1 Monday, 4 December 2006

2 [Open session]

3 [The accused entered court]

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

5 JUDGE BONOMY: I have one procedural matter to deal with before we

6 start this morning.

7 In the course of evidence on - and I'm just -- have lost the date

8 for the moment - the 14th of September, pages 3439 and 40, an exhibit was

9 admitted under seal; it was a war diary with the number 2297. The

10 Prosecution have now advised that there is no reason why it should remain

11 under seal. It can be made public. Intimation of that should have been

12 given to the Defence. If there's nothing to be said by anyone for any of

13 the accused on the matter, then it's our proposal to make that a public

14 exhibit. Very well. That will happen.

15 Mr. Marcussen, who's your next witness.

16 MR. ACKERMAN: Your Honour, I have one matter that should be

17 brief.

18 JUDGE BONOMY: Yes.

19 MR. ACKERMAN: You'll recall last week I objected to the

20 transcript, using the word "diffuse" when the witness said "defuse" and

21 Your Honour indicated there may not be any difference. Just -- and I said

22 it was important and I still believe that and so I want to share with you

23 the definition of those words.

24 D-i-f-f-u-s-e, which was the word that went in the transcript,

25 means to pour out and spread, like a fluid, or to spread or scatter widely

1 or thinly. That is not what the witness was talking about, doing

2 something like that. Defuse, d-e-f-u-s-e, the dictionary definition is to

3 make less dangerous, tense or embarrassing, which is what the witness was

4 talking about, to try to reduce the tension and make things more -- less

5 dangerous.

6 So this could be important not for this Chamber but for a future

7 Chamber where there would be an argument about what the witness said in

8 that regard. So I think that needs to be corrected and the proper word

9 needs to be put in the transcript at the appropriate place.

10 JUDGE BONOMY: Well, I think as I said at the time, Mr. Ackerman,

11 the Trial Chamber noted the point and will take account of the submission

12 that's made about exactly what the witness said and will reflect also upon

13 the comments that you've made at this moment. It is a matter to which you

14 will no doubt draw attention when you make submissions in due course.

15 Now, Mr. Marcussen, who is the next witness?

16 MR. MARCUSSEN: Good morning, Your Honour. The Prosecution's next

17 witness is Major General John Karol Drewienkiewicz. We're proposing the

18 witness as a combined 92 ter and live witness. And I should say that I

19 have indicated to the Defence that we would seek leave for good measure

20 to amend the 65 ter summary on one point. Why we need to seek leave is

21 unclear but I think I should do it for -- to be on the safe side. We

22 would ask that we be allowed to lead evidence about a notebook recording

23 on an intercept -- an intercepted communication involving Sainovic,

24 involving the event at Racak.

25 [The witness entered court]

1 JUDGE BONOMY: Did you say communication about Mr. Sainovic?

2 MR. MARCUSSEN: In which Mr. Sainovic is appearing. It's an

3 intercept --

4 JUDGE BONOMY: You mean an intercepted communication in which he

5 is one of the communicators?

6 MR. MARCUSSEN: That's correct.

7 JUDGE BONOMY: Mr. Petrovic -- [Microphone not activated].

8 THE INTERPRETER: Microphone, please.

9 JUDGE BONOMY: [Microphone not activated] -- I'm very sorry about

10 that.

11 I had no idea there was an issue over amendment to the 65 ter

12 summary. We are constantly being faced with unexpected procedural issues

13 in this trial, and I would not have arranged for you to come into the

14 court had I known this, so could you please leave us for the moment.

15 There was no notice given of this, Mr. Marcussen.

16 MR. MARCUSSEN: Sorry, it was noted in the witness notification

17 that was filed last week, I believe.

18 [The witness stands down]

19 JUDGE BONOMY: That there would be a motion to amend the 65 ter

20 list?

21 MR. MARCUSSEN: I think after the heading 65 ter summary, there's

22 a heading saying additional issues in which we say the Prosecution will

23 seek leave to lead evidence regarding --

24 JUDGE BONOMY: Well, I'm sorry, I read as much as I can, but

25 unless something like that is specifically highlighted, it's not

1 necessarily going to come to my attention.

2 Anyway, Mr. Petrovic.

3 MR. PETROVIC: [Interpretation] Your Honour, I object to this

4 appeal by the OTP to amend their 65 ter list and their wish to lead

5 evidence on the circumstances. There is -- there are a whole spectrum of

6 reasons for that but I just want to say the following. This witness

7 provided a 40-page statement six years ago. He testified for several

8 hours about Racak four years ago. He had plenty of opportunity to say

9 what he had to say on the topic.

10 He came here on the 20th of November, and now we have a piece of

11 paper which is allegedly an extract, an exert from his diary. It doesn't

12 have a heading, a signature, or a date. It only contains the following

13 sentences -- I'm trying to read his handwriting.

14 [In English] Intercept appears to have got the full transcript of

15 the unit that did the massacre.

16 [Interpretation] That was the first sentence.

17 The second one: [In English] -- is mentioned I think.

18 [Interpretation] Based on these two sentences, it seems that the

19 OTP wishes to lead evidence about an alleged conversation in which

20 Sainovic participated, thus implicating him directly and this and that,

21 all this coming from those two sentences alone. This is far insufficient

22 an indication. I don't believe it to be appropriate.

23 JUDGE BONOMY: Just a moment.

24 Where, Mr. Marcussen, is this document in the papers I have?

25 MR. MARCUSSEN: It is listed in the updated witness notification

1 as Exhibit P2534.

2 JUDGE BONOMY: So can I see it, please, on the screen.

3 And this is a record of what exactly, Mr. Marcussen?

4 MR. MARCUSSEN: Well, I intended to ask the witness about this.

5 This is an -- it's an entry in the witness's notebook from -- it's

6 believed to be around the 20th of January. I don't think -- well, I

7 should let the witness speak to the --

8 JUDGE BONOMY: Well --

9 MR. MARCUSSEN: The document --

10 JUDGE BONOMY: Was he interviewed about this?

11 MR. MARCUSSEN: Not to my knowledge. I mean, we -- it came up

12 during proofing --

13 JUDGE BONOMY: Yes, on the -- he was interviewed on the 20th of

14 November, according to Mr. Petrovic. This is when it emerged, is it?

15 MR. MARCUSSEN: That's correct. I'd like to say --

16 JUDGE BONOMY: Have you made a statement about it?

17 MR. MARCUSSEN: We have not. We have informed the Defence about

18 this in a supplemental information sheet that we provided to the Defence

19 after the proofing. We don't file these but we provide them to the

20 Defence.

21 The notebook itself was disclosed to the three original accused in

22 2002 --

23 JUDGE BONOMY: Well, maybe the Prosecution should have read it as

24 well.

25 MR. MARCUSSEN: Yeah, I think the reason why it didn't come up in

1 the Milosevic case was the focus there probably was on Milosevic. So in

2 response to my learned friends --

3 JUDGE BONOMY: Was Sainovic not one of the joint criminal

4 enterprise in the Milosevic trial?

5 MR. MARCUSSEN: No, no, of course he was.

6 JUDGE BONOMY: Okay. A lot of evidence in this case about a man

7 called Djordjevic who's not on trial.

8 MR. MARCUSSEN: In addition, there have been other evidence

9 emerging during this trial about the existence of such an intercept, and

10 we propose to lead this evidence, both for whatever the witness can say

11 about the contents of the intercept but also as evidence of its mere

12 existence.

13 JUDGE BONOMY: Did you in your submission earlier mention a name

14 when you said that you sought to lead evidence about a notebook record and

15 an intercepted communication? Did you mention the name of another person

16 or was it only Sainovic you mentioned?

