MILOSEVIC TRIAL DISCUSSION ARCHIVE

Is Slobodan Milosevic getting a fair trial?
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• discussion archive

• Thursday October 24, 2002 at 1:48 am
  Picture it.

  Pristina; Reporter: Hello Osama. I didn't expect to see you here.

  OB: It is the only place in the world they are not looking for me. The US protects me in this place because, I am a friend to them against the Serbs.

  Why is that?

  The dumb ass Yanks think they can rule the world as long as no one looks for the real reasons for conflict.

  Is it oil?

  Not for me,but for the rest of the world it is grave. Osama wants only to rid Infidels from the holy sites.

  Why are your forces in Kosovo?The Koran indicates Islam shall rule the world.

  Sorry, I am a playwrite by heart.
  
  Pertti Lindroos
  Quesnel
  BC Canada

• Thursday October 24, 2002 at 2:01 am
  IvanI see a bit of nationalist in you.Plese tell me if Croatia is better now that before.Germany was pushing for the breakup of Yugoslavia,while was rushing for their reunification. I saw at Milosevic trial that hundreds of thousands of serbs were evicted from Croatia,and vey few were able to return.As you say They wanted to live in an independent Croatia,that is good,but it should include all the people that were born and lived there regardless of nationality.Yugoslavia was broken up because of outside influence .Who ever was behind did not care about the people . There is no economy there now,no jobs.no money.Any country can say that is indpendent only when it can carry its own weight. I don't think that any of the former Yugoslavia teritories that became independent on the paper are independent in reality. Ivan I am not taking sides here,remember is hard to stay married ,but a divorce can bring you down. Vasile
  
  Vasile Ianos
  NJ

• Thursday October 24, 2002 at 3:22 am
  For those of you who still talk of the renewal of a South Slav state community just a reminder. Tudjman amended the Croatian Constitution by introducing to it Art. 141(2):

  "It is prohibited to initiate any procedure for the association of the Republic of Croatia into alliances with other states if such association leads, or might lead, to a renewal of a South Slav state community or to any Balkan state form of any kind."

  As to the legality of the ICTY. In principle, it is perfectly OK that an administrative body creates law. The only difference between regular law and this kind administrative law is that the latter is considered hierarchically inferior to law created by a legislative body. As to the need for national jurisdictions to ratify the ICTY Statute, that hasn't obviously happened here. Milosevic has only recognized some facets of the ICTY as part of some package deal, notably the Dayton Peace Agreement. If I were to argue that the national jurisdictions are involved in creating ICTY law, I would point to Art. 24(1), where the Yugoslav judicial system is referred to:

  "In determining the terms of imprisonment, the Trial Chambers shall have recourse to the general practice regarding prison sentences in the courts of the former Yugoslavia."

  But I am in basic agreement with Dr Tepavac. This tribunal is illegal. Not because of the documents by which it was created but by its policy. And to arrive at this conclusion, I would argue by the lack of good faith. It is obvious that the prosecution's policy is one-sided. It is only meant to whitewash the real aggressors. So there is a lack of good faith, which manifests itself as logical contradictions and downright fraud. Because the set-up of the judges-prosecution team is also manifestly flawed in the Milosevic trial, I would argue that the proceedings are considered null and void for this reason.

  So the court is de facto illegal. Probably all of the proceedings have been fundamentally flawed. But even then, I guess one would have to proceed case by case to prove one's point.

  As to where the shoe pinches, I still think the "joint criminal enterprise" was basically a smuggling ring. And here is some more stuff that points to the conclusion that this tribunal is a gigantic whitewashing scam.

  When Nato started the bombing it was argued that Security Council resolution 1199 (1998) provided a sufficient basis for resorting to the use of force even without a SC authorization. In the resolution itself there is of course nothing to justify such a view. Or anywhere else. In fact, one of the considerations of the resolution states: "Reaffirming also the commitment of all Member States to the sovereignty and territorial integrity of the Federal Republic of Yugoslavia." If that doesn't exclude the use of force, I don't know what it means.

  But the fraud goes deeper. What that resolution was about was essentially arms embargo. So if the arms embargo turns out in a mutated form in the Milosevic trial, the suggestion is that the trial is a whitewashing scam. The lack of good faith is obvious.

  The considerations of the resolution explicitly state that the supply of arms for terrorist activities is also condemned. So the arms embargo was directed just as much against the Kosovo Albanians as anybody else. It is no secret that it was here that the arms embargo was mainly leaking. And as to the identity of the main terrorist organization we are also left in no doubt. The previous SC resolution, 1160(1998) mentioned the "terrorism by the Kosovo Liberation Army ... and all external support for terrorist activity in Kosovo, including finance, arms and training." So the SC was quite well aware of the intricacies of the KLA activity.

  There is no basis in resolution 1199 to justify the later bombing campaing. But that is not all. The resolution wasn't the final step to the bombing. The final step was the rejection of the Rambouillet Accord by the Serbs. Who signed it? The Albanians! And who exactly? The KLA! So here we have black on white that the bombing in fact violated SC resolution 1199!

  This has of course not so much to do with any smuggling ring operating in Bosnia or Croatia, but the prosecution wouldn't be so stupid as to mention arms smuggling in Kosovo, because someone might come up with these same resolutions. Still, it has to make the arms smuggling stick somewhere else, because otherwise the DynCorp and MPRI part won't be rewritten.

  And anyway, using an arms embargo as a casus belli has "bad faith" written all over it. Especially when the Nato countries had their own sanction-busting system on the opposite side. It is then pointless to evoke the phrase "threat to peace and security in the region" from resolution 1199 to justify a bombing campaign against the Serbs! It is the West's own involvement in the Balkans that constituted a threat to the peace.

  Besides: What is the "sovereignty" which is mentioned in the same resolution? It must basically refer to "sovereign equality" enshrined in Art. 2(1) of the UN Charter. That in turn means equal treatment. So, if you deprive Serbia of its head of state because of alleged sanction-busting, why not all the others on the opposite side? And I should point out that Milosevic's direct involvement in the arms smuggling has not, to my knowledge, been substantiated.

  But of course, this is where the "doctrine" of "failed state" comes in. Because Yugoslavia was a "failed state", it couldn't be an equal negotiating partner. This "failed state" doctrine is of course contrary to the clear wording of the resolution 1199 among others, where "the sovereignty and territorial integrity of the FRY" is explicitly mentioned. It is also contrary to the setting of the Rambouillet Accord, where Serbia was one of the negotiating partners. It is rather the presence of the KLA that made the negotiations so bizarre. But of course, the US had a recipe to drive Serbia away from the negotiating table by introducing the famous Appendix B.

  Bad faith again! And to really consummate the bad faith we heard during the first days of the bombing campaign that the bombing was intended to show Milosevic and the Serbs that their only option was the negotiating table. And when it came so far, it was made equally clear to them that they had no room to negotiate.

  As to the bombing campaign itself, a lot of obscurity reigns over what constitutes a military target and what constitutes a civil target. Only yesterday did I learn that it makes no difference for the US, because it hasn't ratified Protocol I of the Geneva Conventions! So it can go on implementing the teachings of Colonel Warden. And that is where the blessings of the "joint criminal enterprise" on Nato's side come in. Who is to say that this bomb was dropped by the US and this bomb by another Nato country? Britain may be in an especially tough situation, though, because the British government has admitted that most of the bombs the RAF dropped in Yugoslavia were cluster bombs!

  So it is a mess. And deliberately so. As Gogol suggested, the idea of ICTY is not to uphold the society of a given country but to break it. That is exactly why the three concepts of legal unity, legal certainty and legal equality have to be stood on their heads in this case.
  
  Jari Nousiainen
  Finland

• Thursday October 24, 2002 at 3:23 am
  Sorry, sorry.
  
  J N
  Finland

• Thursday October 24, 2002 at 3:49 am
  According to B92, witness protection has been resorted to, because one witness had been victim of physical attacks. This happened this week. I am not sure if that was the first time that a concrete physical attack has taken place to justify the witness protection.

  Del Ponte arrived in Belgrade with 20 new indictments, and the speculation is that Seselj is one of them. She also complained that the only reason Mladic hasn't been caught is because Kostunica is unwilling to catch him. I guess she didn't see the analogy with Karadzic here.
  
  J N
  Finland

• Thursday October 24, 2002 at 7:26 am
  
  Clickety-click: More spanners in the spin machine
  
  Peter Taylor
  Herts/UK

• Thursday October 24, 2002 at 7:55 am
  Thanks Vasilje,I have no idea whether Croatia is better now, I have never been there....I can take a guess and say it is much worse. Why? , because of the bloody destruction that went on there, and that basically it lost a generation of young men to death, injury (of which my cousin is one), drug addiction, and basic knowledge of violence. The economy is absolutely shot to pieces.I think Croatia can blame itself for this....nobody's fault but their own....yet, Croatia is independant. This is a price Croats are willing to pay, to see the Croatian Flag at the UN.It is a symbol of fellowship with other nations...thats how I see it ...and, if this is being nationalist..i guess I am.But...to put it into perspective perhaps.My father was recently asked by a young Chinese woman I share an apartment with, why was there the need to fight???My father responded by saying, there wasn't the need to fight...but, for people who have been born into independance, and are happy with their condition of existence, they don't have to ask for this right. it is given to them. Croatians have basically never had this right. and although my father is a hardliner, i am not. I do not believe independance in paramount above all other concerns...I think life and peace are paramount to a war and death sponsored freedom. We do not live in the medieval ages anymore...unfortunately...many in the world still think we do..and that force is more fruitful than negotiation. Most importantly Croatia is poorer because it lost its Serb populations, an innate and indivisible factor of Croatian history, and its future. You sense nationalist....well thats because for most of my life I have been. Before the age of about 14 I was also a believer that the Ustasa was a wonderfully democratic political system that should be reinstated into power. My aunt's pet budgie was called Ustasa for Christ's sake. I knew how to say Ustasa before I could speak a word of english. I can see now how this is wrong, yet I do not blame my relatives in Australia for feeling this way. It is a feeling brought about from personal experience from the war...and into the Yugoslav Socialist State. I am a horribly overt fence sitter. I am a libran by star sign...I believe in peace and balance in existence, I believe wrongs should be forgotten and new bridges made for future generations (especially in former Yugoslavia).I was brought up a proud Croat and I remain so.I am also a proud Australian.I thank all people on this site for expressing their feelings, otherwise, how can people know how to approach any kinds of appropriate and respectful settlements. Also, I think Germany's role is overstated in the breakup of Yugoslavia. I'm not sure if its some kind of a hang up of the past world wars....but surely, you people have to understand that Germany in the last 50 or so years has rejected anything to do with Nazi politics. Therrefore I am not sure how German support for Croat independance can be construed anything other than that which I mentioned before...I wish for a European people to have a chance to express their national outcomes....without the burden of Yugoslav state.This is not what I think should have happened...I am merely speculating what I suggest was in the thinking of German politics. Just as Iceland recognised Croatia and Slovenia on the same day as Germany did. this is the end of today's sermon....another thing.....don't get upset by me or my sentiments.....i am very 'not' dangerous....I do not spread anti-serb or anti-yugoslav sentiment.....i am merely pro-croat.Ivanmay slobo get off and teach those capitalist fat cats a thing or two about what is legal and what isn't.
  
  Ivan Kokotovic
  Sydney
  Australia

• Thursday October 24, 2002 at 7:55 am
  Thanks Vasilje,I have no idea whether Croatia is better now, I have never been there....I can take a guess and say it is much worse. Why? , because of the bloody destruction that went on there, and that basically it lost a generation of young men to death, injury (of which my cousin is one), drug addiction, and basic knowledge of violence. The economy is absolutely shot to pieces.I think Croatia can blame itself for this....nobody's fault but their own....yet, Croatia is independant. This is a price Croats are willing to pay, to see the Croatian Flag at the UN.It is a symbol of fellowship with other nations...thats how I see it ...and, if this is being nationalist..i guess I am.But...to put it into perspective perhaps.My father was recently asked by a young Chinese woman I share an apartment with, why was there the need to fight???My father responded by saying, there wasn't the need to fight...but, for people who have been born into independance, and are happy with their condition of existence, they don't have to ask for this right. it is given to them. Croatians have basically never had this right. and although my father is a hardliner, i am not. I do not believe independance in paramount above all other concerns...I think life and peace are paramount to a war and death sponsored freedom. We do not live in the medieval ages anymore...unfortunately...many in the world still think we do..and that force is more fruitful than negotiation. Most importantly Croatia is poorer because it lost its Serb populations, an innate and indivisible factor of Croatian history, and its future. You sense nationalist....well thats because for most of my life I have been. Before the age of about 14 I was also a believer that the Ustasa was a wonderfully democratic political system that should be reinstated into power. My aunt's pet budgie was called Ustasa for Christ's sake. I knew how to say Ustasa before I could speak a word of english. I can see now how this is wrong, yet I do not blame my relatives in Australia for feeling this way. It is a feeling brought about from personal experience from the war...and into the Yugoslav Socialist State. I am a horribly overt fence sitter. I am a libran by star sign...I believe in peace and balance in existence, I believe wrongs should be forgotten and new bridges made for future generations (especially in former Yugoslavia).I was brought up a proud Croat and I remain so.I am also a proud Australian.I thank all people on this site for expressing their feelings, otherwise, how can people know how to approach any kinds of appropriate and respectful settlements. Also, I think Germany's role is overstated in the breakup of Yugoslavia. I'm not sure if its some kind of a hang up of the past world wars....but surely, you people have to understand that Germany in the last 50 or so years has rejected anything to do with Nazi politics. Therrefore I am not sure how German support for Croat independance can be construed anything other than that which I mentioned before...I wish for a European people to have a chance to express their national outcomes....without the burden of Yugoslav state.This is not what I think should have happened...I am merely speculating what I suggest was in the thinking of German politics. Just as Iceland recognised Croatia and Slovenia on the same day as Germany did. this is the end of today's sermon....another thing.....don't get upset by me or my sentiments.....i am very 'not' dangerous....I do not spread anti-serb or anti-yugoslav sentiment.....i am merely pro-croat.Ivanmay slobo get off and teach those capitalist fat cats a thing or two about what is legal and what isn't.
  
  Ivan Kokotovic
  Sydney
  Australia

• Thursday October 24, 2002 at 10:02 am
  Nebojsa Malic's column, which Peter Taylor gave the link to, is a very thoughtful one and reflects many of the ideas that have been discussed on this forum. It also mentions that the Croatians won't hand over Gen. Janko Bobetko, because it would be politically risky.

  No problemo! Del Ponte has a solution in store just for situations like this. This time she is concerned about the 83-year-old General's health, so he won't have to stand trial.

  Apropos health, I think we may be witnessing the kind of softening on the side of the prosecution toward Milosevic, which I think was the gist of what Vytas conveyed to us. How has this softening manifested itself? My guess would be the time that Del Ponte reportedly visited Milosevic in the detention center and expressed her concern about his health.

