Page 904

 1                           Tuesday, 2 March 2010

 2                           [Open session]

 3                           [Defence Opening Statement]

 4                           [The accused entered court]

 5                           --- Upon commencing at 9.00 a.m.

 6             JUDGE KWON:  Good morning.  Mr. Karadzic, please continue.

 7     Please plan your statement so as to leave about ten minutes at the end of

 8     today's hearing for a Chamber's oral ruling.

 9             THE ACCUSED: [Interpretation] Thank you, Your Excellencies.

10             As we saw yesterday, in an incredible rhythm or a shocking rhythm

11     that prevailed in Croatia, there was a shocking measure introduced each

12     month affecting the Serbs.  The same situation was with us.  Before I

13     come to the October declaration adopted by the SDA and HDZ deputies

14     contrary to the way the Assembly sessions are convened and contrary to

15     the provisions of the constitutions of Yugoslavia and Bosnia and

16     Herzegovina, as a follow-up I would just like to add that the SDS was the

17     last ethnic party to be established.  We did that reluctantly, because we

18     didn't think that ethnic democracy was a proper thing, but we were forced

19     by the events to do so.

20   The elections took place on the 18th of November, and each nationalist party won,

21  because all the peoples adopted ethnic differentiations based partly on fears and

22  partly on the hopes and ambitions that they would achieve something that they

23  hadn't had before in Yugoslavia.  The government was formed in January 1991, and

24  the first campaign for an independent Bosnia-Herzegovina started in January,

25  although Mr. Izetbegovic vowed to remain in Yugoslavia in January as well. In late

Page 905

 1  January, he suddenly announced the campaign for independence.  Then in February,

 2  Mr. Izetbegovic formed a secret council for the defence of Muslims, although he

 3  was the chairman of the public council for defence of Bosnia-Herzegovina.

 4      I will only state briefly that during the first campaign for independence the

 5  Serbs protested without resorting to countermeasures.  Izetbegovic formed this

 6  Council, which acted as the Supreme Command of the Patriotic League, the secret

 7  army of the SDA.  The Serbian reaction was astonishment, concern, without either

 8  protests or countermeasures, because it had been done secretly.  We found out

 9  about it, but we did not protest much because of it.

10       There was an attempt in February to adopt a declaration on sovereignty and

11  independence.  The Serbs protested and filed a veto and referred the matter to

12  the Council for Ethnic Equality, and the veto succeeded at that time, it was

13  adopted, and we announced that we were going to work on communities of

14  municipalities because if the municipalities decided to do so, they could

15  associate themselves if they had economic and other interests.

16      The Patriotic League was established on the 31st of March, and the Supreme

17  Command now has its army.  The Serbs were deeply concerned over this.  The Serbs

18  employed in the police and the MUP that were brought into power, although they

19  were not members of the SDS because we don't think that there were -- should be

20  any political affiliations in the police.  They tried to prevent any abuse of

21  the police and to inform the public about what was going on.  This was the first

22  time that we in a way had some misunderstandings with our deputy minister that

23  we nominated for that position.

24             So in March 1991, a second attempt to adopt a declaration on

25     independence took place.  After these consultations with our partners, we

Page 906

 1  lodged a veto and continued consultations with the municipalities.  Famously,

 2  the declaration on the sovereignty of Bosnia-Herzegovina will be passed with or

 3  without the Serbian delegates is what Alija Izetbegovic said in May 1991.  So in

 4  three months' time, we had used up all of our brotherhood and unity, our idyllic

 5  coalition, and the breaching of all our rights was announced.  And the abuse of

 6  the police force gathered pace.  Their police was full of criminals, and you

 7  heard yesterday from my conversation with the deputy minister in which he agreed

 8  that we didn't bring any new personnel to the police, unlike them, and we

 9  particularly didn't bring in any criminals as they did.

10     The SDA personnel in the police were keeping everything secret from the Serbs.

11  They assigned Serbs to unimportant positions, and kept them away from all the

12  illegal activities that they were involved in, and that was the first split that

13  happened in the MUP in May 1991.  It was a de facto, not a de jure division of the

14  MUP.  The Serbian personnel in the police were sidetracked so that they could not

15  have any influence, so that they had no insight into the events, let alone any

16  influence on them.  The Serbs reacted by forming autonomous Serbian regions.

17     The Serbian autonomous areas were proclaimed, but this had no substance.  They

18  were not functioning as such; nothing was going on.  They were there just in case

19  if something happened.  And if communications are cut off, the people would be

20  severed from their leadership, and they, in that case, should have some regional

21  leadership to lead them.

22    In June 1991, decisions were taken on this independence of Slovenia and Croatia, and

23  Kucan, Tudjman and Izetbegovic concluding a secret agreement to attack the JNA and

24  Yugoslavia.  This conspiracy and this secret pact will be confirmed here thanks to the

25  evidence provided by the Prosecution, and we also have our own sources of information.

Page 907

 1     The Serbian reaction was to accelerate the creation of SAOs and there's already

 2  talk about regionalisation and we thought that they should start functioning

 3  because this was no joke any longer.  All our moves were conditional even though

 4  the SDA’s were not.  These were not our goals.  That was done out of necessity.

 5  If you continue this way and do not nullify these unlawful decisions, we are going

 6  to activate our plans.

 7             The German newspapers "Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung" and

 8     "Die Welt" wrote about Yugoslavia, that it was a historical freak,

 9     created through agreements from the Paris conference, and they --

10             THE INTERPRETER:  Periphery, interpreter's correction.

11     THE ACCUSED: [Interpretation] -- and they were mocking the Versailles, Saint-

12  Germain, Trianon, and the Neuilly agreements that ended the First World War.

13             Let me remind you that in 1977 and 1978, while Tito was still

14     alive, Josef Strauss gathered the European elite in Munich and tried to

15     persuade them to proclaim Yugoslavia dead.  By courtesy of General

16     Gallois we acquired this information.  General Gallois is an exceptional

17     personality who didn't agree with that either then or now.

18          In July, the Serbs published a document, in Serbian and in English,

19  entitled What Do the Serbs Propose?  Now, I wonder why the Prosecution doesn't

20  mention this agreement at all and why they didn't want to learn what the Serbian

21  position was vis-a-vis Yugoslavia and Bosnia-Herzegovina.  What do the Serbs

22  propose?  It was an important moment.  The crisis was accelerating and the Serbs

23  proposed a solution for the Bosnian crisis.  This proposal excludes absolutely

24  any possibility or any notion of a joint criminal venture -- enterprise.  It

25  absolutely precludes the possibility of an outcome such as the one that stands

Page 908

 1     in the Indictment.

 2             In the beginning of July, the Muslim-Bosniak organisation led by

 3     Adil Zulfikarpasic and Muhamed Filipovic who had left the SDA once they

 4     learnt about the conspiracy that was being pursued behind the backs of

 5     the whole party and the whole Muslim people.  When Filipovic and

 6     Zulfikarpasic, as experienced politicians and dissidents of long

 7     standing, needed some time to see where all these moves were leading to,

 8     this led Mr. Causevic, after leaving the SDA, to say to Mr. Izetbegovic

 9     the following:  "Do you think that the Serbs are fools who cannot see what

10     you're doing?"

11       The Serb side was delighted with this proposal of a historic Serbian-Muslim

12  agreement, and they decided to abandon all the counter-measures that they had

13  envisaged.  Early July, proof that we abandoned these counter-measures,

14  conceived in order to thwart the violation of our constitutional rights,

15  once that the Muslim side offered to abandon the path it had taken.

16           Mr. Zulfikarpasic and I met with Mr. Izetbegovic, who said, Just go

17     on.  And he said to Zulfikarpasic, Please continue your work because the

18     Serbs don't trust me any longer and maybe you can achieve something.

19             In July and August of 1991, we were working on this historic

20     Serbian-Muslim agreement.  We had joint meetings that were full of tensions,

21     but the leaderships of the SDS and the MBO were visiting sensitive areas such

22     as Trebinje and they're holding rallies there.  But everybody was happy, both

23     the Serbs and the Muslims.  Then we went to Zvornik, which was also a

24     sensitive area, which exploded at a later stage.  Apart from a small number

25     of extremists, people were delighted.  We had a crowded sports hall, and they

Page 909

 1   were happy to see that there was a change in the relations between the Serbs

 2   and the Muslims.  The Serbs accepted the return of the status quo ante, and

 3   during this six-month period we didn't apply any counter-measures that we had

 4   envisaged because we reached an agreement with the Muslims.

 5             Towards the end of August, all of a sudden Mr. Izetbegovic

 6     withdrew his support to this agreement while Professor Koljevic and

 7     Professor Filipovic, both from the philosophical faculty, who were

 8     authorised by Zulfikarpasic and myself to continue our work, presented

 9     this agreement to the public with a view to relaxing the situation in

10     Bosnia-Herzegovina, to say that Bosnia is a tripartite state, Bosnian

11     Croats and Muslims, and to convince them that there were no problems,

12     although there were conflicts in Croatia already going on, but they said

13     that this would prevent spill-over into Bosnia.

14      A fax arrived during the middle of a broadcast that the SDA was withdrawing,

15  and the MBO and Mr. Filipovic were proclaimed traitors of the Muslim nation.  So

16  all this game of trying to deceive the Muslims and the Serbs with the aim of

17  defeating politically the MBO, that would have amounted to a Pyrrhus victory.

18  That was a costly and dearly victory.  Immediately the following day, tensions

19  rose in Bosnia-Herzegovina, and the Serbian side, particularly the autonomous

20  region of Krajina, without asking us anything about it, proclaimed an Autonomous

21  Region of the Krajina.  We have an intercept on this subject, and we can always

22  show it to the Trial Chamber should they find it of interest.

23             After that, Izetbegovic withdrew, and we adopted a declaration in

24     the Assembly whose basic elements were, firstly, that all options should

25     be treated as equal; and secondly, that there would be no imposition of

Page 910

 1     solutions by any party.  A solution had to be found that would be

 2     acceptable for everyone involved without any imposition and all options

 3     were legitimate.  So this relaxed the situation a bit, but it didn't last

 4     longer than a month.

 5             By mid-October we have this famous Assembly session where a

 6     constitutional coup d'etat took place where the continuation of the

 7     session was convened unlawfully and all the Serbian deputies, 83 of them,

 8     72 from the SDS and the Serbs from other multi-ethnic parties, walked out

 9     of the Assembly, and the Serbian side announced that unless these

10     decisions were revoked within a week, then the Serbian side was going to

11     establish their own Assembly as a kind of personal autonomy.

12             This is a pivotal moment for both the Prosecution and the

13     indictment.  In paragraph 34 of the pre-trial brief, the Prosecution says

14     the leadership of the Bosnian Serbs established on the 24th of October,

15     1991, a separate Serbian Assembly.  As Karadzic explained to the

16     delegates, this was an historic move which dispelled the last illusions

17     that the Serbs might have.  It will help them to recognise who their

18     friends or foes were, and they will never again be threatened from

19     internal forces.

20             So Karadzic said this is the point when we gave up on all our

21     illusions.  We know exactly who our enemies and who our friends are, and

22     we know exactly where threats are coming from.  Therefore, in

23     November 1991, again in paragraph 34, it reads that immediately before

24     the SDS plebiscite on which the Serbs confirmed that they wanted to

25     remain in Yugoslavia, Karadzic invited the municipal authorities to

Page 911

 1     establish their own power in their respective areas.  "Please be very

 2     energetic in pursuing this policy and establish power in your territories;

 3     in municipalities, regions and local communes, and prepare yourselves for

 4     restructuring and reorganising the municipalities."

 5             This is a quotation of my words by the Prosecution.  But this

 6     does not have the meaning that was attributed to by the OTP.  I'd like to

 7     remind you that between the 24th of October, when the Serbs realised

 8     where the SDS was leading the nation, the Serbs accepted before the

 9     beginning of the war several chances and options for peace, and they even

10     were prepared to give up on their own Assembly.  So Serbs established an

11     Assembly as their last defence.  If all else failed, they would have that

12     Assembly.

13             As the Trial Chamber says in the Krajisnik judgement,

14     paragraph 195 or 196, if the old system fell apart, the central

15     government has to do something in order to prevent the ground from

16     falling apart.  And what is stated here is: "Prepare and establish

17     authority in your own territories, in the municipalities."  If the central

18     government fails and if the municipalities have no one to rely upon; or if

19     they call the central government, and the central government issues them

20     orders that are contrary to the survival of the people, then we have to

21     establish the authorities.  We already have our authorities there but they

22     have to be prepared to function in extraordinary circumstances.

23             I believe, and I think that all international documents

24     corroborate that, that it is better to have any kind of authority than no

25     authority at all.  Chaos is the worst that you can have.

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 1             It is no longer only the SDS that represents the Serbs.  All the

 2     Serbs are there, and they schedule a plebiscite for November 1991.  Let

 3     us see whether the people want what Izetbegovic is insisting upon, or do

 4     the people want something else.

 5             The referendum question has to do with Yugoslavia, with the

 6     joining of all who wish to remain in Yugoslavia, and that referendum was

 7     indeed held.  Since this was an ethnic referendum, there was a

 8     possibility for others to vote as well, and indeed, between 40 to

 9     60.000 Muslims and Croats did vote, and -- in the referendum, and they

10     voted in favour of preserving Yugoslavia.

11             I am afraid that the Prosecution is being malicious when they say

12     that this was a yellow leaflet.  I don't know what the colour of this

13     ballot or leaflet was, but it was written in the Latin script.  Most

14     Serbs use the Cyrillic script, but it was printed in Latin so that they

15     would find it more pleasant, as it were.

16             Now, on the 20th of December, the government of

17     Bosnia-Herzegovina, contrary to the position and opinion of all Serb

18     ministers and deputy ministers who were members of the government, passed

19     a decision to ask the European Community to recognise an independent

20     Bosnia-Herzegovina.  There are no prerequisites for that.  That decision

21     was not made in the right way.  It could not have been reached at the

22     referendum either, because two -- less than two-thirds of all voters

23     voted in favour of that, and it also couldn't pass through the Assembly

24     because we had more than one third.  And it's not a government that asks

25     for independence.  It can only be an Assembly on the basis of more than

Page 913

 1     two-thirds of all MP votes.

 2             As for the Serbian reaction at the Assembly session of 21 November,

 3     we are going to make you aware of each and every detail of this Assembly,

 4     because it is often exploited in the Indictment.

 5    They asked for an annulment of this request for independence, or, as a counter

 6   measure, they're going to proclaim a Serb republic of Bosnia-Herzegovina.

 7             Let us have a look at this map.  The Serbs are blue.  This was

 8     1991.  It didn't change much.  That's basically the way it was.  After

 9     the genocide in the Second World War, the Serbs continued to live in

10     two -- they are a majority, rather, in two-thirds of the territory of

11     Bosnia-Herzegovina, and regrettably they have only one-third.  Up until

12     the Second World War they were the majority population.

13             The SDA refuses to withdraw this request and they move on.

14             From the 20th of December until the 9th of January, they were

15     given 20 days to decide.  The Serbian Republic of Bosnia and Herzegovina

16     was proclaimed, but like all other Serb measures it is only proclaimed as

17     a possibility.  It doesn't really function.  So the Prosecution is not right

18     when they believe that we established the Assembly of the Serb people in

19     order to achieve some objectives.

20             We are actually right.  We established the Serb Assembly in order

21     to prevent the SDA from achieving their objectives at the expense of our

22     security and our own will.  We can see on the basis of all the interim

23     steps taken, and one of the interim steps was the Assembly that was held

24     on the 24th and 25th of January, where Karadzic and Cengic -- this is

25     Muhamed Cengic from the SDA.  It's not the MBO anymore.  The MBO all the

Page 914

 1     time was in favour of reaching an agreement with the Serbs.  Now the

 2     vice-president of the SDA, Cengic, we mentioned that yesterday, reaches

 3     agreement with me at the rostrum itself.  This is very well-known

 4     footage.  We all agree at the same time that the government carries out a

 5     regionalisation within 15 days, and the Serbs vote in the referendum.

 6     Whatever they do, they vote and in this way give the referendum

 7     legitimacy.

 8             Izetbegovic initiated the agreement because Cengic publicly said

 9     that it was Izetbegovic who authorised him in this manner.  It lasted

10     only for two hours.  With the MBO, the agreement lasted for two months;

11     whereas this one lasted for only two hours.

12             Now what happens?  February, the conference starts.  Although we

13     had been receiving monitors from the EU a lot earlier, like

14     Ambassador Wijnaendts, Ambassador Cutileiro, Lord Carrington, et cetera,

15     but officially it is in February that the conference started, and on the

16     22nd or 23rd of February, definitely what is reached is an agreement on

17     three Bosnias.  The Serbs said, "Right.  We are going to leave

18     Yugoslavia.  We are going to leave Yugoslavia and remain within the

19     framework of these boundaries of Bosnia-Herzegovina once they are

20     recognised on the condition that we get this one unit inside and that

21     Bosnia is a compound decentralised state where Serbs, Croats, and Muslims

22     are going to have those guarantees and that security that the republics

23     in Yugoslavia had, however, at a far lower level."

24             On the 22nd or 23rd of February, a decision was made to the

25     effect that the future constituent units will have their own powers.

Page 915

 1     Inter alia, they will have the right to their autonomous sovereign police

 2     that is accountable only to that government and that Assembly.

 3             Since we had experience already to the effect that, say,

 4     yesterday we reach agreement on ten points, and Mr. Izetbegovic the next

 5     day comes and says that we had agreed to nothing, zero.  We say if we

 6     agreed on ten questions, tomorrow we discuss the eleventh question.  We

 7     cannot go back to square one yet again.  It was only in 1993 that we adopted

 8     the principle that nothing has been agreed upon until everything is agreed

 9     upon.  Until then, whatever had been adopted could be put into force.

