South African Urges U.S., NATO to Break Negotiating Pattern in Balkans

(Washington, D.C.): Intensifying efforts to secure Russia’s help in brokering a deal with
Slobodan Milosevic bode ill for efforts to bring about a satisfactory end to the present conflict in
Kosovo — let alone a real and durable peace in the region. As the Wall Street Journal
editorializes today:

The issue in Kosovo is whether the U.S. and its allies are going to save
Milosevic one
more time, with yet one more compromise ratifying his latest outrage as it ratified
previous ones….Everything in our experience says there will be no peace in the Balkans
while he commands the Serb armies.

This point was eloquently made this week by Sir Richard Goldstone, a man who,
as a
former prosecutor for the UN War Crimes Tribunal, is intimately familiar with the
miscarriages
of justice arising from the “previous outrages” that were “ratified” by the West. In an interview
broadcast on 28 April 1998 by National Public Radio, the South African jurist rejected the very
idea of negotiating further with Milosevic.

———————————–

BOB EDWARDS (Host of NPR’s Morning Edition): United Nations
investigators are gathering
information from refugees and military sources about suspected war crimes by Yugoslav forces in
Kosovo. The head of the UN War Crimes Tribunal, Louise Arbour, says Yugoslav President
Slobodan Milosevic could be among those indicted. While the Tribunal is conducting its war
crimes investigation, Russian diplomats continue to hope that Milosevic may agree to a negotiated
settlement that would end the conflict. Richard Goldstone was the War Crimes Tribunal
prosecutor who in 1995 indicted Bosnian Serb leaders Radovan Karadzic and Ratko Mladic. He
believes the Tribunal should indict Milosevic for war crimes.

RICHARD GOLDSTONE: I have no doubt that the evidence indicates
overwhelmingly that
the most atrocious war crimes are being committed over the last few weeks in Kosovo,
that
there’s no question of that. There’s also no question, it seems to me, that Milosevic, as
head
of state, head of the armed forces, knows what’s going on, could stop what’s going on and
is clearly indictable and certainly, as I understand the Security Council statute relating to
the
Tribunal, it’s become as a duty to indict somebody against whom there is that sort of evidence.

EDWARDS: Did you consider an indictment against Milosevic when you were
the prosecutor?

GOLDSTONE: Absolutely.

EDWARDS: And what crimes did you have in mind, specifically?

GOLDSTONE: Well, I would have in mind, certainly, crimes against humanity.
War crimes are
being committed against part of the population and (unintelligible) overwhelming majority of the
population of Kosovo, the ethnic Albanians. They’ve been physically forced from their homes.
Members of their community–many members have been murdered and that says more than
enough.

EDWARDS: How do you bring Milosevic to the bargaining table if you say
you’re going to
prosecute?

GOLDSTONE: Well, I would hope that nobody would want to speak
to him at a bargaining
table. I think a man who is responsible for what’s happened to the ethnic
Albanians
shouldn’t be spoken to at any bargaining table by any decent leaders of any decent
nation.

EDWARDS: So you don’t believe a diplomatic solution to this war is a good
thing?

GOLDSTONE: Yes, absolutely. But I have no doubt that that’s–whether or not
he’s indicted,
my own view is that if the Serb people want to be represented, they must find somebody
else
to represent them.

EDWARDS: In many past cases, in Rwanda, for example, indictments in war
crimes prosecutions
didn’t begin until after the hostilities ended. Is there a case to be made for holding war crimes
indictments until after a cease-fire?

GOLDSTONE: Well, I don’t believe so because, you know, how long would one
have to wait?
But in any event, I think people who commit war crimes must know that there’s going to
be
no waiting, that the international community is no longer prepared to stand by, or should
no longer be prepared to stand by and grant impunity or even a temporary impunity to
anybody committing this sort of crime.

EDWARDS: If he knew he were going to be indicted–or if here were indicted
for war crimes,
why would he come to the negotiating table? Why wouldn’t he feel free to carry out more
atrocities?

GOLDSTONE: Well, I’m not sure that there’s been restraint in any of them. And,
you know, this
is the sort of argument that was put up in 1995 with regard to and Karadzic and Mladic. People
said that he’s necessary at the negotiating table at Dayton. We decided that that wasn’t a reason
to withhold indictments. He was indicted. That meant that he couldn’t go to Dayton. And indeed,
had he not been indicted there probably and almost certainly would not have been a Dayton
Agreement because had Karadzic gone two months off to Srebrenica, the Bosnian leader certainly
wouldn’t have sat at the table with him.

EDWARDS: And where are they now?

GOLDSTONE: Well, this is the point. Mladic is walking around freely
somewhere in Serbia. The
government of Milosevic has ignored its international obligations. And Karadzic, as far as my
information goes, still in Bosnia, in the Republic of Serbska. And he could have been arrested,
obviously, as we all know, many times over and wasn’t.

EDWARDS: And why not?

GOLDSTONE: Because there wasn’t a political will and courage on the
part of the Western
nations to go out and get him.

EDWARDS: So what’s the purpose of having these indictments?

GOLDSTONE: Well, the purpose is to turn these …(unintelligible)
people into pariahs.
Karadzic had to leave the political scene and Mladic had to give up command of the Bosnian Serb
army and that’s better than nothing.