1 Monday, 5 December 2005

2 [Open session]

3 --- Upon commencing at 11.38 a.m.

4 [The accused entered court]

5 JUDGE AGIUS: Yes, Madam Registrar, good morning to you. Could

6 you call the case, please.

7 THE REGISTRAR: Good morning, Your Honours. This is the case

8 number IT-03-68-T, the Prosecutor versus Naser Oric.

9 JUDGE AGIUS: I thank you, Madam.

10 Mr. Oric, can you follow the proceedings in your own language?

11 THE ACCUSED: [Interpretation] Good morning, Your Honours, ladies

12 and gentlemen. I can follow the proceedings in my own language.

13 JUDGE AGIUS: I thank you. You may sit down.

14 Appearances for the Prosecution.

15 MR. WUBBEN: Good morning, Your Honours, and also good morning to

16 the Defence. My name is Jan Wubben, lead counsel for the Prosecution.

17 I'm here together with Ms. Joanne Richardson and Mrs. Patricia Sellers, as

18 co-counsels, and also our case manager, Ms. Donnica Henry-Frijlink.

19 JUDGE AGIUS: I thank you, Mr. Wubben, and good morning to you and

20 your team.

21 Appearances for Naser Oric.

22 MS. VIDOVIC: [Interpretation] Good morning, Your Honours. My name

23 is Vasvija Vidovic, and together with Mr. John Jones I appear for

24 Mr. Naser Oric. We have with us here today our legal assistant,

25 Ms. Jasmina Cosic, and our CaseMap manager, Mr. Geoff Roberts.

1 JUDGE AGIUS: I thank you, Madam Vidovic, and good morning to you

2 and your team.

3 So let me start from here, even though the documents that I will

4 be referring to were filed confidential. You will recall that we last sat

5 on Wednesday -- yes.

6 MR. WUBBEN: Your Honour, it might be Tuesday that we sat.

7 JUDGE AGIUS: Yes, we sat on Tuesday. Yes, we sat on Tuesday.

8 And on my way to the airport, I was informed, to my surprise I

9 must say, at the time, because we had been sitting until the previous day,

10 that Mr. Jones had, on behalf of the Defence, approached a member of my

11 staff, of our staff rather, and informed him that he was objecting to the

12 Prosecution interviewing one of the Defence witnesses, who is due to give

13 evidence shortly, on the assumption that what the Prosecution intended to

14 do was irregular. To cut it short, between the exchanges that I had with

15 my member of the staff, more than one member of the staff, and that

16 included the Senior Legal Officer, in consultation also with the other two

17 Judges, we managed to find out that indeed the Prosecution was intending

18 to interview a Defence witness before, as the Defence put it, the Defence

19 had a chance to proof this witness. And we obtained the assurance on the

20 part of the Prosecution that we -- they would not proceed with this

21 interview, as planned, but wait until the matter is discussed, debated,

22 argued, and decided upon by this Trial Chamber. And in fact, an order was

23 signed by one of the Judges on my behalf precisely specifying this.

24 This morning when I returned to my -- to work, I found a voice

25 message from Mr. Jones, which I would imagine goes back to either Tuesday

1 or Wednesday, in which, to my surprise - and also, I must say, to the

2 surprise of my two colleagues who have heard the voice message - it

3 transpired that what triggered this up in the first place was the

4 understanding on the part of Mr. Jones that there had been an ex parte

5 motion by the Prosecution of which, contrary to normal practice that we

6 have adopted, we did not give notice to the Defence, and that following

7 this ex parte motion, we ordered or we authorised, we issued an order,

8 authorising the Prosecution to interview this individual, as per the

9 ex parte motion.

10 I need to declare here, and I think now the parties do agree that

11 there must have been some misunderstanding between them. I must declare,

12 however, that there was no ex parte motion, such ex parte motion, that

13 there was no discussion at all between the Trial Chamber or any component

14 of the Trial Chamber with the Prosecution with regard to this witness,

15 except what I said earlier. And that we never gave any such order, as I

16 was given to understand when I heard the telephone voice mail.

17 So that is what I wanted to make clear, that there was no ex parte

18 motion. If there had been, we would have followed the previous practice

19 of informing the other party of the existence of such motion. And

20 consequently, and naturally, there couldn't have been any decision on our

21 part.

22 Having said that, I don't know if you are prepared to discuss this

23 matter today; in other words, the substance of the motion and response to

24 that motion that followed, namely a motion by the Defence to prohibit

25 basically the Prosecution from interviewing this individual. Or whether,

1 considering that there is a witness who is an ambassador and who needs to

2 possibly finish his testimony today, you are prepared to postpone it until

3 tomorrow. That is something that I want to hear.

4 But however, I must point out, Mr. Jones, that in exchange for the

5 Prosecution's agreement to postpone this interview until we have discussed

6 it and decided upon it, we promised that we would give the Prosecution and

7 you, of course, the opportunity to debate it and ask to consider it and

8 then decide it. So -- but of course, we are very anxious to know exactly

9 what you intend doing.

10 MR. JONES: Yes, it was just on that procedural matter, really,

11 that, firstly, as Your Honour has rightly observed, we do have an

12 ambassador who's testifying today and who we envisaged would finish today.

13 And he's got travel plans tomorrow. He's of course willing, if necessary,

14 to change those plans. But we did hope to start and finish his testimony

15 today. I can be two to two and a half hours. So that would fit in.

16 That's why I would prefer to discuss it tomorrow. But also for a

17 second reason, which is that according to Your Honour's order, the

18 Prosecution was ordered to file a response on Friday. We were informed by

19 the Prosecution at 4.30 p.m. on Friday that they filed a response. We

20 haven't seen anything in writing, and therefore that's another reason why

21 we're not in a position to reply, particularly if they bring forward any

22 legal arguments or legal authority. We of course need to look into it and

23 need to research any authority. So we would definitely concur with the

24 suggestion that this be postponed until tomorrow.

25 JUDGE AGIUS: I thank you, Mr. Jones.

1 Mr. Wubben.

2 MR. WUBBEN: Well, Your Honour --

3 JUDGE AGIUS: We haven't seen the response either -- I mean, I

4 haven't seen the response either. I'm not saying that it wasn't filed of

5 course. I'm saying that we haven't seen it. At least, I speak for

6 myself, because I -- what we have been in camera discussing amongst

7 ourselves already, some -- at least what is involved in this issue by a

8 matter of principle and practice, but we were not made aware of your

9 response. In fact, I thought that you were coming over here and say, this

10 is our response or something like that.

11 MR. WUBBEN: Your Honour, we filed, indeed, Friday late. And for

12 myself, I also were not able -- was not able to even get a copy from that

13 filing itself. So I can imagine, indeed, that Defence has a right to

14 prepare itself. And secondly, we support, of course, expeditious

15 processing of such a witness.

16 JUDGE AGIUS: Obviously, obviously.

17 So I think we will postpone the discussion on this subject.

18 May I also have your agreement, both parties, to postpone

19 discussion on the other motions that we have received, such as Rule 90,

20 such as documents from Republika Srpska, special division, and so on.

21 We'll postpone them until another day? Okay. All right.

22 MR. WUBBEN: Yes, Your Honour. If it means that you mean oral

23 discussion or do you -- does that include a written response?

24 JUDGE AGIUS: No. You obviously have a right to file, especially

25 with regard to the -- to both of them, actually, both the Ruth 90,

1 et cetera.

2 But Mr. Wubben, and Madam Vidovic, and Mr. Jones, we cannot allow

3 ourselves anymore the luxury of granting ourselves the full time period

4 that we have at our disposal under the Rules. I think if we really need

5 and have to move forward at -- at a reasonable pace, we should cut down on

6 the time limits considerably and try to deal with these motions as

7 expeditiously as possible, because otherwise if I wait for 15 days here,

8 you know, I mean, in the meantime we will be hearing two, three more

9 witnesses and we will be going into recess. So please try to understand

10 that when I say "cut down on the time limits," it's not to the deprive you

11 of the time that you require to answer -- to respond to motions but to

12 insist or impress on you the importance of trying our level best to cut

13 down on the time we need to respond to these motions. This is an appeal

14 that I make, of course.

15 And then if there are problems, like you did last week when you

16 asked for a small extension of time to be able to file one of the

17 responses, I mean we are not unreasonable. We do grant, we do grant. But

18 please try, both of you, to do your level best to come forward with your

19 responses at the shortest time possible.

20 All right. This sitting, today's sitting, I agree entirely with

21 you that we should try to finish with this witness. Have you got an idea

22 how much time you require for cross-examination?

23 MS. SELLERS: Your Honour, I'll certainly try and keep within the

24 Trial Chamber's understanding that this is an important witness, first of

25 all, and try and have him finish today. I understand from what the

1 Defence has represented they'll take two and a half hours. By that

2 understanding it appears that I should have at least an hour and time for

3 whatever questions on rejoinder. My cross-examination at this point

4 should fit within that frame, Your Honour, but I do have to just have one

5 caveat, and that is of course seeing the Defence present their evidence

6 might alter the cross-examination; that's just very natural.

7 JUDGE AGIUS: All right. Okay. Thank you.

8 Can I suggest to you, Mr. Jones, because I see that you will be

9 dealing with this witness, that you try and finish in two hours.

10 MR. JONES: Yes, I'll go as fast I can.

11 JUDGE AGIUS: All right.

12 MR. JONES: May I, in that regard I take it that on uncontentious

13 matters and broadly construed uncontentious matters of the Security

14 Council, et cetera, that I can lead a fair bit of the evidence. That way

15 we will obviously go a lot quicker.

16 JUDGE AGIUS: Okay. Unless -- we will adopt the usual practice.

17 Unless I have serious objections from the other party, we will not

18 intervene as you put direct questions.

19 MR. JONES: I might just say that this witness has testified in

20 the Milosevic case. He's -- he gave a very lengthy statement to the

21 Prosecution. He's an ambassador of many years experience, and so the risk

22 of suggestion, I submit, is minimal to non-existent.

23 JUDGE AGIUS: All right. Is he still an ambassador? I'm asking

24 that so I know how to address him.

25 MR. JONES: I think he still has the benefit of that title but is

1 not serving as an ambassador currently, so....

2 JUDGE AGIUS: Thank you. Let's bring the witness in, please.

3 MR. JONES: May I just say, Your Honour, we'll enter into the

4 merits tomorrow of this whole matter, but just I apologise that you had to

5 come back to a voice mail message from me. As you understand, on that

6 Tuesday evening we were trying to reach various people, and it was

7 expedient for me to leave a message, after subsequently I thought of

8 retracting the message or leaving another message, but I thought it best

9 just to leave it as it was.

10 JUDGE AGIUS: I thank you, Mr. Jones.

11 Yes, Mr. Wubben.

12 MR. WUBBEN: Your Honour, I have two very short submissions to do.

13 It's about producing documents already promised and information regarding

14 completing a Prosecution exhibit. Can that be done in the meanwhile while

15 the --

16 JUDGE AGIUS: If you do it very quickly.

17 MR. WUBBEN: I can do it quickly, Your Honours.

18 It's about the letter by Mr. Gramsci Di Fazio on the 21st of

19 October, 2005. I want to tender it, because it has to deal with the Simic

20 article and should be confirmed officially through tendering. And I would

21 like to tender it and ask for a P number.

22 JUDGE AGIUS: What's the next Prosecution exhibit number, please?

23 THE REGISTRAR: P610, Your Honour.

24 JUDGE AGIUS: So that document will become P610.

25 And what's the other --

1 MR. WUBBEN: The other issue is notification that we had problems

2 with two videos, part of videos, P3 --

3 JUDGE AGIUS: Yes, I think that can wait until tomorrow,

4 Mr. Wubben.

5 MR. WUBBEN: It's just an announcement that we solved it, but we

6 will tender new copies to the Judges by tomorrow.

7 JUDGE AGIUS: All right. Okay. Yes, please do.

8 MR. JONES: Sorry, we don't know what this is, P610, and the Simic

9 article.

10 JUDGE AGIUS: I don't know either, Mr. Jones. We will see.

11 MR. JONES: So we will reserve our observations.

12 JUDGE AGIUS: Where is the witness? In fact, can we see this

13 document, P610, what it is all about?

14 [The witness entered court]

15 JUDGE AGIUS: Ambassador, good morning to you.

16 THE WITNESS: Good morning, sir.

17 JUDGE AGIUS: And welcome to this Tribunal. I know it's not the

18 first time you've been asked to give evidence, but of course I -- as

19 Presiding Judge I would like to welcome you again. My name is Carmel

20 Agius. I come from Malta and I am the Presiding Judge in this trial

21 against Naser Oric. I am flanked to my right by Judge Hans Hendrik

22 Brydensholt from the Kingdom of Denmark, and on my left by Judge Professor

23 Albin Eser from Germany.

24 So welcome. You know what the procedure is. You are going to

25 start giving evidence very shortly, and before you do that our Rules

1 require that you make a solemn declaration, the solemn declaration that is

2 contained in the text that is being handed to you now. Please read that

3 text aloud, and that will be your solemn undertaking with us.

4 THE WITNESS: Thank you, sir. I solemnly declare that I will

5 speak the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth.

6 JUDGE AGIUS: I thank you, Ambassador. Please make yourself

7 comfortable.

8 Ambassador, how would you like us to address you? Usually I

9 address ambassadors here in The Hague and elsewhere as Your Excellency.

10 How would you like me to address you?

11 THE WITNESS: Please refrain from that.

12 JUDGE AGIUS: Thank you. So you are a Defence witness, and it

13 will be Mr. Jones who will go first. We are trying to do our best to

14 finish with your testimony today so that you can fly back tomorrow, as

15 scheduled. I have the cooperation of both parties in trying to do that.

16 So Mr. Jones.

17 MR. JONES: Thank you, Your Honour.

18 WITNESS: DIEGO ENRIQUE ARRIA

19 Examined by Mr. Jones:

20 Q. Yes. Please give your full name for the record.

21 A. Diego Enrique Arria.

22 Q. And now, confirm for me, if you will, the following details.

23 Firstly, you were born on the 8th of October, 1938, and are of Venezuelan

24 nationality?

25 A. Yes, sir.

1 Q. What is your religion?

2 A. Catholic.

3 Q. And your career has been as a politician, diplomat, and

4 ambassador?

5 A. Yes.

6 Q. You're currently a consultant and visiting scholar of Columbia

7 University in New York?

8 A. Yes.

9 Q. I'll pause occasionally for the interpretation.

10 And you're also special advisor to the Secretary-General of the

11 United Nations?

12 A. Yes.

13 Q. Now, is it right that you were the permanent representative of

14 Venezuela at the United Nations from 1991 to 1993, serving in the Security

15 Council after Venezuela's election as a non-permanent member in 1992/1993?

16 A. Yes.

17 Q. And I just need a few more details to confirm. In March 1992 you

18 served as the president of the Security Council?

19 A. Yes.

20 Q. In April 1993 you were the coordinator of the caucus of the

21 non-aligned countries represented in the Security Council?

22 A. Yes.

23 Q. And in fact, I think it's true to say, isn't it, that you were a

24 co-sponsor with France and the United States in the resolution

25 establishing this Tribunal?

1 A. Yes. I was very proud of that.

2 Q. Now speaking about this Tribunal, did you testify here in the

3 Milosevic case on the 10th of February, 2004?

4 A. Yes, I did.

5 Q. And you testified as a witness for the Prosecution?

6 A. Yes, I did.

7 Q. In preparing for that testimony, were you interviewed by the

8 Prosecution in April 2003 and again in September 2003?

9 A. Yes.

10 Q. And as a result of that, was a witness statement drawn up?

11 A. Yes.

12 MR. JONES: Your Honours, I would like to pass up an exhibit which

13 is the statement from 2003. I trust we can safely ignore that.

14 JUDGE AGIUS: No, no. We don't have to worry about this because

15 this is the usual siren tests on Monday at noon. So that's why I looked

16 at my watch, actually.

17 MR. JONES:

18 Q. There's no need to run from the building, Ambassador.

19 A. Thank you. I wasn't planning to.

20 Q. Now, what you have in front of you is a witness statement with a

21 witness information cover sheet, and it's a statement comprising 68 pages

22 and 495 paragraphs. Do you recognise that as the statement that was drawn

23 up, following your interview?

24 A. Yes, I do.

25 Q. And did you review this statement in detail over the last two

1 days?