10             Then the Assembly reaches a decision.  The Serb Assembly and the council

11     of ministers, on the 28th of February, decides that preparations are carried out

12     for establishing a Serb MUP.  And why immediately after the agreement?  Because

13     there was massive, massive abuse of the joint police.  The Muslim police, they

14     were wreaking havoc.  We can see that as testified by Prosecution witnesses,

15     that the police, the Muslim part of the police, and the SDA and the Patriotic

16     League had all become one, and you cannot distinguish between different

17     institutions anymore, but we will go back to this abuse.

18         So on the 28th of February and on the 1st of March there was a referendum.

19  The Serbs did not vote in the referendum, but they didn't prevent it from happening

20  either.  We had our own in November, our plebiscite.  We believed it was all right

21  to have this too, when they had already scheduled it, but we considered it a two-

22  ethnic, bi-ethnic referendum, and not a referendum of the citizens of Bosnia and

23  Herzegovina, for that it was not.  Because it did not happen in a lawful way.

24             On the 1st of March, criminals, well-known criminals, notorious

25     criminals, who are now activists of the Patriotic League, they killed the

Page 916

 1     members of a wedding party in front of the old church, where they wrote

 2     graffiti against the Serbs on the very next day after the establishment

 3     of the SDA was announced.  This old church was built during the days of

 4     the Turkish occupation.  The anecdote says that the Sultan said, All

 5     right, you can build a church that will be as big as the skin of an ox.

 6     And then, allegedly, the Serbs cut this skin of an ox into a thread and

 7     in this way circled the area where the church would be built.  The Sultan

 8     also said that it should not be higher than even the lowest minaret of

 9     all the mosques.  They built the church partly underground, so you really

10     have to walk downstairs when you walk into the church.  I hope you go to

11     Sarajevo one day.  So watch your step when you go there.  You go very

12     deep down into the ground.  This is church that is very dear to the

13     hearts of the Serbs.

14             Anyway, the Muslims tried to engage in deceit and say that this

15     was not an active church.  It was always an active church, even in the

16     days of the Turks, and even the Turks did not touch it.

17             So a young man hits Nikola Gardovic, the father of the bridegroom

18     on that day, and already the next day he appears on TV as a hero, and he

19     said, "Yes, I shot at him.  Why would he carry a Serb flag?"  Serb flags

20     were carried even in the Turkish days at weddings.  It was not a national

21     flag.  It was a religious flag and it was customary.

22             Then on the 2nd of March, barricades were put up in Sarajevo.  At

23     the time, Mr. Koljevic, Mr. Krajisnik and I are negotiating in Belgrade.

24     So we were not there.  Barricades were put up, and they were there for

25     two days.  The SDS did negotiate with the Presidency of

Page 917

 1     Bosnia-Herzegovina with regard to these barricades, and the Crisis Staff

 2     that was headed by this gentleman, who was arrested in London just now,

 3     Mr. Ejup Ganic.  He was a member of the Presidency, a Yugoslav who turned

 4     against Yugoslavia.

 5             So in this situation rife with tension, on 18th of March, an

 6     agreement was reached, the Lisbon Agreement.  The Cutileiro Peace Plan

 7     was adopted, stating that this territory of Bosnia-Herzegovina would be

 8     reorganised with three internal units of the Serb, Croat, and Muslim

 9     people, and we all celebrate.

10             May I remind you that Mr. Ajanovic celebrated the most, saying

11     that 80 to 85 per cent of all Muslims will be in their constituent unit,

12     and only about 20 per cent of the Serbs and Croats would be in their

13     unit, whereas the Serbs fared the worst.  Only 50-something per cent will

14     be in the Serb unit, whereas the rest would be scattered throughout

15     Bosnia.  Even then or after that, no one referred to any population

16     exchanges or any expulsions.

17             On the 24th of March, the SDA withdrew their agreement.  I remind

18     you that on the 18th of March, Ajanovic said, If the Serbs refuse this

19     agreement this is going to be yet another foolish thing that they are

20     doing, and it will be proof that they had opted for war.  However, a week

21     later they are the ones that annul the Lisbon Agreement.

22             Mr. Ajanovic says, Well, we did this sort of as a trick in order

23     to buy time, to wait for recognition, to wait for international

24     recognition at that.

25             Perhaps we could have a look at this slide.  Could we have the

Page 918

 1     previous one, actually.  Yes.

 2             "If the Serbian Assembly rejects the Cutileiro Plan, it will

 3     become evident who is against peace in Bosnia, and it will become evident

 4     who wants to trick the European Community and the chairman of the

 5     conference."  Lord Carrington, that is.

 6             Excellencies, this is an admission:  Who does that will be

 7     guilty.  And this is exactly what he did a week later.

 8             "[In English] The SDA originally accepted the Cutileiro Agreement

 9     because it was a political game to secure the international recognition

10     of a sovereign and independent Bosnia and Herzegovina, and because it

11     would be responsible for the failure of the negotiations.  The SDS, HDZ,

12     and the European Community were in favour of BiH -- B and H remaining in

13     its present borders but for its territories to be transformed."

14             [Interpretation] Now, this is something that he found

15     unacceptable, and on the 18th, 19th, he said, if This is deceit on the

16     part of the Serbs, it is clear that they want to deceive the European

17     Community, and they are to be blamed for the war.  And now the gentleman

18     admits that that's what they actually did, and that thereby they were the

19     ones who wanted war.  The Serb people and the Serb political parties

20     accepted the minimum.  We leave Yugoslavia.  That is the most painful

21     concession we could have made.  The borders of Bosnia-Herzegovina remain

22     as they are if internally we get our own constituent units.  This is what

23     Ambassador Cutileiro wrote in 1995, when the war was already over.  This

24     is what he wrote about what was being said about the Lisbon Agreement.

25     This is what Ambassador Cutileiro wrote, and he felt that he should make

Page 919

 1     this public to the world and that it was not that way, not quite as he

 2     had put it.  This is his letter.

 3              "[In English] After several rounds of the talks -- of talks, our

 4     principles for constitutional arrangements for Bosnia and Herzegovina

 5     were agreed by all three parties (Muslim, Serbs and Croats) in Sarajevo

 6     on 18th of March, 1992.  These continued -- this continued until the

 7     Muslims reneged on the agreement.  Had they not done so, the Bosnian

 8     question might have been settled earlier with less loss of mainly Muslim

 9     life and land.  To be fair, President Izetbegovic and his aides were

10     encouraged to scupper the deal and to fight for a unitary Bosnian state

11     by well-meaning outsiders who thought they knew better."

12             [Interpretation] And this is the moment when we can also ask

13     ourselves what could Karadzic or the SDS do, or all a million and a half

14     Serbs in Bosnia-Herzegovina?  They accepted everything.  They accepted

15     everything that was consistent with their survival.  They accepted that

16     their unit should be the worst, that it should be the one least to

17     satisfy the interests and goals of the Serb people, but they accept it

18     all and still they don't have a chance of preserving peace.  The only

19     thing that is expected of them, quite obviously, is what

20     President Tudjman told the American delegation.  He said the Serbs should

21     leave Bosnia and not that the Muslims should leave Republika Srpska but

22     Serbs out of Bosnia.  That's what he said.

23             I have to go back to the wedding party and the killing there and

24     the barricades.  They are mostly interpreted in a biased way by the

25     Western media.  They said that the barricades were set up because the

Page 920

 1     Muslims voted for independence.  That's just not true.  It's not true.

 2     We didn't prevent that anywhere.

 3             And let's have another look at the ethnic map of

 4     Bosnia-Herzegovina.  Let's see that again.  Wherever you see blue is

 5     where we were in power, because that was the Serb majority, the blue.

 6     And nobody in that area could they have conducted a referendum had we

 7     decided against it.  So we didn't prevent it.  Therefore, it's not true

 8     that the barricades were set up because of the referendum.  They were set

 9     up because of the killing, because a young man, who was a well-known

10     criminal, by the way, understood that it was okay to shoot at a Serb

11     wedding party and kill someone, and he was even celebrated by his ethnic

12     community as hero.  He wasn't arrested for a long time afterwards.  And I

13     think he was ultimately liquidated after the war, some three or four

14     years ago in some cafe somewhere, but nobody took any steps to apprehend

15     him at that time.  So that was the 24th and 25th of March, when it was

16     published that the SDA had withdrawn from the meeting.

17             Now, on the 25th of March -- look at the rhythm, look at the tempo

18     of this.  We're no longer talking about a month or weeks as we were in

19     Croatia.  This is one shock after another, one day to the next.  And we’ve

20     now reached the 25th of March, where the armed forces of Croatia, the

21     National Guards Corps, the MUP, whoever, you don't know who was active there,

22     anyway, they transferred from Croatia to Bosnia-Herzegovina to Bosanski Brod

23     where they met with illegal paramilitary units, led by Armin Pohara, who was

24     the president of a party but he had some military formations too.  They

25     sang, they shot sporadically, and they killed a man and his son -- I think

Page 921

 1     their name was Petrovic, at a petrol pump.  There was no reason for it.  They

 2     weren’t armed, and of course, those others were not allowed to shoot there,

 3     but when it came to shooting the Serbs, they went ahead and killed these two

 4     people.  Nobody stood up to them, not the police of Bosnia-Herzegovina, not

 5     the Yugoslav People's Army who couldn't do anything about it because they

 6     were busy fighting in Croatia already, and they continued the next day, that

 7     is to say on the 26th of March, in the neighbouring village.

 8             Same thing happened as with the wedding party.  Nobody stopped

 9     them and said, Hang on, what are you doing?  On the 26 of March there was

10     the slaughter of the Serbs in Sijekovac, and that poor village,

11     Sijekovac, during World War II, well, a third of the population fled, a

12     third of the population was killed, and a third was converted.  Most of them

13     converted back later, but some of them did not.  Some remained Catholics.

14             Now, the Serb side and this accused here was -- called up the

15     people in the police saying, What's happening, who's going to save

16     people?  They said, We haven't got enough policemen.  Why don't you

17     recruit the reserve force?  We can't without the minister.  It was only

18     the minister who was authorised to mobilise the reserve police force to

19     go into action.

20             Now, we asked them, We have the deputy minister, we have

21     high-ranking officials in the ministry, we had Stanisic at the municipal

22     level, we had Mandic at the republican level, so we asked Mandic and

23     Repic, Why aren't you doing something to mobilise the reserve police

24     force?  And their answer was, We can't.  Somebody has to order us to do

25     that.  There was nobody to issue the order.  There was no barrier between

Page 922

 1     the killers and the Serb people, Serb civilians.  There was no barrier,

 2     and the Serb Assembly was to establish that barrier on the 27th of March,

 3     the day after the slaughter and 13 months after a far mightier body was

 4     set up by the SDA in February 1991 which was the National Security

 5     Council as an advisory body to the Assembly of the Serb people in

 6     Bosnia-Herzegovina.  And the Prosecutor treats -- deals with that in

 7     paragraph 66 of its pre-trial brief.  And that is how the paragraph

 8     reads.

 9             "[In English] The SNB was established by the Assembly on 27 March

10     1992, with Karadzic as its president.  Although initially intended as an

11     advisory body, the SNB in effect immediately turned into an executive

12     organ resembling a central Bosnian Serb Crisis Staff and executing powers

13     similar to those of the Presidency.  Thus, as president of the SNB,

14     Karadzic exercised authority over the Bosnian Serb state organs, that is,

15     the Bosnian Serb forces and republican, regional, and municipal

16     authorities.  The SNB meeting in joint sessions with the Bosnian Serb

17     government passed decision on strategic and military issues such as

18     ordering the activation of the Crisis Staffs in certain conditions;

19     appointing the acting commander of the Territorial Defence; defending

20     Serb positions reached; and ordering a full mobilisation.  Moreover, the

21     SNB took important political decisions such as the appointment of

22     ministers and the adoption of legislation."

23             [Interpretation] Now, of course, the fact that the Prosecutor is

24     summarising, this only happened actually when the war broke out.  Until

25     the war broke out, this body, the Council for National Security, was an

Page 923

 1     advisory body, an advisory body, as the title says.  And for want of any

 2     other body, any command or any formations, the Serb Assembly decided to

 3     have the Serbs in the police, that the Assembly should, through the

 4     advice of an advisory body, issue orders to the police to save the

 5     people.  And the decision was taken on the 28th of February, had been

 6     taken that the Serb MUP be set up in conformity with the conference.

 7     However, it still had not been established and was still not working

 8     because it needed the agreement from -- of the other two sides to go

 9     ahead.

10             Of course, in a paragraph the Prosecutor says that Stanisic and

11     Mandic did that off their own bat.  It's not got nothing to do with their

12     volition.  It was a decision taken by the Serb Assembly on the basis of

13     the results of the conference on Bosnia-Herzegovina that was held in

14     Lisbon under the Presidency of Ambassador Cutileiro, the presiding

15     officer being Ambassador Cutileiro.

16             Now we come to the 1st of April.  Agreements and decisions are

17     being made in the police force about the division of resources, the joint

18     resources, and this was the distribution balance.  The Prosecutor sees

19     this as a criminal act, but it was quite normal where you have an entity

20     split in two, an organisation split in two.  You have to do the balance

21     sheet to see what belongs to whom and who will get what in order to carry

22     out the duty of keeping law and order.  And agreements were reached in

23     that respect and on that level.  And on 1st of April, the Muslim

24     extremists attacked Bijeljina.  Not the Serb extremists, it was the

25     Muslim extremists, and it was established here, through all the

Page 924

 1     testimonies heard in this Tribunal, that somebody was riding a horse and

 2     he wanted to throw a bomb on a Serb cafe.  There's no justification for

 3     that.  They say that 10 or 12 days prior to that, the Serbs had caused an

 4     incident, a Serb had caused an incident in a Muslim cafe.  However, the

 5     police arrested that Serb and sent him to Tuzla, to Muslim territory.

 6     They escorted him there and handed him over to the authorities.  So there

 7     was no justification for this act.

 8             It came as orders from Sarajevo to make Bijeljina a problem, to

 9     problematise Bijeljina so that they could take over power and authority.

10     The Prosecution says in its pre-trial brief "the forcible taking of

11     Bijeljina by the Serbs," et cetera, et cetera, in one of the paragraphs

12     of the indictment or pre-trial brief.  That's completely absurd.  It's

13     absurd to say anything like that in view of the fact that Bijeljina

14     municipality is predominantly Serb, and that the authorities were the

15     Serb Democratic Party, and that everything was functioning property.

16             I would just like at this point to go back a bit, backtrack to

17     paragraph 66 that we read out, where the Prosecution says the following:

18     That the council took over or had authority over Serb forces.  Which Serb

19     forces and which republican organs existed at that point in time?  That's

20     the question.  Not a single one is the answer.  There was the Assembly

21     which was working as a joint Assembly and in a joint Assembly.  There

22     were no executive organs, none at all, nowhere.  It was just not in the

23     SAOs, nowhere.  They were prepared in case of chaos, and especially Serb

24     forces except for the Territorial Defence which existed in all the

25     municipalities until the 20th of May, there were no Serb forces.

Page 925

 1             The Prosecutor furthermore states that after the crisis, the

 2     crisis in Bijeljina lasted two days, so they call -- they say that Arkan

 3     was called in from Belgrade, and the Prosecutor, however, omits to say

 4     that there was a crisis and fighting in Bijeljina for a whole night, and

 5     that Arkan only arrived subsequently.  Now, why did somebody call Arkan

 6     in?  Because I don't justify this and I don't condemn it either.  All I

 7     want to do is throw light on the truth.  Sijekovac is some 100 kilometres

 8     away from Bijeljina and it was clear to one and all what had happened in

 9     Sijekovac, it was published, and what could the citizens of Bijeljina

10     think but that they would suffer the same fate.

11             And let me remind you and we have map about this and we will

12     address that in due course if we have time.  But by the 1st of April, let

13     remind you, throughout Bosnia it was only the Serbs who were being

14     killed.  Whereas the Prosecutor for that period of time is holding me

15     accountable and accusing me of pursuing a policy of warmongering, and we

16     can see that on this map if we look at the border villages and the places

17     in depth that were aflame.  And it was exclusively against the Serbs that

18     the barricades were set up in these areas.  Check-points.  Killings were

19     taking place.  People were being beaten up, intimidated.  Exclusively the

20     Serbs until the war broke out or, rather, the 1st of April.

21             Now, the Prosecutor goes on to say that leading official

22     Biljana Plavsic of the SDS went to Bijeljina.  Well, I don't want to

23     defend myself from things of that kind.  It's just improper.

24     Biljana Plavsic was in Bijeljina as a member of the state Presidency.  It

25     was a state delegation, not a party delegation, and it included

Page 926

 1     Fikret Abdic, who was also not a member of the SDS.  There was Jerko

 2     Doko, the minister of Defence, a Croat, who wasn't a member of the SDS

 3     either.  So why was that the Prosecutor just focuses on Biljana Plavsic

 4     and notice her and not the members of the Presidency, the others ones,

 5     Abdic and so on?  Well, it means that somebody's aiding and abetting the

 6     Prosecutor, that people assisting the Prosecutor are biased and helping

 7     the Prosecutor in that way.  Biljana Plavsic was a state official there

 8     and it was a state delegation.

 9             On the 3rd of April we have the attack on Kupres.  May we have

10     the map back again, please.  It was an attack launched by Croatian

11     forces, local Croatian forces, and forces, regular forces from Croatia.

