Testimony of Wesley Clark at Milosevic Trial
Page 30353
1 Monday, 15 December 2003
2 [Open session]
3 [The accused entered court]
4 --- Upon commencing at 9.05 a.m.
5 THE ACCUSED: [Interpretation] Mr. May.
6 JUDGE MAY: Just one moment to get us ready.
7 Yes. I'm going to start with Mr. Nice. Mr. Nice, is there
8 anything which you need to address us on immediately before the accused
9 raises some point?
10 MR. NICE: I have several points to raise to deal with, matters
11 that would typically, I think, be dealt with in private session even in a
12 fully public session. They are procedural, they deal with disclosure to
13 the accused, matters of that sort. I'm happy to do them now or after the
14 accused has made his point.
15 JUDGE MAY: We need to deal anyway with a number of administrative
16 matters but we will start with the accused since we're in open session.
17 Yes.
18 THE ACCUSED: [Interpretation] Mr. May, at the end of last week,
19 when there were no hearings, I received a decision from the Registry in
20 which I am prohibited of having any communication by telephone or any
21 visits, and I don't understand why this came about. Are you informed of
22 this? And I consider this to be in violent -- in gross violation of human
23 rights, and I would request that the matter be addressed.
24 JUDGE MAY: It's not a matter we'll deal with at the moment. We
25 will look to see what the point is, and if necessary, we'll come back toPage 30354
1 it in due course. For the moment, we will deal with those matters which
2 are concerned with this particular issue.
3 Yes, you want to go into private session, Mr. Nice.
4 MR. NICE: Yes, please.
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18 [Open session]
19 JUDGE MAY: Are we in open session? Yes.
20 There are two -- three matters, potentially, which we have to
21 address at this stage. The first is the extent, if any, it is appropriate
22 with this important witness to have any evidence given under Rule 89(F),
23 he dealing with the accused very substantially on conversations, some of
24 which have been in dispute, in some cases heavily in dispute. And it
25 would therefore seem to us to be appropriate that those matters should bePage 30363
1 dealt with in open session.
2 We are concerned at the evidence which it is proposed to be given
3 about the conflict - I'm referring to the end of the statement - and the
4 amount of resultant cross-examination which there must be, in fairness, if
5 the evidence is given.
6 And finally, we have to deal with the admissibility of the book as
7 a whole.
8 [The witness entered court]
9 JUDGE MAY: General Clark, I'm sorry you've been brought in.
10 There is a misunderstanding. But it doesn't matter because we're going to
11 have a debate about the extent of your evidence and how much we're going
12 to admit; and unless anybody objects, it seems to me, if you don't mind
13 sitting, listening, it may be no harm is done.
14 THE WITNESS: I have no objection, Your Honour.
15 MR. NICE: Your Honour, as to the second of the points that the
16 court expressed as being a matter of concern, could the Court possibly
17 identify the particular passages which you say are concerning because of
18 the degree to which they would open up cross-examination? There's 44 --
19 JUDGE MAY: Let us deal with it in order.
20 MR. NICE: Yes.
21 JUDGE MAY: First of all, the question of live evidence.
22 MR. NICE: Yes.
23 JUDGE MAY: I can tell you we have in mind that the witness's
24 evidence should be given in live.
25 MR. NICE: Very well. It's a matter entirely for the Court. AsPage 30364
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1 you know, when we first instituted 89(F) statements, we said we would
2 apply comprehensively in order not to take any advantage by selecting that
3 which would be given live. We're entirely in the Court's hands. For our
4 part, there are both exchanges where the previous witness, Klaus Naumann,
5 was present, which might have fallen for different consideration, and
6 there are passages where the accused is not present but other named
7 persons are. It had occurred to us those might have been stronger
8 candidates for 89(F) but we don't say any more than that.
9 JUDGE MAY: Very well. Next, the book. We've had a chance of
10 reading those passages on which you rely.
11 MR. NICE: Yes.
12 JUDGE MAY: And they amount to some 10 per cent, if that, of the
13 total pages in the book; 40-odd pages against 400-odd pages.
14 MR. NICE: Yes.
15 JUDGE MAY: And having read the statement, it seem us to broadly
16 that they cover the same material in the most important part, and the
17 others, I should have thought, were not of such significance that they
18 should be admitted. But in any event, there is the question of principle,
19 which is how right it is for a small part of a book to allow the admission
20 of the whole, which of course deals with much broader matters, and we are
21 therefore minded not to admit the book.
22 MR. NICE: Your Honour, we are, of course, in the Court's hands,
23 and it may be something that falls for better consideration at the end
24 rather than at the beginning of the evidence and cross-examination.
25 We provided you with only a limited number of pages in order, wePage 30366
1 hoped, to help and to save the Chamber from the burden of having to go
2 through the totality of the book. We've considered the admission of the
3 book against the rulings that have been made under Rule 70, because of
4 course those follow on an application for limitation of evidence made by
5 us as part of the necessary Rule 70 agreements and requirements, and there
6 is an argument that examination, or certainly cross-examination, outside
7 the identified pages would be in contravention of the ruling of the
8 Chamber.
9 We considered that yesterday with both the witness, his lawyers,
10 but more importantly perhaps the United States government lawyers, and I
11 think that the view taken was that a practical approach might be to say
12 could the whole book be admitted and the witness would be happy to answer
13 questions on anything within its ambit. But if the Court is at first
14 sight and at this stage inclined towards the view that less rather than
15 more is appropriate, we, I think, are happy to go along with that and
16 await the position at the end of the cross-examination.
17 JUDGE MAY: Very well. That's the course that we will follow.
18 MR. NICE: And then finally, Your Honour said that there were
19 particular passages of the statement that might have led to broader
20 cross-examination or more extensive cross-examination that could be
21 allowed for in the time available for this witness. I'm not sure exactly
22 which paragraphs the Court had in mind, because we could consider them and
23 see to what extent we really wish them to go in.
24 JUDGE MAY: But you may wish to consider paragraphs 39 onwards,
25 which deal entirely with the conflict.Page 30367
1 Now, it's a matter for you what course you want to take, but the
2 issue is if such evidence is given, what cross-examination it opens up in
3 fairness to the trial as a whole.
4 MR. NICE: Your Honour, may -- on the assumption that we go beyond
5 the first break, may I come back to that immediately after the first
6 break?
7 JUDGE MAY: Yes. And I suppose the final issue is timing. How
8 long do you anticipate you might be?
9 MR. NICE: I wouldn't have thought that my examination of the
10 witness will last very much more than one session, one ordinary
11 one-and-a-half-hour session. The statement is compact, and the witness
12 knows his material.
13 JUDGE MAY: And the witness has made himself available, as we have
14 in our order stated, for two days; is that right?
15 MR. NICE: Yes, I think so. I haven't actually technically asked
16 him when his return flight is. My oversight, but --
17 JUDGE MAY: Well, no doubt that can be done.
18 Mr. Kay, can you assist us whether you or Mr. Tapuskovic intend to
19 ask any questions?
20 MR. KAY: Your Honour, the matter so far in relation to the book,
21 in my view, it would be probably the position that we can take stock at
22 the end of the evidence to see where we are. We've often made decisions
23 at the start and ended up changing them by the finish of testimony.
24 In terms of time for cross-examination, the amici would request
25 half an hour.Page 30368
1 JUDGE MAY: Thank you.
2 THE ACCUSED: [Interpretation] Mr. May.
3 JUDGE MAY: Yes, Mr. Milosevic.
4 THE ACCUSED: [Interpretation] I don't quite understand the
5 position of this witness since my understanding was that he would be
6 testifying in closed session and that you described that as a temporarily
7 closed session, and then, in the meantime, representatives of the
8 government of his country may be able to review the transcript, to approve
9 some of it, to redact some of it possibly, and only then to release it to
10 the public. I am not aware of any legal court in the world delegating its
11 authority of this kind to any government. This would be the first time
12 for any such thing to happen. Of course, you consider yourself to be a
13 legal court.
14 JUDGE MAY: We are not going to argue this point. We have made
15 our order. The reason that the government have any rights in the matter
16 at all is this, that in order to provide information to this Court, it is
17 occasionally - and I stress occasionally - necessary for governments to do
18 so, and they are allowed to do so under our Rules on certain terms, and
19 these are one of the terms which has been followed in this case.
20 Yes, Mr. Nice. Perhaps we should begin, and we will ask General
21 Clark to take the declaration if he would.
22 MR. NICE: May I diffidently remind Your Honour that you were
23 going to make some rulings. I didn't know if you intended to make them
24 before the witness started his evidence. No. Very well. My
25 misunderstanding.Page 30369
1 JUDGE MAY: I think all the necessary rulings have been made.
2 THE WITNESS: Your Honours, I solemnly declare that I will speak
3 the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth.
4 JUDGE MAY: Thank you. If you'd like to take a seat.
5 WITNESS: WESLEY CLARK
6 Examined by Mr. Nice:
7 Q. It's Wesley Clark; correct?
8 A. Yes, it is.
9 Q. And General Clark, for you are indeed a general, your history is
10 set out in a summary of your life which is at tab 2 of a bundle of
11 exhibits.
12 MR. NICE: May that bundle be given a comprehensive exhibit
13 number.
14 JUDGE MAY: Yes. There is an issue as to whether tab 1 should be
15 admitted because we've not admitted it under Rule 89(F). But we'll --
16 what we'll do is we'll give the bundle a general number and we can review
17 the position at the end as to which tabs are admitted.
18 THE REGISTRAR: 617, Your Honours.
19 MR. NICE: May the witness at some stage have the bundle of
20 exhibits -- may the witness at some stage have that bundle of exhibits if
21 that's convenient.
22 Q. And General Clark, without going through your personal history in
23 detail, for it's a matter of public record, does it include that you
24 graduated from West Point in 1966, from 1994 to 1996 you served as
25 Director for Strategic Plans and Policy for the Joint Chiefs of Staff withPage 30370
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1 responsibilities for worldwide United States military strategic planning;
2 that from 1996 to 1997 you served as Commander-in-Chief of the United
3 States Southern Command, Panama, where you were responsible for the
4 direction of the United States military activities in Latin America and
5 the Caribbean; and from 1997 through to May of 2000 you were NATO Supreme
6 Allied Commander and Commander-in-Chief of the United States European
7 Command, and in this position you commanded the Operation Allied Force
8 which was NATO's first major combat action in the area of the former
9 Yugoslavia?
10 A. This is correct.
11 Q. General Clark, your first encounter with the accused, I think, was
12 on the 17th of August of 1995 where you met him as one of a delegation
13 that included Richard Holbrooke and the late Joseph Kruzel and others,
14 including Colonel Drew and Robert Frasure; is that correct?
15 A. That's correct.
16 Q. And was this part of shuttle negotiations for a Bosnian peace
17 deal?
18 A. Yes, it was.
19 Q. Can you give us a little of the setting: What was the topics, who
20 was running it, and so on?
21 A. Richard Holbrooke was the leader of the American delegation, and
22 this was our first meeting with Serb President Slobodan Milosevic. We
23 wanted to meet each of the leaders in the Balkans and present to them the
24 general outline of what we believed to be a possible settlement that could
25 be achieved, including a settlement achieved with the presence of somePage 30372
1 American troops as part of a NATO mission. And this was the first meeting
2 with President Milosevic.
3 We went to -- went to his office there in the capital of Belgrade.
4 Q. Was one of the topics who should be representing the Bosnian Serbs
5 in negotiating a peace plan; and if so, what was the accused's reaction to
6 that?
7 A. Yes. This was the question, because it had come up previously
8 that some people were talking to Karadzic, and we wanted to raise this
9 issue with Slobodan Milosevic, and so we asked him. "Should we be dealing
10 with you or should we be dealing with the Bosnian Serbs?" And then
11 President Milosevic said, "With me, of course." And as we continued the
12 dialogue, we said, "Well, why?" And the basic reason was that he could
13 deliver the peace agreement. And this -- this seemed improbable on the
14 face of it; he was the president of a different country. And he said
15 -- he said, "No. Give me the terms of the agreement, we'll have an
16 election, a referendum on this agreement." And we said, "Well, why would
17 a referendum in a different country bind the Bosnian Serbs?" He said,
18 "They will not go against the will of the Serb people."
19 Q. There came a time when you spoke to him with only one or perhaps a
20 couple of people present, I think.
21 A. That's right.
22 Q. Can you give the setting for that and then tell the Court your
23 recollection of precisely what was said.
24 A. Well, after we had this exchange, a break was taken and Ambassador
25 Holbrooke went up to visit the facilities outside. The meeting generallyPage 30373
1 broke up. President Milosevic stayed there. And Assistant Secretary
2 Kruzel and I approached President Milosevic as he was standing there in a
3 casual setting outside the formal meeting, and I was still wrestling with
4 the idea as to how it is that Milosevic could maintain that he had the
5 authority and the power to deliver the Serb compliance with the agreement.
6 And so I simply asked him. I said, "Mr. President, you say you have so
7 much influence over the Bosnian Serbs, but how is it then, if you have
8 such influence, that you allowed General Mladic to kill all those people
9 in Srebrenica?" And Milosevic looked at me and he paused for a moment.
10 He then said, "Well, General Clark," he said, "I warned Mladic not to do
11 this, but he didn't listen to me."
12 Q. Your understanding of what he was referring to, if you have an
13 understanding beyond the words themselves, can you give it to us?
14 A. Certainly.
15 Q. And explain, if it does have a context and understanding, how you
16 arrive at that understanding.
17 A. Well, it was very clear what I was asking was about the massacre
18 at Srebrenica. When I said "kill all these people," it wasn't a military
19 operation, it was the massacre. And this was in fact what had been in the
20 news. It had been the starting point for the international agreements
21 which led to NATO's increased resolve to see an end to the fighting in the
22 Balkans. So it was very clear what I was asking. It was also, to me,
23 very clear what Milosevic was answering. He was answering that he did
24 know this in advance, and he was walking the fine line between saying he
25 was powerful enough, influential enough to have known it but trying toPage 30374
1 excuse from himself the responsibility for having done it.
2 Q. The next meeting, I think, was on the 13th of September, or a
3 subsequent meeting was on the 13th of September at the accused's lodge
4 near Belgrade.
5 MR. NICE: Paragraph 5 of the statement serving as a summary, Your
6 Honours.
7 Q. Did you have a discussion with Milosevic on this occasion with
8 expectations that he might be able to make some contact with Mladic and
9 Karadzic?
10 A. Well, we had never -- we had never expected when we went to this
11 meeting that there would be a meeting with Mladic and Karadzic. This was
12 a surprise. This was during the period of the bombing.
13 May I just ask? I have a technical problem with this computer.
14 Maybe this button was hit or something, and I don't know which button to
15 turn it back on with. Thank you.
16 We went there as part of their shuttle diplomacy, and the bombing
17 was going on. President Milosevic had been saying this bombing was bad
18 for peace, and we of course were -- the bombing was part of the pressure
19 to convince the Serbs to fall back and release the grip of terror on
20 Sarajevo. And Milosevic asked the delegation, he said, "Would you be
21 willing to meet with Karadzic and Mladic?" And Ambassador Holbrooke
22 called us aside, he said, What do you think? These men are now indicted
23 war criminals, should we meet with them in the interest of trying to stop
24 and change the situation on the ground? And the delegation agreed with
25 Holbrooke that we should do this. Holbrooke conveyed that information toPage 30375
1 Mr. Milosevic, and Mr. Milosevic said, "Well, they're here. You'll see
2 them in just a couple of minutes, they're only a couple of hundred metres
3 away." We were surprised. We didn't know where they were.
4 Q. Next topic: Did you form a view as to the VJ and Serb leadership
5 receiving operational reports from the VRS? If so, what was the view and
6 why?
7 A. It was our view that the Serb military, that the VRS was closely
8 connected to the military of the -- of Yugoslavia, the VJ. We knew this
9 from electronic evidence, from reliable sources, and we even at one point
10 went and told the Serb military that they had to turn off the air defence
11 connectivity that linked the air defence system in Bosnia with that in
12 Serbia. So there was a clear connection. We knew that the Serb military
13 had been -- had been carved out of the Yugoslav military.
14 Q. And when you asked Serb military to turn off the transmission,
15 which particular Serb military leader did you address?
16 A. It was General Perisic.
17 Q. At the Dayton negotiations, did you meet somebody called Jovica
18 Stanisic?
19 A. Yes, I did.
20 Q. What was he introduced to you as?
21 A. He was introduced to me as the head of the Serb intelligence
22 service. He had been -- he'd been rumoured to be very, very influential,
23 and some people were surprised that he was at the negotiations, but there
24 he was, and we all met him.
25 Q. The military annex drawn at the Dayton negotiations, did you dealPage 30376
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1 with Krajisnik and ask him to review a proposed military annex? If so,
2 what happened and how was the problem resolved?
3 A. We did meet with the Bosnian Serb delegation. I did hand the
4 military annex draft to Mr. Krajisnik and ask him to consider this. I
5 told him I'd like to have an answer back in the next day or two. This was
6 early on in the negotiations. And subsequently he did give me the paper
7 back, and most of the annex was simply lined through. It had the effect
8 of completely obviating the military annex. It would have put a military
9 force into Bosnia that had no authorities.
10 Q. How did you attempt to resolve it? How was it resolved as a
11 problem?
12 A. President Milosevic had previously said that if there were any
13 difficulties, to please consult with him. I arranged to see President
14 Milosevic, said that the Bosnian Serbs had rejected this military annex,
15 and asked for his help. He said, "Just give it to Milutinovic and he'll
16 take care of it." And that's exactly what happened. A day or so later, I
17 got it back from then-Foreign Minister Milutinovic. He said, "This is
18 it." There were a couple of minor changes at the beginning of the
19 document, but all those portions which had been excised by the Bosnian
20 Serbs were restored. I thanked Milutinovic.
21 Q. And what did this reveal to you about where the decision-making
22 power lay?
23 A. Well, it revealed to me that President Milosevic was fully in
24 charge of the delegation.
25 Q. During Dayton, was time spent going over military maps of variousPage 30378
1 kinds, both physical and also computer?
2 A. Yes, we did spend a great deal of time on maps.
3 Q. Was one of those maps a map that you brought from America or had
4 brought from America that's on the easel beside you?
