that we cannot send accused Serbian war criminals back." The fact that the leader of the winning party in last weekend's Serbian elections, Vojislav Seselj, is one of the prisoners awaiting trial in the Hague does not bode particularly well for public sentiment among Serbs.
    If we want to close the chapter on the Balkan wars properly, the tribunal's work must go on.
    
    Helle Dale is director of Foreign Policy and Defense Studies at the Heritage Foundation. E-mail: helle.dale@heritage.org.

Related...

http://www.washtimes.com/op-ed/20040615-090332-2837r.htm

Serbs search for old US bomb at Chinese embassy

Serbs search for old US bomb at Chinese embassy   17 Jun 2004 17:09:42 GMT

BELGRADE, June 17 (Reuters) - Serbian experts began searching on Thursday for a large U.S. bomb at China's embassy that failed to detonate when the building was hit by mistake in a NATO bombing campaign against Yugoslavia five years ago.

The experts said it would take about a month to deactivate the 2,000 lb (900 kg) bomb -- one of four that U.S. planes fired at the embassy in Belgrade on May 7, 1999 -- when it was found.

The other three bombs exploded, killing three Chinese journalists, wrecking part of the building and sparking furious protests in Beijing.

NATO called it a tragic mistake due to poor intelligence and said the U.S. military believed it had been directing the aircraft to bomb a Serbian military supply centre.

But the military had used out-of-date maps that failed to show the embassy, although it was clearly marked on ordinary tourist maps of the Yugoslav capital.

The embassy, which had a distinctive Chinese-style roof in green tiles, looks reasonably intact from the front but is shattered on the inside.

Empty since 1999, the building is still guarded and flies the red Chinese flag.

NATO bombed targets in Serbia and Montenegro for 78 days in 1999 to force then President Slobodan Milosevic to withdraw his troops and police from Kosovo and end persecution of the province's ethnic Albanian majority.

The Belgrade attack was carried out with state-of-the-art JDAM (Joint Direct Attack Munition) bombs guided by global positioning satellite systems.

The experts said there was no danger to the public from the bomb.

"The public has no reason to worry," said Martin Martinovic, a member of the bomb disposal team.

AlertNet Jun 17 2004 6:04PM GMT

Related...

[Moreover - Balkans news]

Serbs search for old US bomb at Chinese embassy

Serbs search for old US bomb at Chinese embassy   17 Jun 2004 17:09:42 GMT

BELGRADE, June 17 (Reuters) - Serbian experts began searching on Thursday for a large U.S. bomb at China's embassy that failed to detonate when the building was hit by mistake in a NATO bombing campaign against Yugoslavia five years ago.

The experts said it would take about a month to deactivate the 2,000 lb (900 kg) bomb -- one of four that U.S. planes fired at the embassy in Belgrade on May 7, 1999 -- when it was found.

The other three bombs exploded, killing three Chinese journalists, wrecking part of the building and sparking furious protests in Beijing.

NATO called it a tragic mistake due to poor intelligence and said the U.S. military believed it had been directing the aircraft to bomb a Serbian military supply centre.

But the military had used out-of-date maps that failed to show the embassy, although it was clearly marked on ordinary tourist maps of the Yugoslav capital.

The embassy, which had a distinctive Chinese-style roof in green tiles, looks reasonably intact from the front but is shattered on the inside.

Empty since 1999, the building is still guarded and flies the red Chinese flag.

NATO bombed targets in Serbia and Montenegro for 78 days in 1999 to force then President Slobodan Milosevic to withdraw his troops and police from Kosovo and end persecution of the province's ethnic Albanian majority.

The Belgrade attack was carried out with state-of-the-art JDAM (Joint Direct Attack Munition) bombs guided by global positioning satellite systems.

The experts said there was no danger to the public from the bomb.

"The public has no reason to worry," said Martin Martinovic, a member of the bomb disposal team.

AlertNet Jun 17 2004 6:04PM GMT

Related...

[Moreover - Balkans news]

Prosecutors charge four over Kosovo rioting

 

Prosecutors charge four over Kosovo rioting 17 Jun 2004 15:19:48 GMT

(Releads with charges, previous SKOPJE) By Matthew Robinson PRISTINA, June 17 (Reuters) - International prosecutors have charged three Kosovo Albanians and one Serb with serious crimes during a wave of violence in the volatile province in mid-March, a United Nations police spokesman said on Thursday. The charges were the first "of a more serious nature" stemming from 48 hours of rioting in which 19 people died and more than 800 Serb homes were set on fire, Neeraj Singh told Reuters. Around 270 people have been arrested since the ethnic violence, the worst since the United Nations took control of the province in 1999 after NATO bombing drove out Serb troops. Serbia has complained frequently that the U.N. fails to enforce the law, especially where Albanian extremists are concerned. Singh said the Serb was charged with a grenade attack on NATO-led peacekeepers in the divided town of Mitrovica in northern Kosovo. The three Albanians were charged with arson, inciting riots and attacking police officers in a series of orchestrated attacks. News of the charges emerged as Kosovo's newly appointed U.N. governor said that major powers must not neglect the province, where NATO carried out its first major military intervention five years ago. FINAL STATUS DECISION LOOMS "There is a lot of attention these days on other priorities, like Iraq and Afghanistan, but turning our back on Kosovo at this stage would be a serious mistake," Soren Jessen-Petersen told a news conference in the Macedonian capital, Skopje. NATO allies bombed Serbia in 1999 to force its army out of Kosovo and end repression of the Albanian majority. In Albanian eyes, the NATO intervention legitimised their demands for independence. But big powers have shied away from a decision. Jessen-Petersen, a Danish diplomat and European Union envoy to Macedonia, was named by the United Nations in New York on Wednesday as Kosovo's fifth U.N. governor, replacing Finnish diplomat Harri Holkeri who resigned last month citing ill health. The Dane, who aims to take up the post in early August, is expected to play a key role in guiding the decision on whether Kosovo becomes independent, possibly some time in 2005, or formally remains part of Serbia and Montenegro. Kosovo's "final status" is tied to a series of democracy and human rights benchmarks set by the United Nations, with a view to assessing progress in 2005. But Kosovo's majority ethnic Albanians are increasingly impatient, saying it is time for the U.N. to start handing real power to local institutions so the stagnant economy can grow and produce jobs for the thousands of unemployed young people. "The mission can be successful only if it starts transferring authority," Mimoza Kusari, spokeswoman for the Kosovo government, told Reuters of the appointment. The United Nations can veto legislation adopted by Kosovo's parliament.

Related...

[Moreover - Balkans news]

A graveyard for our dreams: why I�m not voting Conservative

 

June 15, 2004

                             A graveyard for our dreams: why I’m not voting Conservative
                                                              By David Orchard

The “new Conservative party” under Stephen Harper declares itself a moderate alternative to the Liberals, ready to govern Canada.