12     An attack on Kupres.  Kupres was a very sensitive area.  You had

13     52 per cent Serbs, 40-odd per cent Muslims and 7 or 8 per cent -- or,

14     rather, 40 per cent Croats and 8 per cent Muslims.  So that is the

15     largest flame that broke out, the largest flame on the map there, that's

16     where Kupres is.  For Croats in Central Bosnia this is significant

17     because it is a mountain ridge linking Central Bosnia with Dalmatia and

18     the coast, and that is where the fighting went on for several days, where

19     the Serbs were slaughtered in Malovan, Vukovsko, and the villages around

20     Kupres, and it was a terrible tremendous attack and tremendous suffering

21     and fatalities on the part of the Serbs, but there was still not a war

22     on.  And the Serbs had nothing but the police to protect it them, whereas

23     the police was not actually protecting them but working against them, and

24     the Yugoslav People's Army that didn't have time with the situation.  The

25     Knin Corps appeared there which tried to protect the people in the

Page 927

 1     region.

 2             Now on the 4th of April, the shocks didn't come every day, they

 3     came every hour.  On the 4th of April Mr. Izetbegovic proclaimed general

 4     mobilisation.  It is common knowledge -- it was common knowledge to him

 5     that the Serbs wouldn't respond because they knew what the police was

 6     doing.  They knew what the Patriotic League was doing.  They knew what

 7     the Green Berets were doing, and so the Serbs he knew would not join

 8     those units because they were afraid and it was their assumption that

 9     they would be killed.

10             Karadzic calls up Izetbegovic and asks him to give up on the idea

11  of mobilisation.  That is a common -- that is common knowledge.  Karadzic says,

12  Why did you proclaim mobilisation?  Nikola Koljevic and Biljana Plavsic was

13  expressly against that.  And he wasn't the president of Bosnia-Herzegovina; he was

14  the president of the Presidency, therefore a collective Presidency.  So he wasn't

15  in a position to do that and I told him that publicly, and we have the footage of

16  this, the OTP has it too.  We -- I say it's madness.  The people are armed.

17  Nobody is able to control the armament of the people anymore, and now you're

18  proclaiming general mobilisation to legalise rifles which people are secreting.

19  That is tantamount to a declaration of war, and we have footage of that too, so we

20  won’t waste any time now.  We will screen it in due course during the trial.

21             And on the 5th of April, I state that it was a mistake to go

22     ahead with -- that was a mistake.  Recognition should be delayed, the

23     conference should have been speeded up, and then we would have had peace.

24     Instead of that, what was accelerated was recognition and the conference

25     was slowed down.  That was a recipe for war.  On the 5th of April, in the

Page 928

 1     morning, the apartment of my family was bullet-ridden, with a

 2     machine-gun, and we have witnesses to bear out the fact that they were

 3     waiting to kill us but we were all downstairs, but always -- already in

 4     the Holiday Inn, the party offices, and they failed to kill us.

 5             On the 5th of April, Izetbegovic, Kljujic, and I left -- or was

 6     it Brkic, I don't remember.  Anyway, we went to the television station

 7     with General Kukanjac to appeal for peace.  At the same time, a day

 8     before, the Serb MUP was given agreement that the headquarters of the MUP

 9     should be in the school of the Ministry of the Interior at Vraca, above

10     Grbavica.  So on that April the 5th, while we were broadcasting over

11     television, the Serb MUP which came to take up its offices was held in

12     ambush, and two wonderful young Specials, Serbs, were killed.  The other

13     30 men who came to help them take up their premises, they were -- they

14     captured 140 Muslims and 400 of the pupils, but not a hair of their head

15     was harmed; whereas these wonderful two young Serb men were killed.

16             On the 5th and 6th of April, on the 5th of April in the evening,

17     terror broke lose in Sarajevo.  It was the worst night ever.  There were

18     snipers in all the high-rise buildings, Green Beret snipers.  A policeman

19     was killed in the joint police station - his name was Petrovic - by them,

20     and it was terrible to be a Serb that night in Sarajevo.

21             The Serbs withdrew to their own districts and areas and tried to

22     defend those districts and their families and the people living in them,

23     and that is how the line dividing the town was established.  It wasn't a

24     siege, a line of siege, but it was a line separating and dividing two

25     parts of the town.

Page 929

 1             Now, in the Milosevic trial, witness Eve-Anne Prentice, from

 2     Britain, confirmed -- she confirmed that it wasn't a city under siege, it

 3     was a city divided.  And George Kenney from the State Department, who was

 4     well acquainted about our situation, said on his own initiative, without

 5     having to be asked by the Prosecution or the Defence, said that it was

 6     wrong to state that Sarajevo was a city under siege like Leningrad.

 7     Sarajevo was a divided city like Beirut, with one section of the

 8     population living in one area and the other in the other.  In Beirut it

 9     was common knowledge that after the working hours, at 3.00, shooting

10     broke out; whereas by 3.00 p.m. everybody was at work.

11             On the 12th of April, Ambassador Cutileiro arrives, and at that

12     time Vance was also in Sarajevo.  We signed an agreement on truce with

13     Mr. Cutileiro.  During the talks with Mr. Cutileiro and Cyrus Vance, we

14     established that we had to accelerate the defining of these three constituent

15     units because that could have stopped war.  So if anyone knew that their

16     village was going to be in a certain constituent unit, they didn't have any

17     need to fight.  However, on the afternoon of that same day, Hasan Efendic, the

18     then commander of their Territorial Defence, issued the well-known directive

19     for immediate combat readiness which, translated, meant an attack on all

20     possible Serbian and Yugoslav People’s Army targets, and Bosnian Serb targets.

21             On the 22nd of April, this accused announced and offered his

22     platform for the cessation of hostilities and the continuation of seeking

23     for a political solution.  This is a very important moment, and during

24     this trial we shall see that this was the position of the Serbian side

25     which were contained in documents.  The Serbian positions were expressed

Page 930

 1     in the Serbian Assembly.  There was a provision that a deputy cannot be

 2     held accountable for his speech.  However, an Assembly is not there for

 3     people to deliver speeches but, rather, to legislate, to adopt

 4     resolutions, declarations, decisions, conclusions, and recommendations.

 5             So at least seven documents of that type were produced by the Assembly,

 6     and an instrument for producing this kind of documents is free debate.

 7             The OTP said that an enraged or angry deputy that was affected by

 8     something during the war had said something in the Assembly, and they say that

 9     Karadzic didn't warn him and caution him.  The president didn't have to be

10     present in the Assembly.  I was there often but not always, and particularly

11     the president is not a teacher who should discipline the deputies.  A deputy

12     is a directly elected official, just like the president, and I had no right to

13     do this.  However, if I saw that this could affect some legislature or the

14     constitution or some other decision, then I intervened and tried to have an

15     impact on the final outcome.

16        In addition to thousands of documents officially adopted by the Assembly,

17  published in the Official Gazette, the OTP couldn't find a single document to charge

18  me with or to lay blame on me for it, even though it was a legislative body.  I was

19  not responsible for that body.  I was only responsible to the extent that I may once

20  send back to the Assembly the documents that are submitted to me for my signature.

21  And if they are adopted, then I must sign them.  That means the President’s hands

22  are tied – he does not have unlimited power, though he be Karadzic himself.

23             Among all these laws, decrees, and other documents that were

24     adopted, the OTP did not rely on a single one that could have held this

25     accused accountable for any breach of domestic legislature or any

Page 931

 1     international instrument of international law.

 2             So this was the course of events that led to war between the

 3     12th, when the elections were held.

 4             Let us look briefly at paragraph 78 of the pre-trial brief where

 5     it says:

 6             "[In English] Even before its inaugural session, Karadzic and the

 7     leadership planned that the Assembly would have a role in the acquisition

 8     of Serbian-claimed territories."

 9             [Interpretation] So on the 24th of October, when we walked out of

10     the Assembly and decided to form our own Assembly in order to exert

11     pressure on the SDA to give up on their war plans, the OTP says, no, no,

12     they establish this -- but this was in October 1991.  They established

13     this Assembly to serve as an instrument for capturing territories.

14             Can we please now look at the map again.  The ethnic map.  What

15     territories were Serbs allegedly to capture?  Those were already their

16     territories.  If you look at the front lines, you will see that -- [In

17     English] Can we -- can we have a map.

18             [Interpretation] Of these Serb territories held by them for

19     centuries, the Serbs were prepared for the sake of peace to give up on

20     some of them.  You can see how it looks like without front lines, but now

21     you're going to see how it looked like with the front lines.

22             The OTP claimed that on the 24th of October we established our

23     own Assembly in order to -- can we have it?

24             JUDGE KWON:  You have to turn on the ELMO or video.

25             THE ACCUSED: [Interpretation] So you can see the same map.  The

Page 932

 1   Serbian forces, the Serbian people, the Territorial Defence - according to the law,

 2   every municipality had Territorial Defence.  The president of the municipality was

 3   commander of the TO.  Tito's doctrine of an armed people must be clarified here.

 4   It explains many things that would otherwise remain unexplained, if we were to

 5   consider that Bosnia and Yugoslavia, like other countries, had their own armed

 6   forces, highly trained and kept under command and control.  And these were people

 7   who went to the edges of their own territories in order to prevent slaughter.

 8             These were the front lines throughout the entire war.  If you

 9     look at the central part, Your Excellencies, if we had advanced further

10     on we would have benefitted from that, because we would have shortened the

11     front lines and increased the deployment of our forces and include our

12     reserve forces.  However, if the Muslim and Croat forces advanced, they would

13     have stretched their front and would have been weakened.  So from the

14     strategic point of view, if we had advanced, we could have been more

15     strong.  We could have been stronger and we could have captured the whole

16     of Bosnia.  And you will see this with regard to Sarajevo in particular.

17             Now, what the OTP claims about our Assembly being established to

18     prevent any violation of the constitution, they say that this was created

19     in order to take over the territories that were already ours.  We never

20     left our own ethnic territories.  And the fact that there were Muslims in

21     Prijedor and Eastern Bosnia, wherever there were 20 or 30.000 Serbs

22     and -- or Muslims or Croats, this could have become a canton without war.

23             So I have to defend myself from the allegations that we didn't

24     have enough power on the 24th of October, or the 27th March, or the

25     6th of April, because we had our own forces only on the 20th of May, not

Page 933

 1     counting the Territorial Defence.  The Territorial Defence existed in

 2     every enterprise, in every company.  That was the concept of an armed

 3     people.  We have a situation different than in the rest of the world, and

 4     in order for you to understand that, you should know that even every

 5     company had their own territorial unit and its weapons, and that

 6     particularly applied to municipalities.

 7             Your Excellency, I don't know if I managed to portray for you

 8     this horrible course of events against the Serbs who constituted

 9     one-third, who were not organised in any respect other than having its

10     own Assembly and its deputies who were partly performing in the joint

11     Assembly and partly trying to protect the Serbian people from their own

12     state, from the police, from the state-sponsored terror of their own

13     country.

14             Now let us see what the police was doing.  Why did the SDS ask

15     Ambassador Cutileiro for the constituent unit to have their own police

16     forces?  Everywhere in the world the police forces are decentralised all

17     the way down to the level of municipality.  In the US, you have city and

18     district police forces, and there are state police forces, and then you

19     have federal police forces, and this is what we were asking for.

20             Let us just see what this police did.  I'm talking about the

21     joint police in which we had our representatives and our own positions

22     won at democratic elections.

23             At the very beginning, the joint police forces set out to effect

24     Muslim supremacy and the SDA, the government organs, the police, and the

25     Green Berets and the police became almost one and were equal to one

Page 934

 1     another, and all of that was under the command of the SDA.  The number

 2     one man in the joint police of Bosnia-Herzegovina was a cleric,

 3     Hasan Cengic, who was not a member of the police.

 4             For example, on the 11th of July, 1991, while we were in

 5     negotiations with Zulfikarpasic and Filipovic about the historic

 6     Serbian-Muslim agreement supported by Izetbegovic:

 7              "[In English] The SDA -- on 11th of July, 1991, the SDA issued

 8     instructions for sending candidates of the MUP educational centre in

 9     Croatia," and this instruction is number 12583 in 1991.

10             [Interpretation] What is this all about?  In see secrecy, behind

11     the back of the Serb deputy minister, Mr. Stanisic, and Mr. Stanisic who

12     was chief of police for Sarajevo, preparations were made to send groups

13     of policemen to Croatia who was at the time fighting against Yugoslavia.

14     They were being sent to undergo training so that they can repeat the same

15     activities that Croatia pursued.

16          You can also see a lot of indications of what they did.  Hasan Cengic, his

17    father, Halid Cengic, established the first forerunner of the Patriotic League -

18    the first armed unit in Foca, in August 1990, before the elections.  Hasan

19    Cengic – a true son of his father - took control of the joint police force:

20             "[In English] In accordance with the agreement between officials of

21     the Bosnian and Croatian police MUP, and pursuant to the instructions

22     regarding the employment of police candidates as the Croatian and MUP

23     educational centre, the SDA recommends the above-mentioned candidates for

24     the course at your centre."

25             [Interpretation] This is a cover letter sent with a list of

Page 935

 1     Muslim policemen who were to be trained in Zagreb secretly.  This cover

 2     letter was not signed by anyone from the police, but, rather, by a person

 3     from the SDA, and this is the proof that there was a complete merger

 4     between the SDA and the Muslim part of the police.  So this is how this

 5     joint MUP looks like, and there was a reason good enough for us to leave

 6     the police but this wasn't done until 1991.

 7             The police is intercepting politicians' conversations, private

 8     conversations of ordinary citizens, et cetera.  We are going to see a lot

 9     of intercepts of that kind.  I'm not concerned about that at all.  They

10     are going to be very helpful to see what was done at the time.  I

11     recently asked to be provided with intercepts of conversations between

12     Izetbegovic, Ganic, and others.  I naively suppose that if they listened

13     in to everybody's conversation I could have them, but it turns out the

14     only ones who were -- whose telephones were tapped were the Serbs.

15             So until that moment the SDA established -- [In English] The SDA

16     established its military wing, the so-called Patriotic League.  SDA armed

17     the Patriotic League.  SDA obstructed the appointments of SDS personnel

18     in the MUP, of Serbian personnel in the MUP.  SDA replaced a large number

19     of Serbian employees in the Bosnian MUP.  SDA sent Muslim police

20     personnel to the Croatian MUP for military training [Interpretation] That

21     was at the time when Croatia was in war with Yugoslavia.  [In English]

22     SDA carried out an illegal mobilisation of the reserve forces for

23     Bosnian MUP.  SDA illegally intercepted telephone conversations of the

24     Serbian leadership.

25             [Interpretation] And they did a lot of other things but these are

Page 936

 1     the most striking ones, describing what our government partners were

 2     doing without any core decisions, and they shouldn't have done that

 3     without proper core decisions.  Needless to say that the SDS and the

 4     entire Serbian nation knew about all this, but without a smoking gun and

 5     without solid proof there was no way to disclose that.  And even when

 6     that was divulged, this was refuted immediately and the Serbian side was

 7     accused of corrupting inter-ethnic relations and raising tensions.

 8             This is one conversation between the accused and the deputy

 9     minister, who was a Serb but not a member of the SDS, but he was

10     nominated by the Serbs to protect the Serbian interest and to be part of

11     the checks and balances.  Let's hear it.

12                           [Audiotape played]

13             "Karadzic:  Alija can only made a decision to call upon the

14     Muslims to join the Territorial Defence, and some people around him are

15     ready to start the war.  We know that quite well.  They are preparing a

16     war, they organised the Main Staff, you don't know that, where the staff

17     is.  There is a huge number of armed people.  There are preparations for

18     war.  There are drills to block barracks.  There are counter-manoeuvres

19     of the army and here they are going for war.  They want the unlawful way

20     although we've proved to them that they cannot legally or politically

21     carry that out.  We've told them to use the constitutional procedure to

22     change the constitution but they don't want to because they don't they

23     know they stand a chance with international public.  They don't stand a

24     chance within the legal system.  The only chance they've got is to try

25     and trick us, but the Serbs won't allow that

Page 937

 1             "Zepinic:  Izetbegovic is getting a chance to achieve what no one

 2     has ever achieved.  That is to establish an Islamic state in Europe.

 3             "Karadzic:  We don’t stand a chance.  Europe, they know what it is.

 4     They don't need us.  They would make the state without us, but Europe would

 5     not recognise an Islamic -- that is, a Muslim state at all, and that's a big

 6     problem for them.  They are trying to make us their hostages, hostages of

 7     their state."

 8             That was the 17th of June, 1991, my conversation with our top

 9     representative in the police force who will come here to confirm this,

10     although there's really no need to have this confirmed

11             I believe that there is no need for me to go on about the MUP any

12     longer.  It's time for the break anyway, isn't it?  The MUP was then the

13     strongest support of the SDA policy anyway.

14             JUDGE KWON:  Yes.

15             THE ACCUSED: [Interpretation] Excellency, is it the right time to

16     take the break now?  I can go on.

17             JUDGE KWON:  No, we'll take a break for 20 minutes.

18                           --- Recess taken at 10.13 a.m.

19                           --- On resuming at 10.46 a.m.

20             JUDGE KWON:  Yes, Mr. Karadzic.

21             THE ACCUSED: [Interpretation] These are the further contacts

22     between this accused person and the highest positioned Serb in the

23     police, who is not a member of the SDS, of course.  He is an expert, a

24     police expert.  And we see that this accused says:

25             "We've been tricked at the MUP especially at the state security.