5 A. Yes. This is a military map that was used to discuss the
6 boundaries around Sarajevo and whether Sarajevo would remain a divided
7 city or not.
8 MR. NICE: A copy of that map, Your Honours, is given the marking
9 tab 5 of Exhibit 617.
10 Q. General Clark, can you, probably from where you are but with the
11 pointer that's available, explain to the Court what the accused's part was
12 in dealing with this map.
13 A. This is the map that was used in the middle of the night
14 discussion between President Milosevic and Bosnian Muslim Prime Minister
15 Haris Silajdzic. And the discussion was, this is the city of Sarajevo,
16 this is some of the high ground around Sarajevo, this is the discussion
17 about which parts of the terrain would be given back to the Muslims. And
18 as I recall the discussion, in red here -- Milosevic had this red marker
19 and he scratched things out on it, and this was a personal -- these were
20 personal scrawlings of the leaders here.
21 Q. It's a long time ago but, reminding yourself from the map, looking
22 at, for example, the vertical line closer to Sarajevo that's been crossed
23 out and the line to the east --
24 A. I think, as I recall, this is the line that President Milosevic
25 drew in right here and crossed this one out.Page 30379
1 Q. And such a line would have achieved what for the Serb forces?
2 A. It would have given -- it would have been a give-back to the
3 Muslims around Sarajevo. It would have been an effort to resolve this
4 quarrel about how much ground would be given back around Sarajevo. It
5 would have been a concession.
6 Q. To what degree did the accused, in dealing with this map, have
7 personal knowledge, to what degree did he appear to need to speak to or
8 seek assistance from others with more detailed knowledge?
9 A. He appeared to have a great deal of personal knowledge and seemed
10 to have no need to speak with anyone else.
11 Q. Even when drawing these lines?
12 A. Correct.
13 Q. Next, the computer map. Did you work on a computer map with the
14 accused?
15 A. Yes, we did. It was actually at a time prior to this, as I recall
16 the course of the negotiations. It had to do with the corridor connecting
17 the Bosnian Muslim held enclave of Gorazde with the bulk of the territory
18 that was to be held by the Bosnian Muslims and by the Federation. And
19 President Milosevic came in, we looked at the terrain from various angles,
20 and we discussed the high ground and how much terrain would have to be
21 surrendered to the Federation to be able to protect a road, a sovereign
22 road out to Gorazde.
23 Q. His level of knowledge when dealing with this issue and this
24 computerised map?
25 A. He seemed very familiar with the road, the terrain, and thePage 30380
1 ability to draw the lines in the right place. I remember discussions
2 about the specific area just south of Sarajevo and that road, and he was
3 not unfamiliar with this piece of ground.
4 Q. At the end of Dayton, did the American delegation intend the
5 Bosnian Serb leaders to initial the agreement; and if so, what was the
6 accused's attitude as to who should be signing?
7 A. Well, it was the intent that everyone would signal their intent,
8 their agreement with the final document. But the Bosnian Serb delegation
9 did not sign, and President Milosevic indicated that his initials were
10 adequate, that he would produce the Bosnian Serb's signature later.
11 Q. Going back to the computerised map, help us with this: In dealing
12 with that map, did he turn to the Bosnian Serbs for any assistance or --
13 A. No, he did not.
14 Q. Moving beyond Dayton to 1997, was there an incident involving SFOR
15 troops who had been placed at a television antenna to guard it indeed?
16 A. Yes, there was. There was a period of struggle around the city of
17 Brcko in which NATO troops ended up on top of a piece of high ground. It
18 so happened there was a television antenna there. We continued to occupy
19 that antenna.
20 One morning a mob showed up. President Milosevic had previously
21 told me that any time there was trouble, just call him and he could handle
22 it. I called him and I said, you're going to have to get the mob out of
23 there, they're threatening our troops, and if you don't pull them back ,
24 we'll take other actions. He said, well, no, this is just political. I
25 said no, it's not political, this is a threat against the troops. ItPage 30381
1 seemed that within a half hour or so, the mob disappeared.
2 Q. You addressed him. Was it regular for you to address him or to
3 think of addressing him? Was there anybody to address apart from him for
4 a problem like this?
5 A. It was clear that he still had extraordinary influence if not
6 control. It was never clear how much, but he'd always said if there was a
7 difficulty, call him, and I did.
8 Q. Paragraph 15 of the statement serving as a summary, and now
9 turning to Kosovo.
10 On the 15th of October of 1998, did you, together with Javier
11 Solana, General Naumann fly to Belgrade to meet the accused for the
12 purpose of getting signatures for an agreement about NATO overflight and
13 verification?
14 A. Yes, I did.
15 Q. Were you also going to deal with the proposed pullback of VJ and
16 MUP forces from Kosovo?
17 A. Yes, we were.
18 Q. You met the accused in Beli Dvor. By whom was he accompanied?
19 A. To the best of my recollection, he was accompanied by Milutinovic
20 and Perisic.
21 Q. How long did the meeting last?
22 A. Perhaps three hours.
23 Q. And was the upshot of that that in due course the agreement was
24 signed? And we have that at tab --
25 A. Yes. The air verification agreement was signed.Page 30382
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1 Q. We can found that at tab 5 in the bundle -- sorry, tab 6, beg your
2 pardon. Look at that, please.
3 Now, when dealing with this, did the accused ask Javier Solana
4 when the NATO ACTORD would be cancelled?
5 A. Yes, the accused was quite anxious to have the NATO ACTORD
6 cancelled, and he did ask that question.
7 Q. Very well. Did that lead to a discussion, or indeed an argument,
8 between him and Solana?
9 A. Yes, it did, because Secretary-General Solana made it clear that
10 the ACTORD couldn't be cancelled until there was compliance with the UN
11 directives that directed the pullback of the excessive forces that had
12 been deployed in Kosovo since February of 1998.
13 Q. How consistent or otherwise was the accused's approach to
14 Secretary-General Solana?
15 A. Well, it wasn't consistent. I mean, at first he had denied that
16 he'd made such an agreement, then he denied that there were any excessive
17 forces there or any new forces that had been deployed since that period;
18 and then, confronted with the evidence, he then relented and agreed to
19 pull those military forces back that we had mentioned.
20 Q. You spoke to him directly on the basis of information that you
21 had, and at that time he was accompanied by General Perisic, I think.
22 A. That's right. When he denied that there were any additional
23 forces in there, I simply said, "Well, Mr. President, have you heard of
24 the 211th Armoured Brigade?" We were speaking English. He said, "No,
25 I've not heard of such a unit." He then turned and spoke to GeneralPage 30384
1 Perisic in Serbo-Croatian, and Perisic answered him, and then Milosevic
2 came -- turned back, looking unhappy, and said, "All right, there is such
3 a unit." And it went this way for several different units until -- and
4 each one he subsequently agreed to pull out.
5 It was a grudging acceptance. It wasn't an acceptance of pulling
6 out of the excessive units, it was an acceptance of whatever you name,
7 we'll pull back.
8 Q. Did General Perisic take a part in revealing the accuracy of your
9 information for just the one example, the 211th, or was he taking a
10 similar role in relation to other information you provided?
11 A. He confirmed the accuracy of the other two units that we provided.
12 Q. And was one of those matters you raised a police unit?
13 A. It was, but in this case this wasn't an armoured unit so General
14 Perisic did not confirm it, and President Milosevic tried to say this
15 wasn't a unit, it was a precinct, or words to that effect.
16 Q. And did Perisic correct him on that?
17 A. Perisic wasn't able to correct on that and we were left then with
18 the issue of how many police were there and what was the -- what was the
19 increased strength of the police. And at that point, President Milosevic
20 promised that he would send us that information and give us a full
21 accounting of the police elements that were in there.
22 Q. Very well. My oversight in relation to an earlier matter on
23 paragraph 14. Very briefly let's cover that. In the summer of 1997, did
24 you have conversation with Biljana Plavsic where she told you something
25 that had been said to her by the accused about Stanisic? Just tell usPage 30385
1 about that, please.
2 A. I did have a conversation with Biljana Plavsic, and she said that
3 Milosevic had offered to provide security for her through Stanisic, and
4 she rejected that offer of security.
5 Q. Thank you very much. And let's pick up the story at paragraph 18
6 of the statement serving as summary. Your next meeting on the 20th of
7 October when you returned to Belgrade to discuss --
8 [Trial Chamber confers]
9 JUDGE MAY: I was raising paragraphs 27 to 28. You may want to
10 look at those again, but you can look at them over the adjournment.
11 MR. NICE: Look at them in the sense that querying whether --
12 JUDGE MAY: The mistake is mine. I was getting ahead.
13 MR. NICE:
14 Q. So on the 20th of October you returned to Belgrade to discuss MUP
15 data that had been delivered by the FRY, and I think it was your intention
16 to press further for the withdrawal of forces. Is that correct, General?
17 A. That's correct. This was a time in which we had to work an
18 agreement to pull back the forces in compliance with the UN Security
19 Council Resolution, and I spoke with President Milosevic. I asked that
20 his generals cooperate in doing this. We had a full disclosure by the
21 military and the police of what they believed to be the KLA dispositions
22 and where their own forces were; at least, where the military forces were,
23 the police dispositions still weren't quite complete.
24 Q. Can we deal with that in just a second, but before we do, the
25 composition of the meeting and the function of the people attending, wasPage 30386
1 the accused accompanied by Milutinovic but also by a more personal
2 advisor?
3 A. Yes, he was accompanied by Milutinovic and, as I recall, by Goran
4 Milinovic.
5 Q. Tiny detail: The man Milinovic, what did he do in this or in any
6 other meetings that you saw him at? What service or function did he
7 appear to provide?
8 A. Milinovic had -- was present at almost every meeting we ever had
9 with Milosevic. He seemed to be a Chief of Staff. He was the note-taker,
10 he was the man who listened, who monitored, who, I guess, ensured that the
11 directions given by Milosevic were implemented.
12 Q. But he did make notes?
13 A. He seemed to make notes. I recall him having a notebook and a pen
14 there.
15 Q. Before we come to what it's going to be Djordjevic and Perisic
16 were able to tell you, was there at one stage a private meeting between
17 you and the accused where you walked to an adjoining room and spoke to him
18 about what he should do?
19 A. Yes, there was.
20 Q. Tell us about that, please.
21 A. I began the meeting with President Milosevic on the 20th of
22 October. There didn't seem to be a spirit of cooperation, and in front of
23 his advisors he seemed to be wanting to again backtrack and refuse to pull
24 the forces out and so forth.
25 I asked him to step aside, I spoke to him one-on-one, and I warnedPage 30387
1 him that if he didn't comply with the request of the United Nations, that
2 action would be taken against him in the form of bombing.
3 Q. His response?
4 A. His response was at first to shrug this off, and then on
5 reflection he decided that he would cooperate. He said he would ask his
6 generals -- tell his generals to cooperate.
7 Q. By his response did he indicate the ability to control his
8 generals or not?
9 A. He certainly indicated the ability to control his generals,
10 absolutely. No question about it.
11 Q. Turning now then to Djordjevic and Perisic and in that order, when
12 you spoke to Djordjevic, was there a map available?
13 A. Yes. We laid out a map in a room off the president's office
14 there, and General Djordjevic went through the map in some detail,
15 pointing out the location of each of the KLA remnants that were there.
16 Q. Also present at this meeting? Do you remember who else was
17 present?
18 A. General Perisic was there also and he then he began to talk about
19 the military dispositions that were present.
20 Q. Before we come to that, can you remember who else was present?
21 Doesn't matter if you can't at the moment.
22 A. I had with me some staff members. I had my political advisor,
23 Mike Durkee; staff assistant Colonel Dennis Dimengo; the intelligence
24 officer Brigadier General Glen Schaffer; and, as I recall, somewhere in
25 this meeting also a Major General Lukic came in, another MUP officer.Page 30388
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1 Q. In the course of your discussion with Djordjevic and in the
2 marking of the map, was it possible to count the number of alleged KLA
3 people concerning Djordjevic?
4 A. Yes, we added up these numbers and they totaled 410 KLA, according
5 to Djordjevic's analysis.
6 Q. Did you raise that with him; and if so, tell us what he said.
7 A. Well, I certainly did. I said that that you've forced -- words to
8 the effect, you've forced 350.000, 400.000 people out of their homes;
9 you're trying to destroy the province to get at 400 people. He said, "We
10 were within two weeks of killing them all. Why did you stop us?" And I
11 said, "Because you're targeting a civilian population and it's creating a
12 humanitarian catastrophe for your own people."
13 Q. Very well. Did you say anything further about the appropriateness
14 of otherwise of using force?
15 A. I made it clear that that wasn't appropriate, it was illegal,
16 against the law; it's not done.
17 Q. Now let's turn to Perisic who, of course, you'd recently seen
18 being slightly counter to the accused in his force analysis or more force
19 analysis about troop dispositions, hadn't you?
20 A. Mm-hmm.
21 Q. What happened with him on this occasion?
22 A. Well, he pointed out the military locations and he discussed the
23 size of the units that were out there, and so I had a very good feel for
24 the military dispositions and also how they were deployed tactically after
25 I finished the discussion with General Perisic.Page 30390
1 Q. And by way of an example, how full was his information when he
2 identified a tank?
3 A. Well, it seemed to be very -- he was very forthcoming, I would
4 say. Well, we saw a couple of tanks here, and he would say, yes, that's a
5 company. Or -- I said, so if we saw a dozen vehicles here ... He'd say,
6 yes, that's a battalion. So it indicated that we were only seeing a small
7 portion of the total size of the force that was actually there.
8 Q. Was his approach for the army similar to or different from the
9 approach of Djordjevic for the MUP?
10 A. He seemed to be very -- he seemed to be very forthcoming in terms
11 of the discussion of the issues.
12 Q. Did this meeting result in any pullback; if so, complete or
13 partial?
14 A. This meeting resulted in a plan for a partial pullback of some
15 forces around Malisevo, as sort of a phase 1 of a pullback.
16 Q. And did this lead to another meeting four days later on the 24th,
17 this occasion General Naumann being present?
18 A. I took this partial pullback plan. I warned them at the time that
19 I didn't have the authority to negotiate anything for NATO. I took it
20 back to NATO. I said NATO is going to take a look at it, at all the
21 information you've given, and then we'll see what happens. So it turned
22 out that General Naumann and I were sent back on the 24th of October.
23 Q. Who was present at this meeting?
24 A. At this meeting we first began with President Milosevic, and there
25 was Milutinovic there, Sainovic, Perisic, and others.Page 30391
1 Q. The meeting started when and lasted how long?
2 A. It went -- the initial meeting went around 5.00, and for maybe an
3 hour. Yeah. Yeah.
4 Q. What was your and Klaus Naumann's objective?
5 A. Well, the idea was to get a real pullback of all the forces and
6 comply with the UN Security Council Resolution. We had a NATO ACTORD in
7 place, there was a time deadline we were working against here, and we
8 wanted to say in very direct terms to President Milosevic that this was
9 the time that he must pull these forces back.
10 Q. At one stage did Perisic organise a quiet meeting with you or a
11 private meeting with you?
12 A. Yes. What happened was that Milosevic said, well, you'll have to
13 go back and continue to work this with these generals. So we went to
14 Perisic first and Perisic said we're the only -- he went through the
15 disposition, we talked about how many forces could be pulled back
16 reasonably, and -- but he said that only President Milosevic could give
17 the authority to pull these forces back. And he warned us, and he asked
18 me, he said, "Please not destroy the Yugoslav military." He said, "This
19 is the last democratic institution in Yugoslavia."
20 Q. When he said that, had he made arrangements about the number of
21 people present to hear him speak?
22 A. Yes, he had. He made sure everybody else was out of the room
23 except the interpreter.
24 Q. And as a result of this, did you have hopes that you might
25 accelerate the negotiations?Page 30392
1 A. That seemed to be a very -- a promising attitude, but on the other
2 hand, we recognised that Milosevic had total control of what was going to
3 be decided.
4 Q. Did you then make a decision as to whether you were going to
5 achieve a full pullback or whether you needed to take things further with
6 the accused?
7 A. At that point it was clear that we'd gotten as far as we were
8 going to get with Perisic, and so we decided to go back and see Milosevic
9 and his team.
10 Q. On this occasion -- this again back at Beli Dvor. On this
11 occasion were others present, some you were meeting for the first time?
12 A. Well, Sainovic was there. As I recall, that's the first time I'd
13 met Sainovic. The police people came in, and we assembled the whole group
14 again. This must have been around 8.00 or 9.00 at night on that Saturday
15 night, the 24th of October.
16 Q. What was the accused's initial reaction at this part of the
17 adjourned or however you describe it meeting?
18 A. Well, we said to the accused essentially that we didn't get any
19 satisfaction, or this is not enough. And I said General Naumann has an
20 idea. General Naumann and I had talked about this previously, I turned to
21 him and he said, you're going to have to pull these excess police back,
22 just pull them all back, Mr. President. That's the only way to solve this
23 problem, that's the only way to get rid of the ACTORD. All the excess
24 police out. And Milosevic looked startled, and then he excused himself.
25 He went back into another room with his team. They were in there forPage 30393
1 about 15 minutes, 20 minutes, and then they came back into the meeting
2 room with us. And Milosevic agreed in principle and then he said, you'll
3 have to continue the discussions now and work out the details of this.
4 Q. With whom were you instructed to work out details?
5 A. We went back at that point to the Serb Ministry of Defence, and as
6 I recall, it was Foreign Minister Milutinovic, General Perisic,
7 Djordjevic, Lukic, and I think Sainovic was still there. He went in and
8 out, as I recall.
9 Q. Did those negotiations continue until the early hours of the
10 following morning, the 25th of October, when you returned to see the
11 accused at Beli Dvor?
12 A. That's right. These negotiations ended, I think, around --
13 between 4.30 and 5.00 on the morning of the 25th of January.
14 Q. And you saw the accused at what time, roughly?
15 A. As I recall, it was around 9.00. We had the results at that
16 point. We cleaned up, I checked back in with headquarters, and so we went
17 back around 9.00.
18 Q. And now you were now in a position to require reduction of rather
19 more than you'd originally identified as the number?