2 A. Yes. As a matter of fact, I did.

3 Q. And are the contents of that statement true to the best of your

4 knowledge and belief?

5 A. Yes, very much so.

6 Q. Now, we're going to go to some passages in that statement, but for

7 the sake of context the statement concerns the policy and inaction, action

8 or inaction, of the UN and UN member states to the Bosnian conflict in

9 1992/1993, when you were sitting in the Security Council as the permanent

10 representative of Venezuela. Correct?

11 A. Yes.

12 Q. As well as comments on the fall of Srebrenica in July 1995 and the

13 responsibility of the UN and UN member states for that tragedy. It also

14 contains those comments?

15 A. Yes, sir.

16 Q. Now, following Venezuela's election to the Security Council, were

17 you involved in briefings on the situation in the former Yugoslavia?

18 A. Yes.

19 Q. And who were some of the people you had contacts with or who you

20 spoke to and gained information?

21 A. You mean within the United Nations or outside the United Nations?

22 Q. I was thinking initially within the United Nations.

23 A. At the beginning of the conflict in 1992, the secretariat was

24 basically the main source of information on the developments on the

25 ground. That changed very rapidly when the secretariat was not so

1 forthcoming and so opportune in reporting to the Security Council. And I

2 would say that the international media replaced the secretariat largely by

3 providing objective, factual, and opportune reporting and information to

4 the international community.

5 Q. Thank you. And even prior to the beginning of the conflict or as

6 it started, did you have contact with Darko Silovic, the ambassador to the

7 SFRY?

8 A. Yes, very much so. Because Ambassador Silovic was the head of

9 the non-aligned movement in the United Nations, was at the time the former

10 Yugoslavia ambassador to the UN, a very respected diplomat. And as I

11 stated in Mr. Milosevic's trial, the non-aligned -- we were against the

12 partition of the former Yugoslavia. We actually cooperated with the

13 then-foreign minister Loncar of Croatia, a Croat Yugoslav, to promote

14 within the international community, mainly the European community, not to

15 fragment former Yugoslavia.

16 Mr. Milosevic asked me here when did I -- or when did we change

17 our mind about that, and I responded that it took very few weeks for the

18 international community to find out that Mr. Milosevic was not joso bros

19 [phoen] Tito, and that he was already placing former Yugoslavia under

20 great peril and danger as had proven to be the case.

21 Q. Now, in the interests of time, we're going to attempt to summarise

22 the main points of your statement, which we have -- which you have in

23 front of you. And first I want to ask you about the arms embargo on the

24 former Yugoslavia and its effect. And I refer to paragraphs 57 to 73 of

25 your statement dealing with Resolution 740 of 7 February 1992.

1 A. 57?

2 Q. Paragraphs 57 to 73. It's page 10 and onwards.

3 And firstly, Security Council Resolution 740 of 7 February,

4 1992 --

5 MS. SELLERS: Your Honour.

6 JUDGE AGIUS: Yes, Ms. Sellers.

7 MS. SELLERS: Excuse me, I would just like to offer this broad

8 objection. Also I understand the questions of timing, but certainly it

9 appears as if Ambassador Arria either has current memory of the situation,

10 what he's testified to, and at this point the statement, I don't

11 understand whether it's refreshing recollection that he no longer has or

12 he's going to testify about something and then the statement confirms that

13 that was also his contemporaneous understanding or he's testified about it

14 before. But just to show, in essence, I believe the statement is now

15 being used to lead the evidence in this sense and not corroborate evidence

16 that the ambassador has. I say that knowingly within type of time

17 constraints that we are in, but I would like to state that for the record,

18 Your Honour.

19 JUDGE AGIUS: Okay.

20 What's your position on this, Mr. Jones?

21 MR. JONES: Well, two points. Firstly I haven't even started

22 using it yet, so I don't see how Ms. Sellers is making a timely

23 objection. She should wait and see.

24 But secondly the Prosecution can't have their cake and eat it,

25 too, as far as this is concerned. We are all, apparently, trying to make

1 an effort to finish with this witness today. Now, if I don't use an

2 exhibit which this witness has said he has perused over the last two days,

3 it's true to the best of his knowledge and belief, then we can be here for

4 a week. I can ask him non-leading questions about Security Council

5 Resolutions, and I really don't see the purpose of that.

6 So as I say, the Prosecution is trying to have their cake and eat

7 it, too, in laying down an objection, which now I suppose they'll seek to

8 rely on in due course, but at the same time insist that I go speedily.

9 JUDGE AGIUS: Okay.

10 [Trial Chamber confers]

11 JUDGE AGIUS: Okay. Our position is as follows. I think the way

12 it should go logically and in a legal context should be the following:

13 That if you intend to tender this in evidence as an exhibit, I think --

14 you are fully entitled to do that, that's number one, because it's a

15 statement released to the Prosecution. That's number one. The

16 understanding is that this of course is not in substitution of his

17 evidence. He's testifying viva voce here. So you should put the -- to

18 the witness, first and foremost, whether he stands by what is contained

19 here, in other words, whether he confirms on oath, or pursuant to his

20 solemn declaration, the contents -- the correctness of the contents of

21 this statement. If he does, then I -- of course you are entitled to put

22 to him any questions which go beyond or arise out of the contents of this

23 statement. But possibly, please try to avoid asking him to confirm bits

24 and pieces of this statement, because if he confirms the entirety of it he

25 doesn't need to confirm every event as we go along, one after the other.

1 MR. JONES: Yes.

2 JUDGE AGIUS: So this is basically our approach.

3 MR. JONES: I'll ask him to elaborate on --

4 JUDGE AGIUS: Yes, elaborate and answer any other questions that

5 you would have for him. But -- I mean, we can read it.

6 MR. JONES: Yes. Certainly, Your Honour.

7 I might observe, by the way, that this statement was in front of

8 Ambassador Arria when he gave evidence in Milosevic as an aide-memoire. I

9 find it a bit curious, to say the least, that the Prosecution is seeking

10 to take a different approach in this case, but there you go.

11 Q. Ambassador, could you -- firstly, yes. I asked you earlier in

12 fact if you confirmed that this statement was true to the best of your

13 knowledge and belief. Would you actually affirm on oath the truth of

14 what's contained in this statement in all of the paragraphs?

15 A. I absolutely do. I guess you are referring to the whole document

16 or to the specific --

17 Q. The whole document.

18 A. Absolutely, I certainly do. I have re-read it several times. I

19 prepared very well my intervention last time in the Milosevic case. I

20 fully believe in that then and I fully believe it in now.

21 Q. Yes.

22 MR. JONES: Thank you, Your Honour.

23 And indeed, in terms of using this document, I think it can't

24 hardly be expected for a witness to remember every single date, et cetera,

25 and that's why it's very natural that this should be used as an aid for

1 the witness in any event.

2 JUDGE AGIUS: As we go along, yes, of course, by all means,

3 Mr. Jones. But what we meant is don't read out paragraph 53, for example,

4 to the witness, to the Ambassador, and then tell him: Do you confirm

5 that?

6 MR. JONES: No.

7 JUDGE AGIUS: Let's go a step further straight away. And if he

8 needs to refer to the -- to his statement, of course once he has confirmed

9 it has, he every right to refer to it.

10 MR. JONES: Yes. Thank you, Your Honour.

11 Q. Now at the time of passing the resolution, which imposed an arms

12 embargo, did you think it would stop the war in the former Yugoslavia?

13 A. Yes, we very naively thought that that was the case. When I

14 say "we naively thought that that was the case," I refer to the

15 non-permanent members of the Security Council at the time that didn't have

16 the same information as the permanent members in the secretariat had on

17 the real situation on the ground in reference to how fully armed one side

18 of Yugoslavia was against another party who was completely unarmed.

19 I thought at the time that we were doing the right thing. Later

20 on, a few months later, we found out the real truth. And I always

21 maintain, Your Honours, that with that decision the main members of the

22 Security Council, with the support of the secretariat, decided the outcome

23 of the conflict, in which one party was supposed to roll over the other

24 one very rapidly because it was armed. And the other party was supposed

25 to roll over and play dead. But the Bosniaks were not very good active of

1 that play, for that script, and did not roll over and play dead. They

2 resisted, which became a process of massacre and murders and acts of

3 atrocities against them from then on.

4 Q. Thank you. So you say "one party was supposed to roll over and

5 play dead," and you referred to the Bosniaks in that regard. And just for

6 the record, the party which was expected to win rapidly, which side was

7 that?

8 A. It was undoubtedly what was left of former Yugoslavia, which was

9 the Serbian part under Mr. Milosevic.

10 Q. Now, the Republic of Bosnia and Herzegovina was admitted as a

11 member of the United Nations in March 1992. Now, is it right firstly that

12 under the United Nations' charter it is the right of self-defence?

13 A. I'm sorry. I did not understand your question.

14 Q. Yes, my apologies. It's because I -- now I'm anxious about

15 referring to the statement.

16 MR. JONES: It's very disruptive, Your Honour. I'm going to

17 continue as I planned initially, Your Honour, and hopefully there will be

18 no objections.

19 Q. If I refer to paragraph 60 of your statement you say there pretty

20 much what you've just told us now. I'm going to read two sentences from

21 there. "Little did we know then that with that resolution we were

22 involuntarily deciding the outcome of the conflict, that we were sealing

23 the fate of the Bosnian republic, that we were taking away from this

24 member country the right of self-defence enshrined in the UN charter.

25 What seemed a moral act was in fact the equivalent of what, with

1 hindsight, looks like a premeditated death sentence for the Bosnian

2 Muslim 'side' of the Bosnian and Herzegovina republic."

3 Now, firstly I'll ask you to explain a little why you say it was a

4 premeditated death sentence.

5 A. I said at the time when this was discussed in the Security Council

6 that I could not imagine that the permanent members of the Security

7 Council, which were the most powerful members of the international

8 community in the secretariat, didn't know that the Serb party had left all

9 this armament on the republic of what became the Republic of

10 Bosnia-Herzegovina and that the Bosniak part were completely disarmed and

11 didn't even have an army, didn't have a regular army, which I think the

12 closer thing to a regular army that they had was at the end of the

13 conflict, probably after 1994, but not before when they were more what the

14 French call a levee en masse, people that were resistant, like the Maquis

15 in France, disorganised and weak and disarmed. That's what I meant at the

16 time.

17 Q. And why do you say the "Bosnian Muslim side," with "side" in

18 inverted commas?

19 A. What?

20 Q. In paragraph 60, if you see the last sentence, you say: "The

21 Bosnian Muslim" -- and the "side" in inverted commas. Why do you put

22 "side" in inverted commas, if you can explain that to us.

23 A. Your Honours, I was always very puzzled at the United Nations'

24 behaviour and the international community. Before 1991 I never heard or

25 read that the -- that when they addressed the Bosniaks they referred to

1 them as Muslims. This started after Serbia invaded Bosnia-Herzegovina,

2 and then someone in the international community seemed to have discovered

3 there were Muslims there. It used to be Bosniaks for hundreds of years.

4 Suddenly the creation of an ethnic element was included into the whole

5 equation which make it sound even much more confusing and terrible than it

6 was, and the way some people have at the time, and later on, presented

7 like in the former Yugoslavia was integrated where three tribes of

8 savages, Croats, Serbs, and Bosniaks, which was not the case. The fact

9 that some of the people and the leaders had behaved bestially didn't mean

10 that the people were like that. But suddenly this ethnic issue became a

11 fundamental element into the whole discussion, and I believe that

12 distorted the perception of a simple fact that a fanatic in Serbia who had

13 invaded a territory of a member of the United Nations, and then the

14 international community would not raise a finger to defend that, not to

15 protect them, and would not allow them to arm themselves.

16 Q. Thank you. And now, if you turn to the next page of your

17 statement at paragraph 66, there's a reference to "a fear that

18 Bosnia-Herzegovina would become the tar baby of Europe."

19 Now, can you explain that expression for us. What was that about?

20 A. I had -- I was not familiar with that expression until one

21 permanent member of the Security Council said it to me. Later on I found

22 out as a part of the Africa folklore captured by a historic story-teller

23 in America which explains that when you find yourself in a inexplicable

24 situation that you cannot get away from, that you're caught in a

25 situation. And the reference that I made there that this ambassador made

1 to me, it was a fear that the European, some of the main European

2 countries, were afraid to bring this conflict to Europe. But it was in

3 Europe. But nevertheless, they didn't want to get involved in the

4 conflict. And they thought that the Serbs would rapidly go over the rest

5 of the country and peace will be secured in that part of Europe. Part of

6 this was - and I have said it before - that the Europeans never considered

7 the Bosniaks as Europeans but suddenly considered them as Muslims, which

8 they had not done before.

9 Q. Thank you. Now, I want to explore something you say at

10 paragraph 92 of your statement, which is at page 14, and for the sake of

11 context I do need to read. Paragraph 92: "On 8 June 1992 I attended the

12 UNSC when UNSC Resolution 758 was approved. The resolution reflected a

13 cynical interpretation of reality by requesting the victims not to impede

14 the delivery of humanitarian aid to themselves by the reference to, 'all

15 the parties and others concerned'- victims and aggressors were considered

16 alike."

17 Now, can you explain what you mean by that phrase, "victims and

18 aggressors were considered alike."

19 A. Your Honours, one of the most reprehensible behaviours of the

20 international community that I found in the Security Council was always to

21 try to reach the moral equivalence of the parties. Because if you treat

22 both as criminals, as responsible, then you don't make any difference

23 between them. Then there is no moral obligation on your part to

24 participate. While at the same time, had you acknowledged that there was

25 one aggressor against a member country of the United Nations, by the

1 charter the Security Council would have been obligated and forced to act.

2 But because they don't want to act, it was much better to ignore it and to

3 cover up the whole problem as the parties, which is a really not only a

4 euphemism, but a perverse way to describe the reality that was happening.

5 That's what I meant with that.

6 Q. And who in this scenario were the victims and who were the

7 aggressors?

8 A. The aggressor was, obviously, the groups within Serbia -- within

9 Bosnia-Herzegovina, I'm sorry, that were financed, supported, aided, armed

10 by the former Republic of Yugoslavia. And the victims were the people on

11 one part, some parts of Croatia, and then Bosnia-Herzegovina where the

12 concentrated attacks and acts of vandalisms took place.

13 Q. In that regard, we have the next exhibit which is going to be

14 distributed. It's a United Nations Security Council document. It's for

15 general distribution. S/24377, 4 August 1992.

16 JUDGE AGIUS: Let's do this one by one. First I think we need to

17 give an exhibit number to the Ambassador's statement that you are

18 referring him to.

19 MR. JONES: Yes. Thank you, Your Honour.

20 JUDGE AGIUS: What's the next Defence exhibit number, please?

21 THE REGISTRAR: D951, Your Honour.

22 JUDGE AGIUS: So this will be D951. And the new document that you

23 are seeking to tender or to introduce in the records will be D952.

24 MR. JONES: Thank you.

25 And for the record, this is a letter dated 4 August, 1992, from

1 the permanent representative of Venezuela to the United Nations addressed

2 to the President of the Security Council. "There have been reports in the

3 international communication media about concentration camps and the

4 torture of citizens of the Republic of Bosnia-Herzegovina by citizens of

5 the federal Republic of Yugoslavia. Clearly, in view of their nature,

6 these atrocities committed by citizens of one country against another,

7 which is also a member of our organisation, cannot be regarded as internal

8 acts that violate human rights but rather as inhuman acts of aggression by

9 one country against another which continue to constitute a serious threat

10 to international peace and security."

11 Q. And it's signed by yourself. Do you recall this, Ambassador, this

12 letter?

13 A. I do. I recall it with sadness, because even though when I wrote

14 that letter to the President of the Security Council it was because the

15 international media had projected in colours to the world to see that

16 there were concentration camps and torture, the United Nations at the time

17 never produced a report, not even mentioning that fact. I certainly --

18 and the UN Security Council did not act in that occasion pertaining to my

19 letter and to my request that the Security Council addressed such a grave

20 violation of human rights.

21 Q. Right. Thank you. And so you considered at this point that this

22 was actually an ingression by one country against another?

23 A. Absolutely. That was precisely the whole -- the essence of that,

24 even though at the time the Red Cross and many other NGOs had already

25 reported it. It was even actually officially reported by then-President

1 Izetbegovic of Bosnia to the President Francois Mitterrand at the time.

2 And even though all those negotiations were made and presented, no one did

3 anything about it. It took years to actually discover what was really

4 happening in that respect.