  But I also would hazard the guess the Milosevic remained as defiant as ever, which may explain why the prosecution has really digged deep in its bag of dirty tricks. Unless someone convinces me that we have had witnesses mugged before, I would suggest that the prosecution played some part in what was reported this week: the identity of a witness had to be kept secret because he had been a victim of a physical attack. Hey, the Rade Markovic episode shouldn't be so quickly forgotten!
  
  Jari Nousiainen
  Finland

• Thursday October 24, 2002 at 10:22 am
  

  "I thought secret trials were a thing of the past"

  Slobodan Milosevic

  Addressing the court just before the heavy curtains came down for another close session.
  
  Gogol Charlemagne
  Conn. USA

• Thursday October 24, 2002 at 12:54 pm
  The three latest unsealed indictments (Nikolic, Popovic and Beara) are very instructive. In Popovic indictment § 37 we learn the "requisite four elements of Genocide".

  There we learn, first, that killing one person can be a genocide!

  To be sure, such a person has to belong "to a particular national, ethnical, racial, or religious group". This second criterion is interesting, because every one of this species of ours does belong by definition to a particular group.

  Of course, this is too lax even by the prosecution's standards, so they add a third criterion: "The accused intended to kill the persons."

  Finally, we come closer to what the Genocide Convention actually says. The fourth criterion is: "The accused killed the persons in furtherance of the intent to destroy, in whole or in part, that national, ethnical, racial, or religious group, as such." Of course, the phrase "in furtherance" doesn't occur in the Genocide Convention, and it would be nice to know what it means to act "in furtherance of an intent".

  Lest anybody think that this "intent" was anybody else's than their own, the three indictments are progressive in other respects too. This is the first time I know that the indictments actually tell us that the accused had a criminal intent. So the accused acted in furtherance of this criminal intent of theirs.

  What should we then make of the numerous other indictment where the "criminal intent" is not even mentioned? In these three indictments the "criminal intent" is mentioned in connection with the "joint criminal enterprise", probably to show that belonging to a "joint criminal enterprise" doesn't exclude the possibility that the participants could even have a criminal intent of their own! But doesn't this suggest that the others are mentioned in the joint criminal enterprise as a matter of the prosecution's convenience and the prosecution doesn't even intend to demonstrate that the participants had any criminal intent.

  If you think I am making up the "requisite four elements of Genocide", see § 37 of Popovic indictment for yourself. It enlightens us as follows:

  a) The accused killed one or more persons;

  b) Such persons belonged to a particular national, ethnical, racial, or religious group;

  c) The accused intended to kill the persons; and

  d) The accused killed the persons in furtherance of the intent to destroy, in whole or in part, that national, ethnical, racial, or religious group, as such.
  
  Jari Nousiainen
  Finland

• Thursday October 24, 2002 at 7:16 pm
  Correction

  In my interpretation of the figures for missing persons given in the OHCHR report quoted above I have made an error in the total. Passage 58 of the report quotes 4,600 located bodies of which 2,100 have been identified. There remain 2,500 bodies to be identified and there are 270 graves to be exhumed. This would amount to an initial total of abducted, murdered and hidden persons of 4,870 if each grave contains a single body.

  However Passage 55 of the OHCHR report claims that 3,700 remain missing. That is the 2,500 exhumed bodies that have yet to be identified plus an alleged 1,200 yet to be located. Allowing for the fact that there have been examples of exaggeration in the number of missing and some missing may still be alive I make an estimate of an additional 465. This being the median value between the 270 outstanding graves and the 1,200 bodies claimed to be not yet located. Thus the total becomes some 5,300.

  The responsibility for these deaths is assigned as described above according to the proportions in Passage 55 of the report. Thus 1,360 of the minorities (which corresponds closely with figures published by the Red Cross) were the responsibility of the KLA plus the “more than a thousand” Kosovars that Bujar Bukoshi, reference above, claims were murdered by the KLA: A total of some 2,500. Thus the alleged number of victims of Serb security forces becomes some 2,800 with over 80% being males of combat age: a far, far cry from the original Nato claims of 100,000 and a far cry from the “10,356” presented as evidence in the ICTY. No consideration has been made here for the hundreds killed by Nato bombs, those killed in combat or due to accidents, for other reasons and those bodies the UN reported transferred from Albania into Kosovo. Nor do these figures include those hundreds of the minorities openly murdered by the KLA since Nato occupied Kosovo.

  No one more than three years after the event should have to interpret or estimate these figures. The situation ought to be crystal clear by now. To quote again a comment in the report “The silence of the authorities in the face of the real concerns of the missing persons attains a level of severity which can only be categorised as inhuman treatment.”
  
  Peter Taylor
  Herts/UK

• Thursday October 24, 2002 at 10:27 pm
  It was extremely difficult to follow the "trial" for the last few days, because the proceedings were repeatedly interrupted by private/closed sessions. Both the examination-in-chief and the cross-examination of the protected witness C-020, a Serb from CRO once again, were gradually turning into a theatre of absurd. When Nice examined, he would announce every so often: "...and the balance of this paragraph we will have to deal with at the private session." When it was Milosevic's turn, he was warned by May several times that "this point has been mentioned at the private session, therefore cannot be addressed to in the open court." Milosevic would invariably either re-phrase his question or give it up entirely. The second day of the cross-examination the judges just announced a closed session without an explanation.

  What I managed to establish from those bits of open-session examinations is this: C-020 is a Serb from Borovo Selo near Vukovar, who was a member of the Arkan's Serbian Voluntary Guard - special units "Tigers" and "Super Tigers", brought to testify from the Croatian prison. Those units were volunteers, specially trained, had fought first in CRO and then in B&H, their tasks were to act as strike groups at the front, they were almost "never in contact with local civilians", "we were the most disciplined armed force on all the battlefields", "our equipment was that of an elite unit, a copy of the Foreign Legion outfit and arms, automatic guns exclusively with wooden butts painted black, black berets...", they were "highly skilled in explosives, reconnaissance in force"... They never did any civilian killings or looting. Their volunteering record was filed in their military booklets. They were subordinated to the local Territorial Defence (TO). They were either from Serbia or local Serbs, who came upon invitation of their old unit once more when civil war broke out in B&H. (Nice: "You have received an order in mid August 1994 to join your unit in Belgrade?" C-020: "No, it was not an order, it was an invitation; I could have refused it if I wanted to; but our unit responded massively.")

  His unit also fought in Western Bosnia, "training, instructing, co-ordinating and helping the People's Defence Units of Fikret Abdic" against Alija Izetbegovic, where "three of our high-ranked members got killed and we stopped taking part in fights at the frontline", being too valuable because of their skills.

  After Vukovar was liberated, the Army took Croatian civilians and POWs to Serbia (they were exchanged later on), in order to "save them from the outraged local Serbs" (because of the unspeakable atrocities committed by the CRO forces before and during the battle for Vukovar). The Serbs have even "ambushed one of the Army buses", trying to take them over, so the Army had to "change their routes" to avoid that.

  Well, this is nothing new to our public, it has been widely published and discussed, and so far there was no evidence of Arkan's people being involved in any atrocities. His personal history as a petty gangster robbing villas in Western Europe in his youth, and organizing sanction-busting petrol smuggling in YU later on have nothing to do with his desire to express his patriotism by helping his Serb brothers with his own elite highly drilled unit of volunteers, equipped and paid by himself, risking his own neck in the process being always present at the battlefield. Remember Sir Francis Drake, a pirat helping the English Crown and rewarded with a title; remember Sicilian Mafia, helping the US forces landing in Sicily in WW2. To a lot of people he's a hero. For my taste, his ways were those of a thug, but a war criminal he's not.

  Perhaps C-020 said something new and revealing in one of the numerous closed-session segments of his testimony. We shall never know. Or rather, we shall know it in 50-year time, when Milosevic will be sentenced, dead and forgotten and all the history re-writing sealed as the Official Truth.

  But, "people are suckers for the truth", as Donald Sutherland playing "deep throat" said in "JFK". Therefore, May was wrong when he almost shouted at Milosevic two days ago: "Do not worry about closed sessions. The public is not judging here. I'm judging here!" The public is always the final judge.
  
  Vera Martinovic
  Belgrade
  Yugoslavia

• Friday October 25, 2002 at 3:40 am
  Oh wow! So Arkan was helping Fikret Abdic against Izetbegovic! And another point about the trial. What gives rise to the need to interrogate the same witness partly in an open session, partly in a closed session? To be sure, "The Trial Chamber may order that the press and the public be excluded from all or part of the proceedings" (Rule 79), but it seems the presiding judge cannot rule that a question which was discussed in a closed session cannot be raised again in the open session. There is a special provision, Rule 70, for Matters not Subject to Disclosure, but this Rule doesn't in any way refer to the closed sessions. In fact, Rule 70 (G) that the Trial Chamber may deviate from this provision only to ensure a fair trial! (Undoubtedly this is something worth amending!)

  As to Peter Taylor's posting, I think it is safe to say that the crucial passage is that the KLA killed "a total of some 2,500" (both minorities and Albanians). "Thus the alleged number of victims of Serb security forces becomes some 2,800 with over 80% being males of combat age." That is, if we can extrapolate the number of corpses to 5,300. Indeed, now we can see why the OTP doesn't think it is its responsibility to confirm the total number of corpses! It must find it deeply deplorable that Patrick Ball came up with this figure of 10,356, which is almost twice as high.

  This is an example of how the history is rewritten. By us!

  Back to the legal nitpicking. If the genocide is defined as liberally as the Popovic indictment suggests, surely no combatant is free from genocide charges. This includes Nato too! Ah, but the clue is the word "accused", which is used in the requisite four elements of Genocide. So the catch is not who kills persons belonging to a particular group, but who gets accused! If a combatant gets accused, he is a goner. If not, he is either a hero or an American.

  So the ICTY doesn't accuse Nato. The prosecutor says it has no evidence. Neither does the ICJ want to proceed with the Legality of Use of Force case. So what remains is a few cases pending in national courts.

  Are the national courts any more willing to admit that Nato should pay the bombing victims? Not at all. They basically evoke the just war doctrine, like all the other courts, even if the doctrine was supposedly defunct! They say that all the "collateral damage" damage was for a good cause, because Milosevic was a good enough excuse to make any war waged against him a just war! They may evoke such learned terms like "official and/or effective control" but the essence is still that of a just war (revisited).

  It is suprisingly difficult to nail the participants of a "joint criminal enterprise" when the participants are Nato countries. Compare to the remarkable ease with which the prosecution can nail any participant of the Serbian "joint criminal enterprise". But the same legal reasoning should apply in both cases (were it not for the fact that the doctrine of "joint criminal enterprise" is expressly intended to divert the attention from the responsility of Nato).

  But the ICJ preliminary ruling in the Legality of Use of Force comes to our aid. This ruling reasoned that since Yugoslavia recognized the jurisdiction of the ICJ after the bombing had started, the ICJ couldn't indicate the requested provisional measures. And this formula was repeated in all of the separate cases against the individual Nato countries. So the bottomline is that the bombing campaign was like God: one and indivisible, having no beginning and apparently no end.

  But the national law has a surprising acumen just for cases like this. Suppose some joint enterprise has more than one particants and they do a lot of damage. Then the figure of joint and several responsibility applies. The person who has suffered from anything the joint enterprise did can demand reparation from any one of the participants. And this means the whole lump sum. If the participant who has to pay the lump sum is unhappy about having to pay also the damages caused by the other particants, there are separate judicial mechanisms to sort out the mutual responsibility.

  So now that the ICJ has pointed to the dogma that the bombing was one and indivisible and no distincition should be made between the different participants, the victims can demand the Netherlands, for instance, to pay the whole lump sum for the whole joint enterprise.

  But the national jurisdiction may complain that it is not sure if the "collateral damage" was indeed illegal. If it is not, they argue, the damages won't have to be paid (as if one wouldn't have to pay any damages that have been caused unintentionally). But it is quite evident that the "collateral damage" was quite intentional. The US strategy developed by Colonel Warden makes no bones about this. And why should it, because the US hasn't ratified Protocol I of the Geneva Conventions? It is only a pity that other Nato countries have. If it is shown that the intent to cause damage to the civilians was there, all the Nato members that took part in the bombing campaign are jointly and severally responsible for the damage.

  But maybe they then evoke the doctrine according to which a crime is punishable only if it is punishable in all the countries that are somehow involved in the commission of the crime. However, it is not criminal responsibility we are talking about here but reparation for injuries. I think it is quite logical that if the US does deliberate damage to the civilian infrastructure, according to the Warden doctrine, and in Holland this is illegal (while in the US it is not), the victims have the right to demand reparation for the damage caused by the Nato countries en bloc from any single Nato country which has ratified the Geneva Conventions.

  The whole idea about this humanitarian intervention was to create universal standards for all the inhabitants of this planet, and as Michael Steiner has now declared, nobody is above the law. In the good old days, humanitarian intervention used to mean that if the interests of the citizens of the US, for instance, were violated in another country, say, Yugoslavia, then the US had the right to intervene on behalf of its citizens. It is a moot point whether, say, the US could argue that if the interests of the US citizens were violated in Yugoslavia according to the standards set in the American law, the US had the right to intervene. The Latin American countries have a lot of experience in resolving questions like this. The Calvo doctrine argues that the US citizens, in this case, could not expect to be treated by the standards of the US law when they were in, say, Argentina. But that is an old doctrine by now.

  The new doctrine of humanitarian intervention seeks to award universal protection even to the citizens of a foreign country. In this case we instantly think of the Albanians in Yugoslavia. But if this is a serious doctrine, it should not distinguish between the Serb and the Albanian citizens of Yugoslavia. That is the whole point. On the other hand, if the US, for instance, is serious about these universal legal norms that it says should apply in the Yugoslav judicial system, it should award that same protection to the Yugoslav citizens in its own courts too, no matter if they are Albanian or Serb. I think that is a concrete expression of "intervention". And the "protection" doesn't primarily mean bombing the country but awarding reparation for damages caused by the bombing too. Only then is it rational to speak about universal legal norms.

  What all this means is that if the new doctrine of humanitarian intervention is thought through, the Nato countries have no right to throw out the claims by the Serbs from their own courts!

  And this is to say nothing about the criminal responsibility on account of, say, genocide. I don't know if the Serb bombing victims have turned to the Belgian courts, which supposedly have universal jurisdiction over genocide. Anyway, it is interesting that the genocide is now defined so loosely as has been done in the Popovic indictment. According to the premises of this adventure that is called ICTY, this definition of genocide now applies to the whole world.
  