20 A. Well, the problem was -- yes, that's correct, because General
21 Naumann had given the number of excess police at 3.000. The correct
22 number was 4.000, so we had to go in and see Milosevic. He said he wanted
23 to make some changes in the agreement. We said fine, we listened to him,
24 we said now we want to make a change in the agreement; it's not 3.000
25 police, it's 4.000 police that have to be pulled out.Page 30394
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1 Q. Did he accept that or did he resist that?
2 A. With reluctance, he accepted that.
3 Q. Did he attempt an argument about accepting more MUP presence?
4 A. Yes.
5 Q. How did he base that?
6 A. He essentially said he wanted to stand on the original 3.000
7 figure. He said, Where did you get the information of 4.000? I said it
8 came from your own documents. He had given us the documents as a result
9 of the 15 October meeting.
10 Q. The argument to have more MUP present, was that from Milosevic or
11 from someone else?
12 A. We were only talking -- as I recall the meeting, we were only
13 talking to Milosevic at this point. There had been discussion the
14 previous night with Milutinovic about the numbers of MUP and whether they
15 could be there and be out of uniform and so forth, but on Sunday morning,
16 Milosevic presented his changes that he wanted, we considered them, we
17 agreed to some of them, we explained the rationale for the document, and
18 then we presented this change and we said you're going to have to take
19 4.000 not 3.000 out.
20 Q. During this part of the negotiations, did there come a time when
21 the accused referred to historical events going back to 1946; and if so,
22 from recollection, can you tell the Court what it was he said and what
23 effect it had on you?
24 A. We achieved agreement and then it remained to type up the
25 agreement and get it signed, and so this must have been 10.30, 11:00 inPage 30396
1 the morning or something, and President Milosevic was musing
2 philosophically about this. And he turned to me and said, "General
3 Clark," he said, "We know how to handle these murderers, these rapists,
4 these criminals." He said, "We've done this before." I said, "Well,
5 when?" He said, "In Drenica in 1946." And I said, "What did you do?" He
6 said, "We killed them." He said, "We killed them all."
7 I was stunned at the vehemence with which he spoke, and I just
8 looked at him. General Naumann looked at him, as I recall, and Milosevic
9 then said -- then he qualified his statement. He said, "Of course we did
10 not do it all at one. It took some time."
11 Q. Did he say how long it took?
12 A. I don't recall him saying that.
13 Q. Very well. The agreement being retyped, as you -- or typed, as
14 you've explained, when it was brought in for signature, what did you
15 notice about those who were to sign?
16 A. That Milosevic -- I noticed that Milosevic's name wasn't on the
17 agreement.
18 Q. Did you raise that with him? What was his reaction?
19 A. I did raise it with him. He said it wasn't necessary. I said,
20 well, it is necessary, and asked him to sign it.
21 Q. Did you indeed have to press him to sign it and explain the level
22 of people that you typically dealt with in your negotiations?
23 A. I did have to press hard on this because it's been my experience
24 in dealing with leaders in this part world, and with President Milosevic,
25 that they typically didn't like to sign documents because it meant thenPage 30397
1 that they could no longer disavow them. And I was determined that
2 President Milosevic would sign this. We had negotiated it with him, he
3 had the authority. And had he not signed it, my concern was that he would
4 have then been able to say, "Well, I didn't really see this," and he would
5 have been able to disavow it, so his signature on that document was very
6 important because it represented his promises to NATO.
7 MR. NICE: Your Honour, this document has already been exhibited
8 as Exhibit 94, tab 3. Perhaps it can just be laid on the overhead
9 projector for the witness to see the way the signature was placed.
10 I haven't got it on the screen I think myself. I don't know if
11 the Judges see it. Yes, there it is. Thank you.
12 Q. As we can see, no place on the typed version for the accused to
13 sign. You and General Naumann required him to sign. Just show us where,
14 please.
15 A. Right. This is the signature block. This was typed up in
16 Yugoslavia, in Belgrade, there while I talked to Milosevic. And these
17 were the signatures that he wanted on there and this is what was typed on
18 there, and of course it had our names, General Naumann's name and my name
19 on it, and then this is where he signed it at our insistence.
20 Q. Thank you very much. And this document is the record of the
21 meeting on the 25th of October of 1998, and that is agreed being set out
22 in an attached statement.
23 I turn to paragraph 30, the 20th of December of 1998. Did you go
24 to Belgrade on this occasion to meet a person new to you, Colonel General
25 Ojdanic?Page 30398
1 A. I did. We knew that Perisic was in trouble and, based on the
2 atmosphere in the meetings in October, I was not surprised that he was
3 replaced by General Ojdanic, and I wanted to be certain that General
4 Ojdanic understood the obligations that Yugoslavia had accepted through
5 the Milosevic document.
6 Q. Who else was present on this meeting?
7 A. Well, Mr. Sainovic was there. Apparently I wasn't going to be
8 allowed to meet with General Ojdanic without Mr. Sainovic being present.
9 Q. At the time, what was your judgement about this? What did it say
10 about the level of confidence or trust reposed in Ojdanic?
11 A. It said that Ojdanic wasn't sufficiently trusted to meet alone
12 with me with the interpreters present, that he needed the political
13 guidance of Mr. Sainovic.
14 Q. Did you raise -- really to raise with Ojdanic the presence of VJ
15 tanks north of Pristina near Podujevo?
16 A. Yes. At that point, we had already seen the evidence of the
17 violation of Milosevic's commitments to NATO. They'd already been
18 deploying tanks north of Pristina along the main line of communication
19 near Podujevo, and I raised this with General Ojdanic, and he said, well,
20 it was a training mission. Well, these weren't training missions. And
21 under the agreement, they would have had to have been notified in advance
22 and they weren't.
23 Q. In giving his answer to you, did he speak without assistance or
24 did he discuss the matter at all first with Sainovic?
25 A. Each answer that he gave me was first coached with Sainovic orPage 30399
1 cleared with Sainovic.
2 Q. You made an assessment of Ojdanic. I don't know whether you made
3 it there and then at this meeting or later, but what was your assessment?
4 A. I thought he was a place-holder; someone ambitious enough to want
5 the job and maybe someone who wouldn't ask too many of the tough questions
6 that gotten General Perisic in trouble.
7 Q. Racak. Following that event, did you and General Naumann travel
8 to Belgrade on the 19th of January to meet the accused and to attempt to
9 arrange investigation of the Racak incident?
10 A. Yes, we did.
11 Q. Did you have objectives about Ambassador William Walker as well?
12 A. Yes, we wanted Ambassador Walker to remain in the country, and we
13 only wanted Milosevic to reaffirm and maintain his commitments that he'd
14 made to NATO in the 25 October document.
15 Q. The meeting was in Beli Dvor. How long did it last?
16 A. This meeting in Beli Dvor lasted seven hours.
17 Q. Milosevic was accompanied by whom on his side?
18 A. I recall Mr. Milutinovic and Mr. Sainovic.
19 Q. Was one of the topics you raised in this long meeting the
20 possibility of the then-ICTY Prosecutor Louise Arbour being permitted
21 access to investigate the Racak massacre?
22 A. Yes. This was the first topic that we raised.
23 Q. The accused's reaction to it?
24 A. He employed several different lines of reaction. First he
25 reminded us that he had never agreed to the jurisdiction of thePage 30400
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1 International Criminal Tribunal inside Yugoslavia. We then said you've
2 promised to cooperate with the ICTY. Then he said there was no massacre,
3 and then he said, well, there were bodies. And then we continued to
4 persist. He said that Ms. Arbour could come as a tourist. First he said
5 she couldn't come, then she could as a tourist but she'd have to be
6 escorted, then she'd have to be escorted by the minister of justice. She
7 couldn't investigate anything. Then she could look at the bodies but she
8 could only look at them with other people present.
9 Q. As these proposals were made, did you relay them to Justice Arbour
10 for her reaction?
11 A. Yes, I did. I called her several times, in each case affirming
12 her opinion of the various offers that Mr. Milosevic made.
13 Q. How did your exchanges with the accused on this topic end?
14 A. Essentially it came to the point that he was not offering her a
15 satisfactory opportunity to come and do the investigation, and he
16 continued to dance around the issues and failed to comply with what was
17 required. So I posed it to him in very simple terms. I said, if you
18 don't want her to come, just say so, if you don't want her to come.
19 Otherwise, let her come, give her the authority to do the investigations
20 properly. He said, no, he didn't want her to come.
21 Q. Turning to Ambassador Walker, the accused's attitude in relation
22 to him, how was it resolved?
23 A. Milosevic continued to say that Ambassador Walker had violated his
24 responsibilities as a diplomat by labelling this as a massacre and that it
25 was the decision of the Serb government that he had to leave.Page 30402
1 Q. Did you have a discussion, or a short exchange in any event, with
2 Milutinovic about this during a break?
3 A. Yes. By this time, as I recall, Milutinovic was no longer the
4 foreign minister of Serbia but he was the president of Serbia and
5 Milosevic had moved up to be president of Yugoslavia. But Milutinovic
6 said, on the side, he says, "Now this is going to be -- you could get a
7 compromise on this. This is -- listen to what -- what President Milosevic
8 is saying, he's saying in essence it's the will of the government. So
9 he's offering a compromise. He might not -- he might give in on this."
10 Q. In the event, there was any conclusion to this part of the --
11 A. No, there wasn't. There was not a conclusion other than the fact
12 that Milosevic seemed to be determined that Walker must leave.
13 Q. So far as the October agreements -- commitments were concerned,
14 what was the accused's attitude; compromising or uncompromising, what?
15 A. Milosevic told me, he said, "I'm not going to comply with these
16 agreements. I warned you that we would 'defend ourselves,' and so we're
17 not complying with these agreements."
18 Q. Your reaction to that? What did you tell him?
19 A. Well, I explained to him that his actions went well beyond any
20 reasonable defence, they were disproportionate, they violated the
21 agreements, and I said that "If you persist in this, NATO is going to tell
22 me to start moving aircraft." In other words, implying that he was not
23 living up to his terms of the agreement and NATO would then invoke the
24 ACTORD.
25 Q. Did you in your exchanges with the accused take a strong line,Page 30403
1 make reference generally to what he was doing to his country?
2 A. Yes, I put this in terms that he could understand what the
3 consequences would be for him and his international position. I said
4 that, "NATO is going to be asking -- these leaders are going to be asking
5 what is it that you are trying to do to this country? You forced
6 professors to sign loyalty oaths, you have crushed democracy, you have
7 taken a vibrant economy, you've wrecked it. They're going to be asking,
8 what kind of a leader are you?"
9 Q. What did that lead the accused to say and do?
10 A. Well, President Milosevic became very angry and he then -- he
11 claimed that there were no loyalty oaths, that Serbia was a democracy, and
12 he accused General Naumann and me of threatening him. He -- he said, "You
13 are the war criminals."
14 Q. Did you try and calm him down?
15 A. Yes, I wanted to get back to rational discussion, and so he did
16 calm down, but we never made any more progress.
17 Q. And at one point in this meeting did you refer back to something
18 that you understood the accused had said to Ambassador Holbrooke?
19 A. Yes. Holbrooke had told me that Milosevic had said at one point
20 that Kosovo is more important than his neck. And I asked Milosevic to
21 confirm that, and he said, "No, that's not correct, I said it's more
22 important than my head," meaning that that was the centre of Serbian
23 civilisation, and that's -- that was the essence of what he was saying,
24 that that was the key to his political future.
25 Q. On the earlier occasion there had been reference to what happenedPage 30404
1 in 1946. Was there any further reference to that?
2 A. I believe there was.
3 MR. NICE: Your Honour, I'm three paragraphs short of the place
4 you've asked me to start a reconsideration. We've been going just an
5 hour. I don't know if that would be a convenient moment.
6 JUDGE MAY: Yes. We will take the break now.
7 General Walker --
8 THE WITNESS: It's General Clark, sir.
9 JUDGE MAY: I'm sorry, General Clark. We have to warn all
10 witnesses, as we do, not to speak about their evidence until it's over.
11 Could I do the same with you. We understand that you're giving a lecture
12 tonight on international relations. Of course that's fine, but formally I
13 must, of course, tell you not to discuss the case during it.
14 THE WITNESS: Of course.
15 JUDGE MAY: Yes. We'll adjourn now. Twenty minutes.
16 --- Recess taken at 10.32 a.m.
17 --- On resuming at 10.57 a.m.
18 JUDGE MAY: Yes Mr. Nice.
19 MR. NICE:
20 Q. Paragraph 36 in the statement serving as summary. General Clark,
21 when were you first aware of any FRY forces being involved in an offensive
22 in Kosovo?
23 A. Well, we started to see indicators of this and we began to hear
24 the indicators in January. We had already seen the forces violating the
25 agreement, we knew it was just a matter of time. As I said, in latePage 30405
1 December we saw the forces moving out, we continued to see more forces
2 deployed.
3 Q. What about the Podujevo area? And what did you learn of and when
4 there?
5 A. Well, these were the first ones moving out in December 1998 that I
6 had warned General Ojdanic about on my visit down there, on about the 20th
7 of December of 1998 and -- and then we continued to see those forces
8 deployed out there. They manoeuvred around. And as far as we could
9 determine, what they were doing is they would go around a village, they
10 would stir up trouble, they would look for opportunities to use force, use
11 their guns, heavy guns and so forth.
12 Q. Again, and from memory if you can, of course, any elements of any
13 particular armoured brigades that you can bring to mind as having featured
14 at this time?
15 A. We continued to watch the 211th Armoured Brigade because it had
16 been pulled out. We had seen it in there earlier, it came back in to the
17 border and then began to deploy inside Kosovo again.
18 Q. And as to the Pristina Corps did you notice anything or were you
19 informed of anything as to its level of arms?
20 A. Well, we saw it being reinforced. It was the command and control
21 headquarters for the province and we saw reinforcements added to it so
22 that it became much more capable.
23 Q. Did you form a judgement as to the degree to which it had been
24 enlarged?
25 A. It may have been doubled in strength. It had a lot of additionalPage 30406
1 forces with it.
2 Q. Did you get to learn of something called a Joint Command? And if
3 the answer is yes, can you indicate your source of knowledge in the most
4 general terms, and what you understood that to be.
5 A. Well, I had two general sources of knowledge. First I had
6 received some kind of an indication when I'd first met Sainovic, and the
7 accused had introduced him as being someone who was in charge of this.
8 And then it was clear from other reliable sources that there had actually
9 been a joint -- some kind of a joint police and army headquarters
10 established to be able to deal with the region and that Sainovic had some
11 kind of a role in that. Perhaps a role that enabled him to undercut the
12 authority of the General Staff.
13 Q. What purpose could you see in the use of the Joint Command?
14 A. Well, first it was necessary to -- it would have been necessary to
15 coordinate the military and police activities on the ground, but it served
16 an adjunct purpose as well because it avoided the direct control of the
17 armed forces by the General Staff, and just following on from the comments
18 that Perisic had made to me, I assumed that there were still elements
19 within the General Staff which might have not been under the full
20 political control of President -- then President Milosevic, then thus
21 enabling him to bypass whatever resistance there might have been.
22 Q. In early March of 1999, did Secretary-General Solana give you some
23 instructions as to what you were to do so far as General Ojdanic was
24 concerned?
25 A. Yes. We continued to see the build-up of these forces and IPage 30407
1 brought them to Solana's attention. He said okay, you got to call and ask
2 him -- tell Ojdanic to stop bringing those troops in. See if you can give
3 him a warning to stop doing it so it doesn't escalate the crisis further.
4 And I did call Ojdanic, and I told him we were watching what he was doing,
5 I asked him not to do this. He replied that -- that we were causing him
6 to do this, that he was doing this in self-defence against the threat of a
7 NATO invasion. And of course there was -- there was no possibility of
8 NATO invasion at that point.
9 I told Ojdanic that he shouldn't do it. He said that there were
10 forces coming in to Macedonia. I explained that these forces weren't
11 sufficient for an invasion and warned him that he was violating the
12 October 1998 agreement, that I had met with him on the previous December.
13 Q. With what military or other objective was the build-up of troops
14 consistent in your then-judgement, General?
15 A. All of this was consistent with the plan that we'd heard rumoured
16 to seek the final solution to this problem in 1999.
17 Q. Seek the final solution by what --
18 A. That is to say by using a large-scale ethnic cleansing operation
19 against the people in Kosovo.
20 MR. NICE: Your Honour, in light of the Chamber's observations
21 about paragraphs 39 to 45, with your leave I will deal with the first
22 sentence of paragraph 39 and with paragraph 41, subject to laying a
23 foundation for knowledge, and not the balance. I don't know if that will
24 be acceptable to the Chamber.
25 JUDGE MAY: It is simply a question of the extent ofPage 30408
1 cross-examination which is to be let in by it, but that's the only point
2 that we make.
3 MR. NICE: I quite understand that and we're grateful for the
4 concern that the Chamber has expressed through that question to me.
5 The first sentence of paragraph 39 is a simple point. Paragraph
6 41 is a matter of pattern evidence, pattern connecting between one
7 conflict and another, and I will be seeking first the witness's account of
8 his knowledge for that sort of material.
9 JUDGE MAY: Yes.
10 MR. NICE:
11 Q. General, on what day or approximately what day, in your judgement,
12 did the Serb offensive begin?
13 A. Either Friday the 19th or Saturday the 20th, as NATO could best
14 determine.
15 Q. In the course of your statement you deal with -- it happens at
16 paragraph 41 but don't refer to that, please. You deal with the pattern
17 of events, a typical pattern of events where the VJ and other units came
18 to be involved. Before I ask you for what that pattern was, can you
19 explain what your sources of information were in the most general terms so
20 that we can understand how you could form this judgement?
21 A. I got this from both the news media and other reliable sources.
22 So it was a combination of information.
23 Q. And what was the pattern of involvement of the VJ, the MUP, and/or
24 other units?
25 A. It seemed consistent with an earlier pattern that we had observedPage 30409
1 over the decade of the conflict in the former Yugoslavia. Namely that the
2 military surrounds an objective, it blocks it, it prevents reinforcement
3 or exit. The police then go through, they arrest people by name if they
4 have particular information, that they search for. The paramilitaries
5 then go in and threaten people and rob them and so forth, and then people
6 are thrown out of their homes afterwards, all under the control of the
7 authorities.