17 MR. MARCUSSEN: I think I only mentioned Sainovic. I'll be going

18 in the transcript to see --

19 JUDGE BONOMY: Who is the communication with; do you know?

20 MR. MARCUSSEN: It doesn't emerge from this particular entry in

21 the notebook -- and again, we would like to explore what the witness knows

22 about the intercept. The witness might only know about the existence of

23 the intercept and not much about the contents.

24 [Trial Chamber confers]

25 JUDGE BONOMY: Well, we are almost left speechless by this

1 submission of the Prosecution, which suggests, first of all, uncertainty

2 about whether an application to amend the 65 ter summary is necessary;

3 then fails to indicate what the evidence that's proposed to lead is about

4 in a way that enables us to relate it to the indictment. So this is an

5 application which has no foundation and we refuse it.

6 Can we now proceed with the witness?

7 MR. MARCUSSEN: Yes, please.

8 JUDGE BONOMY: Thank you.

9 [The witness entered court]

10 JUDGE BONOMY: Good morning, Mr. Drewienkiewicz.

11 THE WITNESS: Good morning, sir.

12 JUDGE BONOMY: Would you please make the solemn declaration to

13 speak the truth by reading aloud the document which will now be placed

14 before you.

15 THE WITNESS: I solemnly declare that I will speak the truth, the

16 whole truth, and nothing but the truth.

17 JUDGE BONOMY: Thank you. Please be seated.

18 The first counsel to examine you this morning will be for the

19 Prosecution, and that will be Mr. Marcussen.

20 Mr. Marcussen.

21 MR. MARCUSSEN: Thank you.

22 WITNESS: JOHN DREWIENKIEWICZ

23 Examination by Mr. Marcussen:

24 Q. Good morning, General. Would you please state your name for the

25 record.

1 A. My name is Karol John Drewienkiewicz. And I'm a retired

2 major-general in the British army.

3 Q. General, in -- on the 23rd of June, 2000, did you sign a statement

4 that was given to the Office of the Prosecutor?

5 A. Yes, I did.

6 Q. After you gave that statement, have you had a chance to re-read

7 the statement?

8 A. Yes, several times.

9 THE INTERPRETER: May the speakers be reminded kindly to break

10 between questions and answers for the sake of interpreters.

11 MR. MARCUSSEN: My apologies.

12 Q. Now, in your statement at -- do you have a copy of the statement?

13 I don't think you have.

14 A. No.

15 MR. MARCUSSEN: I would like, if I could, give a copy to the

16 witness and just show one paragraph to the witness. It's P2508.

17 Q. General, I'd ask if you could please have a look at paragraph 89

18 of the statement. In that statement -- in that paragraph you say that you

19 believed that the shooting at the Panda Bar could be the result of one of

20 three things.

21 A. Yes.

22 Q. Do you still believe that to be the case today or have you formed

23 another view of that?

24 A. I have thought about it since, and I continue to think that it was

25 not directly linked with previous events because they were all happening

1 too quickly, one on the other. And the Kosovo Liberation Army did not

2 really have the command and control to be able to direct an operation like

3 this very fast. And so my inclination now about my -- the balance of my

4 view now is that it was probably this middle thought -- that it was what I

5 would call the routine aggravation previously planned and executed that

6 night by coincidence. I don't think to the same degree that I did at the

7 time that it was -- it was carried out by the Serbs either.

8 Q. Thank you. Apart from this slight modification to your views,

9 does the statement correctly reflect the events as you remember them?

10 A. Yes. Yes, it does. I mean, in particular, the time between the

11 events, which was fairly short.

12 Q. Thank you. So if you were asked about these events today, you

13 would describe them as you have done in the statement?

14 A. Yes, but I think I would be more inclined to feel that it was the

15 middle of the three possibilities.

16 Q. Sorry -- sorry, no, I'm talking about the rest of the statement.

17 A. Oh, right, sorry. Yes, the rest of the statement, again, in -- at

18 the time that I made this statement in 2000, it was about a year after

19 the -- or a year, year and a half after the events. I had moved house a

20 couple of times, and I did not have neatly collated all of the documents

21 that -- that over the years have been found in various packing cases as I

22 have unpacked after -- after another move. So it was the best I could do

23 at the time.

24 Q. But you would -- you would nonetheless stand by the answers you

25 have given in the statement today. Are there anything else you think

1 needs to be modified in the statement than what you just talked about?

2 A. No, no. I think I know more now than I did then, if allowed to go

3 through my -- the various bits of paper that I've managed to amass in my

4 travels, but it doesn't change anything.

5 JUDGE BONOMY: After you gave evidence here before, did no one

6 contact you from the Office of the Prosecution between then and this trial

7 to go over your statement and see if things had been clarified in the

8 interim and you had further information or you could assist further in any

9 way?

10 THE WITNESS: I was brought here about two and a half weeks ago,

11 sir, but between leaving in 2002 and about two and a half weeks ago, no,

12 nothing happened.

13 JUDGE BONOMY: Mr. Marcussen.

14 MR. MARCUSSEN: Your Honours, I would ask -- we would like to

15 tender the witness's statement which was mentioned earlier as P2508 at

16 this stage.

17 JUDGE BONOMY: Mr. Ivetic.

18 MR. IVETIC: Your Honour, we have a limited objection to this

19 document insofar as there are a -- there's a wide variety of paragraphs in

20 the statement that deal with an event that is not in the indictment that

21 has been specifically taken out of the indictment, Racak. We're talking

22 about paragraphs 138 through 162 inclusive and paragraphs 180 through 181,

23 and -- so we would object to the introduction of these matters into

24 evidence insofar as Racak is not supposed to be one of the items that we

25 are here to defend against. And there is also an Exhibit P85 that the

1 same objection would reply to since it deals exclusively with that event,

2 so I raise it at this time just for the sake of judicial economy.

3 JUDGE BONOMY: Mr. --

4 MR. ACKERMAN: Your Honour -- I'm sorry.

5 JUDGE BONOMY: Mr. Ackerman.

6 MR. ACKERMAN: I didn't mean to interrupt you, Your Honour.

7 JUDGE BONOMY: On you go.

8 MR. ACKERMAN: Your Honour, the concern that I have about the

9 exhibit actually flows from what the general said starting at page 9,

10 line 5, this morning, about -- it was the best he could do at the time but

11 he really didn't have, you know, all the information available to him.

12 I don't know whether that goes to whether or not the statement

13 should be entered or not or whether it simply goes to the weight that it

14 may have, but I think it's quite significant. If -- instead of the

15 statement being used the Prosecution was asking questions and he was

16 saying, I'm not sure but it's the best I know right now, that would be

17 pretty weightless evidence, I would think.

18 MR. MARCUSSEN: If I may, Your Honour.

19 JUDGE BONOMY: Mr. Marcussen, yes.

20 MR. MARCUSSEN: As to Mr. Ivetic's objection, Your Honour, we

21 submit that the statement should be left in its entirety. The focus of

22 the evidence of this witness is really chain of command and linkage

23 evidence. There are facts about Racak in the statement, but they are

24 intertwined with issues relating to who knew about the events in Racak,

25 who gave instructions to these events, what kind of investigations were

1 carried out, under what conditions were these investigations carried out.

2 And we submit that those issues are important for, as I said, linkage --

3 whether the accused are linked to the event in Racak and what inferences

4 might be drawn from that.

