THE HAGUE/ZAGREB, Nov 5 (Hina) - A senior official of UN peace keeping forces in Bosnia between 1993 and 1999 testified about the Serb siege of Sarajevo at the Slobodan Milosevic trial before the UN war crimes tribunal at The Hague
(ICTY) on Wednesday.
THE HAGUE/ZAGREB, Nov 5 (Hina) - A senior official of UN peace
keeping forces in Bosnia between 1993 and 1999 testified about the
Serb siege of Sarajevo at the Slobodan Milosevic trial before the UN
war crimes tribunal at The Hague (ICTY) on Wednesday. #L#
David Harland, who was a high ranking official of the UN mission for
civil and political affairs, gave his main deposition on September
18 when the cross-examination was interrupted due to the
defendant's illness.
He said then that the Bosnian Serb strategy while shelling Sarajevo
was to force the Bosnian government to adopt a peace agreement under
their terms. At the time, Serbs held 70 percent of Bosnian
territory.
Bosnian Muslims publicly advocated a truce but were actually
undermining it because it did not suit them for the situation to
stabilise with only 18 percent of the territory under their
control, the witness said.
The witness also described the intensity of the attacks, the sniper
campaign against civilians and other incidents such as the open
market massacre when 66 civilians were killed. He said that the city
was shelled with an average 1,000 missiles daily.
The 44 month-long siege of Sarajevo is a separate part of the
indictment against Milosevic charging him with genocide in Bosnia-
Herzegovina.
During today's cross-examination, Milosevic attempted to downplay
his responsibility, claiming he had been requesting the Bosnian
Serb leadership to lift the siege because it was detrimental for
Serb interests. The defendant also attempted to prove that Serb
forces around Sarajavo were deployed at locations that were mostly
populated by Serbs even before the war, and said that Serbs in and
outside the city were also victims.
Harland dismissed Milosevic's claims, stating that the majority of
Sarajevo municipalities had a mixed population. The witness said
those municipalities became mostly Serb-populated only after the
ethnic cleansing of some 100,000 non-Serbs.
Responding to Milosevic's question as to what happened to some
150,000 Serbs in Sarajevo, Harland said the majority lived in Serb-
controlled areas, while 40,000 remained in parts of the city
controlled by the Army of Bosnia-Herzegovina and they were not
allowed to leave. Their forced detention in Sarajevo represented a
violation of the international law and the UN mission opposed that,
Harland said.
The witness also described his frequent meetings with Radovan
Karadzic, Ratko Mladic and other Bosnian Serb leaders, as well as
those with Bosnia-Herzegovina government officials.
It was horrible when Karadzic was fabricating facts when it suited
him, the witness said. Harland said Mladic often travelled to
Belgrade, but the defendant said Mladic was visiting his family.
The witness said Mladic was visiting the defendant, stating that
international representative Carl Bildt saw Mladic with Milosevic
on July 7, 1995, during the Srebrenica massacre. The defendant said
he did not know about the massacre and changed the subject.
During the cross-examination, Milosevic attempted to prove that
Bosnian Muslims themselves were responsible for the slaughter of 66
civilians at the Sarajevo open market in February 1994, after which
NATO launched strikes on Republika Srpska forces.
Amicus curiae Branislav Tapuskovic went a step further and
suggested that Muslims were responsible not only for the market
massacre and other incidents but that Bosnian Army snipers were
taking out civilians in Sarajevo, but Harland refuted such claims.
The trial of Slobodan Milosevic, who is indicted for genocide in
Bosnia-Herzegovina and crimes against humanity in Croatia and
Kosovo, will resume next Tuesday.
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