5 Q. Thank you.

6 MR. JONES: And we have a new exhibit now which is -- yes, it's

7 called "professionalism in war reporting, a correspondent's view." It's

8 by Tom Gjelten from the Carnagie Commission on Preventing Deadly Conflict

9 dated September 1997.

10 Q. I'm going to ask you about a few opinions expressed here.

11 Now firstly I'm going to direct your attention to the first page,

12 the third paragraph. And this is, as we can see from the context, it

13 concerns the Bosnian conflict. And it says, paragraph 3: "Instinctively

14 many of the UN officers," and this is in Bosnia, "felt more at ease among

15 Serb army commanders who were career military men and treated them

16 respectfully than among Muslim commanders, few of whom had military

17 training."

18 I want to ask you: Is that something you came across in relation

19 to Bosnia?

20 A. Your Honours, I had the privilege to lead the Security Council

21 mission to Srebrenica, which was the first time in the history of the

22 United Nations that the UN Security Council mission would go to the ground

23 during a conflict. And when I got to Srebrenica, I knew why the UN

24 Security Council would never send mission to the ground, because you

25 discover the truth was taking place that is being covered up behind

1 documents and papers and statements.

2 One thing we discovered -- I was shocked to find out when after

3 many struggles to try to go into Srebrenica, being obstructed, sabotaged

4 by the second in command of the UNPROFOR forces, Brigadier Hayes, which

5 prevented the arrival of about 40 international journalists who were

6 accompanying our mission were left stranded in Zvornik, was that when we

7 entered Srebrenica -- I entered first with Hayes and some of the Canadian

8 officers. There was a group, to my surprise, within Srebrenica of Serb

9 officials. At that time, we in the Security Council thought that

10 Srebrenica was under siege, but we didn't know that it had been

11 capitulated with the cooperation of the United Nations Protection Forces.

12 I was surprised to see these Serb officials next to Brigadier Hayes.

13 And then there was a group of civilians, and Brigadier Hayes

14 proceeded to introduce them to me. And he said, if my memory doesn't

15 failed me, it's Colonel, Radic or Rodic, basically lieutenant colonel

16 such-and-such and such-and-such of the Republic of Srpksa.

17 And I say, What is that?

18 Well, you know, this is the Serb Republic of Srpksa.

19 I said, We don't have at the United Nations any republic that we

20 recognise with that name.

21 He proceeded to identify the five or six officers from the Serb

22 side, and then he looked at the civilians who are on the other side, all

23 kinds of -- one had a green shirt, another brown, and he said, Well, and

24 these are also my friends. "These also my friends" were the Bosnian

25 representatives of the insurgency -- or the resistance in Bosnia. It was

1 obvious that he considered the Serb, Srpksa Serbs, officials, like the

2 real authorities, the formal authorities, and he considered the Bosniaks,

3 whose country he was in, as sort of egregious or insurgents but not as

4 authoritative. So I was shocked to see how they acknowledge the

5 aggressors of the official authorities and the victims as the opposite.

6 JUDGE AGIUS: I don't think we have the date of this mission.

7 MR. JONES: No, we're going to come to that subsequently, but the

8 Ambassador can tell us that.

9 Q. When was your mission?

10 A. That was in March 1993. It is a --

11 Q. We can refer to --

12 A. I think it is 24th, but I will have to check. It is in the latter

13 part of March.

14 It was the -- Your Honours, probably I may add that this mission

15 was prompted when the five members of the Security Council, what they call

16 at the time the non-aligned group, was watching television how the village

17 of Srebrenica was under siege. And then at the time the Pakistani

18 ambassador, Marker, presided the Council, and we pressed the council to

19 send a mission because the secretariat wasn't informing or reporting to

20 us. CNN, BBC, Reuters, were the source of information. I said at the

21 time that the least informed body at the time officially and

22 institutionally was the Security Council because information was used as a

23 weapon to really obstruct to view the realities on the ground.

24 Actually, when we were discussing the resolution to declare

25 Srebrenica a safe area, actually we wanted it to be a protected area, what

1 we were discussing at 2.00 in the morning in New York, thinking that we

2 are going to save Srebrenica, on the ground in Sarajevo the UNPROFOR

3 forces were hoping to capitulate and to force a rendition of that village,

4 which we only discovered a few days later when we got to Srebrenica.

5 Q. All right. Thank you very much. We're going to come to your

6 mission shortly and we'll have the report so we can check the exact date.

7 But you mentioned Brigadier Hayes a moment ago, and if you turn to

8 page 4, second paragraph of this it says: "To the news media in Bosnia

9 with no professional obligation to satisfy one side or another, it

10 sometimes appeared that UNPROFOR commanders were misrepresenting reality

11 in their eagerness to maintain good relations with the Serb side. A good

12 example was the effort by UNPROFOR commanders to promote the notion that

13 Sarajevo was not actually besieged because the Serb forces that encircled

14 the city occasionally let UN convoys proceed through their lines. 'There

15 is no humanitarian seige,' declared Brigadier Vere Hayes, Chief of Staff

16 to the UNPROFOR commander in Bosnia, speaking in Sarajevo in August 1993."

17 I just wanted to ask you if that's the same Brigadier Hayes you're

18 referring to and if you recall this incident.

19 A. I certainly do.

20 Your Honours, in a country like Bosnia, the Republic of

21 Bosnia-Herzegovina, its deputy prime minister, if I pronounce it

22 correctly, Mr. Turajlic, was assassinated while travelling in the United

23 Nations Protection Forces' armoured car under the alleged protection of a

24 French officer, is shot in daylight, and no one knows anything about it,

25 and the officer gets promoted in France, you -- the message is: You can

1 clearly get away with murder.

2 While Sarajevo -- Sarajevo had been few years before the host of

3 the Olympic Winter Games, and it was -- told the world that it was an

4 extraordinary event. There were no savages there. It was a most

5 ecumenical city, probably one of the most ecumenical cities in the world,

6 and the whole world was happy to be there.

7 When it became -- when Brigadier Hayes was not under siege, some

8 of you must know that the only communication that Sarajevo had at the end

9 was under a tunnel built under the airport strip. And the UNPROFOR forces

10 tried many times to sink this tunnel because they were afraid that the

11 tunnel would endanger the United Nations forces at the airport.

12 I remember Vice-President Ganic of Bosnia telling me that every

13 time he was asked by Hayes and Rose, General Hayes and Rose, what where

14 the noises under the ground, he would say, Well, we are building 50

15 tunnels at the same time in all kinds of directions in order to divert.

16 That was the only way, the only link of communication. If it has

17 not been under siege, I really cannot understand the situation.

18 Q. Thank you. And was in fact -- are you aware whether Brigadier

19 Hayes was criticised even by Madeleine Albright for those remarks?

20 A. Well, Brigadier Hayes behaved more like a subordinate to the Serb

21 side in Bosnia than as a real officer. We were surprised, the mission, to

22 see how respectful he was with the Serb side and how disrespectful he was

23 with the country that was hosting him. He said in the New York Times at

24 the moment that the United Nations Security Council Resolutions were

25 really hated. Actually he said that to me the first day when we got there

1 in Sarajevo. He said, Every time I hear you speaking on BBC on the issue

2 of Sarajevo, I feel like calling you and telling you that these solutions

3 are really hated.

4 And I said, Well, General, I think you had done that, if that

5 would not have been possible, because you would have been first to report

6 to your boss, and your boss to the other one, and then to the

7 Secretary-General, and then to me.

8 But I don't know whether it's pertinent or not, but with the same

9 context I read in one of your witnesses in this trial that even Morillon,

10 General Morillon, referred to the people in Srebrenica as "those nest of

11 terrorists." And that coming from the mouth of a distinguished French

12 officer is really very serious.

13 Q. That's an exhibit we're going to come to shortly.

14 MR. JONES: I would ask for an exhibit number for this, please.

15 JUDGE AGIUS: Yes. This will become Defence Exhibit D953.

16 MR. JONES: Yes. Thank you. And the next exhibit which we have

17 is a draft of the International Human Rights Law Institute chronology of

18 the battle and siege of Sarajevo 03503839 to 03504242. And it's volume 1,

19 part B, January 1993 to September 1993. This is a selection of pages.

20 We're not exhibiting the whole volume, which would be voluminous.

21 Q. But if you turn to page 3 of this bundle, and it's 03504193.

22 A. I'm sorry?

23 Q. The third page in the second paragraph. And we see in

24 there: "British Brigadier General Hayes, Chief of Staff of UN forces in

25 Bosnia, told reporters in the Bosnian capital that the Bosnian army bore

1 the main blame of blocking relief supplies to Sarajevo. He said the

2 current assault on Mount Igman was strangling only the Bosnian military

3 supply line into Sarajevo."

4 So here it appears, the third page, second paragraph, it says

5 03504193 at the top page. On the front "draft of the international human

6 rights law."

7 A. I don't see which paragraph.

8 Q. I can pass up my copy. "British Brigadier General Hayes, Chief of

9 Staff of the UN forces."

10 Let me provide my copy.

11 JUDGE AGIUS: Yes, Ms. Sellers.

12 MS. SELLERS: Your Honour, just to go on the record, and that's

13 with a document we have before us. I can appreciate Defence counsel's

14 offer. I would have to ask that we would see whatever he would pass up to

15 a witness while a witness was testifying about an exhibit, although I

16 believe it will probably show that paragraph marked.

17 And the other I was wondering whether Your Honour would like to

18 have any of these documents placed on the ELMO so that the public can see

19 what we're looking at.

20 JUDGE AGIUS: Okay. Certainly this one.

21 MR. JONES:

22 Q. Yes. Do you have the paragraph now, Ambassador?

23 JUDGE AGIUS: Madam Usher.

24 MR. JONES:

25 Q. Yes, have you seen the paragraph which I was referring to?

1 A. Yes. The one referring to Brigadier Hayes?

2 Q. Yes.

3 A. Well, yes, I remember this well. It was referring that this --

4 the Bosnians inside its own country were making life very difficult for

5 them to take -- for the Serbs to take the city of Sarajevo. And that was

6 really the most cynical accusation, to call the victims aggressors.

7 Q. If we turn to the second-to-last page of this document --

8 A. Second one?

9 Q. Second-to-last page and it says 03504227. It says: "According to

10 US Ambassador Madeleine Albright, UN Secretary-General Boutros-Ghali

11 accepted a US complaint that two UN peacekeeping officers, Brigadier

12 General Hayes, Chief of Staff of the command of UNPROFOR, and Lieutenant

13 Colonel Barry Frewer, the Sarajevo spokesman of UNPROFOR, made

14 inappropriate remarks. Hayes and Frewer had told reporters that Sarajevo

15 was no longer under siege but was encircled by the Serbs."

16 I end the quote there. Do so you agree, that that's a very

17 perverse picture which was drawn by Brigadier Hayes and that he was

18 reprimanded by Madeleine Albright for those remarks?

19 A. Yes. That was the case that Brigadier Hayes also criticise

20 President Clinton and said, What does he think he is? For referring to

21 this situation. And this is not only perverse but a cruel way to describe

22 a city that was being under siege and under attack. Well, in that context

23 even Boutros-Ghali said that he knew of about ten more other cities in the

24 world that were having a worse situation than Sarajevo.

25 Q. So this was typical of a certain attitude of the -- on the part of

1 the United Nations towards the conflict, to downplay the seriousness?

2 A. Well, it also much saw the case that, Your Honours, I ask you to

3 imagine a United Nations Security Council mission that started at 4.00 in

4 the afternoon and the meeting ended at 3.00 in the morning, seriously

5 discussing how to protect the city of Srebrenica, while at the same

6 time -- and actually, they ended before, like I said, the United Nations

7 forces on the ground had capitulated Srebrenica.

8 I remember that later on the president -- the vice-president of

9 Bosnia, Anic, told me that in the wee hours of the morning at the airport

10 to Sarajevo, Brigadier Hayes said to General Halilovic, General, is it

11 time for you to kneel down? Let's pray? And brought down his Bible to

12 the Bosnian commander.

13 Q. The Bosnian commander being a Muslim?

14 A. Yes, sir.

15 Q. Thank you.

16 MR. JONES: I'll ask for an exhibit number for this document.

17 JUDGE AGIUS: This document, Mr. Jones, will become D954.

18 And I recognise Ms. Sellers.

19 MS. SELLERS: Your Honour, I want to point out in this document,

20 and counsel might be able to assist us. It appears to be a document where

21 the numbering, the pagination, at least within the ERNs, is irregular. I

22 just want to make it clear that the Defence is submitting these distinct

23 pages with the ERN number and not the document in its entirety.

24 MR. JONES: Yes, I thought I said that before. This is a

25 selection of pages, and of course the Prosecution has access to the full

1 document.

2 JUDGE AGIUS: And this, I take it, is a document that was given to

3 you or made available to you by the Prosecution itself?

4 MR. JONES: That I can't answer offhand, but I imagine it might be

5 the case.

6 JUDGE AGIUS: All right. But for the record, let me enter now the

7 ERN numbers that I see on this document. First one, which is title page,

8 is 03503839. The second page is 03504192. The third, 03504193. The next

9 page is 03504215. Next is 03504216. And then we have 03504220. Next

10 is 221, the next is 225, the next is 227, and the last one is 242.

11 Thank you.

12 MR. JONES: Yes. Thank you, Your Honour.

13 Q. Now, going back to a matter covered in your statement, and just --

14 well, we won't refer to it. But it concerns the fact that the UNHCR,

15 Madam Ogata of Japan, tried to bring the attention of the UN to the plight

16 of Srebrenica back in December 1992. Do you recall that?

17 A. Yes. Actually, during my -- the position in the Mr. Milosevic

18 case, I was presented with a copy of that letter 11 years later, which we

19 never saw in the Security Council.

20 Q. Just to be clear, there's a letter of December 1992 and I think

21 one of March 1993. Did you see either of them at the time?

22 A. No. And the serious implication of that is that Madam Ogata, whom

23 I have personally consulted on the issue of how to draft proper guidelines

24 for a safe area, expressly said in the letter to Mr. Boutros-Ghali: I

25 urge you, if I memory doesn't fail me, I urge you to warn the leaders of

1 the West of the emerging and monumental tragedy that might occur in

2 Srebrenica.

3 That, by itself, should have been a very powerful alarm in the

4 Security Council. This letter came to my attention 11 years later. Why

5 the Secretary-General would not report to the Security Council such a

6 grave warning is something which is very reprehensible. And I have

7 stated, Your Honours, before that that became part, what I believe still

8 is, a major cover-up of the responsibility evaded by the international

9 community, mainly by the main powers represented in the Council, to face

10 the reality of genocide taking place before their own eyes. And to have

11 an official like Madam Ogata, a very distinguished leader in her own

12 country and in the international community, reporting that seriousness was

13 something that could not be swept under the rug, like it was at the time.

14 Q. So instead of being swept under the rug, the letter wasn't

15 distributed. Is that what you're saying?

16 A. It was not.

17 Q. Now, during the course of being involved in the discussions on

18 Bosnia, did you ever see maps which had been prepared in terms of

19 allocating territory to the different -- to the Republic

20 Bosnia-Herzegovina and to the Serbs?

21 A. Oh, yes. I said in one of my -- it is in the record because I

22 said it in one of my official speeches in the Security Council that a few

23 days after the Security Council welcomed the new member of the Republic of

24 Bosnia-Herzegovina into its midst, we already started a partition process

25 of the same member few weeks afterwards, not even weeks, days.

1 Q. Yes. May I ask you specifically about Srebrenica. Did you see

2 where Srebrenica was placed on those maps?

3 A. Yes. This is the point precisely that I wanted to refer to. In

4 the first Vance-Owen Plan I remember talking to Owen and saying this

5 cartography, exercise in cartography you are doing establishing the

6 partition of a member country, and Srebrenica, which was on the eastern

7 part, is in the eastern part, they considered that it was very close to

8 serve Serbia proper in a way closer to what they called at the time the

9 Greater Serbia, that it was very distant from the rest of

10 Bosnia-Herzegovina.

11 So on the first maps, it was always Srebrenica was always a target

12 of the negotiations as part of the closer area of the enclave closer to

13 Greater Serbia. It was always the case throughout. And today, as we

14 know, Srebrenica is part of that part of Serbia.