Page 938

 1     Please don't let them not know.  Nothing should be done single-handedly.

 2     This is not a private thing.  The entire collegium should meet and they

 3     should be told:  This position is vacant and we suggest this man for the

 4     job.  I beg you to stop doing these things in a private basis."

 5             I'd like to draw your attention to what the president of the

 6     ruling party is saying here.  It's not that he is saying that they should

 7     listen to him.  It's the Serbs at the MUP who say, "We don't want you to

 8     impose some Serb on us.  We want to be the ones who are going to say

 9     which Serb deserves to be in that position."  So it's not being done by

10     Radovan Karadzic.  It's Radovan Karadzic who is asking members of the

11     police to defend their own people by putting professionals in the right

12     positions.  They, not the political party.

13             And then we go on, on the 22nd of July, what I read out just now

14     was on the 8th, this is the 22nd of July:

15             "Tell them not to play games.  Look, they're in Prijedor in the

16     afternoon, Friday afternoon.  They positioned a man there.  The Muslim is

17     a chief, the chief of defence is a Muslim, and the chief of the

18     Territorial Defence is a Muslim, and the commander should have been

19     ours."

20             That was one of the routine manipulations.  The Serbs get a

21     particular position, and they don't allow it to happen, or they put a

22     Muslim as deputy.  But you see what the scenario is, for bloodshed in

23     Prijedor that will eventually happen and we will see how.

24             Let's move on.  September, the 17th of September, 1991, Karadzic,

25     Plavsic:

Page 939

 1             "Today we'll probably talk to them," the Muslims, that is, "and

 2     I'll say no talks until they stop deciding in MUP where each Serb is

 3     going to work.  Until they stop making decisions for us.  We'll separate

 4     our part of the MUP there.  We'll divide the MUP into cantons.  You

 5     should know that we'll do that.  They are proving to us how we are going

 6     to live here," in that state that is.

 7             Excellencies, these were the shocks that we had to deal with, not

 8     on a weekly or a monthly basis like in Croatia, but on an hourly basis.

 9             Now, this is the accused talking to the chief of the political

10     party in Bosanska Krajina, Dr. Vukic.

11                           [Audiotape played]

12             THE INTERPRETER:  "[Voiceover] Karadzic:  There are forces in

13     Bosnia and Herzegovina who know what they cannot achieve what they want

14     without a war, and they need a reason for starting war so they could

15     blame someone else.  We must not give them the reason to start the war,

16     and that's the most essential thing.  By the way, both the international

17     and our constitutional laws are on our side."

18             THE ACCUSED: [Interpretation] For the transcript, I think it's

19     clear.  Izetbegovic wants to wage war.  Babic is playing into his hands.

20     I mean, playing into the hands of warmongering Izetbegovic, and this

21     reference is to the late Milan Babic who was in Krajina often because it

22     was close to him.  And as you will see during the trial he visited and

23     that was very difficult for us.  We had to put out the fire every time he

24     went there.  Babic is playing right into the hands of this warmonger

25     Izetbegovic:

Page 940

 1             "You tell our people from Krajina that I said to

 2     Alija Izetbegovic that he is preparing a war and that he is seeking

 3     assistance for a war.  Please give him this answer of ours.  Tell him

 4     there are forces in Bosnia that know that there cannot be a war if it

 5     doesn't come from above, and they need a pretext for war.  They want to

 6     blame someone else.  We should not give a pretext for war.  That is the

 7     most important thing.  International law and humanitarian law are on our

 8     side.  The basic thing is that we shouldn't do anything that should be a

 9     pretext for war."

10                           [Audiotape played]

11             THE INTERPRETER: "[Voiceover] The Muslims are strongly turning

12     against Alija's war intentions.  They have a republic.  They have

13     Yugoslavia.  No one sane will go to war.  Alija would like to go to war

14     to change that, and now Alija cannot explain to the Muslim people why he

15     would go to war.  The only thing that he needs now is an alibi for a war.

16     We should not help him achieve that."

17      THE ACCUSED: [Interpretation] This is a conversation between Professor Koljevic,

18   member of the Presidency, and Karadzic, where we say that our –- irresponsible

19   people should not make silly statements.  They won't do anything else.  We –-

20   that they shouldn't do anything that would be taken as an alibi for waging war.

21   So, we were working even on that level to make sure war would be avoided.

22             And now let us look at paragraphs 109 and 110 of the Prosecution

23     pre-trial brief.  This is how these two paragraphs treat the accused in

24     relation to the MUP.

25              "[In English] From the outset of the conflict, the MUP played a

Page 941

 1     significant role in establishing and maintaining Bosnian Serb authority

 2     over the territory and in implementing the common criminal purpose.

 3     Following the take-overs, the MUP took a lead role in disarming,

 4     arresting, rounding up, detaining, beating, killings, and expelling

 5     Muslims and Croats.

 6             "For months prior its division, Karadzic contemplated the

 7     division of the MUP as an essential component of the division of B and H

 8     and the realisation of the final goal 'to break off with Muslims and

 9     Croats forever.'"

10             [Interpretation] Well, that's what the Prosecution says about

11     Karadzic and Karadzic's wishes and intentions to create a MUP just like

12     that and in this way break up this idyll between the Muslims and the

13     Serbs.  And the Prosecution is actually trying to reconstruct Serb

14     intentions, as it were, on the basis of Serb behaviour.  Serb behaviour

15     is a response.  It's a reaction.  It is impermissible, it is impossible

16     to say that that is intention rather than reaction.  The SDA decides what

17     the Serbs are going to do.  It's not the Serbs who are deciding that, and

18     that's the way it was throughout.  From February 1991, after the

19     elections, the Serbs' hand was forced, if I can put it that way, and we

20     have to react to what they do, otherwise we will go down the drain.

21             Now let us look at our efforts to have a police.  We actually

22     asked the European Community for constituent units to have their

23     respective police forces.  This is an excerpt from the Lisbon

24     Agreement -- or, rather, the Cutileiro Plan.

25             [In English] "The statement of principles for new constitutional

Page 942

 1     arrangements for Bosnia and Herzegovina.

 2             "(D) The constituent units.

 3             "The civil service, the police, and the local judiciary and any

 4     national guard established by a constituent unit would reflect

 5     proportionally the national composition of the constituent unit."

 6             [Interpretation] From Ambassador Cutileiro and the

 7     European Community we got the right to our own police force.  It was only

 8     then, on the 28th of February, that we decided, the Assembly decided that

 9     we would have our own police force, but we did not establish it before

10     the 1st of April.  So our hand was forced, but nevertheless, the

11     Prosecution charges me that I did this in a premeditated fashion with the

12     intention of achieving something at some point in time.  Instead of

13     clearly seeing that this was caused by SDA behaviour.

14             Throughout that time, we were aware of the secret agreement

15     between Kucan, Tudjman, and Izetbegovic to go to war and we are aware of

16     the information to the effect that Izetbegovic was asked, in the second

17     half of 1991, why he did not go to war with Yugoslavia.  And he says, I

18     will, I will, but I'm just waiting for the right moment, that is the

19     moment when he is given encouragement.  And from mid-October onwards, he

20     does away with any possible solution for a peace -- a peaceful

21     settlement.

22             The OTP has a few cornerstones upon which they would like to

23     construct Serb guilt and Serb responsibility.  One of the things that the

24     OTP charges me with is the paper versions Variant A and B.

25     Unfortunately, that was not created within the SDS.  We did not discuss

Page 943

 1     it.  We did not adopt it.  And there are no traces of any such thing, and

 2     if that had happened, there would have been traces because of all our

 3     transcripts were seized.  Old officers, pensioned officers, when they

 4     realised what Martin Spegelj recommended to Croats, You go to one

 5     apartment, dum, dum, and you shoot him in the stomach, et cetera, et

 6     cetera.  When they saw that in Sarajevo their apartments were being

 7     marked and that an assassin may ring their doorbell and, bang, shoot them

 8     in the stomach, they therefore prepared some guidelines as to what should

 9     be done in order to prevent a war from happening, that kind of thing from

10     happening.

11             There is no political party and no person like Karadzic who could

12     do anything about it if there is chaos.  No one knows what they are going

13     to do.  So now let us see what this paper that I referred to says.

14             Paragraph 36:

15             "[In English] On or about 20th of December, 1992, at a meeting in

16     the Holiday Inn in Sarajevo, Karadzic distributed to the municipality

17     leaders instructions for the establishment of clandestine bodies, the

18     Serbian Crisis Staffs (A/B).  The confidential instructions established

19     the bodies that would be among the primary instruments through which

20     Karadzic and other members of BSL asserted control over territories and

21     removed non-Serbs."

22             [Interpretation] Look at what it says in this piece of paper.

23     It's the pensioned officers who actually provided this:

24             "In the implementation of all these measures ensure the respect

25     for the national and other rights of members of all peoples and

Page 944

 1     subsequently ensure their involvement in the administrative authorities

 2     to be set up by the Assembly of the Serb people in the municipality."

 3             Again we have to view all of this in the context of the

 4     conference, the Lisbon conference and the Cutileiro Plan.  We know that

 5     the SDA is going to try to derogate it by way of war.  This was envisaged

 6     to avoid war and to avoid chaos, and to preserve the heritage of the

 7     conference and to keep people out of harm's way.

 8             There is no need to emphasise to what extent the interests of

 9     others are being taken into account, especially by these officers who

10     were in favour of brotherhood and unit anyway.

11             The other cornerstone of the OTP are strategic objectives.

12     Strategic objectives were not adopted.  As a matter of fact, they were

13     just stated to the Assembly on the 12th of May, that they would be the

14     platform for the conference.  When it was clear that there would be a war

15     and that we would elect a Presidency, a Presidency was indeed elected,

16     and two members of the Presidency of Bosnia-Herzegovina, Mrs. Biljana

17     Plavsic and Mr. Nikola Koljevic, and the third one was yours truly,

18     elected to the Presidency by the Assembly.

19             We then stated what our position would be vis-a-vis the European

20     Community in continuing our efforts to resolve the crisis through

21     peaceful means.  Since there was a war on, we could no longer have

22     enclaves on a discontinuous basis because people would not dare live

23     there.  Something changed in the objectives -- or, rather, our position

24     changed vis-a-vis the negotiations with the European Community.

25             A month later, in June or July, the Presidency made a decision.

Page 945

 1     The strategic objectives were not made public yet, but then a decision

 2     was made to make them public and to send them to the European

 3     Community -- or, rather, the negotiators, together with the map.  So this

 4     is no secret document, secret piece of paper.  This is the terribly

 5     unfair judgement against Krajisnik.  This is what it says with regard to

 6     this matter:

 7             "It would be incorrect to place these goals on a pedestal, as the

 8     Prosecution does, for in the final analysis they are anodyne statements

 9     serving as official state policy and even qualifying for a publication in

10     the Bosnian Serb Republic's Official Gazette.  If one is inclined to find

11     them -- to find in them insidious hidden meanings, it is because of the

12     context and the events that followed.  An anachronistic reading of the

13     May goals is not only inadvisable, it misses the point.  Just as an

14     anachronistic reading of the December instructions," that's Variants A

15     and B, "misses the point.  The instructions and the goals lacked

16     substance and utility, but they did symbolise a new central authority at

17     a time when the old order had disintegrated."

18             This Chamber shows that we are right to reorganise when the old

19     system was collapsing and parts of this disintegrated system are flying

20     at us with the aim of destroying us.

21             So this paragraph deals with two cornerstones in the indictment

22     against me and it -- as far as both of them are concerned, the

23     Prosecution is not right, but although this judgement was made earlier

24     and in the final judgement this was not appealed, the Prosecution still

25     maintains that it could use this against me.

Page 946

 1             Now let's see, to wind up this area, how Lord Owen sees the

 2     situation who came to the Bosnia negotiations very anti-Serb in sentiment

 3     because he had the wrong information given to him, and he was soon to be

 4     surprised, as were indeed other people from the United Nations who came

 5     and thought the Serbs were brutal, but after a month or two they saw what was

 6     really going on.  This is what Lord Owen says in his book "Balkan Odyssey."

 7             "The image of unarmed Bosnian Muslims was not changed even when

 8     Alija Izetbegovic openly admitted on television that the Bosnian

 9     government had smuggled weapons through secret channels:  30.000 rifles

10     and machine-guns, 20 million bullets, 37.000 mines, 4.600 antitank rockets,

11     20.000 grenades, 90.000 uniforms, and 12.000 boots."

12             And I should like to add to that, from the Muslim sources in

13     Sarajevo there were 80.000 mines produced.  That is their confirmation.

14     In that same Sarajevo which was allegedly under siege and mistreated by

15     the Serb army, they had a factory in which they manufactured

16     80.000 mortars and mines.  And the -- but the Prosecution persists.  On

17     the basis of our reactions, panic and in defence, is trying to construe

18     this and present it as being something that we had planned a long time

19     ago; whereas in actual fact we were responding to the challenges of

20     Hasan Cengic and others, the ones they laid in our path, according to the

21     Islamic Declaration as a pretext for chaos, because they said, We can't

22     wait for natural pretexts and causes, we must construct our own.

23             Now, the SDS -- how would the Serbs, the SDS, under regular conditions

24     have reacted and regular conditions would have been secured by the acceptance

25     of new agreements, which the Serbs offered or accepted if they had been made

Page 947

 1     by others.  What would have happened in those regular circumstances?  How could

 2     they have thought of, let alone planned, separating parts of Bosnia-Herzegovina

 3     that they considered to be Serbian?  The Prosecution skips over that and asks

 4     the following question: how did the SDS dare engage in the said activities,

 5     when it was impossible to do this peacefully due to the ethnic mixture?

 6             Now, this ethnic mixture is true for the SDA too.  They, too, did

 7     not dare and should not have engaged in forcible secession from Yugoslavia

 8     because we are so ethnically mixed.  So we were not in favour of stepping down

 9     from Yugoslavia, stepping out from Yugoslavia, but if they left Yugoslavia,

10     and took us out with them too, then we wanted to secure our positions in

11     Bosnia, as we're all a mixed-up population there, you see.

12             Now we have a well-known session held on the 24th of January, and

13     this accused is advocating that the agreement with Cengic about

14     regionalisation should be accepted.  It could have been done within a

15     fortnight, by the end of January, and at the end of February there's a

16     referendum.  And here's what I say:  I say that I and all of us can now

17     imagine what would have happen, gentlemen, if, God forbid, unrest were to

18     break out between the ethnic groups and have a religious war in

19     Bosnia-Herzegovina.  And we can draw it on the board.  The Serbs would

20     flee from Muslim areas, and the Muslims from Serb areas.  The Croats

21     would go to their own regions.  There would be a lot of shooting along

22     the way.  Cities would tumble.  There would be bloodshed up to our knees.

23     And where would we be then?  The same place we are now.  The Serbs in

24     Serb regions, the Muslims in Muslim regions, and the Croats in Croatian

25     regions, homogenous.

Page 948

 1             And what need we do then?  We would once again have to sit down

 2     to the negotiating table and to put three signatures to an agreement,

 3     because without three signatures to an agreement there's no solution to

 4     Bosnia-Herzegovina.  And here's the proof of it:  On the 24th of January

 5     this accused here says it is clear to one and all, and it was clear to

 6     him, too, that there was no fait accompli, but -- and we're talking about

 7     January 1992, a month before the referendum.

 8             Now, where is this common criminal purpose or joint criminal enterprise

 9     that this accused stands accused of along with his associates?  Where is it?

10     When we say: "We are going to have this and this.  Unless we reach an agreement,

11     we will have such and such."  We don’t want that.  And there's another portion

12     where this accused says: "Let us avoid having the situation slip out of our

13     control.  We are the ones who control order.  We cannot bridle chaos."

14             So those are matters which guided us the -- in seeking from

15     Cutileiro to enable us to have our police force, and it was accepted.

16             Now, I'd like to draw your attention to the following.  Let's

17     take a look at Sarajevo itself.  This is the broader area around

18     Sarajevo.  The green line is -- or, rather, the blue line is the Serbs,

19     and where it says "HVO," that area there, on the one hand -- facing us we

20     have the HVO, on the other side we have the Muslims and then there's us.

21     So we are being encircled by them.  We are under their siege.

22             May I be allowed to get up to show you this on the map.

23             This is the Sarajevo area, broader area.  We'll explain this

24     later on, but these are Serb territories and they're under Serb control.

25     Not all of them but some of them are.

Page 949

 1             Now, part of the Serb territory is surrounded by Croatian and

 2     Muslim forces.  So we are also under siege.  This is the city proper, and

 3     we have a divided town, and you'll see why the Serbs are around Sarajevo,

 4     located around Sarajevo.

 5             Let's go back to the ethnic map -- or, rather, let's have the

 6     ethnic map of Sarajevo put up on our screens, please.

 7             THE INTERPRETER:  Microphone, please.

 8             THE ACCUSED: [Interpretation] It was compiled by the same

 9     institute as the Bosnia map earlier on, but this is the city of Sarajevo,

10     and you can see the borders.  The white -- thin white line is the city

11     proper, the inner city.  The blue are the settlements and districts where

12     the Serbs were in a significant majority, and the light blue areas where

13     they were a relative majority.

14             So this was the city of Sarajevo, entirely Serb.  As you can see,

15     it was the property of the Pavlovic family, the squires.  When the Turks

16     arrived, the family was destroyed, but the Serbs remained living in and

17     around Sarajevo, and for a long time they were the majority population in

18     Sarajevo.

19             When the war broke out, the Serbs managed to protect this area in

20     the centre of town.

21             May we zoom into that and see the front line there.  I can't see

22     that on my screen.  Do I have it?