In reality, the party has never had a convention or meeting of its members. It has no constitution. Policies are set with no control by, direction from, or accountability to a membership -- whoever those members may be. (The party is mailing out unsolicited membership cards informing surprised recipients they are party members. Mine arrived last week.)

The “new” party is the old Reform-Alliance which took over the Progressive Conservative party, its colours and half its name. The word “progressive”  was purged (along with its progressive wing). As Stephen Harper explained last June: “We may not have some of the old conservatives, red Tories like the David Orchards or the Joe Clarks. This is not all bad. A more coherent coalition can take strong positions it wouldn’t otherwise be able to take -- as the Alliance alone was able to do during the Iraq war.”

To accomplish the takeover, the Progressive Conservative constitution was trampled. Roughly 20,000 Alliance members were allowed to join, in Trojan horse fashion, increasing the PC membership by 50%. These Alliance members then voted twice -- in both the PC and Alliance ratification votes -- producing the farcical figure of over 90% support for the takeover/merger. Senator Lowell Murray described the takeover of the PC party as a “coup, similar to what we have seen in some countries where the constitution is suspended and a new order ratified in a quick plebiscite.”

Now Mr. Harper’s party has set up a Truth Squad to challenge Liberal lies, headed by none other than Peter MacKay, the man who infamously broke his word -- including that given in writing to win the leadership of his party -- not to merge with the Alliance, and who now refuses to reveal the source of the large donation he subsequently received to erase his campaign debts.

This is the party that attacks the Liberals for lacking ethics and accountability! A vote for it will legitimize the actions of the clique, accountable to no one except their unseen backers (the most visible being Brian Mulroney) which destroyed the party that created Canada and which now openly spurns the most basic elements of democracy. As Mr. Harper has charmingly admitted, policy for the new Conservatives will be essentially what he says it is.

For years Mr. Harper headed the National Citizens Coalition (NCC) -- whose motto is “More freedom through less government.”  Speaking to the NCC in 1994 as a Reform MP, Harper boasted: "What has happened in the past five years? Let me start with the positive side. Universality has been severely reduced: it is virtually dead as a concept in most areas of public policy. The family allowance programme has been eliminated and unemployment insurance has been seriously cut back...These achievements are due in part to the Reform Party of Canada and… the National Citizens' Coalition."

As Alliance leader in Parliament, Stephen Harper set out his views on health care: “Several provinces are involved in pushing for alternative private delivery, even on a profit basis. This is a natural development. In a properly functioning system, profit is the reward that businesses obtain for making substantial, long-term capital investments…The federal government must support this initiative.”

The Canadian Wheat Board, established in 1935 by Conservative prime minister R.B. Bennett, has in spite of fierce U.S. opposition become Canada’s largest net earner of foreign currency. It has played a crucial role in keeping the grain industry in Canadian hands and provides one of the few defences left for western farmers. Harper and his colleagues, cooperating fully with the U.S. grain industry, call repeatedly for its destruction.

Mr. Harper has promised to scrap Canada’s commitment to Kyoto, joining the U.S. in its opposition to the only international agreement to reduce harmful carbon dioxide emissions. He plans to privatize major parts of the CBC and gut the nation’s broadcast regulator, the CRTC, opening the broadcast industry to foreign takeover.

And there is more: since coming from the U.S. Tom Flanagan, a key founder of the Reform Party and now Mr. Harper’s chief advisor and the party’s campaign manager, has made his career attacking Aboriginal people. The Alliance platform called explicitly for the privatization of the reserve system and the deliberate assimilation of Native people. In his book First Nations? Second Thoughts Flanagan writes: “European civilization was several thousand years more advanced than the aboriginal cultures of North America.” He sneeringly dismisses Aboriginal treaty rights: “Sovereignty is an attribute of statehood, and aboriginal peoples in Canada had not arrived at the state level of political organization prior to contact with Europeans.”  With Flanagan’s man in power Aboriginals are offered one choice: to cease to be a distinct people with fundamental rights.

On June 29 a minority Conservative government can expect Bloc support -- for a price. Both parties agree on dismantling the central government and national institutions in favour of greater provincial powers. As constitutional affairs critic for the Reform Party in the lead up to the 1995 Quebec referendum, Mr. Harper stated: “Whether Canada ends up with one national government, or some other kind of arrangement is, quite frankly, secondary in my opinion.” His essay in 2001 defending Alliance MP Jim Pankiw’s private member’s bill to emasculate the Official Languages Act, “Bilingualism -- the God that failed,” is equally revealing.

Bloc MP Yves Rocheleau prefers a Conservative victory, he said, because it would “demonstrate what René Levesque called ‘the impossible Canada.’ Canada is a madhouse. It’s a country that cannot be administered.”

A unilingual French speaking Quebec, a unilingual English speaking rest of Canada and no need for the twain to meet; this is the meeting ground for the Bloc and the Conservatives and a graveyard for the dreams of all who have fought for a tolerant bilingual nation stronger for our efforts to learn from, and be protective of, the other’s culture and language.

During the U.S. war on Iraq Stephen Harper and Stockwell Day repeatedly and vociferously advocated Canadian participation, including attacking the Canadian government in the Wall Street Journal:

“Today the world is at war. A coalition of countries under the leadership of the U.K. and the U.S. is leading a military intervention to disarm Saddam Hussein. Yet, Prime Minister Jean Chrétien has left Canada outside this multilateral coalition of nations.

This is a serious mistake…. The Canadian Alliance -- the official opposition in Parliament -- supports the American and British position…

Make no mistake… the Canadian Alliance won’t be neutral. In our hearts and minds we will be with our allies and friends….

But we will not be with the Canadian government.”

(March 28, 2003)

Only in Quebec with its “pacifist tradition,” Mr. Harper alleged, were most people opposed to the war. Peter MacKay, now Harper’s deputy leader, excoriated Mr. Chrétien for being weak and vacillating, even cowardly, in refusing to join that illegal invasion. Today, apparently hoping Canadians and the media have lost their memories, Harper and Day try to deny their words.

For those who want to protect Canada’s culture, its environment, its institutions and its sovereignty, Mr. Harper and his inner circle have nothing but words of contempt as they work to dismantle our nation. They march to a different drummer, to the beat of Mr. Mulroney and Mr. Bush, pledging allegiance to a foreign flag.

David Orchard is the author of The Fight for Canada - Four Centuries of Resistance to American Expansionism, and ran for the leadership of the federal Progressive Conservative Party in 1998 and 2003. He farms at Borden, SK and can be reached at tel (306) 652-7095, e-mail: davidorchard@sasktel.net     www.davidorchard.com
 

Where's Radovan?