15 Q. When you refer to these maps from the Vance-Owen negotiations,

16 what year are we talking about?

17 A. They started at 1992 until the middle of 1993 when Mr. Stoltenberg

18 replaced Mr. Owen and Mr. Vance, and all the negotiations failed at that

19 time.

20 Q. Right. So in 1992 and 1993 there was already a move to put

21 Srebrenica in, as you called it, Greater Serbia?

22 A. Oh, yes, very much so. It was always a target, not only a

23 military target, it was a diplomatic target.

24 Q. The next exhibit which is -- it's from the UNHCR dated 18 March

25 1993.

1 MR. JONES: Your Honour, I don't see -- on the one hand, this is a

2 document from the UNHCR, and I'm always now sensitive about any concerns

3 for its circulation. At the same time, this was shown publicly in the

4 Milosevic trial, and you'll see from the nature of the document it's

5 addressed to the Secretary-General. I think it can be safely discussed in

6 open session and placed on the ELMO.

7 JUDGE AGIUS: Do you have a position on this, Ms. Sellers?

8 MS. SELLERS: Your Honour, I'm rather confused by relating the

9 document to the other trial. Are we trying to say that we would want this

10 to be sealed in this trial for whatever reason the Defence counsel might

11 offer or --

12 MR. JONES: No --

13 MS. SELLERS: -- or are we saying this document is just a normal

14 potential Defence exhibit document. I don't understand precisely the

15 nature of Defence counsel's comment.

16 MR. JONES: All I was saying is I think this can be public.

17 JUDGE AGIUS: This is the whole issue. To my knowledge, all

18 documents supplied to you by this UN agency is always under the caveat

19 that at any time they may require you not to use them.

20 Now, this document seems to have been given a number. It seems

21 that it has been made use of in another trial. So what I would like to

22 know from you before we proceed any further is whether you have any

23 objection for this document to be made use of in this trial and that it,

24 in addition, be publicly made use of. In other words, if there is a

25 reservation from UNHCR with regard to the use of this document at this

1 trial, we will have to respect it.

2 MS. SELLERS: Your Honour --

3 JUDGE AGIUS: This is the position.

4 MR. JONES: Yes, normally there's an R in front if it's

5 restricted, whereas there's no R --

6 JUDGE AGIUS: I don't know. I mean, I've had to deal with UNHCR

7 in other cases and also in this case, but I don't know what the position

8 is as regards you are concerned.

9 MS. SELLERS: Your Honour, precisely. Usually that's indicated by

10 an R before the ERN.

11 What I would like to say is that: Could we just reserve this

12 position, and for an abundance of caution at this time period to not place

13 it on the ELMO, have it public, and I will certainly come back to Your

14 Honours by the break just to confirm that we can use it publicly or not.

15 MR. JONES: Right. Thank you. In fact, there's another question

16 that I might ask which can maybe throw some light on this as well.

17 Q. Ambassador, do you see at the top it says the "GlenRock Group"?

18 A. Yes, I do.

19 Q. Are you familiar with that group?

20 A. Yes, very much. I am in the board of that group.

21 Q. So in fact did you receive this document?

22 A. Yes. Because when I was preparing for the -- Mr. Milosevic's

23 proceedings, I got this letter from the United Nations, and I sent it

24 to -- either to the Prosecutor's office or to one of the investigators. I

25 was -- that's when I noticed that they had the fax, name of the

1 GlenRock Group, yes.

2 Q. Yes. That might help. We won't place it on the ELMO. I will

3 read from it. There is nothing confidential, certainly, in the content.

4 It says: "The situation in the Srebrenica enclave is deteriorating by the

5 hour. The latest reports I've received from my staff on the spot are

6 appalling. Thousands of people entering the town from surrounding areas

7 which have been systematically attacked and taken by Serb forces. People

8 are dying from military action and starvation and lack of medical

9 treatment at a rate of 30 to 40 a day."

10 And then the next page: "Everything would indicate that a

11 massive humanitarian tragedy is unfolding in the Srebrenica enclave. I

12 believe key world leaders should be alerted to these developments."

13 And she requests that the urgent issue be brought to the attention

14 of the Security Council.

15 Now, you've told us -- well, tell us again because I'm not sure if

16 it's this letter. This is dated 18 March 1993. Was this letter brought

17 to your attention in the Security Council at the time?

18 A. No, it was not. And that's precisely the point that I did try to

19 make, that for four months the United Nations secretariat, and I am sure

20 the main members, knew what was developing there. But they -- they waited

21 until I think a British journalist from ABC, Birtley, Tony Birtley went

22 into Srebrenica and presented to the world what was happening there. I

23 still remember the faces of some of my colleagues in the Security Council.

24 There was a television set outside the Security Council, watching the

25 people -- what was happening in Srebrenica. And I could not believe that

1 in the body that's supposed to represent international peace and security

2 for humanity was being informed by a commercial station -- at that time

3 was CNN or ABC, and for four months where this was taking place, evolving

4 or deteriorating, no one had done anything. I found that actually

5 criminal behaviour.

6 Q. All right. Thank you. Now, also you've told us how you went on a

7 mission to Srebrenica subsequently. Did the conditions there tally or not

8 with the picture painted in this letter?

9 A. You know, the situation was even worse. I remember there were

10 five other ambassadors with me, one was a Russian. And I told him, you

11 know, I was in Leningrad recently and I saw the museum and saw the

12 photographs. And I said, I'm sure that watching around you here you must

13 be moved by the tragedy that you are watching. I said, you know, what we

14 have here is a slow-motion genocide taking place under the protection of

15 the United Nations security forces, protection forces. I even said that

16 the -- our offices look more like the capas [phoen] in a concentration

17 camp rather than the protectors of the people.

18 This is a city which I understand had been a skiing village. You

19 only see devastation, burned houses, only women and old men and children

20 in the streets. No water, no electricity, no gas, no doctors. And we had

21 been told that they were under siege and surrounded by Serb tanks all

22 around. It looked like a shooting gallery where the people in the village

23 were down and the Serb tanks surrounded them, that they could shoot them

24 at their own -- at their mercy, at their will.

25 This malice, this stagnancy, it was -- in my whole experience I

1 never seen anything like it. I didn't see one single soldier. I said,

2 you know, they are surrounded, a civilian population. And what was very

3 shocking, Your Honours, I must tell you, I landed in one of the United

4 Nations helicopters in what used to be the soccer field, and I saw about

5 20 men dressed in white, you know, white robes, like doctors or

6 paramedics, and I asked one of the officers: Are those Medecins Sans

7 Frontieres or the Red Cross?

8 He said: No, they are Serb doctors.

9 I said: What are they doing here? They are doing the triage to

10 see if they will let them out or not of the wounded people, mostly old

11 men.

12 So the United Nations was helping, actually, in the triage to say

13 this one comes in, this one doesn't come out, this one goes in the

14 helicopter, and this one stays here, this one taken, which is exactly what

15 happened two years later when they took 7.000 people out of Srebrenica and

16 murdered them in the same procedure. You get into the bus, you don't get

17 into the bus, you are strike-out, you are dead. It is the coldest, most

18 cruel experience I have seen, and under the United Nations banner.

19 That week, Your Honours, a week before we got there, a bomb --

20 shells were exploded in the school in Srebrenica. Brigadier Hayes wanted

21 to take us around the town. Fortunately Madam Ogata's representative, a

22 distinguished Spaniard, Mendiluce, later became a member of parliament

23 called me aside and said to me, Ask them to take you to the school, ask

24 them to take you to ex mountain, you will see the tanks. Thanks to him we

25 were able to see the deployment of the tanks. I forced the mission to go

1 to the school. There was still remnants of children had who had been

2 killed a week before. And when I turned around to see what was behind me

3 in the school, this Serb colonel, together with Brigadier Hayes, probably

4 the man who was responsible for shelling these children, was almost hand

5 in hand with the head of the United Nations forces in Srebrenica.

6 And later on, when we went through the town, the two of them were

7 in the United Nations protection forces armoured car, which I found it so

8 reprehensible that we would go into the cities being victimised by the

9 Serbs, and they take a United Nations Security Council mission and parade

10 it through the town with the officer in charge of the destruction, siege

11 and attacks and vandalism of that village.

12 Q. Thank you. Thank you very much, indeed.

13 JUDGE AGIUS: Yes, I think we can have a break now, Mr. Jones.

14 MR. JONES: Yes. Perhaps an exhibit number for this before we --

15 JUDGE AGIUS: Yes. This will become Defence Exhibit D955, with

16 the understanding, Ms. Sellers, if you come back to us with problems

17 relating to the publicity of this document, then we will put it under seal

18 of course.

19 MS. SELLERS: Thank you very much, Your Honours.

20 JUDGE AGIUS: We will have a 30-minute break and then we will have

21 one more session in order to make it possible for us to make the plenary

22 we have.

23 MR. JONES: We are stopping at 4.00; is that correct?

24 JUDGE AGIUS: No, the plenary starts at 4.00, so we will try to

25 stop any time between 3.00 and 3.30.

1 MR. JONES: Yes. Well, I'm making good progress.

2 JUDGE AGIUS: Thank you.

3 Ambassador, we will have a 30-minute break.

4 THE WITNESS: Thank you, sir.

5 --- Recess taken at 1.02 p.m.

6 --- On resuming at 1.37 p.m.

7 JUDGE AGIUS: Yes, your client isn't seated as yet.

8 Yes, Mr. Jones, you may proceed. Thank you.

9 MR. JONES: Thank you.

10 Q. Now, Ambassador, before the break you were telling us, in fact,

11 about your mission to Srebrenica. And now I'm going to just, in the

12 interests of time and clarification, ask a few brief questions which you

13 can probably answer shortly just to set the context. First, who proposed

14 that mission?

15 A. It was proposed by -- I was the head of the group of the

16 non-aligned at the time in the Security Council. And, yes, I proposed it.

17 Q. And this -- again, this is described in detail in your statement,

18 so I won't go through that paragraph by paragraph. Did you also -- one

19 moment, please. You proposed it, and were you the head, also, of the

20 mission?

21 A. Yes.

22 Q. And was it the first ever mission undertaken by the Security

23 Council or had there been others before?

24 A. It was the first time.

25 Q. And was there any opposition to your mission?

1 A. Yes. It was quite a struggle within the Security Council for

2 about two hours' discussion. The precedent that this was going to set or

3 not. But finally, we were able to prevail.

4 Q. And you carried out the mission, of course. Did you produce a

5 report?

6 A. Yes. And I personally drafted the report which was -- then was

7 unanimously agreed by the members of the mission.

8 Q. And we're going to pass up copies of the report now. I'm going to

9 take one matter in relation to that report and then come back to it. So

10 this is -- this bears the reference number S/25700 of 30 April 1993. It's

11 a United Nations Security Council document.

12 JUDGE AGIUS: Yes, I recognise Ms. Sellers.

13 MS. SELLERS: Your Honour, I wanted to state at this time period,

14 and I apologise to Defence counsel for not bringing this up before we

15 began, the testimony in this segment of Ambassador Arria, that the

16 document we referred to earlier, the letter from Ms. Ogata, I have been

17 able to check our sources and it need not be under seal, just in case

18 Defence counsel wanted to use it further during this examination.

19 JUDGE AGIUS: I thank you, Ms. Sellers, and I appreciate your

20 cooperation.

21 MR. JONES: I also wanted to state on the record that we don't

22 have the letter of December 1992. I state that on the record for various

23 reasons, otherwise I would have used it with the witness.

24 JUDGE AGIUS: Thank you, Mr. Jones.

25 MR. JONES:

1 Q. Now, as I said, I'm going to come back to this document later.

2 But firstly, do you recognise this as being the letter of transmittal with

3 your report?

4 A. Yes, I do.

5 Q. And if we turn to page 13 I think we can establish now the actual

6 date that you went to Srebrenica. It says: "Itinerary, annex 1, 25 April

7 1993, arrival at Srebrenica."

8 I I'm just wondering, could that be correct, that it was actually

9 25 April 1993? I think you might have said March before.

10 JUDGE AGIUS: Yes, he did say March before. Yes, I agree.

11 MR. JONES:

12 Q. Is this the correct date, April 1993?

13 A. Yes.

14 Q. I'm going to come back to this document in the course -- and

15 perhaps I could ask for an exhibit number now.

16 JUDGE AGIUS: Yes. This document will become Defence

17 Exhibit D956.

18 MR. JONES: Thank you, Your Honour.

19 Q. Now, you've already described a number of aspects of your mission,

20 of what occurred. You mentioned Brigadier Hayes obviously a couple of

21 times, and one thing you mentioned that he called Security Council

22 Resolutions on this whole matter woolly-headed. I just want to ask: In

23 your view, was his attitude a factor in why Resolutions were not being

24 implemented in Bosnia-Herzegovina, Security Council Resolutions on --

25 A. You know, it would be unfair of me to say that in absolute terms

1 because, after all, Brigadier Hayes had a commanding officer, above him,

2 who was General Morillon. And General Morillon had on top of him the

3 hierarchy General Wahlgren at the time. So it would have to be a

4 collective one. Now, the fact that he was in Sarajevo while Wahlgren was

5 in Zagreb made a significant difference on the ground, but I cannot say

6 that he was alone in that predicament.

7 Q. And is it General Wahlgren? Is that who you're referring to in

8 Zagreb?

9 A. Yes. His headquarters were in Zagreb.

10 Q. And that's where he was based, then, during this time?

11 A. Yes. General Morillon was based in Kiseljak, and Brigadier Hayes

12 was in Sarajevo.

13 Q. All right. Thank you. Now, in terms of your mission, carrying

14 out this Security Council mission, did Brigadier Hayes help or hinder your

15 mission?

16 A. Brigadier Hayes was -- I think he interpret the mandate of the

17 Security Council mission like to take the ambassadors for a tour of

18 Bosnia-Herzegovina, not as a mandate to find out what was going on on the

19 ground.

20 And I will explain why. To begin with, Brigadier Hayes refused to

21 take the journalist who came from New York as part of our mission. He

22 sabotaged, boycotted, do not allowing them to enter Srebrenica. Only to

23 get to Zvornik. He almost managed not to let the rest of my delegation

24 arrive in Srebrenica. I went with him first and he said in the next

25 helicopter would follow your colleagues and the press. That didn't happen

1 for two hours while he was negotiating with this Serb colonel Rodic or

2 Radic. What happened, it was suddenly they were caught in this situation

3 that we were going to find out which was the real situation in Srebrenica.

4 Because when they were forcing the capitulation on the Bosnians, they

5 never thought that the United Nations Security Council mission was going

6 to visit them and ask questions and ask to be taken to Srebrenica.

7 So, Your Honours, if I tell you that the United Nations forces

8 sequester and got the cameras away from six ambassadors of the United

9 Nations, you will find it difficult to believe. This is what happened.

10 The UNPROFOR, following orders from the Serb side, asked all my colleagues

11 to deliver the cameras because they didn't want anyone with a camera

12 entering Srebrenica. They said that they were filming it. I never seen a

13 film of that. I refused to render mine, and the few photographs there are

14 of that time of Srebrenica are the ones that I took. And I gave the roll

15 to the Reuters people at the time as the only record to show, actually,

16 some of the people, the local people, who were defending Srebrenica, the

17 destruction of the city. And it begs the question: Why would the United

18 Nations prevent photographs taken if they have nothing to hide? If this

19 was not a city under siege? If nothing wrong was happening? Why would

20 the United Nations cooperate with the Serbs in preventing photographs?

21 Not from the journalists they prevented; the journalists never got to

22 Srebrenica. Prevented the ambassadors from taking photographs. That's

23 really amazing and shocking to see.

24 Q. Thank you. We're going to look at your photographs now. We have

25 hard copy and we have colour copies which I think we're going to show the

1 colour copies on the screen because we only have black and white copies.

2 And the ERN sequence is 03514788 to 03514800. So if we can see those now

3 in sequence.

4 Now, firstly, tell me if you recognise these photographs or

5 this --

6 A. This photograph I took at the school where the children had been

7 killed a week before. And when we visited Serbs as sort of a refuge where

8 all women and children and all men were on the floor all over the place in

9 the most crowded building that I ever seen in my life. That's the school

10 in Srebrenica.

11 Q. We'll clip to the next one now. And there's nothing -- if there's

12 anything to comment on, then please comment; otherwise just let us know if

13 you recognise or not this as being one of your photographs.