8 Q. The pattern that you've identified, was it something in your
9 judgement as a soldier that could have happened with or without the
10 knowledge of the local VJ or the local MUP?
11 A. Could not have happened without the coordination of the VJ and the
12 MUP, and based on what I'd seen of the army, it had to have happened with
13 high-level command and control because this was still a disciplined force.
14 Q. I want to return to one topic you dealt with earlier and ask you a
15 couple of further questions about it. It's the air defence system. You
16 will remember telling the Chamber, that's paragraph 6, how you once told
17 Perisic to turn off the transmission system. Can you amplify what you've
18 already said about the air defence system, describing in a sentence what
19 your judgement was of its nature, contrasting it with or comparing it with
20 air defence system cooperation of, say NATO countries or the United
21 Kingdom and the United States, something like that?
22 A. Well, this was an integrated air defence system that was put
23 together coherently, laid out on a single template with various regional
24 reporting nodes and a dispersed early warning radars and target
25 acquisition radars and a certain number of missile launching sites and soPage 30410
1 forth. And it was a leftover from Yugoslavia, and it was still fully
2 operational so it indicated to me that this was as though there had never
3 been a separation between the VRS and the VJ; it was simply an integrated
4 air defence system.
5 Q. How would that compare with, say, information sharing between
6 allies such as the United Kingdom and the United States, something like
7 that, in general terms without saying anything that would be revealing
8 about particular relationships current at the moment?
9 A. Well, under NATO agreements, countries delegated their air defence
10 to NATO but it was still under a sovereign agreement. So there was data
11 sharing between nations but it was data sharing over national systems. So
12 there was an international system on top.
13 So what you've got right here is what was formerly a national
14 system that had never been disestablished, it was still there in the case
15 of Yugoslavia. Integrated. That means all the pieces would fit together.
16 Information would flow back and forth. As far as we could tell, it was
17 seamless.
18 Q. And the significance of this, what does it -- and what does it
19 reveal about the relationship between the two armies concerned?
20 A. Well, as we looked at this, our reliable information seemed to
21 suggest that the separation of the two armies was -- it was political but
22 it wasn't substantive. In other words, that what had happened is that
23 when these two armies separated, as best we could figure this out,
24 soldiers who had lived in the republic -- in Bosnia-Herzegovina were taken
25 out of the VJ, but the officers were shuffled in a general sense. SomePage 30411
1 officers volunteered to serve there apparently, others didn't. The
2 training was still done, as far as we could determine, inside and by the
3 VJ. Officer assignments were controlled by the VJ, and promotions and pay
4 were subject to the control of the VJ.
5 Q. Yes. I'm more concerned about being specific to the air defence
6 system, its integrated nature. What does that reveal about the connection
7 of the two armies?
8 A. It meant that there was an integrated control of the system so
9 that decisions to fire or decisions to turn on radars and so forth were
10 likely to have been made by Yugoslavia, not by the Serbs themselves in
11 Bosnia.
12 MR. NICE: Your Honour, I just now deal with the present position
13 so far as exhibits are concerned. If the summary of General Clark's
14 background may become tab 2. For the time being we pass over tab 3, but
15 I'd just ask the witness this as a fact.
16 Q. You wrote the book "Waging Modern War." Have you become aware
17 since writing it of any corrections communicated either to you or to your
18 publishers?
19 A. No. No.
20 MR. NICE: There's a chart that shows passages that the
21 Prosecution have asked the Judges to have in mind from that book, and
22 indeed at tab 4 -- at tab 3, you have, I think, the excerpts from the
23 book, Your Honours.
24 JUDGE MAY: But the question is this: We're not going to admit
25 that. Do you want -- sorry I don't understand the position. Are youPage 30412
1 saying that the book -- that the accused is free to cross-examine on any
2 part of the book? That is not as I had understood the position.
3 MR. NICE: No, Your Honour, that's not what we're seeking,
4 especially in light of what Your Honour was saying this morning. So that
5 even the extracts, it may be, don't need to be produced.
6 JUDGE MAY: No, most certainly not because it seems to me there is
7 an unfairness in producing extracts which in any event are being given in
8 evidence largely.
9 MR. NICE: Certainly. At tab 5 I said there was an interest in
10 the exhibit from a museum. There is letter which doesn't need to become
11 an exhibit but can be distributed. Alternatively, it could become part of
12 tab 5, the map. It comes from the MacArthur Museum of Arkansas Military
13 History, and it explains the only change made to the map is the addition
14 of a pencil accession number, which it identifies. So it may be that this
15 letter could become part of tab 5, particularly if the Chamber is prepared
16 to accept the copy version of the map as tab 5 in order to allow the
17 original to return to the museum.
18 JUDGE MAY: Let's deal with that now
19 [Trial Chamber confers]
20 JUDGE MAY: Yes, we will accept the versions that we have; the
21 original can return to the museum.
22 MR. NICE: I'm grateful.
23 JUDGE KWON: Mr. Nice, there are two maps in tab 5, one of which
24 isn't dealt with.
25 MR. NICE: I think the actual exhibit, if that's what you'rePage 30413
1 referring to, is a map and an overlay. I haven't got my own copy at the
2 moment, but I think you'll find that is original map without markings.
3 JUDGE KWON: This is different.
4 MR. NICE: I'm sorry. What you have, I think --
5 JUDGE MAY: The second appears to be an unmarked version of the
6 first.
7 MR. NICE: That's right, because the exhibit itself, which is on
8 the easel, is a map with a plastic transparent sheet on top of it on which
9 markings have been made, so what you see in your two maps is the original
10 and the version as effectively marked by, says the witness, the accused.
11 Your Honour, looking at the exhibits, tab 6 has now been produced
12 as well.
13 That's all I ask of this witness at this stage.
14 General Clark, you'll be asked some further questions.
15 JUDGE MAY: Before you begin, Mr. Milosevic, there are some
16 matters the Trial Chamber has to decide.
17 [Trial Chamber confers]
18 JUDGE MAY: Mr. Milosevic, before you begin cross-examining, you
19 should know that there are parameters in this case beyond which you cannot
20 go. We've already made an order which restricts the scope of
21 cross-examination. I'm not going to go into the reasons for it again. It
22 is limited to the statement which the witness has given, which means that
23 you are restricted in a way that you are not restricted with other
24 witnesses, because then you're allowed to ask any relevant matters.
25 You're restricted in this case to the witness's evidence. So you can givePage 30414
1 -- ask him questions, of course, about what he's said here but not about
2 other evidence. He's given no other evidence against you apart from the
3 matter which General Clark has dealt with here.
4 So your cross-examination in this case is limited.
5 We have refused to admit the book. It's not part of the evidence.
6 We therefore will not allow some free-ranging cross-examination through
7 it, but you may, if you are entitled to do so, and that will be a matter
8 of relevance, you can, if you wish, ask General Clark about passages of
9 the book which are related to his evidence, and that largely will be --
10 not entirely will be the matters which are already underlined.
11 So subject to those matters, of course you may conduct your
12 cross-examination, but you will be stopped if you go beyond those
13 particular bounds.
14 We've considered the time that you should have. We have in mind
15 that you should have some two and a half hours, if you so wish, to
16 cross-examine, and it's now for you to begin.
17 THE ACCUSED: [Interpretation] Mr. May, I don't understand at all
18 how you can limit my cross-examination to two and a half hours.
19 JUDGE MAY: Well, we would look at the time that we've given you.
20 It will be subject to others' convenience, but also if you use the time
21 properly and you want extra time, we would, of course, consider extending
22 it, but it depends on your use of it and it seems to me two and a half
23 hours should be adequate to deal with the limited matters which the
24 witness has given in evidence.
25 THE ACCUSED: [Interpretation] Very well, Mr. May. I see now thatPage 30415
1 you're introducing some restrictions linked to the witness's book, and the
2 witness's book is linked to the credibility of this witness, which means
3 that I couldn't question the witness even in relation to matters that have
4 to do with his credit. Is that what it means or am I after all allowed to
5 ask certain questions along those lines?
6 JUDGE MAY: You know exactly what you've been allowed to do. You
7 must ask questions within those limitations.
8 THE ACCUSED: [Interpretation] Very well, Mr. May. You will
9 probably allow me to ask at least some questions.
10 Cross-examined by Mr. Milosevic:
11 Q. [Interpretation] General Clark, in your book you say that the NATO
12 military action Yugoslavia in the spring of 1999 could not be called a
13 war.
14 JUDGE MAY: I don't think we're going to have that debate. That's
15 precisely what I've been talking about. You're not allowed a free-ranging
16 discussion about the NATO action. You're limited to the evidence which
17 the witness has given.
18 THE ACCUSED: [Interpretation] Mr. May, a fundamental question here
19 relates to the NATO strike against Yugoslavia. You're not allowing me to
20 ask the witness about the war against Yugoslavia, of which he was in
21 command, then I don't know really what you're letting me ask him about.
22 JUDGE MAY: Yes. The witness hasn't given any evidence about that
23 war. He has -- the Prosecution have chosen to call him on a limited
24 number of issues, and he has given evidence about a limited number of
25 issues. We will have to look elsewhere for evidence about those broaderPage 30416
1 issues which, if relevant for us to consider, you want to put in front of
2 us. You can't do it through this witness.
3 MR. MILOSEVIC: [Interpretation]
4 Q. General Clark, is it true that in an interview that you gave for
5 The New Yorker on the 17th of November, you said that the war that you
6 waged was technically illegal?
7 JUDGE MAY: Now, that is precisely the point. He's given no
8 evidence about the legality of the war. He's not gone into that in his
9 evidence. Now, concentrate on what evidence that he's given here and
10 you'll be allowed to ask the questions, but you can't go into these
11 broader questions with this witness. If they're relevant, we'll hear them
12 from another one.
13 THE ACCUSED: [Interpretation] I cannot understand, Mr. May, what
14 you are allowing me to ask this witness about. You're not letting me ask
15 him anything.
16 JUDGE MAY: Let me explain. The general has given evidence about
17 a series of meetings that you had with him. You yourself had with him in
18 1995, including comments which you have made. He has given evidence about
19 further meetings in -- at a time leading up to the events in the Kosovo
20 indictment. He has given evidence about meetings after Racak. Now, those
21 are all things, and they are meetings at which you were present, upon
22 which the witness has given evidence and you can cross-examine. The other
23 matters are dealt with, insofar as they are dealt with, by other
24 witnesses, and you can ask them about it. But as far as this witness is
25 concerned, and I thought it was plain, you can ask him about his evidence,Page 30417
1 you can ask him about the statement he's made here, and your
2 cross-examination will be so confined.
3 So you can begin, for instance, by asking about the meeting in
4 August 1995 with Mr. Holbrooke and various other people. You can ask
5 about that, if you wish, if you challenge. If you don't challenge the
6 witness's evidence here, why then there's no need to cross-examine him.
7 THE ACCUSED: [Interpretation] Mr. May, of course I challenge the
8 testimony of General Clark, because he has distorted the facts to a
9 maximum degree, and I will show that, but it is absolutely not clear to
10 me --
11 JUDGE MAY: You better get on with it. Put the questions. You
12 make these allegations, the witness should have the chance to answer them.
13 General Clark -- just a moment. You've just made an allegation of
14 a sort which a witness should have the opportunity of dealing with.
15 General Clark, the accused alleges to us that he challenges your
16 evidence. Of course he's entitled to do that. But what he does say is
17 that you've distorted the facts about which you've given evidence. He
18 makes that allegation. Perhaps you would like to answer the allegation.
19 THE WITNESS: Well, Your Honour, I gave the testimony to the best
20 of my recollection. The facts are exactly as I recollect them, and those
21 are the facts I gave the Court.
22 JUDGE MAY: Yes, Mr. Milosevic.
23 THE ACCUSED: [Interpretation] Mr. May, just in order to clarify
24 the basic attitude towards me in relation to this witness, is it in
25 dispute that General Clark was in command of NATO during the war againstPage 30418
1 Yugoslavia? And is it disputed that that was his most important role in
2 everything that related to Yugoslavia? And is it in dispute that you're
3 not allowing me to ask him anything at all about that?
4 JUDGE MAY: That's right. Now, ask questions -- if you wish to
5 ask questions, concentrate on those matters that you've been told about
6 several times. Now, what we're doing is wasting time going over this.
7 You've heard the ruling, and you must abide by it, and you're taking up
8 your time, you see, arguing.
9 THE ACCUSED: [Interpretation] So I cannot ask him anything at all
10 about the war waged by NATO against Yugoslavia. Is that what you're
11 saying?
12 JUDGE MAY: Yes.
13 THE ACCUSED: [Interpretation] Well, Mr. May, that really is an
14 example showing that this is truly nothing more than a farce.
15 JUDGE MAY: Well, if you've got no questions for the witness, you
16 needn't ask them, but if you want to, you must get on with it now. I also
17 restrict your comments too.
18 THE ACCUSED: [Interpretation] Very well. Very well, Mr. May. I
19 will move on to questions that you will allow, though I think this is
20 scandalous that you are not allowing me to ask General Clark --
21 JUDGE MAY: That's exactly what I meant when I said you must
22 restrict your comments and not waste time.
23 MR. MILOSEVIC: [Interpretation]
24 Q. General Clark, you started your testimony with your biography;
25 isn't that right?Page 30419
1 A. That's correct.
2 Q. In your biography, your CV, I see that you were involved - and I
3 don't know how to put it - in some indirect relationships with your former
4 president, Clinton.
5 THE WITNESS: Your Honour, I don't understand what the question
6 is.
7 JUDGE MAY: Don't -- General, if you don't understand a question,
8 you don't have to answer it.
9 MR. MILOSEVIC: [Interpretation]
10 Q. Very well, General. Were you for many years a very close friend
11 of your former president, Clinton?
12 JUDGE MAY: What is the point of all this? Now, you've been told
13 to answer the questions -- I mean, to ask relevant questions which the
14 witness can answer. That's not such a question.
15 THE ACCUSED: [Interpretation] Mr. May --
16 JUDGE MAY: May I point out to you you have yet to challenge once
17 a specific point in the witness's evidence.
18 THE ACCUSED: [Interpretation] Mr. May, it is relevant because in
19 the CV, it is stated that he only knew his former president superficially,
20 whereas he personally told me in Holbrooke's presence that they were very
21 close friends from Arkansas, that they went hunting together, that they
22 consult one another about everything. So it's quite different from what
23 is represented in his CV, and I want to establish that the witness is not
24 telling the truth starting from his CV.
25 JUDGE MAY: Yes. The witness -- you can ask the witness aboutPage 30420
1 that. It's a conversation you allege you had with him.
2 Perhaps, General, you could just deal with that.
3 THE WITNESS: Your Honour, I did not tell President Milosevic that
4 I was a close friend of President Clinton. I've never been hunting with
5 President Clinton, and I did not and do not consult with President Clinton
6 about everything.
7 My relationship with President Clinton was formal, it was correct.
8 He was the president of the United States, I was an officer in the United
9 States army. I worked, during the time I was involved in the Dayton
10 negotiations, with the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, and as the
11 Supreme Allied Commander Europe, I had a dual reporting chain. I reported
12 through the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff to the secretary of
13 defence, and I reported to the NATO Military Committee and to the NATO
14 Secretary-General.
15 MR. MILOSEVIC: [Interpretation]
16 Q. So you are denying that in that building that you call a hunting
17 lodge, when Holbrooke, you, and I were walking around, that both you and
18 Holbrooke were speaking about your direct and close relationships with
19 President Clinton. So you're saying that you didn't say that and that we
20 didn't talk about that?
21 A. Your Honour, I have no recollection of any such conversation, and
22 I've never told anybody that I had a direct and close relationship with
23 President Clinton.
24 Q. You even spoke about hunting wild geese. Do you remember that?
25 A. Your Honour, I recall in the early days of the shuttlePage 30421
1 negotiations that on one occasion President Milosevic, Ambassador
2 Holbrooke, and I went for a walk around the lake. During that period of
3 time, I talked about duck hunting in the state of Arkansas. It had no
4 relation to anything to do with President Clinton. It was no more than a
5 social conversation intended to further the course of negotiations to seek
6 an end to the fighting in Bosnia.
7 JUDGE MAY: Mr. Milosevic, I point out that in the CV which we
8 have in front of us in the exhibits, I may be wrong about this and I'll be
9 corrected if I am, but in it I think I can see no mention of President
10 Clinton. It certainly mentions Little Rock, but I can't see any other
11 mention at all, contrary to what you assert.
12 THE ACCUSED: [Interpretation] Because it is contrary to what I am
13 saying. What I'm trying to say is that at the time he was saying
14 different things from what is now in the CV. Of course he's now denying
15 that. But we can move on.
16 MR. MILOSEVIC: [Interpretation]
17 Q. General Clark, you said that we met for the first time in August
18 1995, and at the time, your delegation was complete. You remember that.
19 Kruzel and Frasure and Drew and the others, they were all there; isn't
20 that right?
21 A. Your Honour, in August of 1995, with the US delegation, we met
22 with Milosevic for the first time, as I recounted in my testimony.
23 Q. Is it true that this was the beginning of efforts to -- to
24 initiate comprehensive negotiations on peace in Bosnia?
25 A. Your Honour, this was the -- my first involvement in peace talksPage 30422
1 aimed at bringing an end to the fighting in Bosnia. However, there had
2 been many efforts, as I'm sure the Court is well aware, for many years, to
3 end the fighting in Bosnia.
4 Q. But that was the first direct involvement of an official American
5 delegation headed by Holbrooke; isn't that right?
6 A. Your Honour, to the best of my knowledge, that was the first
7 engagement of Ambassador Holbrooke. It was my first engagement, it was
8 the first time the delegation was involved. Previously, Ambassador Redman
9 had been involved with something called the Contact Group peace plan, as I
10 recall.
11 Q. Apart from Redman, who was involved through the Contact Group, Bob
12 Frasure came to see me too, and he was a member of your delegation when he
13 came, wasn't he?
14 A. Your Honour, I have no direct knowledge of the specifics of
15 Ambassador Frasure's visit with Milosevic, but I do recall hearing that
16 Ambassador Frasure had previously met with Milosevic.
17 Q. Very well. Since you have no direct knowledge about it, though I
18 doubt it as you were all very well-informed, do you at least recollect
19 that at that meeting -- that the meeting was imbued with a spirit of
20 identical intentions, that is between those of Serbia and your delegation,
21 and that was to achieve peace. At least, that was what you were saying.