  Jari Nousiainen
  Finland

• Friday October 25, 2002 at 10:02 am
  I think Del Ponte and Arbour have both said that an investigation of Nato actions would be quite possible. I think how far this possibility reaches. Even if an investigation is possible, that doesn't mean that an indictment would be possible. Even if an indictment were possible, no trial would be necessarily possible. Even if a trial were possible, no conviction would then be necessarily possible. And in fact this last step is practically barred in the Statute, which says in Art. 24 that "the Trial Chambers shall have recourse to the general practice regarding prison sentences in the courts of the former Yugoslavia". Should an American be convicted according to the prison sentences in the courts of the former Yugoslavia?

  So it is obvious that the ICTY is prejudiced in this way. The problem is that if this reasoning is valid, then the Serbs and the Montenegrins would be pretty hard to convict on Art. 24 too, because Serbia and Montenegro are Yugoslavia, while the prison sentences are modelled after the practise in former Yugoslavia. No wonder that the Americans have always insisted that the trump Yugoslavia should properly be called "Serbia and Montenegro".

  But everybody understands that the tribunal is for the Serbs and not for Nato. The latest 20 indictments that Del Ponte brought to Belgrade kind of dribe home the point.

  Even if Serbia weren't strictly speaking form part of "former Yugoslavia", the ICTY has ruled that the Serb courts cannot guarantee a fair trial. By this, ICTY of course means fair for the prosecution, not for the accused. But then the question is, are the courts in Nato countries any better equipped or even more willing to convict their own citizens of war crimes (or worse) committed in "former Yugoslavia" (including Serbia and Montenegro)?

  Then let us turn to the phenomenon called the presiding judge. He motivates his erratic decisions about the closed sessions by "interests of justice". Judge May could just as well say: "Because I say so". In fact his truism "we are the judges" comes pretty close. But isn't it remarkable how close the "interests of justice" are to the "interests of the prosecution"? Nice kept complaining about the poor level of his own evidence, and instantly May comes to his rescue with the interests of justice.

  Even if the interests of justice weren't identical with the interests of the prosecution, the interests of justice should in no way derogate from the defendant's right to a fair and public trial. It is true that Rule 75(A) only makes a point of the fact that the measures for the protection of victims and witnesses are to be consistent with the rights of the accused, while not making such a provision for the other reasons for ordering closed sessions on account of Rule 79(A). However, this doesn't have to be interpreted a contrario so that a closed session ordered on account of the interests of justice wouldn't have to take into account the rights of the defendant.

  In fact, it is obvious not only from the statements made by Nice but also from those made by May himself that his interpretation of the "interests of justice" is expressly meant to frustrate the defendant's right to a fair trial. I guess should we take May's statement literally when he said: "Do not worry about closed sessions. The public is not judging here. I'm judging here!" Well, nobody suggested (to my knowledge) that the public should be judging. All Milosevic and we have been saying that the world is his jury. Boy, would May have some trouble with a jury! He seems to have some trouble with the two other judges, because he says: "I am judging here."

  Is he afraid that the public would be judging him? He seems to resort to the useful argument used by some lawyers: anybody who knows things better than they do is instantly dismissed as a hobbyist.

  If May thinks that the right of the defendant to a fair and public trial can be disposed with every time a certain Rule doesn't expressly mention it, the question that should be asked is: why have open sessions at all? I think May is asking the same question. The open sessions do a lot of damage to the "interests of justice", i.e. the prosecution's case. From what we now hear, the secret witness that was supposed to say bad things about Arkan, only confirmed that he was not a bad guy. So the theory of "joint criminal enterprise" is in danger. By the way, one has to pinch oneself to remember that this was not a defence witness but a prosecution witness.

  I think the question of this discussion "Is Milosevic getting a fair trial?" should be put to May. I think he would like to say: "Who cares? I am judging here!" Or if he wants to keep up the appearances, he might quote the ECHR's decision in the Naletilic case, which says: "Involved here is the surrender to an international court which, in view of the content of its Statute and Rules of Procedure, offers all the necessary guarantees including those of impartiality and independence."

  The faith of the European Court of Human Rights in the ICTY is boundless. For instance, the ECHR took quite a leap of faith when it motivated its decision with a reference to the Statute and the Rules. The ECHR made the decision in the Naletilic case on may 4, 2000. The Rules of Procedure have been amended nine times after that, last time a couple of weeks ago.
  
  J N
  Finland

• Saturday October 26, 2002 at 12:35 pm
  So why was Arkan assassinated?The guy had about 38 shots fired at him.Someone wasn't happy about something, and I suggest it was more than his petty crime and sanction busting activities.Or perhaps Croatian terrorists are responsible for another proud Serb death.How about Slobo having him killed??No of course not, Slobo wouldn't do that. Arkan was on his side, wasn't he?Also, "liberation" of Vukovar is an interesting turn of phrase, considering it was basically demolished, and that when it was overrun by the Serb and JNA forces it was declared, not as a part of Yugoslavia, but as a part of a Serbian state....which was conveniantly set up with the help of Serb fighters, from where??? oh yes from Serbia... These guys were mercenaries???or...they were just helping their Serb brothers???OK, so the Serb diaspora helping each other to protect Yugoslavia, but not really doing it considering the establishment of Krajina, of course thats OK....but Croatian diaspora from outside of Croatia helping their forces is merely the continuation of the Ustasa emigre dream. Yes of course thats it. There is just a tad bit of inconsistency (in my view) and bias in your points, Vera. ....but good onya...I don't deny you your right to express them.
  
  Ivan Kokotovic
  Sydney
  Australia

• Sunday October 27, 2002 at 5:08 pm
  Ivan, in your previous posts I felt that here is a man who has thrown nationalism on the “dustbin of history”. I felt that here is a man who looks at world events with his head rather than with his gut. Through your posts, I felt that Australian education system like that in Canada examines issues of racism and prejudice. However, your last post oooozzzzzes nationalism. Your last post is patronizing, innuendo and mostly emotional unsubstantiated gut reaction and for that reason I find your post irrational rather than rational. Nationalism is a sickness Ivan and the cure is not in emotion but in reason. With daily examples such as Moscow, Bali and New York its time we looked to reason to solve national problems.
  
  Walter Trkla
  Kamloops BC
  Canada

• Sunday October 27, 2002 at 7:21 pm
  Ivan, you seem to know a lot of things about the events in Belgrade and in Vukovar from your far-away Australia. Why don't you share your knowledge with all of us and tell us who killed Arkan and why?

  And yes, Vukovar was liberated in Nov. 1991 by the YU Army from illegal CRO armed groups trying to accomplish violent secession, so the YU Army was within its rights to fight this battle, which started with the Croats attacking YU Army barracks and blocking the whole town in Aug. 1991, and before that, since Feb. 1991, killings of the Serbs started in the region.

  The town was demolished because the full-fledged battle lasted for months (Oct-Nov. 1991), it was street fighting for each building, with mortars used from both sides.

  No, it wasn't "the Serb diaspora helping each other to protect Yugoslavia". Those were the Serbs both from Serbia and local Serbs from CRO and B&H, openly volunteering, officially joining the YU Army and the Territorial Defence while there was still a joint state existing.

  Afterwards, Vukovar was not declared "a part of a Serbian state", it simply continued to be in Yugoslavia, as well as the rest of CRO for that matter. The Serbian Autonomous Region (SAO) was formed in refusal to follow CRO in its illegal secession, until CRO was prematurely internationally recognized in 1992, when it became an UNPA (UN-protected) Zone.

  You said in one of your earlier posts: "We know what happened in Vukovar." Well, I for one cannot claim to know all what happened in Vukovar, despite my living there from the age 2 to 18, despite my frequent visits afterwards (the last one immediately after the battle of Vukovar stopped), despite my family living there and spending in cellars those months of the battle, despite my talking to numerous people on the topic, despite my extensive research afterwards... No, I do not know what happened there, and I would really like to know, seriously. Maybe Ivan could help us. But if your sources are media headlines, please don't bother.

  I would very much appreciate if any of you could give me some links where I could find anything about the battle for Vukovar.

  Ivan, you seem a decent person, willing to think and learn, so you deserve some input. You have somehow equalized Ustashas and Chetniks - wrongly. They were both violent towards the opposite (as well as their own) nationality - Chetniks on a much smaller scale - but that's not the point. While Chetniks were self-imposed armed groups boasting to fight for the runnaway King Peter II, but supported by no authority, Ustashas were regular state armed forces (as you said yourself, your uncle had to join, it was under conscription), implementing officially proclaimed state plans of terror against the Serbs, Jews and Gypsies.

  About insignia: Ustashas' sign was a red-chequered coat of arms with a letter "U". And the argument that such a coat of arms was older than Ustashas "at least about 1,000 years"? Do yout think that anyone, seeing a swastika (Hakenkreuz) thinks of something else than Nazi Germany, although this is an ancient Indian (Aryan) sign, emblematic of the sun and the word "swastika" is actually a Sanskrit word?
  
  Vera Martinovic
  Belgrade
  Yugoslavia

• Monday October 28, 2002 at 3:36 am
  Well, this secret witness who praised the virtues of Arkan's Tigers was a prosecution witness, so whatever Arkan's intrinsic merit, I guess this trial is really going from bad to worse (from the prosecution's point of view). I have seen Arkan in one TV interview on BBC, and he seemed a highly intelligent person, but I don't doubt he could have been capable of all the alleged atrocities. But the fact remains that we hear some lenient stuff from the prosecution witness.

  Let me come back to the basics of ICTY. It is commonly objected that the Security Council doesn't have the authority to set up a judicial organ. The UN Charter doesn't mention such a possibility. However, international documents are sometimes interpreted teleologically, which means that as the need arises, the rules can be bent a bit. That happened with everything that went on when the Security Council set up the peace-keeping forces. The Soviet Union protested that such peace-keeping forces are not mentioned in the UN Charter, and when the Soviet Union stayed out of the Security Council resolution authorizing the peace-keeping forces in Korea, the interpretation of the Security Council voting rules were adjusted.

  This kind of teleological interpretation is called implied powers in the UN. Sure, it seems odd that an administrative organ like the Security Council should set up a judicial organ, but in fact the distinction between a judicial and administrative organ is getting fuzzy these days anyway. And the rules that such an organ establishes can be regarded as law, even if it is hierarchically inferior to law passed by a legislative organ.

  It is objected that the ICTY should have been set up by the General Assembly. However, I guess if the ICTY had been set up by the General Assembly, we would have the same kind of arguments against the authority of the General Assembly. Remember that the ICC was not set up by a UN organ but by a multilateral treaty.

  The fact is that the General Assembly is happy with the ICTY. It is the General Assembly that elects the ICTY judges according to the Statute. If it weren't happy, it should protest.

  But that doesn't excuse the rampant fraud that permeates everything the ICTY does. Let us make a thought experiment. Why doesn't the ICTY indict the Americans? Sure, the tribunal was an American idea, but the principle has been that a court of law can only be established by someone who yields to its jurisdiction himself. OK, so it is countered that this is not strictly speaking a court of law but a tribunal, which is established for someone else than the founder. But in that case, why give it the UN blessing? The minute the resolution establishing the ICTY was adopted, the Americans should have become fair game as well. Remember that the ICTY is regarded by some as a sort of stepping stone towards issuing similar war crimes charges against Russia, which is a member of the Security Council too. By "some" I mean some ICTY supporters who have aired their views in this discussion, and even Del Ponte herself. So why are the Americans singled out for a special treatment, even if they are Security Council members?

  According to Art. 21(1) of the Statute, all persons shall be equal before the tribunal. Yes, it really says that. Who are these "persons"? I guess they are the same "persons" that the prosecutor is responsible for prosecuting, according to Art. 16(1):

  "The Prosecutor shall be responsible for the investigation and prosecution of persons responsible for serious violations of international humanitarian law committed in the territory of the former Yugoslavia since 1 January 1991."

  So this article says that the prosecutor is responsible for the prosecution. Quite clever! Why include such a provision in the Statute, if it doesn't imply that whenever there have been serious violations of international humanitarian law committed in the territory of the former Yugoslavia since 1 January 1991, the prosecutor must investigate and prosecute the perpetrators? The ICTY Statute uses the formula the International Tribunal shall have the power to do all kinds of things in Art. 1 - 5, but the it is the prosecutor's duty to carry them out.

  Sure, the subjective interpretation of this provision would exclude the possibility of prosecuting the Americans, because the Americans would never have intended such an interpretation. However, let us not forget that the Statute was passed in 1993, when the Americans could hardly dream of becoming so involved in the crisis as they did in 1999. So the Americans are fair game. The subjective interpretation has to stop somewhere.

  And the prosecution must investigate and prosecute the perpetrators ex officio (Art. 18). Sure, the prosecutor can receive information from Governments according to Art. 18, but "he or she shall not seek or receive instructions from any Government or from any other source" (Art. 16-2). Does the word "Government" mean the US in the first case and Serbia in the latter? Anyway, the word Government is the same as in Art. 7(2), which provides that the official position of the accused doesn't relieve him of criminal responsibility.

  As to the territorial jurisdiction, I have to correct myself. The jurisdiction extends to the territory of the SFRY, which includes the present territory of Serbia and Montenegro (Art. 8). But note how careful this article is to point out that the territory includes "airspace and territorial waters". Now how many of the existing indictments include the "airspace"? Is this a dead letter now after the bombing in 1999?

  What happens if the Americans refuse to ratify Protocol I of the Geneva Conventions? Well, join the club. As the Yugoslav government now argues in the Genocide case between Bosnia and Yugoslavia pending at the ICJ, Yugoslavia is now recognized as not being the successor state of SFRY, because it was admitted to the UN as a new member. If that argument sticks to genocide (which it should not, because genocide is jus cogens), it should stick all the more to Protocol I of the Geneva Conventions. The Yugoslav government argues that the treaties ratified by the SFRY don't automatically bind the FRY. So it was in the same position that the US is now.

  Be that as it may, does that relieve the Yugoslavs of criminal responsibility? Of course not. Their responsibility is determined on the basis of the ICTY Statute, which refers to grave breaches of the Geneva Conventions. Does that include Protocol I of the Geneva Conventions? Sure. Read the Bosnia indictment of Milosevic, for starters.

  So if the individual criminal responsibility is determined on the basis of the ICTY Statute, independently of whether the State was a party to the relevant treaties or not, this same rule should apply to the Americans. So even if the Americans haven't ratified Protocol I, they can still be individually responsible in the ICTY for breaking it.

  But the Americans could reply that the Statute speaks of concurrent jurisdiction. If the American courts cannot prosecute anyone for breaking certain treaties, how could the jurisdiction be concurrent? That is true. But on the other hand, the ICTY can even break the non bis in idem rule according to Art. 10(2)(b), if "the national court proceedings were not impartial or independent, were designed to shield the accused from international criminal responsibility, or the case was not diligently prosecuted". And sure the American courts are "shielding" their own boys and girls, because they don't even apply all the treaties that the ICTY applies by virtue of the ICTY Statute. So this discrepancy in applicable laws is enough justification for transferring American boys and girls to The Hague.