14 A. I do. That's a Canadian colonel to the right.

15 Q. All right. We'll clip to the next one. Now, could you explain

16 who these people are in this photograph.

17 A. Yes. If I make a comment, Your Honour, I don't know whether this

18 officer, which is Colonel Radic, that's his real name or not, but this is

19 talking to us in Zvornik. The one behind is the French ambassador, and I

20 am to his right. He is explaining to me that Srpksa is a new republic in

21 control of the area.

22 Q. That's Republika Srpska. Is that correct?

23 A. Yes.

24 Q. And is that you in this picture?

25 A. Yes, I am, to -- actually, he's addressing me.

1 Q. Okay. Thank you.

2 MR. JONES: Your Honour, I haven't been reading the ERNs as we go

3 along. I don't know if that's necessary. Perhaps it is.

4 JUDGE AGIUS: If you are going to tender them as a group with one

5 exhibit number, then it's okay. I mean --

6 MR. JONES: Yes, that was my intention.

7 JUDGE AGIUS: I'm taking note of the ERNs myself, I'm taking note

8 down of --

9 MR. JONES: Okay. Thank you, Your Honour.

10 JUDGE AGIUS: -- it now. But it depends on how you prefer to --

11 MR. JONES: I was planning to tender them all in one exhibit

12 number.

13 JUDGE AGIUS: Okay.

14 MR. JONES: And then we can go to the next photograph.

15 Q. Again is this one of yours?

16 A. Yes, this is taken from a United Nations armoured car. You can

17 see the destruction of all the villages and homes, which still -- many of

18 them are still in the same situation because I visited recently during the

19 tenth massacre anniversary of Srebrenica.

20 Q. I don't know if you see in the top right-hand corner near the

21 pylon, do you see the church there?

22 A. Yes.

23 Q. The Orthodox church. That was not damaged?

24 A. It was not. All the minarets were destroyed.

25 Q. Are you referring to Srebrenica or elsewhere?

1 A. In Srebrenica and the surrounding areas.

2 Q. Okay. Thank you. The next photograph, if you recognise that?

3 A. Yeah, these were children, you know, they had signs with the name

4 of my country, France, Russia, Pakistan, and New Zealand and Hungary who

5 were the countries represented by us. You know, desperate people.

6 Q. And I think actually in the bottom right-hand corner we see a

7 date. Is that correct?

8 A. Pardon me?

9 Q. In the bottom right-hand corner, we see in red, 93/4/25. So that

10 would be 25 April 1993.

11 A. Yes.

12 Q. Then the next picture. Was this one of your pictures?

13 A. One of a countless -- they were all destroyed. People were living

14 on the streets. There were no homes, there were no buildings, there were

15 no hospitals. I believe there's only one local doctor who was there.

16 They prevented the doctor from outside to come in. So it was -- you know,

17 a picture of total devastation and sadness.

18 Q. Thank you.

19 A. -- about to take place. Hunger. People were really desperate.

20 Q. You mentioned a doctor. Did you visit a clinic of any

21 description, a health clinic?

22 A. Actually, when we were there, there was no clinic. They were

23 being treated in the soccer field. That's the way they were treated.

24 Q. And then I think we can take the next pictures fairly quickly.

25 Well, yes, the next one -- yes.

1 A. This is the same Serb colonel. I don't know whether he is

2 indicted here or not. He should have been. He was in charge of the

3 shelling of Srebrenica.

4 Q. Thank you. And I don't know if you can recognise the face on the

5 left or tell us what he was doing.

6 A. The left is a British major, a colonel, at the time who was one of

7 Brigadier Hayes' second in command.

8 Q. Was he happy with you taking that photograph?

9 A. No. He told me that they were filming it. It's difficult to

10 imagine that they're going to film genocide, but that's what they said

11 they were doing.

12 Q. And you --

13 A. And the United Nations never ever shown a photograph or a film.

14 Q. From your mission?

15 A. Not from my mission, not from whatever happened during those years

16 in Srebrenica.

17 Q. And then we move to the next 4795. Again, houses which have been

18 destroyed. Do you know who had damaged the houses in Srebrenica that you

19 saw?

20 A. This was the shelling coming from the mountain right in front. As

21 I described before, Srebrenica is like in a valley surrounded by the

22 mountains. And the tanks, the Serb tanks, were on top. And it was --

23 they shelled them until they destroyed the whole village. It was as

24 simple as that.

25 Q. Thank you. And we move to the next picture. Yes. And again,

1 perhaps for these you can just confirm whether or not you took them,

2 because you've explained already.

3 A. Yes. You know, I actually gave a lot of these pictures, all of

4 them, actually, to the Prosecution in the case of Mr. Milosevic because

5 there were -- they would portray the destruction of the whole village of

6 Srebrenica.

7 Q. Here we have 14 photographs. Did you only take 14 photographs?

8 A. I took like three rolls of film, and I had an information

9 assistant of mine on my mission who took also photos with my camera. And

10 we gave them to the international journalist when we landed in Zvornik.

11 Q. But in terms of the photographs you've described giving to the

12 Prosecution, did you give them just he 14 photographs that we see here or

13 did you give them --

14 A. No, I -- many more.

15 Q. All right. Well, we'll keep going through this sequence.

16 Next one 4797, again any brief comments you have.

17 A. That's an armoured car, you know, crossing the certain street.

18 People were piling up in certain areas of the village like the soccer

19 stadium in the lower part of town, the -- we are descending into the

20 village, and of course the closer you were to the mountains, the more

21 destroyed and at risk the people were. So they were all down by the lower

22 part of the city or the village of Srebrenica.

23 Q. I think we just have three more.

24 A. This is a cruel example of what was all over. There were no

25 selective targets. Srebrenica in the whole was a target. It was a pure

1 exercise in ethnic cleansing and destruction.

2 Q. Okay. And then the next one. And that's -- do you recognise that

3 building -- can you tell us where in Srebrenica that was roughly.

4 A. That's the lower part of the village.

5 Q. And then I think we just have two more. Yes, that one --

6 A. The same, you know. It's another vision from the same terrible

7 situation that the people were living there.

8 Q. Thank you. And finally 801 we see a house which appears to have

9 no roof whatsoever. Is that a picture you took?

10 A. Yes.

11 Q. Thank you.

12 MR. JONES: I'll ask for an exhibit number for these photographs.

13 JUDGE AGIUS: So these photos, which number 14 in total, and which

14 go from ERN 03514788 to and inclusive of 03514801 are being tendered and

15 marked as Defence Exhibit D957.

16 MR. JONES: Right. Thank you, Your Honour.

17 Q. Now, I'm going back to something else which you told us earlier

18 about, how Brigadier Hayes introduced some Bosnian Serb officers who

19 appeared to be military officers by name, and then he turned to some

20 Bosnians and said "these are also my friends. Did he appear to know who

21 they were or not by name?

22 A. I think after Brigadier Hayes introduced each Serb by his rank and

23 name and then he had to his other side the three or four Bosniaks, you

24 know, he realised that he had made a mistake in -- and as an afterthought

25 he said, "And these are also my friends," meaning the victims, supposedly

1 the defenders of the village. As I said before, he was much more familiar

2 with the aggressors than with the victim.

3 Q. And were those Bosniaks in full uniform as well, full military

4 fig?

5 A. It's really, you know, it's sad to say, they looked really

6 pathetic. One of them had a shotgun and I asked him: What do you do in

7 your life?

8 He said: Well, I used to be a teacher.

9 The other one was a mechanic. They were, to begin with, very

10 poorly dressed. They were not in uniform, and they were very badly armed.

11 I would say they were actually almost disarmed, which was the situation at

12 that part of the world until about 1994, 1995, when things started to

13 change and they got better equipment later on, even though the

14 international community forbid them for a long time to be armed.

15 Q. So if I were to -- if you were to be shown a video, part of a

16 video with people in uniform, or bits of uniform, would that change your

17 view about what you saw that day or is that what you saw? Poorly dressed

18 people not in uniform?

19 A. The only people that I saw that appeared as defenders were very

20 few, to start with, very few.

21 We called for a meeting, Your Honours, of the village in the

22 middle of the -- of Srebrenica where I addressed the people in the village

23 of why we were there. And I can see it still today when I stood up to

24 speak. At the end of the room there was again the Serb colonel, and on

25 the right there were the three or four Bosniak defenders, one of them the

1 mayor of the city. And I told him, you know, we were there to make sure

2 that they would be protected, that I came under the mandate of the United

3 Nations Security Council that was responsible for the preservation of

4 peace and security in the world, that I would guarantee to them that we

5 will protect them. You know, Your Honours, every time I think about it I

6 flinch, because two years later they massacred 7.000 of them and no one

7 did anything about it.

8 Q. Thank you.

9 A. Even though we had said that a massacre would take place. I said

10 it -- it's not today that I'm saying this. I said it in a public meeting

11 of the Security Council that the major massacre would take place, that

12 there was a slow-motion genocide before the eyes of the world. And all

13 those words that we conveyed to the poor people of Srebrenica were a false

14 promise. We made -- the UN and international community carries a major

15 responsibility in encouraging them to stay there, to develop expectations

16 that the world would protect them, and that the UNPROFOR forces would not

17 allow the Serbs to massacre them. And we failed them.

18 Q. Thank you. In that regard, I have an exhibit which we'll pass up.

19 It's from the Washington Post dated 26th April 1993. And the headline

20 is: "UN delegation visited shell-scared Bosnian enclave Ambassadors back

21 expansion of demilitarised zone around Srebrenica, criticised Serbs."

22 I'm just going to read a part from page 3 of this document where

23 it says reporting on this mission: "It is a snap-shot of hell, said New

24 Zealand's O'Brien who described the winding streets of hillside Srebrenica

25 as packed with people, excrement and trash. During a stop at a school, he

1 said the delegation found 38 children in one small room sitting on

2 mattresses with their mothers. Some had oozing sores, he said."

3 Pausing there, is that what you described and the photograph which

4 you took? Was that of that school?

5 A. Yes. You know, I think that the human misery that is witnessed

6 there, it's very difficult to summarise in words. And that was the

7 closest that I could come up at that time to describe the situation on the

8 ground.

9 Q. And this here, O'Brien is -- can you just explain for us who New

10 Zealand's O'Brien is?

11 A. O'Brien was a permanent representative of New Zealand and was part

12 of the delegation, Ambassador O'Brien.

13 Q. Thank you. And then it goes on: "The Serbs have forbidden

14 doctors from getting to the city, O'Brien said, adding that only one

15 doctor remained in Srebrenica. Arria said the water, electricity, and

16 medical problems amounted to a slow process of killing people. Srebrenica

17 is like an open jail, a slow genocide. You can kill people by bullets,

18 shelling, or sickness. In Srebrenica, the Serbs are killing people by

19 sickness."

20 Do you recall whether you made those comments?

21 A. Yes, I certainly did. I did them in Srebrenica, in Zvornik, in

22 the official room where the United Nations Security Council meets, and in

23 front of the international press. I felt at the time, as I feel now, that

24 the UNPROFOR forces were more in prison getting over with the situation

25 there regardless of the outcome because Srebrenica was becoming like a

1 thorn on the side of the UNPROFOR forces. And they were more concerned

2 for that than for the misery affecting the people of that village.

3 Q. Thank you. And when you say that "Srebrenica was becoming a thorn

4 in the side of the -- of UNPROFOR," did that affect or not the attitude of

5 UNPROFOR towards the defenders of Srebrenica?

6 A. Your Honours, you must be familiar with the name Akashi. Akashi

7 was a representative of the Secretary-General in Bosnia. Akashi

8 considered, he said it, that the people in Srebrenica were contrabandists,

9 smugglers, I mean, in a way saying not worth fighting for. I wonder

10 whether Mr. Akashi thought that they would export something from

11 Srebrenica.

12 Q. Thank you.

13 A. General Morillon is quoted by his own aide-de-camp, telling the

14 Serb general that he will help them to get rid of that nest of terrorists

15 in Srebrenica without additional cost to you. With that kind of a

16 perception that those gentlemen had on Srebrenica, it must be very clear

17 they were not willing to do much about it. And diplomatically Srebrenica

18 was closer to Greater Serbia. It was an appealing, appetising part of the

19 territory that the Serbs wanted that was part of the negotiations.

20 MR. JONES: Yes, I'll ask for an exhibit number for this

21 document.

22 JUDGE AGIUS: Yes, by all means, Mr. Jones. This document with

23 ERN M0011807 to 810 is being given Defence Exhibit Number D958.

24 MR. JONES: Thank you.

25 Q. And overall, given what you saw on your mission and what you told

1 us about this Colonel Rodic, about the behaviour of Brigadier Hayes, the

2 triage, et cetera, what did that show you about what was actually in

3 charge on the ground in Srebrenica at that time?

4 A. No doubt that the Serbs were in full control. Even more, when we

5 were on the way to Srebrenica, we were stopped by a group of Serb soldiers

6 near what they called Charlie checkpoint, something outside Sarajevo. And

7 they stopped us and put a tank with the cannon facing the vehicle where I

8 was, which was the first vehicle on the mission. And even though we had

9 30 or 40 journalists behind our armoured cars, one Serb sergeant or

10 corporal held two British generals, three French colonels, and I don't

11 know, countless Swedish and Danish soldiers that were there, we were about

12 40 armed cars and tanks. And one sergeant, Serb sergeant stopped us for

13 two hours, threatened us, and all the time the behaviour of the people who

14 were protecting us were so subordinate that I'm sure that their own

15 countrymen saw them they would be really very ashamed of them.

16 Q. Thank you. Now, you've referred to your press conference in

17 Zvornik and the matters which you dealt with there, and I'm not going to

18 go over that again now. Except for one part, and it may help if we refer

19 to paragraph 344 of your statement, it's at page 46, if you still have it

20 in front of you.

21 A. Yes, I have it.

22 Q. Yes. And it's -- in that paragraph 344 you say, and it's about, I

23 don't know, maybe 20 lines down: "The Serbs are effectively running a

24 concentration camp policed by UNPROFOR while they act as wardens of this

25 open jail. Meanwhile the slow-motion genocide to kill them gains speed.

1 Srebrenica is a symbol of resistance, a symbol of defiance by their

2 courageous people."

3 Now, firstly, do you recall that that was something which you said

4 in Zvornik in your press conference?

5 A. Yes. I said that when we returned from -- when we came out of

6 Srebrenica and we landed in Zvornik right after coming out of Srebrenica.

7 Q. Now, in your statement in -- testimony in Milosevic, you said how

8 President Izetbegovic was sometimes called intractable by the

9 international community, and you compared him to Benes, the prime minister

10 of Czechoslovakia who was also criticised before the Second World War for

11 not covering up his country and giving part of it to the Nazis. Do you

12 recall that firstly?

13 A. Very much so. Very much so. Actually, even Lord Owen, who was

14 quite a gentleman, was very disdainful. They called him Izetbegovic and

15 never addressed him as President Izetbegovic. And I complained to Owen

16 officially that every time they referred to Bosnia they call them the

17 Muslim side and not the Republic of Bosnia-Herzegovina. And of course

18 President Izetbegovic did not play the role, as I said at the beginning,

19 in the script -- he didn't follow the script and roll down and play dead.

20 And he was a leader of his people to resist the invasion of another

21 country.

22 Q. And were the defenders of Srebrenica regarded as a nuisance by the

23 international community for the same reason?

24 A. Absolutely. I don't know, Your Honours, if I can indicate

25 something, which to me set the stage for the massacre. When we -- the

1 non-aligned members of the council, when the things started in Srebrenica,

2 proposed a safe area resolution, I personally was one of the drafters. It

3 is one of the things I feel sorry in my life for having suggested that,

4 because we brought the idea to create protected areas, which the French

5 call it "securite," and in Spanish it's "protegido," and in English

6 protected. Had different meanings, which is one of the problems of the

7 Security Council. Because could be different interpretations according to

8 the interests of each party, and that's a very serious matter.

9 On the second resolution after our mission, which is 836, I

10 personally asked Madam Ogata to give us some guidelines of what the safe

11 area should be, and she did. And she also sent a copy to the secretariat.