 

Where's Radovan? A Bosnian Serb leader indicted on genocide charges remains at large -- and few seem to care Russ Baker
Celebici is a remote gnat of a place. A few dozen houses and a church, a couple of hours way up a rough road from the ragged Bosnian hills, surrounded by forested peaks. But it was as big as the headlines it generated when NATO-led forces staged Operation Daybreak there in February 2002, ostensibly hoping to net Radovan Karadzic, the Bosnian Serb leader who had been indicted by The Hague's war crimes tribunal for helping to lead a genocide in 1992-1995 that killed up to 200,000 people, mostly Bosnian Muslims. Helicopters disgorged black-masked troops who kicked in doors and blew open locks as they conducted a door-to-door search. They left empty-handed. Operation Daybreak remains the only serious action the West is known to have conducted to pick up Karadzic. Like Osama bin Laden, Karadzic is well known and physically distinctive. A tall man with a big belly, a dimpled chin and a dramatic gray bouffant, he ought to be difficult to hide. Like Saddam Hussein, he is considered a genocidal murderer whose most horrible crimes were committed a decade ago. And, as in the case of bin Laden, the fact that he remains at large is a cause of great instability throughout a strategically crucial region. Eight years after the Dayton peace accords -- following a process that was supposed to lead to reunification, and despite the efforts of hundreds of foreign aid workers and the expenditure of more than $5 billion -- Bosnia remains fractious and fractured. Efforts to create unity and long-term peace have been frustrated by the continued dominance in the ethnic Serbian state-within-a-state (known as Republika Srpska) of a corrupt clique said to be controlled by Karadzic. And, of course, the fate of the entire area holds lessons for other Western efforts at democracy- and nation-building, such as those in Iraq and Afghanistan. Karadzic's continued freedom leaves the huge numbers of ethnic Muslims and Croats who fled Bosnia during the war, and who have been slowly returning to their prewar homes, with a sense that all has not yet been put right. At the same time, his aura of invincibility has grown among the 700,000 Bosnian Serbs. The NATO military command has increasingly issued tough statements and conducted a number of high-profile "raids" that failed to capture Karadzic. Serious observers consider these nothing but publicity efforts and perhaps attempts to send messages to the Bosnian Serb leadership. For example, troops twice conducted search operations in Pale, Karadzic's wartime capital and the home of his wife and daughter -- surely not the most likely place for Karadzic to hide. There are many obstacles to finding the man, ranging from the ruggedness of the terrain to the fierce loyalty of many locals toward Karadzic. But perhaps the largest obstacle is that the United States and its allies have not dedicated real resources to chasing him down. Many of the NATO soldiers -- 13,000 troops from 35 countries, down from 60,000 after the war -- share no common language, and those few who can speak to soldiers from other countries aren't necessarily inclined to do so. Each contingent has gotten a reputation. American troops -- now just 1, 500, all National Guardsmen, dentists from Ohio and laborers from New York -- are not exactly Special Forces quality and tend to stay pretty close to base. Italian and French troops like to live it up and have perhaps gotten too cozy with some locals. The Brits are the most enthusiastic about actually doing something. And, given their experience among a hostile, armed population in Northern Ireland, they're the best prepared -- and show it through deft use of intelligence and of lightning-fast raids. So far, they have apprehended most of the war criminals -- half of the 24 arrests reported by the NATO force to date have been in their zone. But the areas where Bosnians suspect Karadzic is hiding are controlled by Italian, French, and German troops, none of whom seem eager to fire their guns. The Germans I met in Celebici made clear that it would absolutely not be desirable, for obvious historical reasons, to have Germany in the forefront of a bloody international military incident that involved capturing someone accused of murdering large numbers of innocent people. The French, technically in charge of the area, have been historically close with the Serbs and opposed the creation of the Hague tribunal. On the morning of the Celebici raid, according to military sources, a French officer took a call from a Republika Srpska police officer inquiring about the unusually large NATO presence that day. In the conversation, which was monitored by peacekeeping forces, the Frenchman obliquely referred to the area as being of interest "today in particular." Capturing Karadzic is especially challenging because ordinary people revere him and because some extraordinarily ruthless and powerful people are joined with him at the hip. Everywhere one travels on both sides of the border between Bosnia and Serbia, and in neighboring Montenegro, where Karadzic was born and raised, he is a kind of folk hero, celebrated for defending orthodoxy against Muslim aggression and thereby playing a righteous role in what amounts to a 500-year- old quarrel. The Hague's evidence of his war crimes is dismissed as exaggerated, biased or trumped up. His calls for a single country uniting all ethnic Serbs, coupled with his credentials as a psychiatrist and author of poems, folk songs and children's books, have been used to polish his image as a hero. Calendars of Karadzic hang at bus stations, and on Christmas Day 2002, thousands of Bosnian Serbs received a text-message holiday greeting from Karadzic on their mobile phones. And last year, pro-Karadzic posters mysteriously appeared all over the ethnic Serb capital of Banja Luka, although authorities, undoubtedly worried about the reaction of Western forces, had them removed within hours. Yet many of the Serbs who defend Karadzic may be motivated less by nationalist fervor than by self-interest. Karadzic sat -- and presumably continues to sit -- at the center of an intricate web of political, legal, military and police and financial power. The network gained considerable wealth through wartime profiteering and won favorable treatment from the Karadzic and post-Karadzic regimes in Republika Srpska. Many government officials, including Cabinet ministers, are deeply involved in the underground economy and would potentially face charges and long prison sentences if the semi-independent republic were ever cleaned up. In the past year or so, Western forces in Bosnia have moved to crack down on the most corrupt among the army's top brass, but the army remains loyal to Karadzic. Republika Srpska is the only part of the former Yugoslavia that has yet to arrest a single war-crimes suspect -- despite being required to do so under the Dayton accords that ended the war. Karadzic's cronies spend about $200,000 a month protecting him, according to foreign diplomats. A sort of medieval tithing system, enforced by tough guys, includes a "tax" collected by civilians carrying police identification and skimmed profits from foreign electricity sales. U.S. intelligence services have tracked gasoline from Saddam Hussein's Iraq to merchants and distributors with close links to Karadzic. Republika Srpska also makes donations to the Orthodox Church for the ostensible purpose of rebuilding religious structures destroyed in the war -- donations that, by law, cannot be monitored or even audited. Officials in Banja Luka and foreign diplomats believe that some of this money finds its way to Karadzic. Hague prosecutor Carla Del Ponte said monitored telephone communications had revealed that Karadzic was hiding at a mountaintop Orthodox monastery in Ostrog, northwest of the capital. Church officials denied sheltering Karadzic but praised him nonetheless. And the Orthodox archbishop of Sarajevo, welcoming new NATO troops from Greece (another Orthodox country), is said to have extended to them Karadzic's warm regards. Last month, the United States suspended millions of dollars in assistance to Serbia for lack of cooperation, including failure to hand over Karadzic's military chief and fellow war crimes indictee, Ratko Mladic. When officials learned the same month that Karadzic might be in the village of Zaovine, troops raided Pale instead. Not surprisingly, they came up empty-handed. It all seems like a strange way to treat an accused mass murderer. If capturing Saddam Hussein was as important a milestone for Iraq's future as the White House says it is, then what does it say about the future of the strategically important Balkans that an indicted war criminal of Karadzic's reputed brutality is allowed to roam free? Few doubt Karadzic can be apprehended, but, as the years pass, many wonder about the will of those with the power to do so. The eye of the powerful has turned away from this fragile land, and increasingly one hears the refrain, "Radovan who?" Russ Baker is a New York-based investigative reporter who has spent much of the past two years in the Balkan region.

