1 Wednesday, 10 November 2004

2 [Open session]

3 [The accused entered court]

4 --- Upon commencing at 2.20 p.m.

5 JUDGE ORIE: Good afternoon to everyone.

6 Madam Registrar, would you please call the case.

7 THE REGISTRAR: Good afternoon, Your Honours. This is case number

8 IT-00-39-T, the Prosecutor versus Momcilo Krajisnik.

9 JUDGE ORIE: Thank you, Madam Registrar.

10 Mr. Hannis, are you ready to resume the examination-in-chief of

11 the witness Mr. Bjelobrk?

12 MR. HANNIS: I am, Your Honour. I believe Mr. Stewart wanted to

13 raise one matter regarding scheduling.

14 JUDGE ORIE: Yes, Mr. Stewart.

15 MR. STEWART: Yes, Your Honour. It seems appropriate that I

16 should mention this to Your Honours straight away this afternoon, as I

17 indicated to the Prosecution that I would do. I wrote to Mr. Harmon, and

18 also to Mr. Hannis, of course, who is dealing with this witness. It was

19 about an hour ago, actually, a little less than an hour ago, in fact,

20 after I'd reviewed the position, and, well, the way I'd put it then is

21 probably as succinctly as I can put it now to Your Honours.

22 What I said was that I had been reviewing the position on the

23 current witness, that's 651, and the forthcoming, 629, who is a protected

24 witness, and that in particular, I'd been examining the scope and the

25 nature of Mr. Bjelobrk's evidence, including the witness statement, which

1 was incorporated in full in his oral evidence yesterday, and that I had

2 been to see Mr. Krajisnik this morning, as in fact I just interject now,

3 I've been to see him every morning this week. And the conclusion I'd

4 reached was that it was -- I don't make the rulings, of course,

5 Your Honour. Please don't misunderstand me there. But it was my

6 conclusion that it was impracticable and unfair to Mr. Krajisnik for me to

7 proceed with cross-examination of Mr. Bjelobrk at this point.

8 Just going to the end, my concrete proposal, Your Honour, as I

9 mentioned to the Prosecution, and as I put before the Court, my concrete

10 proposal is that Mr. Hannis should complete his evidence in chief of

11 Mr. Bjelobrk today and that we would then adjourn today to enable me to

12 get ready to cross-examine the witness 629 tomorrow, which I should

13 propose to do. And there ought not to be any difficulty about completing

14 the cross-examination of 629.

15 Your Honour, the -- I did mention and I raise this now as well,

16 that the -- there is a broader question here, because the evidence of

17 Mr. Bjelobrk does really raise questions which I've mentioned before

18 recently about the way in which the 89(F) procedure has come to be used.

19 It was originally -- I don't mean Rule 89(F), but the 89(F) procedure

20 which has been developed for the purposes of this trial, as we understand

21 it, it was originally intended to speed up oral evidence by avoiding any

22 extensive waste of time on relatively uncontroversial areas, and at the

23 same time, we worked on a procedure to enable the public, then, to get

24 some feel of what the areas were which were not actually being covered

25 orally so the public could then understand sufficient background to the

1 evidence that was being given.

2 But what seems to have happened, Your Honour, is that over a

3 period, we have drifted into a completely different and, in our

4 submission, inappropriate use of the 89(F) procedure. And generally,

5 Your Honour, the Defence position is that this requires most careful

6 review generally, not right now, this minute, but the most careful review

7 by the parties and the Trial Chamber to ensure that we have the proper and

8 appropriate use of any such procedure for the future. But turning

9 specific to Mr. Bjelobrk's evidence, it's a good illustration of the

10 problem.

11 Your Honour, I would ask just to take a few minutes to run

12 through, very quickly, as quickly as I can, but to run through the

13 statement of Mr. Bjelobrk, which was -- I do have difficulty pronouncing

14 his name, but I don't think I'm the only one that finds it a more than

15 averagely difficult one to pronounce, but I'll do my best. But just the

16 very briefest run-down to indicate what now the really enormous scope of

17 Mr. Bjelobrk's evidence and the enormous potential scope of the areas of

18 cross-examination which it would be, in fairness to Mr. Krajisnik, my

19 obligation to explore with Mr. Bjelobrk to avoid material simply being

20 there as his evidence. Because this has been confirmed as his evidence.

21 This statement is now incorporated in his evidence.

22 And just to run through it very briefly, to start with,

23 Your Honour, the first seven or eight paragraphs are political background,

24 and they're a mixture of fact and opinion. One might take issue with some

25 of that, but I'm not suggesting that that's the problem area. It isn't,

1 although there's rather more stuff there than one would expect.

2 Paragraphs 8 to 12 could be regarded as objectionable in the sense

3 that they contain what -- a great deal of what would normally be regarded

4 as expert evidence. But we try on our side of the case not to be too

5 technical and too difficult about these things. And I also don't suggest

6 that those paragraphs, although there may be some tendentious material in

7 there, I don't suggest that these paragraphs would be the nub of a

8 cross-examination. But we do have quite a big chunk of stuff which goes

9 beyond what he might normally be expected to present to the court.

10 Paragraph 13 is a description of his own party's position.

11 Paragraph 15, then, same as 14. Paragraph 15 talks about the

12 relative party positions and the differences of approach between SDA and

13 HDZ, on one hand, and SDS on the other. And certainly that is an area

14 which needs consideration.

15 Paragraph 16 is a fairly typical type of paragraph in this

16 statement because the single sentence "the national parties wanted to

17 change the borders to change the composition of the population to remove

18 the population and only after that did they want to discuss democracy."

19 There's an awful lot of important stuff wrapped into about 15 or 20 words,

20 though at that point the witness is talking about all three parties, but

21 by definition, therefore, including the SDS. He then goes on in the next

22 paragraph, the SDS, and considers what he describes as local

23 homogenisation as opposed to regionalisation. He makes a comparison with

24 the nationalist movement in Croatia in paragraph 19. If that's of any

25 relevance, that's something that would need to be explored.

1 He draws a distinction between regionalisation and national

2 separatism.

3 Paragraph 20, he talks about an idea which, in his evidence, his

4 assertion, is that came from the top leadership of the SDA. There were

5 many speeches, which he doesn't specify, leaving it to us, therefore, to

6 explore and identify any such speeches for the purpose of

7 cross-examination. He talks about the top of the next page --

8 JUDGE ORIE: Mr. Stewart, the Judges have seen the statement, so

9 it's not a big surprise to me that your analysis of this statement would

10 include the kind of observations you just made, and I think you could go

11 to the end.

12 MR. STEWART: Yes.

13 JUDGE ORIE: This morning, I prepared a small memo, still to be

14 discussed among the Judges, on the 89(F) procedure. I did that because

15 Ms. Loukas has drawn our attention to the 89(F) procedure already. I

16 would suggest to you that you give us some time to see whether the Judges

17 would come up with a procedure which is amended.

18 MR. STEWART: Well, of course, Your Honour. I'm very pleased to

19 hear that the matter is under active consideration.

20 JUDGE ORIE: Yes. The matter is certainly under active

21 consideration. So, therefore, I would suggest to you that we do it that

22 way. And I think the Chamber understood what was said by Ms. Loukas.

23 Perhaps, as we did last time, we -- the Chamber then proposed a procedure

24 for 89(F) where the parties did agree, so therefore it was no problem for

25 the Chamber to adopt that procedure. I'm not saying what would have

1 happened if the parties would not have agreed, but at least we could put

2 it to the parties that this is what we have in mind, ask for their brief

3 comments, and then see what to do.

4 So if you'd allow us, and part of it was also that how -- part of

5 my memo deals with the matter of one party informing the other party that

6 certain parts of a statement might not be fit for being introduced in

7 evidence under 89(F), but that viva voce testimony would really be needed

8 for specific parts of the statement. Of course, that could go up to the

9 whole of the statement, but at least that's part of the --

10 MR. STEWART: At least we'd know that, Your Honour. Yes. May I

11 say, Your Honour, everything Your Honour said so far indicates, with

12 respect, that Your Honour's thinking is going in the same sort of

13 direction as our thinking and our discussions.

14 JUDGE ORIE: Whether that's wishful thinking or reality, I leave

15 that open at this moment.

16 MR. STEWART: Of course.

17 JUDGE ORIE: Mr. Stewart. So therefore, I suggest that we either

18 even -- perhaps even today, but I don't know whether we'll have sufficient

19 time to do that during the next breaks, but otherwise perhaps tomorrow,

20 that we could deal with the matter.

21 MR. STEWART: Tomorrow -- yes, indeed, Your Honour. I sometimes

22 don't even know what day of the week it is. Yes, Your Honour, indeed.

23 JUDGE ORIE: Then I have another question. If you say I better

24 not start the cross-examination of Mr. Bjelobrk today, would that mean

25 that you think that you could start his cross-examination by tomorrow,

1 Mr. Bjelobrk is here.

2 MR. STEWART: No, Your Honour. I'm so sorry. I should have made

3 that clear. Because my -- it was -- it was perhaps not made sufficiently

4 clear, but it was implicit in my practical proposal that we should

5 adjourn, I should proceed to deal with the other witness, that that would

6 be tomorrow and that Mr. Bjelobrk -- I acknowledge, Your Honour, I clearly

7 had in mind, although I didn't express it, Mr. Bjelobrk would have to come

8 back on another occasion.

9 JUDGE ORIE: Yes. Of course, it's a bit of a surprise, after the

10 beginning of this week, where the statement of Mr. Bjelobrk was there,

11 including all the elements that you just mentioned, where he mixes up

12 facts and opinion, where he's not very specific on certain matters, and

13 where the parties have expressed their confidence at that moment that they

14 could finish the witnesses for this week. So, therefore --

15 MR. STEWART: May I comment on that, Your Honour. It's a fair

16 question for Your Honour to ask, but it's a fair question for me then to

17 have the opportunity of answering briefly.

18 JUDGE ORIE: Yes. Please do so.

19 MR. STEWART: So far as the timetable was concerned, Your Honour,

20 my confidence that we would complete the witnesses was based, if you like,

21 on the arithmetic based on the estimates, which have turned out to be

22 pretty accurate from the Prosecution of how long they would need for each

23 witness and my reasonable confidence that we have generally come within

24 the guidelines on cross-examination. So they didn't in principle seem to

25 be a difficulty. The difficulty isn't so much then the question of the

1 arithmetical timing and so on; the difficulty is to do with the substance

2 of Mr. Bjelobrk's evidence and, Your Honour, there I will frankly

3 acknowledge that noting that Mr. Bjelobrk, A, came into the picture

4 relatively late at all as a witness, and that material from Mr. Bjelobrk

5 has only very recently been available to me, and then, when it did become

6 available to me, what I didn't have available to me, Your Honour, was time

7 to deal with it, because I had so much to do this week. And it's as

8 simple and frank as that, Your Honour.

9 I -- it's only recently that I've had the opportunity, as opposed

10 to taking the opportunity, really, of honing in on specifically what is

11 required in cross-examination of Mr. Bjelobrk and coupled with my

12 discussions with Mr. Krajisnik, of course, to explore what it is. And I

13 can tell Your Honour that it took us an hour this morning for practical

14 purposes to, well, in fact not all that successfully cover one of the

15 points that arises out of what Mr. Bjelobrk says. It sometimes can be a

16 very protracted procedure to get to the bottom of these things. Adding,

17 Your Honour, from a practical point in mind, I just note it in passing as

18 it occurs to me, that when a statement which itself refers to a number of

19 documents is incorporated in a witness's evidence, some thought needs to

20 be given to annexing to the statement at least the more material documents

21 so that it can be read easily without having to scratch together that

22 material. That's a bit of a side-issue in a way, Your Honour, but as it

23 occurs to me, I'll mention it now.

24 But, Your Honour, that is the position. But the substance of the

25 matter is, and, well, Your Honour didn't need me to go through then

1 paragraph by paragraph and page by page, but there are some bigger points

2 still that come up later in Mr. Bjelobrk's statement than the ones that

3 I'd indicated so far when Your Honour said, well, the Trial Chamber has

4 the picture anyway of the scope of Mr. Bjelobrk's evidence. But there are

5 some very big points built into assertions, and of course an assertion

6 made by a witness can be made in one sentence. But to deal with it

7 requires the most careful work.

8 JUDGE ORIE: Yes. I'll refrain from comments at this moment, on

9 your explanation, Mr. Stewart. We'll consider the matter.

10 MR. STEWART: I'd be grateful if Your Honour has any comments at

11 any point, I'd be grateful for an opportunity then where fair to deal with

12 any such comments.

13 JUDGE ORIE: Yes. I have not developed them, and if I would

14 develop them, it would be Chamber comments rather than my personal

15 comments. So, therefore, I'll discuss whether your observations are in

16 need of any comment by the Chamber.

17 So would the Defence be ready to start cross-examining Witness

18 629? I don't know whether that witness is available, but ...

19 MR. HANNIS: Your Honour, he's present. I had told victims and

20 witnesses and our investigator handling witness preparations that I didn't

21 anticipate that we would start with him today, but to have him sort of on

22 stand-by for the last hour.

23 MR. STEWART: Your Honour, I'm not in a position to proceed with

24 Witness 629, because what I did do was I have, as I often do, I tried my

25 best up to quite a late stage to see what I could deal with with

1 Mr. Bjelobrk. I do conscientiously make the effort, Your Honour, not to

2 throw away time and not to give up --

3 JUDGE ORIE: You say, Mr. Stewart, with a lot of words, you say

4 that --

5 MR. STEWART: A lot of words, Your Honour --

6 JUDGE ORIE: Your preparation was such that you're not ready at

7 this moment to proceed with the cross-examination of 629. That's the most

8 important thing I'd like to know because I've got in my mind how to

9 schedule today and tomorrow.

10 MR. STEWART: Yes, I see, Your Honour. I was offering a small

11 explanation, Your Honour.

12 JUDGE ORIE: Yes.

13 MR. STEWART: I thought the Trial Chamber might welcome that.

14 JUDGE ORIE: I think at this moment we should continue the

15 examination-in-chief of Mr. Bjelobrk, and I would like to invite the

16 parties to see whether there would be any way of agreeing on what are the

17 really essential and vital parts of the written statement of Mr. Bjelobrk,

18 that the Prosecution could reconsider whether the whole of the statement,

19 perhaps after discussions with the Defence, would be needed in evidence,

20 and then to see whether we could, with a reduced statement, but it would

21 be possible, after Mr. Stewart would have had an opportunity to speak to

22 Mr. Krajisnik again, to see whether cross-examination could start. I'm

23 just asking the parties to explore the possibilities by perhaps reducing

24 the statement, which would, of course, if it's not in evidence any more,

25 it would need less attention. I do not know. You indicated to us that

1 some part you -- well, there are less important for you to cross-examine

2 the witness on. I do not know exactly what the Prosecution considers to

3 be the most vital parts of the statement of Mr. Bjelobrk.

4 But at least to give it a try to see whether a solution could be

5 reached by, on the one hand, reducing the statement; and on the other

6 hand -- therefore, also reducing the time needed for the preparation of

7 cross-examination.

8 I'm not asking you to answer this question at this very moment.

9 I'm just suggesting it to you. And I'd like to hear from you if that

10 would bring us anything at all, and otherwise, if not, then the Chamber,

11 of course, will have to decide upon your request, Mr. Stewart, to delay

12 and postpone the cross-examination of Mr. Bjelobrk.

13 I do see that Mr. Krajisnik would like to address the Chamber as

14 well.

15 MR. STEWART: Well, I hope Mr. Krajisnik won't mind if I, as his

16 counsel, simply complete first what I've got to say before --

17 JUDGE ORIE: I leave it up to you to --

18 MR. STEWART: Yes.

19 JUDGE ORIE: -- To determine --

20 MR. STEWART: -- Give the floor to me for the moment, I think,

21 Your Honour. Thank you, Mr. Krajisnik.

22 THE INTERPRETER: The interpreters cannot hear the speaker.

23 JUDGE ORIE: Yes. Mr. Krajisnik, the interpreters could not hear

24 you, so if it was important, please repeat it with the microphone on. If

25 not, we'll proceed.

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1 ART: Well, the tone of voice suggested it was at least

2 positive in some sense.

3 Your Honour, the exercise, in fact, the exercise of identifying

4 some parts is a valuable exercise. I confess, I was also -- I was

5 slightly taken by surprise that the whole statement went in just like

6 that, although to be fair to Mr. Hannis, he didn't tell me it wasn't going

7 to. So I'm not suggesting I was misled in any way. But it's just that if

8 we are -- two points. One is if we are going to engage in an exercise of

9 trying to identify the bits that the Prosecution would wish to go in, it

10 really needs to be done before we proceed any further with the oral

11 examination of the witness, because until we know which bits of the

12 statement are going to be treated as the subject of an 89(F) application

13 and --

14 JUDGE ORIE: May I take it that if we would continue with the

15 examination-in-chief of the witness, that Mr. Hannis would concentrate on

16 those parts he deems to be of vital importance for the Prosecution case?

17 MR. HANNIS: Yes, Your Honour. But may I raise a point.

18 JUDGE ORIE: Yes.

19 MR. HANNIS: I did redact some six or seven paragraphs out of the

20 total of 68 paragraphs, so there was a 10 per cent reduction, at least in

21 terms of numbers of paragraphs, as far as the statement that was

22 introduced through the witness. So it wasn't his entire statement. We

23 did make some deletions before we started.