5 Now, with respect to Mr. Ackerman's objection --

6 JUDGE BONOMY: Before you move on, the -- it may be that there is

7 a limited number of these paragraphs that that argument does not apply to.

8 I cannot say offhand just now. I have read them with that in mind, and my

9 impression was that there might be a solid objection to some of them and

10 that others do fall into the category you indicate.

11 We're unlikely to reach this in the first session, are we?

12 MR. MARCUSSEN: I think that is unlikely, yeah.

13 JUDGE BONOMY: So at the break we'll look at that and we'll decide

14 which of these paragraphs, if any, have to be excluded in their entirety.

15 On Mr. Ackerman's point, what do you wish to say?

16 MR. MARCUSSEN: There -- on that point I wish to say that the

17 witness has confirmed that the statement as it is is a correct reflection

18 of his recollection of the events as of today. What the witness said was

19 that he might be able to provide further information. The witness didn't

20 indicate any doubt as to what was the contents of the statements, so

21 therefore I submit Mr. Ackerman's objection should be dismissed.

22 JUDGE BONOMY: Mr. Drewienkiewicz, the actual provision of the

23 rule which has to be satisfied before a statement is admitted in these

24 circumstances is the following: The witness attests that the written

25 statement or transcript - in your case it's a statement - accurately

1 reflects that witness declaration and what the witness would say if

2 examined. Now, are you satisfied your statement does that, or are you

3 hesitant about saying it does that?

4 THE WITNESS: I'm satisfied it does that, sir.

5 JUDGE BONOMY: Thank you.

6 [Trial Chamber confers]

7 JUDGE BONOMY: Well, Mr. Ackerman, we do consider that the

8 statement in general ought to be admitted. We are satisfied that Rule 92

9 ter is complied with, and we're also satisfied - having reflected on it -

10 that it is in the interests of justice to presented part of this witness's

11 evidence in written form, knowing two things in particular: One, that the

12 point that is made by you goes to weight; and secondly, that you will have

13 an opportunity to cross-examine on that very point and others in due

14 course.

15 Mr. Marcussen.

16 MR. MARCUSSEN: Thank you, Your Honour.

17 Q. General, to put your evidence in context, could I ask you first to

18 explain why the KVM was created.

19 A. Yes, indeed. I'll try to be quick.

20 In the spring and summer of 1998, the international community

21 became extremely concerned at the level of violence that was going on

22 inside Kosovo and was concerned at the actions of the -- of the Serb

23 forces, the police and the army. As a result of that, there were a number

24 of high-level delegations that went to Serbia and expressed that concern

25 from the different pieces of the international community, but particularly

1 from NATO. NATO was sufficiently concerned that it issued an ACTORD

2 [Realtime transcript read in error " act or order"], which means that it

3 placed its forces on a higher level of alert, a much higher level of

4 alert. And in -- as a result of the various negotiations, an agreement

5 was reached whereby the OSCE would provide an unarmed mission inside

6 Kosovo, which would be called the OSCE Kosovo Verification Mission. That

7 mission would be up to 2000 verifiers strong, would was formed as quickly

8 as possible, and would have the mandate of a year.

9 A further force that was brought into being was a NATO air

10 verification mission, which was to be based outside Kosovo but which was

11 to carry out air surveillance of Kosovo in support of the verifiers on the

12 ground.

13 MR. ACKERMAN: Your Honour, excuse me.

14 JUDGE BONOMY: Mr. Ackerman.

15 MR. ACKERMAN: Page 13, line 15, the general said that NATO had

16 issued -- and the word he used was ACTORD; it's spelled A-C-T-O-R-D. It's

17 a term of art and has particular significance, and so it should be correct

18 in the transcript.

19 JUDGE BONOMY: Issued an ACTORD. Is that what you're saying?

20 MR. ACKERMAN: Yeah. A-C-T-O-R-D is the NATO term for what they

21 did at that point.

22 THE WITNESS: It's short for activation order, sir.

23 JUDGE BONOMY: So you accept the comment that's made by counsel.

24 Thank you.

25 Mr. Marcussen.

1 MR. MARCUSSEN:

2 Q. General, the -- how was the KVM to carry out verification on the

3 ground in Kosovo?

4 A. It was to get there as quickly as possible, to establish itself,

5 and to establish liaison with all of the parties, and then to report on

6 what it saw and to attempt to help the situation to improve with a view,

7 it must be remembered, of assisting with elections before the year was

8 out. And so it saw itself as taking the situation that it found on

9 arrival and helping it to improve rather than just to observe it.

10 Q. In the statement and in various documents, in the statement, for

11 example, at paragraph 36, there's talk about the creation of base-lines

12 for verification. Could you explain to the Court, please, what that

13 means.

14 A. Yes. In the negotiations that preceded the creation of the Kosovo

15 Verification Mission, there were a number of agreements that were come to

16 which talked about the level of forces within Kosovo, the level of

17 police -- Serb police and Serb military forces within Kosovo, and the

18 agreement that had been reached was that the -- those forces should be

19 reduced to the level that they were at before the actions of the previous

20 spring and summer had begun.

21 Now, in order to know whether or not that was the case, it was

22 important to know what precisely that level was. And so one of the early

23 things that we sought to do - that I sought to do - was to obtain an

24 accurate base-line of what was the strength of the Serb army in Kosovo,

25 what was the strength of the Serb police in Kosovo in some detail so that

1 we would confirm that this was indeed being adhered to.

2 Q. Thank you. And we'll get back to a little more the details of a

3 base-line later on.

4 General, what I'd propose to do now is to essentially follow

5 through your statement and try to cover some issues that I think arise

6 from your statement. The first thing is in paragraph 15 of the statement

7 there's talk about the issuance of visas to members of the KVM and

8 requests for multi-entry visas. Were multi-entry visas actually given to

9 KVM staff?

10 A. Yes, eventually.

11 Q. About when?

12 A. It varied. Because what happened was when a member of the KVM

13 arrived, they came in on a single-entry visa, and once they were inside

14 Kosovo on that single-entry visa, we then had to apply to Belgrade for a

15 multi-entry visa and that took several weeks. And while that was going

16 on, that individual was in effect gated inside Kosovo, was not able to go

17 down to Macedonia, was not able to go back to Vienna for meetings, and so

18 it limited their effectiveness.

19 Q. Do you think that affected the effectiveness of KVM?

20 A. Yes, it certainly did.

21 Q. Now, in paragraph 20 you -- you describe the meetings you had with

22 TEC and various other authorities during your initial mission to Kosovo to

23 try to set up the KVM. Could you tell the Court what were the kind of

24 things you were trying to achieve during those meetings.

25 A. In the first instance, we wanted locations that we would operate

1 out of. We also needed contracts for fuel and the like, and we needed

2 assistance with setting up the communications. That's the sort of thing

3 we were after. We arrived and the 15 or so of us were living in the hotel

4 in Pristina, which was not big enough or the right place from which to

5 operate. We needed -- with 2.000 people coming in, you needed office

6 space for 2.000 people.

7 Q. Was assistance forthcoming?

8 A. It was not very forthcoming. We were pretty much left to go out

9 and almost knock on doors to try to find suitable locations. We did not

10 detect any -- any willingness to make property available quickly by, if

11 necessary, moving somebody else out.

12 Q. You say that Andjelkovic didn't seem to have any authority. At

13 this period were there anybody who seemed to be having authority or were

14 it just the general situation that there was nobody to speak to really?

15 A. At this early stage, the first person whom we met who appeared to

16 have some ability to influence events was General Loncar.