12 So we asked the Secretary-General to prepare some -- a paper for us and if

13 my memory doesn't fail me, on May 28th, 1993, the secretariat circulated

14 what we call at the UN a non-paper, which were the guidelines of the safe

15 area. That was circulated to us in the informal consultation room, which

16 is the size of this room, where there is no press, no one except the

17 members of the Security Council, and no records are kept. To my surprise,

18 I got my copy, and a few minutes later someone from the secretariat came

19 up and picked up the copies that were on the table. There were only a few

20 ambassadors; I had come earlier. And you have to say: What happened?

21 Four days later the -- France, the UK, and Russia promoted the

22 resolution for the safe areas without waiting for the first time in the

23 history of the United Nations, to adopt a resolution without the

24 recommendations or objections of the Secretary-General. The UN Security

25 Council acts after they hear the Secretary-General. In this case, they

1 decided to go ahead without a report. And one would ask: Why? Because

2 they knew that the report prepared by the secretariat, some of the

3 secretariat people, and Madam Ogata, had three fundamental points. First,

4 that should be the will to protect them militarily and to protect them to

5 any extreme; second, that the safe area should have access in and out,

6 humanitarian, water, electricity, public services, so it was the opposite

7 of what became.

8 I am sad to tell you, Your Honours, that that day was actually the

9 death sentence of the people in Srebrenica because the world thought that

10 the Security Council was going to defend them; no, it was a charade. They

11 were not willing to defend them. That's why they could not wait to have

12 that report as part of the resolution, because if that report had been

13 part of the resolution, they would have to protect them militarily and do

14 the opposite of what happened in Srebrenica.

15 And I repeat to you, that day the Secretary-General withdrew the

16 paper at the request of some of the permanent members. If I remember

17 well, the Secretary-General was in London and some of the gentlemen called

18 him and said, You have to withdraw the paper, and he withdrew it. That

19 paper is mentioned in the new Secretary-General Kofi Annan's report of the

20 massacre of Srebrenica when he refers to that paper. Had that paper been

21 part of the resolution the international community would have had to take

22 a position, we will defend it or not but not to appear to be doing

23 something for the people who were massacred actually two years later.

24 Q. Thank you. And just one matter. In fact, I think if you look at

25 page 53 of your statement, paragraphs 387 onwards, is that dealing, at

1 least in part, with what you just told us about this non-paper, the paper

2 that was never officially presented is referred to in paragraph 389. Is

3 that describing what you've referred to?

4 A. Yes, that's exactly the case.

5 Q. Thank you. And following -- following what you've just described,

6 did you hear permanent members saying that in fact there was no duty to

7 defend the safe area?

8 A. Absolutely. The interpretation made, even though it was chapter 7

9 of the Security Council, the United Nations charter, they didn't feel any

10 obligation to defend them and they did not defend them; and we know the

11 consequences of that.

12 Q. Thank you. Now, I want to turn briefly back to your report which

13 I think now has an exhibit number, which is D956.

14 A. Which?

15 Q. It's D956. And it's the report or letter of transmittal and then

16 your report.

17 MR. JONES: I don't know if the witness has that in front of him.

18 JUDGE AGIUS: Mission report, in other words.

19 MR. JONES:

20 Q. Now, this introduction refers to Resolution 819. And when we see

21 that resolution, we see that the language in fact condemns: "Hostilities

22 by Bosnian Serb parliamentary units, the interdiction of Bosnian Serb --

23 by Bosnian Serb paramilitary units of humanitarian assistance convoys."

24 In other words, there's a reference to the Bosnian Serbs in

25 particular. You told us how before the language tended to be morally

1 neutral. Can you explain what happened with this resolution?

2 A. This was the first time in two years of the Bosnian tragedy that

3 the Security Council was forced to admit that there was an aggressor. Why

4 did it happen? In our mission there were representatives of France, for

5 example, who had opposed that throughout the process. But the French

6 delegate in the mission signed the report, so they couldn't contradict

7 their own report. And this -- that was an eventful element for the first

8 time to recognise by the Security Council that there were not two parties,

9 but there was one party was the aggressor.

10 Q. Thank you. Now, I'm just going to turn back to your statement

11 briefly.

12 Before I do so, I want to clarify one matter in your statement and

13 it's fairly trivial, but I want to clear it up. If you go to

14 paragraph 74, I think it is -- 78 of your statement.

15 A. Yes.

16 JUDGE AGIUS: Yes, Ms. Sellers.

17 MS. SELLERS: Your Honour, this was precisely among the reasons

18 that I placed my first objection on the record. If there is something

19 within the report that is not either truthful or may be something that

20 after a period of time Ambassador Arria would say that he would have

21 changed his mind or was not explained correctly, I think that that

22 certainly can be asked of him. But to preface any question that we're now

23 going to ask him about a report that so far his evidence has been is

24 truthful and correct so far as he remembers, that there's a part in here

25 that might need a correction, prefacing that is not only just a form of

1 leading the witness but is a bit of a misuse of his statement, which we

2 had feared. If he says something contradictory, then we can go to the

3 statement and show where possibly that is not reflected.

4 JUDGE AGIUS: I think you're running --

5 MR. JONES: This is absolutely --

6 JUDGE AGIUS: -- I think you're running, Ms. Sellers, because I

7 don't know what the question is going to be. Because so far I have

8 followed closely this series of questions that Mr. Jones put with

9 reference to particular parts. I don't think there has been an abuse of

10 the process that we sort of regulated in the first place. So let's wait

11 and see what the question is. If it's going to be a leading question, I

12 will stop Mr. Jones, you can rest assured. But I don't know what question

13 he is going to ask.

14 MS. SELLERS: Pardon me, I might have been misunderstood. I'm not

15 saying at this point that the question is leading, just seeing Mr. Jones

16 having prefaced the question, that he's going to clear up something, it

17 might be trivial. I'm unaware at this point, is there something that

18 Ambassador Arria would re-do on his statement.

19 The point that I'm trying to make, Your Honour, is that we just

20 can directly ask Ambassador Arria: Did you -- a question: Did he say

21 that this is what happened. Now, let's go back to your statement is that

22 contradicted? The appearance that we're clearing this up first we're

23 telling him that we're about to clear this up is rather indicative.

24 I don't want to relabour the point, Your Honour, because Mr. Jones

25 did say it's a trivial matter, but I do want to say that, in essence, it's

1 not the proper way, I believe, to use his statement.

2 JUDGE AGIUS: I don't tend to agree with you at this point. But

3 let's see what the question is. And if it's not regular, I'm sure we'll

4 put Mr. Jones in the right direction.

5 MR. JONES: Your Honour, well, you'll see it's a ridiculous

6 objection, and it's utterly trivial and we've wasted two minutes, and

7 you'll see that in seconds.

8 Q. Paragraph 78 has a one sentence and in the middle of that sentence

9 we see, in brackets: "How can you support this assertion?"

10 Now, obviously that's not a statement -- that's not a sentence

11 which belongs there. My question is simply this: Is that a question

12 posed by an OTP investigator which simply got left in the statement by

13 mistake? It's as simple as that.

14 A. Am I being asked?

15 JUDGE AGIUS: Yes, yes.

16 THE WITNESS: Sorry. Your Honour, it is -- I find it difficult to

17 lead me in question when I have been a participant and an observer and a

18 witness to these issues which I knew so well and know so well.

19 Yes, that was a question put to me by the Prosecution at the time,

20 whether I would be able to sustain it, and I said yes, I did. I did so at

21 the time.

22 MR. JONES: All right. It was simply to ask him if he could cross

23 out those words because they're obviously someone else's markings.

24 JUDGE AGIUS: Yes. Well, basically we have a confirmation from

25 him that these are not words spoken by him but someone else.

1 MR. JONES: You'll see, it was absolutely trivial.

2 JUDGE AGIUS: Let's move, please, because time is pressing.

3 MR. JONES: Yes.

4 Q. Now, we've looked at your report, and we were looking at the

5 Resolution 819 which you've told us about how there was no longer moral

6 equivalent phrasing being used, in essence, because you had been on the

7 ground and seen the situation. Correct?

8 A. Yes.

9 Q. And at paragraph 17 of that report it stated the

10 following: "There is no doubt that had this agreement not been reached,

11 most probably a massacre would have taken place."

12 And then you go on in paragraph 18 to say how Srebrenica is the

13 equivalent of an open jail.

14 I was just going to ask you about the -- that reference to a

15 massacre, that a massacre would have taken place. Is that -- that's

16 something you stand by in your report?

17 A. Yes. It is based on the military information provided to us on

18 the ground by the three officers, Wahlgren, Morillon, and Hayes, that the

19 Serbs were going to really exterminate. It just took longer than we

20 thought.

21 Q. Thank you. Now, are you familiar with the report prepared by the

22 Secretary-General, and by that I mean Kofi Annan rather than

23 Boutros-Ghali, regarding the fall of Srebrenica?

24 A. Very much so, yes.

25 Q. And we're going to distribute a copy of the front page and then

1 one paragraph from that report. Thank you.

2 So this document reads: "United Nations General Assembly,

3 15 November 1999," and it's a report of the Secretary-General pursuant to

4 General Assembly Resolution 53/35, the fall of Srebrenica. And we just

5 have an extract from one photograph because it's a very long report,

6 obviously.

7 And in particular, I want to draw your attention to the following;

8 it's the last two sentences. It says: "The Serbs repeatedly exaggerated

9 the extent of the raids out of Srebrenica as a pretext for the prosecution

10 of a central war aim, to create a geographically contiguous and ethnically

11 pure territory along the Drina while freeing up their troops to fight in

12 other parts of the country. The extent to which this pretext was accepted

13 at face value by international actors and observers reflected the prism of

14 moral equivalency through which the conflict in Bosnia was viewed by too

15 many for too long."

16 Now, my question is, you referred to moral equivalency. Do you

17 share any of the sentiments expressed there?

18 A. Absolutely. I understand that you all must know that this is the

19 first time ever that a Secretary-General of the United Nations has ever

20 made a report of that nature, bringing to the surface the failures of the

21 international community and of the UN, which was in the case of Srebrenica

22 and Rwanda, and I concur with that.

23 Q. Thank you. I think you said earlier that --

24 MR. JONES: In fact, I'll ask for an exhibit number, please, for

25 this.

1 JUDGE AGIUS: This will become D959.

2 MR. JONES:

3 Q. You said earlier how events such as the assassination of the

4 deputy prime minister of -- Turajlic and other events created this culture

5 where basically the Serbs, as you said, could get away with murder. And

6 you referred a couple of times to comments by General Morillon.

7 MR. JONES: I'll ask if the exhibit could be shown -- the

8 exhibit. If the witness could be shown Exhibit P510, Prosecution

9 Exhibit P510.

10 And actually, while that's being located:

11 Q. Did you in fact look into whether a proper investigation was

12 conducted in the matter of Mr. Turajlic?

13 A. The UNPROFOR forces, UNPROFOR command, prepared a report of the

14 assassination, because that's what it was, of the deputy prime minister.

15 And it was circulated to the members of the Security Council. I

16 immediately sent that report to two former prosecutors, national

17 prosecutors, one in Canada and one in the United States, asking them for

18 their legal opinions about these proceedings. I sent copies to the

19 Prosecution during the Mr. Milosevic trial of the opinion of those two

20 distinguished jurists in which actually UNPROFOR didn't do any kind of a

21 serious review of the situation.

22 I complained constantly on this to the Security Council.

23 Boutros-Ghali offered all the time to present the report, and to present

24 the report, which they never did. And of course the message, like I said

25 to you before, to the Serbs that the climate of impunity that prevailed

1 would allow them from then on to do anything. And I assigned so much

2 importance to that fact because the aggressiveness climbed after that

3 rapidly and ended in what we know in Srebrenica, which people tend to see

4 as one massacre. It was a massacre that took place within two or three

5 years and accumulated in time.

6 I've always been against individualising the one individual

7 massacre. This was a massacre of people during a pro-Serb evacuation.

8 Like when we speak of the Holocaust, you don't speak of the Holocaust of

9 1944 or 1943, we speak of the Holocaust. Here is a massacre of people in

10 that part of the world.

11 Q. Thank you just two last matters then.

12 In this exhibit which you have there, and it's pages 3467

13 and 3468.

14 A. Paragraph?

15 Q. No. It's in that document which is on the ELMO.

16 During the course of proofing, did I in fact show you an extract

17 from a diary?

18 A. Oh, yes. Tucker.

19 Q. Is that the diary? Yes. And when you were referring earlier to

20 comments made by General Morillon, are you referring to what we see on

21 page 3468 -- I should say for the record 3467 has 15 March, 1520 hours,

22 Potocari, General Milovanovic, General Morillon, and Colonel Dolimir or

23 Polimir. And then the second page that we see the words "I know you wish

24 to clean out this nest of terrorists. I will do it for you and save you

25 many, many casualties."

1 Is that what you're referring to earlier?

2 A. Yes. I was really horrified to read that, and even more so to

3 read the explanation that General Morillon expressed such a statement that

4 get rid of that nest of terrorists at no cost to you, because that was a

5 language that the Serbs understand better.

6 Q. Thank you. And is that consistent or not with the attitudes of

7 UNPROFOR officers, what we see there?

8 A. There is no doubt that corroborates what the Bosnian government

9 and representative told us countless times.

10 Your Honours, the amount of statements sent by the Bosnian

11 president, and at the time the Bosnian Ambassador Sacirbey at the Security

12 Council, almost every day on what was taking place reached a point that

13 some of the permanent members would come to the Security Council and say,

14 Oh, another letter from Mr. Izetbegovic. Oh, another letter from

15 Sacirbey. And they were saying yesterday 75 people were killed, 200

16 people were killed, so many of them were raped. Oh, another claim from

17 the Bosnians. I saw this. I didn't read about it.

18 Q. Yes. Thank you. And then finally a last exhibit we have, it's

19 the letter of Tadeusz Mazowiecki. Firstly I'll just ask you, do you know

20 Tadeusz Mazowiecki, the special rapporteur of the Commission on Human

21 Rights?

22 A. Yes. I had the privilege to meet him, yes.

23 Q. Are you aware that he resigned from his post because of the fall

24 of Srebrenica?

25 A. I'm sorry, if I know?

1 Q. That he resigned following the fall of Srebrenica.

2 A. Yes.

3 Q. And now this is General Assembly Security Council document

4 18 September 1995, and it's annex 1 that there's a letter from Mazowiecki.

5 MR. JONES: If Your Honours will give me one moment.

6 Q. Well, in this document Mazowiecki compares the situation in the

7 Republic of Bosnia-Herzegovina to the fight in Poland against

8 totalitarianism and states that the very stability of international order

9 and the principle of civilisation is at stake over the question of Bosnia.

10 I want to ask you whether you saw the conflict in those terms of

11 collective security?

12 A. You know, the fact that Mr. Mazowiecki would make such a statement

13 should have made a greater impact because of whom he is. And I absolutely

14 concur with him in his views -- not only concur with him, I express

15 similar thoughts while I was a member of the Security Council.

16 Q. Thank you.

17 MR. JONES: And I think I would simply ask for an exhibit number

18 for this document.

19 JUDGE AGIUS: Yes. This will become Defence Exhibit D967.

20 MR. JONES:

21 Q. And do you recall yourself using words from Henry V to describe

22 the UN's role in all of this?

23 A. Well, the day the Security Council passed that infamous

24 resolution, offering protection that they were not willing to do or to

25 provide, I said at the end of my intervention, it is in the public

1 statement, something to the effect that: I hope when you look backwards

2 you wouldn't have to recall Henry the V in Shakespeare. It is nothing but

3 a shame, eternal shame, on you.

4 Q. Thank you.

5 MR. JONES: I have no further questions.

6 JUDGE AGIUS: I thank you, Mr. Jones.

7 Ms. Sellers.

8 MS. SELLERS: Your Honour, I ask the Court give me five minutes'

9 indulgence because we have just one or two issues to check on prior to

10 proceeding with this cross-examination.

11 JUDGE AGIUS: Certainly.

12 Do we need to stay here or should we walk out?

13 [Trial Chamber confers]

14 JUDGE AGIUS: If you feel more comfortable if we suspend the

15 sitting --

16 MS. SELLERS: Could we suspend it for five minutes.

17 JUDGE AGIUS: You can confer in privacy with Mr. Wubben.

18 MS. SELLERS: I appreciate that.

19 JUDGE AGIUS: Yes.

20 Ambassador, if you bear with us a little bit.

21 THE WITNESS: With pleasure, sir.

22 JUDGE AGIUS: Thank you.

23 --- Break taken at 2.33 p.m.