24 MR. STEWART: Sorry. I meant by implication his entire redacted

25 statement and I did at least when I received the redacted statement, for

1 which thank you very much, I did go through and just tick off and check

2 the redactions. But and they were --

3 JUDGE ORIE: That's --

4 MR. STEWART: They were pretty obvious, actually, most of them.

5 JUDGE ORIE: So the question now is -- the question now is whether

6 we should give the parties an opportunity to discuss my suggestion at this

7 very moment or that we first start -- that we first resume the

8 examination-in-chief of Mr. Bjelobrk and give the parties an opportunity

9 to discuss the matter during the next break. Mr. Hannis, do you have

10 any ...

11 MR. HANNIS: I'm of two minds, Your Honour, as to which is the

12 most efficient. For one, I planned my direct examination based on the

13 assumption that the redacted statement that was in was going to be his

14 evidence. And then I focused on the parts where I thought I needed

15 clarification of those portions that I presumed would be in evidence. To

16 go forward now, not knowing whether all of that's in or not, I may not

17 cover some things. On the other hand, if I knew from Mr. Stewart what he

18 was concerned about, I might be able to do that. But, Your Honour --

19 [Trial Chamber confers]

20 JUDGE ORIE: Yes.

21 MR. STEWART: Your Honour, the other thing I wanted --

22 THE INTERPRETER: Microphone, please.

23 MR. STEWART: The other thing I wanted to add was this,

24 Your Honour, that whatever the outcome of this particular exercise, now

25 for me to cross-examine both these witnesses, and my primary position,

1 Your Honour, is that I find it very difficult, though I suppose waiting

2 until we at least know the outcome of the exercise Your Honour is

3 suggesting, I would reserve a final position, but I find it very difficult

4 at the moment to see how that is going to resolve the position as far as

5 Mr. Bjelobrk is concerned. But if then, in the light of any such

6 discussions, I were to proceed with cross-examination of Mr. Bjelobrk, I

7 wouldn't then be in a position to cross-examine the other witness. So one

8 of these gentlemen would end up leaving The Hague. May I simply say,

9 Your Honour, that I have found on my arrival back in The Hague that the

10 programme of witnesses which was devised for this week, with me taking a

11 telephone call as I passed through the airport last week, telling me that

12 another witness was going to be squeezed in and some brief explanation

13 being given to me, I have found that the programme of witnesses rather

14 heavier than I really might reasonably have understood from those brief

15 telephone calls. Now, that's just perhaps a communication point, but it's

16 a fact. The witness tomorrow is heavier than I had inferred from the

17 discussions reported to me from court and the telephone conversation I've

18 had. So that's where we are, Your Honour. I didn't complain about it

19 earlier this week, because I felt without this particular problem of

20 Mr. Bjelobrk, which has really come very much -- well, which I now see far

21 more clearly, that the other witness --

22 JUDGE ORIE: Yes.

23 MR. STEWART: He remains --

24 JUDGE ORIE: I do understand, Mr. Stewart. On the other hand, I

25 think the other witness, Witness 629, was on the motion to have his

1 evidence admitted under 92 bis, that the Prosecution has responded to

2 that. So I take it was more or less aware of what this witness was about.

3 MR. STEWART: Sorry, who was, Your Honour?

4 JUDGE ORIE: The Defence.

5 MR. STEWART: Well, I wasn't, Your Honour. I was standing in the

6 middle of the airport being told there was a witness from Kljuc. That's

7 all I knew.

8 JUDGE ORIE: Mr. Hannis, I think it was a witness in the motion

9 for admission of 92 bis evidence on which the Defence responded already

10 prior to next week -- last week.

11 MR. HANNIS: Correct, Your Honour, and included was a municipality

12 that was one of those that we were discussing proposed agreed facts on. I

13 don't know what conversation, though, transpired. I don't know what

14 message Ms. Loukas conveyed to Mr. Stewart.

15 JUDGE ORIE: Of course. But of course we waited to give a

16 decision until the Defence had had an opportunity to at least briefly

17 discuss that. Let's not at this moment -- I do understand that you're

18 surprised, whether or not this surprise is fully understandable under the

19 circumstances is not a major issue at this moment.

20 MR. STEWART: Your Honour, all I was saying is what was devised

21 last week by way of a timetable and reported to me very briefly, all I'll

22 say is it stretched to the very limit, when I discovered what was

23 involved, it stretched to the limit the timetable this week. That's all

24 I'm saying. So it doesn't leave any spare capacity for anything at all.

25 JUDGE ORIE: Yes. There has been taken no decision last week on

1 the scheduling until we received back from Ms. Loukas the result of the

2 consultations she had with you.

3 MR. STEWART: Yes. And I've read those, Your Honour, and they

4 were more or less accurate, more or less accurate, but given the

5 circumstances in which it was done. But I think it was perfectly plain

6 that I was not in a position to know or say very much. I just assumed

7 that those of you here in The Hague, I wasn't far away at the time,

8 actually, but those of you here in The Hague, that a timetable would be

9 devised which was at least manageable. That was the assumption that I

10 made and I'm saying it was just about, at a stretch, manageable if

11 absolutely nothing else was imposed upon it.

12 JUDGE ORIE: Yes. The Chamber prefers to continue the

13 examination-in-chief of Mr. Bjelobrk first, and nevertheless, the parties

14 are invited to discuss the matter, as suggested, during the next break.

15 Mr. Hannis, to the extent possible, would you please keep that in the back

16 of your mind when you resume the examination-in-chief.

17 MR. HANNIS: I wills Your Honour, and for scheduling purposes and

18 victims and witnesses arrangements, I would hope that we'll have enough

19 information maybe by the next -- by the second break to advise whether one

20 of those witnesses should go home.

21 JUDGE ORIE: Yes, of course.

22 MR. HANNIS: Or plan to go home.

23 JUDGE ORIE: I do hope that we have that information then

24 available.

25 Madam Usher, could you please escort Mr. Bjelobrk into the

1 courtroom.

2 Oh, yes.

3 MR. STEWART: I apologise. I had forgotten -- sorry,

4 Mr. Krajisnik.

5 JUDGE ORIE: Mr. Krajisnik. I have to apologise, because it was

6 just a matter of who comes first and not who will speak.

7 Please proceed, Mr. Krajisnik.

8 THE ACCUSED: [Interpretation] I wish to thank you. I would just

9 like to assist the Trial Chamber. Your Honours, an important witness is

10 before you today, a very rare witness, especially among the Prosecution

11 witnesses. That's why I have a proposal in this regard. This is a

12 witness who has ideological disagreements with me but who is not inclined

13 to say anything that is not true. In principle, he always tells the

14 truth.

15 In his statement, however, probably because he has forgotten a

16 great many things, he said many things that were quite simply wrong. Now

17 I sound like the witness who was here yesterday. But I have the

18 stenographic notes here that we got from these sessions. If we would show

19 these stenographic notes to the witness, since I know him, I'm sure that

20 he would not say that this is not true or accurate. That is why I would

21 not want to shorten his testimony, and I thank Mr. Stewart, because this

22 shows the very essence of our conflict from before the war. He can

23 confirm a great many things, although we never agreed ideologically. But

24 he will say whether I voted for his proposal or not, whether the Serb MPs

25 walked out or not, whether the session was adjourned or not, whether there

1 were any preparations or not. So I kindly ask you, Your Honours, not to

2 speed things up. We are going to work more productively if we hear this

3 witness out. Not in order to defend Momcilo Krajisnik, but in order to

4 ascertain what the truth is. You will have witnesses from the SDS, but

5 you may say that they are partial. But here you will be able to see two

6 truths, and you will see what it is.

7 This morning, Mr. Stewart, Ms. Cmeric, and I met briefly for an

8 hour. We could not do anything with that hour. There are so many things

9 that are criss-crossed, if I can put it that way. Therefore, I think it

10 would be good for you to hear this witness out, because in the papers you

11 only have the minutes, and that is very short, whereas these are

12 stenographic notes, the actual minutes of every word that was said at the

13 session. I tell you that what he said was not correct, but he is not

14 saying anything that is wrong on purpose. He simply does not remember

15 properly. If you show him the documents, I'm sure that he will

16 corroborate that. So I think that this will help you to understand all

17 the commotion that took place in Bosnia-Herzegovina.

18 I would like to thank my lawyer. I used to be president of the

19 parliament and I would be the one who would give people the floor in order

20 to make it possible for them to speak. So perhaps I transgressed a bit

21 today, but I didn't mean to. I'm sorry. And thank you very much.

22 JUDGE ORIE: Yes. It's clear that you underline and you emphasise

23 the importance of fully cross-examining this witness, not only by putting

24 questions to him but also by confronting him with, as you said, the

25 stenographic notes. We'll consider that as well, and I do understand.

1 Have these stenographic notes, have they been available to the

2 Prosecution already? I mean, if -- I do understand that Mr. Krajisnik

3 expects the witness to easily accept if there's any inconsistence between

4 his recollection and what is in the stenographic notes. That, of course,

5 is that matter that might even be solved to some extent already before the

6 testimony of the witness. Has this been presented to the Prosecution

7 before, these notes, or ...? I'm just asking, Mr. Stewart. It should

8 have been through you. The material Mr. Krajisnik is now referring to,

9 stenographic notes of -- I take it of assembly meetings, who voted for

10 what and ...

11 MR. STEWART: Well, I couldn't have read them yet, Your Honour,

12 myself, because apparently they don't exist in English at the moment.

13 JUDGE ORIE: Yes. Okay. That's clear to me. So that -- well,

14 even sometimes better to present it to the Prosecution so that you have a

15 copy in English as soon as possible.

16 Mr. Krajisnik, yes.

17 THE ACCUSED: [Interpretation] May I assist. The Prosecution

18 provided three pages from a certain session. That is what the Prosecution

19 provided. But these are stenographic notes that our investigators got

20 directly from Bosnia-Herzegovina, from the Assembly there. It would be a

21 good thing for the Trial Chamber to have a look at this and the

22 Prosecution as well. Of course, this is not within my rights, but it

23 would be a good thing if my lawyer would first look at this and then

24 everybody else. But it would be a good thing if everybody had a look at

25 this. However, the Prosecution apparently does not have the documents in

1 their entirety. They only provided us with these three pages.

2 JUDGE ORIE: Yes. I do not know whether that's true or whether

3 the Prosecution considered only these three pages relevant.

4 MR. HANNIS: Your Honour, I'm not sure of what portion of the

5 minutes of the Bosnian-Herzegovinian sessions we have. I know we have

6 minutes of some sessions. As far as the RS Assembly, we have a much

7 greater collection. But prior to the break in October of 1991, I don't

8 think we have a very extensive collection.

9 JUDGE ORIE: Okay. Let's not discuss here what is in our files

10 and what is not. I leave up to the parties to include the last remarks by

11 Mr. Krajisnik in their conversations.

12 Madam Usher, could you please escort Mr. Bjelobrk into the

13 courtroom.

14 [The witness entered court]

15 JUDGE ORIE: Good afternoon. Good afternoon, Mr. Bjelobrk.

16 THE WITNESS: [Interpretation] Good afternoon to all.

17 JUDGE ORIE: I first apologise that you had to wait such a long

18 time. We had a procedural issue we had to discuss first, and it took the

19 time it took.

20 Mr. Hannis, please proceed.

21 MR. STEWART: Your Honour, we notice the witness did bring some

22 materials with him.

23 JUDGE ORIE: Yes. Mr. Bjelobrk, I can't see what is on your desk

24 because it's all hidden through your monitor. Could I invite you,

25 whenever you have any material there, to keep it away. If you want to

1 consult it or if you feel any need to consult it, please indicate so and

2 tell us what you'd like to consult and then we'll decide on whether it's

3 appropriate or not for you to consult any notes or papers.

4 Please proceed, Mr. Hannis.

5 MR. HANNIS: For the record, it appeared that on top he had a copy

6 of his witness statement.

7 WITNESS: BORO BJELOBRK [Resumed]

8 [Witness answered through interpreter]

9 Examined by Mr. Hannis: [Continued]

10 Q. Mr. Bjelobrk, when we stopped yesterday I was asking you about

11 paragraph 22 of your statement, where you talked about --

12 MR. STEWART: Sorry, for the record, Your Honour, it was quite

13 clear he's got more than a copy of his witness statement.

14 JUDGE ORIE: Mr. Stewart, it's closed. It's not there anymore

15 although I see still one piece of paper which seems to be open. Let's

16 proceed.

17 MR. HANNIS: Thank you.

18 Q. You were describing an event that happened in the Assembly in

19 which your party was trying to get a matter on the agenda. Just -- if you

20 could clarify it for me a little bit about how it worked in the

21 Bosnia-Herzegovina Assembly in 1991. First of all, approximately how many

22 deputies or members were there in the entire Assembly? Do you know that

23 number?

24 A. Of course, I'll speak to the best of my recollection, but I don't

25 think I'll make any major mistakes. There were about 240 MPs, about 80

1 per cent were the deputies of the three national parties, and the rest

2 were the opposition parties, if I can put it that way.

3 Q. And for a piece of legislation or a decision to be reached by the

4 Assembly, what percentage of the members had to agree?

5 A. There was a majority system, so there had to be a simple majority

6 of 51 per cent. There was a few special issues which required a different

7 kind of majority, but as far as procedural issues were concerned, like the

8 adoption of the agenda and other matters, that was voted on by simple

9 majority.

10 Q. And there were, as I understand it, two separate bodies within the

11 Assembly. Can you tell us what those were and what the difference was

12 between those two?

13 A. Yes. There were two chambers, something that may be reminiscent

14 of a lower and an upper house. There was the Chamber of Citizens and a

15 Chamber of Municipalities. A deputy in the Chamber of Citizens would come

16 from party lists. As far as the Chamber of Nationalities was concerned,

17 there were direct candidatures of specific names and surnames and they had

18 the backing of individual political parties.

19 Q. And as for the Chamber of Municipalities?

20 A. The Chamber of Municipalities had 105 deputies, I think. It

21 corresponded to the number of municipalities in Bosnia-Herzegovina and

22 from every municipality there was one deputy. Similar agendas were

23 discussed at both chambers. For a certain number of issues, they were

24 mainly discussed by the Chamber of Citizens. But there were many issues

25 that were discussed by both chambers. Also, as far as major debates are

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1 concerned, there was the possibility of having what was called joint

2 sessions of both chambers of the Assembly, and that did happen.

3 MR. STEWART: Your Honour, there seems to be -- Ms. Cmeric tells

4 me there's an interpretation issue. Chamber of Nationalities, where that

5 appears, page 22, line 9, that, according to Ms. Cmeric, that was Chamber

6 of Municipalities in the answer. I think through Mr. Hannis, not

7 surprisingly, as probably others, because we end up in fact with the wrong

8 number of chambers if such a body existed, the Chamber of Nationalities.

9 THE INTERPRETER: Interpreters note that the witness used the

10 expression "Vijece Naroda" only once, which would be Chamber of

11 Nationalities, and that was referred to only once.

12 MR. HANNIS:

13 Q. Mr. Bjelobrk, just to be clear: There were only two chambers; is

14 that correct?

15 A. Only two.

16 Q. The Chamber of Citizens and the Chamber of Municipalities?

17 A. Yes.

18 Q. Now, in paragraph 25 of your statement, and if you need to refer

19 to it, we can have Exhibit 392 handed to you if you need to check

20 something I'm asking you about.

21 JUDGE ORIE: Mr. Hannis, have you left paragraph 22 or ...

22 MR. HANNIS: Your Honour, I'm going to be --

23 JUDGE ORIE: Okay. You go back. You're not finished. Okay.

24 Please proceed.

25 MR. HANNIS: And I'll start my question now while the statement's

1 on its way to you.

2 Q. But you describe a pre-parliamentary procedure, and you talk about

3 the Collegium of the Assembly. Can you explain to me a little bit about

4 how that worked? First of all, what was the Collegium?

5 A. The Collegium was basically a consultative body of the president

6 to the parliament and consisted of the president, vice-president of the

7 parliament and also the heads of the clubs of the members of the

8 parliament. If there were three members coming from particular parties,

9 they constituted a club and they were supposed to reach organisational

10 agreements on organisational matters, although often efforts were made to

11 reach political agreements within such a small framework. So part of the

12 atmosphere of obstruction that I talked about yesterday was basically

13 formulated in that Collegium, although later on the three national parties

14 agreed that once the agenda is adopted, there has to be agreement among

15 the heads of clubs of these three parties, and the others were not even

16 asked. Although each and every member of parliament could propose a

17 particular item to be included on the agenda, in case it was not included

18 already and if they wanted to have it discussed.

19 Q. Now, in addition to the three national parties, how many other

20 parties in the BH Assembly at that time were of sufficient size to have a

21 Deputies Club and a member of the Collegium?

22 A. Now I'm really speaking from memory only. I think there were

23 three or four parties. It was the SDP, the reformists. I'm not sure

24 whether the Liberal Party had a club of deputies. And that would be about

25 it. Again, I'm speaking from memory.

1 Q. Now, I want to go back for a moment to paragraph 22, and yesterday

2 you told us that the particular item that your party was trying to get on

3 the agenda related to this principle of the equidistant position of Bosnia

4 vis-a-vis Croatia on the one hand and Serbia on the other; is that

5 correct?

6 A. Yes. Until the summer of 1991, there was a series of talks that

7 took place among the presidents of the republics. Our proposal to the

8 parliament was motivated by the failure of the split meeting of the

9 presidents of the republics. We wanted to offer a solution which would

10 lead to compromise and to a democratic denouement. We proposed a set of

11 positions which would define the stand of Bosnia-Herzegovina in these

12 negotiations.