22 Isn't that right, General?
23 A. Your Honour, at the time of the meetings in August of 1995, we
24 were sounding out each of the factions and the participants in the
25 fighting in Bosnia in an effort to find a way to end the fighting there.Page 30423
1 It was at that time unclear what President Milosevic's role might be, and
2 that was the purpose of the meeting.
3 Q. You came to see me precisely for me to assist in achieving peace
4 in Bosnia as soon as possible with the help of the authority enjoyed by
5 the Republic of Serbia and me personally. Isn't that right, General?
6 A. Your Honour, we came to see Mr. -- the accused because we wanted
7 to determine what his position would be on the strategic plan that we
8 developed for trying to end the conflict and whether he could in fact
9 provide a constructive role. We thought that he was going to be a factor,
10 perhaps the dominant factor, in whether or not we could achieve peace, and
11 we didn't know whether he would provide a constructive role or some other
12 role.
13 Q. General Clark, do you remember that for several months prior to
14 your inclusion there was a Contact Group plan on the table with Serbia,
15 the government of Serbia, and I personally had supported and insisted on
16 this Contact Group plan being adopted, and that plan implied a separation
17 of the entities in Bosnia-Herzegovina in the proportion 51/49 per cent.
18 Do you remember that?
19 A. Your Honour, over the previous period of time a Contact Group plan
20 did emerge which called for a 51/49 division of the country. To the best
21 of my knowledge, the Serbs had never agreed to this plan. It was unclear
22 to me personally what Milosevic's role might have been in proposing it,
23 supporting it, or encouraging others to support it. What we knew was that
24 the plan had not succeeded.
25 We also knew that Yugoslavia still had a major if not dominatingPage 30424
1 role in continuing the conflict against the Bosnian Muslim forces and
2 Croat forces, that there were heavy weapons used, that the logistics
3 seemed -- chain seemed to go back to Yugoslavia, and so it was unclear to
4 me what Milosevic's role might have been during this period.
5 Q. Very well, General Clark. It's quite clear to me what you're --
6 you wish to explain here, but let us go back to the meeting. That was the
7 first meeting that you had in the territory of the former Yugoslavia,
8 wasn't it? As a delegation.
9 A. Your Honour, this was our first meeting in the former Yugoslavia
10 with the then-head of Serbia.
11 Q. At that meeting, you presented a plan to me. You said that you
12 were leaving already on the following day and that you would be talking to
13 the leadership in Sarajevo headed by Izetbegovic; is that right?
14 A. Your Honour, that is correct.
15 Q. Do you remember that I suggested to you and that I cautioned you
16 not to go, as you had intended to go, via Mount Igman because there isn't
17 a proper road there? There's only a footpath there basically. It's very
18 dangerous. My suggestion to you was that you should take the normal road.
19 Do you remember that?
20 A. Your Honour, I don't remember all the ins and outs of this
21 dialogue. What I do remember is that we had asked the accused to assure
22 that we could get through on the normal road, that we wouldn't be stopped
23 by checkpoints and other things. And I do recall that the accused was
24 able to contact immediately, I believe it was General Mladic, at least
25 that's the impression that we were given, that I took from the meeting,Page 30425
1 and he came back and said that he could not ensure that we could have an
2 unrestricted passage in at that time on the normal routes.
3 Q. General Clark, it's exactly the other way around. I'm going to
4 remind you. First of all, I'm not the one who went out in order to get
5 into contact with anyone. It's my chef de cabinet, Goran Milinovic, who
6 went out. I never left the room; I went on talking to you. Do you
7 remember that?
8 A. Your Honour, I don't remember the specific details of who left the
9 room or who didn't at that point.
10 Q. All right, General Clark. How come you don't remember that Goran
11 Milinovic brought a fax containing written guarantees from General Mladic
12 that you would not be stopped anywhere and that you can pass along the
13 normal route? That is what we discussed for a long time, because he came
14 back a few times in order to establish the exact wording of this guarantee
15 so that it would be absolutely certain that nobody would stop you, because
16 Holbrooke explained that it would be a great shame for the delegation if
17 anyone stopped them anywhere. I assume you should remember that. It was
18 the first meeting. Is that right or is that not right?
19 A. Your Honour, I don't have any recollection of this specifically.
20 I do remember that there was discussion about the route and that we were
21 unable to get satisfactory guarantees that we could go through it and that
22 that's subsequently why we decided we would go the Mount Igman route. I
23 don't have any recollection of the details other than that there was some
24 conversation with Mladic. That is to say that there was a report that
25 someone had had a conversation with Mladic. We didn't see that. WePage 30426
1 stayed in the room. Who might have had that conversation and what was
2 carried back and forth and so forth, I don't recall.
3 Q. Don't you remember that you were given this guarantee into your
4 very own hands in writing that you would not be stopped anywhere and that
5 Holbrooke refused this out of his very own vanity and that's why four of
6 your men got killed on Mount Igman in the accident because the APC
7 tumbled? You cannot remember that, General Clark? Four of your fellow
8 members of the delegation got killed then because of your vanity.
9 A. Your Honour, I can assure you I was never given any guarantee in
10 my very own hands that we could travel on the normal routes. I have never
11 seen such a document. I have no recollection of it whatsoever. Of course
12 I remember the tragedy on Mount Igman. I think it's regrettable that it
13 wasn't possible to go in on the normal routes. And at the time, I viewed
14 that as a political decision by someone in an effort to delay our ability
15 to consult with the Bosnian Muslim authority, President Izetbegovic, and
16 Prime Minister Silajdzic.
17 Q. General Clark, this is really something that an honourable man
18 should not allow himself to say. You know full well the effort that we
19 made --
20 JUDGE MAY: Mr. Milosevic, this is all by way of comment. You've
21 heard what the witness has said. You challenge it. It doesn't seem to me
22 we're going to get very much further and not by sort of abuse of that
23 kind.
24 MR. MILOSEVIC: [Interpretation]
25 Q. And do you remember at least, General Clark, that I was the onePage 30427
1 who categorically suggested to you not to go via Mount Igman by any means,
2 to take the road around? And that is why we made every effort in order to
3 obtain this guarantee for you. Do you remember that we -- that I
4 categorically advocated that, that you take the normal route, not the path
5 across Mount Igman, and that that is why every effort was made for you to
6 obtain this guarantee. You are speaking under oath here, and we have
7 witnesses about this.
8 A. Your Honour, we're talking about what I remember and what I don't
9 remember in some kind of a meeting. In this meeting, I don't remember any
10 of this emotion, I don't remember the sort of extreme efforts that the
11 accused is presenting here. I remember an ongoing discussion about
12 whether or not there were assurances that we could in fact get through the
13 checkpoints without being stopped. I recall the conclusion was that we
14 could not. I'm not sure who the conversations were alleged to have taken
15 place with, but I don't have these specific recollections. What I
16 remember is the conclusion of the meeting, and at the conclusion of the
17 meeting we determined that if we were going to consult in Sarajevo, we
18 would have to do so without going through the checkpoints.
19 Q. You decided not to go there out of vanity, not because you did not
20 get a guarantee. Isn't that right, General Clark? That's why your
21 friends got killed.
22 A. Your Honour, this is incorrect.
23 Q. All right, General Clark. Let us move on to other questions now.
24 You said that you were surprised that I was advocating that Serbia
25 play the main role in the negotiations. Isn't that right? Is that whatPage 30428
1 you said a few minutes ago?
2 A. Your Honour, my statement was when the accused said that we should
3 deal with him rather than Bosnian Serbs, the question then that struck me
4 was how is it that he could be so certain, and what legal mechanisms did
5 he have to be so certain that if a referendum were held on the peace
6 agreement inside Yugoslavia that it would apply to the Bosnian Serbs, the
7 leaders of a faction in another country. I was not certain and unclear as
8 to what his authority was over these people. It wasn't clear to me that
9 he had that authority, certainly not legally, and that was the basis for
10 our questions. His answer was, of course, that they would not resist the
11 will of the Serb people, and then I took advantage of the opportunity to
12 ask him personally that if it wasn't a matter of legality, then it was a
13 matter of influence and therefore what was the basis that we should assume
14 he had influence over these people if he couldn't have prevented the
15 killing of innocents at Srebrenica.
16 Q. General Clark, you've got everything mixed up now, but let us work
17 our way through this, detail by detail, and then we're going to clarify
18 it. Do you remember that precisely because Serbia, and I personally,
19 advocated the achievement of peace, and we conducted marathon negotiations
20 with the leadership of Republika Srpska that included the entire
21 leadership of Yugoslavia, Serbia, Montenegro, and Republika Srpska, and
22 the patriarch of the Serbian Orthodox church was present there, His
23 Holiness Pavle.
24 We reached agreement to establish a single delegation for the
25 peace negotiations, because this was in the interest of the entire SerbPage 30429
1 people, both in the Federal Republic of Yugoslavia and Republika Srpska
2 and all other people who live in the territory of the former Yugoslavia.
3 Do you remember at least that?
4 A. Your Honour, over the several years of the conflict, we had seen
5 the accused's role as ambiguous; on the one hand seeming to encourage
6 conflict, and on the other hand seeming to at times support peace.
7 During the period when we began the negotiations, he seemed to be
8 attempting to portray himself as someone in favour of negotiations. And
9 in response to our challenge about his influence, the next time we saw
10 him, he reached into his pocket and he pulled out what we came to know as
11 the patriarch's letter, which was the idea that there would be a single
12 delegation that would be comprised of six people and that he would have
13 the controlling vote on this delegation. What went into the completion of
14 this, whether or not there were negotiations and how extensive they were,
15 we have no direct knowledge, I have no direct knowledge of that, but I do
16 recall the patriarch letter.
17 Q. General Clark, first and foremost, this was no letter of the
18 patriarch. There was an agreement reached between the leadership of
19 Yugoslavia, the leadership of Serbia, the leadership of Montenegro, the
20 leadership of Republika Srpska. In the presence of the patriarch we all
21 signed this letter, including the representatives of Republika Srpska and
22 the representatives of the Federal Republic of Yugoslavia, and finally it
23 was signed by the patriarch too because in this way he wanted to attach
24 importance to it and to bless this agreement.
25 THE ACCUSED: [Interpretation] After all, this agreement does existPage 30430
1 here, so during the break could you please get a copy of this out for
2 General Clark to see, because he is even twisting that.
3 JUDGE MAY: Mr. Nice, could you try and find it for the accused.
4 Now, what are you alleging that General Clark has twisted?
5 THE ACCUSED: [Interpretation] He's twisted everything, Mr. May.
6 He's twisted everything. He's twisted the fact that Serbia was the main
7 factor that advocated peace all those years, that Serbia made every effort
8 to have this peace achieved, and that in very, very intensive negotiations
9 this was precisely attained, that is that Serbia be actively involved in
10 the peace process, and the result of that was this agreement which
11 includes the patriarch's signature. Had this not happened --
12 JUDGE MAY: The General should be able to deal and can only deal
13 with what he knew himself about the Serb negotiating side.
14 General Clark, can you assist us as to what you knew of the
15 position on the other side in -- we are now talking about August 1995, as
16 to the composition of the other side or anything of that sort?
17 THE WITNESS: Yes, Your Honour. I do recall this letter. We
18 called it the patriarch letter. Of course it was an agreement, and it's
19 the agreement that the accused used to demonstrate that he was the person
20 who should be consulted and was the lead for the negotiations. We called
21 it the patriarch letter for short because it was signed by the patriarch,
22 among others, that's all.
23 MR. MILOSEVIC: [Interpretation]
24 Q. General Clark, then why did Serbia and why did I personally
25 advocate having a single delegation? Wasn't it in order to have aPage 30431
1 guarantee that the peace agreement would be reached? Isn't that right,
2 General Clark?
3 A. Your Honour, I believe that the single delegation was the response
4 to the challenge that Ambassador Holbrooke presented in the first session
5 that we had where we asked him who should we consult with; should we
6 consult with the Bosnian Serbs or you? President Milosevic at the time
7 said, "You should consult with me, of course." And this is the piece that
8 I have testified about in my opening testimony. This letter merely
9 established the fact that he would have the ability to control the Bosnian
10 Serb delegation should there be disagreements.
11 Q. General Clark, even what you said just now is not true, because I
12 had advised you to talk to the leadership of Republika Srpska. Achieving
13 a single delegation was, for us, a question of life itself, of peace, of
14 attaining guarantees that peace would be achieved. If you want to
15 remember this, and if you want something to jog your memory, which is
16 obviously not your intention, I suggested to you precisely that you should
17 talk to the leadership of Republika Srpska and that Serbia and the Federal
18 Republic of Yugoslavia would give their maximum support to all peace
19 efforts. At that time, we trusted you. At that time we really believed
20 that you were interested in peace. Wasn't that the way it was, General?
21 A. Your Honour, what I remember of the first meeting was I don't
22 remember President Milosevic telling us we should not talk to the Bosnian
23 Serbs. What I do remember his saying was that he was the appropriate
24 person to lead the peace discussions.
25 JUDGE MAY: I think his suggestion was that he advised you,Page 30432
1 General, to speak to the leadership of the Republika Srpska. Did he do
2 anything like that?
3 THE WITNESS: Your Honour, whether the accused advised us to speak
4 to them or not, I don't recall. At the time, they were both indicted war
5 criminals, and so it wasn't our desire to speak to either Karadzic or
6 Mladic.
7 MR. MILOSEVIC: [Interpretation]
8 Q. Now millimetre by millimetre, slowly but surely, General Clark,
9 you are approaching the terrain of the truth. You did not want to accept
10 my suggestions to talk to the leadership of Republika Srpska, and you
11 explained this by saying that you did not want to talk to individuals who
12 were indicted for war crimes. Is that right or is that not right, General
13 Clark? That is just what you've said.
14 A. What I just told you is my view. What I remember of the
15 conversation at the time, Your Honour, was we asked the accused, "Should
16 we be dealing with you or should we be dealing with the Bosnian Serbs?"
17 He said, "You'll deal with me, of course." And he said, "Give me the
18 terms of the peace agreement and we'll hold a referendum on them." I
19 don't remember what other sideline of the conversation there might have
20 been. I don't recall whether he would have ever said, "By all means talk
21 to the Bosnian Serbs." The main thrust of the conversation was to
22 establish him in a position of power and control over the process. That's
23 what I took from the meeting, that's what I've testified about.
24 Q. Well, didn't you say just a few minutes ago that you did not want
25 to talk to the leadership of Republika Srpska because you said that youPage 30433
1 did not want to talk to individuals who had been indicted for war crimes?
2 Isn't that what you said just a few minutes ago, General Clark?
3 A. Your Honour, I did say that a few minutes ago, and that is in fact
4 true, that we preferred not to have to do this negotiation with these
5 individuals. Carl Bildt had already talked to these individuals, and on
6 the other hand, we were prepared to talk to them if that turned out to be
7 absolutely necessary. It was simply one factor. And it was an irrelevant
8 factor for the purposes of my testimony, as I'm explaining to you and as
9 I've testified, it was President -- then President Milosevic who explained
10 that he was the person who should be dealt with in dealing with and
11 talking about the proposed peace agreement.
12 Q. General Clark, this is a complete lie.
13 JUDGE MAY: We've been over this topic now for about ten minutes.
14 Let's move on to something else.
15 MR. MILOSEVIC: [Interpretation]
16 Q. General Clark, didn't you say several minutes ago during the
17 examination-in-chief or, rather, what is called the examination-in-chief
18 here, didn't you say that I had persuaded you to talk to Karadzic and
19 Mladic about the ways in which the bombing could be stopped, that you and
20 Holbrooke and the other members of the delegation withdrew in order to
21 discuss this, namely whether you should talk to them at all? And I had
22 called them so that they could talk to you, and that ultimately you met up
23 with them and talked to them. Is that true or is that not true, General
24 Clark?
25 A. Your Honour, this is correct that we did talk to Karadzic andPage 30434
1 Mladic on a subsequent meeting at the so-called hunting lodge during the
2 time that the bombing was ongoing.
3 Q. Well, the point of my mediation was precisely for you to talk to
4 the political and military leadership of Republika Srpska and reach
5 agreement on the terms under which the bombing could be stopped. I wanted
6 to help the bombing stop. Wasn't that the main reason? Wasn't that the
7 main objective? Isn't that right, General Clark?
8 A. Your Honour, I believe that that is correct, that President
9 Milosevic called these people together. He wanted them to talk to us. As
10 he told us at the time, he said this bombing is hurting the cause of
11 peace. He wanted the negotiations to proceed - at least, that was my
12 understanding - and we did subsequently talk to those people.
13 Q. Well, all right. At that meeting with Karadzic and Mladic, didn't
14 you reach agreement on the terms for having the bombing stopped? Is that
15 right or is that not right?
16 A. Your Honour, it's correct that at this meeting we agreed on a
17 cease-fire to -- around Sarajevo and that when that was accepted and
18 implemented that we would be able to halt the NATO bombing in the fall of
19 1995.
20 Q. So my mediation between you and the political and military
21 leadership of Republika Srpska helped lead to a halt in the bombing and
22 creating conditions for peace negotiations. Isn't that right, General
23 Clark?
24 A. This is correct.
25 Q. And is it correct, General Clark, that this was not your firstPage 30435
1 meeting with Mladic, that you had met Mladic on an individual basis and
2 independently of that before?
3 A. That's correct.
4 Q. When did you meet Mladic?
5 A. On my first trip to Bosnia in 1994, I met with leaders on both
6 sides at the instructions of some, or the suggestions of some of my
7 colleagues in Washington. I met with Izetbegovic, Silajdzic, Delic, and
8 Mladic.
9 Q. All right. Did you meet anyone else from the Serb side then or
10 did you only meet with Mladic?
11 A. I don't recall who else might have been in that meeting with
12 Mladic.
13 Q. And did you achieve anything at that meeting with Mladic?
14 A. Your Honour, what I remember about the meeting with Mladic is that
15 we discussed the Contact Group peace plan, that Mladic was angry,
16 belligerent, refused to agree to the peace plan, and was attempting to
17 threaten the Bosnian Muslims should the United States provide assistance
18 to them. I took extensive notes on the meeting and it was a helpful
19 meeting for me to understand what it was like to deal with Bosnian Serbs.