17 Q. And who was he -- do you know if he was reporting to anyone?

18 A. Well, he reported back to Mr. Sainovic.

19 Q. You describe in some details then how meetings unfolded and you

20 describe where the meetings took place. You had drawn a diagram of some

21 of the important buildings in Pristina. And then towards the end of your

22 stay there, I understand that from paragraph 26 and paragraph 27 of your

23 statement that you went to Pec. Why did you go there?

24 A. Sorry, let me find --

25 Q. It would be on page 5 of the statement.

1 A. I've managed to get it all over the place. Right. I'm back on

2 course. Sorry.

3 Q. No problem.

4 A. Yes. This was -- this was very early on, and I was not formally

5 appointed to the Kosovo Verification Mission at this stage. I was lent to

6 Vienna, to the OSCE, to assist with planning. And the OSCE Permanent

7 Council sent a reconnaissance party of administrators from the Permanent

8 Council, from the OSCE secretariat, down to Pristina in order to sort out

9 the arrival and the accommodation for the Kosovo Verification Mission. I

10 was attached to this group with some individuals from other delegations,

11 but I was not in charge of it. And on that basis, I spent the first days

12 that I was down there essentially attempting to assist the administrators.

13 As we got to the end of our time down there, which was quite

14 short, I realised I'd only seen things inside Pristina and therefore

15 decided I had better get outside Pristina and see what it looked like

16 outside Pristina and borrowed a vehicle and went off on my day's trip

17 around Pec.

18 Q. And what did it look like out there?

19 A. It was extremely subdued. I was surprised by the lack of normal

20 commercial activity. There were police at roadblocks throughout the area.

21 I moved through without let or hindrance, but my impression was that

22 everyone was lying low, in effect.

23 Q. You say that there were signs of looting. Could you describe

24 those signs. What -- if you remember --

25 A. Well, I would say there was signs of ransacking, that doors had

1 been kicked in, windows were broken, walls had been knocked down, and so

2 it was as though a -- a riot had gone through the place really.

3 Q. And was that a generalised picture throughout the areas you went

4 through or was it in certain locations?

5 A. It was worse in some locations. Really the further east -- sorry,

6 the further west you went, the worse it got, and in particular around

7 Decani it was particularly marked.

8 Q. You also many -- you also mention that many houses had signs of

9 burning. Do you think those signs of burning were a result of combat

10 operations or something else?

11 A. I didn't think it was as a result of combat operations; I thought

12 it was as a result of deliberate firing of the houses. I had served in

13 Bosnia previously, and so I had a fairly good idea of the difference

14 between recent combat operations and deliberate burning.

15 Q. Could you describe that a little bit more. What was it about the

16 houses that made you think that it was deliberate burning rather than

17 combat?

18 A. Because it looked as though the fire had been started inside the

19 house and had been allowed to burn, and then burned up to the roof and

20 then the roof fell in once the rafters -- the wooden rafters caught fire,

21 and that looks a particular way. If it had been fought over, then there

22 would have been more evidence of shell impact rather than just the effect

23 of burning.

24 Q. Thank you. Now, I'll jump to another part of your statement.

25 It's on page 8, where you describe the absorption process, the attempts of

1 the KVM to absorb the KDOMs.

2 First, maybe you could remind us what -- the KDOM, what is that?

3 A. Before -- over the summer, the different embassies or some of the

4 embassies in -- that were based in Belgrade, which began to report on the

5 situation by sending their defence and military attaches down from

6 Belgrade reinforced their defence attaches with a number of individuals

7 who they then equipped in four-wheel drive vehicles, and these became

8 known as diplomatic observer missions, so they were an extension of the

9 office of the defence attache of the relevant embassy, and they were of

10 varying strengths and varying capabilities. But essentially they reported

11 to the ambassador of the country in Belgrade.

12 Q. Did they have any specific verification mandates that they were

13 working under?

14 A. I never saw their specifically mandate, but I understand that they

15 acted as extensions of their embassies in Belgrade, and therefore had

16 legitimacy as extensions of the -- of those diplomatic entities.

17 Q. Now, you say that it -- at paragraph 46 you explained that it

18 irritated or seemed to irritate the Serb authorities that the US-DOM and

19 the EU-DOM were not absorbed by the KVM.

20 A. Yes.

21 Q. Then you say at paragraph 48 that the absorption process was

22 deliberately delayed. Now, that looks like sort of a contradiction, is

23 it?

24 A. Well, I don't think it was because you're dealing with a lot of

25 different -- a lot of different pieces here.

1 If I can deal with the two separately, it was the understanding

2 that once the Kosovo Verification Mission was -- was up and running, that

3 the KDOMs would be absorbed into it, and that was indeed the case with

4 some of the KDOMs. And that -- there was no purpose in the KDOMs as far

5 as we could see once we were established. The KDOMs were 10s, 20s, 30s

6 strong; we were building up to be 2.000 strong. So why were they needed?

7 Therefore, we wanted to get our premises contracted and established,

8 repaired where necessary, as quickly as possible; and in doing this, we

9 were dealing with the Serb local authorities. And therefore, it was

10 entirely in their interest that we became effective as quickly as

11 possible. But that did not seem to affect the degree to which they were

12 really quite slow and unhelpful in the contracting.

13 And so my point I was trying to make there was that although it

14 was in everybody's interest that we got up and running as quickly as

15 possible, we did not discern any leaning forward by the Serb authorities

16 to help us become more effective more quickly. And it was particularly

17 perplexing because the quicker we became effective, the quicker the role

18 of the KDOMs would become superfluous.

19 Q. Was the whole of the US-KDOM and EU-KDOM absorbed?

20 A. No, it wasn't.

21 Q. What -- did that -- what effects did that have?

22 A. It confused us and it confused the authorities, and I think it

23 confused the Kosovo Liberation Army. So I think I can say it confused

24 everybody.

25 Q. Did you raise this with the US and the European Union?

1 A. Yes. The US authorities that I dealt with, I can remember on one

2 occasion they came in and said, Right, we need to absorb -- we need you to

3 absorb us in the next week, and you need to provide premises for us and

4 how quickly can you do it? And in another breath, within two or three

5 days they were back saying, Actually, we think we'd like to be absorbed

6 last and do everybody else first. And eventually, we did absorb a number,

7 about half of the US-KDOM personnel, but they remained a separate entity

8 throughout.

9 Now, at -- when they began saying, You need to absorb us straight

10 away, the reason why they came back and said, Actually, we think that

11 we've changed our mind on that, was that they felt they needed to provide

12 support to Ambassador Hill who was doing a separate set of negotiations

13 with the Kosovo Liberation Army and the Kosovars to try to produce a deal

14 that was acceptable to them, and it was felt that giving him US personnel

15 to be his direct support was appropriate, and I understand that. But that

16 finished well before Christmas of 1998, and they continued throughout --

17 well into March of 1999.

18 Q. So it seems that you and the Serb authorities sometime after

19 Christmas agreed on the confusion that was created by these remaining

20 KDOMs. Did you tell anyone from the Serb authorities about your views on

21 this?

22 A. I don't think I ever -- I don't think I ever specifically sat down

23 with them. You must remember that I was not the head of mission. I

24 was -- I was, at best, number three in that mission, and there were other

25 people who had those responsibilities. I was -- I was more concerned with

1 what was happening on the ground and less concerned with the diplomacy of

2 it, not being a professional diplomat.

3 JUDGE BONOMY: Who would you say was number two in the mission?

4 THE WITNESS: The French diplomat, Ambassador Gabriel Keller was

5 absolutely the number two, sir.

6 JUDGE BONOMY: One other question just arising from these

7 paragraphs. In paragraph 47 your last sentence says: "It was public that

8 the KLA was threatening to kill anyone who signed any agreements."