13 Q. And the first step in getting something like that passed by the

14 Assembly was to get on the agenda; correct?

15 A. Yes, of course. The formal sponsor of the proposal for an agenda

16 of an Assembly meeting is the president of the Assembly. That is in

17 accordance with the rules of procedure. So the president of the Assembly

18 has to receive such proposals first. So we presented our proposal to have

19 this kind of material be placed on the agenda of the Assembly.

20 Q. And once it's presented to the president, what happens next? Is

21 it simply up to him or is it voted on by a larger group or how does that

22 work?

23 A. No. No. He is the official proposing party, and the members of

24 parliament vote on the proposal. In the meantime, it can be amended

25 through interventions of other MPs. So ultimately, the president of the

1 parliament does have the right to put forth proposals, but all MPs would

2 have the same right while the session was still in the opening stage. So

3 this was a proposal of the SDP, and the proposal was accepted by the

4 president then. And it was discussed. However, when the debate started

5 on whether it would be supported by the MPs or not, then we came across

6 hurdles.

7 Q. What hurdles did you come across? What happened?

8 A. In this polemic, to put it briefly, whether this proposal of ours

9 would be debated within the agenda or not, the MPs of the SDS left the

10 session after a protracted debate and a very unpleasant one, in my

11 opinion. Mr. Krajisnik stayed on and chaired the session, and he also

12 voted in favour of putting this proposal on the agenda, as opposed to all

13 the other SDS MPs. When it was finally debated, there was almost a

14 quorum. The number of persons present was equal to a quorum. All the MPs

15 who were present at that moment were of the number that was required for

16 adopting the proposal.

17 However, finally, Mr. Krajisnik was the only one to vote against

18 it, whereas all the other MPs voted for the proposal. It was very

19 unpleasant, if I can put it that way, for a simple reason. If it is a

20 political demonstration staged by the SDS MPs when they walked out,

21 Mr. Krajisnik did stay on. On the other hand, it was natural that we

22 expected to have a democratic discussion of different views on this.

23 However, he knew that he was the one remaining vote that could tip the

24 scales, and that did happen ultimately.

25 JUDGE ORIE: May I ask you a few questions on this item 22. In

1 your statement, and also in your testimony, you tell us how Mr. Krajisnik

2 obstructed. A few questions. Do you consider Mr. Krajisnik not leaving

3 the Assembly, but staying, to be an act of obstruction?

4 THE WITNESS: [Interpretation] No, I do not. As a deputy, he

5 performed his duties as president of the Assembly in a very correct

6 manner. He maintained the order of the Assembly, abided by the agenda,

7 the rules of procedure, et cetera. However --

8 JUDGE ORIE: Let me stop you. Next question: In your opinion,

9 should Mr. Krajisnik have voted against adopting this item on the agenda?

10 THE WITNESS: [Interpretation] If the position of all the MPs from

11 that club was that, then it was only natural that he would disagree like

12 the rest. The fact that he stayed behind means that it was manipulation.

13 That's the way I see it.

14 JUDGE ORIE: If he would have blocked adopting this issue on the

15 agenda, would you have considered this a contribution to the democratic

16 process in the Assembly?

17 THE WITNESS: [Interpretation] Had he blocked it, I would not have

18 considered that to be a contribution to a democratic process, because I do

19 not think that stopping a democratic debate can be considered an act of

20 democracy. It is quite illogical. He is primus inter pares within the

21 Assembly but he is a member of the club of deputies of the SDS and they

22 define their position by walking out.

23 JUDGE ORIE: The next question is: Would you have expected

24 Mr. Krajisnik, who was an SDS member, to have voted in favour of a

25 proposal which the SDS opposed?

1 THE WITNESS: [Interpretation] I did not expect that, not at any

2 moment.

3 JUDGE ORIE: Have you considered the possibility that the

4 responsibility of Mr. Krajisnik, as speaker of the Assembly, could have

5 taken the view that it would not have been appropriate for him to block

6 something to be put on the agenda, thus preventing it from further being

7 discussed in the Assembly; and at the same time, as an SDS member, that it

8 was appropriate for him not to vote in favour after the discussions had

9 taken place in the Assembly, on the matter?

10 THE WITNESS: [Interpretation] If I've understood you correctly, as

11 I see a democratic procedure, every president of an assembly, an MP,

12 should allow a democratic debate to take place. And of course, it is

13 natural that at the end of a debate, every MP should vote in favour or

14 against a proposal, depending on his stance. This was a manipulation in

15 terms of whether something should be put on the agenda or not, because the

16 political affiliates of

17 Mr. Krajisnik left the session, at the time when a decision was to be

18 taken about the agenda.

19 JUDGE ORIE: Would the outcome have been any different if they

20 would have stayed and voted against it?

21 THE WITNESS: [Interpretation] I am certain that it would not have

22 been different. That's not the point. But at least we would have had a

23 democratic debate, we would have spoken our minds, and we would have heard

24 different opinions, probably, and taken a step further. But when you're

25 leaving a place where democratic decisions are to be taken, then there's

1 no further step to be taken at all.

2 JUDGE ORIE: Do I understand your view as well if you say that you

3 would have appreciated to hear the positions of those members that had

4 left the Assembly as a contribution to the democratic debate?

5 THE WITNESS: [Interpretation] Of course, because the general

6 public, the community, would be hearing everyone's opinions and all the

7 MPs would have something to take into consideration while discussing the

8 matter.

9 JUDGE ORIE: So you considered leaving the Assembly meeting by the

10 SDS Assembly members as manipulative for the democratic debate; is that a

11 proper understanding of your testimony?

12 THE WITNESS: [Interpretation] Well, above all, what president of

13 the Assembly did was manipulative, because he was there in two capacities,

14 because he was president of the Assembly, proceeding under the statutes of

15 the Assembly, but, like all of his other colleagues from the SDS club, he

16 was an SDS deputy, so he was there wearing two hats, basically.

17 JUDGE ORIE: Yes. But do you mean to say that they should have

18 left or should have stayed, with the others, or should they have left with

19 the others or should they have stayed?

20 THE WITNESS: [Interpretation] All of them should have stayed and

21 taken part in the debate.

22 JUDGE ORIE: I do understand that you blame the other

23 representatives for leaving the Assembly meeting.

24 My next question would be: Could Mr. Krajisnik have made them to

25 stay? Did he have any power? Did he have any competence to prevent them

1 from leaving?

2 THE WITNESS: [Interpretation] As far as some special competences

3 are concerned, in terms of the internal rules within a deputies club, I

4 don't think there are any such special competences or authorities that any

5 one of them could have vis-a-vis the others. But I'm starting from first

6 of all the authority of the president of the Assembly, on the one hand,

7 and on the other, authority of some of the SDS leaders. I would hold them

8 responsible and think that they should have held themselves responsible in

9 terms of securing that a democratic debate does take place.

10 JUDGE ORIE: Is there any fact known to you which would

11 demonstrate that Mr. Krajisnik was encouraging any of the SDS members to

12 leave?

13 THE WITNESS: [Interpretation] I don't know anything about that,

14 because the meetings within the clubs were usually behind closed doors,

15 and I don't know what went on there. But there are other facts to

16 corroborate what I've just said. The general public commented on these

17 frequent intervals during the Assembly session, also in a witty fashion,

18 saying that it seems that the entire Assembly was made up of intervals.

19 The intervals were an instrument to slow down the proceedings of the

20 Assembly, on the one hand, and to introduce -- raise new issues that would

21 help complicate the situation further.

22 JUDGE ORIE: These are comments of a rather general nature. I'd

23 like to focus first on the example, and, if needed, we could go into other

24 areas.

25 Do I understand you well that you say the SDS members should have

1 stayed in the Assembly meeting because their contribution to the

2 democratic debate was needed for a proper exercise of the democratic

3 functions? That's the first element. Do I also understand your testimony

4 correctly if I say Mr. Krajisnik had no powers to prevent the other SDS

5 representatives from leaving? Until now, is this a correct understanding?

6 I'll continue with the next section after you have responded to this

7 question.

8 THE WITNESS: [Interpretation] First of all, you've understood me

9 correctly. And second, I am not aware of any special powers by

10 Mr. Krajisnik, other than those inherent in the function of a president of

11 an assembly.

12 JUDGE ORIE: Do I understand from the whole of your answers that

13 you would have expected Mr. Krajisnik to use his influence in order to

14 prevent the SDS representatives from leaving? Is that what you expected

15 from him at that moment? Is that what you thought would be a wise step to

16 take by a speaker of the Assembly?

17 THE WITNESS: [Interpretation] Yes. Yes, that's what we expected.

18 JUDGE ORIE: In paragraph 22, you're talking about an example of

19 the exercise of his authority, and you described that in terms of

20 obstruction. Do I understand you well that the obstruction demonstrated

21 here by Mr. Krajisnik consisted of not taking, as you thought it would be,

22 the wise position to encourage the SDS representatives to stay in the

23 Assembly meeting?

24 THE WITNESS: [Interpretation] Yes.

25 JUDGE ORIE: Thank you.

1 Please proceed, Mr. Hannis.

2 MR. HANNIS: Thank you, Your Honour.

3 Mr. Bjelobrk, I would -- well, Your Honours, next I would like to

4 play an intercepted conversation for Mr. Bjelobrk. If this could be given

5 the next exhibit number. This is a conversation dated 28th of June, 1991,

6 and this is one that Mr. Bjelobrk listened to in preparation for his

7 testimony today. Your Honour, I intend to play three separate segments

8 within this entire conversation. And for the translators, the first

9 segment begins on page 1 of the English, in the second box from the bottom

10 of the page, where Mr. Karadzic is speaking. And in the B/C/S, it begins

11 on page 1, approximately halfway down. It's the first big block, where

12 Mr. Karadzic is speaking. This first segment, Your Honour, will last

13 about a minute.

14 JUDGE ORIE: Do we have numbers already -- have they been played

15 before or is this the first time?

16 MR. HANNIS: This is the first time, Your Honour. I would propose

17 to give the entire tape one number and I'm just going to play these

18 portions.

19 JUDGE ORIE: Yes. What we'll do, then, is -- you say the tape --

20 you received that in the form of a CD-ROM or ...?

21 MR. HANNIS: Yes.

22 JUDGE ORIE: Yes. So the CD-ROM would have a number and the

23 different parts would get that same number but A, B, and C added for each

24 part. And then the translation would be the number A.1 or the number and

25 then B.1 for the translation into English.

1 THE REGISTRAR: Just for the record, before I start to number, I

2 just want to be clear. You have just this --

3 MR. HANNIS: There should be an English and a B/C/S version.

4 THE REGISTRAR: Right.

5 MR. HANNIS: And the English, I guess, would be B.1, Your Honour.

6 THE REGISTRAR: Yes.

7 MR. HANNIS: That's the translation. A.1 would be the B/C/S

8 original.

9 JUDGE ORIE: And the overall number for the CD-ROM?

10 THE REGISTRAR: The overall number would be 3 -- P395.

11 JUDGE ORIE: Yes. So the first part to be played would be P395A,

12 and A.1 for the English translation. Please proceed.

13 MR. HANNIS: Thank you.

14 [Intercept played]

15 THE INTERPRETER: [Voiceover]

16 "Radovan KARADZIC: No, last night we -- we went out of the

17 parliament yesterday, we won a great victory yesterday, indeed. What our

18 representatives did yesterday regarding the issues of Yugoslavia,

19 constitutionality, laws, it was -- SDA was speechless, barely three of

20 their representatives spoke. HDZ had to legitimise itself to, to ask for

21 the recognition of Slovenia and Croatia and such nonsense. We were

22 leading the game and all of a sudden this fax came in, informing about

23 him -- he is a mad man, indeed.

24 Slobodan MILOSEVIC: Okay, but you should say it doesn't mean a

25 thing, and --

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1 Radovan KARADZIC: No. We said it was in case of breakup of the

2 constitutional system. As long as there is a constitution we will respect

3 it and we will be the last ones to violate it.

4 Slobodan MILOSEVIC: Yes, yes.

5 Radovan KARADZIC: So that was how we carried out that thing,

6 although I think --

7 Slobodan MILOSEVIC: And why did you break up?

8 Radovan KARADZIC: Well, we broke up because the coalition was

9 trying to impose their things. They didn't want to declare themselves

10 about Slovenia and Croatia. Krajisnik set them such a trap that no matter

11 how they voted, it didn't suit them. If they condemned it, they would

12 have difficulties with their coalition, and if they didn't condemn it,

13 they would encounter problems because they didn't condemn IT. And

14 Izetbegovic came up with six promotes very cunningly, and in the first two

15 he put that it should be accepted although it was a bit too simple. He's

16 a lawyer, a lawyer who said it was simple, but still legal.

17 Slobodan MILOSEVIC: Yes.

18 Radovan KARADZIC: And then our representatives got on the

19 platform and his proposals were defeated. They lost to one vote. He lost

20 to one vote.

21 Slobodan MILOSEVIC: It's strange. It means that not only our

22 representatives voted, but also others.

23 Radovan KARADZIC:. Yes, yes. The reformists voted, they

24 abstained. But no Krajisnik set it very wisely in accordance with the

25 question -- in accordance with how the proposal is formulated. If it's

1 formulated as yes, then he needs 121.0."

2 MR. HANNIS:

3 Q. Mr. Bjelobrk, can you tell us if this relates to the event you

4 were talking about or another occasion?

5 A. Yes, this refers to that particular event in question.

6 MR. HANNIS: Your Honour, I don't know what time you want to

7 break. I have two more clips to play. One is about two minutes --

8 JUDGE ORIE: Usually we have a break after one hour and a half,

9 which would bring us to a quarter to 4.00.

10 MR. HANNIS: I think I can do the next two. Thank you. I would

11 like to play the next one, and before we start, I'll tell the interpreters

12 that that begins -- the English begins on page 3 of the English

13 translation, and it's the eighth block down. And the B/C/S begins on page

14 3, and it's the sixth block down. I'm sorry. I misspoke. Page 3, the

15 sixth block down and we have Mr. Karadzic speaking.

16 JUDGE ORIE: It's grey in our copy, so that saves us from

17 counting. Please proceed.

18 [Intercept played]

19 THE INTERPRETER: [Voiceover]

20 "Radovan KARADZIC: Markovic's moratorium didn't pass here last

21 night. If we stayed longer maybe it would have passed but I wasn't sure

22 whether it was good or not.

23 Slobodan MILOSEVIC: Yes.

24 Radovan KARADZIC: Well, we left earlier because of our things and

25 because they didn't declare themselves so we left the reformists alone and

1 then the reformists got mad and they left too, so only SDA and HDZ

2 stayed. The communists left early this morning, they left early in the

3 morning yesterday and now we have weakened the coalition in such a way

4 that they are self-sufficient now.

5 Slobodan MILOSEVIC: They can't sit now.

6 Radovan KARADZIC: Yes. No, no. Not now. It's not possible.

7 Now we are going to dictate whether we are going to go back to the

8 parliament or the.

9 Slobodan MILOSEVIC: Yes, yes.

10 Radovan KARADZIC: And Krajisnik made himself clear, nobody can --

11 it was -- he was the hero of the day in Bosnia. It was on TV. He

12 literally held the parliament in his hands.

13 Slobodan MILOSEVIC: Yes, yes. Perfect. Fuck the country which

14 doesn't have Bosnia.

15 Radovan KARADZIC: Yes, yes. The country can't go without Bosnia.

16 No way.

17 Slobodan MILOSEVIC: [Laughter]

18 Radovan KARADZIC: We are not going to let it happen."

19 THE INTERPRETER: Interpreters correction from the booth. "A

20 country cannot do without Bosnia" would be a more appropriate translation

21 of the penultimate sentence.

22 MR. HANNIS: Your Honour, if the Defence has no dispute with that,

23 I have no dispute.

24 JUDGE ORIE: Mr. Stewart, suggested in the translation by the

25 interpreters, country could -- "cannot do without Bosnia" rather than

1 "cannot go without Bosnia."

2 MR. STEWART: Yes, we agree, Your Honour.

3 JUDGE ORIE: Yes. Then please proceed, Mr. Hannis.

4 MR. HANNIS: Thank you.

5 Q. Mr. Bjelobrk, can you tell us, if you know, what Mr. Markovic's

6 moratorium was?

7 A. I cannot recall what moratorium they're talking about here, which

8 Markovic's moratorium.

9 Q. Thank you.

10 THE INTERPRETER: Microphone, please.

11 MR. HANNIS: I'm sorry.

12 Q. The last segment I want to play, the English begins on page 6 and

13 the B/C/S is also on page 6, and this one is about a minute, Your Honour.

14 [Intercept played]

15 THE INTERPRETER: [Voiceover]

16 "Slobodan MILOSEVIC: What about Durakovic's men.

17 Radovan KARADZIC: Well, they are desperate.

18 Slobodan MILOSEVIC: Did they vote for the Izetbegovic's

19 proposals?

20 Radovan KARADZIC: No, they left yesterday morning.

21 Slobodan MILOSEVIC: Yes.

22 Radovan KARADZIC: Because they wanted to impose a resolution on

23 the indivisibility of Bosnia.

24 Slobodan MILOSEVIC: Yes.

25 Radovan KARADZIC: It's an context completely, there's no context

1 in it at all.

2 Slobodan MILOSEVIC: Yes, yes, they wanted to collect a couple of

3 points but his timing was bad.

4 Radovan KARADZIC: Yes, yes, they wanted to, indeed, but we played

5 an extraordinary game and Krajisnik suspended the session and he said that

6 the smallest club of two representatives was important to him and that he

7 would not work if -- the parliament had to decide whether to continue

8 without one party.

