THE HAGUE/ZAGREB, Dec 18 (Hina) - Slobodan Milosevic knew that General Ratko Mladic would commit the massacre in Srebrenica and allegedly warned him not to do it, a former NATO commander, US General Wesley Clark, said in his testimony
at the UN war crimes tribunal in The Hague, the transcripts of which were made public on Thursday.
THE HAGUE/ZAGREB, Dec 18 (Hina) - Slobodan Milosevic knew that General
Ratko Mladic would commit the massacre in Srebrenica and allegedly
warned him not to do it, a former NATO commander, US General Wesley
Clark, said in his testimony at the UN war crimes tribunal in The
Hague, the transcripts of which were made public on Thursday.#L#
Retired General Clark, currently the presidential candidate of the
Democratic Party, testified at the UN war crimes tribunal for the
former Yugoslavia behind closed doors on Monday and Tuesday. His
testimony was made public with a 48-hour delay at the request of
Washington.
Clark described a series of meetings with Milosevic that were held in
1995 as part of the peace process in Bosnia-Herzegovina and during the
war in Kosovo in 1998/99.
He said that at a meeting in Belgrade on 17 August 1995, Milosevic was
trying to assure US negotiators, led by Richard Holbrooke, of his
unquestionable influence on Bosnian Serbs and requested that the peace
plan be negotiated with him and not the Bosnian Serb leadership.
Clark said that during a break in the talks he asked Milosevic why he
had allowed General Mladic to kill the people captured in Srebrenica
if he had influence on Bosnian Serbs. Milosevic answered that he had
warned Mladic against it, but that the general did not obey him.
It was clear that he knew what would happen, Clark said describing the
talks that were conducted one month after Serbs killed more than 7,000
Muslims in Srebrenica.
At the request of the prosecution, Clark described how Milosevic made
all decisions on behalf of Bosnian Serbs at the peace talks in Dayton,
including the decision on border demarcation. In the end, he signed
the peace agreement on behalf of Bosnian Serbs, Clark said. Referring
to intelligence data, the US general also spoke about links between
the Bosnian Serb army and the Yugoslav Army, especially their joint
anti-aircraft defence system.
The prosecution dedicated the largest part of the questioning to
Kosovo, i.e. the talks which Clark, as NATO commander, had with
Milosevic before NATO's air campaign in Yugoslavia in 1999. Clark was
not questioned about NATO's 11-day campaign, which put an end to the
intervention of Serbian forces in Kosovo.
He described talks conducted in the autumn and winter of 1998, at
which NATO demanded the withdrawal of Yugoslav army and police forces
from Kosovo. The talks were also attended by Javier Solana, at the
time NATO's secretary-general. Clark said that Milosevic at the time
exercised absolute control over army generals, especially through the
joint army and police command in Kosovo.
He described how Milosevic openly expressed his stand on the issue of
Kosovo at one of the meetings. "General Clark, we know how to deal
with those murderers, rapists and criminals. We killed all such people
in Drenica in 1946," Milosevic said to the astonishment of NATO
officials, Clark said.
(Hina) rml sb