  It is also true that the Statute metes out the punishments according to the practice of the courts in former Yugoslavia (Art. 24-1), but that doesn't exclude the Americans. If the Americans were extradited to Yugoslavia, they would be sentenced according to the Yugoslav law, of course.

  And as to the material crimes, we could start by prosecuting the Americans for genocide. The new "requisite elements" in Popovic indictment make this possible. Sure, it can be replied that the Americans didn't have the intent to destroy the Serbs. However, it doesn't matter if they had the intent. Now all that matters, according to the Popovic indictment, is that they acted "in furtherance of an intent". And judging by a statement made by Blair, according to which the idea was to "get rid of the Serbs", it is obvious that the Americans were acting in furtherance of an intent to destroy the Serbs. Alternativesly, the "get rid" could be construed as a crime pointing to genocide, the same way that thge permanent removal of Bosnian Croats and Muslims is construed as pointing to the genocide of Bosnian Croats and Muslims.

  Anyway, it doesn't matter if the Americans have ratified all the necessary documents pertaining to genocide, because genocide is jus cogens and as such binding and prosecutable all over the world.

  Would the Americans be happy about this change in policy? Well, I guess they are familiar by now with Art. 29(1): "States shall co-operate with the International Tribunal in the investigation and prosecution of persons accused of committing serious violations of international humanitarian law." If the States do not co-operate, the Security Council can impose sanctions. The UN would not be happy to do that against the US, because that would mean the end of the UN. However, during the bombing it was argued by the Clinton administration that the UN is in need of reform anyway.

  If it ever came so far, everyone would be much more receptive to the arguments that we are making here now. One argument that I haven't mentioned is temporal jurisdiction. Does the Statute cover the Kosovo bombing? No. Art. 8 says: "The temporal jurisdiction of the International Tribunal shall extend to a period beginning on 1 January 1991." So the only direction the jurisdiction extend is backwards. The Statute was adopted on May 25, 1993. That means that strictly speaking the temporal jurisdiction covers 1991-1993.

  On the other hand, it can be argued that the Statute covers the Bosnian war only because Milosevic signed the Dayton Peace Agreement, which mentions the ICTY. In fact, this is the argument made by those who maintain that Milosevic recognized the ICTY. But can the Dayton Agreement be valid, because it was signed by Milosevic, who is now prosecuted for crimes he allegedly committed befor signing?

  Besides, after Dayton there has been no similar accord. The Security Council resolution 1244 (1999) mentions the ICTY in § 14, but it doesn't bring strictly speaking anything new. It says: "Demands full cooperation by all concerned, including the international security presence, with the International Tribunal for the Former Yugoslavia."

  I think that the applicability of this paragraph depends on the behaviour of the "international security presence", i.e. KFOR. It would seem that what now binds the Serbs, also binds the KFOR, i.e. the Americans. Or does the wording suggest anything else? I think this supersedes the infamous Appendix B of the Rambouillet Accord, which provided for the immunity of Nato. This "accord" is only to be "taken into account" (e.g. § 11-a), and the context is Kosovo's self-government, not the immunity of Nato troops.

  No-one would deny that the Americans have a heightened sense of chutzpah, but that alone doesn't make them any more clever than the rest of us. They may justify all the bad things that they have done with some nice-sounding term, like duress or humanitarian catastrophe, but according to the Latin maxim nullus commodum capere de sua propria injuria, nobody should benefit from one's own unlawfulness. I guess that the stories about Camp Bondsteel, Trepca mines and Trans-Balkan pipeline at least suggest that the Americans did have some benefit from their own unlawfulness.
  
  Jari Nousiainen
  Finland

• Monday October 28, 2002 at 3:37 am
  Oops. I did it again.
  
  J N
  Finland

• Monday October 28, 2002 at 4:17 am
  In case you haven't heard, the Americans now argue that the Serbs are helping the Iraqis to beef up their defense system. That is logical, let no-one tell you otherwise. The bombing of Yugoslavia was justified by the Milosevic was Saddam. Now the bombing of Iraq is justified partly by the fact that the post-Milosevic government is helping Saddam. Either the regime change didn't change anything or Milosevic is running the world from prison. But that would mean that what the ICTY did to Serbia didn't "work", even if Ari Fleischer argues that the Americans should set up the same kind of war crimes tribunal for Saddam, because it "worked" in Serbia.

  Ari, my friend. Make up your mind. Did it work in Serbia, or did it not? If it did, what are the Serbs now allegedly doing in Iraq?

  But I still don't believe that Bush knocked down the WTC. There were the same kind of conspiracy theories about the Russians blowing off highrises and putting the blame on the Chechens. I am sure that in a year we will hear all about how the Russians actually organized the hostage crisis in Moscow. And they were even so clever as to organize such an incindent in the middle of Moscow, so that people would think that the Chechens are somehow linked to al-Qaeda, who attacked a prominent building in the middle of New York!
  
  J N
  Finland

• Monday October 28, 2002 at 4:29 am
  And if George still doesn't see one link for his anti-intuitive approach, let me point it out to him. If the attack on Iraq is anything about fighting terrorism, how could the Chechens be free to arrange a hostage crisis in the middle of Moscow! Oh I see! It was in order to undermine the credibility of the attack on Iraq that the Russians organized such a happening in Moscow! That explains why the American administration hasn't recognized the Chechens as terrorists (possibly barring the hostage-takers). They can outdo the Russians in their own game. And they can outdo the Serbs too. That is why the Americans support the Chechens, as they supported the KLA. And once they can outdo the Russians and the Serbs, they can outdo the Iraqis (even before the regime-change).

  But somehow this still doesn't explain why the hostage-crisis was allowed to happen in Moscow.
  
  J N
  Finland

• Monday October 28, 2002 at 9:42 am
  About the Chechen-Del Ponte-US triangle, see URL at http://www.cdi.org/russia/johnson/6129-8.cfm . That gang will surely make the world a better place.
  
  J N
  Finland

• Monday October 28, 2002 at 11:40 am
  Legality of the ICTY can be judged from many standpoints. A very important one is how it is financed. Instead of being fully financed by the UN it receives contributions from the USA and other countries that were actively involved in the wars of the destruction of the former Yugoslavia. If I remember correctly even Mr. Soros and his private organization have contributed funds. When the first contribution of this type happened the legality and impartiality of the ICTY was irreparably compromised. The other point is that the court, prosecution and chamber of appeals are the three branches of the same UN Organ. Since this is legally un-acceptable for any modern democratic state, especially ones that took part in destruction of Yugoslavia in the name of humanity, how it can be acceptable for the UN. I rest the case.
  
  Pera Bora
  Canada

• Monday October 28, 2002 at 11:40 am
  Legality of the ICTY can be judged from many standpoints. A very important one is how it is financed. Instead of being fully financed by the UN it receives contributions from the USA and other countries that were actively involved in the wars of the destruction of the former Yugoslavia. If I remember correctly even Mr. Soros and his private organization have contributed funds. When the first contribution of this type happened the legality and impartiality of the ICTY was irreparably compromised. The other point is that the court, prosecution and chamber of appeals are the three branches of the same UN Organ. Since this is legally un-acceptable for any modern democratic state, especially ones that took part in destruction of Yugoslavia in the name of humanity, how it can be acceptable for the UN. I rest the case.
  
  Pera Bora
  Canada

• Monday October 28, 2002 at 11:46 am
  Legality of the ICTY can be judged from many standpoints. A very important one is how it is financed. Instead of being fully financed by the UN it receives contributions from the USA and other countries that were actively involved in the wars of the destruction of the former Yugoslavia. If I remember correctly even Mr. Soros and his private organization have contributed funds. When the first contribution of this type happened the legality and impartiality of the ICTY was irreparably compromised. The other point is that the court, prosecution and chamber of appeals are the three branches of the same UN Organ. Since this is legally un-acceptable for any modern democratic state, especially ones that took part in destruction of Yugoslavia in the name of humanity, how it can be acceptable for the UN. I rest the case.
  
  Pera Bora
  Canada

• Monday October 28, 2002 at 5:36 pm
  

  Paddy Ashdown claims to have learned something in BiH. Some lesson he has learned. Click HERE and control yourself.
  
  Gogol Charlemagne
  Conn. USA

• Tuesday October 29, 2002 at 2:58 am
  It is worthwhile to discuss the legal basis of the tribunal. That way we will learn more of the activities of the tribunal. Trust me, even if the tribunal had an adequate legal basis, there is enough hanky-panky going on to render the whole organ "diseased throughout". On the other hand, let us not ignore the basic legal documents just because we may think the organ is illegal. We must not let "them" beat us just because we know the documents worse than "they" do.

  As to the funds, I have read that some provision forbids external funding from outside the UN. On the other hand, Security Council resolution 827 says:

  "Urges States and intergovernmental and non-governmental organizations to contribute funds, equipment and services to the International Tribunal, including the offer of expert personnel. (§ 5)"

  But actually, I am more concerned about the temporal jurisdiction of the tribunal. As the ICTY Statute states, the temporal jurisdiction extends backwards to 1 January 1991 (Art. 8). On the other hand, no "expiry date" for the tribunal's jurisdiction has been confirmed, although that was the intention. The above-mentioned resolution clearly indicates that the temporal jurisdiction was not meant to last forever. Its § 2 defines the temporal jurisdiction preliminarily as follows: "between 1 January 1991 and a date to be determined by the Security Council upon the restoration of peace".

  The sense of urgency is palpable. In fact, the Secretary-General points out that this urgency was the very reason that the tribunal had to be set up by the Security Council and not by the General Assembly. He says in § 23: "This approach would have the advantage of being expeditious and of being immediately effective as all States would be under a binding obligation to take whatever action is required to carry out a decision taken as an enforcement measure under Chapter VII." (You can view the report of the Secretary-General at http://www.un.org/icty/legaldoc/index.htm ). Granted that, this "expeditiousness" would contradict the present policy, which allows the temporal jurisdiction to linger on indefinitely.

  And thus we come back to the issue of bad faith. Of course, when the tribunal has been set up, it is tempting to begin another war to transfer all the political undesirables to The Hague. (Well, you have the Dayton Agreement in your pocket.) It is true that resolution 827 refers exclusively to the former Yugoslavs being the criminals. For instance, its third consideration mentions "mass killings, massive, organized and systematic detention and rape of women, and the continuance of the practice of 'ethnic cleansing', including for the acquisition and the holding of territory." This is stuff that has been regularly associated with "non-Americans".

  However, to adjudicate any alleged crimes committed after the tribunal had been set up and it had become more institutionalized, more even-handedness is necessary. I think that at that point one would have to take the leap from subjective interpretation to objective interpretation.

  According to the latter, nothing seems to prevent the Nato personnel from being prosecuted. I think the Prosecutors have admitted that, and to abort any further investigations they had to resort to the inane excuse that there was not enough evidence.

  And to flesh out the "bad faith" even more: The prosecutor's policy of concentrating on the Serbs is outrageous. To borrow Bin Cheng's terminology, this is abuse of discretion. Of course, the prosecutor has some latitude (i.e. discretion) to decide which persons to prosecute, but it is obvious that this "discretion" has now mutated into a downright dogma!

  There is another manifestation of "bad faith". This is the fictitious use of a right, as Bin Cheng would call it. This can be hung on the Latin maxim ex re sed non ex nomine. My translation: "according to the matter but not according to the name". In other words, it doesn't matter which name you put on the Kosovo bombing (like "humanitarian intervention"). The fact is that the result was large-scale devastation.

  Another fact is that actually the Americans, the aggressors, were the only winners. This contradicts the maxim nullus commodum capere de sua propria injuria.

  Believe it or not, resolution 827 provides in § 7 as follows:

  "Decides also that the work of the International Tribunal shall be carried out without prejudice to the right of the victims to seek, through appropriate means, compensation for damages incurred as a result of violations of international humanitarian law."

  Obviously, this covers the bombing victims too. However, here the bad faith continues. You may have heard that the chief (or whoever it was) of RTS was convicted for letting his staff stay in the studio, although he is believed to have known that Nato would bomb the building. The case against Nato was dismissed. That, of course, makes no sense. When one pinpoints the responsibility in cases like this, one has to proceed by excluding the acts that could have occurred without causing any damage. Letting the staff stay in the studio is such a thing. That didn't cause the damage. The bombing did. Without the bombing, there would have been no damage.

  Also, according to Protocol I of the Geneva Conventions, it is the duty of the attacker to warn the civilians of the coming attack. This didn't happen. Now it is the chief's fault. But of course, the US can break Protocol I all it likes, unless the Americans are brought to The Hague.

  But there is more odd things about the RTS. The chief was convicted in Belgrade. Why not in The Hague? It is the ICTY itself that has argued that the Serb judicial system is not ripe to deal with war crimes. And apparently this was one, because it is obvious that Milosevic was ultimately responsible for using this kind of human shield in RTS. No doubt Milosevic will be held as a war criminal for that, which means he has to remain in detention in The Hague, whereas the chief is tried in Belgrade.

  What is going on? Apparently the Americans thought that the conviction is so absurd that they couldn't take the risk of somebody exposing the lie in The Hague. That would get dangerously close to point to the American's own responsibility. So this matter had to be dealt with in Belgrade.

  It is incontestable that Nato broke every rule it came to save. We can go on for ever with this idiotic blah-blah about humanitarian intervention to shield the Americans. But in fact, the unlawfulness of the bombing and all that it entailed does not necessarily have to be established. The new doctrine - talking about new doctrines - is that in such cases of highly technical operations (that tend to get awry), not to say anything of the environmental damage, the responsibility is not subjective but objective. In other words, you don't have to establish if the perpetrator was negligent - or whatever. The only thing that counts is that the damage has been done, and Nato did it. As the English say: res ipsa loquitur.

  But more about the prosecution's bad faith per se. The Prosecution is trying everything, and that way it will get its fingers burnt. We have this marvelous doctrine of "joint criminal enterprise", which is supposedly enough to convict all the participants. However, the report of the Secretary-General, mentioned above, states in § 51: "[natural] persons would be subject to the jurisdiction of the International Tribunal irrespective of membership in groups". Is the "joint criminal enterprise" a "group" in the sense of the report. I think so. Only, it is difficult to confirm this, because the "joint criminal enterprise" can mean anything the prosecution wants it to mean.

  Another reason the prosecution may burn its fingers is that it is harbouring terrorists. Or is there any other way to describe the meeting between the Chechens and Del Ponte? I think somebody is guilty of bad faith. I don't know on how many counts any more.
  
  Jari Nousiainen
  Finland

• Tuesday October 29, 2002 at 6:28 am
  Yes, about the RTS bombing. The court in Belgrade sentenced the former general manager of the national television, Dragoljub Milanovic, to ten years' imprisonment, for the death of 16 employees of this media house killed in the NATO bombing. The sentence was handed down last June. He was sentenced on account of Article 194, paragraphs 2 and 3 of the Criminal Law of the Republic of Serbia. This article mentions the crime against general safety, in particular non-application of measures against fire.