23             Now we can see that the Serbs have succeeded in protecting part

24     of town, and it's the well-known settlement -- Serb settlement of

25     Grbavica on the left bank of the Miljacka River.  On the right bank,

Page 950

 1   Pofalici, a Serb settlement, was one they did not succeed in defending, and by

 2   15 May there was not a single house standing, nor a single person left alive

 3   there.  More than 250 people were killed, in the middle of the city and well

 4   within the range of Mr. Izetbegovic’s authorities.  Mladic's house was there

 5   as well.  Luckily his family managed to escape but the whole area was destroyed.

 6             Now, Your Excellencies, take a look at this.  The Serbs here are

 7     only controlling their own parts, their own parts of town, that's all.

 8     The city proper and the surrounding parts.  And those Serb territories

 9     are located under a Muslim siege, surrounded by Muslim forces, the

10     Muslim-Croatian Army.

11             Now I'd like to ask you to focus on the Hadzici municipality in

12     the lower left-hand corner.  Can we zoom into the Hadzici, please.  It's

13     on the other map, the left-hand corner.  The Prosecutor says that the

14     Serbs took over control of Hadzici, where they were in the minority.  It

15     was true that we were the minority, but all this green area to the very

16     left, to the extreme left, is Hadzici municipality which the Serbs were

17     not in control of.  The Serbs only controlled the Serbian part of

18     Hadzici.  And throughout Bosnia-Herzegovina, wherever they say or write

19     that the Serbs had assumed control over such and such a municipality in

20     which they were a minority, that is just not true.  It's not correct.

21     All the Serbs were in control of was the Serb portion of the

22     municipalities.

23             Then it says "Hrasnica" down there, number 5.  Number 5 is

24     Hrasnica.  Half of Hrasnica is half of Ilidza municipality.  The Serbs

25     only controlled the Serb half of that municipality, the Ilidza

Page 951

 1     municipality.  They never attempted to take control of Hrasnica.  Can you

 2     see that?  I think you can see number 5.  Number 5 is Hrasnica on this

 3     map.  And opposite Hrasnica to the right is Lukavica, Dobrinja, and so on

 4     and so forth.

 5             So in actual fact we didn't control any Muslim settlement nor did

 6     we attempt do so; whereas the Muslims did control significant Serb areas,

 7     and nobody remained alive there in mid-May.  The people had to flee those

 8     regions.

 9             Now, the truth set in stone or marble that Sarajevo wasn't under

10     a siege is true.  The truth of it is it was a divided city, both the city

11     proper and the area around it.  And on this map we can see the city

12     proper, and we see the front lines, which are being held at 100 to

13     200 metres between each other, and sometimes the distance between them is

14     just 15 metres.  Sometimes in one flat you have the Muslims, in the next

15     you have the Serbs.  And the front line runs right through the building.

16             I would like to be allowed to get up again and approach the

17     screen so that I can explain this to you using the map.

18             This is my city.  I've spent 50 years of my life living in it.

19     This is Grbavica.  This is the Miljacka River going across this area.

20     The Serbs protected Grbavica because it was a majority population over

21     there.

22             THE INTERPRETER:  Could the accused kindly be provided with a

23     microphone.  Thank you.

24             JUDGE KWON:  Mr. Karadzic, could you start again with your

25     microphone on.

Page 952

 1             THE ACCUSED: [Interpretation] Now we see the front line, and the

 2     front line follows along and stretches -- well, the two lines run

 3     alongside each other.  The red line contains the Muslim and Serb front

 4     line.  We are adjacent to each other there.  And when somebody says a

 5     Serb shell, and you will hear from Prosecution witnesses, all they can

 6     say is the direction the shell came from.  Now, who's going to say, if

 7     you look at this, what were legitimate targets in this area, in the old

 8     part of town?  What were the legitimate targets that the Serb side had

 9     the right to respond to?  I'd like to ask you to focus on this area.  We

10     still don't have the entire map and we will in due course when the trial

11     gets going, but look at all the schools and nurseries that were

12     transferred into military premises, turned into military premises.

13             The nursery called Pcelica, kindergarten Pcelica, in the

14     Svetozar Markovic area, it was the command post of the 105th Brigade, a

15     Military Police battalion.  In a kindergarten, mark you.  So that is the

16     city that was helpless and innocent, and there were always three times

17     more soldiers than in the Serbian Romanija Corps.  They always had three

18     times the manpower that we did.  Here you have the command post of the

19     105th Mountain Brigade, as I said, the Razija Omanovic primary school

20     this time.  This is the old city core, the old part of town called

21     Bascarsija, dating back to Turkish times, and we're being shot at from there,

22     and we're suffering losses.  And you'll be able to see that there were

23     also mortars on this bank over here, above the brewery, which were most

24     probably used to shoot at Markale, because that's the general axis, the

25     direction from which the shells are coming towards that part of town.

Page 953

 1             I think that you have that in the lists, that that is listed.

 2     It's somewhere around there, in the Bistrik area.

 3             Fire positions, Bistrik area, Bistrik street, mortars, a battery

 4     of mortars.  So it's a slope facing town, facing their positions.  We

 5     were behind them and -- to the south.  And if you hold that position you

 6     can shoot at any part of town whenever you feel like it.

 7             Now look at this very narrow part of town.  How many legitimate

 8     targets there are.  This -- these are 10 per cent of the legitimate

 9     targets that were -- 10 per cent of what we're going to show as being

10     legitimate targets, but we are going to show the abuse of hospitals,

11     schools, kindergartens turned into military facilities.  Here we have the

12     command of the 152nd Mountain Brigade which is a foreign language school

13     in Vaso Miskin Street.  It's been renamed now but it's the same street

14     where there was that explosion in the bread line on the 27th of May,

15     1992.

16             Here we have the command post of the military police.  Here we

17     have Bascarsija, the Old Town centre.  And downstream from there, to the

18     left -- could you zoom in to the left.  Can we move to Skenderija,

19     opposite Skenderija.  There we have Dositejeva Street.  Pan left.  Pan

20     left a bit more.  Upstream.  Here we have the command post of the 105th,

21     and it's the Sipad building, a civilian facility turned into a military

22     facility.  And if, from a flat roof of that building, they shot at us and

23     we returned fire, they would portray this as nonselective shelling of the

24     town by the Serb army.

25             This is a logistics base on the Dositejeva Street, now called

Page 954

 1     Branislava Djurdjeva number 2.  This is a helicopter fleet in the centre

 2     of Sarajevo.  This is a first-rate legitimate military target.

 3             Here we see Marin Dvor, which is in the Old Town.  Immediately

 4     next to it is Holiday Inn hotel where foreign journalists were residing.

 5     And around this area was the stage of all these stage-managed events and

 6     shells.  For example, if you look at the Catholic cathedral, this was the

 7     logistics base of the 105th Mountain Brigade.  Right next to the church.

 8     This is the street that leads to Vrbanja bridge.  There's a firing

 9     position, a mortar firing position on -- at the corner of this street.

10     So you see these firing positions in the centre of the town.

11             Also, 12.7 was a submachine -- or machine-gun nest in the centre

12     of the town.  This is a sniper position at the corner of the streets

13     Gundulica and Branimira Cosica.

14             Now we're going to see how many schools and kindergartens were

15     used -- abused.  This is a faculty near Vrbanja, and that's what we see a

16     minute ago.

17             Now, the museum building had a firing position as well in it.  We

18     were being shot from that position, and we had to respond, and we were

19     accused of firing at the museum.  12.7.  So if we are attacking this

20     position, we were accused of firing indiscriminately at Sarajevo.

21             There is a footage where Mladic says, "Turn the weapons at

22     Velesici.  There no Serbs there."  But the one firing knows what the

23     targets are.  The targets are legitimate targets, because we know that

24     there were legitimate targets in Velesici.  It was a firing position of

25     the 101st, Centrotrans Buca Potok, and there was a maintenance repair

Page 955

 1     shop for armored vehicles.

 2             Now, the building of the transport institute, which was another

 3     legitimate target, this is a forward command post in Velesici, in the

 4     auto repair shop.  And when Mladic says, "Target Velesici," he is not

 5     referring to civilian facilities.  He is referring to legitimate targets.

 6     On the other hand, the OTP thinks that although we know what it was all

 7     about we had to say a false sentence, fire at the car repair shop in

 8     Velesici which is the command post.  This is not how this is being done.

 9             The Kosevo Hospital now, the OTP witnesses are going to confirm

10     that they riddled it with bullets from their own weapons, and this is a

11     legitimate target in the yard of the Kosevo Hospital which belonged to

12     the 105th Brigade.

13             Now, this is the physical education faculty which is a university

14     facility also abused, and there's another faculty building of the civil

15     engineering which was occupied by the 105th Brigade.

16             The Vuk Karadzic elementary school.  I don't believe it's call

17     that any longer.  Karadzic was an ancestor of mine who was born in Serbia

18     who carried out the reform of the Serbian culture and Serbian alphabet.

19             I think this was enough.  Now, I would like to enumerate for you

20     things that can be said with relation to Sarajevo.  So overall, Sarajevo was

21     build on the Serb-owned land.  For a long time it was populated by majority of

22     Serbs.  All the settlements around Sarajevo, and some of its neighbourhoods

23     have always been majority Serb.  Some quarters in the city centre had a Serb

24     majority before the war, and before the Second World War, all of Sarajevo,

25     and some neighbourhoods in particular, were almost 100 per cent Serb.

Page 956

 1       Before the breakout of this war and with regard to the conference on Bosnia-

 2  Herzegovina, the Serbian side did not propose a division, but a transformation of

 3  the town, on the model of Brussels.  We were saying that Bosnia and Herzegovina

 4  should be reorganized like Switzerland.  This meant cantonization after the Swiss

 5  model.  For Sarajevo, not division, but transformation similar to the one carried

 6  out in Brussels.  As you know, there are 17 boroughs in Brussels.  None of them

 7  are mixed.  They're either Flemish or Walloon.  That is how conflicts are avoided.

 8  But yet it is only the Balkan peoples who are being asked to try to live in a

 9  melting pot that will be pregnant with needless anxiety and tensions and conflicts.

10  So, the request was to transform Sarajevo so that each community had its own

11  borough and thus to remove at least one of the reasons for tensions.

12             This precludes any intention of terrorising the town.

13             Your Excellencies, in the map that you saw, we didn't have

14     professional army.  These were the people living 50 metres from the front

15     line.  They had nowhere to escape.  They had to fight 50 metres from their

16     own home.  They were sleeping in their homes.  They were not billeted in

17     barracks.  These were people's army.  They had to fight for Sarajevo.

18     Had the war been avoided, Sarajevo would have been transformed into several

19     municipalities, and each municipality would take care of its own affairs.

20             The so-called gerrymandering was carried out in the whole of

21     Bosnia-Herzegovina, including Sarajevo.  Gerry Mander [sic] was a master

22     of election manipulation.  He managed to establish such constituencies so

23     that weaker parties would win the elections, and this phenomenon of

24     gerrymandering was very much present in Bosnia-Herzegovina.  For example,

25     Hrasnica was attached to Ilidza so that the Serbs would not have their

Page 957

 1     own municipality.  Rajlovac, the place where Mr. Krajisnik hailed, used

 2     to be a municipality, was attached to Novi Grad where Serbs became a

 3     minority, and any development of Rajlovac was halted.

 4             We are going to demonstrate to you this gerrymandering process

 5     applied in the whole of Bosnia which rendered Serbian areas totally

 6     devastated.  So the plan for Sarajevo was to be reorganised

 7     administratively, and it was necessary anyway to make smaller

 8     municipalities.  Previously there were enormous municipalities and nobody

 9     could do anything without resorting to bribe.  Even without the war and

10     without the crisis this should have been done.

11             Sarajevo was composed of ten municipalities before the war.  The

12     Serbs only had control in Serbian municipalities, and in Muslim majority

13     municipalities, they only controlled Serbian neighbourhoods.  If we can

14     have back the map with the front line.  I have it on my screen.  Yes.

15             To the far left is Pale, and this is Renovica.  The Muslim

16     municipality of Pale was something that we never tried to take and place

17     under our control.  So to the far right.  Yes, yes, to the far right.

18             The part of the town controlled by the SDA police and army was

19     taken over by the 1st Corps of the BH Army and later by the

20     12th Division.  They had between 35.000 and 80.000 troops.  There were

21     also legitimate targets.  Kindergarten Pcelica; elementary school Beta

22     Isakovic [phoen]; Pira's [phoen] cafe; Pastrema [phoen]; Ferhadija, which

23     is a foreign language school; military police on Marsala Tita Street.

24     Sipad, also a civilian facilities.  Flats in the well-known elite

25     Carrington building was a legitimate target because it was full of army

Page 958

 1     troops, mortars, and other lethal and combat assets.  PAM was -- a PAM

 2     was on Vrbanja Most, which is a mortar.  So during the trial we are going

 3     to establish very precisely and tell you an absolute truth about all

 4     these targets were located.

 5             The United Nations are going to say that never in Sarajevo it was

 6     the Serbs who started fighting.  We kept saying, Let us wait for a

 7     political solution with the sole purpose of saving people's lives.

 8             The Muslims boasted that this internal line towards the city

 9     proper was at the beginning of war 42 kilometres long.  By the end of

10     war, they boasted of this having extended to 60 kilometres.  If you take

11     into account that this was urban warfare, to advance 22 kilometres in

12     city warfare is a clear indication who was attacking in Sarajevo and who

13     was defending themselves in Sarajevo.

14             In Bosnia and in Sarajevo, Serbs never wanted to capture more

15     territories.  Quite the contrary.  They were prepared to return many important

16     territories for the sake of peace.  We never did anything in the town that was

17     contrary to our interests, and our interest was to revive the peace process

18     and to acquire and accomplish three signatures that would spell a peaceful

19     solution.  There was never intentional shelling.  We are going to prove here

20     that all massive killings were the result of a cunning strategy as called by

21     Sefer Halilovic of Izetbegovic's policy.  This was war trick -- these were war

22     tricks aimed at bringing in foreign troops and foreign intervention.  And you

23     remember what a judge said in 1983: "What the Young Muslims want can only

24     be achieved through terror or by foreign intervention."  The SDA failed to

25     manage to achieve that through terror.  They tried to maintain terror and

Page 959

 1     to invite foreign intervention.  All the mediators will tell you that

 2     everything that happened on Bosnia-Herzegovina that was done by the

 3     Muslim side was with the purpose of drawing in NATO and Western countries

 4     into war on their side.

 5             I am convinced that regardless of all the reforms and innovations

 6     in the international jurisprudence, the principle in dubio pro reo is

 7     still valid.  It is sufficient for us that we know that we can prove that

 8     they did shell their own people and that they did kill all their own people

 9     from snipers, to demand from the OTP to prove that this was done by the Serbs.

10     We don't need to prove that this was done by the Muslims.  Once there is

11     evidence that they did that or they did that as well, then we have to

12     identify which killings were not committed by them and to prove that they

13     were committed by Serbs.

14             Our retaliation, and I think that my letter to General

15     Milovanovic is quoted, where I say that foreign observers are not blaming

16     us for retaliation, but they are just objecting to the number of mortar

17     shells that we are using, and my response was they have more troops but

18     that we had better weapons and I really criticised our side for doing

19     that, but it turned out that that was not exactly true.  The fact remains

20     that somebody who didn't have enough troops could retaliate with more

21     mortar shells.

22             You will see from a Presidency session held around the 10th of July

23     that we said, we must reduce the shelling, but in order to do that, we have

24     to bring a brigade from Krajina.  We have to maintain a strategic balance,

25     otherwise the people would vanish.  It is said in the minutes, Yes, we are

Page 960

 1     going to reduce the shelling, but we have to bring a brigade from the Krajina

 2     in order to enable these people to defend themselves.  This is not a war

 3     between armies, this is the war between peoples.  Wherever the SDA army trod,

 4     there was nothing left alive.  Everything was burned to the ground.

 5             The war in Sarajevo lasted for about 1200 days, whereas in the

 6     Biblical apocalypse the number is 1260.

 7             The city was never under blockade when it was not necessary in

 8     military terms.  You will see when we talk about the Croats from Bosnia

 9     confirming that units were able to enter and exit Sarajevo as they

10     pleased, and you can see from the BH Army orders that a certain brigade

11     should be returned from Igman to the city, etc.

12             Concerning transportation, it was I who proposed at the beginning

13     of war for Sarajevo to become an open city and to be under the control of

14     the UN.  Izetbegovic did not accept that.  He wanted to have influence on

15     the international community, to use emotional blackmail, stirring up

16     emotions, and thereby provoke intervention.

17           We thought that any restrictions imposed should pertain only to military

18     transports.  However, the Sarajevo criminals never allowed commercial traffic,

19     because the prices on the black market would fall if that happened, and they

20     were earning their living from this there, and made a lot of money from it.

21        If you look at the city proper, which was under control of the SDA army, did

22  not get a single drop of water, not a single cubic metre of gas, a single kilowatt

23  of electricity that hadn't crossed the Serbian territory first.  We never deprived

24  them of anything of that sort intentionally.  How can you call this terrorising

25  the city?  Whenever we had a little water, we shared it with them?  All the wells

Page 961

 1  are in the Serbian territory, and we shared these water sources with them.

 2             There is a letter in which I'm writing to our generals, and they

 3     were resentful over the fact that we were allowing all the humanitarian

 4     aid to pass through that was distributed only to Muslims and not to Serbs

 5     later on, we received maybe one-third or one-fourth, where the accused

 6     said that the civilians were not our opponents or our enemies.  We are

 7     not going to wage war by using water and food.