9 What do you mean by "any agreements"?

10 THE WITNESS: There was -- there was a view that Ambassador

11 Hill -- Ambassador Hill was working with all sectors of Albanian society,

12 including Rugova, who of course was publicly determined to do everything

13 in a non-violent way. And that was not the view of the Kosovo Liberation

14 Army, quite clearly. And there was -- I mean, this was -- I don't

15 remember reading it anywhere. This was a view formed among us that there

16 was deep division inside the Kosovar Albanian camp. Nobody was really

17 speaking for them, but the Kosovar -- the Kosovo Liberation Army were

18 reported and goodness knows where we -- I got it from, that anyone who

19 signed agreements with Ambassador Christopher Hill would -- would be dealt

20 with violently by the Kosovar Albanian KLA.

21 JUDGE BONOMY: Thank you.

22 Mr. Marcussen.

23 MR. MARCUSSEN: Thank you.

24 Q. Now, I would like to jump ahead to paragraph 9 of your statement.

25 A. 9?

1 Q. 9, yes. At paragraph 57 --

2 JUDGE BONOMY: It can't be 9 if you're going ahead.

3 THE WITNESS: Page 9.

4 MR. MARCUSSEN: Page 9.

5 JUDGE BONOMY: Sorry.

6 THE WITNESS: Yeah, got it.

7 MR. MARCUSSEN:

8 Q. Now, you say that you are sure that the Serb authorities generated

9 daily situation reports, and then you say: "This is the military way."

10 Can you explain what you mean by that.

11 A. Yes. Whenever I have been anywhere, you produce a daily report,

12 which says what's happening and what you think's going to happen next. At

13 the very least, you say what has happened, and that was certainly the case

14 with the -- the NATO missions I have been on. It was certainly the case

15 with the Kosovo Verification Mission that we did a daily report up to

16 Vienna, to the Permanent Council. And on the occasions when we met with

17 the Serb authorities, there were moments when it was quite clear that they

18 were reading from lists of events as well, and we weren't, in the least,

19 surprised. And I would be surprised if they hadn't been.

20 Q. And was it also your impression that the Serb authorities that you

21 dealt with or reported further up their chains?

22 A. Yes, absolutely. I mean, I can't think of anyone who wouldn't

23 have reported up their chains.

24 Q. Thank you. Now, I'd like to move to the next paragraph,

25 paragraph 58, and go a little bit into the way the KVM -- the internal

1 workings of the KVM. You describe in this paragraph the fusion centre.

2 What was the fusion centre?

3 A. This was the group of people that were not concerned with what was

4 going on on a minute-by-minute and a day-by-day basis, which I would call

5 the operation side. These were the people who were taking all of the

6 information coming in and trying to put it together to form an overall

7 picture of what was really happening and try to work out what might happen

8 next and how we might help, where the areas were, where we could apply

9 more effort in order to be more effective. And so they were combining,

10 really, the sort of forward thinking, the analysis and forward thinking

11 part of the mission.

12 Q. How was the fusion centre staffed? What was all the profile of

13 the people working in the fusion centre?

14 A. There were largely people who had done analysis before, and when

15 you talk of analysis in the military side you're talking about

16 intelligence. And so there were intelligence -- ex-intelligence officers

17 in this centre. But I would say that what they were dealing with was

18 open-source information. What was of concern to us was to take all of the

19 open-source information and to make sure it was all put together in

20 context and in -- in so doing work out where the opportunities lay for us

21 and where the dangers lay for us.

22 Q. And what were the sources of information that the fusion centre

23 had to work with?

24 A. It had the reports of the verifiers out on the ground. It had the

25 media reports, it had reports from anybody it -- people stopped and talked

1 to, which again generally came to them through -- through the verifiers

2 and we would occasionally get stuff from NATO down in Macedonia because

3 there was this agreement that we should ask them in -- with the -- with

4 their ability to conduct air reconnaissance, we should ask them questions

5 that they would be able to answer for us so that we could do our job

6 better.

7 Now, if I can give you an example. We were particularly keen to

8 have aerial reconnaissance run of a particular area to see the degree of

9 devastation that had happened in those areas. And if you looked at a

10 particular area from the road, you could see lots of knocked-down roofs.

11 But unless you went right into the town or village and started counting on

12 a house-by-house basis, it was very difficult to tell the difference

13 between a house -- a community that had got 20 or 30 per cent of its roofs

14 burned and a community that got 80 per cent of its roofs burned. If you

15 run aerial reconnaissance and take one photograph, you can do that in a

16 heart beat.

17 And so that was the sort of thing we wanted to know. We wanted to

18 know where the areas were that had suffered most in the summer's

19 activities. And once we knew that, we would be able to work out where the

20 places were that needed assistance most. Because when you spoke to the

21 locals, all of them said that their area was of course the area that

22 needed assistance most. So it -- we needed a better way of doing it than

23 just necessarily asking the locals.

24 Q. Were there any kind of sort of topical reports created outside the

25 fusion centre on infrastructure matters or anything like that?

1 A. Yes, yes. Once we were set up, we were -- we set up these five

2 regional centres and each of the regional -- which corresponded to the

3 counties. And each of these regional centres had a responsibility to say

4 what were the needs of the people there. And so, to do that, they carried

5 out a number of surveys. I particularly -- I remember one being done, for

6 instance, on the railways, and that was specifically with a view to having

7 a proper report that could be passed up to the OSCE in Vienna, possibly

8 across to the EU, and which might then have attracted some EU funding to

9 get the railways going again, because that was the sort of thing we were

10 thinking of, certainly, in the early days.

11 Q. And did you also receive information on issues relating to the

12 security of the mission?

13 A. Yes. There was an extra understanding that if NATO became aware

14 of issues which would directly affect the security of -- of the verifiers

15 on the ground, that they would pass that to us. And in order to receive

16 that, we had to make specific arrangements to protect that information,

17 but it was specifically information which would essentially keep us alive.

18 Q. To the extent you are able to, can you give an example of such

19 information.

20 A. Yes. And I'm -- I'm hesitating because I am -- I have obligations

21 under my national Official Secrets Act, and therefore I'm not going to --

22 I'm going to try to be careful in what I say and not end up going to jail

23 back in England.

24 In February -- sorry, in January we had the situation of the eight

25 VJ soldiers who were -- who were taken captive by the KLA in the area

1 north of Mitrovica, around the Trepca mines. We were attempting to

2 extract -- to negotiate the safe release of those eight VJ soldiers, and

3 in order to do that I ordered some of the verifiers up into the KLA camp

4 to make sure that the VJ soldiers, (a), were there; (b), that they were in

5 one piece; and (c), that they and the KLA knew that there were active

6 discussions going on in order to try to return them safely. This went on

7 over several days and nights, and in the course of that, we received

8 information that Serbian special forces were being moved to a position

9 from which they could carry out a coup de main operation on the top of the

10 hill where the Kosovo Liberation Army were.

11 This was of direct concern to me and of direct concern to the

12 safety of the verifiers, because if in the middle of this particular

13 location you suddenly had a group of special forces arrive by a helicopter

14 or by a parachute in an attempt to get their the captives out themselves,

15 then there was highly likely to be a fire-fight and it was quite likely

16 that verifiers as well as everybody else would be among the injured. And

17 I was not prepared to put my people into that situation, and therefore,

18 that -- when I received that information, I acted on it.