20 Q. As far as I can remember, that meeting of yours was very cordial.
21 It wasn't any kind of quarrel. Isn't that right, General Clark? Your
22 meeting with General Mladic, according what you told me and according to
23 what Mladic told me, was very cordial. Mladic praised you a great deal,
24 that you had a lot of understanding, and then also you said to me all the
25 best about Mladic. Isn't that right, General Clark?Page 30436
1 A. No. Your Honour, I don't remember making any complimentary
2 remarks about General Mladic. But at the meeting that I had with Mladic,
3 I listened to his views, I did write his views down, I said I would convey
4 these views to Washington. They were angry, they were belligerent, they
5 were not the views of someone who could agree to stop fighting. And in
6 fact, he did not agree at that time, the summer of 1994, that he would
7 advocate Serbs signing the Contact Group peace plan at the time. I did my
8 best to bring Mladic around to a position that was more constructive, but
9 I was ultimately unsuccessful in doing so.
10 Q. And do you remember, General Clark, that Mladic's position then
11 was to stop all hostilities throughout Bosnia-Herzegovina? Well, you told
12 me about that. You told me about your experience with Mladic when we
13 first met with this entire delegation.
14 A. I don't remember going into any detail on my experience in the
15 meeting with Mladic, Your Honour. I just simply have no recollection of
16 that. I remember in the first meeting that Ambassador Holbrooke did most
17 of the talking and I think I was introduced and the only substantive
18 conversation I had with President Milosevic that I can remember was the
19 one I have produced here in evidence.
20 I think that the accused is referring to the general Bosnian Serb
21 position, that what they wanted to do was freeze the positions as they
22 were in 1994 in which the Serb side controlled much more than 49 per cent
23 of Bosnia-Herzegovina. That was the position at the time. And that was
24 going to be an unacceptable position in terms of a peace settlement, and
25 that was the Bosnian Serb position; simply stop fighting, we'll hold ontoPage 30437
1 what we have. As far as I remember, it was 60 or 70 per cent of the
2 territory.
3 Q. First of all, you are now interpreting people's intentions,
4 General, and you are saying that people had ill-intentions. And as for
5 that meeting with Mladic in 1994, it was aimed at suggesting the cessation
6 of all hostilities throughout Bosnia-Herzegovina in order to promote the
7 peace process. Isn't that --
8 JUDGE MAY: I'm going to stop the cross-examination continuing on
9 these lines. The witness has told you what he can remember of it. You
10 need to move on to something else.
11 THE ACCUSED: [Interpretation] I really don't understand, Mr. May,
12 what you're actually allowing me to ask this witness.
13 JUDGE MAY: Not repetition is one thing. We've been over that
14 conversation several times.
15 MR. MILOSEVIC: [Interpretation]
16 Q. Was that conversation between you a cordial one or not? I mean,
17 between you and Mladic.
18 A. Your Honour, I did my best to have a cordial conversation with
19 General Mladic. I have to say that it was difficult to do so.
20 Q. What do you mean it was difficult? There are photographs. A
21 couple of weeks ago -- months ago, the Belgrade weekly Nin carried on its
22 front page your photograph with Mladic, smiling, Mladic wearing your cap
23 and you wearing his. It was a cordial encounter. You could have seen
24 this photograph on the front page of the Belgrade weekly Nin, an issue
25 two months ago, I think. I can't give you the exact date but it's easy toPage 30438
1 find.
2 Isn't that the best proof that you had a good understanding
3 between you, a cordial meeting, in accordance with what I'm saying? Do
4 you remember that?
5 A. Your Honour, the best proof of the quality of the meeting is my
6 memory, which I've already described to this Court on two separate answers
7 to this question. This was a difficult meeting. I did my best in terms
8 of military diplomacy to take something constructive from it.
9 Q. Very well, General Clark. Since you said that the Serbs held a
10 large percentage of the area, which is quite true, are you aware first of
11 all their public statements were that they would reduce that percentage of
12 the area and that that is something that they wished to negotiate with the
13 other two sides? Do you remember that? That was the content of all the
14 talks conducted in Geneva by Owen and Stoltenberg who also are fully aware
15 of those statements of theirs.
16 A. Your Honour, I'm not the expert on the Owen and Stoltenberg talks.
17 At the time I was not engaged in this issue, and I can't provide any
18 direct testimony about it.
19 JUDGE MAY: Perhaps you can help us with this: As far as you were
20 concerned, General, was that the Serb portion?
21 THE WITNESS: I have no recollection of the details of the Serb
22 position. What I recall was that at the time that I came into the process
23 of trying to bring peace to the Balkans, there was a Contact Group plan.
24 The Contact Group plan was rejected by the Serb Assembly in Pale, and in
25 its place was a proposal that simply all fighting stop, and that's what IPage 30439
1 remember, that they would simply freeze in place. Whether there was
2 anything that went beyond that or not is not clear to me. I just don't
3 have any recollection of it.
4 JUDGE MAY: Yes. That's a convenient time. We're going to
5 adjourn now. We will adjourn for 20 minutes.
6 --- Recess taken at 12.20 p.m.
7 --- On resuming at 12.44 p.m.
8 JUDGE MAY: Yes, Mr. Nice.
9 MR. NICE: We're tracking down the patriarch letter or agreement.
10 I have some documents, but I'm not yet in a position to make them
11 available, but I hope to be able to do so by the end of the session or,
12 alternatively, to explain why I can't.
13 JUDGE MAY: Yes. But I do recollect it.
14 MR. NICE: I don't believe it's been produced, but we'll have to
15 check further on that.
16 The second point is, in light of the accused's expressions of
17 objection about the scope of his questioning, may I just draw to the
18 Court's attention not only that your order permitted him to cross-examine
19 on the basis of the scope identified by annex A, which is the larger
20 rather than the smaller version of the document, the statement of the
21 witness, but it also allowed the accused and the amici to seek broader
22 scope of cross-examination by a procedure that they could adopt, and
23 neither the accused nor the amici has taken the opportunity of that
24 procedure.
25 JUDGE MAY: Very well.Page 30440
1 MR. KAY: Yes, Your Honour. Can I make a few observations,
2 because it's obviously important as there is a big issue behind this
3 witness that I think everyone in the court is aware of. The order of the
4 Court, I believe, of the 30th of October did confine cross-examination to
5 material in annex A. I have been tracking annex A, which is a statement
6 served on me on the 3rd of November, and although slightly wider than the
7 present statement we have, it is the same issues that the witness has
8 dealt with in direct examination this morning that is before the Court.
9 It doesn't deal with the NATO bombing campaign, and so to all intents and
10 purposes, the issues are the same.
11 One of the big problems has been was the belief, of course, that
12 this book was going to be exhibited, and if the book had been exhibited,
13 it of course dealt with the NATO bombing campaign and the accused would
14 have been able to deal with those issues that arise within the book. That
15 has not happened, and of course I believe the situation has been that he
16 would have prepared a great deal of his cross-examination on that basis,
17 because that was the belief of all parties until very recently, having
18 been alerted to an issue on Friday as to whether the book would be
19 exhibited or not. And so in many respects, the accused has approached
20 this witness from a particular way which it seems has been changed at a
21 very late stage, and of course that has caused him difficulties with his
22 case strategy.
23 JUDGE MAY: Well, I certainly never understood that. There was no
24 reference to the book in the order which we had made. And while it is
25 true that there was talk about the book, we had never been asked - I mayPage 30441
1 be wrong about this - to order its being exhibited. And what I had
2 understood was that the Prosecution would seek to rely on those parts of
3 the book which supported the evidence, which is in fact what effectively
4 has happened because the passages to which they referred are essentially
5 the same as in the evidence. And of course in those circumstances, for
6 the reasons we have given, we haven't admitted the book, it adding
7 nothing.
8 But yes, that may explain why there has been no application. You
9 will, of course, have the period overnight to consider the position.
10 MR. KAY: Yes. The history of it is quite important, because when
11 we started with this witness and the Rule 70 issues, the book was served
12 by the Prosecution, and it looked at that stage, and we've been through
13 various other stages since, but it looked at the original stage that that
14 was going to be the basis of testimony because we have been approaching
15 witnesses in a very different way recently from how we did when we started
16 the trial, and there's been a situation where Rule 89(F) could have been
17 used in relation to the book and that be the basis of the testimony.
18 In many respects I had originally expected that, although, of
19 course, I appreciated things were changing as we moved further and closer
20 to this witness's testimony. But it may well be that that was not
21 something that the accused had appreciated.
22 JUDGE MAY: Very well.
23 MR. NICE: And, Your Honour, I can actually sort out the point
24 about the patriarch agreement straight away. We don't have a copy of the
25 agreement itself, or letter itself, that we can produce for you, but aPage 30442
1 document, 469, tab 20, produced by Lilic is the stenographic record of one
2 of the two meetings held at Dobanovci, this one on the 30th of August,
3 1995, and on page 16 of 19 of that document, the agreement is set out and
4 you can therefore find the terms of the agreement there. And if the
5 accused wishes to find it, that's where he can find it for the time being.
6 JUDGE MAY: It might be helpful if somebody has a copy available
7 for tomorrow.
8 We are going to have a copy of this document, and there is this
9 reference to it, Exhibit 469, tab 20, and there should be a copy for the
10 witness.
11 MR. NICE: In English it turns -- the agreement starts at page 16
12 of 19. In the B/C/S version, it starts at page 14 at the top, if the
13 accused would find that helpful.
14 MR. NICE: Page 16 in the English we can find this reference, can
15 we?
16 MR. KAY: Paragraph 2 is the --
17 JUDGE MAY: Help us with the date. It seems that the meeting is
18 on the --
19 THE INTERPRETER: Microphone, please Your Honour.
20 JUDGE MAY: Date 30th of August, 1995.
21 MR. NICE: The date of the agreement is set out on page 16 --
22 THE INTERPRETER: Microphone, please, Mr. Nice.
23 MR. NICE: Thank you. The date of the agreement is said to be on
24 the 29th of August. If you look three lines above the word "agreement,"
25 towards the foot of page 16 of the document.Page 30443
1 JUDGE MAY: Yes. Thank you.
2 Mr. Milosevic, we now have that document in front of us, and the
3 witness has a copy, the general has a copy, if you want to ask any further
4 questions about that. Otherwise, we will continue until 2.00, which means
5 another hour for your cross-examination, hour and a bit. Yes.
6 THE ACCUSED: [Interpretation] I assume I'll have some time
7 tomorrow as well for my cross-examination, Mr. May.
8 JUDGE MAY: Yes, you will have some time tomorrow.
9 THE ACCUSED: [Interpretation] Let us first clear up one particular
10 point. A moment ago, Mr. Kay said that by instructions issued on Friday,
11 you specified the scope of the cross-examination or the examination or the
12 testimony of this witness. I have received no document to that effect on
13 Friday.
14 JUDGE MAY: No, it wasn't an order. It was the -- the order is
15 the written order which has already been referred to, that's the original
16 order. There was some discussion on Friday, or certainly one morning, it
17 may not have even been Friday. There was some discussion about the
18 admissibility or how much of the book should be admitted or not. That was
19 only the point. There was no order.
20 Now, let us continue.
21 THE ACCUSED: [Interpretation] Mr. May, when this witness's
22 testimony was announced, the opposite side disclosed his book to me, which
23 is called "Waging Modern War." Therefore the fact that the side opposite
24 provided me with a document, I assumed, and it is only logical for anyone
25 to assume, that that would served as the basis for the testimony of thisPage 30444
1 witness and his cross-examination. However, just now you have prohibited
2 me from asking him a single question about a war of which this witness was
3 in command against Yugoslavia.
4 JUDGE MAY: We're not going over this again. The order was issued
5 on the 30th of October, it was in writing, and it made quite plain the
6 scope of the examination. Now, let us continue with the examination now.
7 THE ACCUSED: [Interpretation] But even then, on the 30th of
8 October, the book was not excluded. It was not excluded. On the
9 contrary; the book was produced as a basis for the testimony of this
10 witness. You didn't exclude the book on the 30th of October.
11 JUDGE MAY: What was referred to in the summary were possible
12 extracts and that was all. And in fact, those extracts, as we've just
13 heard, are substantially the evidence which General Clark has given.
14 Now, if you want to spend your time usefully, you should continue
15 with your cross-examination.
16 THE ACCUSED: [Interpretation] I will certainly continue. That's
17 not a problem.
18 MR. MILOSEVIC: [Interpretation]
19 Q. General Clark, since a moment ago we were discussing a matter you
20 know nothing about, that is the readiness of the Serb side in Bosnia and
21 Herzegovina to give up part of the territory it controlled, will you
22 please place in front of you a map which is not any division map but it is
23 an ethnic map based on the 1991 census, and you will see that most of the
24 territory in fact belongs to the Serbs on the basis of this map.
25 So my question to you is: Are you aware that predominantly - I'mPage 30445
1 not saying altogether - that the Serbs held territories that belonged to
2 them or not?
3 THE ACCUSED: [Interpretation] So will you please put this map on
4 the ELMO.
5 JUDGE MAY: Yes, this is a map that has already been produced
6 several times. I will be reminded of the number. It's got a D number.
7 Yes. We'll get the number in due course.
8 Yes. What is it that you want the witness to deal with?
9 JUDGE KWON: It's D215. 215.
10 THE REGISTRAR: That's correct, Your Honour.
11 MR. MILOSEVIC: [Interpretation]
12 Q. I should just like to ask the witness to tell us whether this was
13 roughly the land controlled by the Serbs and that they in fact controlled
14 mostly their own territory because it belonged to them and because they
15 were the majority population in those areas.
16 A. Well, Your Honour, I'm not familiar with the method that was used
17 to produce this census. I have seen census results, but since we're
18 talking about events that occurred before the period on which I testified,
19 then I think it's just -- it's fair to point out the fact that during this
20 period, and the area in which the Serbs were in control included areas
21 such as Banja Luka, which had very large non-Serb populations which were
22 driven out. We know that for a fact. All of this was relevant. It was
23 all important background.
24 Some of these camps were set up in this area that's not blue but
25 pink on this map, and this area in here, there were substantial portionsPage 30446
1 of non-Serbs, also appear around Brcko and the surrounding area, the
2 Posavina Corridor, also over here.
3 So I don't think -- I don't understand the thrust of the accused's
4 question. But if it gets into the point about the specific division of
5 territories, then I think it's clear that if one looked at the territory
6 in 1994 that was controlled by the Serbs, one would have to conclude that
7 non-Serb populations had been driven out and confined. And if one's
8 concerned with the percentages of the land that are controlled, then one
9 would have to say the percentages were not in accordance with the division
10 of the population.
11 Q. Are you claiming, General Clark, that the non-Serbs were detained
12 in camps? Do you have any idea how many such non-Serbs were in camps? If
13 you make such a claim, then I assume you base it on some figures.
14 A. Your Honour, I'm only trying to discuss the issue of the map.
15 I've already presented the testimony as requested. I can certainly
16 produce additional figures that would give estimates of the numbers of
17 people detained, the locations of the camps, and so forth. I don't have
18 those in my memory. They're not in the line of my direct performance of
19 duties. At the time I wasn't responsible for this part of it, for these
20 negotiations, but I'm happy to engage in a broader debate if that is the
21 wishes of the Court.
22 JUDGE MAY: Have you finished with the plan now? Have you
23 finished with the map?
24 THE ACCUSED: [Interpretation] Yes, you can remove it. I assume it
25 speaks for itself.Page 30447
1 JUDGE MAY: We will take it back, and it can go back to the
2 accused. In fact, the registry was right about the map; that map hasn't
3 been produced, according to my recollection. It was the Sarajevo map
4 which we produced, a similar one, but it may be we're going to get
5 something else coming up. Yes.
6 MR. MILOSEVIC: [Interpretation]
7 Q. Let me briefly go back to what General Clark referred to as the
8 patriarch's letter. I assume the translation is correct. It says
9 "Minutes" or "Record from a meeting of the highest political and military
10 leadership of the Federal Republic of Yugoslavia and Republic of Srpska,
11 held on the 29th of August, 1995, at the Yugoslav army residence in
12 Dobanovci." That's the small hunting lodge that General Clark mentioned.
13 So it says here -- I hope one can see clearly from this document
14 how the meeting developed and evolved and how long the explanations went
15 on for regarding the need for an agreement to be drafted between
16 Yugoslavia and Republika Srpska in relation to the peace negotiations. I
17 should like to read out what it says here on page 16 of the English
18 version from which it can clearly be seen that there are two sides here
19 endeavouring to define their common interest in achieving peace.
20 And it says here: "At a joint meeting of the leadership of the
21 Federal Republic of Yugoslavia, (present: The president of the Federal
22 Republic of Yugoslavia, Zoran Lilic; the President of Serbia, Slobodan
23 Milosevic; the president of Montenegro, Momir Bulatovic; the president of
24 the federal government, Dr. Rade Kontic; federal Defence Minister Pavle
25 Bulatovic; and the Yugoslav Army General Chief of Staff, Colonel GeneralPage 30448
1 Momcilo Perisic) and of the Republic of Srpska (present: President of the
2 Republic of Srpska, Dr. Radovan Karadzic; vice-president Dr. Nikola
3 Koljevic and Dr. Biljana Plavsic; president of the Assembly of Republika
4 Srpska, Momcilo Krajisnik; the president of the Republika Srpska, Dusan
5 Kozic; Minister of Foreign Affairs Dr. Aleksa Buha; the Commander of the
6 Main Staff of Republika Srpska Colonel-General Ratko Mladic with Generals
7 Zdravko Tolimir, Milan Gvero, and Djordje Djukic) ..."
8 So it is stated that this was a meeting held between these two
9 delegations and that the meeting was also attended, as it says clearly
10 here, by the patriarch of the Serbian Orthodox Church, His Eminence Pavle
11 and Bishop Irinej Bulovic.
12 And then it says: "The following agreement was reached ..." So
13 it is no letter by the patriarch but the presence of the patriarch and
14 Bishop Irinej at a meeting between delegations of the Republic of
15 Yugoslavia and the Republika Srpska represented on a parity basis,
16 including the highest level of political and military leaderships. And
17 then it says in paragraph 1: "The leadership of Republika Srpska is in
18 agreement with the complete coordination of its approach to the peace
19 process with the leadership of the Federal Republic of Yugoslavia in the
20 interests of peace."