Related...

http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/chronicle/archive/2004/05/30/INGMC6PKMI1.DTL

Where's Radovan? A Bosnian Serb leader indicted on genocide charges remains at large -- and few seem to care

 

 

 

Where's Radovan? A Bosnian Serb leader indicted on genocide charges remains at large -- and few seem to care Russ Baker
Celebici is a remote gnat of a place. A few dozen houses and a church, a couple of hours way up a rough road from the ragged Bosnian hills, surrounded by forested peaks. But it was as big as the headlines it generated when NATO-led forces staged Operation Daybreak there in February 2002, ostensibly hoping to net Radovan Karadzic, the Bosnian Serb leader who had been indicted by The Hague's war crimes tribunal for helping to lead a genocide in 1992-1995 that killed up to 200,000 people, mostly Bosnian Muslims. Helicopters disgorged black-masked troops who kicked in doors and blew open locks as they conducted a door-to-door search. They left empty-handed. Operation Daybreak remains the only serious action the West is known to have conducted to pick up Karadzic. Like Osama bin Laden, Karadzic is well known and physically distinctive. A tall man with a big belly, a dimpled chin and a dramatic gray bouffant, he ought to be difficult to hide. Like Saddam Hussein, he is considered a genocidal murderer whose most horrible crimes were committed a decade ago. And, as in the case of bin Laden, the fact that he remains at large is a cause of great instability throughout a strategically crucial region. Eight years after the Dayton peace accords -- following a process that was supposed to lead to reunification, and despite the efforts of hundreds of foreign aid workers and the expenditure of more than $5 billion -- Bosnia remains fractious and fractured. Efforts to create unity and long-term peace have been frustrated by the continued dominance in the ethnic Serbian state-within-a-state (known as Republika Srpska) of a corrupt clique said to be controlled by Karadzic. And, of course, the fate of the entire area holds lessons for other Western efforts at democracy- and nation-building, such as those in Iraq and Afghanistan. Karadzic's continued freedom leaves the huge numbers of ethnic Muslims and Croats who fled Bosnia during the war, and who have been slowly returning to their prewar homes, with a sense that all has not yet been put right. At the same time, his aura of invincibility has grown among the 700,000 Bosnian Serbs. The NATO military command has increasingly issued tough statements and conducted a number of high-profile "raids" that failed to capture Karadzic. Serious observers consider these nothing but publicity efforts and perhaps attempts to send messages to the Bosnian Serb leadership. For example, troops twice conducted search operations in Pale, Karadzic's wartime capital and the home of his wife and daughter -- surely not the most likely place for Karadzic to hide. There are many obstacles to finding the man, ranging from the ruggedness of the terrain to the fierce loyalty of many locals toward Karadzic. But perhaps the largest obstacle is that the United States and its allies have not dedicated real resources to chasing him down. Many of the NATO soldiers -- 13,000 troops from 35 countries, down from 60,000 after the war -- share no common language, and those few who can speak to soldiers from other countries aren't necessarily inclined to do so. Each contingent has gotten a reputation. American troops -- now just 1, 500, all National Guardsmen, dentists from Ohio and laborers from New York -- are not exactly Special Forces quality and tend to stay pretty close to base. Italian and French troops like to live it up and have perhaps gotten too cozy with some locals. The Brits are the most enthusiastic about actually doing something. And, given their experience among a hostile, armed population in Northern Ireland, they're the best prepared -- and show it through deft use of intelligence and of lightning-fast raids. So far, they have apprehended most of the war criminals -- half of the 24 arrests reported by the NATO force to date have been in their zone. But the areas where Bosnians suspect Karadzic is hiding are controlled by Italian, French, and German troops, none of whom seem eager to fire their guns. The Germans I met in Celebici made clear that it would absolutely not be desirable, for obvious historical reasons, to have Germany in the forefront of a bloody international military incident that involved capturing someone accused of murdering large numbers of innocent people. The French, technically in charge of the area, have been historically close with the Serbs and opposed the creation of the Hague tribunal. On the morning of the Celebici raid, according to military sources, a French officer took a call from a Republika Srpska police officer inquiring about the unusually large NATO presence that day. In the conversation, which was monitored by peacekeeping forces, the Frenchman obliquely referred to the area as being of interest "today in particular." Capturing Karadzic is especially challenging because ordinary people revere him and because some extraordinarily ruthless and powerful people are joined with him at the hip. Everywhere one travels on both sides of the border between Bosnia and Serbia, and in neighboring Montenegro, where Karadzic was born and raised, he is a kind of folk hero, celebrated for defending orthodoxy against Muslim aggression and thereby playing a righteous role in what amounts to a 500-year- old quarrel. The Hague's evidence of his war crimes is dismissed as exaggerated, biased or trumped up. His calls for a single country uniting all ethnic Serbs, coupled with his credentials as a psychiatrist and author of poems, folk songs and children's books, have been used to polish his image as a hero. Calendars of Karadzic hang at bus stations, and on Christmas Day 2002, thousands of Bosnian Serbs received a text-message holiday greeting from Karadzic on their mobile phones. And last year, pro-Karadzic posters mysteriously appeared all over the ethnic Serb capital of Banja Luka, although authorities, undoubtedly worried about the reaction of Western forces, had them removed within hours. Yet many of the Serbs who defend Karadzic may be motivated less by nationalist fervor than by self-interest. Karadzic sat -- and presumably continues to sit -- at the center of an intricate web of political, legal, military and police and financial power. The network gained considerable wealth through wartime profiteering and won favorable treatment from the Karadzic and post-Karadzic regimes in Republika Srpska. Many government officials, including Cabinet ministers, are deeply involved in the underground economy and would potentially face charges and long prison sentences if the semi-independent republic were ever cleaned up. In the past year or so, Western forces in Bosnia have moved to crack down on the most corrupt among the army's top brass, but the army remains loyal to Karadzic. Republika Srpska is the only part of the former Yugoslavia that has yet to arrest a single war-crimes suspect -- despite being required to do so under the Dayton accords that ended the war. Karadzic's cronies spend about $200,000 a month protecting him, according to foreign diplomats. A sort of medieval tithing system, enforced by tough guys, includes a "tax" collected by civilians carrying police identification and skimmed profits from foreign electricity sales. U.S. intelligence services have tracked gasoline from Saddam Hussein's Iraq to merchants and distributors with close links to Karadzic. Republika Srpska also makes donations to the Orthodox Church for the ostensible purpose of rebuilding religious structures destroyed in the war -- donations that, by law, cannot be monitored or even audited. Officials in Banja Luka and foreign diplomats believe that some of this money finds its way to Karadzic. Hague prosecutor Carla Del Ponte said monitored telephone communications had revealed that Karadzic was hiding at a mountaintop Orthodox monastery in Ostrog, northwest of the capital. Church officials denied sheltering Karadzic but praised him nonetheless. And the Orthodox archbishop of Sarajevo, welcoming new NATO troops from Greece (another Orthodox country), is said to have extended to them Karadzic's warm regards. Last month, the United States suspended millions of dollars in assistance to Serbia for lack of cooperation, including failure to hand over Karadzic's military chief and fellow war crimes indictee, Ratko Mladic. When officials learned the same month that Karadzic might be in the village of Zaovine, troops raided Pale instead. Not surprisingly, they came up empty-handed. It all seems like a strange way to treat an accused mass murderer. If capturing Saddam Hussein was as important a milestone for Iraq's future as the White House says it is, then what does it say about the future of the strategically important Balkans that an indicted war criminal of Karadzic's reputed brutality is allowed to roam free? Few doubt Karadzic can be apprehended, but, as the years pass, many wonder about the will of those with the power to do so. The eye of the powerful has turned away from this fragile land, and increasingly one hears the refrain, "Radovan who?" Russ Baker is a New York-based investigative reporter who has spent much of the past two years in the Balkan region.