19 Now, that was information which I have no idea where the heck it

20 came from, but it was sufficiently credible for me to act on and, I was

21 certainly alarmed for the safety of my verifiers. And in the course of

22 the hours preceding that, I ordered those verifiers off the top of the

23 hill because I was worried that something was going to happen that was

24 going to put their lives in even more danger. And then there were

25 discussions, and then I told them to go back up, and we carried on with

1 the process.

2 Q. So while we're on that topic, apart from pulling your verifiers

3 back, did you pass on the information about the special forces to anybody

4 on the Serb side?

5 A. Yes. This was -- this was passed to, as I recall it, both General

6 Loncar and to Mr. Sainovic. Ambassador Gabriel Keller was dealing on a

7 minute-by-minute basis with Mr. Sainovic.

8 Q. And what was the result of the -- your expression of concern about

9 these special forces?

10 A. The result was that there was no special -- Serb special force

11 intervention into the process, which meant that the process of negotiation

12 that was going on was able to continue and was eventually brought to a

13 successful conclusion.

14 Q. If you know, who decided to not engage the special forces or who

15 told you that they would not be engaged so you could pull your verifiers

16 back?

17 MR. IVETIC: Your Honour, I can't think of question that would be

18 more speculative than this one.

19 THE WITNESS: I'm trying --

20 JUDGE BONOMY: Hold on a minute, please, Mr. Drewienkiewicz, until

21 we decide whether you should be allowed to even consider answering the

22 question.

23 THE WITNESS: Sure.

24 JUDGE BONOMY: It does sound as though it's a speculative

25 question.

1 MR. MARCUSSEN: Let me break it down in some smaller bits.

2 Q. General, I understand from your answer that special forces were

3 not sent in.

4 A. Correct.

5 Q. Were you told that special forces would not be deployed?

6 JUDGE BONOMY: I think -- just hold on a second. The objection

7 was I think to the start of the question "if you know who decided."

8 Now, isn't the first thing to establish whether he knows, and once

9 you've got an answer to that, then you can ask the question you really

10 want to ask.

11 That was the objection, as I understand it. Of course if you want

12 to address it in an entirely different way, that's a matter for you.

13 MR. MARCUSSEN: Well, if we can do it the short way, then let's do

14 it that way.

15 Q. Do you know who -- do you know whether a decision was taken not to

16 deploy special forces?

17 A. No special forces appeared on the top of that hill, and therefore

18 we may have been completely dreaming that these things existed. However,

19 I think what I can say is we received information which -- from a credible

20 source that the use of special forces was being contemplated.

21 JUDGE BONOMY: Well, can I just stop you there because you earlier

22 said you had no idea what the source was but the information sounded

23 credible enough.

24 THE WITNESS: Yes.

25 JUDGE BONOMY: Now you're saying something rather different.

1 Unless we're talking about two different sets of circumstances.

2 THE WITNESS: I can think of two messages I received which both

3 related to special forces during this period; both were credible, sir. As

4 a result of that, I reported this to Ambassador Keller, and he spoke

5 immediately to Mr. Sainovic. And I understand that he received an

6 assurance from Mr. Sainovic that whatever was being contemplated would be

7 put on hold and that he was content that we continue to try to resolve the

8 situation by negotiation.

9 MR. MARCUSSEN:

10 Q. Thank you. I think that answers my question.

11 Now, I'd like to go back to what might seen a little bit of the

12 nitty-gritty of the paperwork in KVM, and I'd like to talk to -- ask you

13 about the ways reports were flowing from your different regional --

14 regional offices and up towards your headquarters and were used by the

15 fusion centre. And for that purpose I'd like to show Exhibit P673.

16 JUDGE BONOMY: Does this also have a DZ number in the package of

17 material you gave us?

18 MR. MARCUSSEN: It does not, Your Honour.

19 JUDGE BONOMY: Okay. Thanks.

20 THE WITNESS: Yeah. Got it.

21 MR. MARCUSSEN:

22 Q. General, can you see this?

23 A. Yeah, I used to be able to do font 4, but I can't now.

24 Yeah, that's better. Thank you. Yeah, I -- yeah, this is Rugova.

25 I know about Rugova. Yeah.

1 Q. What I'd like to ask you about is not so much the substance of the

2 document, but could you explain what this document is.

3 A. There were -- beneath the headquarters in Pristina, there were

4 five regional centres, each run by someone who essentially reported to me.

5 And each day, at the end of each day, they would send a daily statement of

6 what had happened, which got to us by, I don't know, 9.00 at night, say.

7 We then took those reports, added what we knew as well, and turned it into

8 a -- a report that went up to Vienna, which tried to concentrate on the

9 big issues and tried to provide some thematic view of what was going on.

10 So this would be one of the five reports that would come in in the evening

11 in the normal course of events.

12 If something extraordinary happened, then obviously we would be

13 told -- we would be alerted to it by phone or radio, and as quickly as

14 they knew the facts they would send us a written report with the full --

15 with as many facts on it as they could give us. Because if it got

16 really -- if it was a really serious incident, then we had to get the

17 message to Vienna quickly because Vienna were also very sensitive about

18 being blind-sided by stuff where they were rung up by the media before

19 they were told by us. So it was important to get an early heads-up to

20 Vienna.

21 Q. So this document and documents like it, they would be daily

22 contemporaneous reports --

23 A. Yes.

24 Q. -- from verifiers on the ground. Is that a correct understanding?

25 A. Yes. But again the regional centre was taking -- I mean, Prizren

1 had at least 250 people subordinate -- working for it. And so this is the

2 amalgamation of all the reports of all the 250 at the end of the day. If

3 it was a spot report in the middle of the day, it might just be sending on

4 to us something that had came from one or two people but which was

5 sufficiently important to need to tell us quickly.

6 Q. Now, from your experience on the ground in Kosovo, were these

7 regional reports reliable reports?

8 A. Yes, particularly this one because -- I mean, obviously there

9 were -- not every one was of the same quality and the commander of the

10 regional centre Prizren was, I would say, the best, the most organised,

11 the most experienced of my regional centre commanders.

12 Q. Now, I'd like to show you another document, that is P666.

13 A. Yeah, I can get it. Thank you.

14 Q. Now, this is something from a coordination centre. Could you

15 explain where that fits into the reporting picture, please.

16 A. Beneath the -- beneath the regional centres, there were a number

17 of coordination centres which we wanted to put one in each municipality.

18 And eventually there were about 42 of them, I think, on the ground, but we

19 had to build them up as people became available and as we were able to

20 contract real estate for them, and the Orahovac coordination centre was

21 one of the earlier ones to be set up, I think.

22 Q. And did the coordination centres, did they report to the regional

23 centres --

24 A. Yes.

25 Q. -- or did they report to --

1 A. Yes -- sorry. It was quite hierarchical that the coordinating

2 centres were the people who were assigned to the regional centre. The

3 regional centre put out coordination centres where they felt they needed

4 them, where the centres of population were, where bad things were

5 happening, and that was really the -- that was the choice, that was the

6 decision of the head of the regional centre. So coordination centres

7 reported to regional centres who reported to ourselves in Pristina, and we

8 reported up to Vienna.

9 Q. Did the fusion centre receive the reports from the coordination

10 centres or did they remain at a lower level?

11 A. They tended to receive the reports of the coordination centres as

12 well because one of the things that they did was to really go through them

13 with a fine-tooth comb to see if there was anything that had been missed

14 or which wasn't immediately apparent, and to see if there were trends that

15 went back. And so this was part of the information that the fusion centre

16 was able to work on, not on a daily basis, but on a thematic basis.