 8             Your Excellencies, in this area between Hrasnica and this narrow

 9     passage on the front line is an airfield that we handed over to the

10     United Nations in July 1992.  Over 10.000 humanitarian flights landed at

11     this airfield without a single incident from the Serbian side.  They shot

12     at the planes occasionally in order to blame us.

13             Ten thousand humanitarian flights, is that terrorising a city?  That

14     is what the Serbian side ensured, and it is we who held the airport, and we

15     handed it over to the United Nations.  Thousands of convoys of humanitarian

16     aid entered Sarajevo through Serb territory.  Trucks and the like.  The

17     documentation of General Wahlgren, Mr. Akashi and others will show you that

18     the incident with convoys were only due to irregularities caused by the convoys

19     themselves.  That is what Wahlgren explains in his letter and that is confirmed

20     by the representatives of the UN.  They say, Serbs do not make any problems

21     regarding convoys, but if there is an extra truck or goods that have not been

22     declared in the bill of entry, then they make a problem.

23             This has to do with simple military reasoning.  The soldier has a list

24     of approved goods, and if something is not in line with the list provided,

25     then he says it can’t go through.  Another way to create an incident involving

Page 962

 1     a humanitarian convoy for CNN and the like, and there would always be TV

 2     crews there: a convoy would show up unannounced at a crossing.  There would

 3     be a soldier who was not informed, and soldiers did not have the authority

 4     to be creative and flexible, as it were.  The convoy would be announced at

 5     one bridge and then they would appear at another bridge, and the guard there

 6     would not know a thing about it.

 7             So this is our town.  200.000 Serbs live there.  Almost

 8     30.000 declared themselves as Yugoslavs, but almost all of them were

 9     Serbs.  It's a Serb city as well.  I lived that city of my own free will

10     because I loved the city.  I love it to this day, and we're never going

11     to give up on it.  We have our own part of town.  Had our proposal been

12     accepted, that it be declared an open city, there would have been no

13     casualties.  Had the transformation of municipalities been agreed to,

14     Serbs, Croats and Muslims, see the brown colour here, all the way up to

15     Ilidza, there would be peace and prosperity.  However, a policy that

16     wanted to have 100 per cent authority in 100 per cent of Bosnia against

17     the Christian majority led to what it led to.  And the Prosecution

18     believes that we did not have any right whatsoever to protect ourselves

19     or that we had no right to defend ourselves.

20             I would now like to draw your attention to something that I'm

21     going to read out, an excerpt from General Rose's book.  He says the

22     reports of the French were a lot more serious.

23             THE INTERPRETER:  Interpreters note, we do not have the text.

24             THE ACCUSED: [Interpretation] "...that the Muslim troops in the city

25     were firing at their own citizens.  This was a rule rather than an exception.

Page 963

 1     Bosnian brigadier Hajrulahovic, nicknamed Italian, and General Jovan Divjak

 2     were the persons I told that the first examination of the crater of the bomb

 3     that had exploded in Markale -- rather grenade, showed that it was fired from

 4     the Bosnian side.  The room fell silent and Hajrulahovic looked at me in a

 5     hostile way.  I added that the angle of the shell trajectory proved that it

 6     had been fired from a very short distance or perhaps it was planted on the

 7     spot and activated.  Then I asked him why they moved parts of this."

 8             JUDGE KWON:  Given that the interpreters do not have that script,

 9     could you slow down.

10             THE ACCUSED: [Interpretation] I do apologise.

11             Then I asked him why they had removed some parts of the exploded

12     shell before the UN forces had arrived on the spot.

13             You will see, Excellencies, that this Prosecution calls as their

14     witnesses and expert witnesses from the UN people who are not those who

15     are the first to arrive on the scene.  We don't see their findings.  They

16     call a man who came 40 minutes after the incident, in August 1995, and

17     seven days after the incident in 1994.  When we ask these people what the

18     best time is for investigating this kind of incident, they say the very

19     next minute.  Right after the incident.  That is to say that the first to

20     arrive on the scene stand the best chance of providing accurate findings.

21             The OTP has mislaid or put away those documents or persons who

22     were the first to arrive on the scene, because obviously they don't like

23     their findings.

24             Lord David Owen in his book "The Balkan Odyssey" says, and I

25     quote --

Page 964

 1             THE INTERPRETER:  Interpreter's note again we don't have the

 2     original document.

 3             THE ACCUSED: [Interpretation] The Muslim government prevented the

 4     departure of their own people through internal obstacles and bureaucratic

 5     red tape.  It was the army, not the government, saying that able-bodied

 6     men were not allowed to leave, between the ages and 18 and 45, that is,

 7     as well as women -- or, rather, up until the age of 65 and women up until

 8     the age of 60 because they were in indispensable for the defence of the

 9     city.  However, their main reason was different.

10             The Serb siege in the propaganda war led to the compassion of the

11     world.  Therefore, it was necessary for the elderly and children to

12     remain there.  That was their most emotional propaganda weapon in order

13     to draw the Americans into the war, because they didn't want to get

14     weaker in any way.

15             Furthermore -- so that was the objective, to draw the Americans

16     and NATO into the war.  That is what had to do with the shelling of

17     Sarajevo.

18             At one point General Rose says it would be a lot easier if they

19     did not fire at their own people, at their own population.  The war would

20     end a lot quicker.

21             We're not talking about in dubio pro reo.  We have proof that

22     they did that kind of thing.  You saw the footage yesterday of the empty

23     marketplace.  You also saw footage of preparations that led to that

24     incident.  I am truly surprised not only at the life sentence imposed on

25     General Galic but also by the fact that the OTP continued to use that in

Page 965

 1     the indictments against General Milosevic, myself, et cetera.  Therefore,

 2     we have to be aware of the fact that it would be a very good thing if the

 3     Trial Chamber would instruct the OTP to have a good look at the

 4     indictment yet again and to see what -- what the detriment is when there

 5     are proceedings only against one side, the weaker one at that, one that

 6     was on the defensive all the time, that awaited a political solution.

 7     How can that side be declared the belligerent side, the aggressive side,

 8     and a terrorist against their own city from which 80 per cent of the

 9     Serbian population had been expelled into the suburbs.

10             I believe that if they were to have a careful look at all the

11     material they have available, they would not only withdraw the indictment

12     against me, but they would even ask for a review of the judgements

13     against my generals Galic and Milosevic, in order to save the idea of

14     international justice, to save the idea of courts of this nature.

15       The idea of international justice stands a grave chance of being compromised

16   altogether.  If these proceedings continue, I shall prove what it was that happened

17   in Bosnia-Herzegovina.  You will see that it is primarily part of the international

18   community that is responsible.  First and foremost the SDA, but they could not have

19   done a thing had they not had the encouragement to opt for all or nothing, nothing

20   for the Serbs and the Croats, later on it was nothing for the Croats too, and all for

21   the Islamic fundamentalists, allegedly the Muslim people, but the Muslim people would

22   not have gained anything from this, because the fundamentalists' idea of the

23   structure of power is still Ottoman rather than democratic.  You would still have

24   agas and beys, Silajdzic and others, who would be the sole benefactors of such a

25   regime as they would have established.  I mean, they would impose that kind of

Page 966

 1     regime and they would be the ones who would get all the benefits.

 2             Do we have more time before the break or --

 3             JUDGE KWON:  We can go on for five minutes, but if you wish, we

 4     can take a break now.

 5             THE ACCUSED: [Interpretation] Well, I thought that perhaps I had

 6     said enough about general matters concerning Sarajevo, because during the

 7     proceedings we shall be dealing with Sarajevo in detail.

 8             This Defence does not agree with the approach taken by the OTP

 9     that some Serbs killed some Muslims.  We want to know exactly what

10     happened.  I still don't have regular forensic material for Markale 1,

11     for Markale 2, for the bread line in Vasa Miskin.  For other incidents of

12     mass suffering.  I am convinced that in Markale 1 and Markale 2 perhaps

13     there weren't any civilian casualties at all.  Perhaps it is corpses that

14     were planted throughout.  And the representatives of the UN are going to

15     confirm here that their predecessors had warned them to be very careful

16     about this kind of planting of bodies throughout Sarajevo with a view to

17     accusing the Serb side for that.

18             How are we going to deal with this since we cannot count on

19     objective investigations of an investigating judge, we cannot count on

20     the modesty of the OTP, that they should take care as to what they're

21     doing.  We can count on you only and you alone.  The Trial Chamber is

22     going to prevent this kind of trickery or planting, and not allow the

23     codification of lies and tricks that are supposed to remain in the

24     history of our people as some kind of truth.

25             We saw yesterday what happened in Markale.  It is only someone

Page 967

 1     who wishes to believe that that can believe that, and even that with

 2     great difficulty.  If you think straight, you see that the Serbs did

 3     not do it.  You see that it was staged.  But do you realise what

 4     that does to the people down there, to the Serbs and the Muslims?  We're

 5     going to talk about Srebrenica today as well.  We are going to see what

 6     these false myths and false victims do to the souls of the ordinary

 7     people who cannot penetrate the essence of the matter.  We have to see

 8     what this is going to do to the future and what kind of seed of future

 9     hatred and suffering has been sown in this way for our children and

10     grandchildren.  Whoever believes this, who codifies these things, saying

11     that the Serbs did something that they never did, whoever does that

12     ensured the continuation of further conflicts and slaughters.  Whenever

13     there is a crisis in the world, as has been the case so far, it always

14     turns out into a -- turns out be a fratricidal war as well.

15             Perhaps I could stop at this point.

16             JUDGE KWON:  We'll break for half an hour.

17                           --- Recess taken at 11.59 a.m.

18                           --- On resuming at 12.32 p.m.

19             JUDGE KWON:  Yes, Mr. Karadzic.

20             THE ACCUSED:  Thank you, Excellency.

21             [Interpretation] I'd like now to recapitulate -- or, rather,

22     summarise the facts and enumerate them with respect to the first joint

23     criminal enterprise.  I'd like to draw your attention, to have you focus

24     on some facts that we shall be dealing with and easily prove during this

25     trial.  I will deal with everything I said in my opening statement, and I

Page 968

 1     dealt with matters that I would easily be able to prove during the trial.

 2             The forcible removal of Bosnian Muslims and Croats was never our

 3     plan, to begin with.  Not ever.  It was never in our minds, let alone

 4     plans, let alone putting that into practice, and I have been saying over

 5     the past two days what proposals the Serbs made, what agreements the

 6     Serbs agreed to which absolutely excluded any joint criminal enterprise

 7     or common criminal purpose, especially the expulsion of Muslims and

 8     Croats from Republika Srpska.

 9             We said that we always wanted to live together with the Muslims.

10     We entreated them to remain in Yugoslavia, but that we couldn't agree to

11     come under a Muslim fundamentalist regime in Bosnia, and there's no doubt

12     about the fact that it was such a regime because Mr. Izetbegovic's

13     Islamic Declaration was to be at the core of their constitution.

14             All the agreements, let me remind you, from the five peace plans put

15   forward, this accused agreed to four of them.  We reduced to the maximum our

16   wishes and desires and goals in order to avoid war.  We bore them down to the

17   very minimum.  And I want to remind you of another fact set in stone or marble,

18   this marble fact as I refer to it.  There was never a time when some conference

19   on Bosnia and Herzegovina was not in force, at least as of February 1992.  Now,

20   let's see what the Serb side was doing and what the Muslim side was doing.

21             The Serb side is bona fides negotiating, and whereas it is taking

22     counter measures of a protective type, should the negotiations fall

23     through, should they be tricked, should we be tricked and deceived.  Now,

24     the Prosecution considers that we did not have the right to be cautious

25     when trickery was afoot and then says Karadzic, yes, he did negotiate,

Page 969

 1     but he had a back-up plan.  Well, what kind of politician would I be had

 2     I not had a back-up plan, had I not had a reserve plan when I knew who I

 3     was dealing with.  But I didn't -- this back-up plan was not my priority.

 4     My priority was negotiation and agreement through negotiation.

 5             The SDA did quite the reverse.  They falsely negotiated, and they

 6     left traces that they engaged in false negotiation, whereas bona fides

 7     they were preparing for a war.  So the reverse position, and it was God

 8     who saved us, not to have gone under in a situation of that kind, where

 9     we were negotiating in good faith and were preparing countermeasures in

10     case something went wrong.

11             Now I'm going to put to you an example of what happened in the

12     municipalities.  In all the municipalities, agreements were underway

13     about the transformation of those municipalities into two or three

14     municipalities, depending on whether there was a Croat population or two

15     Muslim sets of people or whatever.

16             When the Prosecution says that, "as soon as they took over the

17     municipality," now, where would we -- who would we take the municipality

18     from?  From ourselves, of course, for who would we take the Serbian

19     municipalities from, if not from ourselves?  We were in power over there. 

20     We couldn’t take over the municipality.  And I think in paragraph 105, it is,

21     that I've remembered the number correctly, where the Prosecution states that

22     they dismissed people, dismissed Muslims from the police or whatever.

23             Now let's see what really happened.  There were Serb municipalities

24     such as Sanski Most, Kljuc, Prijedor, and so on and so forth, but as for

25     Bijeljina, it doesn't say "Serb municipality."  For Banja Luka it doesn't say

Page 970

 1     Serb municipality, Pale either.  Why?  Because there are no conditions for it

 2     to become a Muslim municipality.  So where it says Serb municipality, the

 3     agreement was that it would be a Muslim municipality too.  If a Serb

 4     municipality had a Serb police force, then negotiations were underway for

 5     the Muslims to go to join up with the Muslim police station.  So that was

 6     the source of what it says here, that the Serbs dismissed people.

 7             Why weren't the Muslims dismissed from the Bijeljina police

 8     force, Gradiska, Banja Luka?  Why were they not dismissed anywhere

 9     elsewhere you didn't have a Serb municipality?  Not only policemen but

10     every institution which needed -- which wasn't at the level of the town

11     but every Muslim municipality, negotiations were underway.  And if it

12     says Serb municipality, then that means that the services were divided

13     there into two municipalities.  If it didn't say Serb municipality, let

14     them show me where it is we dismissed someone from, say, Banja Luka or

15     Bijeljina, and we will have a witness coming in, a Muslim from Bijeljina

16     who worked in the police force for as long as he wanted to.  Everybody

17     knew he was a Muslim.  Nobody killed him.

18             Yes, Muslims and Serbs were killed in Bijeljina but the

19     difference between that is who held the gun.  That's the exclusive

20     difference.  So you were able to see from Rabija Subic's letter to

21     Izetbegovic, where he is calling upon the fact that he should implement

22     agreements achieved by the Serbs and Muslims in Vlasenica and Bratunac

23     all over Bosnia, that they would have two municipalities side by side and

24     that they would live in peace without interfering with each other.

25             Now, this process of negotiation which served to preserve peace

Page 971

 1     and excluded any kind of population resettlement and transference was

 2     brutally interrupted by the SDA party using all resources including the

 3     directive for combat readiness straight away, as of the 12th of April.

 4     And then pursuant to instructions and orders of the SDA of the

 5     12th of April, all the military-able population was on the move because

 6     there was general mobilisation, which meant men from 16 to 65 were called

 7     up.  It was proclaimed on the 4th of April, and all the soldiers,

 8     according to their assertions and documents, over 75 per cent were not in

 9     uniform.  They did not have a uniform.  And for the entire first year of

10     the war, there were no uniforms, and if the person was killed wearing

11     civilian clothing did not mean that it -- he was a civilian.

12             The Serbs didn't have uniforms either but neither about the

13     Muslims.  They didn't go to the army.  They sabotaged the JNA for a week

14     prior -- for a year prior to that, and they went to war wearing civilian

15     clothes.  And if they proved victorious somewhere then they would

16     celebrate and so would their foreign allies.  If they were defeated

17     somewhere else, then they would cry out and say that it was an aggression

18     by the aggressor.  What aggressor?  Whose aggression in Kotor Varos, for

19     instance, or Sanski Most, or Kljujic, inhabited by both the Serbs and

20     Muslims, the local Serbs and the local Muslims?

21             We will have a witness from Prijedor here to confirm -- who will

22     confirm, and he was asked in the Kovacevic case by another counsel, How

23     did you dare?  He said, Well, they were better organised than us.  They

24     were a better army than us.  And counsel asked him, How did you dare to

25     lead your people against an army like that?  He said, What could I do?

Page 972

 1     That was the order I received from Sarajevo.

 2             So you will see several examples.  One is Visegrad and Zvornik.

 3     In Visegrad, for instance, which was thrown out of my indictment, removed

 4     from my indictment, unfortunately, let me say, there was a terror

 5     exercised by the Muslims against the Serbs.  There were rapes of young

 6     girls on an ethnic basis, and there were killings, and there was the

 7     destruction of the monument of Ivo Andric, the Nobel prize winner, a Serb

 8     Catholic.  They -- some Western countries did not allow Serb Catholics to

 9     remain Serbs but Andric always remained a Serb, and in 1991, the monument

10     to Ivo Andric was destroyed.

11           Then there was the saint day killing.  Each Serb has a family saint day.

12    They invited two Muslims to attend the luncheon, and at the end, they killed

13    the man for celebrating a Christian saint day in a Muslim Bosnia.  They would

14    pull priests by their beards.  They would send back people going to Herzegovina

15    on a pilgrimage.  They took over -- they stopped the JNA whenever they felt

16    like it.  Then the Serbs fled from Visegrad to the surrounding parts and then

17    the army set up law and order again.  The Serbs returned, and then the Muslims

18    said that they were attacked for no reason at all.