Related...

http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/chronicle/archive/2004/05/30/INGMC6PKMI1.DTL

Where's Radovan?

 

Where's Radovan? A Bosnian Serb leader indicted on genocide charges remains at large -- and few seem to care Russ Baker
Celebici is a remote gnat of a place. A few dozen houses and a church, a couple of hours way up a rough road from the ragged Bosnian hills, surrounded by forested peaks. But it was as big as the headlines it generated when NATO-led forces staged Operation Daybreak there in February 2002, ostensibly hoping to net Radovan Karadzic, the Bosnian Serb leader who had been indicted by The Hague's war crimes tribunal for helping to lead a genocide in 1992-1995 that killed up to 200,000 people, mostly Bosnian Muslims. Helicopters disgorged black-masked troops who kicked in doors and blew open locks as they conducted a door-to-door search. They left empty-handed. Operation Daybreak remains the only serious action the West is known to have conducted to pick up Karadzic. Like Osama bin Laden, Karadzic is well known and physically distinctive. A tall man with a big belly, a dimpled chin and a dramatic gray bouffant, he ought to be difficult to hide. Like Saddam Hussein, he is considered a genocidal murderer whose most horrible crimes were committed a decade ago. And, as in the case of bin Laden, the fact that he remains at large is a cause of great instability throughout a strategically crucial region. Eight years after the Dayton peace accords -- following a process that was supposed to lead to reunification, and despite the efforts of hundreds of foreign aid workers and the expenditure of more than $5 billion -- Bosnia remains fractious and fractured. Efforts to create unity and long-term peace have been frustrated by the continued dominance in the ethnic Serbian state-within-a-state (known as Republika Srpska) of a corrupt clique said to be controlled by Karadzic. And, of course, the fate of the entire area holds lessons for other Western efforts at democracy- and nation-building, such as those in Iraq and Afghanistan. Karadzic's continued freedom leaves the huge numbers of ethnic Muslims and Croats who fled Bosnia during the war, and who have been slowly returning to their prewar homes, with a sense that all has not yet been put right. At the same time, his aura of invincibility has grown among the 700,000 Bosnian Serbs. The NATO military command has increasingly issued tough statements and conducted a number of high-profile "raids" that failed to capture Karadzic. Serious observers consider these nothing but publicity efforts and perhaps attempts to send messages to the Bosnian Serb leadership. For example, troops twice conducted search operations in Pale, Karadzic's wartime capital and the home of his wife and daughter -- surely not the most likely place for Karadzic to hide. There are many obstacles to finding the man, ranging from the ruggedness of the terrain to the fierce loyalty of many locals toward Karadzic. But perhaps the largest obstacle is that the United States and its allies have not dedicated real resources to chasing him down. Many of the NATO soldiers -- 13,000 troops from 35 countries, down from 60,000 after the war -- share no common language, and those few who can speak to soldiers from other countries aren't necessarily inclined to do so. Each contingent has gotten a reputation. American troops -- now just 1, 500, all National Guardsmen, dentists from Ohio and laborers from New York -- are not exactly Special Forces quality and tend to stay pretty close to base. Italian and French troops like to live it up and have perhaps gotten too cozy with some locals. The Brits are the most enthusiastic about actually doing something. And, given their experience among a hostile, armed population in Northern Ireland, they're the best prepared -- and show it through deft use of intelligence and of lightning-fast raids. So far, they have apprehended most of the war criminals -- half of the 24 arrests reported by the NATO force to date have been in their zone. But the areas where Bosnians suspect Karadzic is hiding are controlled by Italian, French, and German troops, none of whom seem eager to fire their guns. The Germans I met in Celebici made clear that it would absolutely not be desirable, for obvious historical reasons, to have Germany in the forefront of a bloody international military incident that involved capturing someone accused of murdering large numbers of innocent people. The French, technically in charge of the area, have been historically close with the Serbs and opposed the creation of the Hague tribunal. On the morning of the Celebici raid, according to military sources, a French officer took a call from a Republika Srpska police officer inquiring about the unusually large NATO presence that day. In the conversation, which was monitored by peacekeeping forces, the Frenchman obliquely referred to the area as being of interest "today in particular." Capturing Karadzic is especially challenging because ordinary people revere him and because some extraordinarily ruthless and powerful people are joined with him at the hip. Everywhere one travels on both sides of the border between Bosnia and Serbia, and in neighboring Montenegro, where Karadzic was born and raised, he is a kind of folk hero, celebrated for defending orthodoxy against Muslim aggression and thereby playing a righteous role in what amounts to a 500-year- old quarrel. The Hague's evidence of his war crimes is dismissed as exaggerated, biased or trumped up. His calls for a single country uniting all ethnic Serbs, coupled with his credentials as a psychiatrist and author of poems, folk songs and children's books, have been used to polish his image as a hero. Calendars of Karadzic hang at bus stations, and on Christmas Day 2002, thousands of Bosnian Serbs received a text-message holiday greeting from Karadzic on their mobile phones. And last year, pro-Karadzic posters mysteriously appeared all over the ethnic Serb capital of Banja Luka, although authorities, undoubtedly worried about the reaction of Western forces, had them removed within hours. Yet many of the Serbs who defend Karadzic may be motivated less by nationalist fervor than by self-interest. Karadzic sat -- and presumably continues to sit -- at the center of an intricate web of political, legal, military and police and financial power. The network gained considerable wealth through wartime profiteering and won favorable treatment from the Karadzic and post-Karadzic regimes in Republika Srpska. Many government officials, including Cabinet ministers, are deeply involved in the underground economy and would potentially face charges and long prison sentences if the semi-independent republic were ever cleaned up. In the past year or so, Western forces in Bosnia have moved to crack down on the most corrupt among the army's top brass, but the army remains loyal to Karadzic. Republika Srpska is the only part of the former Yugoslavia that has yet to arrest a single war-crimes suspect -- despite being required to do so under the Dayton accords that ended the war. Karadzic's cronies spend about $200,000 a month protecting him, according to foreign diplomats. A sort of medieval tithing system, enforced by tough guys, includes a "tax" collected by civilians carrying police identification and skimmed profits from foreign electricity sales. U.S. intelligence services have tracked gasoline from Saddam Hussein's Iraq to merchants and distributors with close links to Karadzic. Republika Srpska also makes donations to the Orthodox Church for the ostensible purpose of rebuilding religious structures destroyed in the war -- donations that, by law, cannot be monitored or even audited. Officials in Banja Luka and foreign diplomats believe that some of this money finds its way to Karadzic. Hague prosecutor Carla Del Ponte said monitored telephone communications had revealed that Karadzic was hiding at a mountaintop Orthodox monastery in Ostrog, northwest of the capital. Church officials denied sheltering Karadzic but praised him nonetheless. And the Orthodox archbishop of Sarajevo, welcoming new NATO troops from Greece (another Orthodox country), is said to have extended to them Karadzic's warm regards. Last month, the United States suspended millions of dollars in assistance to Serbia for lack of cooperation, including failure to hand over Karadzic's military chief and fellow war crimes indictee, Ratko Mladic. When officials learned the same month that Karadzic might be in the village of Zaovine, troops raided Pale instead. Not surprisingly, they came up empty-handed. It all seems like a strange way to treat an accused mass murderer. If capturing Saddam Hussein was as important a milestone for Iraq's future as the White House says it is, then what does it say about the future of the strategically important Balkans that an indicted war criminal of Karadzic's reputed brutality is allowed to roam free? Few doubt Karadzic can be apprehended, but, as the years pass, many wonder about the will of those with the power to do so. The eye of the powerful has turned away from this fragile land, and increasingly one hears the refrain, "Radovan who?" Russ Baker is a New York-based investigative reporter who has spent much of the past two years in the Balkan region.