17 Q. Okay. And I'd like to show you a different kind of document.

18 MR. MARCUSSEN: If we can look at P667, please.

19 Q. This is a memorandum. I don't know if you are able to see that

20 yet on your screen.

21 A. Yeah. Can we go up a few fonts.

22 MR. MARCUSSEN: Maybe we can just zoom in on sort of the date and

23 where it says "memorandum" and the first two paragraphs or something.

24 It's just to allow the general to look at the document.

25 THE WITNESS: Yeah.

1 MR. MARCUSSEN:

2 Q. This is a document outside what you can see, but it's signed by

3 KVM-MUP liaison officer or the other name come up.

4 A. Yeah.

5 Q. Thank you. Now, this kind of document, where does that fit into

6 the -- to the whole paper processing in KVM?

7 A. One of the -- one of the most important functions was to liaise

8 with the main actors, and MUP and the VJ and the KLA were, obviously, the

9 three actors that we were particularly concerned because they had the

10 ability to make life very difficult.

11 And so within each -- at each level where there were -- at least

12 level of command of the different organisations that we had to deal with,

13 we attempted to put someone in as a permanent liaison officer so that they

14 dealt with the same people each time. So within the regional centres,

15 there were MUP liaison, VJ liaison, and KLA liaison. We, too, at our

16 level had MUP liaison, VJ liaison, and KLA liaison. And I put somebody

17 specifically in charge of that group of liaison officers, because we

18 understood that they were particularly important. And so, such a report

19 would be a report rendered at any moment that it was thought that there

20 was something useful to report.

21 Q. And would this also be fed to the fusion centre for processing?

22 A. Yes, absolutely.

23 Q. Now, the mission also generated a number of daily updates --

24 MR. MARCUSSEN: And I'd like if we could call up P657, please.

25 Q. Now, these reports, who generated a daily report like this one?

1 A. The report -- the daily report would be produced by a team of

2 specific report writers of about two or three, who -- who were attached to

3 the office of the head of mission, and the head of mission, obviously,

4 signed off, approved the report, before it went up to Vienna every day,

5 although sometimes if it wasn't a controversial day, he would let it go;

6 but if it was a controversial day he would certainly want to check it to

7 make sure that he was comfortable with the message that was being sent to

8 Vienna.

9 Q. Now, there were also something called mission reports.

10 MR. MARCUSSEN: And if we could call up Exhibit P664, please.

11 Could you scroll up so we can see the heading? Yeah, thank you.

12 Q. What were the mission reports?

13 A. The mission report would have been, I'm pretty sure, produced by

14 the same people that the one you saw earlier -- a moment ago was.

15 Q. And who were -- who did the mission report go to?

16 A. It went more widely. It went down to the regional centres so they

17 saw what was going on so they could get the bigger picture. It went

18 around the whole of the KVM, and it went up to Vienna.

19 Q. And so the daily reports and mission reports, were they based on

20 reportings coming up through the -- your internal chain of command, so to

21 speak?

22 A. Yes, yes.

23 MR. MARCUSSEN: Now if we can see another document, P662.

24 Q. I'd like to ask you about that. It looks very similar -- well,

25 I'll wait until it comes up.

1 This is called an interim report, and it covers the day of the

2 10th of January, 1999. What caused an interim report to be generated?

3 A. We started off with interim reports when we -- in the period until

4 we were completely covering the whole of the province.

5 We started off in the west in Prizren and Pec and worked eastwards

6 as more people were made available to us by the participating states of

7 the OSCE. The 2000 didn't arrive all on the same day, obviously. They

8 were arriving at a rate of about a hundred a week. And as -- we had

9 neither the administrative support nor the real estate to be able to put

10 everyone down at the same moment and so we set up regional centres one at

11 a time. And until we'd got Kosovo completely covered, I'm pretty sure we

12 were sending out what we called interim reports which it had been

13 explained to Vienna that there was some areas where what they were getting

14 was the result of quite a lot of people on the ground that we could check

15 this, and there were other areas, particularly in the east, where we'd got

16 hardly anybody and we were having to rely on the reports that were less

17 reliable.

18 Q. And when reports were less reliable, was that reflected in the

19 reportings up the chain? Could you try to describe the quality of

20 information --

21 A. If it was specifically -- if it was specifically drawn from media

22 reports, then it would often say that, yes.

23 Q. Now, the last --

24 JUDGE BONOMY: It's not clear to me where this fits in with the

25 other documents we've been looking at and at what level this was compiled.

1 Can you clarify that?

2 MR. MARCUSSEN: Yes.

3 Q. General, who compiled the interim reports?

4 A. The interim reports became the daily reports later, once we had

5 full coverage. We called them interim reports from the day we said we

6 really have got to produce a daily report, which was about the sort of

7 25th of November or 20th of November. And they kept being called interim

8 reports until the day that we said we think we're now fully covering the

9 place, let's stop calling them interim reports.

10 JUDGE BONOMY: Thank you.

11 Mr. Marcussen.

12 MR. MARCUSSEN:

13 Q. Now, the last of these kind of documents I'd like to ask you about

14 is a fusion working paper, and that has Exhibit Number P680.

15 MR. MARCUSSEN: If we could see that, please.

16 Q. General, a fusion working paper, who generated these? That might

17 be obvious, but ...

18 A. Yeah, well, they came out of the fusion cell and were produced by

19 the individual -- by the team in the fusion cell, which obviously was

20 under a chief and the chief worked with me, and we would generally discuss

21 the sort of products he was working on and the rate of production; in

22 other words, did we want one that was immediate because there was an

23 immediate need, or could I give him a bit longer so he could spend longer

24 and get more indication of trends. So I was consulted over the timing and

25 the content, the subject matter to be concentrated on. He'd then go away

1 with his team and produce something like this.

2 Q. And so, depending on the nature, these would be sort of

3 longer-term analysis or --

4 A. Yes.

5 Q. -- analysis of specific events?

6 A. Yes.

7 Q. And again, the material underlying these reports, would that --

8 that would be the kind of material that the fusion cell received. Is that

9 a correct understanding?

10 A. Yes. They would -- they would use all of the material that was

11 passed into them that had come up from the -- from the CCs, from the RCs,

12 from individual liaison officers. I mean, all the material, throw on to

13 it media reports, throw on to it any TV footage that came out of the

14 media, and everything we had they would get and then they would make the

15 best they could of it.

16 MR. MARCUSSEN: Your Honours, I would like at this stage to tender

17 the different reports that I have mentioned and discussed with the

18 general. I'd also like to tender some reports that I haven't discussed

19 but that are of the same nature. They are P659, P675, P677; they are all

20 daily updates. And then there is a mission report in addition to the one

21 that I mentioned, which is P665. And I'll ask that they be tendered into

22 evidence.

23 Now, I do not intend to go through them with the witness, at least

24 not all of them, but I can address the relevancy of the documents if you

25 would like me to.

1 JUDGE BONOMY: I think you should do that.

2 MR. MARCUSSEN: Actually, would you like me to do that now with

3 the witness here or should we ...

4 JUDGE BONOMY: Yes. If you don't intend to ask him any questions

5 about them, then there can be no prejudice to dealing with it.

6 MR. MARCUSSEN: Some of them I will ask questions about but I

7 think I can explain the relevancy of the document without creating any

8 problems in terms of the integrity of the evidence.

9 Now, if I take them in the order the documents have come up.

10 P673, which is a daily --

11 JUDGE BONOMY: I didn't expect you to be going back over the ones

12 you've already dealt with. I'm expecting you to tell me the relevance of

13 the ones you've just listed now which I thought you weren't going to ask

14 him questions about and which we could fit into the indictment.

