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American General Wesley Clark was an envoy to the Dayton Peace Agreement negotiations in November 1995 and NATO’s Supreme Allied Commander Europe in 1999. |
General Wesley Clark describes a conversation he had with Slobodan Milošević on 17 August 1995, during negotiations to end the war in Bosnia and Herzegovina, about the killings in Srebrenica that had occurred the month before:
I said, “Mr. President, you say you have so much influence over the Bosnian Serbs, but how is it then, if you have such influence, that you allowed General Mladic to kill all those people in Srebrenica?” And Milošević looked at me and he paused for a moment. He then said, “Well, General Clark,” he said, “I warned Mladić not to do this, but he didn't listen to me.”
General Clark relates another conversation he had with Slobodan Milošević in October 1998 during negotiations to end the crisis in Kosovo [Clark’s NATO colleague, German General Klaus Naumann, who was also present during this meeting, related the same conversation during his own testimony on 13 June 2002]:
And he turned to me and said, “General Clark,” he said, “We know how to handle these murderers, these rapists, these criminals.” He said, “We've done this before.” I said, “Well, when?” He said, “In Drenica in 1946.” And I said, “What did you do?” He said, “We killed them.” He said, “We killed them all.” I was stunned at the vehemence with which he spoke, and I just looked at him. General Naumann looked at him, as I recall, and Milošević then said -- then he qualified his statement. He said, “Of course we did not do it all at once. It took some time.”
General Clark also testified about meetings that he had with Slobodan Milošević during the humanitarian crisis in Kosovo in October 1998 and January 1999. General Clark’s conversations with Slobodan Milošević provided crucial evidence about Milošević’s state of mind, and supported the Prosecution’s contention that committing crimes against non-Serbs was part of Milošević’s intent.
General Clark’s testimony also helped to support the Prosecution’s allegation that Slobodan Milošević knew that crimes were being committed in Bosnia and Herzegovina. General Clark reported to the court that American negotiator Richard Holbrooke had a conversation with Milošević during meetings on 17 August 1995 in which Holbrooke told Milošević that what had occurred in Srebrenica was a war crime. Holbrooke related that Milošević’s response was, “I know.”
General Clark also helped to support the Prosecution's contention that Slobodan Milošević controlled both the Bosnian Serb leadership and Yugoslav and Serbian institutions. During the Dayton negotiations in November 1995 General Clark worked with Milošević on maps to define boundaries in the final settlement. Clark said that Milošević showed intimate knowledge of that part of Bosnia and Herzegovina’s geography and did not need to consult with any member of the Bosnian Serb team. During negotiations to end the Kosovo crisis in October 1998, Clark testified that Milošević clearly dominated both the Yugoslav Army and the President of Serbia, Milošević’s co-accused Milan Milutinović.
General Wesley Clark, a highly decorated United States military officer, graduated from West Point Military Academy in 1966. From 1997 to May 2000, Clark, a four-star general, was NATO’s Supreme Allied Commander Europe, and Commander-in-chief of the United States European Command. In that capacity, Clark commanded Operation Allied Force, NATO’s first major combat action in the former Yugoslavia which lasted from 24 March to 12 June 1999. Clark retired from the military in 2000. When he testified in December 2003, Clark had already begun campaigning for the Democratic Party’s presidential nomination.
Read General Wesley Clark full testimony on 15 December 2003 and on 16 December 2003.