  As evidence the court paraded Order 37, which however has not been found. Witness Slobodan Perisic says it was burned on October 5, 2000. Perisic is the one who Dragoljub Milanovic authorized to take care of defense and protection of the RTS in 1998.

  Order 37, which cannot be found, seems to have been issued by the Federal Government. The Order is so important, because it ordered the necessary equipment to be relocated to Kosutnjak. Or so it is said.

  Does the bombing make any more sense? The bombing managed to silence the Serb TV only for three hours. Even then, it is difficult to see what the immediate military advantage in the sense of Protocol I of the Geneva Conventions was.

  Clinton said: "The Serbian television was a key instrument of command and control for the Yugoslav leadership. Through that TV the Serbs spread hatred and disinformation."

  Yugoslav leadership? Milanovic was sentenced because he supposedly acted in contravention of the orders issued by the Federal government, i.e. "the Yugoslav leadership". So the question is: would Nato be guilty, if Milanovic had taken the staff out of the building, as the Federal government suggested (according to the court's reasoning)? So was this "order" the sole exception that would have shifted the blame on Nato? Whenever the RTS followed any other orders from the Federal government, it became subject to bombing. The reason for bombing the RTS tower in the first place was that it followed the orders of the "Yugoslav leadership"!

  The distorted logic is this: Destroying a civilian building would have been Nato's fault, if the people had been taken out. As soon as the people inside were destroyed as well, Nato is exonerated. Even if it knew they were inside.

  A lot seems to depend on the question who knew what. Did Nato know the people were inside? This is a fair question, because Nato now says Milanovic knew that Nato would attack. Does the fact that Milanovic knew of the attack exonerate Nato, even if Nato knew people were inside?

  Whose knowledge decides who is guilty? According to Protocol I of the Geneva Conventions: Nato's. But that is something the US doesn't recognize, so the logic in this normative vacuum is that the victim has to be punished.

  And the answer to the riddle? Yugoslavia won't be accepted in the Partnership for Peace if it doesn't drop the charges against the NATO leaders concerning the compensation for the damages. I guess no-one can deny that this "condition" curtails the right of individual citizens to seek compensations from abroad. Besides, let us not forget what the celebrated resolution 827 says in § 7:

  "Decides also that the work of the International Tribunal shall be carried out without prejudice to the right of the victims to seek, through appropriate means, compensation for damages incurred as a result of violations of international humanitarian law."

  I am sure there are many ways to read this. However, the most "natural" interpretation is that even if the Yugoslav war-time leader Milosevic is now molested by the ICTY, the victims of the Nato aggression can still seek compensation for damages in the Nato countries.

  Or what kind of "humanitarian intervention" is it when it destroys everything around and refuses to repair the damages? It seems that even if the damages were unintentional, which they were not, the word "humanitarian" implies that the damage has to be paid anyway. So the bill of this kind of "humanitarian intervention" consists not only of the direct cost of the bombing but also the damages that the victims of the bombing incur. In other words, such an humanitarian intervention entails objective responsibility.

  The resolution speaks of "appropriate means." What would that be? The think-tank in the Nato must be delusional if it thinks that sentencing Milanovic is the appropriate means. My opinion is that if the US doesn't allow Yugoslavia to seek compensation through the ICJ, where the Legality of Use of Force is pending, then it has to establish the kind of ad hoc tribunal which was set up with Iran: the US-Iran Claims Tribunal. If that is too much to ask, as it undoubtedly is, then the only "appropriate means" would be to litigate in the US courts. In fact, nothing else is more appropriate.

  This also accords with the Calvo clause, which the Americans have protested against, because it restricts the freedom of the US citizens to request the US government to take the matter into its own hands, whenever there is a disagreement between a Latin American country and the US citizens residing in that country. The Calvo clause means that foreigners should not resort to the diplomatic representation of their home countries, if they have the national remedies at their disposal. Imagine the Calvo clause being used for once in the favour of the US!

  Besides, in this case, the "foreigners", i.e. the Yugoslavs, cannot resort to the diplomatic representation of Yugoslavia, because the US considered it a "failed state". And the US doesn't recognize the jurisdiction of the only available "tribunal", the Internation Court of Justice, in this case anyway.

  In fact, the term "humanitarian" suggests that all the troubles of the Yugoslav citizens were now directly under the US jurisdiction. This means the US has some responsibilities as well. As Bin Cheng points out, if you arrogate rights to yourself, you still have to abide by your obligations.

  So the US courts would have to open up their doors to the Yugoslavs. What the status of the Yugoslav citizens is a different matter. I guess Bin Cheng comes to our rescue once again. The rights of foreigners residing in a country that is at war can be curtailed in the name of self-preservation. However, this must not be done arbitrarily. They deserve just compensation. Now that the US has arrogated the jurisdiction over the Yugoslav citizens in other matters, the citizens can be compared to foreigners who reside in a country that is at war and who deserve just compensation for any unjust damage. This is a general principle of international law, and the beauty of it is that it has so-called direct effect (because the general principles arguably emanate from domestic law).

  Anyway, the situation is quite anomalous. I think that the prosecution and everybody else knows that. That is why everybody is resorting to the most arcane reasonings these days. Take the genocide charges against Milosevic, which came out after he had been transferred to The Hague. Hardly had Milosevic been taken to The Hague, as the case law started coming out from the ICJ that foreign politicians enjoy immunity from litigation. And that is the reason that the prosecution has to make the genocide charge stick on Milosevic. Genocide has commonly been recognized as the one charge that allow the immunity rules to be bent.

  So everything happens in name of the teleological interpretation. The official position does shield a person with immunity, but the question is now what Milosevic is doing in The Hague. No problemo! Let us charge him with genocide, and the legal system is rescued once again. And that meant that Krstic had to be sentenced for genocide last August, just before the two remaining indictments against Milosevic were issued.
  
  J N
  Finland

• Tuesday October 29, 2002 at 6:47 am
  By the way, you may have heard about Professor Francis A. Boyle of the University of Illinois. A citizen of Bosnia, he has demanded indictments, among others, against Akashi, Carl Bildt, Boutros-Boutros Ghali etc. He is an inveterable enemy of Milosevic. He has also suggested the Palestinians should take Israel to court over genocide.

  This is what the University of Illinois College of Law website tells about him:

  "In 2000, President Aslan Maskhadov appointed Professor Boyle Attorney of Record for the Chechen Republic of Ichkeria to conduct its legal affairs on a worldwide basis. In that capacity, Professor Boyle brought charges against the Russian Federation at the International Court of Justice for violating the 1948 Genocide Convention."
  
  J N
  Finland

• Tuesday October 29, 2002 at 5:23 pm
  

  Judge Kwon (OCCUPIED) made quite a revelation this morning when he said to Mr. Nice (NATO): "I am different than the two other judges here, I don't know much about Croatia and I find very educating when the witnesses are giving testimony in chief, in full since I learn about it. I wonder Mr. Nice why you did not request testimony being given under rule 92bis for the other protected witnesses, why have you changed your mind, I wonder what your criteria is in making these decisions"

  Mr. Nice (NATO) reply is not worth it to comment upon.

  Mr. Groove (NATO) asked the court to drop protection status to JNA Military Intelligence (KOS) officer Slobodan Lazarevic (TURNCOAT), since the witness lived safely now in another country after been given another identity, to make the message clearly this vulture spoke English using a rather intelligence type of jargon. Well drilled for sure. And he spoke, giving anecdotical details wanting but failing to be humorous.

  I am not sure if, as in other occassions by tomorrow when Mr. Milosevic cross examination will be about to begin Miltary Intelligence officer Lazarevic (TURNCOAT) will not ask, indeed beg the court for protection . . .but I shall not anticipate, we all see.

  There were no interruptions by judge May (NATO) even when amici curiae Tapuskovic pointed to the court the prosecutor was using documents dated in 1995 when talking about events in 1992 . . .
  
  Gogol Charlemagne
  Conn. USA

• Wednesday October 30, 2002 at 2:56 am
  Oops! Trouble in Paradise! Good for Judge Kwon. Of course, he is different from the other judges in every other respect as well, not just in not knowing Croatia so well. In fact, that is not the reason he makes this sort of retorts. Earlier he had criticized a witness for giving lessons in geography. The difference is of course that Mr Nice has the other two judges in his pocket. In fact, that casts doubt on the whole Trial Chamber, him included.

  As they say, ex oriente lux. The book by Bin Cheng that I have been quoting here is the most meticulous piece of work in the area of international law that I know. But the real surprising thing is that this sort of learnedness can be combined with fairness. Bin Cheng was active at the University of London, but as his name suggests, he must have something more inherent in common with Judge Kwon.

  Rule 92bis, which the quarrel is about, refers to the written depositions, which can be submitted in lieu of oral testimonies. Rule 92bis lists factors that weigh in favour of admitting written depositions, and obviously, there is no consensus whether these factors are at stake here.

  On the other hand, it is interesting that the same Rule 92bis also lists three factors that weigh against admitting written depositions, and I think all of them are could be appealed to. The three factors are listed in Rule 92bis(A)(ii) as follows:

  "(a) there is an overriding public interest in the evidence in question being presented orally;

  (b) a party objecting can demonstrate that its nature and source renders it unreliable, or that its prejudicial effect outweighs its probative value; or

  (c) there are any other factors which make it appropriate for the witness to attend for cross-examination."

  Well, the Milosevic trial as a whole sure has an overriding public interest. And as to the reliability of the documents, as Mr Nice said, the documents speak for themselves, and that may not be a good thing. Even May has ruled some of the documents inadmissible. As to the "any other factors", I think if the alternative is a secret trial, it is indeed appropriate to make the whole trial subject to cross-examination.

  Gogol, I didn't access your link to Paddy Ashdown's revelation, because I don't want to register at NYT. However, from B92 I learned that he has now discovered that the Bosnian Serbs were involved in the Iraqi arms program (or something like that).

  What is Paddy Ashdown's official title? Seriously! I don't know. He has been called the High Representative of the international community to Bosnia. I always thought that the OHR (Office of the High Representative) belonged to the OSCE, but a Google search suggests otherwise.

  Well, if he is the High Representative of the international community, it is easier to understand why he makes these revelations now that the attack on Iraq is about to begin. It chimes well with the US and UK foreign policy. And as if to highlight that this offensive will not be about fighting terrorism, Ashdown has, to my knowledge, kept strangely silent about the mujaheddin survivors in Bosnia while instead focusing on the Bosnian Serbs.

  Why is he doing this? We have heard a lot of stupid things from Ashdown, but these Serb-Iraqi stories really take the biscuit. Does he still deny, as he did in the witness stand, that there is a drive towards US-British world domination?

  The question is why come up with these incredible theories that no-one can take seriously. As we know, Ashdown is Blair's lapdog. The fact that he is from another party makes him nominally independent. That is what Blair needs. And Blair needs that right now. He is about to embark on this silly invasion of Iraq, and his advisers tell him that this will be against international law. Everybody knows what that means: indictment from ICC. So instead of refraining from the attack, the British government is now devising the most insane stories to make the invasion seem right. The Serb-Iraqi connection is one of them. No matter that this contradicts flatly what Ari Fleischer said about the ICTY doing the job in Serbia and President Bush sending a thank-you note to Djindjic for the Serbs' fight against terrorism. Ashdown is the living piece of evidence that this show is Blair's, once again.

  I support the Iraqi invasion as long as Blair stays out. He won't. So the distinction is academic. But I hope that the human rights do-gooders can cooperate with us this time on Blair. Unlike the ICTY Statute, the ICC Statute prohibits aggression. The Iraqi invasion is aggression, and the British government is under the ICC's jurisdiction. Blair has to be indicted for what he managed to escape from in Yugoslavia. This is only another attraction-getter of his to deflect the attention from the parody going on at the ICTY.

  Now are seasoned enough to see through his game and make sure that his game stops right here. So indict Blair. Even if he doesn't participate in the attack, he has already done enough to "aid and abet" it. Because his intent is wholesale devastation, let not the name fool you. Ex re sed non ex nomine. Last time they called the most inhumane war since WW II a humanitarian intervention. As Hitler said, people don't swallow small lies, only the big lies.

  And what would be a bigger lie than to call something its opposite? I wonder what "doctrine" they will come up this time. What was stylishly called "humanitarian intervention" is now simply called "Clinton doctrine".

  That doesn't mean that the present administration is not liable for the 100-billion-dollar damage that this doctrine caused. It is very foolhardy to start another war, before the US has even paid the bill for the last one.

  And why am I picking on the US? There were other Nato countries as well. However, to quote the ICTY terminology, the US had the "official and/or effective control" over this "joint criminal enterprise", so we can let the other NATO countries be for the moment. Besides, who else could pay the 100-billion-dollar bill? It makes less that 500 dollars per one US citizen. This sum can be claimed from the US on account of joint and several responsibility, and the US is the only country with the authority to settle the accounts with the other Nato countries afterwards.

  Of course, the US will do anything to wriggle around the responsibility, but that way it will only increase its own culpability. Besides, let us not forget about the interest on the debt, which will be the bigger the longer they wait. The Holocaust victims got compensations after decades, so why wouldn't the humanitarian intervention victims? It is now your turn to give me one good reason.
  
  Jari Nousiainen
  Finland

• Wednesday October 30, 2002 at 4:31 am
  It is not customary for the loser of the war to send a bill to the victor. Legally, it has been the other way around. The victor can demand war reparations from the loser.

  However, the aggressors in 1999 were careful not to call the aggression a war but a humanitarian intervention. None of the countries declared war. So the war reparations are excluded on account of the name the aggressors gave to the operation.

  So now I seem to be contradicting the maxim ex re sed non ex nomine: as long as the aggressors said the intervention was not a war, it was not a war. But that makes no difference really. If the aggressors call the aggression war, then they are guilty of war crimes. You see, until now they have managed to whitewash any "mistake" by appealing to the humanitarian character of the intervention.

  So the effect is the same, whether you call the aggression a war or a humanitarian intervention. The bottomline is tha Nato has to repair the damage it has caused. And ex re sed non ex nomine obtains.

  Sure, Nato countries have done a lot of reconstruction. That costs money! So would that reconstruction pass for reparation?

  No. The rule is not that if you are willing to repair the damage afterwards, you are free to break anything you want. It would be interesting to see this "principle" applied in any domestic system.

  Besides, the reconstruction happened on the victors' terms. They wanted to expand their empire. You don't even need the stories about Camp Bondsteel to substantiate that. It was the avowed purpose of the conquerors to bring "democracy" to Kosovo. We know what that means. Besides, whatever it means, it is in contradiction with the principle of self-determination. Of course, to turn this violation of self-determination into its opposite, bringing of democracy from abroad is now called self-determination.

  Or to make an appeal to the UN Charter, which must still have some authority even among the peace-mongers, this violated the principle of sovereign equality enshrined in Art. 2(1) of the UN Charter.