9 Slobodan MILOSEVIC: Yes, yes.

10 Radovan KARADZIC: That way, we are buying ourselves the right

11 to -- when we leave, the session will have to be suspended.

12 Slobodan MILOSEVIC: Yes, yes.

13 Radovan KARADZIC: I think this could pass, if they accept it,

14 then it can be accepted under the condition, of course, that he declare in

15 public that he will abide by the constitution.

16 Slobodan MILOSEVIC: Yes, yes. I will try to make it pass now."

17 MR. HANNIS:

18 Q. Mr. Bjelobrk, can you tell us who Durakovic was that's referred to

19 there?

20 A. Durakovic is the president of the party whose member I was at the

21 time, and --

22 THE INTERPRETER: The interpreter didn't hear the last part of the

23 witness's answer.

24 JUDGE ORIE: Could you please repeat the last part of your answer,

25 because the interpreters couldn't hear you.

1 A. Durakovic is the president of the party, the member of which I was

2 at the time, and I was one of the hajduks mentioned here -- of the

3 highwaymen, that would be the translation, as mentioned in the text here.

4 MR. HANNIS:

5 Q. Mr. Bjelobrk, as -- in the course of your work as a member of the

6 Assembly, were you able to form an opinion of Mr. Krajisnik as the

7 president of the Assembly in terms of his ability to influence the members

8 of his party? Just yes or no, first of all.

9 A. Yes.

10 Q. And what was your opinion --

11 THE INTERPRETER: Microphone, please.

12 MR. HANNIS:

13 Q. What was your opinion in that regard?

14 A. The president of the Assembly had the crucial responsibility of

15 making sure that the Assembly worked with full capacity, including all the

16 different facilities, like, for instance, making it possible to defer

17 certain matters for an hour or two, unless things couldn't be resolved,

18 without just saying that some of the deputies have left and that nothing

19 can be done, as you can see from the minutes that this was actually done

20 that way.

21 Q. And did you have an opinion about his awareness and understanding

22 of the rules of parliamentary procedure and those matters, as they related

23 to his job as president of the Assembly?

24 A. I think he was very well familiar with the rules of procedure.

25 MR. HANNIS: Your Honour, I have one more brief intercept I would

1 like to play before the break, if possible.

2 JUDGE ORIE: Yes. If you can do it in six minutes.

3 MR. HANNIS: Yes, I believe I can. If I could give the next one a

4 number, this is the intercept dated the 13th of August, 1991.

5 JUDGE ORIE: Yes. Would that be in the same CD or on a different

6 CD?

7 MR. HANNIS: It's a different CD.

8 JUDGE ORIE: Different CD. So I take it it will be P396.

9 THE REGISTRAR: Yes, Your Honour. P396.

10 JUDGE ORIE: And will there follow other parts of that --

11 MR. HANNIS: Only one segment.

12 JUDGE ORIE: Only one segment. So we have P396A for the

13 transcript and P396A.1 for the translation.

14 THE REGISTRAR: Thank you, Your Honour.

15 JUDGE ORIE: Not to leave it to you, Madam Registrar.

16 MR. HANNIS: And for the interpreters: On the English, this

17 begins at the bottom of page 1 and a little higher up on page 1 on the

18 B/C/S. It's about a minute long.

19 [Intercept played]

20 THE INTERPRETER: [Voiceover]

21 "Momcilo KRAJISNIK: There is you know what the rule book says,

22 represents, it says it represents the Assembly and I'm entitled to the

23 initiative on the decisions by the Assembly. The third thing is that I'm

24 taking care of the cooperation of the BiH Assembly with the assemblies of

25 the other republics and with the SFRY Assembly.

1 Radovan KARADZIC: Right.

2 Momcilo KRAJISNIK: Everything fits in. It is as if God was your

3 host, so to say.

4 Radovan KARADZIC: Yes, yes.

5 Momcilo KRAJISNIK: So that everything -- you know what he was

6 doing, it is the same as if I said I made it happen there, I fought for

7 our standpoints and I have been thinking it seems to me we really gave too

8 much.

9 Radovan KARADZIC: Yes, yes. We gave too much. You were really

10 insisting on it.

11 Momcilo KRAJISNIK: What can I do? Say it doesn't make sense in

12 the end? I am the Assembly president after all.

13 Radovan KARADZIC: Of all the Bosnians, you insisted a bit, a

14 bit."

15 MR. HANNIS: Thank you. Your Honour, I'm about to go into a new

16 area and I have a couple of other intercepts. Would this be a good time

17 to break?

18 JUDGE ORIE: Yes. You have no further questions.

19 MR. HANNIS: No, Your Honour. I only played that to relate to his

20 previous comment about knowledge of procedure.

21 JUDGE ORIE: Mr. Bjelobrk, we'll have a break for half an hour. It

22 might be that you have to wait for a couple of more minutes then because I

23 invited the parties to discuss some matters during the break. We'll

24 adjourn until a quarter past 4.00.

25 --- Recess taken at 3.43 p.m.

1 --- On resuming at 4.24 p.m.

2 JUDGE ORIE: First of all, I'd like to make a correction to what I

3 said. I think I made reference during the -- in the beginning of today's

4 hearing on the testimony of Mr. Bjelobrk being in a motion. Of course, it

5 was not. He was never in a 92 bis motion. So whatever I said in that

6 respect is based on a mistake.

7 MR. HANNIS: I'm sorry, Your Honour. I had understood you were

8 talking about 629 at that time.

9 JUDGE ORIE: Yes. Yes. Well, I'm not quite sure about it any

10 more what I said, but one thing is for sure, that 629 was in the motion

11 and that the response of the Defence was there, and certainly that's not

12 true for Mr. Bjelobrk.

13 May I invite the parties whether any conversation has led to

14 inform us on whether the conversations have led to any result.

15 MR. HANNIS: We did discuss and we would like to propose

16 something, Your Honour. We would like to propose that I go as quickly as

17 I can to finish the direct examination of this witness and that we stop

18 for the day at whatever time that is, before 7.00, and that we send

19 (Redacted)

20 (Redacted) We have to send 629 home and

21 that we start with the cross-examination of Mr. Bjelobrk at 2.15 tomorrow.

22 Mr. Stewart do the best he can. And he's able to complete it, great. If

23 he's not, we would have to have Mr. Bjelobrk back at a later date to

24 complete him.

25 [Trial Chamber confers]

1 JUDGE ORIE: Yes. I take it, Mr. Hannis, that you informed us

2 about the suggestion by the parties and that Mr. Stewart is not

3 protesting. The Chamber will adopt that solution, and then Witness 629

4 will appear at a later date for cross-examination.

5 MR. STEWART: Yes, indeed, Your Honour. I agree absolutely with

6 everything Mr. Hannis said. I think the only thing is that Mr. Hannis

7 said if I I'm able to complete it, the cross-examination, great.

8 Your Honour, there is really no serious prospect that I will be able to

9 cover all the ground with Mr. Bjelobrk tomorrow.

10 JUDGE ORIE: Yes. Let's see how far we come and --

11 MR. STEWART: Your Honour --

12 JUDGE ORIE: Effective questioning sometimes -- but.

13 MR. STEWART: Your Honour, may I make it clear, Your Honour.

14 JUDGE ORIE: Yes.

15 MR. STEWART: In a sense, I should be frank about it, Your Honour.

16 I'm not going to attempt to do that, because I'm not going to attempt

17 tomorrow, in order to make tomorrow effective, I cannot make the attempt

18 of covering all the points in Mr. Bjelobrk's evidence for

19 cross-examination. I already know that much. So to make tomorrow as

20 effective as possible, I'm going to concentrate and tailor what I do

21 tomorrow to cover the most ground tomorrow.

22 JUDGE ORIE: Let's see how far we come, and let's keep in mind

23 that cross-examination and examination-in-chief should finish once the

24 time has elapsed needed for that and that we forget about that sometimes

25 if there's more time, that it will take more time. Mr. Stewart, you said

1 once this week that the experience shows that if you would have one hour

2 extra, that you usually finish at the same time. I just wanted to remind

3 you that that's not an approach which is adopted as the valid approach by

4 the Chamber.

5 MR. STEWART: As what? I'm sorry. I didn't quite catch that.

6 JUDGE ORIE: As the valid approach.

7 MR. STEWART: I was making an observation of fact, Your Honour,

8 and facts are facts.

9 JUDGE ORIE: Yes.

10 MR. STEWART: I understood what Your Honour was also saying, the

11 different point, that if sometimes a time limit or if you have less time

12 for cross-examination, you deal with it more quickly. That's in a sense

13 obviously true. If you have less time for cross-examination, then you

14 take less time for cross-examination. But what I'm saying about this

15 witness, without spending a lot of time on it, Your Honour, is I'm going

16 to tailor my preparations to most effectively use tomorrow, but

17 Your Honour, I can say in advance that that will not enable me to prepare

18 the whole ground.

19 JUDGE ORIE: Yes. You nevertheless are invited to achieve as much

20 as possible.

21 MR. STEWART: Of course. I've already undertaken to do that,

22 Your Honour.

23 JUDGE ORIE: Yes. Then I'd like to ask Madam Usher to escort the

24 witness into the courtroom, but she just left. Madam Registrar will serve

25 as a subsidiary usher. Thank you, Madam Registrar.

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1 Mr. Hannis, you may proceed.

2 MR. HANNIS: Thank you, Your Honour.

3 Q. Mr. Bjelobrk, now I want to go to paragraphs 26 and 27 of your

4 statement, where you describe the SDS as engaging in a "parallel process"

5 and the formation of parallel structures. Can you tell the Court what

6 evidence, if any, did you see or hear or become aware of in 1991 and early

7 1992 about the SDS engaging in that process, and give us some examples, if

8 you have some.

9 A. I think that there were three stages in terms of this separation

10 of government conducted by the SDS. In the first stage, the beginning of

11 1991, the assemblies where the SDS was in power were made bigger.

12 THE INTERPRETER: Interpreter's correction. Not assemblies, but

13 municipalities.

14 A. Also, local officials were instructed to implement the

15 constitution of Yugoslavia, not the constitution of Bosnia-Herzegovina.

16 The second stage was the establishment of Serb autonomous

17 provinces, which was already an anticonstitutional act, because no such

18 thing was stipulated in the constitution.

19 The third part of this organisation, or rather, the third stage,

20 was the establishment of the Serb Assembly, and that was a directly

21 anticonstitutional act.

22 In the decision on the establishment of this Assembly, there is a

23 provision stating that the Assembly has a legislative nature. I should

24 like to remind you that according to the constitution of

25 Bosnia-Herzegovina, legislative authority is vested only in the Assembly

1 of Bosnia-Herzegovina. That is why I am saying that this meant the

2 restructuring of government, of state bodies, by introducing this parallel

3 authority, parallel government, in Bosnia-Herzegovina.

4 MR. HANNIS:

5 Q. Thank you.

6 MR. HANNIS: I would like to have the next CD marked and given an

7 exhibit number.

8 JUDGE ORIE: Madam Registrar, that would be number --?

9 THE REGISTRAR: That would be number P397.

10 MR. HANNIS: Your Honours, I only have one clip from this

11 intercept and it's about 35 seconds long.

12 JUDGE ORIE: Yes. That would then be P397A for the transcript in

13 B/C/S, and P397A.1 for the English translation. Please proceed.

14 MR. HANNIS: Thank you. And for the interpreters, this begins at

15 the very beginning of the translation. I'm sorry, Your Honour. I'm not

16 hearing anything.

17 [Intercept played]

18 THE INTERPRETER: [Voiceover]

19 "Radovan KARADZIC: -- Meet every morning and have it sorted out.

20 I was with Izetbegovic and Zulfikarpasic last night and I told them openly

21 we would form a parallel government, we would form a parallel police, if

22 they exclude our people and government, and they will still have to pay

23 for them. We would exclude all our people who are armed, we would form

24 completely a parallel state, if you continue to fuck around. And he only

25 stared at me, and winked, because he knew that we would do it. God could

1 not stop us in that, because they started to fuck around with us. And

2 there is no doubt there. We would do it in a week. So let the war be.

3 So we'll have it finished once."

4 MR. HANNIS:

5 Q. Mr. Bjelobrk, you told us just before we played this about the

6 three phases that you saw of this parallel process, and one of them that

7 you talked about the municipalities where the SDS was in power were made

8 bigger. How were they made bigger? What did you mean by that exactly?

9 A. They were not made bigger physically. They were instructed as

10 follows: Whenever they're supposed to resolve a problem, they should

11 resort to the provisions of the constitution of Yugoslavia rather than the

12 constitution of Bosnia-Herzegovina. That is what the situation was in

13 January 1991, if I remember correctly. In my opinion, this was the second

14 stage, in the month of July, and this atmosphere permeated the public,

15 because these were words that had already become recognisable.

16 Q. And in the intercept that we just heard played and was dated, I

17 believe, the 13th of August, 1991, did you see any evidence of the Serbs

18 forming parallel governments?

19 A. The 13th of August? I'm sorry, but the transcript I have before

20 me is dated the 8th of July.

21 Q. I'm sorry. I was reading ahead, Mr. Bjelobrk. You're correct.

22 By that time, had you seen or become aware of any parallel structures

23 being set up by the SDS within Bosnia?

24 A. Of course. The deputies of the SDS spoke in the Assembly and they

25 appeared in the media, the officials of the SDS did, and we found out

1 about all of this, about this sequence of events that was unfolding in the

2 municipalities where the SDS was in power.

3 In the summer of 1991, in the couloir at the Assembly, we had the

4 opportunity of hearing what individual SDS deputies were saying, namely

5 that they intended to establish a government of their own.

6 MR. HANNIS: Your Honours, I would like to have the next CD marked

7 as an exhibit, given a number, please. And I only have one segment in

8 this one.

9 THE REGISTRAR: The number will be P398, and the English

10 translation is P398.1.

11 JUDGE ORIE: Yes. But I think we have a CD, which bears the

12 number 398. Then we have the transcript, the original transcript, 398A,

13 and then P398A.1 for the English translation.

14 MR. HANNIS: And, Your Honour, I'll begin on page 1 of both the

15 B/C/S and the English, and it's about five lines down.

16 [Intercept played]

17 THE INTERPRETER: The interpreters can hear the same tape that was

18 played before.

19 MR. HANNIS: I'm sorry, Your Honour. That's the last one.

20 [Intercept played]

21 THE INTERPRETER: [Voiceover]

22 "Nikola KOLJEVIC: Tell me something, has the law proposed by the

23 government to suspend the federal law been adopted?

24 Radovan KARADZIC: Yes, at the government level. At the

25 government level. It was --

1 Nikola KOLJEVIC: Did the Assembly adopt it too?

2 Radovan KARADZIC: No, no. The Assembly is the Board of Citizens.

3 The Board of Municipalities rejected it earlier and whatever the Board of

4 Citizens does now, it would not be valid. No one has the right to do that

5 and nobody will. It has not been adopted and our municipalities will not

6 obey it. They report to Doko on a regular basis.

7 Nikola KOLJEVIC: Has it been adopted at the Assembly?

8 Radovan KARADZIC: No, it hasn't.

9 Nikola KOLJEVIC: Okay. That's the most important.

10 Radovan KARADZIC: No, it hasn't. And also, our municipalities

11 are not acting according to it.

12 Nikola KOLJEVIC: Okay, then.

13 Radovan KARADZIC: Doko is sending, he is sending to, Doko and

14 Pelivan are sending together.

15 Nikola KOLJEVIC: Yes.

16 Radovan KARADZIC: However, our municipalities regularly report

17 that they will obey only the federal law.

18 Nikola KOLJEVIC: Yes.

19 Radovan KARADZIC: To tell you the truth, I did not watch all of

20 that, but the journalist told me what happened. He told me what Kljuic

21 was saying. They intend to create a crisis in Bosnia and Herzegovina.

22 They are threatening to leave the Assembly and the coalition and to join

23 the opposition.

24 Nikola KOLJEVIC: Who is threatening by leaving the Assembly?

25 Radovan KARADZIC: Or the coalition. Kljuic is.

1 Nikola KOLJEVIC: Yes.

2 Radovan KARADZIC: And by joining the opposition.

3 Nikola KOLJEVIC: He would be in the opposition?

4 Radovan KARADZIC: Yes.

5 Nikola KOLJEVIC: Did you continue the talks with Alija?

6 Radovan KARADZIC: Yes, we did.

7 Nikola KOLJEVIC: Was there anything new?

8 Radovan KARADZIC: You know, we both talked, but basically, I

9 said -- were you there when I said that we found ourselves in the

10 situation -- what Alija described is the conflict of two political wills.

11 We are in the situation to decide is there one solution for

12 Bosnia-Herzegovina, i.e., something that would be acceptable for all three

13 nations.

14 Nikola KOLJEVIC: Yes.

15 Radovan KARADZIC: If not, then we should find solution for each

16 nation separately, to find out what would be the solution that every

17 nation can accept, i.e., every nation shall look for its own solution.

18 Because if there won't be any acceptable solution for us at the level of

19 Bosnia and Herzegovina, we will find our own solution. But Momo took a

20 dig at them in terms of referendum.

21 Nikola KOLJEVIC: Is that so?

22 Radovan KARADZIC: He told him: Let's suppose that we get a

23 result. We can guess what the result will be. What will you do with that

24 result? He stopped, as to say: We know it too. He then said: The

25 result will be to our benefit. We will have the benefit of the referendum

1 results. Alija was not saying a word like they have smelled the rat and

2 Momo did not want to tell him why it would be to our benefit."

3 JUDGE ORIE: Any discrepancies between the spoken B/C/S and what

4 was listened by the interpreter's booth?