19         In Zvornik there was also a Muslim reign of terror.  The Serbs fled to

20  Karakaj, to the Serbian parts of the municipality.  And as for Zvornik, they said

21  that we controlled Zvornik.  Well, in Zvornik we controlled the predominantly

22  Serb parts of Zvornik, and when you deduct Sapna, Kovacevic and other areas where

23  Muslims were concentrated, you will see that the rest was not a Muslim majority.

24  Then the Serbs returned, and they recovered, and then they were victorious and

25  then that was considered to be an aggression.  Regardless of how much we were

Page 973

 1   actually engaged, that was at the very beginning, so we had no opportunities.

 2             In Prijedor a similar situation unfolded itself.  The agreement

 3     was -- well, first of all they lost on the 12th of April.  They were

 4     prevented on the 12th of April, and then they got a new order, to attack the

 5     whole of the Sana valley Kljuc, Sanski Most, Prijedor, Bosanski Novi, that

 6     whole area, as soon as the JNA leaves on 20th of May.  So along the Sana River

 7     valley they had the elite Patriotic League unit there, and the Sana River

 8     valley pursuant to orders from Sarajevo was set aflame.

 9             Then we have Sanski Most.  I'm still not ready to examine

10     witnesses from Sanski Most, but I do know that there are different types

11     of villages.  In certain villages nothing happened.  In other villages

12     conflicts and clashes took part.  Hrustovo and the others.  And they had

13     900 fighters.  And the Muslims write in their books, they say, While we

14     stood guard we didn't have any problems.  When we launched an offensive,

15     we were hit on the hands.  So we knew that they stood watch, that they

16     had shifts.  We didn't mind.  That was a defensive measure.  If they felt

17     unsafe, let them stand guard, but that's another matter.  When they start

18     killing people in Serb villages, then a conflict is unavoidable.

19             So there were two types.  There was terror with the Serbs

20     fleeing.  Then they came back to protect their homes, their thresholds.

21     Sometimes they were victorious, in other parts not.  And then there was

22     this other way of dividing up the municipalities.  Sanski Most was Serb.

23     The rest was Muslim.  Everything was agreed to, and then they attacked

24     us, and once they lost -- when they lost, we had this hullabaloo created.

25     Twelve thousand Muslims during the war lived in Sanski Most under Serb

Page 974

 1     control.  Sanski Most is well known from World War II.  There was

 2     Susnjar, the hill on which 5.300 Serbs were killed in a single day.  So

 3     no -- nobody can expect the Serbs to be -- to lack caution and to allow

 4     themselves to be killed again that way, on Susnjar.  Twelve thousand

 5     Muslims live and work in Sanski Most today without any problem and

 6     several hundred are at Manjaca, and the difference is only that the ones

 7     fought and the others didn't.

 8      Now let's take Prijedor, Your Excellencies.  The powers in Prijedor, once they

 9  had decided to attack, on the 23rd of May, announced this on TV.  They shot at car

10  -- at a car with four Serbs and two Croats.  Two were killed, two were slightly

11  wounded and two were seriously wounded.  You will see how ludicrous it looks when

12  they explain that those six men attacked them at a check-point.  That's ludicrous.

13             So when the Muslims started out towards Prijedor, and they did do

14     so, they proclaimed over the radio that the civilians shouldn't leave

15     their homes until they had settled accounts with the terrorists, but many

16     did not listen to that caution, and we'll hear this testimony from many

17     witnesses because they've already made public statements to that effect.

18             Omarska and Keraterm, they weren't camps.  Omarska and Keraterm were

19     investigating centres of regular state organs.  The Prosecution has and has

20     not disclosed to me over 3.000 documents of the investigations and inquiries

21     undertaken and recorded by the investigating organs in Keraterm and Omarska.

22     1.500 people were captured in the space of two days.  The Croatian intercepts

23     will bear that out as will other sources.  There was massive capture of

24     fighters and civilians who had gone out and interfered, but had not fought.

25     So there was this triage in the centre of Omarska and Keraterm and the

Page 975

 1     following results were achieved:  41 per cent had not taken part in any

 2     combat and they were released.  And then they reached Trnopolje and were

 3     safe there because you couldn't have enough policemen to guard every

 4     house.  But when they were in Trnopolje, then five policemen would be

 5     enough to provide security for them, and they confirm this and you will

 6     see that on the footage.  41 per cent of the detainees in Keraterm and

 7     Omarska were released after this selection and triage on the basis of an

 8     investigation.  They were Muslims just like the others.  They were all

 9     Muslims.  So 59 per cent were found to be combatants, fighters, and so

10     they were sent to Manjaca, to the military camp there, prisoner of war

11     camp, and 41 per cent were released.

12             Now I'd like the Prosecution to provide me with those

13     3.000 investigation documents and they should see how these

14     investigations were conducted, because they were normal institutions

15     carried out by the regular organs, not party organs, and then we can see

16     and establish what happened, although it would have been better for this

17     to have been established beforehand.  Then we'll see how in a short space

18     of time of the 1.500 that were held in detention, 41 per cent were released.

19             This speaks something which was contrary to what is claimed by

20     the Prosecution, meaning that people who were completely innocent were

21     being arrested and detained.

22             Concerning other relocations or deportations, we are going to

23     prove here, on the basis of documents provided to us by courtesy of the

24     Prosecution, that civilians from both communities asked to be allowed to

25     leave.  The Serbs had to pay exorbitant amounts of money to be let out of

Page 976

 1     Sarajevo and Central Bosnia.  In Central Bosnia where we were helped in the

 2     process by the Croats in some places, because all these Serbs were fleeing,

 3     and on the other hand, we also helped Croats and Muslims whenever their civilians

 4     needed to be saved and allowed passage.

 5         In the areas of Srebrenica and Zvornik, General Morillon was under the constant

 6     pressure from both the Serbian and Muslim sides.  The Muslims wanted him to take

 7     civilians to Tuzla.  The Serbs said, All right, we shall allow that, but give us the

 8     Serbs from Tuzla.  They are suffering there, and they are in danger there.  There is

 9     no doubt that Morillon was exposed to such pressure.  He testified to that, and he

10     enabled the Muslim civilians to leave for Tuzla.  Unfortunately, the Muslims of

11     Tuzla did not allow the Serbs to leave Tuzla, and that was the way in which the SDA

12     compromised the SDS in the eyes of the Serbian people, by saying, They're incapable

13     of taking you out of Tuzla.

14   In Nikola Koljevic’s diary, we have evidence that the Muslims from Trebinje via Biljana

15  Plavsic exerted pressure to be allowed to leave Trebinje, which enraged me.  According

16  to the diary, I was furious, and I said that it was out of the question.  I said if they

17  have any problems, the police is there to protect them.  They nevertheless left, as

18  ordered by the SDA, and we have that document which we will present here.  And after

19  three months, the SDA wanted to have Trebinje on the basis of ethnic cleansing.  These

20 are primitive tricks. We know that they ordered the Trebinje Muslims to go to Montenegro,

21  even though none of them were killed and they didn't come into any harm's way.

22          In Professor Koljevic's diary, who was witness to the events and a participant

23    in them, he was the vice-president of the republic, he was a very responsible person,

24    he was born in Banja Luka, lived in Sarajevo, and had excellent relations with the

25    Muslims, says that one of the international organisations that our side favoured and

Page 977

 1     respected most, i.e. UNHCR and ICRC, demanded that I let a large number of Muslims

 2     and Croats from the Bosnian Krajina, the surrounding areas of Banja Luka, to be

 3     taken to third countries.  That also enraged me and I didn't allow that.  After

 4     lengthy pressures, I approved five trucks a day to be allowed leave instead of 80,

 5     as they requested.  If somebody was so much under threat and wanted to be reunited

 6     with their families, they were allowed to go.

 7         The Prosecutor -- a Prosecution witness in his statement, and he's going to

 8  testify here, confirmed this in the very same words.  The Prosecution is going to say

 9  that it was us who cleansed these people from Bosnia and Krajina.  The people from

10  Bosanski Novi actually used UNPROFOR to take them to Croatia.  This is what they

11  demanded.  Yesterday I said that many municipalities made a lot of obstacles, asking

12  them to provide proof that they had paid taxes and things like that.  They created

13  obstacles.  That’s not done if you are driving people out of their homes in such

14  fashion that they leave behind them, on the table, a meal that is still warm, as Serbs

15  did when they were fleeing from Muslim areas.

16      The Serbs fled from the Muslim area in a disarray.  The Muslims, on the other hand,

17  left the Serbian areas in an orderly fashion, at their own request and escorted by the

18  police, which they had also requested.  We are going to prove all this.  So the Bosnian

19  Krajina was not cleansed.  The Croatian minister, who is now in the Government of

20  Republika Srpska, recently said, "I never left Republika Srpska.  Those who left were

21  angry with me for staying behind."  So his own fellow Croats who left Doboj left in

22  order to exploit this fact, and they were angry at him for staying behind and thereby

23  negating his -- their claim that it will -- a co-existence with Serbs was impossible.

24  We have an interview with this minister.

25        So we are going to refute these things, and I believe that we are -- believe that

Page 978

 1   that was untrue.  We are going to prove that not a single village that

 2   surrendered their weapons or didn't have them at all in the first place had no

 3   problems.  Not a single Muslim who was not engaged in fighting had any problems.

 4   Those who were imprisoned were extremists without exception.

 5             I would now like to move to the subject of Srebrenica and the

 6     elimination of Muslims from Srebrenica by organised killing of men and by

 7     deportation of women and children and genocide of the Srebrenica Muslim.

 8             Here in this title there are no men and boys mentioned without the

 9     Prosecution explaining what "boy" means, but this is an emotional impact which

10     implies that the Serbs were killing boys.  When you say a boy, it could be a

11     16 or 17 boy who was mobilised and who was a member of a unit.

12            Quite briefly let me tell you this – so that it does not appear to be

13  tu quoque – it’s not tu quoque – that there was fierce fighting and there was

14  terrible terror exercised by the Muslims of the area.  They shot at the army in

15  the back, and no army in the world shall tolerate that.  They killed entire

16  villages on Christian holidays, on Christmas and slavas.  And this is clear, it’s

17  available, it is easy to prove.  This accused issued orders to exercise maximum

18  restraint during all Catholic and Muslim holidays.  And in both this war and the

19  Second World War, they killed Serbs on their biggest holidays.  You will see here

20  what they did in Kravica in 1993, this was eight or nine months after the war

21  broke out.  On Christmas Day, they slaughtered people who were caught unawares,

22  while preparing for the festivities, without any reason whatsoever, and that was

23  actually an attack on civilians that was provoked by nothing.

24             I'm going to request the Prosecution to provide reliable

25     information about how many Muslim women and children were killed and how

Page 979

 1     many Serb women and children were killed, and we are going to demonstrate

 2     where it was that the Serbs were being killed and where the Muslims were

 3     being killed, and both these groups were mostly killed in Serbian

 4     villages.  The Muslim army attacks a Serbian village and the result is

 5     end of both Serbs and Muslims.  The place of death will clearly

 6     demonstrate what -- what was being done by everyone in this war.

 7             Before I move to Srebrenica, let me tell you something about

 8     directive.  We are talking here about directives 4 and 7, these two

 9     directives, and I'm not going to go into this whether I signed any of

10     this, but I will focus on what General Mladic said about them leaving the

11     zone together with the population.

12             The population made an ultimatum and wanted to be allowed to leave.

13     In November, in Kotor Varos, there was an uprising among the Muslims, and they

14     wanted their population to be allowed to go, and I approved of that.  Mladic,

15     not knowing about that, said no.  They cannot just allow the civilians to go

16     and they would remain there and fight against us in our territory.

17         Two weeks after that, Mladic issued directive number 4, relating to Eastern

18  Bosnia, and he says the same thing, that they would either leave alongside with the

19  civilians or disarm themselves and remain to live as civilians. And the Prosecution

20  translates this as "surrender themselves", disarm oneself and surrender oneself.

21             We have a problem with the transcript, don't we.

22             Directive number 4, there is a sentence in this directive which

23     is perpetuated further on in directive 7, and this sentence, which is

24     ascribed to both Mladic and me, says that we had ordered for the

25     civilians to disappear from a certain area, but that is not true.  What

Page 980

 1     Mladic said was that the fighters should leave together with the

 2     civilians and not the civilians with the fighters.  We are going to prove

 3     that it was the civilians who asked and who were given permission to

 4     leave.  Then Mladic added that, You shall also go with them.  Mladic

 5     didn't say the army should leave and take civilians with them, but quite

 6     the opposite.  If the civilians are going to leave, then the army should

 7     join them.  There's no doubt about that.

 8        Two weeks before directive 4 was issued we had this case in Kotor Varos and now

 9   this case has become a pattern of the Serbian conduct.  If the civilians want to

10   leave, you should leave with them and not stay behind and to shoot us in the back.

11   The essence of directive 4 and directive 7 was that the civilians should take the army

12   with them, because the civilians wanted to leave in any case.  These requests were

13   made in Eastern Bosnia to Morillon and in Kotor Varos to the municipal War Presidency.

14   It was an ultimatum for their civilians to be allowed to leave.  There is proof that I

15   said it's all right, allow them safe passage.  But soldiers have their own logic.

16   They would say why -- why would you leave and allow civilians to leave without army

17   joining them?  We cannot allow that.  Well, that is the basis for Directives 4 and 7,

18   which the OTP is waving around and based on which they have convicted some people, but

19   it is not correct at all.  This sentence says that the army should join civilians, not

20   the other way around, and it has been established that two weeks prior to that the

21   civilians were allowed to leave Kotor Varos, and that the army was ordered to leave

22   together with them and not stay behind our backs, deep in our territory, and fight us.

23        As for Srebrenica, I will just briefly describe the period before 1995.  In 1993,

24   Srebrenica and Zepa were declared safe zones after I halted the advance of Serbian

25   Army.  We had been under constant attack from that area, from Kamenica, from the

Page 981

 1     surrounding places between Srebrenica and Zvornik.  They were constantly

 2     attacking us, and not only the army.  They would set an ambush and they

 3     would kill a bus full of civilians, as they did at Crni Vrh.  That's what

 4     was impossible to tolerate any longer.  The negotiations did not yield any

 5     results.  They followed orders from Sarajevo to provoke the Serbian Army

 6     everywhere they could.  That is how fighting took place in the area

 7     around Zvornik, Kamenica, towards Srebrenica, which they lost.  Many of

 8     them went to Srebrenica.

 9             There was enormous propaganda surrounding Cerska.  The same like

10     the one concerning Srebrenica.  There was rivers of blood.  The Serbs

11     were slaughtering people.

12             General Morillon wanted to enter Cerska to see for himself, which

13     he did, and he reported that there was no fighting whatsoever, let alone

14     massacre.  For that reason we were late in ordering an investigation to be

15     carried out regarding Srebrenica, because the same propaganda that was applied

16     to Cerska was repeated two years later to Srebrenica.

17            I halted the advance of our army towards Srebrenica with the well-known

18     order I gave.  It has been presented here.  And I even ordered them not to

19     investigate any crime -- war crimes, although there were lots of them, just to

20     avoid any revenge killings.

21             A border between the two safe zones were agreed, and the passage was

22     left between Skelani and Milici.  Throughout the whole period, as testified by

23     the UN Secretary-General, Srebrenica and Zepa were not safe haven, but they

24     were, rather, military strongholds of armed troops from which at least one Serb

25     was killed daily by shooting from these zones.  We have daily reports of the

Page 982

 1     Secretary-General to the Security Council about what was happening there.

 2     The Prosecution, probably based on that, accepted that these were legitimate

 3     operations, but our operation was not aimed at capturing Srebrenica.

 4          In all the agreements, in all peace plans we had accepted that Srebrenica

 5   and Zepa would be connected to Gorazde and that it would become a canton, as is

 6   the case today with Gorazde, and Zepa and Srebrenica would be Muslim.  Therefore,

 7   we never even thought of taking them.  All of a sudden it turns out, once all

 8   soldiers enter Srebrenica, that they had left Srebrenica.  That's when I ordered

 9   them to enter the town to restore peace and order.  I have that letter here too.

10   General Tolimir, in particular, was informed of what I had approved.

11       Once they entered Srebrenica there were no civilians in sight nor any members

12   of the military.  The army fled to the woods.  The civilian authority surrenders.

13   The army didn't listen to the civilian authorities.  They fled to the forests and

14   wanted to continue fighting.  And the civilian population were not taken out of

15   their homes by the Serb army but, rather, by the UN.

16     We also have the testimony of Muslim witnesses here that, starting out from the

17   villages, and not from Srebrenica itself, they went with the plan and intention

18   for men to join the units to make a breakthrough towards Tuzla, whereas the

19   civilians were supposed to go to Potocari and then to be taken by UNPROFOR to

20   Kladanj and Muslim-held territory.  Our entry was a complete surprise but

21   also any -- also the absence of civilians in the houses was a surprise.

22             The Prosecution still insists, nevertheless, that this was a

23     forcible deportation, whereas we have every possible evidence that that

24     was not the case and that was never planned.

25             When we heard that they wanted to leave their homes and to be

Page 983

 1   transferred to Kladanj and Tuzla under Muslim control, we hastily started looking

 2   for buses and trucks to provide for transportation because we were afraid of

 3   revenge, of acts of revenge.  If someone bent on revenge threw a grenade into

 4   such a crowd, there would be a massacre.  There had been no killing until the

 5   14th.  There was some incident on the 13th, in Kravica, when a Muslim detainee

 6   grabbed a rifle and started shooting.  That was when an incident occurred.