  But how can there be self-determination in any sense of the term, as long as the Nato countries say that the Yugoslav citizens should drop the charges against the Nato leaders? Come again. Charges? What charges? So far, all the charges have been dismissed as inadmissible.

  In fact, Nato is saying more than it should. Why have the charges been declared inadmissible? Obviously because the Nato leaders want the Yugoslav citizen to drop the charges against them. Doesn't this amount to pressure on the judicial system by the executive branch of the government?

  What happens if the charges are not dropped? The worst thing possible: Yugoslavia won't be accepted to the Partnership for Peace (PFP) program, which is the junior version of Nato membership. Does Yugoslavia want it? I think Milosevic gave a clear enough answer to that question, and the Nato gave a concrete response. So Yugoslavia has no choice but to join this PFP: "if you are not with us, you are against us". And then we will bomb you. The trouble is that Yugoslavia won't be accepted in the PFP, if the Yugoslavs won't drop the charges. So it is not that Yugoslavia wants to join PFP and the Yugoslavs are standing in its way. It is that Nato wants Yugoslavia to join PFP and that means that the Yugoslavs have to drop the charges or else...This is a threat, and no valid legal agreements can ensue from it.

  I have discussed the possibility of indicting the US citizens just to make a more dramatic effect. However, yesterday I noticed that the Agreement on Surrender of Persons between the Government of the United States and the Tribunal signed in 1994 (can be viewed on ICTY website) says in Art. 1(1):

  "The United States agrees to surrender to the Tribunal, pursuant to the provisions of this Agreement and the Statute, persons, including United States citizens, found in its territory whom the Tribunal has charged with or found guilty of a violation or violations within the competence of the Tribunal as defined in the Statute."

  So it is not my idea or anybody else's that even the US citizens can be indicted (and even found guilty). The US had the necessary perspicacity to realize this back in 1994. On the other hand, the US has made its position on the ICC quite as clear: the ICC has no jurisdiction over US citizens. Bush is quite a joker. Whatever he rules on the ICC doesn't exclude the possibility of transferring US citizens to The Hague, as long as the recipient is the ICTY and not the ICC.

  This kind of clause is not very popular in the Member State cooperation agreements, which can be viewed on the ICTY website ("Member States Cooperation"). But neither are they non-existent: The Austrian agreement says in Art. 5: "Austrian citizenship shall not preclude committal to the International Tribunal...". The Swiss agreement says in Art. 10(2): "A Swiss citizen may be transferred to the international tribunal concerned only if it guarantees that he will be returned to Switzerland after the proceedings." I haven't found similar clauses in the other agreements, which of course doesn't mean that their citizen could not be indicted as well.

  Against this legal background, what to make of Del Ponte? The Prosecutor's policy should be looked into. The practical problem is that the ICTY staff enjoy immunity.

  I once wondered why the Dutch police didn't storm the building. The answer is found in the Headquarter Agreement between the United Nations and the Kingdom of the Netherlands. Art. V(2) provides:

  "The competent authorities [the Dutch] shall not enter the premises of the Tribunal to perform any official duty, except with the express consent, or at the request of, the Registrar or an official designated by him. Judicial actions and the service or execution of legal process, including the seizure of private property, cannot be enforced on the premises of the Tribunal except with the consent of and in accordance with conditions approved by the Registrar."

  As we know, the official position of the accused shall not shield the person from prosecution, according to the ICTY Statute. As has been pointed out, this in flat contradiction with the Vienna Convention on Diplomatic Relations. Yet the Headquarters Agreement invokes diplomatic immunity for the ICTY judges and prosecutors in Art. XIV(1):

  "The Judges, the Prosecutor and the Registrar shall, together with members of their families forming part of their household and who do not have Netherlands nationality or permanent residence status in the host country, enjoy the privileges and immunities, exemptions and facilities accorded to diplomatic agents, in accordance with international law and in particular under the General Convention and the Vienna Convention."

  To cut to the chase: what are we then to do with May and Del Ponte? Art. XIV (3) gives the followíng answer:

  "The right and the duty to waive the immunity in any case where it can be waived without prejudice to the purpose for which it is accorded shall lie, as concerns the Judges, with the Tribunal in accordance with its rules; as concerns the Prosecutor and the Registrar, with the Secretary-General in consultation with the President."

  Kofi Annan may be a busy man, but it is worth a try. As we know from Ahtisaari's memoirs, he was just as aghast at the indictment of Milosevic as anybody else. As Michael Steiner said, nobody should be above the law.
  
  J N
  Finland

• Wednesday October 30, 2002 at 5:04 am
  I heard the news about the ex-spy's testimony from B92.

  "Lazarevic said delegations of Croatian Serbs went to Belgrade for instructions before every international peace conference".

  This is pretty serious stuff. So the Bosnian Serbs consulted Belgrade. Boy oh boy! Where should they have turned? Zagreb was at that point the illegal government.

  "Their instructions from Milosevic's office were always the same - not to agree to any plan that would bring peace to Croatia."

  Well, at least Milosevic has learned something from the Americans. Besides, an armed conflict is not a crime in itself (according to the ICTY Statute). And mind you, the Serbs were on the business of defending the integrity of Yugoslavia. This happened in 1991, when Croatia had not yet been recognized even by Germany and Iceland.

  So to twist and turn things, preserving the integrity of Yugoslavia is what the amended Croatia indictment calls "the execution of the purpose of the joint criminal enterprise" in § 26(j). What else could it mean? The purpose of the joint criminal enterprise was not about committing war crimes, because that same paragraph speaks of "the execution of the purpose of the joint criminal enterprise through the commission of crimes": by the prosecutor's own admission, the war crimes were the means, not the end. Yet Milosevic is charged with subscribing to the purpose of the joint criminal enterprise. This used to be called a circular reasoning. Maybe the Clinton doctrine has another name for it.
  
  J N
  Finland

• Wednesday October 30, 2002 at 3:37 pm
  Dear Moderator,Based on the lack of postings by regulars, it appears that the size of the thread relative to the timeout may be the problem. Would you, please, consider breaking up the thread into weekly chunks, or increasing the timeout?Thanks in advance, DS
  
  D S
  USA

• Wednesday October 30, 2002 at 3:55 pm
  

  OSCE

  Incoming High Representative for Bosnia and Herzegovina Ashdown to address OSCE Delegations

  VIENNA, 23 May 2002 – The incoming High Representative and European Union Special Representative to Bosnia and Herzegovina, Lord Paddy Ashdown, will address an informal meeting of the 55 OSCE Delegations on Friday, 24 May, in Vienna.

  This is the first visit to the OSCE by Lord Ashdown, a former leader of the Liberal Democratic Party in the United Kingdom. He will officially take over his new functions in Bosnia and Herzegovina on 27 May from Wolfgang Petritsch, who served in this position for three years.Lord Ashdown's address to the OSCE Delegations will start at 15:00 in Segmentgalerie I of the Hofburg Conference Centre and will be open to media. After the informal meeting, at approximately 15:45, Lord Ashdown and the Chairman of the Permanent Council, Ambassador Joao de Lima Pimentel of Portugal, will give a brief statement to media representatives in Segmentgalerie II.

  
  
  Gogol Charlemagne
  Conn. USA

• Wednesday October 30, 2002 at 4:06 pm
  

  The Office of the High Representative, click HERE and see.
  
  Gogol Charlemagne
  Conn. USA

• Wednesday October 30, 2002 at 4:55 pm
  

  Perhaps the only almost daily account, a poor account of the Ordeal by Trial, click HERE

  I think Mr. Milosevic is a fantastic bull fighter of dangerous and vicious bulls, you know bulls that have been tried previously are considered lethal by experienced fighters. These are the bulls, the ganaderos Ponte & Nice y Cia. are sending to Mr. Milosevices corrida and yet he kills them all.

  There is something extremely sad about this trial, it lacks any redemption since we known the winners are revengeful and even if the win what do they win exactly?

  Their trial is full of trickeries, of low lifes, shadowy double faced characters of unclear loyalties, of changing rules and despite all its britishness full of un-fairplay.

  Judge May (NATO) is indisposed today, Mr. Robinson announced it today and I felt relieved, a judge can also be undisposed, how human of him to do so!

  Then Robinson instructed Mr. Milosevic about the manner on how to conduct his cross-examination and for the first time Mr. Milosevic said hvala gospodin Rosbinson for the first time Mr. Milosevic thanked a judge for his attention and regard towards him!

  Then Robinson protected Mr. Milosevic from the pettyness of Mr. Groove's (NATO) objections, thick like a brickwall this Mr. Groove resorts to pettyness when his witness, his bull is mortally wounded: "you're a liar" Mr. Milosevic prepares him for the final blow, "you're not telling the truth" and Robinson gave him another one hour and 45 minutes for tomorrow to finish him off while sardonically asking the prosecutor, "do you have another witness ready for tomorrow? "
  
  Gogol Charlemagne
  Conn. USA

• Thursday October 31, 2002 at 2:39 am
  Gogol, I am with you. Today session was a pleasure to watch.There were no incidents,everybody was calm and there was a lot of ground covered. A +++ for Judge Robinson. I think that this trial will be better conducted by judge Robinson. Vasile
  
  Vasile Ianos
  NJ

• Thursday October 31, 2002 at 3:37 am
  Gogol, I didn't know that the OHR was established by Dayton Agreement. I always had the illusion, as I said, that he was the High Representative of the OSCE. To be exact, his post was established by Annex 10 of the Dayton Accord (which can be viewed at http://www.ohr.int/dpa/default.asp?content_id=366 ). Yet I am troubled with the same old question: who is he the High Representative of? The Annex makes some imprecise references to the Security Council resolutions, but I don't know which ones. And who appoints the High Representative? It seems that he cooperates with the IFOR commander, so it is likely that in effect he is appointed by Nato. But who can give some specifics? Owing to these obscurities, it is no wonder the High Representative has also been called the Viceroy.

  The relevant SC resolutions can be viewed on the same site at http://www.ohr.int/other-doc/un-res-bih/archive.asp?sa=on . It takes a while, however, to find the "relevant" resolution. The only one that seems to give any hint is SC resolution 1031 (1995). It provides in § 26 as follows:

  "Endorses the establishment of a High Representative, following the request of the parties, who, in accordance with Annex 10 on the civilian implementation of the Peace Agreement, will monitor the implementation of the Peace Agreement and mobilize and, as appropriate, give guidance to, and coordinate the activities of, the civilian organizations and agencies involved, and agrees the designation of Mr. Carl Bildt as High Representative."

  Well, who are the parties? Annex 10 begins with this introduction: "The Republic of Bosnia and Herzegovina, the Republic of Croatia, the Federal Republic of Yugoslavia, the Federation of Bosnia and Herzegovina, and the Republika Srpska (the "Parties")..."

  Is that it? The High Representative actually represents the "parties"? That is insane. Why has he then been called the High Representative of the "international community", which must mean the High Representative of the US and the UK, because those two countries are the only ones now left of the international community. The question is still the same: who is he the High Representative of?

  --

  Well, Gogol. It seems that the tribunal is run like any other Soviet-style enterprise. The government expects the production to rise to such and such a level, and it doesn't matter how the targets are met. The people become despondent. The production falls, but the trickery offsets that fall. This is the vanguard of democracy in the world. I can't believe it!

  Let us see how democratic the West is. Suppose that someone would come up with the idea of indicting Clinton and Blair. Have you ever seen them get angry? You know that it is easier said than done. Blair can look at you as if he would like to kill with one glance all the stupid infidels, who will never rise to the level of Islam.

  These are democratically elected leaders. So they are automatically above the law. How could one charge democratically elected leaders with anything? If the judicial system is too impartial, it can be made to understand that some inconvenient charges should be dismissed as inadmissible. Take the charges byh the Yugoslavs.

  See? This is not just the problem of the ICTY. This plague has contaminated the national courts! And not only that, but the judicial superorgan, the European Court of Human Rights as well! So much of checks and balances. Democracy? Anything but.

  So when the West justifies the wholesale destruction of Yugoslavia with "democracy" we know something ain't right. Sure, it promises to rebuild a brave new world after the bombing. But that promise shows just how depraved the West has become. On the Canadian radio some "expert" said during the bombing that the whole Yugoslav infrastructure has to be destroyed, so that a democratic one can replace it, which is waht happened in Germany after WW II.

  And yet this grandiose plan becomes taboo as soon as it is put into action. Especially the first part: destroying the whole infrastructure. No no, that should not be discussed, because everybody now has this wonderful promise of a beautiful tomorrow. Genocide? Yeah but...there was a humanitarian catastrophe. I am not sure who caused it, but does it matter?

  I checked my Bin Cheng once again. Perhaps this kind of wanton destruction coupled with the vague promise to repair it afterwards would be what he calls malicious use of a right. A right, or an alleged right, cannot be used to harm somebody else. And in this case the harm was more than palpable. It doesn't matter if most of the people were spared, because the international subject, the State, is gone for all practical purposes. Bin Cheng also quotes the Latin maxim malitiis non est indulgendum. I am not sure what that means, but at least it is in Latin.

  In fact, it is good that the trial goes on, because behind all the tricks the truth emerges. The Croatia indictment, for instance, is rather ambivalent about the "purpose of the joint criminal enterprise". Coupled with the testimonies that we now hear, however, it is clear that the alleged purpose of this alleged joint criminal enterprise was the preservation of the Yugoslav state! As § 26(j) of the amended Croatia indictment suggests, the war crimes come second. Lazarevic helped us to see that the Milosevic is implicated, because the Krajina Serbs came to him!

  Now consider that the Prosecutor has never even thought about indicting an American. On the other hand, the Yugoslavs are indicted en masse apparently for no other reason than preserving the Yugoslav state. Are we allowed to conclude from this that this is the evidence we need to prove that it was the American plan to destroy the Yugoslav state - and that the ICTY is the stratagem? Charge the destoyed, not the destoyers, seems to be the message.

  What did the de facto envoy of the Clinton, the Human Rights Watch, say after the bombing? It said this: NATO has caused 500 deaths which it could have avoided. Well, it seems the HRW is trying to avoid something itself. Could it be trying to avoid the conclusion that these 500 avoidable deaths amounted to a war crime? Why doesn't the HRW say that? Ask them again: does that mean NATO committed war crimes? The same answer: there were 500 deaths NATO could have avoided.

  So apparently NATO's war crimes are on a different level than those committed by its victims. In fact, this was conceded even by the mainstream media. It was said that NATO had some higher purpose, and even the most vocal critics couldn't deny that. Only, the reverse side of this admission is that NATO did commit war crimes, no matter at what level they were.

  Do the legal documents bar HRW from speaking its mind? According to the cooperation agreement between ICTY and the US, the US citizens can be indicted - and found guilty! What does HRW think of that? Apparently nothing. Dick Dickers of the HRW doesn't boycott the OTP for not indicting the American war criminals. From Jared Israel's reports we hear that rather the opposite is the case.