21 So it means that agreement was reached to coordinate the approach
22 rather than any kind of alchemistry of mine. So the point was in
23 achieving a unified approach with the aim of achieving peace.
24 Is that clear, General?
25 A. Your Honour, I've seen the so-called patriarch letter before. IPage 30449
1 understand what it provided. I have not seen this full package before.
2 But the patriarch letter is clear, and it gives the accused the final vote
3 and control over the delegation.
4 Q. Yes. I insisted because the Vance-Owen Plan of 1993 fell through
5 because our authority from Serbia and the Federal Republic of Yugoslavia,
6 the president of Yugoslavia, Cosic, was there, the president of
7 Montenegro, Bulatovic, myself, and the Greek Prime Minister Mitsotakis.
8 We did not manage to convince them.
9 JUDGE MAY: General Clark can't deal with what you decided amongst
10 yourselves. You can give evidence about it in due course. We can all
11 read this document. Is there anything else you want to ask the general
12 about it?
13 MR. MILOSEVIC: [Interpretation]
14 Q. Is it clear that it was stated in this document that Republika
15 Srpska would delegate three members to the six-member delegation which,
16 while headed by Slobodan Milosevic, President of Serbia, will conduct the
17 negotiations on a comprehensive peace agreement for Bosnia-Herzegovina.
18 And then the members are listed. And it is also stated that the
19 delegation is authorised to sign the peace agreement on behalf of
20 Republika Srpska, the part of it relating to Republika Srpska, with the
21 obligation that the achieved agreement should be strictly and consistently
22 complied with. Is that right, General Clark?
23 A. Well, Your Honour, I think the patriarch letter speaks for itself.
24 I mean, it has it there in writing. Everyone can read it. I think the
25 broader issue that's being raised is the role of the accused and ofPage 30450
1 Yugoslavia in this conflict, and as an observer of this from the outside
2 and as someone who had reliable sources to depend on, what I viewed was
3 that this side had, at this point in 1995, suffered a grievous strategic
4 setback and they had recognised that with the developments, the military
5 developments on the ground, that they were in danger of defeat on the
6 ground and therefore the best tactical course was to accept the general
7 outlines of the peace proposal that the United States delegation was
8 bringing.
9 To say that is to say nothing about their motivations, their
10 previous participation in efforts of war and peace and so forth. It's
11 simply -- this is simply a reflection -- I believe this patriarch letter,
12 it's simply a tactical document that reflects the position that they found
13 the themselves in at the time.
14 Q. Very well, General Clark. You insist on calling this the
15 patriarch's letter, though it is quite clear that it's an agreement
16 between Republika Srpska and the Federal Republic of Yugoslavia which the
17 patriarch gave his blessing to only and signed it, as well as Bishop
18 Irinej. Because it says here on behalf of the Republika Srpska and on
19 behalf of the Federal Republic of Yugoslavia. And then in paragraph 3, it
20 says: "The leadership of Republika Srpska agree that binding decisions
21 for the delegation in relation to the peace plan be made by the delegation
22 at a plenary session based on a majority of votes. In the event of an
23 equal number of votes, the vote of President Slobodan Milosevic would be
24 decisive." Is that clear, General? Surely that's clear. Is it logical
25 to you, in view of the fact that I was, after all, the most senior personPage 30451
1 in that delegation?
2 A. Your Honour, I think the agreement speaks for itself. It's very
3 clear what this agreement says, it's also clear what it was in response
4 to. There's never been any issue about this. It was simply referred to
5 colloquially by the US delegation as the so-called patriarch letter. We
6 understood exactly what it was, that it was an agreement, and that it did
7 give -- if the terms of the agreement were followed, it gave the accused
8 the final word in the discussions during the shuttle diplomacy and
9 subsequently at Dayton.
10 Q. Very well, General Clark. The fact that I had the final word,
11 surely that was decisive for the Dayton Agreement to be signed, wasn't it,
12 or not?
13 A. Your Honour, it was very clear to me during the process of
14 negotiating the Dayton Agreement that the accused was very much in charge
15 of the delegation and that he had the final say. It wasn't the accused
16 alone that made the agreement at Dayton possible. That was a result of
17 work by several different parties, but it was clear that the accused did
18 have effective direction, control over his delegation, including the
19 members from the Serb portion of Bosnia-Herzegovina.
20 Q. Was this of decisive significance in achieving the Dayton
21 agreements, General Clark? As a participant in the negotiations, can you
22 deny that?
23 A. Your Honours, I testified when I had difficulties with the Bosnian
24 Serbs, I went to the accused who then was able to insist, I suppose, that
25 they accept whatever it was that I was proposing.Page 30452
1 Q. Surely we're not going to call in question the fact that the
2 agreement was reached in Dayton, signed there, and after that in Paris
3 again. Surely that is not at issue, at least.
4 A. Your Honour, I don't -- that is not at issue, nor is the role of
5 the accused at issue.
6 Q. Very well, General Clark. That's fine. Since in your
7 examination-in-chief you quoted me as having told you that you were a war
8 criminal, am I quoting what you've said, General Clark, correctly?
9 A. I recall your saying that I would be the war criminal or that I
10 was a war criminal, yes. That was in the meeting that we had in Beli Dvor
11 in January of 1999.
12 Q. That is quite true that I said that you would be a war criminal if
13 you attacked Yugoslavia. That is quite true. I said to you, "You will be
14 a war criminal if you attack Yugoslavia. Yugoslavia is a sovereign state
15 and you have no right to intervene militarily in Yugoslavia." Is that
16 right, General Clark?
17 A. Your Honour, I don't recall all of the qualifications. I recall
18 the accused becoming very angry, red in the face, and making accusations.
19 That's what I recall, and that's what I testified to.
20 Q. So you were heralding a NATO bombardment, and you said -- and I
21 said that you did not have the right to bomb a sovereign state, and that
22 if you did that you would be a war criminal. Is that right, General
23 Clark?
24 JUDGE MAY: The witness has answered the question. There's no
25 need to repeat it.Page 30453
1 THE ACCUSED: [Interpretation] All right.
2 MR. MILOSEVIC: [Interpretation]
3 Q. Do you think that you are a war criminal, General Clark?
4 JUDGE MAY: That's not a proper question.
5 THE ACCUSED: [Interpretation] All right.
6 If it's not a proper question, then I'm going to put some other
7 questions.
8 Could you put this photograph on the ELMO.
9 JUDGE MAY: What is the photograph about? What is it of?
10 THE ACCUSED: [Interpretation] The photograph depicts General Clark
11 together with Hashim Thaci, Agim Ceku, General Jackson, and Kouchner.
12 They're like the Musketeers with their hands all together.
13 JUDGE MAY: It doesn't arise from your examination -- or the
14 examination-in-chief of the witness or his statement.
15 THE ACCUSED: [Interpretation] Mr. May, during the
16 examination-in-chief the witness said, when quoting me, and I confirmed
17 that, that I said to him that he would be a war criminal if he attacked
18 Yugoslavia. I wish to show him proof of the fact that what I said to him
19 was correct. So I have the right --
20 JUDGE MAY: You can ask him about the conversation because that is
21 something which the witness dealt with in chief and in his statement.
22 You've asked him about the conversation. You've got the answer. The
23 substance of your allegations, such as they are, is neither here nor
24 there. All we are concerned with is the fact that you made these
25 allegations, if there's any significance in it.Page 30454
1 THE ACCUSED: [Interpretation] Mr. May --
2 JUDGE MAY: Don't waste your time arguing about these matters.
3 THE ACCUSED: [Interpretation] Mr. May, do I not have the right to
4 put a question to him in relation to what he himself stated, that I had
5 said to him that he would be a war criminal? Don't I have the right to
6 ask him about the consequences of what he did afterwards?
7 JUDGE MAY: No, and you've heard the reasons. You know how far
8 you're allowed to go and how far you aren't, and this goes beyond it. If
9 it's a way to try and get round the ruling, which I suspect it is, it will
10 not be successful. The witness has answered the question. He said you
11 did make that allegation, for what it's worth, but doesn't remember what
12 the qualifications were. Now, we can't take it any further. All you can
13 ask him about is the conversation itself.
14 THE ACCUSED: [Interpretation] Oh, so I can ask him about the
15 conversation but I cannot ask him about the content and meaning of that
16 conversation? Is that what you're trying to say?
17 JUDGE MAY: That's right. That's right. Particularly these sort
18 of allegations that you're anxious to pursue.
19 THE ACCUSED: [Interpretation] Well, that's the point, Mr. May.
20 This entire farce serves that purpose, to cover up the crime committed
21 against Yugoslavia by --
22 JUDGE MAY: No, we don't want political speeches now. We're far
23 too advanced in this trial to listen to this.
24 MR. MILOSEVIC: [Interpretation]
25 Q. All right. General Clark, do you think that in view of yourPage 30455
1 military training and education, the high position you held in the army of
2 the United States and in NATO, that the killing of civilians, the bombing
3 of --
4 JUDGE MAY: Now, you know quite well that this is not the sort of
5 question the witness is dealing with. We've told you before you were
6 asking questions which you were perfectly permitted to ask before the
7 adjournment. I suggest you return to that.
8 THE ACCUSED: [Interpretation] So you are not allowing me to put a
9 single question in relation to the crimes that this witness committed
10 against my country?
11 JUDGE MAY: You know quite well that these sort of questions are
12 not permitted. These sort of allegations which you make are not matters
13 which can be debated now, or indeed at any time probably in this trial,
14 unless you show the relevance of it, but it's certainly not relevant to
15 these -- to this evidence. This kind of allegation does not assist
16 anybody.
17 THE ACCUSED: [Interpretation] All right. Since you've said just
18 now, Mr. May, that this cannot be discussed here, I have here with me the
19 final report that a commission established to look into the NATO campaign
20 against Yugoslavia, and this commission worked for the Prosecution --
21 JUDGE MAY: No. You're wasting your own time. It's very limited.
22 You know quite well what your questioning is limited to. You must return
23 to it or this cross-examination will stop. It's a matter for you whether
24 you want the cross-examination to stop or not. Now, you will go back to
25 what the witness gave evidence about in chief or this cross-examinationPage 30456
1 will be brought to an end.
2 THE ACCUSED: [Interpretation] All right, Mr. May. You are
3 restricting me to mere crumbles, as far as the questioning of this witness
4 is concerned, but in accordance with what he was explaining here, I will
5 try to put some other questions to him.
6 May I proceed, Mr. May?
7 JUDGE MAY: Yes. Half an hour ago you could have gone on.
8 MR. MILOSEVIC: [Interpretation]
9 Q. General Clark, a short while ago you explained this document that
10 I affixed my signature to as well at the insistence of General Naumann and
11 yourself, as you had explained it.
12 Now I'm going to show you, by using the document itself, that
13 you've twisted the facts in this respect too. This is a document that
14 bears one of your ERN numbers, 0767673, and it's entitled Record From the
15 Meeting Held on the 25th of October, 1998, in Belgrade.
16 JUDGE MAY: Have we got that one? It's one, Mr. Nice, that you
17 disclosed, is it?
18 JUDGE KWON: Microphone.
19 MR. NICE: Exhibit previously tendered 94, tab 3. And I believe
20 we have courtesy copies. I hope you have.
21 JUDGE MAY: Yes, we have it.
22 MR. MILOSEVIC: [Interpretation]
23 Q. So Record of Meeting Held in Belgrade on the 25th of October,
24 1998. It has only three items. Item 1 refers to all the people who
25 attended the meeting: Milan Milutinovic, president of the Republic ofPage 30457
1 Serbia; Nikola Sainovic, vice-premier of the federal government of the
2 FRY; Colonel General Momcilo Perisic, Chief of the General Staff of the
3 Yugoslav Army, and so on and so forth; and Colonel General Vlastimir
4 Djordjevic and the members of their delegation, then the NATO military
5 authorities, General Naumann, chairman of the Military Committee; General
6 Clark, Supreme Allied Commander Europe, and their delegations.
7 So isn't it clear that I myself did not attend the meeting at all?
8 You discussed specific matters during that meeting. I'm not a participant
9 in the meeting. Isn't that right, General Clark? Is that right or is
10 that not right?
11 A. Your Honour, the accused is misrepresenting the meeting. We began
12 the meeting with the accused. We dealt with the substance that was to be
13 worked. The accused reviewed and approved the agreement in every detail,
14 not the first three paragraphs, which is the record of the meeting, but
15 the subsequent attached document which is marked 00766674 --
16 Q. General Clark, please.
17 A. -- which was the document, Your Honour, that the attached
18 memorandum referred to. This is the document that was reviewed in detail
19 and approved by the accused. It's the document that he had some
20 objections to, that we changed in accordance with his objections, and we
21 worked together on throughout the night of the 24th of October and that
22 then he assigned -- he signed this cover sheet to the document on the 25th
23 of October.
24 So this cover sheet applies to the statement that it's attached
25 to, which is marked as a separate document but in fact it is the samePage 30458
1 document.
2 Q. General Clark, we'll get to the content, too, and that suits me
3 fine, to get to the content of the document too. But isn't it clear from
4 the document itself, the document that was signed, that you and Naumann
5 attended the meeting together with your staff, and on the other side you
6 had the president of the Republic of Serbia, Milutinovic, then Sainovic,
7 Perisic, and Djordjevic? So you discussed all these particular matters at
8 that meeting, and it is stated that the purpose of the meeting was to
9 discuss specific steps to be taken to achieve full compliance by the
10 Federal Republic of Yugoslavia with the requirements of the United Nations
11 Security Council Resolution 1199. And item 3 says: "The position of the
12 Federal Republic of Serbia and Serbian authorities is reflected in the
13 attached statement. The NATO military representatives took note of the
14 statement."
15 And then this record is signed on behalf of the Federal Republic
16 of Yugoslavia, Deputy Prime Minister Sainovic; on behalf of the Republic
17 of Serbia, General Djordjevic; and on behalf of NATO, you and Naumann.
18 And I, as an _expression of my goodwill, not as a response of any kind of
19 compulsion on your part because you couldn't have forced me to do that, I
20 put my signature there in order to confirm that that is the way it was,
21 namely that I was aware of this and that I supported this record that you
22 had compiled together.
23 So we are not discussing my signature here in terms of it being
24 missing. I was not at the meeting. Afterwards, I signed the document
25 here on the side, and I confirmed in this way that I agreed with it as anPage 30459
1 _expression of my goodwill --
2 JUDGE MAY: You must come to a question. You've been allowed to
3 go on to explain your position. Now you must come to a question.
4 MR. MILOSEVIC: [Interpretation]
5 Q. Well, isn't it clear that I did not attend that meeting of yours,
6 and isn't it clear that I signed this as an _expression of my own goodwill
7 in order to show that I agree with what you had agreed upon and signed?
8 Is that right or is that not right, General Clark?
9 A. Your Honour, the accused was in charge of the government and all
10 the activities that were going on inside Serbia, including inside Kosovo.
11 Q. General Clark --
12 JUDGE MAY: No. Let the witness finish.
13 THE WITNESS: When I and General Naumann went down there, we saw
14 the accused first. He asked us to work the details with his military
15 people. They said we had to come back, he was the only man who could
16 produce such an agreement. We did come back to him. He did consent to
17 it. He then said, "Please go back, write up the statement." We then
18 brought the statement to him that morning of the 25th, and he then went
19 over it line by line. It represented him. In fact, this was -- this
20 signature page was further proof of the -- of his artifice. It was in
21 motivation, I believed, duplicitous. It was an effort by the accused to
22 wriggle out from his responsibilities to living up to the substance of the
23 statement.
24 This was his statement that was to be presented to the NATO
25 authorities in order to not have the UN Security Council Resolution 1199Page 30460
1 enforced by NATO military action. We were carrying his statement back to
2 the NATO council, and it was his statement and it was for that reason that
3 I insisted that he sign that statement, precisely to prevent the kind of
4 efforts that we're seeing this morning to characterise his presence as
5 sort of perfunctory or goodwill when in fact he was involved in approving
6 the details of this statement and responsible for the compliance with it.
7 MR. MILOSEVIC: [Interpretation]
8 Q. General Clark, you've missed the target completely when giving
9 this explanation. I am not bringing into question at all that you -- that
10 I agreed upon what you had been doing all night. As you said, that you
11 worked out this agreement, I had a look at it and I agreed with it. But
12 the document itself states that it was signed by the participants in the
13 meeting itself and that I subsequently supported it, of course, and that
14 is not being challenged in any way. But what you mentioned just now was
15 that you informed -- that you informed NATO - I can't remember the exact
16 words that you used - not to enforce Resolution 1199 by force.
17 Tell me, where is it in Resolution 1199 that you have any grounds
18 in order to resort to force? Answer that question.
19 A. Your Honour, this is the basic issue that I came to see the
20 accused with on the 20th of October. Under UN Security Council Resolution
21 1199, Chapter VII, use of all necessary means, I delivered the threat to
22 the accused that if he didn't cease his actions, pull back his forces and
23 comply, that NATO would take action. This document was an effort to
24 demonstrate the specifics by which Serbia would take action to comply with
25 UN Security Council Resolution 1199, and as such it required the solutionPage 30461
1 of the accused who was the head of the government in Yugoslavia and in
2 overall charge of what was going on in Kosovo.
3 Q. General Clark, answer my question: Where does Resolution 1199
4 authorise you to use force? Are you claiming that you have a Security
5 Council Resolution on the basis of which you waged war against Yugoslavia?
6 Is that your assertion?
7 A. Your Honour, the accused brought to a state of acute crisis the
8 humanitarian situation in the province of Kosovo. 350 to 400.000 --
9 Q. General, I'm asking you about --
10 JUDGE MAY: No. You must let witnesses explain. The general is
11 explaining the position.
12 THE WITNESS: 350 to 400.000 inhabitants were driven from their
13 homes. They were forced to live in the woods. People perished in the
14 extreme conditions outdoors. Artillery and heavy weapons were used
15 against unarmed civilians. Key elements, including families, were
16 eliminated during this period.