24 --- On resuming at 2.39 p.m.

25 JUDGE AGIUS: Okay. Do you wish to cross-examine the witness,

1 Ms. Sellers?

2 MS. SELLERS: Yes, Your Honour. Thanks again for the Trial

3 Chamber's indulgence on this small break.

4 JUDGE AGIUS: How long do you think you will take?

5 MS. SELLERS: Your Honour, I will try and complete Ambassador

6 Arria today, and I think that I will be able to conclude my examination.

7 JUDGE AGIUS: Okay.

8 Cross-examined by Ms. Sellers:

9 Q. Good afternoon, Ambassador Arria.

10 A. Good afternoon.

11 Q. I have a couple of preliminary questions, but given the time

12 constraint my questions might really appear to jump around to different

13 things that you've testified about today, so I'd ask that you bear with me

14 so that we will be able to complete your cross-examination.

15 My first question, Ambassador, is that certainly you understand

16 that you have been asked to testify in the case of the Prosecution versus

17 Naser Oric?

18 A. Yes, I do.

19 Q. Now, did you meet Naser Oric when you were in Srebrenica?

20 A. No, I did not.

21 Q. I think you are also aware that the Prosecution's case concerns

22 crimes that were committed against Bosnian Serbs in Bosnia-Herzegovina in

23 1992. You're aware of that, sir?

24 A. Of alleged crimes, yes.

25 Q. Yes. And this brings me to the first area that I wanted to get

1 your clarification on. Now, you've mentioned that Bosnia-Herzegovina

2 became a member of the United Nations of the General Assembly in March

3 1992. Correct, sir?

4 A. Yes.

5 Q. Now, with Bosnia-Herzegovina becoming a full-fledged member with

6 all that entails within the United Nations, can you confirm to the Trial

7 Chamber that that meant that all the inhabitants, all of the citizens of

8 Bosnia-Herzegovina, would then, via their country, be recognised as

9 members of the United Nations?

10 A. Once the General Assembly admits a member, the Security Council

11 reviews the procedure, which we did, and approve the membership, and of

12 course it includes the whole of the population, yes.

13 Q. And because of the unfortunate ethnisation of the country of

14 Bosnia-Herzegovina, you would agree that both what is referred to as

15 Bosnian Muslims or Bosniaks and Bosnian Serbs were the inhabitants and the

16 citizens of the country of Bosnia-Herzegovina at that time period, 1992?

17 A. When we admitted, we called them "Bosniaks," "Bosnians," never

18 call them any other way.

19 Q. Thank you. And then the other -- the question I want to ask you

20 related to this is that since you've recognised that there was aggression,

21 in particular coming in from what would have been known as Serbia and

22 Montenegro, the former Yugoslavia, into now the sovereign territory of

23 Bosnia-Herzegovina, you would look at that aggression, in essence, a war

24 of one state against another state that was a member of the United

25 Nations. Am I correct in understanding that?

1 A. Not precisely.

2 Q. Please clarify then.

3 A. You had an aggressor, which was a state, and you had their

4 intermediaries within -- like, the paramilitaries within the territory.

5 So it was a state aiding and abetting and supporting also forces within

6 another country. So it was a mixture of the two.

7 Q. So this mixture would almost be a mixture of war between states

8 and a war among a state, if I'm correctly understanding what you're

9 saying?

10 A. You are the lawyer. I think it would be difficult to make that

11 case precisely. It was definitely a war of aggression on the side of the

12 Serbs. Now, whether it was a state against state war, that remains

13 probably for you to clarify to me.

14 Q. Okay. And when you say the Serbs now, are we speaking of the

15 nation of Serbia and Montenegro, or are we speaking of Serbs from a

16 different geographical location?

17 A. Always when I refer to them, I refer to them from Serbia and

18 Montenegro. Yes, thank you for asking me.

19 Q. Thank you. I just wanted to clarify that.

20 Sir, you've mentioned in your testimony today that this idea of

21 victims on parity with aggressors, and I'd just like a little

22 clarification of that terminology before I move into the body of my cross.

23 When you're talking about victims, are you talking about Bosniaks or are

24 you talking about Bosnian Muslims who are Bosniak? Could you just clarify

25 that or are you talking about civilians, members of the army? I'm just

1 uncertain with your use of the terminology "victims."

2 A. Basically I think the length of my position before during

3 Mr. Milosevic and today, when I speak of the victims, I'm speaking of what

4 has become the regular language here in this Tribunal to refer to them as

5 the Muslim part of the equation. And I -- you probably recall that today

6 I said that was not the way to address the members of that country before

7 the conflict started.

8 Q. Thank you, sir. So would you recognise that it would be proper

9 when one speaks of victims that one could speak also of individual victims

10 of a crime that might have occurred during war?

11 A. Yes. I would have to say yes.

12 Q. And can I take it that you would probably also agree with the

13 proposition or maybe from your point of view the fact, that at times there

14 were Bosnian Serb or Bosniaks who were Bosnian Serbs who might have been

15 individual victims of crimes committed during this war at this time

16 period?

17 A. You know, I've been posed that question before in a different

18 context, and this would be like criticising the people of Delft for

19 defending themselves against the Germans at the time. And of course when

20 you attack somebody, you run the risk of being hurt, too. But you have to

21 see it from the perspective of the victims who were being aggressively

22 attacked. But, yes, I understand your question, and of course there must

23 be.

24 Q. Thank you. Thank you, sir. I'm taking your answer to be a yes?

25 A. Yes.

1 Q. Thanks. And also in this same realm, I'm certain you who were one

2 of the founders, if one could say, of the commission of experts that's

3 seen as very important work that you would agree that during this conflict

4 we had individual perpetrators of crimes who could have come from any of

5 the countries involved and through the ethnisation any of the ethnic

6 groups involved?

7 A. Yes, I heard the same.

8 Q. And you would agree with that?

9 A. Would you precisely tell me what am I going to agree with at this

10 time?

11 Q. Well, you would agree perpetrators could have been either

12 Bosnians -- Bosniaks were Bosnian Serbs or Bosnian Muslims or persons who

13 came from Serbia and Montenegro?

14 A. I would have to agree with you, yes.

15 Q. Thank you, sir. Now I'd like to come a little bit closer to some

16 of the concrete work that you did in Bosnia and particularly in Srebrenica

17 in 1993. And if you would just assist us by giving us the exact dates

18 that you were in Srebrenica.

19 A. I was just reminded that it was April 24. I have the reports in

20 my hands.

21 JUDGE AGIUS: The dates are shown in the first annex after page 13

22 on the report, if I remember well, from the 23rd to the 26th.

23 MR. JONES: He said in evidence he was there on the 25th of April,

24 1993.

25 MS. SELLERS: Right. Your Honour, you know, that I understand,

1 and I just wanted to at this point under -- have Ambassador Arria to

2 remind us the length of the mission and the time period spent in

3 Srebrenica. It's the point of my question.

4 JUDGE AGIUS: Yes, okay. I understand you better now. Go ahead.

5 THE WITNESS: Do you want me to --

6 MS. SELLERS:

7 Q. Could you just confirm that you were in Srebrenica on one day,

8 that day was April 25th, 1993, out of the three- or four-day period of the

9 entire mission.

10 A. You know, that question was posed to me exactly by Mr. Milosevic.

11 And of course I'm sure you don't want to imply the same thing that he did.

12 He did imply to me openly that I had been there for too short a time to

13 really provide an expert opinion. I told Mr. Milosevic that it didn't

14 take but a few hours to see human misery and destruction. You had -- you

15 have to live with that. On the contrary, it seems that the people from

16 the United Nations who saw that for a long time got used to the idea of

17 seeing misery without reporting it.

18 MS. SELLERS: Your Honour --

19 Q. Excuse me, Ambassador Arria.

20 MS. SELLERS: Not to confuse the witness and the panel.

21 Q. I appreciate you not readily implying that Mr. Milosevic and I

22 have the same intent. My intent was precisely to see your time period was

23 there.

24 My next question, therefore, would go to the mandate that the

25 mission had. Was that mandate written prior to going to Srebrenica or the

1 mission? Or did that mandate evolve through your experience in

2 Srebrenica, the things you saw?

3 A. We had a very general description of the mission. This mission

4 was agreed at 2.00 in the morning. We left 24 hours later. And actually,

5 we were given authority to design our trip any way we saw fit for, but of

6 course the purpose of the mission was to report to the Security Council.

7 They didn't tell us to stay a week there. Just tell me, tell us what's

8 going on there.

9 The UNPROFOR forces, they don't want us to spend too much time in

10 Srebrenica, to come to your point, they wanted us to spend more time in

11 Zagreb, the fighting in Zagreb, or spend more time in Kiseljak, which is

12 the headquarters of UNPROFOR. We wanted to be in Srebrenica, and they

13 made everything possible for us not to be there and to be there as little

14 as possible.

15 You will recall that I said to you, I said to Their Honours, that

16 Hayes interpreted our mission like a tour. He thought that putting us in

17 a flak jacket and a helmet would make us very happy to be there.

18 Q. Yes, I remember that part of the testimony. So am I to understand

19 that the mandate of what you were to do in the Srebrenica part of your

20 mission was something that was fairly wide open from the point of view of

21 the members of the delegation? Would that be correct, sir?

22 A. That's correct.

23 Q. And also is it something that expanded or conformed to do what you

24 saw or what you wanted to know or things that might have popped up during

25 this 24-hour period?

1 A. We were not prepared to see what we saw. You see, we were under

2 the false illusion and cover-up that our own colleagues in the Security

3 Council had told us that the city was under siege. They didn't tell us

4 that they had been suffering for four months, that Madam Ogata had warned

5 of a massacre. They didn't tell us that there was no electricity, water,

6 nothing, no medics, and hat they were trapped, as Mr. Karadzic had said

7 once, trapped like rats. So we were not prepared to see anything of that

8 sort, so to us it came as a shock.

9 Q. Yes, Ambassador. And along those lines, in terms of preparation,

10 you've testified that it appears that there was almost some type of

11 block-out on information coming to you and the Security Council about

12 Srebrenica. Now, please correct me, are you referring to Srebrenica the

13 town or Srebrenica the municipality, in terms of the block-out of

14 information?

15 A. I'm referring to the whole country. But the hottest spot at the

16 time was the municipality of Srebrenica. But actually, the information on

17 the whole process was not coming, like torture was not being reported,

18 concentration camp was not being reported. So Srebrenica was added, and I

19 dare to say if it had not been for this British journalist, I think he was

20 shot later on in the leg or the arm, I think Birtley is his name, probably

21 would have waited longer. We would not have known what was taking place

22 in Srebrenica. Maybe they would have massacred them earlier.

23 JUDGE AGIUS: So, Madam Sellers, if you please, I'd like to

24 interrupt you here to clear one thing up following your very important

25 questions in regards where are we talking -- what the witness is talking

1 about.

2 You recorded here in the annex the itinerary that on the 25th you

3 arrived in Srebrenica and you had a meeting with Colonel Rodic, Major

4 Popovic, Major Civic and Major Madzic. Where did you meet these four

5 presumably -- not presumably, are all army people. Where did you meet

6 these? In the town of Srebrenica itself or outside the town but inside

7 the Srebrenica municipality?

8 THE WITNESS: The day that we left Kiseljak for Srebrenica,

9 surprisingly I land in an old soccer field, old airport was soccer field.

10 I asked Hayes, Why are we landing? Well, I have to talk to some people

11 here. That was Zvornik. And we landed, and that's where we were welcomed

12 by these Colonel Radic or Rodic. And actually what was happening he was

13 negotiating permission for us, the UN Security Council, to enter the

14 village of Srebrenica, which we thought had not been capitulated. That

15 was still under siege. So this lasted about two hours. I mean, they were

16 delaying this as much as they could.

17 JUDGE AGIUS: So --

18 THE WITNESS: That's why. And then they flew in the helicopter

19 with us, and in the same helicopter, it was a French helicopter, into

20 Srebrenica, this gentleman that you're referring to.

21 JUDGE AGIUS: So you -- yes. You met them in this soccer field in

22 Zvornik?

23 THE WITNESS: In Zvornik and then in Srebrenica.

24 JUDGE AGIUS: And then in Srebrenica. Yes. And then you show

25 here briefing by Lieutenant Colonel Geburt, Jean-Claude Amiot, Francois

1 Bellon, and Jose Maria Mendiluce. Did you have this briefing with these

2 four gentlemen at the same time, together, or separately?

3 THE WITNESS: Some together, some separate.

4 JUDGE AGIUS: So -- and the place where you had the briefing,

5 would that be in Srebrenica town or before you reached Srebrenica town?

6 THE WITNESS: Before Kiseljak, Zagreb, Sarajevo, and then

7 Srebrenica.

8 JUDGE AGIUS: Okay. That's perfect. Thank you.

9 Judge Eser.

10 I apologise to you, Ms. Sellers, but I think this was important to

11 clarify for our understanding at least.

12 MS. SELLERS: Yes, Your Honour. I appreciate it.

13 JUDGE ESER: Just for the sake of clarification, we already had

14 some confusion with regard to the term "municipality." Now, what do you

15 mean with municipality? In your testimony you only spoke of what I would

16 describe as the town, the valley, of Srebrenica. When you talk of

17 municipality, do you also think of other villages or hamlets around the

18 town of Srebrenica?

19 THE WITNESS: It's a good point, Your Honour. Yes, we always --

20 well, we want to refer to the area of Srebrenica. It is -- because the

21 people that live around it were also affected -- actually, they came to

22 live on the town where there were less or relatively more protected than

23 being on the outer part of the municipality.

24 JUDGE AGIUS: I thank you, Judge Eser.

25 Ms. Sellers.

1 MS. SELLERS: Thank you very much. As a matter of fact, that

2 leads into one of the next questions that I wanted to ask.

3 Q. You talked in your testimony about villages and homes in

4 Srebrenica. And I wanted to ask: In terms of villages, other than the

5 physical town of Srebrenica, was it part of your mandate or did you

6 involve this into your mandate to go out to other villages in the

7 municipality, opstina, of Srebrenica or not?

8 A. Probably you don't know that our mission went beyond Srebrenica;

9 that was the reason we met Mr. Karadzic in Belgrade. That's the reason we

10 met in the centre with Mr. Boban in Split. So actually was to see what

11 was going on in the battleground in Bosnia-Herzegovina. So we also saw

12 Tudjman, President Tudjman, at the time. So it went beyond -- and that --

13 we decided whom to meet and whom not to meet.

14 Q. Okay. So in terms of deciding who to meet and not to meet, that

15 resided purely with the delegation?

16 A. Absolutely.

17 Q. Okay. Let me possibly rephrase my prior question because I

18 understand that you had meetings with various people, apart from what I

19 would call the Srebrenica part of your mission. Back to the Srebrenica

20 part of your mission, did you visit villages in the Srebrenica

21 municipality as part of the Srebrenica part of your mission? This is what

22 I would like to clarify.

23 A. Thank you for asking that. Yes. Thanks to Mr. Mendiluce, who

24 knew the area very well because it was Madam Ogata's, I insisted to be

25 taken around and outside the village proper of Srebrenica, and that's why

1 I can state to you today, as I did yesterday, that we saw the surrounding

2 area of Srebrenica.

3 Q. Thank you, sir. And could you please inform the Trial Chamber

4 what were the names of those villages that you were able to visit out --

5 within Srebrenica municipality but outside the city or town, the town or

6 village of Srebrenica itself?

7 A. You are straining and forcing my memory, especially for very

8 complicated names, which are -- for a Latin speaker it is difficult to

9 pronounce, even today, to pronounce Srebrenica. Probably I am doing it

10 incorrectly. But I can tell you in the report there are mentions, and at

11 the time I knew them very well. But I assure you I saw them, and

12 precisely we went to see where the Serb tanks were deployed. So in order

13 for us to see them, we have to go all around and behind the mountain.

14 Q. All right. So, sir, those names are contained within your report,

15 the names of the villages that you visited outside of the town of

16 Srebrenica?

17 A. Yes, and there are -- they must by the position. They are also

18 included in the Secretary-General's report of the massacre of Srebrenica.

19 And at the time we didn't consider it necessary, because we spoke of

20 Srebrenica as an area rather than a specific village.

21 Q. Okay. So therefore, your visit to the villages surrounding the

22 town, the reason for that was to look at the different Serb military

23 positions. Is that correct?