5 THE INTERPRETER: None between the transcript and the English

6 translation; however, the spoken words were too fast; it couldn't be

7 matched.

8 JUDGE ORIE: Any need for them to be replayed or is the Defence

9 sufficiently ...?

10 MR. STEWART: No, Your Honour. Ms. Cmeric says there's a couple

11 of things she can check, but she can do that later without taking the

12 Court's time.

13 JUDGE ORIE: Then we can proceed.

14 MR. HANNIS: Thank you, Your Honour.

15 Q. Mr. Bjelobrk, one of the things you mentioned before was following

16 the federal constitution rather than the republican constitution. In the

17 beginning, there seemed to be a discussion about that. Is that the matter

18 that you were talking about?

19 A. Yes. Yes. That is one of the examples of the kind of thing I

20 meant. The person who is mentioned here as Doko was the minister of

21 defence. The government wanted to take additional measures in order to

22 resolve the situation concerning weapons in Bosnia-Herzegovina, by

23 managing these resources directly. There was an important need for taking

24 such a measure, because there was a tangible threat of use of arms. It is

25 obvious from the transcript that the SDA position is that the federal law

1 should be applied, first and foremost, and then, number 2, that the

2 municipalities would not obey the government, as mentioned here.

3 Q. Mr. Bjelobrk, I'm looking at the transcript, and it comes off as

4 your answer was: "It was obvious from the transcript that the SDA

5 position is that the federal law should be applied." Did you mean to say

6 SDA?

7 A. It was a slip. The SDS.

8 Q. Thank you. Now, in your statement, where you talk in paragraphs

9 26 and 27 about the parallel process, you also talked about

10 regionalisation, which I think is what you referred to in an earlier

11 answer in talking about the creation of the Serb autonomous regions. Do

12 you recall when that first became public knowledge or in the awareness of

13 the public, that there was any kind of formal media announcement about

14 those Serb autonomous regions?

15 A. The public was formally informed only at the moment when these

16 forms of regionalisation, as they termed them in the SDS, were formally

17 established. The second aspect of it is that many of these notions did

18 emerge in the press, in the independent media. Therefore, my direct

19 answer to your question would be the following: There were no official,

20 formal announcements of these acts, but by interpreting the different

21 discussions that went on between various politicians, like, for instance,

22 something that we heard in the penultimate transcript, and of course, this

23 reached the Assembly members and we could infer our own conclusions.

24 Thirdly, I was born and I live in Sarajevo; however, many of my

25 colleagues live in other areas of Bosnia and Herzegovina. They directly

1 conveyed to me the information as to what was going on in their

2 communities. That was sufficient information for me, to be indirectly

3 informed about all these processes.

4 MR. HANNIS: Your Honours, at this time I'd like to have the next

5 CD given an exhibit number. And again, I have a single --

6 JUDGE ORIE: Madam Registrar.

7 THE REGISTRAR: The next number is P399. The original B/C/S

8 version transcript is P399A, and the English is P399A.1.

9 MR. HANNIS: For the booth, this excerpt starts about the middle

10 of page 3 in the English and a third of the way down on page 2 of the

11 B/C/S. It's about a minute and a half

12 [Intercept played]

13 THE INTERPRETER: [Voiceover]

14 "Momcilo KRAJISNIK: I spoke to Alija.

15 Radovan KARADZIC: Yes.

16 Momcilo KRAJISNIK: Concerning the platform.

17 Radovan KARADZIC: Yes.

18 Momcilo KRAJISNIK: He says: You know, I have to think about it,

19 I have to, because it's not concrete enough, you know.

20 Radovan KARADZIC: Right.

21 Momcilo KRAJISNIK: Let me see, I think that Ganic agrees with it

22 also, I have to see, so he stayed, but postponed it for Monday.

23 Radovan KARADZIC: Uh-huh.

24 Momcilo KRAJISNIK: But Nikola is now completely depressed.

25 Radovan KARADZIC: Really?

1 Momcilo KRAJISNIK: You know he gets all on fire but yesterday he

2 was all, you know, I guess they didn't talk about it so it all seemed

3 strange to him.

4 Radovan KARADZIC: Uh-huh.

5 Momcilo KRAJISNIK: I just told him, wait a minute, Nikola,

6 understand, if he thought so, and if he didn't think so, he was not

7 supposed to tell the gathering yesterday so publicly and we're not

8 interested in him. As soon as we speak to them we'll sort it out

9 ourselves. Come on.

10 Radovan KARADZIC: Yes, yes.

11 Momcilo KRAJISNIK: I told him not to get so upset over it, so he

12 calmed down a little. This morning he came to me.

13 Radovan KARADZIC: Yes, yes. We will face them with an

14 alternative. We can do it this way. But you know what comes then. We

15 are going to the national equality council. Nothing will come out of that

16 and your Assembly can, can dissolve or, or return it to the previous state

17 so that the Serbs can participate in it.

18 Momcilo KRAJISNIK: Yeah, well, I don't think at all. We will

19 simply -- our project in the future when we spoke to him we'll go publicly

20 with regionalisation because we'll say we've spoken to you, what do you

21 want?

22 Radovan KARADZIC: Yes, yes, right.

23 Momcilo KRAJISNIK: Over there we have nothing else our great

24 problem is that --

25 Radovan KARADZIC: That's right, I have a newspaper here. We will

1 release a little of it. A part.

2 Momcilo KRAJISNIK: Yeah.

3 Radovan KARADZIC: In the public, so then --

4 Momcilo KRAJISNIK: Listen here: At 4.00 that guy Milojevic will

5 come here and Miskin will come, Dokinic will come. So I'll have a look

6 then regarding, you know, that map we spoke about.

7 Radovan KARADZIC: Yeah, yeah.

8 Momcilo KRAJISNIK: And then the two of us will have a look at it

9 together and then at 6.00 we will go down there. There is some -- that

10 thing, what's it called, the Executive Board, is it?

11 Radovan KARADZIC: The executive is at six, is it?

12 Momcilo KRAJISNIK: At six."

13 MR. HANNIS:

14 Q. Mr. Bjelobrk, my first question is: Can you tell us what the

15 national equality council was?

16 A. It was a body which purported to discuss those issues that the

17 politicians deemed relevant and important for national equality, for

18 ethnic equality. This was a novelty in the state infrastructure, because

19 I want to correct something I stated yesterday. The Presidency at the

20 time had seven members, two from the ranks of the Serbs, two from the

21 ranks of Croats, two from the ranks of Bosniaks, and one from the ranks of

22 "others," and that institution itself had already had the competence, the

23 authority to discuss issues related to ethnic equality. In any case, the

24 Assembly had the competence to discuss these matters. In my opinion, this

25 idea of creating this exclusive body was simply a way of trying to discuss

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1 the matters of ethnic equality in a narrow -- among a narrow circle of

2 people.

3 Q. And by whom was this body created, and what authority or power did

4 it have, if any?

5 A. I don't recall precisely what sort of an act it was, establishing

6 the body, but it was an advisory body. All the positions presented from

7 that body had to be decided upon ultimately, either by the Assembly or by

8 the Presidency. But if I may, I would like to state the following: I

9 mentioned yesterday that one of the key characteristics of such a practice

10 was the choice of a defensive tactics. In that context, when it came to

11 raising any issues within the ethnic equality council, it could have been

12 decided upon in an exclusive matter. I will try to put it simply. The

13 SDS platform text, at least one of its initial versions, insisted on the

14 principle of regionalisation of Bosnia and Herzegovina, which meant that

15 every national government would basically exert its authority over a given

16 territory of the country. But this was placed in a very exclusive way,

17 that is to say, in an ultimatum type way: Either it is going to be this

18 way or it is not going to be in any of these ways. And in this

19 transcript, you can read such a statement, that regionalisation will be

20 insisted upon regardless of what these institutions may decide upon. The

21 times that lay ahead only served to confirm that choice of proceeding.

22 Q. In 1991, when regionalisation became public, when some of the Serb

23 Autonomous Regions were pronounced or announced, was there public

24 discussion about it or discussion about this in the Assembly?

25 A. When it came to the decision-making process of -- or presenting

1 any sort of a platform to the Assembly, nothing of that sort ever took

2 place. However, from what the SDS MPs were saying, one could discern the

3 inevitability of it actually happening, taking place, regardless of what

4 the other MPs in the Assembly thought about it.

5 Q. Thank you. I want to move to another topic now, and this is in

6 paragraph 54 of your statement. You refer to Mr. Krajisnik as being

7 "moderate in his public statements." Can you tell the Judges what you

8 meant by the use of that term "moderate." Compared to whom or compared to

9 what?

10 A. First of all, the terms he used in his public statements were far

11 more tolerant and carefully chosen than the ones that we could see in the

12 transcript and what we would actually conclude on the basis of the

13 transcript. The way in which he was chairing the Assembly's sessions also

14 seemed to point to a person that really wanted to abide by the democratic

15 procedure and end the process in a tolerant way. Outside these official

16 meetings, I had the occasion of experiencing his more fierce statements,

17 even at an earlier stage. And in my statement, I did mention several such

18 examples. I think it was in one of the interviews immediately

19 before -- or actually, in the beginning of 1992, where Mr. Krajisnik gave

20 a very clear public statement that was bordering on the statements

21 contained in the transcript, and that the public did not have the

22 opportunity of hearing before. I have to admit that, especially in summer

23 and in autumn, he did gain a lot of sympathy, support, from the Croat and

24 Bosniak public.

25 Q. In your statement, you did, and I think you just now said, that

1 you had occasion or opportunity to see Mr. Krajisnik in a non-public

2 setting, where his demeanour and choice of language was different. Can

3 you give the Court some details about that, when that was, what the nature

4 of those discussions were, and how that difference manifested itself.

5 A. I will describe a meeting that we had together. That year I was

6 president of the trade union organisation in Sarajevo that had 220.000

7 members. There had been many strikes. One strike that was held in a

8 large company in Sarajevo had as its objective the settlement of the debt

9 of some 50 million dollars of a commercial company dealing with the trade

10 in arms. Together with those who were holding the strike, we were asking

11 for the, of course, company to intervene, but also for the government and

12 the Assembly to intervene in the matter. Because it was clear that the

13 organs of the federal government also had to be involved in the resolution

14 of the problem. And the situation, which was very tense, I had a

15 negotiating team that met with Mr. Krajisnik, but this meeting very soon

16 got into quite different waters, far away from what actually the motives

17 of those who had been holding the strike were.

18 I recall that two questions were put to us: Was this something

19 that was directed against the Serbs? And: Is there someone from among us

20 who dislikes Belgrade?

21 I will just say that the end of the whole matter was that, that

22 same evening, the funds were deposited to the account of that company

23 towards the debt.

24 When I had the opportunity of working with Mr. Krajisnik, either

25 on some commissions or other bodies, he was much more effusive than when

1 seated at the chairman's seat of the Assembly. When I talked to other

2 members of the SDS and listened to their very tough statements, I asked

3 them whether other SDS leaders were of the same opinion that they held,

4 and they always confirmed to me with absolute certainty that Mr. Krajisnik

5 was of the same position.

6 JUDGE ORIE: May I just intervene with one question. Could you

7 give us a few examples of the -- I mean, you are qualifying the language

8 used by Mr. Krajisnik, but could you give us examples, apart from the two

9 you mentioned, whether it was against Serbs and whether some people didn't

10 like Belgrade.

11 THE WITNESS: [Interpretation] In the debates in the autumn of

12 1991, I could hear from Mr. Krajisnik in the discussions that we had

13 during the sessions of the Assembly, I could hear him persuading me that

14 basically there was no way that we could agree upon anything with the

15 Muslims and that Bosnia and Herzegovina had to be divided. In my

16 statement, I also mentioned a conversation that took place at his

17 invitation. He invited Miro Lazovic, the then-head of the SDP club and my

18 own boss, and the motive was the meeting of the Serbian intellectuals that

19 was taking place at the time. The topic was: Why did we not support the

20 SDS? The two of us were telling him that we looked upon

21 Bosnia-Herzegovina as a country of citizens, and he was persuading us,

22 trying to persuade us, that Bosnia and Herzegovina had to be divided along

23 ethnic lines.

24 I remember very well the last message he conveyed to us, and I

25 quoted that one. That type of a country you're advocating won't exist in

1 200 years' time.

2 JUDGE ORIE: Yes. I was still -- it was still on my mind that

3 your testimony was about that meeting you had in your capacity as a trade

4 union leader, about the debt that still had to be paid. What kind of

5 language did he use in that meeting?

6 THE WITNESS: [Interpretation] That meeting didn't last very long,

7 because the tensions heightened very soon. And instead of discussing how

8 this whole operation of the settling the debt of that company could be

9 brought about, there were these two questions that I mentioned, and

10 workers who were there with me reacted strongly to that, and our

11 conversation didn't last very long after that.

12 JUDGE ORIE: Yes, but in your statement it says, "he was

13 passionately discussing with us." Were these the two questions? I could

14 read it to you: "As a representative of the unions, I met with Krajisnik

15 in his capacity as president of the Assembly, on one occasion. It was a

16 meeting without media and he was passionately discussing with us. Our

17 dialogue bordered on an open fight."

18 Is that the meeting? Because that's the meeting described in

19 paragraph 54. So I'd like to know exactly apart from the two examples you

20 gave, what was the -- what were the words used during this passionate

21 discussing and how did the dialogue border on an open fight?

22 THE WITNESS: [Interpretation] First of all, I was facing an angry

23 man, and I could not persuade him to try and discuss the actual problem

24 that existed in the company.

25 JUDGE ORIE: My question was what words Mr. Krajisnik used which

1 made you conclude that he was angry or passionately discussing or that

2 your dialogue bordered on an open fight.

3 THE WITNESS: [Interpretation] I usually measure anger in decibels,

4 and I do remember it as being a very loud discussion. I have tried to

5 quote, and I have quoted two statements. The rest was just the debate

6 amongst a crowd of people, and I'm not really sure that I would be able to

7 quote precisely.

8 JUDGE ORIE: Then my next question: How was the aspect of being

9 pro- or anti-Serb involved in this? Was the debt owed by a private

10 company owned by Serbs or was it -- I mean, how do you -- how did you

11 understand these remarks by Mr. Krajisnik, whether this was against Serbs

12 or whether this was -- or whether anyone didn't like Belgrade?

13 THE WITNESS: [Interpretation] First of all, it was a state-owned

14 company. Second, the money that was due, and I will now try to use the,

15 so to say, spatial terminology, the money belonged to Sarajevo but was at

16 the time in Belgrade. And of course, our demands were justified, and that

17 was proved by the fact that the federal government sent the money to be

18 deposited to that company's account that same evening.

19 JUDGE ORIE: So I do understand that the issue was that the money

20 had to come from Belgrade and had to be paid to Sarajevo. And was it 50

21 million or 15 million? I did not clearly understand that.

22 THE WITNESS: [Interpretation] I'm speaking of my memory now,

23 because of course this can be found in the record, but I think it was

24 somewhere around 50 million dollars.

25 JUDGE ORIE: 50, 5-0. Yes. Thank you.

1 Please proceed.

2 MR. HANNIS: Thank you, Your Honour.

3 Q. I think you told us Mr. Krajisnik was already president of the

4 Assembly at that time. Do you remember approximately when that was, what

5 year and month?

6 A. It was certainly in 1991.

7 MR. HANNIS: Thank you. Your Honour --

8 A. The month could have been September, I think.

9 MR. HANNIS: Thank you. I would like to mark the next CD and give

10 it an exhibit number. And I have one segment to play from here, but it's

11 a long one. It's almost five minutes, Your Honour.

12 JUDGE ORIE: Madam Registrar, that would be number --?

13 THE REGISTRAR: That would be number P400. And the original B/C/S

14 transcript is P400A, and the English translation is P400A.1.

15 JUDGE ORIE: Thank you, Madam Registrar.

16 MR. HANNIS: For the booths, this starts on page 2 of the English,

17 about five lines down and the B/C/S is on the second page, ERN 95 --

18 [Intercept played]

19 THE INTERPRETER: [Voiceover]

20 "Momcilo KRAJISNIK: A Presidency meeting was held today, you

21 know.

22 Radovan KARADZIC: Uh-huh.

23 Momcilo KRAJISNIK: Well, they adopted some decisions. I don't

24 know. I think that our lot did not understand it well. I looked at that

25 platform.

1 Radovan KARADZIC: Hmm.

2 Momcilo KRAJISNIK: I think that it's not good.

3 Radovan KARADZIC: Did they -- our lot did --

4 Momcilo KRAJISNIK: I don't know what they were doing. I think

5 they did not rise to the occasion. They did not understand it. I don't

6 know what we're going to do.

7 Radovan KARADZIC: Hmm.

8 Momcilo KRAJISNIK: Believe me, according to the platform Bosnia

9 and Herzegovina is a sovereign country. I'm afraid that's going to cause

10 a scandal and there's going to be trouble. There's no Yugoslavia. It's

11 two, three, or five times worse than anything that's been offered so far.

12 Radovan KARADZIC: Well, never mind. They'll have a breakup of

13 Bosnia and Herzegovina.

14 Momcilo KRAJISNIK: Let me tell you something, to avoid

15 participating in the breakup because it's wrong, we're not interested in

16 that. I think a good thing to do would be, so to speak, to consult the

17 two of ours. I don't know what they adopted.