Related...

http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/chronicle/archive/2004/05/30/INGMC6PKMI1.DTL

Izbor za 15.jun

Former Yugoslavia in 1990: Why It Had a Bad Prognosis (by Håkan Wiberg)
http://www.transnational.org/forum/meet/2004/Wiberg_BadPrognosis_YU.html
--------------------------------------------------------------------------
Ethnic Violence erupts in Kosovo (by Scott Taylor)
http://www.espritdecorps.ca/new_page_170.htm

Violence is not the path towards a European future
http://groups.yahoo.com/group/decani/message/82343

Reuters: Interview: Ex-Rebel Leader Calls Time on UN in Kosovo (by Matthew Robinson)
http://www.globalpolicy.org/security/issues/kosovo1/2004/0611interview.htm

Green Left Weekly: Washington Seeks New Military Base (by Stephen Katsinaris)
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/1153359/posts

NYT: Editorial: Military Bases in Germany
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/1153178/posts

Halifax Herald: A detour with Kurdish secret police (by Scott Taylor)
http://www.espritdecorps.ca/new_page_192.htm

Halifax Herald: Kurdish Tensions Rising (by Scott Taylor)
http://www.espritdecorps.ca/new_page_188.htm

Kurds: Another American ally about to be betrayed (by Srdja Trifkovic)
http://www.chroniclesmagazine.org/News/Trifkovic04/NewsST061304.html

A very hot June (by Spyros Payiatakis)
http://www.ekathimerini.com/4dcgi/news/columns_2551898KathiLev&xml/&aspKath/columns.asp?fdate=14/06/2004

The consequences of weakness (by Gunduz Aktan)
http://www.turkishdailynews.com/FrTDN/latest/gunduz.HTM

European governments rocked by EU election results (by Peter Schwarz)
http://www.wsws.org/articles/2004/jun2004/euro-j15_prn.shtml

Europe votes Against (by Timothy Bancroft-Hinchey)
http://english.pravda.ru/printed.html?news_id=13093

Izbor za 16.jun

206 paratroopers who shocked the world (by Alexander Khramchikhin)
http://english.pravda.ru/printed.html?news_id=13094
----------------------------------------------------
International observers welcome Serbia's progress towards electing president
http://www.osce.org/news/generate.pf.php3?news_id=4150

OSCE Kosovo Mission presents document on informal settlements
http://www.osce.org/news/generate.pf.php3?news_id=4153

Cyprus 'sets record straight' at UN (by George Gilson)
http://www.athensnews.gr/athweb/nathens.prnt_article?e=C&f=&t=01&m=A11&aa=1

Kurdish releases could herald new era of peace (by Burak Bekdil)
http://www.ekathimerini.com/4dcgi/_w_articles_world_3617097_15/06/2004_43937

Romania Won't Vote on Security Council Resolution on ICC (by Ovidiu Barbulescu)
http://www.balkantimes.com/default3.asp?lang=english&page=process_print&article_id=24619

Arms and the NATO summit
http://www.janes.com/security/international_security/news/jid/jid040610_1_n.shtml

Defusing the nuclear Middle East (by Bennett Ramberg)
http://www.thebulletin.org/issues/2004/mj04/mj04ramberg.html

Unity among imperialists? A pipedream! (by Yossi Schwartz)
http://www.marxist.com/MiddleEast/imperialis_unity0604.html

Izbor za 17.jun

Where judges stand on the Milosevic "Trial" after the prosecution case
http://www.un.org/icty/milosevic/trialc/judgement/mil-dec040616e.pdf

Decision on motion of acquittal in the Milosevic case
http://www.un.org/icty/pressreal/2004/p858-e.htm
------------------------------------------------
dpa: KFOR commander: Fragile Kosovo needs solution soon
http://www.reliefweb.int/w/rwb.nsf/6686f45896f15dbc852567ae00530132/121dd878b184bf07c1256eb500481fca?OpenDocument

Reuters: UN to Resume Kosovo Privatisation
http://www.seeurope.net/en/Story.php?StoryID=51408

Bulgaria All Set to Join the EU, Probably
http://www.balkanalysis.com/modules.php?name=News&file=print&sid=360

Editorial: Crucial turning point
http://www.ekathimerini.com/4dcgi/_w_articles_columns_4774691_16/06/2004_43985

Where are the EU's Final Borders? (by Laza Kekic)
http://www.moscowtimes.ru/stories/2004/06/17/006-print.html

Industrial nations tie foreign aid to support for "war on terror" (by Barry Mason)
http://www.wsws.org/articles/2004/jun2004/aidd-j17_prn.shtml