24 A. Both. One, two see where they were placed because, according to

25 the resolution, they should not have been there; they should have been

1 withdrawn. And I must tell you, there was no villagers, there was no one

2 there; there was only destruction. That I said in the Security Council is

3 where we understood that "ethnic cleansing" meant. You know, ethnic

4 cleansing was a word in a document in the Security Council, but when you

5 see houses that were put bombs to destroy the roofs so nobody could live

6 there is when you get the grasp. When you see they killed even the

7 animals, sheep, et cetera, killed there is when you realise ethnic

8 cleansing. So I was more interested to witness that than to recall the

9 names of specifically of destroyed towns around Srebrenica.

10 Q. Thank you. If I could possibly jog your memory, and certainly

11 tell me if you don't remember. I'd like to ask you the names of a couple

12 of villages to see if you went to see them. Did you go to Ratkovici, sir?

13 A. See, you would have to jog my memory. I would not be able to tell

14 you exactly because I really don't remember.

15 Q. Did you -- maybe one village might come back. Did you go to

16 Jezestica?

17 A. Well, I went to Potocari.

18 Q. You went to Potocari, yes. Okay?

19 A. Is it -- you see, I hardly remember how to pronounce it, but

20 that's one of the places.

21 Q. Right. Do you remember going or did you have as your mandate to

22 go to Jezestika?

23 JUDGE AGIUS: Jezestica.

24 MS. SELLERS:

25 Q. Jezestica.

1 A. Thank you. It's difficult sometimes to remember. As I told you,

2 our mandate was expanded. It was -- I was the head of the mission, so I

3 mean it was agreed with my colleagues what should we do and not do. And

4 we were not collecting, as I told you, names of populations; we were

5 collecting data and information was -- of the tragedy that was evolving

6 there, and I hope you will excuse me for that.

7 Q. If that was the mission, then certainly this is what the Trial

8 Chamber wants to hear. Maybe I can assist in your memory. These -- the

9 location of Jezestica, [indiscernible], is in the Bratunac municipality.

10 And I would like to know: As part of your Srebrenica visit did you go to

11 the Bratunac municipality and visit -- I'm going to name the other towns.

12 You've mentioned Jezestica. Also I'll mention now Fakovici, Radijevici,

13 Bjelovac, Divovici, Sikirici, Kravica, or Siljkovici. Did you remember

14 going to any of those towns or villages as part of your Srebrenica visit,

15 sir?

16 JUDGE AGIUS: He's going to tell you that everywhere he went to

17 ended in "ici," Ms. Sellers, and therefore he cannot remember.

18 MS. SELLERS: Your Honour, just for the sake of the record, I

19 guess he would have to say that.

20 JUDGE AGIUS: Let him answer. I mean, I think it will only make

21 it more confusing.

22 THE WITNESS: I concur with Your Honour.

23 MS. SELLERS:

24 Q. Then, Ambassador Arria, did you have, as part of the mandate or

25 evolving mandate with your mission, to speak to inhabitants of

1 Bosnia-Herzegovina, in particular civilians who might be, what is called

2 Bosnian Serbs, in relationship to things that have occurred in the

3 Srebrenica municipality in 1992? Was that part of your mandate?

4 A. We made it our mandate and -- so much so, Your Honours, that we

5 met with Mr. Karadzic in Belgrade, which should tell you something that he

6 was dispatching from Belgrade. And actually, we met with him on the first

7 day of the sanction that we had on former Yugoslavia, and we met

8 with the most prominent or infamous one of that part. And he told us that

9 Srebrenica would have water, electricity, services, doctors within 24

10 hours. It took them three years. And he had to be forced by outside

11 forces to do it.

12 So, yes, we spoke to -- like, we spoke, as I said before, to

13 Mr. Boban, on the Croat side; Mr. Tudjman. You see, this mission was not

14 sent by the Bosniaks; this mission was sent by the United Nations Security

15 Council. So this mission was made up of six Ambassadors from very

16 different countries. So we're not on the mandate of what you would call

17 today the Muslim side. We were sent by the Security Council. So it was

18 an even-handed objective mission. That the fight is stronger on one side

19 than the other is a different matter, and this is a historic record. I

20 think I should be very clear on that.

21 Q. Certainly, sir, you are. My question and it might be also,

22 Mr. Karadzic being a civilian, I want to know: Did you speak to any other

23 Bosnian Serb civilians within the Srebrenica municipality? And let me

24 clarify that, civilians who might, themselves, have been refugees,

25 displaced, victims of crimes. Did you speak to any civilian Bosnian Serb

1 Srebrenican villagers during your mandated part of the Srebrenica mess?

2 A. Let me respond the following way, which is a factual way. We saw

3 people suffering in the street, because I told you fundamentally women and

4 old men. I did not stop to ask: Are you a Serb? Are you a Bosniak? Are

5 you a Croat? We saw the people suffering. I mean, we didn't ask them

6 for -- identify themselves to us. The only Serbs officially that I can

7 recall are these Radicik -- I'm sorry, the Radic or Rodic gentleman who

8 were there. Because on the other side -- actually, even what you would

9 call the Muslim side, they didn't look like soldiers; we didn't know what

10 they were. One, as I told you, a mechanic, a teacher, those were the only

11 ones that we actually spoke to. So we were even in that.

12 Now, when the people were suffering in the streets, we didn't ask

13 them to identify themselves to us, but I heard mothers, brothers, boys

14 talking they haven't eaten in so many days and have water and have

15 electricity, et cetera, et cetera, we wouldn't ask to identify where the

16 misery was coming from. I don't know if I make myself clear on that.

17 Q. Well, if I can just paraphrase then I would say that it wasn't a

18 mandate of the mission to speak to Bosnian Serb civilians who might have

19 been refugees or -- that you just spoke to people who were present in the

20 town of Srebrenica, those civilians?

21 A. As I said to you the mandate was to be an objective appraisal of

22 the situation. No one told us or I didn't tell my colleagues or my

23 colleagues didn't tell me, now we must interview a Serb or a Bosniak or a

24 Croat, no.

25 Q. Thank you, sir. Now I do understand. One of the last questions

1 in terms of a bit of geography, and this will not deal with names but

2 basically miles or kilometres. Do you know how many kilometres or miles

3 outside of the town of Srebrenica that you visited, if you could kind of

4 say the distance or the time it took to get to the places?

5 A. You know, on the hilly side, that's the way you were going

6 around. We were for an hour going around in armoured car; armoured cars

7 do not go very fast, but they go faster than tanks. You do not jog my

8 imagination, but I would have to speculate my imagination, how many miles.

9 But I would say, you know, going around the mountains, how many, I would

10 say around 15 kilometres outside of -- outside of the area because where

11 we saw Mendiluce, said to me at one side, the tanks over there, ask them

12 to take you there. And it took us about half -- you know, about 20

13 minutes, half an hour to get on top of that mountain. Not because of the

14 distance but how difficult it was to get to the mountain.

15 Q. Thank you, sir. You've testified that there was not that much

16 information, if I understand correctly, about Srebrenica municipality

17 prior to your arriving on the mission. And is it possible that due to

18 that lack of information about what had happened in the municipality that

19 you were unaware of whether humanitarian aid had arrived in Srebrenica at

20 any time period during 1992 or 1993 prior to your coming?

21 JUDGE AGIUS: Yes, Mr. Jones.

22 MR. JONES: All right. I just wondering if Ms. Sellers can direct

23 us to where the witness said that there was not that information about

24 Srebrenica municipality prior to you arriving on the mission. Whether

25 she's talking about the municipalities distinct from Srebrenica, I'm not

1 sure but I'd like to know where the witness said that. If I could have a

2 page and line reference, then I'll have a look. I don't recall him

3 testifying to that.

4 JUDGE AGIUS: Yes, Ms. Sellers, what are you referring to?

5 MS. SELLERS: Your Honours, I unfortunately can't scroll back, but

6 I believe that Ambassador Arria said that not only did they not receive

7 information about Srebrenica. It was the whole country. My impression is

8 that he testified that there didn't seem to be information coming in about

9 the country and then I asked about the municipality.

10 MR. JONES: He certainly didn't say, Oh, I had no information

11 about Srebrenica before I got there. The whole tenure of cross -- of

12 examination-in-chief, he explained what his sources of information were on

13 the situation. He didn't say, I went to Srebrenica knowing nothing of the

14 situation there. To the contrary.

15 JUDGE AGIUS: All right. At the end of the day, is it going to

16 change history, Ms. Sellers, because we have had reference, evidence

17 already as to what aid was forthcoming and when.

18 MS. SELLERS: Your Honour, might I rephrase the question, just a

19 very direct question, we can get a yes or no and move on.

20 Q. Ambassador Arria, were you aware that there was humanitarian aid

21 convoy that came to Srebrenica in November of 1992 prior to your mission

22 going to Srebrenica?

23 A. When I got to Srebrenica, Mr. Mendiluce, who was the most honest

24 man in the place, said to us no humanitarian assistance had come in.

25 I want to tell Your Honours something -- United Nations Security

1 Council. Yugoslavia, former Yugoslavia, was under sanctions. So when

2 they are under sanctions, there are 50 members. As you know, the 50

3 members of the Security Council have a commission. If one of them vetoes,

4 each one has a veto power. So every time that Mr. Karadzic wanted to fly

5 away to one meeting or all or whatever, they have to get the permission of

6 the commission. And we always oppose it, to force him to go by ground to

7 take the same risk. And then we -- I learned a procedure by which you try

8 to force them not to approve, for example, the buying of oranges, fruits,

9 from Brazil, whatever, if they didn't let the humanitarian convoys pass

10 by. And Mendiluce was there, confirmed to me that they were not allowed

11 to come in. And actually, hen we were there, and it took almost two years

12 for that to happen. So it was not allowed to go through.

13 Q. Thank you, sir. I would also like to ask you whether you were

14 aware or not that representatives from Medecins Sans Frontieres came into

15 Srebrenica in December 1992 and then came back in March of 1993. Were you

16 aware that there had been an initial visit by Medecins Sans Frontieres

17 prior to your mission to Srebrenica?

18 A. Yes. When I got to Srebrenica as -- you probably recall this

19 morning, I saw a lot of people in white robes, and I thought they were

20 Red Cross or maybe Medecins Sans Frontieres. In the [foreign language

21 spoken] they have been expelled from the village. And now you're telling

22 me that, yes, I recall that I was told that before Medecins Sans

23 Frontieres, before December, had been in the area, yes.

24 Q. And, sir, were you aware that there was a war hospital in

25 Srebrenica prior to your coming to the town?

1 A. I -- yes, I understand there were some -- what you creatively

2 would call a war hospital because there were no hospitals as such. Let's

3 call it a place. I even said before that in the soccer field I saw people

4 being treated and attended by -- doing the triage and by their own

5 relatives in the open at the soccer field. I wouldn't call that a war

6 hospital.

7 Q. Sir, I'm using a terminology that's not my own but from an author,

8 but let's say medical clinic or let's say medical facility.

9 A. It reminds me of President Izetbegovic gave us a luncheon in

10 Sarajevo and the menu said war soup, and it was almost like hot water.

11 Probably is the closest thing to a hospital.

12 Q. My question is: In the mandate of your mission, you did not go to

13 the war hospital or the entity referred to as the war hospital and that

14 didn't evolve into your mandate. Correct?

15 A. Everything was in our mandate. Unfortunately, I have failed to

16 express forcefully what I meant. Our mandate encompassed anything and

17 everything. I mean, at the same time there -- as I told you, there was no

18 hospital, like there were no schools, there was no police, there was no

19 army. There were just people suffering.

20 Q. Okay. Can I ask directly: You didn't go to this war hospital

21 during the time period you were in Srebrenica?

22 A. We never saw anyone. There was no war hospital.

23 Q. Okay. Fine. Sir, then might I also ask you: Did you receive

24 military briefings about the Bosnian -- from Bosnia-Herzegovina, their

25 army, or the presence of their army whatsoever in Srebrenica municipality

1 or city prior to your mission?

2 A. Never. I mean, we were so objective, Ms. Sellers, Your Honours,

3 that the Bosnian ambassador to the United Nations, Sacirbey, presented

4 himself to Zagreb, and I refused to let him in our helicopter to fly to

5 Sarajevo. Because I said we are a United Nations mission, Security

6 Council mission, and if you come in it would give the wrong impression

7 what we are trying to do. Actually, it wasn't a very pleasant experience,

8 but I as the head of the mission told him under no circumstances can you

9 come in. And again, when we were in Zagreb he tried to enter a meeting

10 where we were discussing with Morillon and Wahlgren, and I stood up and

11 asked Ambassador Sacirbey to please leave the room. Along with my

12 colleague, and he was representing that the country was suffering. But

13 we were very sensitive to the issue that we should be very even-handed and

14 objective. I want you to know that.

15 Q. Thank you for that information.

16 A. I never got any meetings -- to begin with, Ms. Sellers, there was

17 no army. There was no army. The only general I heard his name was

18 Halilovic. The rest, like I said to you before, looked to me and to the

19 mission, like the Maquis during World War II, or the resistance in other

20 parts of the world. But an army as such with ranks and so forth, never

21 during my life. Not during our stay there.

22 JUDGE AGIUS: Yes. How much more, Ms. Sellers?

23 MS. SELLERS: Your Honour, I have a couple of videos that I would

24 like to show. And I don't want to ask the Ambassador -- we have to keep

25 some questions a bit briefer, but there are some questions that I do need

1 to move through. And I still would like to finish by today. I have

2 already eliminated --

3 JUDGE AGIUS: Okay. But we have a plenary at 4.00 and as chairman

4 of the Rules Committee I have still got to do a lot of work, and we have

5 been sitting for --

6 Ambassador, I've done my best to try and accommodate you. Would

7 it be --

8 THE WITNESS: For you to decide, Your Honour.

9 JUDGE AGIUS: Yes, I know that, but that's not in our style to

10 disappoint anyone.

11 Yes, Mr. Jones.

12 MR. JONES: May I just say, in the spirit of being helpful, in the

13 moment I have no re-examination. And I would ask Ms. Sellers to consider

14 really whether these videos are really going to be something which this

15 witness can help with and if it's really worth bringing him back

16 tomorrow.

17 JUDGE AGIUS: I don't know.

18 MR. JONES: We'll see that in due course, Your Honour, whether

19 it's really worth it if this ambassador has to stay until tomorrow to see

20 a video.

21 JUDGE AGIUS: What time are you flying, in the morning or in the

22 afternoon, if I may ask?

23 THE WITNESS: I was flying in the morning, Your Honour, but I

24 believe this is such an important thing that I will be willing to stay as

25 long as you wish me to stay.

1 JUDGE AGIUS: Because at this stage, I mean, it would be very

2 un-Orthodox on our part to stop you and say no or to pre-empt the issue

3 that Mr. Jones has just raised. But we have been sitting for almost two

4 hours now, one hour, 45 minutes, and I wouldn't like to put undue pressure

5 on anyone.

6 Ambassador, do you mind coming back again? Tomorrow we are

7 sitting in the afternoon.

8 THE WITNESS: In the morning, sir?

9 JUDGE AGIUS: No, in the afternoon we are sitting tomorrow.

10 THE WITNESS: I am at --

11 JUDGE AGIUS: I have been trying in the meantime to see if we

12 could shift the sitting to the morning, but I'm told it's not possible.

13 MR. JONES: May I say, Your Honour, I skipped at least half a

14 dozen exhibits and I tried to go quickly.

15 JUDGE AGIUS: I know. Mr. Jones, if you want to visit those on

16 cross -- on re-examination, we'll give you all the opportunity. Yes,

17 definitely.

18 MR. JONES: Thank you, Your Honour.

19 JUDGE AGIUS: But -- all right. We'll have to stop here, also to

20 give everyone a rest, a well-deserved rest.

21 And we'll continue tomorrow, Ambassador. I'm sure that you will

22 be taken care of, and I thank you so much for understanding.

23 Tomorrow we are sitting in the afternoon. Is that correct? We

24 are still sitting -- we haven't managed to -- all right. And we'll

25 continue from there. Thank you so much. Bye.

1 --- Whereupon the hearing adjourned at 3.21 p.m.,

2 to be reconvened on Tuesday, the 6th day of

3 December, 2005, at 2.15 p.m.

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