18 Radovan KARADZIC: Hmm.

19 Momcilo KRAJISNIK: I think that is --

20 Radovan KARADZIC: Ours did --

21 Momcilo KRAJISNIK: Huh.

22 Radovan KARADZIC: Ours gave a special, special, special --

23 Momcilo KRAJISNIK: I was here with a man who was present here.

24 Radovan KARADZIC: Yeah, and what did he say?

25 Momcilo KRAJISNIK: I think they did not understand each other.

1 They did not understand what they want. The Presidency discussion has

2 finished he thinks that we should - verb missing - him to finish.

3 Radovan KARADZIC: Yes, the Presidency discussion has finished.

4 Now it's the Assembly's turn, right?

5 Momcilo KRAJISNIK: Yes. That wouldn't be -- I think that wasn't

6 okay. I'm afraid there's going to be trouble in Bosnia-Herzegovina.

7 We'll --

8 Radovan KARADZIC: They want it for the constitutional commission,

9 don't they?

10 Momcilo KRAJISNIK: No, no. It is for the Assembly.

11 Radovan KARADZIC: How come? Well, it has to be for the

12 constitutional commission.

13 Momcilo KRAJISNIK: Well, you see, there are two problems here.

14 It was said that the platform was going to be for the Assembly but the

15 problem is who does it go to for further procedure.

16 Radovan KARADZIC: Uh-huh.

17 Momcilo KRAJISNIK: You know that's it.

18 Radovan KARADZIC: Uh-huh.

19 Momcilo KRAJISNIK: Because now they want it to have a

20 non-constitutional character and it hasn't got a constitutional character,

21 you know.

22 Radovan KARADZIC: Yes.

23 Momcilo KRAJISNIK: In this way, they have two documents. One for

24 drawing up the constitution. Today I was so angry. Believe me, I haven't

25 been angry for a long time. We have groups, you see, in the

1 constitutional commission.

2 Radovan KARADZIC: Yes.

3 Momcilo KRAJISNIK: Which constitute different, so to speak,

4 fractions. And international relations. And I was supposed to do it. I

5 said: Don't make me choose Miljanovic, that Gasa. He is a professor.

6 He's realistic. Well, he's not much of a Serb, but it doesn't matter.

7 Radovan KARADZIC: Uh-huh.

8 Momcilo KRAJISNIK: He will know what should be done.

9 Radovan KARADZIC: Yes.

10 Momcilo KRAJISNIK: Milan was supposed to go with him.

11 Radovan KARADZIC: Uh-huh.

12 Momcilo KRAJISNIK: And that Krstan Malesevic was appointed on

13 behalf of the SDP.

14 Radovan KARADZIC: Yes, yes.

15 Momcilo KRAJISNIK: And a member of the government was

16 suggested --

17 Radovan KARADZIC: Uh-huh.

18 Momcilo KRAJISNIK: And a member of the Presidency. Two members,

19 one of the government and the other of the Presidency. It has to be one

20 of each of the three nationalities. And today I received the act --

21 Radovan KARADZIC: Uh-huh.

22 Momcilo KRAJISNIK: Finished. It's a real wonder.

23 Radovan KARADZIC: None of our people were absent, right?

24 Momcilo KRAJISNIK: Milan Trbojevic was also present and then I

25 called. Ranko was there for 15 minutes. Micic was there but he had no

1 authorisation. Well, that Mijanovic was absent. Krstan was absent. And,

2 get this, it -- I think of Serbs -- what was -- because that's what we had

3 agreed at the national composition. Milan Trbojevic was present. He came

4 to me and said, get this, we have agreed to - verb missing - now. There

5 were all sorts of remarks, that somebody should summarise it and then we

6 should sit down again.

7 Radovan KARADZIC: Yes.

8 Momcilo KRAJISNIK: And they draft it. It's finished, and they

9 send it to the representatives and members of the constitutional

10 commission, to other commissions to deal with.

11 Radovan KARADZIC: You know what you should do. Have

12 Milan Trbojevic write it for you, an official letter to.

13 Momcilo KRAJISNIK: All right. I know what I've done.

14 Everything -- they have -- I said you have to be responsible to the

15 people. Are you passing on what the interests of the people are? And he

16 will write it down. Because that's really a mistake of this

17 Cazim Sadikovic.

18 Radovan KARADZIC: Yes. Yes.

19 Momcilo KRAJISNIK: But it's not possible, man, on that people

20 everyone is taking away. There's no one there. It's a total chaos. Well,

21 I said, well, do you understand man, I'm not -- you will start a

22 revolution, you, man -- first, I don't think that we should now act to the

23 benefit of the Serbs. But, man, you can't do it that way. People will

24 spit on you. And they will make us traitors.

25 Radovan KARADZIC: How did Trbojevic behave then?

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13 English transcripts.

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1 Momcilo KRAJISNIK: Well, how.

2 Radovan KARADZIC: He doesn't see the danger, does he?

3 Momcilo KRAJISNIK: Well, that's the problem, I think. It's hard

4 for me to say this. To hell with silky and Ranko. I was there for 15

5 minutes. I had no authorisation. Oh, Simovic sent Ranko, Ranko said

6 since I didn't go, I left the place later they can go to --

7 Radovan KARADZIC: Well, you should engage Simovic. You should

8 leave out Ranko a bit.

9 Momcilo KRAJISNIK: Well, I told them today, for God's sake,

10 people -- I was so angry. Well, it is clear to you, man, what -- do you

11 understand that this is not -- you have no right to pass on that

12 information. Where's your alternative, if nothing else. How can you do

13 that? They say, well, it's not -- well, then you know they start well, we

14 added it. Well, you can add it. You know what, you have what --

15 Radovan KARADZIC: They will not let the bill to be passed.

16 Momcilo KRAJISNIK: Well, no -- we are --

17 Radovan KARADZIC: That's their --

18 Momcilo KRAJISNIK: Well, we have clearly defined what it is. And

19 you can pass what it is, man, people want -- and not what you think or

20 what you think somebody else would think. This is an amendment to the act

21 where we have to say precisely some want this, others that, and let the

22 people decide.

23 Radovan KARADZIC: Yes, yes.

24 Momcilo KRAJISNIK: And the Assembly, three -- two thirds or one

25 third majority, one third. You can't use tactics, half of this, half of

1 that. But you have to tell me precisely, please, the alternative is --

2 federative Yugoslavia and federal units. Bosnia is a sovereign, an equal

3 and sovereign state and let them decide who wants what.

4 Radovan KARADZIC: Yes. Yes."

5 MR. HANNIS:

6 Q. Mr. Bjelobrk --

7 JUDGE ORIE: No discrepancies noticed that need any further

8 attention.

9 THE INTERPRETER: To the extent the interpreters could follow,

10 none.

11 JUDGE ORIE: Mr. Hannis.

12 MR. HANNIS: Thank you, Your Honour.

13 Q. Mr. Bjelobrk, this intercept is dated, I believe, the 14th of

14 August, 1991, although --

15 JUDGE ORIE: Do we find that.

16 MR. HANNIS: It does not appear on my copy of the transcript. I

17 will ask you:

18 Q. Were you aware of discussions about the platform being discussed

19 in the late summer/early fall in the Assembly?

20 A. Yes. One of the conclusions of the Assembly, in view of various

21 memorandums or resolutions of different authors and different political

22 parties, was to bring all of this together through a single platform which

23 would initially be drafted by the Presidency of Bosnia-Herzegovina. So

24 this comment has to do with that.

25 Q. And that matter was also being discussed in the Presidency, as

1 well as in the Assembly?

2 A. Of course. So the Presidency discussed it for two reasons. First

3 of all, because this had to do with the general situation and the

4 Presidency is responsible for the general situation in the country. And

5 when preparing all sessions of the presidents of the republics, the

6 Presidency would formulate its own positions. So when this one member of

7 the Presidency went to represent them there, he or she would have their

8 positions. It is the Assembly also that was in charge of such matters,

9 and therefore, the Presidency followed what was going on in the Assembly

10 and what was said in the parliamentary debates.

11 At the end of July 1991 and the beginning of August 1991, efforts

12 were made by the Presidency to work out this single document that would be

13 verified by the Presidency itself and the Assembly.

14 Q. Thank you.

15 MR. HANNIS: Your Honours, I want to go into the October 8th

16 session of the Assembly. That's a new topic. Would this be an

17 appropriate time for the break?

18 JUDGE ORIE: Yes, it would be, Mr. Hannis. I make one

19 observation. The suggestion made by both parties might result in having

20 to send back two witnesses home and to call them back. The Chamber will

21 consider over the next break whether it still supports that suggestion.

22 MR. HANNIS: Your Honour, in connection with that, may I advise

23 you of one matter. We had some discussion with --

24 JUDGE ORIE: Yes. Perhaps we first ask Madam Usher to escort the

25 witness out of the courtroom. We'll have a break, Mr. Bjelobrk.

1 [The witness stands down]

2 JUDGE ORIE: Yes, Mr. Hannis.

3 MR. HANNIS: Your Honour, we appreciate the share the Court's

4 concerns about that possibility and we did discussion that with

5 Mr. Stewart, Mr. Harmon and myself during the last break, and we thought

6 about what would be the possibility if we sent Mr. Bjelobrk home and

7 started with Witness 629 tomorrow, with the possibility that we might be

8 able to finish him, since he's only here for cross-examination. However,

9 he did testify for approximately five days in Brdjanin. It was an

10 extensive examination. There were, I believe, about 70 exhibits shown to

11 him at that time. I've spoken with Mr. Harmon, and he's not sure that,

12 depending on how long the cross-examination was, how much redirect there

13 would be, and given the number of exhibits, we might still have to send

14 him home as well. That's why we proposed the other procedure.

15 JUDGE ORIE: Yes. Thank you for this additional information.

16 We'll consider the matter and we'll have a break until 10 minutes to 6.00.

17 --- Recess taken at 5.29 p.m.

18 --- On resuming at 5.55 p.m.

19 JUDGE ORIE: Madam Usher, would you please escort the witness into

20 the courtroom.

21 MR. HANNIS: Your Honour, may I inquire if the Court decided which

22 procedure --

23 JUDGE ORIE: Yes. The Chamber has again considered whether it

24 would prefer to hear Witness 629 or Mr. Bjelobrk -- the start of the

25 cross-examination of Mr. Bjelobrk. And the Chamber decided that we would

1 continue in the way we intended to go. That means that we start the

2 cross-examination of Mr. Bjelobrk tomorrow.

3 [The witness entered court]

4 MR. HANNIS: Thank you, Your Honour.

5 Q. Mr. Bjelobrk, now I'd like to take you to October 10th, 11th, and

6 14th of 1991, the 8th Session of the Assembly of Bosnia and Herzegovina.

7 And you talk about this in your statement in paragraphs 40 to 42,

8 paragraph 46, and paragraphs 49 and 50. Just briefly, concisely, can you

9 tell us what was the topic that caused such heated debate at this session

10 and eventually led to the SDS walking out? What was the main topic on the

11 agenda that led to that result?

12 A. The main item on the agenda was the position of Bosnia-Herzegovina

13 in the Yugoslav crisis. The underlying idea at that session was to try to

14 come to a document, yet again, which would establish the positions of the

15 Assembly of Bosnia-Herzegovina in relation to the crisis. The session had

16 two parts. The first part of the session was marked by a very broad

17 debate, and then an attempt was made to draft a document which was

18 supposed to be conducive to the second part of the parliamentary debate.

19 Q. And were there various documents relating to that issue proposed

20 by more than one party?

21 A. Formally speaking, there were several proposals, but the

22 discussion made it obvious that the previously formulated proposals would

23 be put forth too.

24 Q. Let me ask you briefly three short questions. Was there an SDS

25 proposal on the agenda?

1 A. As far as I can remember, they had a proposal of their own too.

2 Q. Was there an SDA memorandum?

3 A. Yes. Yes, there was.

4 Q. And your party, the SDP, had a proposal as well?

5 A. Yes. We kept bringing up the proposal we drafted during the

6 summer.

7 Q. And in your statement, you talk about the speech that Mr. Karadzic

8 made at one point, and it's also in the record that you spoke on that

9 occasion. But there came a point in time where the SDS walked out and

10 Mr. Krajisnik ended the session, as president of the Assembly, he ended

11 the session; correct?

12 A. As far as I can remember, the last three speakers during that part

13 of the session were yours truly, Mr. Karadzic, and Mr. Izetbegovic. After

14 that, there was a break, and after the break, the Assembly was adjourned.

15 In my opinion, and that was the general feeling, it happened very abruptly

16 and unexpectedly.

17 Afterwards, a rule was found in the rules of procedure that the

18 vice-president could chair the remainder of the session, even in the

19 absence of the SDS MPs.

20 Q. And in the absence of the SDS representatives, were there still

21 enough representatives to compose a quorum in terms of numbers?

22 A. There was a quorum, but there was this doubt concerning the quorum

23 that had been raised earlier on as to whether the representatives of the

24 three ethnic parties had to be there, regardless of that rule that was

25 contained in the rules of procedure, exactly providing for the number of

1 representatives that had to be present to compose a quorum.

2 MR. HANNIS: Your Honour, at this time I'd like to have the next

3 document marked as an exhibit. It is -- well, let me ask you a question

4 about marking this before we give it a number. This is the -- these are

5 the minutes of the 8th Session on the 10th, 11th, and 14th of October,

6 1991. A document of that nature relating to those minutes is an exhibit

7 to Mr. Treanor's expert report. It is in the binder 6 -- Exhibit 64A, and

8 I believe it's at tab 435. However, I wasn't able to ascertain whether

9 the version that is in that binder is the full minutes or -- there is a

10 translation that only has highlighted portions. So I don't know if you

11 want me to use that same number, and we have a copy --

12 JUDGE ORIE: Yes. If it's the -- if it is the same document, so

13 if you say I don't remember, you will understand that I could not answer

14 that question by heart, whether that was the full or the -- but perhaps

15 you could check. No. I think even that it might not be in this

16 courtroom.

17 MR. HANNIS: No. Because the footnotes are --

18 JUDGE ORIE: Yes. We'll not assign a number to it yet. You're

19 invited to check overnight whether it's exactly the same document. If

20 not, then it will be given a number tomorrow.

21 MR. HANNIS: Thank you, Your Honour.

22 JUDGE ORIE: Yes.

23 MR. HANNIS: That will work.

24 Q. Mr. Bjelobrk, did you have an opportunity to review that document

25 before testifying today?

1 A. Yes.

2 Q. And do you recognise it as reflecting the minutes of what happened

3 during that session of the BH Assembly?

4 A. These are the official minutes of that particular session of the

5 Assembly.

6 JUDGE ORIE: Yes. Before we continue, Mr. Hannis, we have heard

7 some observations made by Mr. Krajisnik on what are correct text or not.

8 I'd like to ask Mr. Krajisnik at this moment, although not as a witness

9 but as a defendant, whether there's any alternative version of those

10 minutes that he would like to put to the witness at a later stage so that

11 we can already take that into account when listening to the witness. Is

12 there an alternative version?

13 THE ACCUSED: [Interpretation] Your Honours, this is the short

14 version, the minutes that I was referring to, and here we have the

15 stenographic notes, which is much larger.

16 JUDGE ORIE: Yes. I do understand.

17 Mr. Hannis, you are not aware of the content of these stenographic

18 notes?

19 MR. HANNIS: I'm not, Your Honour. I can't frankly tell you

20 whether we have those stenographic notes for this session of the

21 BiH Assembly or not.

22 JUDGE ORIE: May I just ask whether Mr. Krajisnik would allow the

23 Chamber just to have a glance at the stenographic notes so that we have

24 any idea about the size of it. But, of course, only -- I would say --

25 Mr. Krajisnik, I take it that you have consulted Mr. Stewart on this, or

1 at least discussed it with Mr. Stewart.

2 [Defence counsel and accused confer]

3 MR. STEWART: Your Honour, we can tell Your Honours that the notes

4 for the 14th of October, and of course there are all those previous days,

5 constitute just about a hundred pages, 98 pages, something like that.

6 That's for the 14th, that one day.

7 JUDGE ORIE: Yes. Could I just have a brief look at it, just to

8 get an impression on what it looks like.

9 MR. STEWART: Yes, indeed, Your Honour.

10 [Trial Chamber confers]

11 JUDGE ORIE: First of all, I would like to at least allow

12 Mr. Hannis to have a glance on it. If there would be any issue raised in

13 a question which would look quite different if one would consult the

14 stenographic notes or if there's really -- it's a wrong representation or

15 a misleading presentation of what has been said, then the Chamber

16 exceptionally would like to be informed about that. And whether this is

17 done by the accused himself, by Mr. Krajisnik himself, or through you, I

18 leave that up to, well, policy to be developed by the Defence. But we'd

19 rather not spend a lot of questions and time on an issue where the basis

20 could be subject to serious doubt because the minutes would reflect not

21 what has been said. At least the Chamber would like to be informed about

22 it.