A drunkard means otherwise than in wine
http://english.peopledaily.com.cn/200406/16/print20040616_146546.html

IPS: US military on the move (by Jim Lobe)
http://www.atimes.com/atimes/Front_Page/FF17Aa03.html

Where judges stand on the Milosevic "Trial" after the prosecution case
http://www.un.org/icty/milosevic/trialc/judgement/mil-dec040616e.pdf

Decision on motion of acquittal in the Milosevic case
http://www.un.org/icty/pressreal/2004/p858-e.htm
------------------------------------------------
dpa: KFOR commander: Fragile Kosovo needs solution soon
http://www.reliefweb.int/w/rwb.nsf/6686f45896f15dbc852567ae00530132/121dd878b184bf07c1256eb500481fca?OpenDocument

Reuters: UN to Resume Kosovo Privatisation
http://www.seeurope.net/en/Story.php?StoryID=51408

Bulgaria All Set to Join the EU, Probably
http://www.balkanalysis.com/modules.php?name=News&file=print&sid=360

Editorial: Crucial turning point
http://www.ekathimerini.com/4dcgi/_w_articles_columns_4774691_16/06/2004_43985

Where are the EU's Final Borders? (by Laza Kekic)
http://www.moscowtimes.ru/stories/2004/06/17/006-print.html

Industrial nations tie foreign aid to support for "war on terror" (by Barry Mason)
http://www.wsws.org/articles/2004/jun2004/aidd-j17_prn.shtml

A drunkard means otherwise than in wine
http://english.peopledaily.com.cn/200406/16/print20040616_146546.html

IPS: US military on the move (by Jim Lobe)
http://www.atimes.com/atimes/Front_Page/FF17Aa03.html

Izbor za 17.jun

Where judges stand on the Milosevic "Trial" after the prosecution case
http://www.un.org/icty/milosevic/trialc/judgement/mil-dec040616e.pdf

Decision on motion of acquittal in the Milosevic case
http://www.un.org/icty/pressreal/2004/p858-e.htm
------------------------------------------------
dpa: KFOR commander: Fragile Kosovo needs solution soon
http://www.reliefweb.int/w/rwb.nsf/6686f45896f15dbc852567ae00530132/121dd878b184bf07c1256eb500481fca?OpenDocument

Reuters: UN to Resume Kosovo Privatisation
http://www.seeurope.net/en/Story.php?StoryID=51408

Bulgaria All Set to Join the EU, Probably
http://www.balkanalysis.com/modules.php?name=News&file=print&sid=360

Editorial: Crucial turning point
http://www.ekathimerini.com/4dcgi/_w_articles_columns_4774691_16/06/2004_43985

Where are the EU's Final Borders? (by Laza Kekic)
http://www.moscowtimes.ru/stories/2004/06/17/006-print.html

Industrial nations tie foreign aid to support for "war on terror" (by Barry Mason)
http://www.wsws.org/articles/2004/jun2004/aidd-j17_prn.shtml

A drunkard means otherwise than in wine
http://english.peopledaily.com.cn/200406/16/print20040616_146546.html

IPS: US military on the move (by Jim Lobe)
http://www.atimes.com/atimes/Front_Page/FF17Aa03.html

Izbor za 17.jun

Where judges stand on the Milosevic "Trial" after the prosecution case
http://www.un.org/icty/milosevic/trialc/judgement/mil-dec040616e.pdf

Decision on motion of acquittal in the Milosevic case
http://www.un.org/icty/pressreal/2004/p858-e.htm
------------------------------------------------
dpa: KFOR commander: Fragile Kosovo needs solution soon
http://www.reliefweb.int/w/rwb.nsf/6686f45896f15dbc852567ae00530132/121dd878b184bf07c1256eb500481fca?OpenDocument

Reuters: UN to Resume Kosovo Privatisation
http://www.seeurope.net/en/Story.php?StoryID=51408

Bulgaria All Set to Join the EU, Probably
http://www.balkanalysis.com/modules.php?name=News&file=print&sid=360

Editorial: Crucial turning point
http://www.ekathimerini.com/4dcgi/_w_articles_columns_4774691_16/06/2004_43985

Where are the EU's Final Borders? (by Laza Kekic)
http://www.moscowtimes.ru/stories/2004/06/17/006-print.html

Industrial nations tie foreign aid to support for "war on terror" (by Barry Mason)
http://www.wsws.org/articles/2004/jun2004/aidd-j17_prn.shtml

A drunkard means otherwise than in wine
http://english.peopledaily.com.cn/200406/16/print20040616_146546.html

IPS: US military on the move (by Jim Lobe)
http://www.atimes.com/atimes/Front_Page/FF17Aa03.html

Where judges stand on the Milosevic "Trial" after the prosecution case
http://www.un.org/icty/milosevic/trialc/judgement/mil-dec040616e.pdf

Decision on motion of acquittal in the Milosevic case
http://www.un.org/icty/pressreal/2004/p858-e.htm
------------------------------------------------
dpa: KFOR commander: Fragile Kosovo needs solution soon
http://www.reliefweb.int/w/rwb.nsf/6686f45896f15dbc852567ae00530132/121dd878b184bf07c1256eb500481fca?OpenDocument

Reuters: UN to Resume Kosovo Privatisation
http://www.seeurope.net/en/Story.php?StoryID=51408

Bulgaria All Set to Join the EU, Probably
http://www.balkanalysis.com/modules.php?name=News&file=print&sid=360

Editorial: Crucial turning point
http://www.ekathimerini.com/4dcgi/_w_articles_columns_4774691_16/06/2004_43985

Where are the EU's Final Borders? (by Laza Kekic)
http://www.moscowtimes.ru/stories/2004/06/17/006-print.html

Industrial nations tie foreign aid to support for "war on terror" (by Barry Mason)
http://www.wsws.org/articles/2004/jun2004/aidd-j17_prn.shtml

A drunkard means otherwise than in wine
http://english.peopledaily.com.cn/200406/16/print20040616_146546.html

IPS: US military on the move (by Jim Lobe)
http://www.atimes.com/atimes/Front_Page/FF17Aa03.html

Balkan ghosts

 

Balkan ghosts


By Helle Dale

So much has happened in theworldsincethe Balkan wars of the 1990s that the international community seems to have lost sight of the fact that the wheels of justice are still turning to bring Serbian and Croatian war criminals to justice. Even as we have debated the worth of the International Criminal Court, actual prosecutions of real crimes against humanity in the former Yugoslavia have slipped from public view.
    This week, Judge Theodor Meron, president of the International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia, was in Washington for consultations and in New York to argue at the U.N. Security Council for continued full funding for bringing criminals to justice. 
 