17 In response to this, the UN Security Council Resolution did direct
18 that humanitarian efforts be made. It authorised such efforts under UN
19 Security Council Resolution 1199.
20 Acting together, the North Atlantic Treaty Organisation issued to
21 Serbia an activation order. It issued the activation order to its forces.
22 It was to be applied against Serbia. The accused understands this very
23 well. This is what he wanted to have lifted in the 15 October meeting.
24 It was operative in bringing about a relief of the humanitarian situation,
25 the crisis that he himself had directed to be caused by the activities ofPage 30462
1 police and military forces in Kosovo against an essentially unarmed set of
2 inhabitants in that province, the majority of inhabitants in that
3 province. So the NATO action was constructive and in pursuit of a
4 peaceful settlement of the issues there to enable the population to return
5 to their homes. What was at issue here was whether or not the Serb forces
6 and police would be reduced in compliance with the UN instructions or
7 whether the accused and the elements of his chain of command would
8 maintain excessive force in the province to use it and to use it directly
9 and in intimidation against the inhabitants.
10 Q. General, it is not necessary for you to make speeches in response
11 to questions that relate to documents. You said that you were authorised
12 by Resolution 1199 to use force. I claim that that is not true, because
13 there is no Security Council Resolution for that. You waged an illegal
14 war. Where does it say in Resolution 1199 that you were authorised to use
15 force? Don't make a speech about various false --
16 JUDGE MAY: Mr. Milosevic, it's a fault with which you're
17 familiar. Were the witness to make speeches, he would be stopped, but
18 he's not; he's answering the questions.
19 Now, General you were asked about Resolution 1199. We'll deal
20 with this and then we'll move on. The question is who said that you were
21 authorised to use force in this Resolution that was mentioned or discussed
22 in this meeting that you had with the accused?
23 THE WITNESS: The content of the Resolution is a matter of public
24 record, and I was following the instructions from NATO and from my
25 government.Page 30463
1 MR. MILOSEVIC: [Interpretation]
2 Q. And these instructions that you had from NATO and your government,
3 are they in accordance with the charter of the United Nations, General
4 Clark, and are they in accordance with international law?
5 JUDGE MAY: You're going well beyond the bounds of the witness's
6 evidence now. You've heard the explanation of why the threat was issued
7 to you.
8 THE ACCUSED: [Interpretation] Do you know, Mr. May, that threats
9 are also prohibited under the UN Charter, threats issued to states?
10 JUDGE MAY: No. Let us move on.
11 MR. MILOSEVIC: [Interpretation]
12 Q. General Clark, you invoked this document, trying to say that I was
13 trying to evade a discussion about the content of the document, because
14 what was signed was actually only a record of the meeting and the document
15 is actually attached to this cover sheet, as you put it. But on the
16 contrary, I don't want to avoid that. I want to quote the statement. And
17 you invoked it.
18 "Recognising Resolution 1199 of the UN Security Council and
19 proceeding from the fact that organised terrorism has been defeated in
20 Kosmet and that all actions against terrorists have ceased as of September
21 29, 1998, the authorities of the Federal Republic of Yugoslavia have
22 decided, among other measures, to undertake a series of actions that would
23 help further confidence-building among citizens, members of all national
24 communities living in Kosmet, as well as the resolution of all pending
25 humanitarian problems especially the speedy return to their homes of allPage 30464
1 displaced persons. These measures are undertaken with a clear view of
2 ensuring the return to full normality of life as soon as possible
3 throughout Kosmet, while continuing to secure the safety and well-being of
4 all citizens and innocent civilians of Kosmet, and guaranteeing the right
5 of all citizens, members of all national communities living in Kosovo and
6 Metohija to carry on their everyday life free from any threat or
7 constraint, which includes the full freedom of movement for all citizens
8 and state authorities representatives as well as normal activity of all
9 state organs."
10 And then it says: "In order to further encourage the return to
11 peace and normality," then it says, underlined in hand, "the state
12 authorities of the FRY will bring down the level of presence and the
13 equipment of security forces (MUP and VJ) throughout Kosmet to normal
14 levels..." And now I highlight this: "... to normal levels, i.e., to the
15 levels preceding the outbreak of terrorist activities ..." So terrorist
16 activities stopped and the forces are going back to normal levels.
17 "... with the clear intention of creating conditions that would help the
18 speedy resumption of the political process and the resolution of all
19 outstanding political and humanitarian issues." That is what is written
20 here.
21 And then it says, further on: "In this process," again this is
22 underlined, the process, "the state authorities of the Federal Republic of
23 Yugoslavia are counting on the assistance and support of the OSCE
24 Verification Mission, KDOM - the Kosovo Diplomatic Observer Mission - and
25 international humanitarian and other organisations."Page 30465
1 And then the authorities announce the following measures, number 1
2 through 6, but you're probably going to say that we didn't do some of
3 this. So 1: "Special police units deployed to Kosovo after February 1998
4 will be withdrawn from Kosovo. Combined police/special police strength in
5 Kosovo will be reduced to their February 1998 duty level."
6 Do you remember that it was stated then that there should be a
7 total of 10.024 policemen? This figure remains imprinted in my memory.
8 So that is the duty level of February 1998.
9 "Any additional heavy weapons (that is to say, brought in or
10 transferred after February 1998) from 12.7 millimetre above or equipment
11 brought into Kosovo or transferred from the VJ to the police/special
12 police, will be withdrawn from Kosovo or returned to the army of
13 Yugoslavia."
14 Item number 3: "Police/special police will resume their normal
15 peacetime activities. Heavy weapons and equipment remaining under MUP
16 control in --"
17 JUDGE MAY: We can read this, Mr. Milosevic. I haven't stopped
18 you before, but we can all read it. What was it that you want to ask
19 General Clark about here?
20 MR. MILOSEVIC: [Interpretation]
21 Q. General Clark, is it clear that after the main threats by the
22 terrorists in Kosovo and Metohija had been eliminated, the situation was
23 brought back to the level prior to February 1998 and that in paragraph 5,
24 which refers to the army of Yugoslavia, it was implied that the Pristina
25 Corps would continue normally to be in Kosovo but that only three groupsPage 30466
1 of company level would be positioned to secure certain directions and
2 lines of communication. Was that how it was?
3 A. Your Honour, first of all I want to just underscore that the
4 statement is the statement of the FRY. It's not the statement of NATO.
5 It was noted by General Naumann and me. We helped to work the specific
6 provisions, but the terminologies and so forth that are in this, including
7 the statement about terrorism and so forth, these are -- this is the
8 wording of the government of FRY.
9 As far as compliance is concerned, what we saw was partial but not
10 complete compliance. For example, item number 2, heavy weapons or
11 equipment brought into Kosovo or transferred from the VJ will be withdrawn
12 or returned to the VJ. That was not the case. The heavy equipment that
13 was given to the special police was not in every case pulled out of Kosovo
14 or returned to the VJ.
15 We did initially see the withdrawals of some police. There was no
16 way to determine whether it was the full 4.000 that were required or not.
17 And we then saw by mid-December the violation of the agreements about the
18 deployments, and that started really about the same time that General
19 Perisic was replaced as the chief of the Yugoslav military. And that
20 additional deployment is the one that I mentioned in my testimony. It's
21 the one that we noted that was north of Pristina. So that constituted a
22 violation, and that's the one that I counselled General Ojdanic about in
23 December.
24 Q. General Clark, why are you linking up the replacement of General
25 Perisic and the appointment of General Ojdanic with any increase of forcesPage 30467
1 in Kosovo when the two have absolutely no connection? Who told you that?
2 Where did you get that information from?
3 A. Your Honour, it's my impression that General Perisic was replaced
4 as the commander because he wasn't fully supportive of the accused's
5 policies of employing military forces against the population in Kosovo.
6 And what we noted was that almost immediately after his replacement, the
7 forces that were there began to deploy to the field and conduct actions in
8 contravention to the promises made by the accused in this statement to
9 NATO.
10 Q. That is what you are claiming, and this statement was fully
11 complied with. Are you claiming, General Clark, that this was complied
12 with or that it was not complied with? Let us make things quite clear.
13 A. Your Honour, I am stating that by the middle of December this
14 statement -- or the 20th of December, this statement was not being
15 complied with. I'm not sure it was ever totally complied with in that we
16 believed that there still remained heavy weapons that had been transferred
17 to the MUP that had not been removed or given back to the VJ in accordance
18 with this agreement, but that in addition, by the 20th or so of December
19 we had evidence that additional Serb military forces were being deployed
20 and used against the population against the terms of the agreement.
21 Q. Was the announcement complied with up to the 20th of December and
22 not after that? Is that what you're saying, General?
23 A. Your Honour, I'm saying that the accused did not live up to the
24 terms of his commitment to NATO.
25 Q. These are commitments in accordance with Resolution 1199. SurelyPage 30468
1 that is not in dispute, General Clark. Is it in dispute or not, General
2 Clark?
3 A. Your Honour, this statement is the statement that General Naumann
4 and I took back to the North Atlantic Treaty Organisation that detailed
5 the actions that the accused and his forces would take in order to comply
6 with 1199, and it's -- what I'm saying is that he did not live up to this
7 commitment that I took back to NATO.
8 Q. How do you know that it was not complied with? Where is the
9 evidence? Are you saying that the commitment assumed was not complied
10 with? There were no activities after that until you started spurring them
11 on through Walker and others to start killing once again. Wasn't that so,
12 General Clark?
13 A. That's incorrect. What actually happened after the agreement was
14 signed in late October, is that there was some brief period of diplomatic
15 activity. The diplomatic activity didn't go anywhere for a variety of
16 reasons. The change was made in the leadership of the Yugoslav military,
17 in my view a more compliant officer was put in place, General Ojdanic.
18 The forces then began to move out again, and starting in mid-December or
19 late December, we began to see the evidence that the campaign against the
20 population in Kosovo was heating up. We saw increased numbers of forces
21 moved in, we saw more tactical activities. We had reports from the Kosovo
22 -- the KDOM mission there, the Diplomatic Observer Mission, that there was
23 more action, and so it was an intensification of operations again, in
24 contravention to the promises made to NATO.
25 Q. General Clark, during your examination-in-chief, didn't youPage 30469
1 explain that you had a talk with General Ojdanic and that you asked him
2 why the number of troops was being increased? Yourself said in the border
3 area. Isn't that right? Isn't that what you said a moment ago? Surely I
4 don't need to refer to the LiveNote. You surely remember what you said
5 ten minutes ago if you don't remember what happened five years ago. You
6 spoke to Ojdanic; is that right?
7 A. Your Honour, I think the accused has confused two separate
8 conversations. The first was my visit to Belgrade on or about 20 December
9 in which I met with General Ojdanic and Mr. Sainovic. And during that
10 meeting, I went through this statement and reminded General Ojdanic of his
11 obligations. I warned him that the deployment to the Podujevo was out of
12 bounds. I asked him to pull those forces back. I subsequently departed
13 Belgrade.
14 In early March, after the massacre at Racak, after Rambouillet had
15 commenced, there was a continuing build-up of forces and activities on the
16 ground in Kosovo. I then called General Ojdanic and asked him to remove
17 those additional forces that had been brought in, and I asked him why he
18 was building them up and so forth, and that's when he told me that he had
19 brought them in, as I relayed in my previous testimony.
20 So there are two separate conversations here some three months
21 apart.
22 Q. Very well. And then he explained to you that the forces were
23 going there because you were threatening to attack Yugoslavia. Isn't that
24 so? And that the forces were on the border to defend the border. Is that
25 what General Ojdanic told you?Page 30470
1 A. General Ojdanic, Your Honour, did not tell me the forces were on
2 the border. The forces were not on the border. The forces were arrayed
3 around generally against -- deployed in such a way that they could take
4 action against the population. They were not arrayed strictly for a
5 defence against a hypothetical NATO attack. I also told Ojdanic that such
6 a defence would be unnecessary because NATO had no intention of invading
7 Kosovo.
8 Q. But all the time you were threatening with invasion. Is it true,
9 General Clark, that as early as mid-1998 you had planned bombing of
10 Yugoslavia, even though at the time you could not have --
11 JUDGE MAY: No. No. You can ask the witness about the
12 conversations. You know that.
13 THE ACCUSED: [Interpretation] Well, Mr. May, I really don't know
14 when you're switching off my microphone whenever I take the lead from what
15 the witness himself has said.
16 MR. MILOSEVIC: [Interpretation]
17 Q. So General Clark, you yourself mentioned just now that Ojdanic
18 told you that your threats had provoked certain movement of our forces in
19 order to be able effectively to protect the country's borders. Is that
20 right or not?
21 A. Your Honour, what I recounted was in full detail the conversation
22 including the excuse given by General Ojdanic for deploying forces. And I
23 also explained my discussion with Ojdanic. There was no threat from NATO
24 at the time. There were no forces in Macedonia which would have warranted
25 such a build-up of forces in Kosovo. And the forces that were in KosovoPage 30471
1 were not deployed in defensive array against a hypothetical NATO invasion
2 in any case; they were deployed in such a way that they could be used
3 against the civilian population in Kosovo.
4 Q. But those forces, General Clark, did not act against the
5 population. Is that clear to you or not, or are you perhaps claiming that
6 they did act against the population?
7 A. Your Honour, when I move into this discussion, I'm going past the
8 bounds of my original evidence, so I'm going to answer the question and
9 then refer it to the Court as to how far we go on this, but, yes, those
10 forces did move against the population. They began moving against the
11 population on the 19th or 20th of March, as I stated.
12 JUDGE MAY: Yes. That was part of your evidence. And that's as
13 far as it's to be taken, no further, or we get into the areas which the
14 witness did not give evidence about and is not evidence from him. If you
15 want to pursue these matters, you must pursue them in other people.
16 So there's no misunderstanding, if you want to cross-examine the
17 general on the book, you can on those parts which relate to his evidence,
18 those parts which are marked, but at the moment that has not been
19 admitted, it hasn't been admitted, but we should not stop you
20 cross-examining, if you wanted to, on those parts, but those are the only
21 parts.
22 Yes.
23 MR. NICE: One point. I notice that the accused has not yet
24 cross-examined on the contents of the conversation set out at paragraphs 3
25 and 4 in any detail. Now, they're very important paragraphs. I'vePage 30472
1 suggested to him through the court that he'll also want to look at the
2 material disclosed coming from the Tudjman transcripts. I know the normal
3 rule is that if somebody doesn't cross-examine on something that it's, as
4 it were, taken at full value. This is something, of course, of such
5 importance that if there is any suggestion of a nuance to that
6 conversation, it would be in the accused's interests to put it and it
7 would help the Chamber to have the issued joined now.
8 JUDGE MAY: Yes. We will have that in mind. There are two
9 conversations in particular -- which I have noted in particular. One
10 concerns Srebrenica, and the other was the corroborative evidence of what
11 General Naumann said about Drenica. Both of those could be relied on or
12 might be relied on to support the accused's state of knowledge.
13 Mr. Milosevic, you hear what's being said. No doubt you've got
14 your own time and you've got your own plans. No doubt you will get round
15 to challenging those, but if you do challenge them, you should do so
16 clearly so that a witness can deal with them, particularly matters of
17 importance such as those.
18 Now, we'll consider for a moment what time you should have in the
19 morning.
20 THE ACCUSED: [Interpretation] May we just clear up something
21 because that is also probably part of the tactics of the opposing side.
22 I'm never supplied with materials on time. In my document, it says
23 General Wesley Clark was the Supreme Commander during the conflict in
24 Kosovo, et cetera, et cetera. That is paragraph 3 in my documents. And
25 paragraph 4, the witness will testify about his general observationsPage 30473
1 regarding the style of government of Milosevic. So I don't know which
2 paragraphs 3 and 4 you are referring to. Do you have another statement of
3 the witness? Will you please give me a copy of that statement where those
4 paragraphs appear? I have just quoted from paragraphs 3 and 4 in my
5 document, the one that was disclosed to me.
6 JUDGE MAY: Let me make one thing --
7 THE INTERPRETER: Microphone, Mr. President.
8 JUDGE MAY: Let me make one thing clear: The evidence is the
9 evidence which this witness has given before the Court. It is not, in
10 this case, any statements and the like. You should have, and I hope you
11 do have, the up-to-date witness statement. Has that been served upon the
12 accused, the summary which you served last week?
13 MR. NICE: A version last week was served which is identical to
14 the version that was served I think today or yesterday - so of today - but
15 for formatting differences. So there have been two versions of a
16 45-paragraph statement in 11 pages served on the accused, and that's been
17 the basis for the testimony today. And the paragraph numbers are exactly
18 the same for those two versions. So it's 45 paragraph number, if I've got
19 it right, that he's looking for, and he can find it possibly at the
20 beginning of the bundle of exhibits if he's been given that, but he's been
21 supplied with two already.
22 [Trial Chamber confers]
23 THE ACCUSED: [No translation]
24 JUDGE MAY: Just a moment. We're just thinking. We're
25 considering.Page 30474
1 [Trial Chamber confers]
2 JUDGE MAY: We've considered the position, and because you are in
3 person, we shall not stick absolutely to the limit which we mentioned
4 earlier today. What we'll do, having regard to how the cross-examination
5 has gone, we will give you an hour and a half tomorrow morning to conclude
6 your evidence, in the course of which you should, of course, bear in mind
7 what the Prosecution said and deal with those matters which are in
8 dispute, those which deal with controversial matters. So you should
9 prepare on that basis.
10 For a moment, please, the registry.
11 [Trial Chamber and registrar confer]
12 JUDGE MAY: Mr. Nice, there seems to be some difficulty about the
13 transcript being provided to the provider, the government. I thought
14 there was no difficulty about this at all, I thought the matter had all
15 been arranged.
16 THE INTERPRETER: Microphone, Mr. Nice.
17 MR. NICE: They've got to have a copy, otherwise they can't review
18 it.
19 JUDGE MAY: Yes. Very well. That will be done.
20 MR. NICE: Thank you very much.
21 JUDGE MAY: General Clark, if you could be back, please, tomorrow
22 at 9.00 to conclude your testimony. Thank you very much.
23 THE WITNESS: Thank you.
24 JUDGE MAY: We will adjourn.
25 --- Whereupon the hearing adjourned at 2.09 p.m.,Page 30475
1 to be reconvened on Tuesday, the 16th day of
2 December, 2003, at 9.00 a.m.
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