  Could it be that HRW is - don't tell me - biased? The Yugoslav have even bluntly rejected the 500 figure. And after all the numbers game we have done in Kosovo, it seems that the casualties resulting from the war crimes committed by the Yugoslav troops cannot be higher than 500. Maybe HRW knows that, which is why it had to devise such a low figure for NATO-caused casualties.

  The difference is of course that the deaths caused by the Yugoslavs are at a different level than those caused by NATO. It is basically a question of high-tech versus low-tech. The low-tech guys have to search their souls, while the high-tech guys have machines.

  It is interesting that now HRW is concerned with what happened in Moscow. You guessed it. It is concerned about the type of gas the Russians used. No doubt this raises fears that the Russians are also linked to the Iraqi arms program. It is good, from the HRW viewpoint, that the gas caused some deaths, because now we don't have to be told the stories about how the Russians organized the whole incident to undermine the credility of the invasion of Iraq. Attention is already masterfully deflected from the real perpetrators, the Chechens, to the Russians. That is also why HRW can afford to be so concerned about the victims, even if they were Russians: they were killed by other Russians. If they had been killed by the Chechens, HRW would have stayed silent (until it had managed to show that the Russians were behind the whole incident).

  And all this shows that the invasion of Iraq is anything but a war on terror. Now the Russians and the Serbs are connected with Iraq. Not the Balkan mujaheddin and the Chechens, which my primitive mind would associate with terrorists. No, the Russians and the Serbs, who now are connected with Iraq, are the bad guys, and they fight the friendly mujaheddin and Chechens. Good luck George!

  At least all the hurly-burly about the Serb-Iraqi link underlines the fact that the "joint criminal enterprise" may indeed revolve around sanction-busting (among other things like preserving the integrity of the state). The news this week was: the High Representative busts a sanction-busting ring in Republika Srpska, and the defense minister resigns, which is good, because then he won't have to be indicted for war crimes committed in 1991-1995.

  And to make this message a little longer, I would like to quote Art. I of the Dayton Agreement for those of you who are as nostalgic as I am. How do you think Article I has been applied from 1995 onwards? It goes lie this:

  "The Parties shall conduct their relations in accordance with the principles set forth in the United Nations Charter, as well as the Helsinki Final Act and other documents of the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe. In particular, the Parties shall fully respect the sovereign equality of one another, shall settle disputes by peaceful means, and shall refrain from any action, by threat or use of force or otherwise, against the territorial integrity or political independence of Bosnia and Herzegovina or any other State."

  Witnessed by European Union Special Negotiator, the French Republic, the Federal Republic of Germany, the Russian Federation, the United Kingdom and the United States of America.
  
  Jari Nousiainen
  Finland

• Thursday October 31, 2002 at 4:01 am
  As to the selection process of the High Representative, we are told by Dr David Chandler in The Guardian (July 9, 2002) that no Bosnians were involved in the selection process. On the other hand, the Security Council says it elected Carld Bildt on request of the Parties. What the -- is going on? I think the crucial passage in Chandler's article is this:

  "Ashdown is the fourth incumbent since the 'temporary' international protectorate was established at the end of the war in 1995. No Bosnians were involved in the selection process. The appointment was decided by a group of western governments - our own lobbied for Ashdown."
  
  J N
  Finland

• Thursday October 31, 2002 at 4:24 am
  Just went through the B92 news. Now we hear this: "A network of Yugoslav firms has been helping Libya to develop long-range cruise missiles capable of reaching targets in Israel, according to a confidential US complaint to Belgrade." What these people forget is that Israel helped Yugoslavia bust the sanctions against Yugoslavia! This silence is remarkable, because the sanction busting by the Israeli has to do with the Bosnian war and thus with the indictments!

  In another peace of news: "After seven years of dismal results, Carla Del Ponte said yesterday that other powerful international bodies should also take action."

  The "dismal results" must refer to the failure to catch Karadzic and Mladic, because the Milosevic trial has only been going on for a few months. But it is because of the dismal results of the Milosevic trial that Del Ponte is now running around the world saying everything would be OK if Karadzic and Mladic were in custody.

  Well, the Serbs may be sheltering Mladic, but what wouldn't the Americans do to shelter their boys and girls? Has Del Ponte even tried?

  I think the Serbs had better hand Mladic to her, because the friendly forces would rather bomb the country again than live up to the cooperation agreement which the US and ICTY signed back in 1994.
  
  J N
  Finland

• Thursday October 31, 2002 at 5:45 am
  One little thing Jari.How could the Croatian Serbs be defending the integrity of Yugoslavia, when they named Krajina, a Serb Republic.....not a Yugoslav Republic? Its a simple question.Also, so Milosevic did not want to settle for peace???Well wonderful; here we have the President of Serbia agitating for a war in a neighbouring republic...but of course he didn't inflame the situation. He wanted peace (remember!!!).and of course....he didn't know anything about it as we would have him believe.Get real people!!!!!
  
  Ivan Kokotovic
  Sydney
  Australia

• Thursday October 31, 2002 at 5:46 am
  One little thing Jari.How could the Croatian Serbs be defending the integrity of Yugoslavia, when they named Krajina, a Serb Republic.....not a Yugoslav Republic? Its a simple question.Also, so Milosevic did not want to settle for peace???Well wonderful; here we have the President of Serbia agitating for a war in a neighbouring republic...but of course he didn't inflame the situation. He wanted peace (remember!!!).and of course....he didn't know anything about it as we would have him believe.Get real people!!!!!
  
  Ivan Kokotovic
  Sydney
  Australia

• Thursday October 31, 2002 at 6:29 am
  OK thanks Vera and Walter, At least now I have drawn some reaction from you both.My points are based on how I think the war unfolded. I see it as a much more evenly initiated struggle, with all the leaderships knowing what was going to happen, and how it was going to happen.They then preceeded to manipulate their people accordingly, to get what they wanted.The west intervened, and bingo...there you have it. Now,what we need to equate is, where nationalism ends, and where patriotism begins.Croat nationalism was on the rise, and Serb nationalism was on the rise.Do a bit of agitating, and there you have it, a real dog-fight.Now the problem that you educated people have is that you still regard Croatia as it was in 1991, an illegal nation.Thus making all the acts of the "defenders of Yugoslavia", valid.I doubt strongly the claim from Milosevic, that he didn't know what was going on, as it would have been absolutely negligible of him to not be aware of Vukovar, considering its proximity to Beograd. Now. Serb irregulars by you guys are seen as patriotic defenders, while Croat irregulars, and illegal Police forces are seen as criminals.They were both illigelly armed, thus your arguments about legality are thrown out the window.Don't you see.....you guys are accusing me of being nationalistic, for thinking defenders of a break away republic have the right to do so;whereas Serb defenders of their land aren't that at all. They are just good hearted defenders of all Yugoslavia. I personally view the whole bunch of them as bandits who needed some action on the front line.I mean, the Serbs from Serbia fighting in Croatia weren't defending Yugoslavia, if they were why didn't they go and fight in Slovenia.They were there to protect their brethren!!!!!I agree, they had a right to do so....but why the pretending that people like Arkan weren't criminals. Just because he fought for Serbs, doesn't mean he is a martyr above reproach. He was a low-life killer. My problem with you guys is...a defender isn't a criminal, just because something isn't legal.War shouldn't be legal, but so what????The American war of independence, nor the Bolshevik Revolutions were legal according to the authorities at the time. Thus, wherein lies the fault of either side. If they were fighting for what they beleived was right.It is your tainted minds about some idyllic notion of a peaceful Yugoslavia which has skewed your thinking. Croats aren't Serbs, nor vice versa.They can live together, but unless the past is forgotten, they won't.What is done is done.....!!!!the end.and by the way walter.....don't lecture me from the other side of the room....it only enhances your biased opinions.
  
  ivan kokotovic
  sydney
  australia

• Thursday October 31, 2002 at 6:55 am
  OK thanks Vera and Walter, At least now I have drawn some reaction from you both.My points are based on how I think the war unfolded. I see it as a much more evenly initiated struggle, with all the leaderships knowing what was going to happen, and how it was going to happen.They then preceeded to manipulate their people accordingly, to get what they wanted.The west intervened, and bingo...there you have it. Now,what we need to equate is, where nationalism ends, and where patriotism begins.Croat nationalism was on the rise, and Serb nationalism was on the rise.Do a bit of agitating, and there you have it, a real dog-fight.Now the problem that you educated people have is that you still regard Croatia as it was in 1991, an illegal nation.Thus making all the acts of the "defenders of Yugoslavia", valid.I doubt strongly the claim from Milosevic, that he didn't know what was going on, as it would have been absolutely negligible of him to not be aware of Vukovar, considering its proximity to Beograd. Now. Serb irregulars by you guys are seen as patriotic defenders, while Croat irregulars, and illegal Police forces are seen as criminals.They were both illigelly armed, thus your arguments about legality are thrown out the window.Don't you see.....you guys are accusing me of being nationalistic, for thinking defenders of a break away republic have the right to do so;whereas Serb defenders of their land aren't that at all. They are just good hearted defenders of all Yugoslavia. I personally view the whole bunch of them as bandits who needed some action on the front line.I mean, the Serbs from Serbia fighting in Croatia weren't defending Yugoslavia, if they were why didn't they go and fight in Slovenia.They were there to protect their brethren!!!!!I agree, they had a right to do so....but why the pretending that people like Arkan weren't criminals. Just because he fought for Serbs, doesn't mean he is a martyr above reproach. He was a low-life killer. My problem with you guys is...a defender isn't a criminal, just because something isn't legal.War shouldn't be legal, but so what????The American war of independence, nor the Bolshevik Revolutions were legal according to the authorities at the time. Thus, wherein lies the fault of either side. If they were fighting for what they beleived was right.It is your tainted minds about some idyllic notion of a peaceful Yugoslavia which has skewed your thinking. Croats aren't Serbs, nor vice versa.They can live together, but unless the past is forgotten, they won't.What is done is done.....!!!!the end.and by the way walter.....don't lecture me from the other side of the room....it only enhances your biased opinions.
  
  ivan kokotovic
  sydney
  australia

• Thursday October 31, 2002 at 7:14 am
  Another thing Walter.It is not a national problem any longer.There are still issues to deal with yet, there is no Yugoslavia as there once was. Yugoslavia was never a multi-cultural nation. Multi-culturalism denotes a freedom of expression of the cultures within the society.This however, it was not. Whether under the Serb monarchy or Socialism....the multi-cultural aspect was lost under the guise of either a hegemony, or an authoritarian rule which repressed ethnic-specific cultural expression.Pan-slavism was a valid movement ...but hey, so was the Soviet Bloc, and unfortunately that ended too. I also fully reject at the utmost, the notion that Serbs fighting during the battles in Croatia, were fighting for the preservation of Yugoslavia. They were fighting for Serbian preservation/land gains, in an open nationalistic fashion; which can be seen by the way the Krajina Serbs helped the Bosnian Serbs around Bihac, in keeping it under seige.They knew that preservation of Yugoslavia was not a realistic outcome after about 5 months of fighting (side by side with the JNA).Hence former JNA generals such as Mladic dropped their Yugoslav guises and started to fight for the Serb cause. any takers???also walter....yes we in australia have a good education system...it also teaches us to straight talk and to take the piss of people we deem to be stuck up and self-righteous know-it-alls.Irrational???How about saying the tribunal is a farce, etc, etc...and then getting all worked up over every little dodgy pip-squeak that stands on the witness box.If you don't agree with it....then why does it irritate all of you so....??if you all know the 'real' story behind everything.!!!!!!
  
  ivan kokotovic
  sydney
  australia

• Thursday October 31, 2002 at 7:15 am
  Another thing Walter.It is not a national problem any longer.There are still issues to deal with yet, there is no Yugoslavia as there once was. Yugoslavia was never a multi-cultural nation. Multi-culturalism denotes a freedom of expression of the cultures within the society.This however, it was not. Whether under the Serb monarchy or Socialism....the multi-cultural aspect was lost under the guise of either a hegemony, or an authoritarian rule which repressed ethnic-specific cultural expression.Pan-slavism was a valid movement ...but hey, so was the Soviet Bloc, and unfortunately that ended too. I also fully reject at the utmost, the notion that Serbs fighting during the battles in Croatia, were fighting for the preservation of Yugoslavia. They were fighting for Serbian preservation/land gains, in an open nationalistic fashion; which can be seen by the way the Krajina Serbs helped the Bosnian Serbs around Bihac, in keeping it under seige.They knew that preservation of Yugoslavia was not a realistic outcome after about 5 months of fighting (side by side with the JNA).Hence former JNA generals such as Mladic dropped their Yugoslav guises and started to fight for the Serb cause. any takers???also walter....yes we in australia have a good education system...it also teaches us to straight talk and to take the piss of people we deem to be stuck up and self-righteous know-it-alls.Irrational???How about saying the tribunal is a farce, etc, etc...and then getting all worked up over every little dodgy pip-squeak that stands on the witness box.If you don't agree with it....then why does it irritate all of you so....??if you all know the 'real' story behind everything.!!!!!!
  
  ivan kokotovic
  sydney
  australia

• Thursday October 31, 2002 at 7:34 am
  

  KOS Officer, a translator really Lazarevic proven to be a liar by Mr. Milosevic and amici Tapuskovic cross-examination.

  Don't miss the footage of today!
  
  Gogol Charlemagne
  USA

• Thursday October 31, 2002 at 8:37 am
  Ivan, I think you are the only one at the moment who is getting worked up. As to the preservation of the Yugoslav state, you say that we shouldn't regard Croatia as it was in 1991, an illegal nation. Who said that?

  On the other hand, I think we have to view things that happened in 1991-1992 the way they were then. So you admit that in 1991 Croatia was illegal. It was not until summer 1992 that Germany and Iceland recognized it, and even those recognitions were arguably premature.

  So isn't it logical that those who fought Croatia at that time were in fact defending Yugoslavia? And as to your simple question about Krajina, I think the simple answer is that as late as in 1993 it was not sure whether the newly independent states would inherit the borders of the respective republics.

  The Serb Krajina could still be annexed to Serbia, even if Croatia became independent. But of course Croatia solved that problem by pushing the Serbs out, and I think your point is that we should view the past from the perspective of the present, which means the Serbs were illegally in the country to begin with. As to the issue of how the SAO evolved to the SR Krajina I don't know the details, but I am sure I won't get them from you.
  
  Jari Nousiainen
  Finland

• Thursday October 31, 2002 at 11:12 am
  I mean, who said that we should regard Croatia as it was in 1991, an illegal nation. But Ivan touched on interesting subjects.

  Suppose the Serbs were bandits and the Croats were the nice guys. Then why didn't the Americans help the Serbs against the Croats? They helped the Albanians against the Serbs, and who would deny that Albanians were bandits?

  Then as to the Croatian territory, let me ask you, Ivan, a simple question. If it was obvious from 1991 that the Croatian territory should be what it is now, why did Croatia have to sign the Dayton Agreement as late as 1995? All we now hear is how the Serbs made a mess in Bosnia, but could it be that the Croats were also trying to expand their territory to Bosnia as well?