    "What worries me is that the international community becomes blase to the idea of the court. People get tired and they don't pay up their dues," he says. Judge Meron, a mild-mannered man, speaks with evident passion. As a Holocaust survivor from Poland, erstwhile resident of Israel and a U.S. citizen, his deep commitment to see the tribunal to its rightful and just conclusion is highly understandable.
    "After half a century of doing nothing, we have shown that credible trials are possible. We have created a body of war crimes jurisprudence as well as a body of procedural international law. This is an important legacy for the future."
    As we have witnessed many other horrors in the intervening years, a reminder may be in order.
    For three years in the early 1990s, the war that raged between Bosnians desiring independence and Serbs refusing to allow them to part from the former federation of Yugoslavia resulted in horrendous war crimes committed by all sides. Detention camps sprung up, civilians were shelled, millions of people were driven from their homes, more than 20,000 women were systematically raped, 200,000 people were killed, and men of military age were murdered and buried in mass graves.
    In Croatia, which had declared independence in 1991, Serbs attempted to keep control of the Vukovar region, bombarding the town for three months solid in 1992. Later Croatian troops swept through the Serb-controlled region of Krajina, forcing tens of thousands of Croatian Serbs to flee from their homes toward Serbia proper.
    In Kosovo, in 1999, then-President Slobodan Milosevic of Serbia attempted yet another ethnic cleansing campaign against the Albanian population there, burning houses and murdering residents to drive the population out and replace it with Serbs. After NATO finally intervened and bombed Serbia to stop this action, Albanian refugees came back and their leaders in turn drove 100,000 Kosovar Serbs from the province. Europe had not seen crimes against humanity like these since World War II.
    With strong support from the United States, the International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia was set up in 1993 by the U.N. Security Council. An ad hoc institution, it was later given jurisdiction over the prosecutions of the Rwandan genocide as well, an even more horrific event that took place approximately at the same time, costing more than 1 million people their lives.
     The Yugoslav and Rwandan tribunal is designed to go out of business when its work is done, which the United Nations has decided will be 2008. There is already a freeze on the hiring of law clerks, which according to Judge Meron is premature.
     The highly publicized trial of Mr. Milosevic is only now entering the defense stage, which the accused insists on conducting himself. After 35 prosecutions and 17 guilty pleas, there are still 33 prosecutions pending, and 20 wanted war criminals are still at large — mainly suspected of hiding in Serbia — including two of the most famous, Radovan Karadzic and Ratko Mladic. And it's not just the suspects that are missing. According to Judge Meron, Belgrade continues to drag its feet on delivering documents and opening archives. This contrasts with the Bosnians and the Croats, who are largely cooperating with the tribunal.
    Judge Meron has an idea for speeding things up. "I am going to propose in my monthly report to the Security Council that the future of prosecutions is in national courts ... I want to establish a special war crimes chamber at the court in Sarajevo to try people who had committed crimes in Bosnia-Herzegovina." He would like to do the same for Croatia.
    However, he says, "Belgrade has shown such a lack of cooperation that we cannot send accused Serbian war criminals back." The fact that the leader of the winning party in last weekend's Serbian elections, Vojislav Seselj, is one of the prisoners awaiting trial in the Hague does not bode particularly well for public sentiment among Serbs.
    If we want to close the chapter on the Balkan wars properly, the tribunal's work must go on.
    
    Helle Dale is director of Foreign Policy and Defense Studies at the Heritage Foundation. E-mail: helle.dale@heritage.org.

Related...

http://www.washtimes.com/op-ed/20040615-090332-2837r.htm

Milosevic wants Clinton, Blair, Schroeder subpoenaed as witnesses in his war crimes trial

Milosevic wants Clinton, Blair, Schroeder subpoenaed as witnesses in his war crimes trial ANTHONY DEUTSCH, Associated Press Writer		Thursday, June 17, 2004
(06-17) 06:51 PDT THE HAGUE, Netherlands (AP) -- Former Yugoslav President Slobodan Milosevic said Thursday he wants former President Bill Clinton, German Chancellor Gerhard Schroeder and British Prime Minister Tony Blair to be subpoenaed as witnesses in his war crimes trial. They were among nearly 1,400 witnesses Milosevic sought to call in his defense case, set to start July 5. U.N. judges at the Yugoslav tribunal did not immediately rule on the request. "In effect, you are asking us to subpoena those persons. You will have to produce, in writing, reasons for the issuance by the chamber of that subpoena," presiding judge Patrick Robinson said. Milosevic said he would call the Western leaders to testify about the "war waged against Yugoslavia" and pressed for a quick decision. The three headed their governments in the 1990s during the period covered by Milosevic's indictment. "Clinton has to appear here. Schroeder, Blair, others, too," Milosevic said at a procedural hearing. "The reasons for which Mr. Clinton should appear here are quite clear. He decided upon many matters which had to do with Yugoslavia. He uttered a series of lies as a pretext to the bombing of Yugoslavia. He gave the orders." Clinton was president during a 78-day NATO bombing campaign of Yugoslavia in 1999 that forced Serbia to end its crackdown on the ethnic Albanian population of the southern Serbian province of Kosovo. The court set a four-hour limit for Milosevic's opening statement and reaffirmed he will have 150 trial days to present his case. It will consider his request that the court seek intelligence service documents from Britain, Germany and the United States. Milosevic said he has 1,631 witnesses in mind and has presented the names of nearly 1,400 of them to the court. Among other names submitted to the court were former NATO commander Wesley Clark and longtime West German Foreign Minister Hans-Dietrich Genscher. Clark testified for the prosecution in December. "The most terrible accusations have been uttered here," Milosevic told the court. "The most flagrant lies have been spoken here as well, and the only means to fight that is to present the truth." Appearing energetic and characteristically defiant despite his frail health, Milosevic told the judges, "I should like here, before the public, to prove that these are all false indictments, false accusations against Serbia, against the Federal Republic of Yugoslavia, and against myself." Robinson cut Milosevic short, warning him against making speeches. He instructed the former Serb leader to provide more details about witnesses he wants to call, such as the subject of their testimony. Milosevic is representing himself against 66 charges of war crimes filed by prosecutors, including genocide, during the Balkan wars of the 1990s. He has had nearly three months to prepare his defense since prosecutors completed their case in February. He is assisted by several lawyers. The 61-year-old Milosevic showed no sign of the ailments that has delayed the trial for months. He has a weak heart and high blood pressure, and has complained of fatigue and stress. The judges said they won't limit the number of witnesses he calls, as long as doesn't his allotted 150 days. Milosevic has the right to keep the content of his case confidential but must disclose a witness list each week to prosecutors, the judges said. During the prosecution case, which began in February 2002, nearly 300 witnesses were called and thousands of documents were presented. The judges rejected Milosevic's request for an extra month to interview witnesses, questioning the relevance of many of them. On Wednesday, the three-judge tribunal dismissed a motion filed by three independent lawyers to drop the genocide charges. The judges dismissed the argument by the lawyers, appointed by the court to ensure fairness, that the prosecution had failed to provide sufficient evidence to support the charges.

http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/news/archive/2004/06/17/international0951EDT0520.DTL