23 So, therefore, it's not necessary to intervene immediately, if a

24 question is put, but we would like to avoid that we'd hear questions and

25 answers for 15 or 20 minutes on a subject which would look totally

1 different if you would look at the stenographic notes. This is not to say

2 that the Chamber, by giving such an opportunity, accepts the authenticity

3 of the stenographic notes. Nothing is said about that. It's just a very

4 practical approach of the matter at this very moment. And perhaps I also

5 should then perhaps remind the parties, both Prosecution and Defence, that

6 of course the way in which political parties have developed and formulated

7 their goals, what strategies or others would call it perhaps games or

8 tricks be played in order to get that -- to achieve aims and goals is not

9 the core of this case. I'm not saying that political matters are

10 insignificant for this case, but that's not the core of this case. And

11 I'd like to remind the parties of that.

12 So, therefore, even if this Chamber is confronted with, in

13 statements or testimonies about political analysis of a certain situation,

14 the most important thing, then, for the Chamber is that in evidence is

15 that someone analysed the political situation in that way, and not

16 necessarily that such an analysis makes any sense at all. I'm not saying

17 that it makes sense, does not make sense, but if not a proper, factual

18 foundation for such analysis is given, it's just the analysis, it's just

19 the opinion of a person. The Chamber -- you may have noticed that some

20 questions were put to this witness to -- of course, not to demonstrate,

21 because that was not the purpose, but that could demonstrate the approach

22 of this Chamber, that is, analysis, qualifications, are of minor

23 assistance to the Chamber, whereas facts are the most important things

24 this Chamber will look at.

25 Please proceed, Mr. Hannis.

1 MR. STEWART: Your Honour, could I just ask: I happen to know, as

2 Mr. Hannis knows, in my case, that it's unlikely, with respect, that

3 Mr. Hannis's grasp of B/C/S will enable him to do a deep analysis of the

4 document in his hands at the moment. But since it is Mr. Krajisnik's

5 document and since it does have, I think, some of his notes, I wonder,

6 when a glance --

7 JUDGE ORIE: Yes, of course.

8 MR. STEWART: It's already back. I'm so sorry. Things happen

9 when you're not looking and it's already back. My apologies.

10 JUDGE ORIE: Perhaps it's even difficult for you to follow the

11 course of a B/C/S document.

12 MR. STEWART: I'm acknowledging. We know each other's limitations

13 as far as that goes, Your Honour.

14 JUDGE ORIE: Yes. Please proceed, Mr. Hannis.

15 MR. HANNIS: Thank you, Your Honour. And actually, I'm intending

16 to ask the witness about events that happened after Mr. Krajisnik left and

17 I think the stenographic minutes he has don't cover the period that I'm

18 going to go into now, Your Honour.

19 JUDGE ORIE: Yes. I do understand that it's the 14th of October.

20 So if we come to that, it makes any sense if we are still at the 10th or

21 the 11th, it's different. Yes. Please proceed, Mr. Hannis.

22 MR. HANNIS: Thank you.

23 Q. Mr. Bjelobrk, after the SDS had walked out and Mr. Krajisnik had

24 adjourned the session, I understand that those of you who remained were

25 enough to constitute a quorum. Is that correct?

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1 A. Yes. There was enough of us to constitute a quorum.

2 Q. And after consulting the rules and having some discussion, did you

3 continue to have a session in the absence of the SDS and Mr. Krajisnik?

4 A. The vice-president of the Assembly, Mariofil Ljubic continued to

5 chair the session.

6 Q. And did you conduct some business during that session, vote on

7 some of the proposals?

8 A. Yes. The Assembly discussed and adopted a memorandum containing

9 several paragraphs that were determining the position of Bosnia and

10 Herzegovina in respect of the Yugoslav crisis.

11 Q. And the details --

12 THE INTERPRETER: Microphone, please.

13 MR. HANNIS: I'm sorry.

14 Q. And the details of that are reflected in the minutes before you as

15 to which items were voted on and whether they passed?

16 A. Are you waiting for my answer?

17 Q. I am.

18 A. That is correct. The substance is contained in the minutes, and

19 in my statement, I presented paragraphs 1 to 3, and I analysed in some

20 detail paragraph 6, which insisted on the use of political means only for

21 the resolution of the crisis.

22 Q. And that memorandum also expressed the principle that you

23 mentioned earlier in your testimony about Bosnia maintaining equidistance

24 between itself and Croatia, on the one hand, and Serbia on the other; is

25 that correct?

1 A. That is correct. That constituted the minimum from which we would

2 not depart in terms of our position for the resolution of the Yugoslav

3 crisis, that equidistance in relation to Serbia and Croatia, and

4 internally the equality of every single citizen and nation constituting

5 the Republic of Bosnia-Herzegovina, and I underline that the sixth item

6 was a novelty for the Assembly. It was drafted in response to

7 Mr. Karadzic's address, that the only means for the resolution of crisis

8 allowed are going to be the political ones.

9 Q. Thank you.

10 A. And democratic ones.

11 Q. Thank you. After this session ended, then, was there a reaction

12 or a position that the SDS took in response to your -- I mean the

13 remaining delegates who stayed after the SDS walkout, was there an SDS

14 response to the actions that you all had taken in that post-walkout

15 session?

16 A. The basic message from the SDS was that the Assembly could not

17 adopt anything without consulting the will of one nation, and I've almost

18 quoted their position here. But they were not familiar with either the

19 text of the document or the way in which it was adopted. A combination of

20 facts that occurred later on proved to be the radicalisation of their

21 position in terms of their creating an Assembly of the Serbian People.

22 MR. HANNIS: Your Honours, next I would like to have a CD, another

23 intercept, given the next number and played to this witness. There's only

24 one segment from this intercept.

25 JUDGE ORIE: Yes.

1 THE REGISTRAR: The next number is P401; the B/C/S transcript is

2 401A; and English translation 401A.1.

3 MR. HANNIS: Your Honours, before we begin, for the interpreters,

4 the English begins about the middle of page 5 and the B/C/S begins at the

5 bottom of page ERN 03236578. And during proofing, the witness pointed out

6 to me, in listening to the conversation, that there appeared to be a word

7 that he heard spoken that did not appear in the B/C/S transcript. I spoke

8 about that with Ms. Cmeric. She heard the same missing word. It is in

9 the B/C/S about halfway down on page 6579, where Mr. Karadzic is speaking.

10 In the English, it is on page 6, at the top, the second box, where

11 Mr. Karadzic is speaking, the word missing appears to be "ne," in the

12 context meaning not, and I would ask if the interpreters could listen

13 carefully for that where Mr. Karadzic is speaking about what Alija said

14 about controlling the entire Bosnia and whether they hear the same thing

15 that the witness and Ms. Cmeric have heard. And with that, I'm ready to

16 begin playing, if everyone else is ready.

17 [Intercept played]

18 THE INTERPRETER: [Voiceover]

19 "Djogo GOJKO: And you must bust this, man, this -- I mean, before

20 everybody, that, that representative of yours, Bogicevic.

21 Radovan KARADZIC: Yes. No, on the next Assembly session we shall

22 ask from him to resign. Although everybody denied him trust, he has to

23 resign. And finally they have to work, no matter how many of them are

24 there. They must work. I don't know -- not Mesic. Mesic is a traitor.

25 He betrayed his oath and the fact that he doesn't want it, doesn't oblige

1 us to anything. If he doesn't want it, it doesn't mean that Yugoslavia

2 doesn't exist.

3 Djogo GOJKO: Yes. Yes.

4 Radovan KARADZIC: That means that he betrayed that Yugoslavia.

5 So, they should work. They must work. The government and the Assembly

6 and everything. And now, from here, we shall make them work. You know?

7 Djogo GOJKO: That should be -- I don't know how the Muslims will

8 take it. You know. They might, you know, start something somewhere or

9 start some kind of negotiations you know or maybe simply take over.

10 Radovan KARADZIC: Here -- no --

11 Djogo GOJKO: Some of the territories, you know.

12 Radovan KARADZIC: No. No negotiation. Because Alija they will

13 probably ask for -- want to accept what we did and they'll want to mark

14 their territory as well, and that will be the end of it.

15 Djogo GOJKO: Muslims, huh?

16 Radovan KARADZIC: Yes, I believe in that. Because Alija said, if

17 we cannot control the entire Bosnia, then we'll choose what we can control

18 with success, take over with success.

19 Djogo GOJKO: Uh-huh.

20 Radovan KARADZIC: Because he really wants to achieve that Islamic

21 way of life of his and we have nothing against it.

22 Djogo GOJKO: Yes. Yes.

23 Radovan KARADZIC: But it's no good. He's been thought not to

24 like the state and that's it.

25 Djogo GOJKO: Well, what can you do? You can agree on what you

1 will control.

2 Radovan KARADZIC: Well, right. There are those Muslim areas and

3 so on. We can agree on all of that nothing is --

4 Djogo GOJKO: Yes. Yes.

5 Radovan KARADZIC: Nothing is -- impossible.

6 Djogo GOJKO: Uh-huh.

7 Radovan KARADZIC: But in any case, there's no special agreement

8 because we are discussing this for three months now and then they can pull

9 this thing with memorandum.

10 Djogo GOJKO: Yes.

11 Radovan KARADZIC: And adopt it in an unconstitutional manner. I

12 don't want to discuss anything anymore.

13 Djogo GOJKO: Well, that's like -- you give him a hand and

14 he, you know --

15 Radovan KARADZIC: No, he thinks you are weak, weak because you

16 are kind.

17 Djogo GOJKO: Yes, yes.

18 Radovan KARADZIC: We are not weak now. We have --

19 Djogo GOJKO: Uh-huh.

20 Radovan KARADZIC: -- entire Serbian people. More than we had for

21 the elections, man. And more, it's such a force that is behind us now."

22 JUDGE ORIE: Before we continue, Mr. Hannis, does the word appear

23 in the translation?

24 MR. HANNIS: The word does not appear in the translation, nor does

25 it appear in the transcript of the B/C/S.

1 JUDGE ORIE: Yes. Are you going to provide a new version of this

2 document?

3 MR. HANNIS: Your Honour, assuming that we're all in agreement, I

4 propose to provide a corrected B/C/S transcript and an English

5 translation, including that word.

6 JUDGE ORIE: Yes. That's right. And then just for my better

7 understanding: How would then the translation read on the relevant part?

8 MR. HANNIS: Your Honour, I believe it would say -- do you want to

9 ask me?

10 JUDGE ORIE: Well, at least -- but if Ms. Cmeric would help us

11 out, but then not for the B/C/S but... If you read perhaps the line where

12 the word "ne" appears then we hear from the translator how the translation

13 should be.

14 MS. CMERIC: Certainly, Your Honour.

15 "Radovan KARADZIC: Yes, I believe in that, because Alija said

16 that if we cannot control the entire Bosnia, then we'll choose what we can

17 control successfully, that is, gain."

18 JUDGE ORIE: Yes. Now, where does the negative miss in the

19 translation, Mr. --

20 MR. HANNIS: Your Honour, I believe not --

21 THE INTERPRETER: Microphone, please.

22 MR. HANNIS: I'm sorry. I believe the word "not" needs to be

23 inserted between can and control on the first line of what Mr. Karadzic is

24 saying.

25 JUDGE ORIE: I read in my translation "cannot."

1 MR. HANNIS: I'm sorry, Your Honour. Perhaps I have a copy that

2 does not include it.

3 JUDGE ORIE: And could we just look, since there seem to be

4 different versions, and I'll see whether the B/C/S really is not the right

5 one. Let me just have a look.

6 Ms. Cmeric, could you -- I think that in the B/C/S version, we are

7 in the middle of page 6579, last four digits.

8 MS. CMERIC: Yes.

9 JUDGE ORIE: And we are in the box where Mr. Karadzic, Radovan,

10 starts saying "Da" and then [B/C/S spoken] or something like that.

11 MS. CMERIC: Yes, Your Honour.

12 JUDGE ORIE: And then where would the -- where's the word missing?

13 MS. CMERIC: It's missing in the next sentence [B/C/S spoken] and

14 then the word after "Ako," between words "Ako" and "Budemo". It has to be

15 "Ako ne Budemo".

16 JUDGE ORIE: Yes. So what I understand is that the translation is

17 not correct to the extent that it includes the word "cannot," but if we

18 would add "ne" in this part then the translation would be correct.

19 MR. HANNIS: That's correct, Your Honour. It appears that I have

20 an earlier copy of the English translation without the "not" in it. You

21 have a copy with "not" in it, but we both have the B/C/S version with no

22 ne.

23 JUDGE ORIE: It's a bit confusing that the translation is

24 corrected, and not the original. But it's clear now. So we only get a

25 new copy of the B/C/S version and not of the translation.

1 MR. STEWART: Your Honour, while we were on that little box, apart

2 from the obvious typo of then instead of than in the English, which is

3 fairly clear, I think, we had -- or Ms. Cmeric, I should say, that's the

4 "we" had a slight problem with the last line there, where the English

5 translation at the moment says "takeover with success" which wasn't what

6 came across from the interpreters and it's not what came across to me from

7 Ms. Cmeric either.

8 JUDGE ORIE: Yes. Let me first ask the interpreters: Were you

9 able to follow the B/C/S text and was the transcript in B/C/S correct or

10 not?

11 THE INTERPRETER: We tried, Your Honour. It was very fast, and we

12 tried to do our best. We think it is all there.

13 JUDGE ORIE: You think it's all there. So of course, Ms. Cmeric,

14 if there would be any need ... And then is it a matter of translation,

15 Ms. Cmeric, or is it a matter of incorrect transcribing the B/C/S text?

16 MS. CMERIC: It is a matter of translation, Your Honour.

17 JUDGE ORIE: Would you then please read, slowly, the relevant part

18 so that the interpreters could assist us in providing us with the English

19 version.

20 MS. CMERIC: Yes. It is in fact the same part, Your Honour. It's

21 just -- the same box. It's just the end of it.

22 JUDGE ORIE: Yes. Could you please slowly read that. So perhaps

23 from then we'll choose. Is it the last part? Yes.

24 MS. CMERIC: Yes. [Interpretation] "Choose that which we can

25 control successfully, or rather, gain."

1 JUDGE ORIE: So the difference in the translation is now that the

2 word "gain" is used rather than "takeover."

3 MS. CMERIC: Yes, Your Honour.

4 JUDGE ORIE: Yes. Then we take that -- I beg your pardon?

5 MR. STEWART: I'm sorry, Your Honour. I was just commenting to

6 Ms. Cmeric and also that the with success is not repeated, as it is on the

7 text we have. So that drops off the end. That's how I understood --

8 JUDGE ORIE: Could I ask the interpreters to confirm that the

9 words "with success" are used only once in relation to control and not

10 again used after the word "gain."

11 THE INTERPRETER: That is correct.

12 JUDGE ORIE: So, Mr. Hannis, I think that you've got now

13 sufficient guidance to provide us both with the new B/C/S version and --

14 MR. HANNIS: Yes, Your Honour.

15 JUDGE ORIE: I do not know whether it's really necessary to have

16 it all copied again, because whatever should be changed, I changed in my

17 copy, which of course is not the official copy. If the copy for the

18 registrar is the finally --

19 MR. HANNIS: I think we can make those changes on the individual

20 page and not have to change any of the rest and substitute that page.

21 JUDGE ORIE: Unless the parties would agree that with my -- that I

22 would change the copy that has handed now to the registrar. I mean, these

23 are not originals.

24 MR. STEWART: Your Honour, we're happy with that. And all this

25 stuff is on the transcript as well, so we're perfectly happy with that.

1 JUDGE ORIE: Okay. Then we'll change it by hand. I'll give it

2 my - how do you call that?- my signature and then it's not necessary to

3 copy some other 50 or 60 pages for that purpose. Please proceed,

4 Mr. Hannis.

5 MR. HANNIS: Your Honour, to clear up one remaining mystery as to

6 why the word "ne" was not changed in the B/C/S translation, it's my

7 understanding this was a B/C/S transcript that was provided to us by an

8 outside agency and --

9 JUDGE ORIE: Mistake and there was no one who intentionally did

10 it, but if so, that needs another investigation.

11 MR. HANNIS: Thank you, Your Honour.

12 JUDGE ORIE: Please proceed.

13 MR. HANNIS:

14 Q. Mr. Bjelobrk, on that intercept that we just listened to, at the

15 beginning, it talked about an individual named Bogicevic. Can you tell us

16 who that was?

17 A. Bogicevic was a member of the Presidency of Yugoslavia at the

18 time. He was elected in Bosnia and Herzegovina and represented Bosnia and

19 Herzegovina in that body. Otherwise, he was a member and one of the

20 leaders of the Social Democratic Party. He was known for having opposed

21 the logic that stood behind the events leading up to the Yugoslav crisis,

22 and since he is a Serb by ethnicity, he was criticised by all those who

23 thought that he did not advocate the Serb positions.

24 Q. And in that intercept, Mr. Karadzic indicates that at the next

25 Assembly session, they will ask him to resign. Do you know if there was a

1 call for him to resign sometime after this November 11th conversation?

2 A. Throughout the year, criticism was levelled at him for his

3 representation of Bosnia and Herzegovina, and if I recall well, in

4 November, at one of the Assembly sessions, he submitted a report on his

5 work, and there were differing opinions, of course, as to the quality of

6 his work. If you allow me to remind you, the recordings and the

7 transcripts of the session of the Yugoslav Presidency on the key issues

8 have now been made public. He directly opposed the introduction of

9 military measures in Yugoslavia, in such a way that he opposed those

10 people who represented the Serb positions.

11 Q. You heard where Mr. Karadzic talked about them pulling this thing

12 with the memorandum and adopting it in an unconstitutional manner. Do

13 those remarks reflect the SDS position about the memorandum that you all

14 had passed in the post-walkout session?

15 A. If I've understood you correctly, he -- if I understood it

16 correctly, he said that the document had been adopted in a manner that was

17 not in accordance with the procedure.

18 THE INTERPRETER: That was illegitimate. Interpreter's

19 correction.