  The rhetoric about Greater Serbia lies behind it all. However, if it wasn't certain even for the "international community" whether the borders of the new republics should coincide with the borders of the former Yugoslav republics, then wasn't the "international community" uncertain whether the new states should coincide the respective population areas, so that we should have not only Greater Serbia, but also Greater Croatia and Greater Albania? This was, as I have understood correctly, what the Lisbon Agreement of 1992 was about (see URL http://www.srpska-mreza.com/library/facts/bosnia101.html ).

  So the "international community" was behind this Greater Serbia, Greater Croatia, Greater Albania thinking for a while, until it changed its mind. In fact, the international community was still behind the idea as late as 1993, when it endorsed the Vance-Owen Plan. No wonder Owen is not on Francis A. Boyle's list of possible indictees.

  However, to show you how one-sided the Greater Serbia rhetoric is, let me point out that in Security Council resolution 836 (1993) the Security Council was "gravely concerned at the persistent refusal of the Bosnian Serb party to accept the Vance-Owen Plan and calling upon that party to accept the Peace Plan for the Republic of Bosnia and Herzegovina in full."

  Well, Karadzic did sign the Vance-Owen Plan on May 2, 1993.

  Two weeks later 96% of the Bosnian Serbs vote against the Plan (talk about forgotten history).

  On August 23, the Croatian Republic of Herceg-Bosna declared independence.

  On August 29, 1993 the Croats and the Bosniaks rejected the new Vance-Stoltenberg Plan.

  On September 27, Fikret Abdic declared the region around Bihac "Autonomous Province of Western Bosnia".

  On July 5, 1994, the Bosnian Serbs rejected the plan whereby they would have received 49% of the Bosnian territory and the Croat-Muslim Federation the remaining 51%.

  On August 4, 1994, the Yugoslav federal government cut its ties with the Bosnian Serbs because of this rejection.

  On August 28, 1994, Fikret Abdic joins the Serbs in the fight against the Bosnian government, which had taken Bihac.

  Lot of good stuff, eh? This is what a German site has to say about the Bosnian history. Quite a different and I would say a somewhat more credible version from the one we now hear from ICTY.

  But was Milosevic a war-mongere or a peace-maker? From the Serb side we have heard that Milosevic always told the Krajina Serbs to refrain from the decisive attack, which irritated the Krajina Serbs no end. From the Croat side we have now heard that Milosevic was the master-mind behind the Krajina mess.

  What a schizophrenic personality, this Milosevic! Is he fit to stand trial, because he is crazy?

  Ivan gets all worked up because we supposedly get worked up at "every little dodgy pip-squeak that stands on the witness box". We are thus apparently contradicting ourselves, because in the same breath we say the trial is a farce. I don't know where our inconsistency is supposed to lie. If the trial is indeed "a little dodgy pip-squeak" and we are now talking louder, it is most assuredly the ICTY's own fault. Haven't there been enough appeals voiced even on this forums for the networks to start broadcasting the trial?

  Are we now the farce? If so, that must be a sure sign that we have arrived. There is one basic difference between us and the tribunal, however. The tribunal has the power to sentence persons for life. We don't. So apparently we can discuss the "truth" as long as we can't change the foreordained sentences.

  But are the Croats now really saying that the ICTY is even-handed? Is that what I am hearing?

  If both the Croats and the Serbs had irregular groups in Krajina, why is it predominantly the Serbs that we see in The Hague? If the Croats don't deliver their few indictees to The Hague, when does Del Ponte get all worked up at the Serbs?

  Ivan brought up the SR Krajina. Is it a coincidence that it doesn't exist any more? Could the indictments have something to do with that fact? So no-one can deny that the ICTY's work is to direct the formation of the new republics in the desired direction. And that is why the preservation of the integrity of Yugoslavia is now dismissed as "the purpose of the joint criminal enterprise".
  
  J N
  Finland

• Thursday October 31, 2002 at 11:22 am
  If you read German, then see the Bosnian chronology at http://www.vcp.de/index.php?http://www.vcp.de/aktuell/balkan1999/9394.htm . Deutsche Gründlichkeit!
  
  J N
  Finland

• Thursday October 31, 2002 at 11:55 am
  Slovenia and Croatia declared independence on June 25, 1991.

  On December 23, 1991 Germany recognized both.

  On January 15, 1992 they were recognized by the European Community (as the EU was then called).

  On April 7, 1992 the EC and the US recognize Bosnia.

  --

  But what happened inside those states?

  On April 23, 1990 Tudjman won the election in Croatia.

  On July 2, 1990 Slovenia declared independence the first time. I don't know when Croatia did.

  On August 19, 1990 the Krajina Serb vote for independence in a plebiscite.

  On December 22, 1990 Croatia promulgates the new constitution, and the Krajina Serbs declare autonomy.

  On May 11, 1991, the Serbs in Banija (?) join in a referendum the SAO Krajina. Next day, the Krajina Serbs decide to join Serbia and Montenegro.

  --

  The source: the above German website. So I guess now we have the chronology right. Good grief!
  
  J N
  Finland

• Thursday October 31, 2002 at 4:06 pm
  Ivan, Serbs enjoyed autonomy in Austrohungary greater than Croats.When Austrohungary fell apart in 1918, Slovenians, Croats, and Serbs declared a common state. (It had nothing to do with Yugoslavia at that time.)When Croats seceded from Yugoslavia, they seceded the Serbian part as well, throwing out Serbs forcefully from the Constitution, and jobs, yet Croats paramilitaries and official Croatian police started killing and humiliation of Serbs. That was a problem.Ivan - Milosevic did not have any political party in Croatia in 1990.All Serbs casted their votes to Racan and Silvio Degen. There were only few representatives (4) from Knin and Benkovac which belonged to Raskovic party, and some of themwere beaten in Sabor.Serbs were fighting for Yugoslavia. And it was not for the first time it was throughout history.Serbs from that State 1918 (The State of Slovenians, Croats and Serbs) welcomed Kingdom of Serbians, Croats and Slovenians, but Croats initiated it.Remember "Danica" - "Ilirski preporod" Ljudevit Gaj:"Na noge se diz'te mac u ruke sadatudjinstvo nek padne slavjanstvo da vlada" - which was inspiration for other Serbo-Croat intelectuals to proceed in building a common base for the independence from Austria.or: "Lijepa nasa domovino" Croatian oath that in 1813 wrote Antun Mihanovic and music was written by Josif Runjanin (Serbian).So basically Krajina Serbs then joined Croats in establishing national feelings necessary to establish way for independence.Remember on March the 10th 1925. Stjepan Radic recognized Constitution of the Kingdam but, in order to get graeter autonomy and warrants for foreign investment in Croatia - he was supported by Krajina Serbs, which was materialized through Radic-Pribicevic coalition.There was a radical wing in Croatia from Franko and Strosmaer (who by the way was not of a Slavic heritage) who started to destroy the constructive relation between Croats and Serbs, which resulted later on in the establishment of the Ustasha movement. (Kvaternik, Pavelic, Budak).During WWII Krajina Serbs had to fight for survival. Tito came with his partisans to put emblem on the Kordun's Serbs - then they became partisans not Serbs.Anyway in order to survive they had to flee from Croatia and they found natural supporters - Serbs from Bosnia. That is how JNA was established. - Was there anything unusual that they considered JNA as their army to the end (Remember Serbian Serbs were freedom fighter at that time which were supported by London).Was there anywhere in Bosnia and Krajina that Serbs hated Yugoslavia?Why Americans supported Croats. They followed Vatican's huge influence and Germany. After the fall of Berlin's wall,Bush Senior visited Germany in 1990 and promised to Gensher: "We will never be again on the opposite sides".Naturally Serbs in Bosnia and Krajina wanted to live together. Yugoslavia was their common state too – and they wanted to protect it. Croats – all the time considered Yugoslavia as just a step toward full independence (So they used Yugoslavia for it and Serbs at a time contributed with its sovergnity).Do you know why “Ban Jelacic” was turned towards East?Serbian intellectuals from Krajina Petar Preradovic, Nikola Tesla were proud to be Serbs considering Croatia as their home, politicians: Pribicevic supported Croat-Serbian coalition; the first Croatian vice premier Stanko Opacic Canica was one that helped Hebrang to clear anything that seem to be a Serbian nationalism in Krajina, and in the 1990 Jovan Raskovic as president of SDS did not support anything that was not in line with the constructive relationship with Croats (find any example that he said differently) and even Karadzic did not cooperate with Milosevic.Now you are saying that Serbs fought for greater Serbia, and under Milosevic. Serbs fought many times for the same territory and the same rights.You obviously don’t know for “Uskocke bune”, Serbian uprising in “Gorski Kotar” in 19 century against Austria, You obviously did not hear for “Gomirske Sume” First World War, WWII, 1948, 1971 – In which of these wars and uprisings Serbs in Krajina did not fight for their rights and their land there. – Where was Milosvic at that time?It is easier for everybody including Europe to blame Milosevic.But the main cause was that Croats in 1990 like in 1941 did not leave a small door open for any respectful contact with Serbs. Mesic promised to destroy Yugoslavia, and Tudjman said on the “Trg Bana Jelacica”“There would be no war if we did not wanted it.”Now ICTY and all these that performed criminal acts destroying Yugoslavia are looking to the other side of the room – like you said.Saying Croats were illegal nation in 1991. Serbs were in the same position and even much worse. You probably don know that in 1945 under communist rule with the help from West Serbs had to leave their Kingdom, and choose between Tito and Ante Subasic both Croats – Did Croat have the same in any period of time in Yugoslavia. Croats have not been satisfied in Yugoslavia, they did not see freedom there and they did not admire its achievements, obviously they did not like it.That Yugoslavia was not multicultural – Only Serbs can say so, since Croats and Slovenians ruled Yugoslavia, anyway still it was more democratic and multicultural than many western countries. You probably don’t know that Yugoslavia had financed two different alphabets, more than 10 official languages, official documents, schoolbooks, courts, universities on all of them. Yugoslavian constitution made equal national minorities to nations.Yugoslavia was the only place on the earth were three main religions were bordering, two different economic systems, several markets etc.What cultural differences Croatia offers, today?
  
  Pero Peric
  Canada

• Thursday October 31, 2002 at 5:48 pm
  

  " gospodin Lazarevic are you sure you don't work for the British Secret services?" Mr. Milosevic asked as his last question for this witness today.

  "Oh, your honours, what a preposterous idea, of course not, that is impossible . ." Lazarevic answered.

  Later amici curiae Tapuskovic asked him: "Can you explain to this court Mr. Lazarevic why are you wearing a British military uniform on theses two differents occasions as shown in two photographs part of prosecution's documents?"

  "Well, I . . .I have at home a collection of uniforms, of military uniforms, nothing wrong with that . . ." Mr. Lazarevic said.
  
  Gogol Charlemagne
  Conn. USA

• Thursday October 31, 2002 at 8:31 pm
  Ivan I can see from your post that the water in the toilet down under actually swirls in the opposite direction from the Northern Hemisphere. Read your post Ivan, who is lecturing? Re-read the archives and you will see that most who have posted on this page have been saying that the Tribunal was illegal, one sided and victors justice. No one is saying that the Serbs did not expel Croats and Muslims from their homes and vice versa. No one is saying that crimes were not committed by each group. There are dozen families here in Kamloops who will attest to that fact. These families are from Croatia, Bosnia and Kosovo who escaped with their heads. A Serbian man whose wife is Croatian tells a story how his Croatian neighbors used him for target practice. He said it was a game for them to see who could shoot the closest to him without hitting him. In the end they let him go. A man from Herzegovina tells a totally different story. He tells how at night the Croats and the Serbs on the front line would talk to each other about their families and businesses relationships from the past and during the day they would meet in no-man’s land and exchange t-shirts. I am sure that each side has such stories to tell.

  Ivan writes that “It is not a national problem any longer”. Of course it is a national problem when a nation denies its citizens their human and civil rights. You speak how the Croats were denied these rights in former Yugoslavia and yet you say nothing about how the Serbs were denied and are still denied their rights in the New Croatia.

  Ivan also writes that “Multi-culturalism denotes a freedom of expression of the cultures within the society”. Thanks for the lecture. Tell this to the aborigines in Australia or your Oriental immigrants. Oh yes I should not lecture because Canada is not a glowing example of how indigenous people should be treated or how immigrants should be treated. Every Croat and Serb in Canada knows what it means to be called a Hunky or a DP. Tell this to the Serbs that are left in Croatia.

  What exactly were the Croats denied in Tito’s Yugoslavia? Yes there were issues of freedom of speech and religion but that was a fact of life in every republic. I think that was a mistake. Covering up the atrocities committed during WWII was a mistake. It was not a mistake for the government to promote understanding and co-operation nor was it a mistake to prevent hate against minorities even when force was used. Unfortunately Pandora’s Box of nationalism was opened, I would suggest to you Ivan by the Croatians, particularly the émigré elements. Do you read the Zajednicar? My mother-in-law gets it even though she has written to them many times to stop sending it. I read it and find it Hitlerian.

  The Serbs in Croatia saw the return of the Ustase mentality in the attacks against them. It was logical for them to think that Jasenovac, Gospic and Ploce extermination camps were next. Mladic’s parents I understand were killed by the fascists and like most officers in former Yugoslavia be they Croat or Serb loyalty was measured by ones WWII experience. If your parents were killed by the Chetniks or by the Ustase and you joined the Partisans as a result you had a career in the military. For example if your family was in any way connected to any anti partisan group you were denied the right to be a pilot in the air force or an officer in any branch of the service.

  I think Mladic’s parents were either from Croatia or Bosnia so to say that he dropped his Yugoslavian identity and took up the nationalist cause is not accurate. During the fighting around Dubrovnik, for example, the JNA was composed of every ethnic group including Croats. As the war progressed the JNA splintered and retreated to their home republics. The officers and men then joined the forces from their own region and organized defense units to protect the areas where they lived. In Bosnia and Herzegovina Croat and Serb volunteers joined the local military units or fought under their own commanders. I think Arkan’s and Seselj’s volunteers are a good example of this. The Muslims were assisted by the Al-qaida and International Brigades from the Muslim nations.

  Ivan writes that “Krajina Serbs helped the Bosnian Serbs around Bihac”. Fikret Abdic who was sentenced by the Croatian courts to 20 years in prison promoted the Yugoslav idea. Anyone who thinks that Bosnia and Herzegovina (the mini Yugoslavia) can survive as it is needs to join Ivan in Australia. I started this post this morning before I went to work. When I came home I read Jari's and Pero's posts so I decided to stop since I think you have your answer to your patronizing comments. Ivan there is no point in me rehashing the facts you have your answer from Jari and Pero with whom I agree.
  
  Walter Trkla
  kamloops BC
  Canada