 7             The crown witness of the Prosecution against me in the Srebrenica

 8     case was late Deronjic, and they laid all their hopes in him according to

 9     92 quater rule.  He actually testified in my favour.  He said that on the

10     evening of the 13th and morning of the 14th, there was a colonel who was

11     allegedly wanting to kill certain detainees and that he prevented them

12     from doing that.  He told him, "If you keep behaving like that, I'm going

13     to call the president."  That was on the 13th in the evening, and he

14     eventually withdrew.

15             We have a language problem here between the terms "detainees" and

16     "prisoners of war."  When we speak about prisoners, this is not a

17     detainee in our language.  When you say "prisoner," that implies a

18     prisoner of war, and those who are detained are called detainees.  So we

19     are talking about POWs.  And when we speak about an exchange of prisoners

20     without saying "prisoners of war," then the Prosecution claims that this

21     was an exchange of detainees.  This is another linguistic problem that we

22     are facing here.  Once you say a prisoner, it is understood that this

23     means a prisoner of war captured in fight.  Those who were detained were

24     detained on a different basis and due to different reasons.

25             Thank you for this correction in the transcript.

Page 984

 1             On the morning of the 14th, as testified to by Deronjic, I don't

 2     know whether that actually happened or not with that colonel, but

 3     Deronjic himself says, "I met him at Yellow Bridge, and he asked that we

 4     use the brick factory, and I said I'm going to Pale to see the

 5     president."  And indeed he did come to see me on the 14th, and then this

 6     man withdrew.

 7             A member of -- a small town SDS president stops a member of the

 8     Main Staff twice by using the name of Radovan Karadzic.  Had

 9     Radovan Karadzic ordered some kind of unlawful killing, the colonel would

10     have said, "What do you want, kid?  I have my instructions."  Even if

11     Mladic had said something to him, he would say, "What do I care about

12     you?  I have my boss.  See?"

13             So the strongest Prosecution witness, according to what has been

14     said so far, absolutely does not speak in favour of the thesis that is

15     advocated by the Prosecution.

16             Deronjic testifies also to the fact that allegedly he said to me

17     on the 14th that some officers want to kill prisoners of war and that I

18     said that all these officers were crazy.  The driver who brought him

19     testifies to the following:  When Deronjic returned from me, when he got

20     into the car, he said, "I cannot believe that the president knows nothing

21     about this."

22             The OTP knows that.  I don't remember about him having said that.

23     If he made an allusion, perhaps I didn't understand it, but saying that

24     officers were crazy, well, there was a quite a bit of tension between the

25     officers and the civilian authorities.  We held a lot of things against

Page 985

 1     each other.  But when a psychiatrist said that somebody is crazy, then

 2     that may sound like a diagnosis, but this wasn't a diagnosis.  This was

 3     just speaking figuratively.  So they cannot use Deronjic against me and

 4     they really don't have anything else.

 5             Then there's the report of the Dutch government that says that

 6     Karadzic's role is unclear.  In dubio pro reo is the rule that prevails.

 7     Therefore, there is no culpability.

 8             There is no investigation.  There is no investigation for

 9     Srebrenica.  I cannot say anything about Srebrenica because there is no

10     investigation.  What they created there was a place of worship.  It's a

11     myth again.  On the stone there it says "Over 8.000 Muslims," and they

12     could not bury more than 2.500.  I don't know what the exact figure is

13     now, but please have a look at where these Muslims come from, those who

14     were buried on this hallow ground.  See, Bratunac; Bijeljina, that is

15     100 kilometres away from there; Foca; Han Pijesak; Rogatica, Sarajevo;

16     Sokolac; Srebrenica; Srebrenik, which is even further away; Ugljevik;

17     Visegrad; Vlasenica; and Zvornik.

18             And now what they're saying is that the Serbs killed Muslim boys

19     and men, 8 .320.  Over four years of war, deaths during the course of

20     four years of war, deaths in forests around Srebrenica when attempts were

21     made to forcibly break through Serb territory.  Nevertheless, including

22     all of that, they could not bury more than 2.000, 3.000 people.

23             And then this investigating material.  People are being tried for

24     Srebrenica here and this investigating material is being dealt with just

25     like that.  Let us see where the DNA is.

Page 986

 1             Now I am in the stage of establishing the truth concerning

 2     Srebrenica.  Let us see whether there was anything unlawful, whether

 3     there was any unlawful killing, how did it happen, and what the extent of

 4     it was, if any.  However, we have the report of the Muslim municipality

 5     itself that says we have 37.000 people.  We are showing 45 for the sake

 6     of humanitarian aid so that we could feed our troops too.  So if we are

 7     to add up natural deaths and death in -- deaths in combat and also all of

 8     those who managed to get out of Kladanj and Tuzla, and when we see what

 9     they identified and in which day they identified the cause of death,

10     executions do not take place by shells.  There have to be investigations

11     for the sake of the future, not for Karadzic's sake, for the sake of the

12     future of the peoples over there.  It has to be established who got

13     killed how and in which way and where.  But just to have trials

14     off-the-cuff saying such and such a number of Serbs killed such and such

15     a number of Muslims, I hope this Trial Chamber is not going to support

16     that.  Let it be established once and for all what happened in

17     Srebrenica.

18             I have to say that I cannot accuse Trial Chambers of not having

19     established that, because in our system it is the investigating judges

20     who are in charge.  However, the Defence teams were not in a position to

21     present the truth to the Trial Chambers involved because there was no

22     investigation.  Simply there was no investigation, and there was no way

23     of saying this happened or that happened because there was no proper

24     investigation.

25             Now, after the investigation concerning Srebrenica, and I am

Page 987

 1     going to ask for each and every report that exists, I have been given the

 2     consent of the Trial Chamber to receive all the material involved, all

 3     the information, and then let us create a 5 per cent sample of the DNA

 4     and then let us see whether there are significant deviations.  If that is

 5     the case, then everything has to be examined.

 6             You see, we know to this day that graves are being exhumed in

 7     Bosnia and Herzegovina, all over Bosnia and Herzegovina so that somebody

 8     could be buried in July in Srebrenica.  Well, of course the death of a

 9     single person is significant, but then why exaggerate.

10             I have another 15 minutes left; is that right?

11             I would like to say, finally, something about paragraph 11 -- or,

12     rather, joint criminal enterprise that pertains to hostage-taking.

13             My essential objection is that an army cannot be held hostage.

14     Civilians are hostages, and they are not taking part in fighting in any

15     way.

16             These gentlemen who were held hostage, if I can put it that way,

17     were not civilians, and they were involved in combat.

18             Let me say straight away it's going to be easy for me to prove

19     that I have nothing to do with that.  A Prosecution witness said Karadzic

20     found out from the media and the entire world without out from the media

21     that people were panic-stricken before the unlawful air-strikes by NATO,

22     unlawful bombing, because this was not close-air support, which would

23     have been legitimate if a UN unit had been endangered.  However, this

24     operative [indiscernible] was bombing the Serb positions, and it was a

25     strategic decision in order to weaken the position of the Serbs so that

Page 988

 1     they could not defend themselves easily.

 2             The Serbs kept these foreigners close to a bridge so that that

 3     bridge would not be hit, because in a different situation, the SDA would

 4     have slaughtered them -- or, rather, their army would have slaughtered

 5     them.

 6             The general said in his first interview, Karadzic found out from

 7     the media.  He called and said that they should be released straight

 8     away.  However, that could not have been helped any longer.  The media

 9     had already carried these news and everyone started takes these hostages.

10             Why are they not hostages, though?  Why are they combatants?  We

11     are going to prove here that all UN generals are asking their civilian

12     chiefs, "Please do not involve us in the conflict.  You're going to

13     expose to us to danger, and you are going to make us become part of one

14     of the sides involved."  All of the commanders were aware that if they

15     bombed the Serbs, with a call made to these troops, that these troops

16     will be involved.  And it's not that they were involved through the

17     action of their commanders only.  They were even involved individually.

18             General Rose has the transcript of a broadcast as to how his

19     soldiers were involved, because they were the marksmen of the aircraft

20     flying above them.  And then this young man says, "I have chosen a target

21     and I can hear the aircraft.  I have the target -- oh, my goodness.  The

22     Serbs hit my target.  My target falls," and so on and so forth.

23             Let us leave aside what our suspicions are and what our proven

24     suspicions are to the effect that these UN units were involved in

25     smuggling.  For a while UNPROFOR was called the taxi of the Muslim army

Page 989

 1     because they crossed our lines unannounced.  They smuggled ammunition,

 2     weapons, but nobody would have taken them as hostages because of that.

 3     They were taken as hostages when the bombing started, not for the sake of

 4     close-air support but tactically, operatively and almost strategically

 5     for other reasons.

 6             Now, all of these military observers, we have a witness who says

 7     that -- says that these people are experts, and one such individual is

 8     more valid than an entire company of mine.  I am very sorry that they

 9     bombed us in the first place, but I am sorry that this was done, but this

10     is not hostage-taking.  They were involved in a war against us.  They

11     called NATO aircraft to bomb us.  They helped them.  They selected

12     targets for them.  They were their marksmen.  Well, people like that

13     cannot be called hostages.

14             So you will see during the Defence case how many foreign soldiers

15     in Bosnia were killed by the Muslim side.  You will see that they downed

16     the Italian aircraft.  The Serbian Army couldn't have done that in any

17     way.  And then a no-fly zone was introduced after that.

18             You'll see how many times the Muslims shelled convoys that were

19     escorted by UNPROFOR from Igman.  All of this we have on the basis of the

20     material that the OTP has and uses against me.  You will see what they

21     did to the foreigners who smuggled weapons for them, gave them vast

22     amounts of humanitarian aid.  They shelled them.  They hit them with

23     sniper fire in order to cause odium against the Serbs.  Actually it was

24     clear and it was unequivocally established that they were the ones who

25     were doing that.  You will not find a single case except for one that the

Page 990

 1     Serbs did that.

 2             A lieutenant-colonel, when he became very nervous, he did not

 3     kill anyone but he simply scattered the things belonging to a convoy all

 4     over the place.

 5             I apologised to Mr. Wahlgren, and I dismissed this man.  His

 6     nerves were shaken and he was upset because UNPROFOR was interfering and

 7     doing all sorts of things that they were not supposed to do.  But the

 8     most important thing is what the UNPROFOR commander says, Do not get us

 9     involved against the war.  We will become a warring party if you involve

10     us in this.  And the moment when they started bombing us outside the

11     close-air support, they did become a warring party.

12             Now, I don't need to dwell on this any longer.  Suffice it to say

13     that soldiers who take a particular side, regardless of what their weapon

14     is, a laser or a rifle or whatever else, they cannot be hostages.  They

15     are combatants.  They are fighting against one of the sides that can at

16     least take them prisoner.  Of course that was not a decision taken by

17     civilian authorities, it was not a decision taken by the military

18     commands, but it did so happen that the people did that, and we have

19     proof of that in OTP material.  I remember that that was the case.  I

20     remember that the images were carried all over the world, and it was hard

21     to release them silently because the bombing was going on and the people

22     all of a sudden realised that that would save us.

23             Excellencies, I'm not afraid of these proceedings.  It is with

24     great enthusiasm that I am preparing for these proceedings.  Regrettably

25     this may endanger my health because I'm working all night because I don't

Page 991

 1     have enough time.  Why do I not have enough time?  Because inter alia for

 2     three and a half or four months, whatever, I did not have proper

 3     assistance.  My advisors could not work with me, and the OTP had

 4     indiscriminately thrown together loads of material and alleged evidence

 5     guided by the fact that they did not have evidence.  And then, like our

 6     Marxists, they thought that some day quantity would become quality, or

 7     that it's better to use a shotgun against a little bird and then you will

 8     hit one at least.

 9             If the Security Council does not pass a Resolution sanctioning

10     the agreement with Holbrooke on my immunity, I am going to tell you what

11     I'm thinking about.  I don't know whether all of it is possible, but I'll

12     tell you what I think.  I think it would be a good thing if the

13     Trial Chamber were to return the indictment to the OTP, to see all the

14     things that they presented there that can easily be swept up as false

15     evidence.  So they should either amend the indictment, narrow down the

16     indictment, and they cannot just say that Karadzic's intentions can be

17     heard through Tom, Dick, and Harry's words.  I'm a politician.  I make

18     speeches.  If I have an intention to carry out something, I have to

19     pacify people, and it is deeds that speak, not words.

20             If they don't want to withdraw the indictment, if they don't want

21     to reduce the indictment, if they don't want to isolate the things that

22     really pertain to me, then it would be a good thing for me to get time

23     and resources, because the President of the Tribunal also established

24     that I did not have sufficient resources, so let us have exemplary

25     proceedings that will be to the credit of the Trial Chamber, the OTP, and

Page 992

 1     Defence.  Exemplary proceedings that is going to be a blueprint for

 2     international justice, that is going to rehabilitate international courts

 3     and trials of this nature.

 4             In that case, I could take it upon myself, up until the end of

 5     May or, say, mid-June, if the trial were to be resumed in mid-June, then

 6     by the second half of May I could provide you with thousands of facts, my

 7     agreed facts list.  These are facts that the OTP will not be able to

 8     challenge, practically not at all.  For example, that Serbs took over

 9     such and such a municipality, and Serbs lived there in the first place.

10     For example, Hadzici was under Serb control.  Serbs held under their

11     control only a very part -- a small part of Hadzici.  Only the Serbian

12     neighbourhood there, actually.  So these are facts that we could agree

13     on.  By the end of May or, say, by mid-May I could provide these agreed

14     facts and this would disburden these proceedings.  We could agree on so

15     many things.  That would shorten the proceedings to a maximum of, say,

16     one or one and a half year, because there would be very few facts that

17     would be challenged and that we would be dealing with here in this

18     courtroom.

19             Your Excellencies, I would like to end on that note, and I think

20     that the best thing would be to observe the Holbrooke Agreement, because

21     that actually did take place.  However, somebody did not do their work.

22     I did my share.

23             Could the Office of the Prosecutor ask you to have the indictment

24     withdrawn?  However, if we are going to go to trial, then there are going

25     to be reviews of other trials where innocent men were convicted.  I will

Page 993

 1     be able to prove that they were convicted as innocent men as I defend

 2     myself here in these proceedings.  If we go to trial, then I'm going to

 3     do whatever is up to me.  If we are going to have expeditious, fair

 4     proceedings that will be to the credit of the international community and

 5     international justice, I am going to give a constructive contribution, as

 6     I have been doing all along.  And my constructive contribution is going

 7     to be in singling out the facts that we can all agree upon, and in this

 8     way, we can cleanse these proceedings from unnecessary material that

 9     would just exhaust us here.  We have to go to the basic merits of this

10     case.

11             Thank you.

12             JUDGE KWON:  Thank you.

13             This is an oral ruling of the Chamber.

14             Following the Trial Chamber's decision on the accused's motion

15     for the postponement of trial, issued on 26 February 2010, the accused

16     yesterday filed an application for certification to appeal and for stay.

17     The Prosecution responded to that application yesterday, stating that it

18     does not oppose the granting of certification to appeal the

19     Trial Chamber's decision but that it does oppose staying the proceedings

20     until such time as the Appeals Chamber determines the matter.

21             Pursuant to Rule 73(B) of the Tribunal's Rules, a Trial Chamber

22     may grant certification to appeal one of its decisions if that decision

23     "involves an issue that would significantly affect the fair and

24     expeditious conduct of the proceedings or the outcome of the trial, and

25     for which, in the opinion of the Trial Chamber, an immediate resolution

Page 994

 1     by the Appeals Chamber may materially advance the proceedings."

 2             Having considered the submission of the parties, the Chamber is

 3     satisfied that the issue of the accused's readiness to actively

 4     participate in his trial at this stage of the proceedings, which is

 5     determined in the Chamber's decision on postponement, pertains directly

 6     to the fairness of the proceedings and that therefore the first prong of

 7     the test for certification under Rule 73(B) is met in the present

 8     circumstances.

 9             Since a resolution of this matter at any later stage could

10     require in the specific circumstances of this case a retrial in the event

11     that the Trial Chamber decision is found to have been incorrect, the

12     Trial Chamber is satisfied that the second prong of the test is also met.

13             Given that both prongs of the test for certification are

14     satisfied and the Chamber's view that it is in the interests of justice

15     for the Appeals Chamber to rule on this issue, certification to appeal is

16     hereby granted.

17             The Trial Chamber is mindful of the fact that staying the

18     proceedings at this stage would have an adverse effect on witnesses who

19     have already been brought to The Hague to testify this week and next.

20     However, should the proceedings continue tomorrow with the hearing of

21     those witnesses' evidence and the Appeals Chamber subsequently overturn

22     the Trial Chamber's decision on postponement, those witnesses would have

23     to return to The Hague for a third time and repeat their testimony as

24     would all the other witnesses whose evidence was heard between now and

25     the Appeals Chamber's decision.

Page 995

 1             Having considered the matter carefully, the Trial Chamber is thus

 2     convinced that it is in the interests of justice for it to stay the

 3     effect of its decision on postponement until the Appeals Chamber resolves

 4     the matter.

 5             The Chamber regrets the inconveniences caused to those witnesses

 6     who have already travelled to The Hague or who are in transit, and trusts

 7     that the Appeals Chamber will resolve this matter speedily so that we can

 8     proceed to hear their evidence as soon as possible.  Plainly, it is in

 9     everyone's interest that both sides use any time available before the

10     Appeals Chamber's decision to continue with active trial preparation.

11     Therefore, now that Mr. Karadzic's opening statement has concluded, these

12     proceedings will be adjourned until further order following the

13     Appeals Chamber's ruling.

14             The hearing is now adjourned.

15                           --- Whereupon the hearing adjourned at 1.35 p.m.,

16                           sine die.

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