20 A. If the standard of legitimacy is the statute of the Assembly, then

21 the document was passed in a legitimate way. If we, by legitimacy, mean

22 the consensus by all three national parties, then such a conclusion would

23 be justified and founded. But this was merely an agreement between the

24 national -- three national parties as to what they thought was legitimate

25 in the Assembly's proceedings. Perhaps I should not be the one to say

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1 this, but Bosnia-Herzegovina was, under the constitution, defined as a

2 state of its constitutive nations and citizens.

3 JUDGE ORIE: Controversy over the legitimacy is well known to the

4 Chamber. We had a lot of evidence and this Chamber does not pretend to be

5 the constitutional court of either Bosnia-Herzegovina or one of the

6 entities contained in it. Please proceed.

7 MR. HANNIS: Thank you, Your Honour.

8 Q. Mr. Bjelobrk, let me move on to another topic.

9 MR. HANNIS: If the next item could be given an exhibit number.

10 This is a newspaper article from Oslobodjenje, 1 January 1992.

11 THE REGISTRAR: This document will be marked P402.

12 MR. HANNIS: I'm sorry, Your Honour. I said 1 January. I see the

13 English says 12 January. I'm looking at the original B/C/S, and perhaps I

14 can get some help from Ms. Cmeric. Part of it looks like 31/12/1991. And

15 then I don't know if it's 1 -- 1, 2 January 1992. I don't know what date

16 that actually reflects it came out on.

17 MS. CMERIC: Yes, Your Honour. Mr. Hannis is correct. The date

18 is 31st of December, 1991, 1st and 2nd January, 1992. It's probably

19 new year's eve issue.

20 JUDGE ORIE: It's around new year.

21 MR. HANNIS: Thank you.

22 Q. Mr. Bjelobrk, do you recall seeing this interview of

23 Mr. Izetbegovic published in the newspaper about that time?

24 A. Yes, I do recall this interview.

25 Q. And without going into the details of what's in the interview, do

1 you recall if he was talking about the idea of an independent Bosnia?

2 A. Yes. He shared this idea too, of an independent, sovereign

3 Bosnia-Herzegovina.

4 Q. Do you recall, after this interview was given, hearing any

5 reaction from SDS members or any particular SDS individuals talking about

6 what he had said, Mr. Izetbegovic had said in his interview?

7 A. This was one of the many such presentations, and it did not really

8 constitute news from the point of view of the general public. I know that

9 there were some sharp comments after the interview was published. I

10 consider the interview of Mr. Krajisnik to be an important one, though one

11 that was published also in January, 1992, right after this one. And on

12 the basis of a similar structure, he presented the views of the party that

13 he belonged to. In a way, it was a kind of response to Izetbegovic's

14 interview, although I do not believe that it had that dimension only.

15 Q. Mr. Bjelobrk, I hope to get to that shortly. If I could now have

16 the next CD marked as an exhibit. This is an intercept, Your Honour. I

17 have three different segments in this one that I would like to play.

18 They're all relatively short. I think the longest is a minute and a half.

19 And the first one begins on the first page, in both the B/C/S and the

20 English?

21 JUDGE ORIE: Yes. Madam Registrar.

22 MR. HANNIS: I do want to raise one point regarding the number. I

23 understand that when Mr. Harmon presented a binder of intercepts to

24 Mr. Kljuic, I believe it was 292. This -- the transcript of this

25 intercept was marked with KID number 30911 in that binder, but the audio

1 was not played for Mr. Kljuic. So I'm not sure how we should number this.

2 JUDGE ORIE: Then, as a matter of fact, I would like to have the

3 CD to be assigned a number and that a similar number with the A, B, and C,

4 and the .1 assigned to these documents to avoid whatever confusion.

5 MR. HANNIS: Thank you, Your Honour.

6 THE REGISTRAR: The next number is P403.

7 JUDGE ORIE: Yes. And we have then now P403A as the first section

8 to be played.

9 [Intercept played]

10 THE INTERPRETER: [Voiceover]

11 "Momcilo KRAJISNIK: Did Nikola call you.

12 Radovan KARADZIC: Yes.

13 Momcilo KRAJISNIK: What do you think about that idea?

14 Radovan KARADZIC: What idea?

15 Momcilo KRAJISNIK: Did he tell you?

16 Radovan KARADZIC: Nah.

17 Momcilo KRAJISNIK: You can say -- you can tell he didn't tell me.

18 He said -- he told the people from Banja Luka these people from Krajina,

19 that is, it's terrible.

20 Radovan KARADZIC: Oh, that. He did tell me that. You know what?

21 The dislocation of this thing from Sarajevo is an idiotic idea.

22 Momcilo KRAJISNIK: Yes -- I don't know.

23 Radovan KARADZIC: Never mind. Let me tell you, that is a very

24 dangerous idea.

25 Momcilo KRAJISNIK: You think?

1 Radovan KARADZIC: Of course it is, man. It is so dangerous I

2 forgot about it immediately.

3 Momcilo KRAJISNIK: Huh?

4 Radovan KARADZIC: It is so dangerous I forgot about it

5 immediately.

6 Radovan KARADZIC: Well, I can tell you, I don't know, it all

7 depends, you know what the most important thing is? The most important

8 thing is that we've already held the first session of the parliament. The

9 most important thing is that this session was held there.

10 Radovan KARADZIC: I'm afraid that's already

11 Momcilo KRAJISNIK: That's true. That's --

12 Radovan KARADZIC: Very dangerous. This battle needs to be won

13 here, not there.

14 Momcilo KRAJISNIK: You know what, I know that, but you know how

15 it is when something is pronounced at a place where separatism --

16 then -- and you pronounce Sarajevo the capital.

17 Radovan KARADZIC: All right. Maybe we should give it a thought.

18 I'm not sure about --

19 Momcilo KRAJISNIK: Neither am I, neither am I. It's just that

20 even if you have the worst idea if you turn it into something positive

21 then it turns out to be great, you know.

22 Radovan KARADZIC: Yes.

23 Momcilo KRAJISNIK: Because there is great separatism there, you

24 know.

25 Radovan KARADZIC: Yes.

1 Momcilo KRAJISNIK: So it means a lot when you say this is the HQ

2 here, you pronounce it the centre of everything and thus you keep it.

3 This way, you turn this into a long-term thing, because they can't do

4 anything else in a situation like this.

5 Radovan KARADZIC: Yes, yes.

6 Momcilo KRAJISNIK: Every one of these things has its own

7 significance. I've been thinking about this a long time and it's

8 something -- fuck, I don't know.

9 Radovan KARADZIC: We should think about it. I don't know. We

10 should think about it."

11 JUDGE ORIE: No major discrepancies?

12 THE INTERPRETER: Not any major ones, no.

13 JUDGE ORIE: Thank you. Please proceed, Mr. Hannis.

14 MR. HANNIS: Thank you, Your Honour. In the interest of time, I'd

15 like to move to the next clip, which begins on the bottom of page 4 in the

16 English.

17 JUDGE ORIE: Yes. Here again ...

18 MR. HANNIS: Begins with Mr. Karadzic talking about reading the

19 interview. And in the B/C/S, I believe that begins on page 5, or ERN

20 03220530.

21 JUDGE ORIE: Yes.

22 [Intercept played]

23 THE INTERPRETER: [Voiceover]

24 "Radovan KARADZIC: Fuck her, fuck her. I was just reading this

25 Izetbegovic's interview.

1 Momcilo KRAJISNIK: Yeah. What's it's like?

2 Radovan KARADZIC: Well, he's crazy, man. He -- he is directly

3 irritating the Serbs.

4 Momcilo KRAJISNIK: Yeah?

5 Radovan KARADZIC: He was like: If we're all the same, this and

6 that, and a sovereign and independent Bosnia. Now he's talking openly of

7 a sovereign and independent Bosnia. Does he want someone to destroy

8 Sarajevo?

9 Momcilo KRAJISNIK: Yeah.

10 Radovan KARADZIC: Fuck, he's really crazy. He now openly talks

11 of a sovereign and independent Bosnia.

12 Momcilo KRAJISNIK: Yeah.

13 Radovan KARADZIC: You know, that --

14 Momcilo KRAJISNIK: Yeah.

15 Radovan KARADZIC: It was until recently -- fuck him. We will

16 release our tigers and let them do their job.

17 Momcilo KRAJISNIK: Yeah, can you imagine this impertinence.

18 Radovan KARADZIC: Fuck, I've -- we've been calming the Serb

19 people for a year because of his foolishness. What can I do? I will not

20 be calming anyone any more, nor can I.

21 Momcilo KRAJISNIK: No, but he says -- we don't want -- this

22 isn't an independent -- that's not a state, he says, it's a sovereign --

23 so it is equal in the talks. Now he says independent, fucking -- they

24 really are crazy. Europe is crazy too if they think this can be so. Man,

25 this is impossible, this -- I don't think there's a man who would turn the

1 situation around now and make it so.

2 Radovan KARADZIC: No, no.

3 Momcilo KRAJISNIK: No. These are -- man.

4 Radovan KARADZIC: No way. We need to release those people. We

5 shouldn't hold them back.

6 Momcilo KRAJISNIK: We have to, but they'll do it anyway, whether

7 you want them to or not.

8 Radovan KARADZIC: Like I said, you can't hold them back any

9 more."

10 JUDGE ORIE: No major discrepancies?

11 THE INTERPRETER: No.

12 JUDGE ORIE: Thank you.

13 MR. HANNIS: Your Honour, then I would like to go to the last

14 segment and the last intercept I intend to play. This is not marked on

15 your copy, I believe, of the English, but it starts on page 6, a little

16 over a third of the way down, where Mr. Karadzic begins by saying: "I

17 don't know. Let him do whatever..." In the B/C/S, it's on page ERN

18 0322-0531, about halfway down the page.

19 JUDGE ORIE: And then until where?

20 MR. HANNIS: And then it goes until the bottom of page 6 in the

21 English, the last line. And in the B/C/S, I believe it goes to about a

22 third of the way down on page number 0532. Mr. Krajisnik is the last

23 speaker.

24 JUDGE ORIE: Yes.

25 [Intercept played]

1 THE INTERPRETER: [Voiceover].

2 "Radovan KARADZIC: I don't know. Let me him do whatever

3 he wants. I don't have anything against this. But we cannot hold our

4 people back any more.

5 Momcilo KRAJISNIK: Yeah. He sent up a trial balloon. Today I

6 heard on the radio he had said new currency was due. I was like fuck,

7 man.

8 Radovan KARADZIC: Yeah. He wants war. He is playing with fire,

9 thinking Serbs wouldn't --

10 Momcilo KRAJISNIK: Yes.

11 Radovan KARADZIC: He thinks Serbs wouldn't -- and he can't even

12 introduce his currency in Pale, Novo Sarajevo.

13 Momcilo KRAJISNIK: No way.

14 Radovan KARADZIC: Let alone somewhere else.

15 Momcilo KRAJISNIK: Exactly.

16 Radovan KARADZIC: He's also disseminated the idea that Serbs

17 would be a minority in Sarajevo.

18 Momcilo KRAJISNIK: Yes.

19 Radovan KARADZIC: You know, I mean, he is very unfair, and he's

20 after irritating the Serbs to the maximum.

21 Momcilo KRAJISNIK: We have to use the first opportunity to tell

22 him that he's playing with fire. And we'll say clearly that they're

23 playing with fire.

24 Radovan KARADZIC: We will not tell him in private, but we shall

25 do so in public, and him --

1 Momcilo KRAJISNIK: Yeah, in public. That's what I meant.

2 Radovan KARADZIC: In private we'll tell him some other things.

3 Momcilo KRAJISNIK: Yes, yes, and that's clear."

4 MR. HANNIS: Did Your Honour wish to inquire if there were any

5 discrepancies?

6 JUDGE ORIE: Yes. I should have asked. But I take it that if

7 there would be major discrepancies, that the booth would warn me anyhow.

8 But I should have asked.

9 MR. HANNIS: Thank you.

10 JUDGE ORIE: And the answer is, I take it, that there are no major

11 discrepancies.

12 THE INTERPRETER: No major, no, discrepancies.

13 MR. HANNIS: Now, If we could mark -- give the next item a

14 number. It's an interview of Mr. Krajisnik dated the 26th of January,

15 1992.

16 THE REGISTRAR: P404.

17 MR. HANNIS:

18 Q. Mr. Bjelobrk, would you take a look at that and tell us if that's

19 the interview you referred to earlier in your testimony.

20 A. Yes, that's the interview.

21 Q. And in your written statement that is in evidence in this case, at

22 paragraph 55, I believe, you discuss that in some detail. And I don't

23 have any other questions for you about that at the moment, but is there

24 any comment you wanted to make, that you haven't, in connection with it?

25 A. Since in paragraph 55, I have about seven sub-items and I stated

1 my positions regarding the interview, perhaps I can reiterate only the

2 following: There is a polemic going on, and the problem is not the fact

3 that it is taking place, that is to say, what kind of statehood can

4 Bosnia-Herzegovina achieve through all the stages of the crisis and the

5 claims that it is impossible for Bosnia-Herzegovina to remain in a single

6 state after disintegration, by introducing clauses of war, destruction,

7 and the like. That is what astonished every normal person, that these

8 categories should be used when assessing different views.

9 Q. Thank you.

10 MR. HANNIS: Finally, if the last item, a news article from

11 Slobodna Bosna, could be given the next number.

12 THE REGISTRAR: P405.

13 MR. HANNIS:

14 Q. Mr. Bjelobrk, we're about to hand you an item that, I believe, is

15 what you referred to in your statement in paragraph 61. I want to ask you

16 if you recall having seen this before.

17 A. Yes, I do recall having seen it before.

18 Q. And this was published in March of 1992?

19 A. Yes.

20 MR. STEWART: Your Honour, may I comment. Mr. Krajisnik,

21 surprise, surprise, is not able to read the B/C/S version, which is in

22 such minuscule print on the photocopy that it would be a challenge to

23 anybody. That's -- P402 is the same, same problem, Your Honour.

24 JUDGE ORIE: This is true for P405 or -- because I have a large --

25 which --?

1 MR. STEWART: 404 and -- well, 405 we've just got to. That

2 doesn't -- no, 405 is not a problem, Your Honour. That's satisfyingly

3 large. But it is really absolutely impossible.

4 JUDGE ORIE: Yes, but which ones are the --

5 MR. STEWART: 402 and 404, Your Honour.

6 MR. HANNIS: Your Honour, I think that's a fair point. We will

7 try to enlarge that and provide a larger copy, hopefully without losing

8 any quality of the print.

9 JUDGE ORIE: Yes. Because the quality seems already to be a

10 bit ... But, well, since -- when do you think you could provide that? I

11 mean, it's just making a 200-per-cent copy, I would say.

12 MR. HANNIS: Your Honour, I think we could put it in their box at

13 the front gate within the hour after we finish.

14 JUDGE ORIE: Yes. The problem is that Mr. Krajisnik would like to

15 have it. I don't know how much time it would take before he -- and I

16 don't know whether there are any rules that would prevent him from taking

17 anything.

18 MR. STEWART: Your Honour, it's not, I think, an insoluble problem

19 here, because we're planning to see Mr. Krajisnik pretty early tomorrow.

20 JUDGE ORIE: So if it would be in your box, then you could bring

21 it to him.

22 MR. STEWART: Yes, and he's got generally enough to do, Your

23 Honour. I am concerned whether it is going to blow up, but then

24 Mr. Hannis will do his best to see what we can do.

25 JUDGE ORIE: Yes.

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1 MR. STEWART: Thanks anyway.

2 JUDGE ORIE: Let's try to get the best quality, and it will be

3 within one hour in your box, Mr. Stewart.

4 MR. HANNIS: We will, Your Honour.

5 Q. The last questions I have for you, Mr. Bjelobrk, relate to

6 paragraph 32. You talk about some efforts by Serbs to try to get you to

7 join them, and you name three individuals in paragraph 32: Mr. Knezevic,

8 Mr. Bijelic, and Mr. Nedic. Who were they? Did they hold any position?

9 Were they also members of the Assembly?

10 Q. The names that I mentioned in paragraph 32, namely, Savo Knezevic,

11 Slobodan Bijelic, Miladin Nedic, are only a selection of people I talked

12 to from the SDS, and this I brought to your attention as a common

13 denominator. Basically, what they were saying was that all Serbs should

14 live in one state and that they could not live together with other

15 peoples, other nations. I would like to underline that I had similar

16 conversations with Momcilo Krajisnik and Miro Lazovic, and I spoke of that

17 too.

18 Q. Yes, you did mention that earlier.

19 MR. HANNIS: Your Honour, those are all the questions I have for

20 Mr. Bjelobrk.

21 JUDGE ORIE: Thank you, Mr. Hannis.

22 Mr. Bjelobrk, it's 7.00, the time we usually finish. Mr. Hannis

23 has concluded your examination-in-chief. We'll adjourn. We'd like to see

24 you back tomorrow at a quarter past 2.00 in this same courtroom. May I

25 instruct you not to speak with anyone about the testimony you have given

1 and you're still about to give.

2 Madam Usher, could you please escort Mr. Bjelobrk out of the

3 courtroom.

4 [The witness stands down]

5 JUDGE ORIE: If there are no procedural issues, then we adjourn.

6 I again would like to remind the parties that this is not a constitutional

7 court, this is not a court which finally deals with what are appropriate

8 political means to achieve your goals or not, and also, I'd like to stress

9 the relative importance of many such matters. And if you'd keep that in

10 mind in your preparations for tomorrow, that would be highly appreciated.

11 We adjourn until tomorrow.

12 --- Whereupon the hearing adjourned at 7.02 p.m.,

13 to be reconvened on Thursday, the 11th day of

14 November 2004, at 2.15 p.m.

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