15 MR. MARCUSSEN: Well -- okay, I was actually intending as we move

16 through only to take up a few of these and later we will make submissions

17 on parts of these. What I sought to establish is the reliability of the

18 reports, and it's therefore my submission that they can be admitted on the

19 basis of what the witness has said about the generation and concept of

20 reports.

21 JUDGE BONOMY: I understand what you're doing in relation to the

22 authenticity of these, but the other equally important leg of the test for

23 admitting any of these documents is their probative value and in

24 particular the relevance to the issues in the indictment. Now, if you're

25 saying that the best way of doing that is to make a written submission and

1 to allow us to look at it and you want to use your time otherwise here,

2 then that's fine. But at some stage we'll have to be told what's the

3 relevance of these various documents.

4 MR. MARCUSSEN: I suggest that we then do it the following way.

5 The ones that I'm not going to touch on today specifically with the

6 witness, we will make a written submission on those, rather than spending

7 the Court's time talking away about the validity of the documents.

8 JUDGE BONOMY: So that effectively means that from your reference

9 to P673, we should regard each of the proposed exhibits as potential

10 exhibits for the moment until we have some indication of their relevance.

11 Is that the position?

12 MR. MARCUSSEN: Indeed, Your Honour.

13 JUDGE BONOMY: Thank you.

14 MR. MARCUSSEN:

15 Q. Now, one last document that I'd like to ask you about is the

16 document you referred to in your statement, the blue book. What is that?

17 A. This was -- this evolved, and as we became -- as we became more

18 organised, I felt that we needed -- before we -- the -- the people at the

19 top of the mission met every morning, that we all needed to have a common

20 description of what we thought the different events were of the previous

21 day or days in a way that was not just script but which was easier to

22 understand. They could see where things where and where they were related

23 to one another. Because not all of the -- not all of the people at the

24 top of the mission spent their lives pouring over the map of Kosovo. And

25 so I asked -- or I tasked the fusion centre to produce a pictorial version

1 of what had happened in the last day or days in each of the regional

2 centre areas and linking all of the events to ones that had previously

3 taken place where that was relevant. But it was specifically a pictorial

4 view of it. It was a PowerPoint slides with points on the map describing

5 what had happened and where. And it was produced by the fusion centre

6 because, frankly, they were better at PowerPoint than the operation

7 centre.

8 Q. These reports continued -- the blue book covered the period after

9 the KVM left Kosovo?

10 A. Yes.

11 Q. So at that point in time, there would not have been any of your

12 verifiers on the ground to report to the KVM?

13 A. That's correct, yes.

14 Q. How was the report then -- or, sorry, the entries to the blue

15 book, how were they prepared, on what basis?

16 A. On the basis of the best information we were able to get. And

17 when we left Kosovo, we continued to talk to people by mobile phone that

18 we'd been talking to previously by mobile phone. And we also were able to

19 talk to people as they came out of Kosovo, and there were a number of

20 other sources like UNHCR who were dealing with the refugees as they

21 arrived.

22 And so the blue book continued to attempt to -- to give as much

23 accuracy as we could to events inside Kosovo because certainly in the

24 first three or four weeks we were keen not just to report the sensational

25 stuff that one person gave to a member of the media as he staggered out

1 over the border. We were trying to give information which was confirmed

2 by more than one source. And so in doing that, we were trying to give an

3 indication of the reliability of some of these reports because we were

4 very concerned that there was some very exaggerated stories coming out,

5 and the world was working itself up into a frenzy at this stage, and it

6 needed somebody to say, Well, this incident here appears to have been

7 corroborated by six different sources, all of which seem to support the

8 common theme, and so we think that the report of this incident is

9 accurate, whereas other ones might not be so accurate. This was an

10 attempt to -- to really talk down some of the -- some of the wilder

11 stories that were going on, but where there was genuine substance to them

12 to give them more weight.

13 Q. And --

14 JUDGE BONOMY: The written statement gives the impression that

15 this book was already in existence prior to the mission leaving. Is that

16 the case?

17 THE WITNESS: Yes. Yes, sir. We evolved how we worked as we --

18 as events unfolded and as the needs changed. And from mid- to late

19 January I would say, off the top of my head, we got into a good rhythm of

20 what the documents were that were useful to the mission and to Vienna and

21 to those we dealt with. And the blue book came out of that. And so the

22 blue book was available, for instance, while the Rambouillet negotiations

23 were going on in February and was useful in being able to give detail

24 where up at Rambouillet it was not uncommon for the meeting -- the start

25 of the meetings, the negotiations, to be delayed while one person or

1 another would say, I can't possibly sit down and negotiate until we find

2 out what happened last night in Pec when something awful happened. And so

3 there would be a frantic phone call from Rambouillet saying, What the heck

4 happened last night in Pec? And we would be able either to say, Well,

5 this is what we know happened in Pec last night. Or, We don't think

6 anything happened in Pec but we'll ask again.

7 And this was part of the ability to respond quickly to that sort

8 of question. And so, yes, we were using it before we drove out. Its

9 purpose changed somewhat once we had driven out.

10 JUDGE BONOMY: Thank you. It's a suitable time to break if you

11 can find the point, Mr. Marcussen.

12 MR. MARCUSSEN:

13 Q. Just to clarify the last answer and then we can break.

14 Is it a correct understanding that the term the "blue book" sort

15 of came about later when the daily PowerPoints and comments were compiled

16 into one document?

17 A. Yes. I mean, it became -- it was because it was put into a blue

18 folder. It's as simple as that, and I think the first time we produced it

19 I took it to the different members of the -- of the sort of executive

20 group that met at 8.00 in the morning and said, Look, this is what we've

21 produced. I think it's going to be useful. What do you think? And the

22 head of mission said, Yes, this blue book's jolly good. Thereafter it

23 became known as the blue book. There were moments when it probably

24 appeared in a yellow cover.

25 Q. Thank you. We'll get back to a few points about the blue book

1 later, but let's break now.

2 JUDGE BONOMY: You probably are aware we have to break from time

3 to time for various reasons. This is one of these occasions. We'll be

4 breaking for about half an hour. Could you please go with the usher

5 meanwhile; he'll show you where to wait.

6 [The witness stands down]

7 JUDGE BONOMY: And we shall resume at 11.15.

8 --- Recess taken at 10.46 a.m.

9 --- On resuming at 11.18 a.m.

10 JUDGE BONOMY: On the objection that was taken by Mr. Ivetic to

11 parts of the statement, we consider that from paragraph 147 to

12 paragraph 154 should not be admitted because they plainly are matters of

13 detail in relation to the events within the locus. The other paragraphs

14 objected to, including the two later in the statement, will be admitted.

15 We will note carefully those which, due to some extent, also deal with the

16 detail and exclude obviously that detail from consideration. If in the

17 course of either the examination or the cross-examination it becomes clear

18 that those we have so far refused to admit could have some bearing on the

19 issues which are relevant in the trial, then we will review that part of

20 the decision. But that's the decision so far as we can make it on the

21 basis of the information presently available to us.

22 Mr. Marcussen.

23 [The witness takes the stand]

24 MR. MARCUSSEN: Thank you, Your Honour. And should -- we will

25 replace the version of the statement in e-court with a statement that

1 reflects your ruling as it is at the end of the day.

2 JUDGE BONOMY: Thank you very much.

3 MR. MARCUSSEN:

4 Q. General, we were -- before the break, we were talking about the

5 blue book that at times came in a yellow binder. Now, you mentioned that

6 you were in contact with people still in Kosovo over mobile phone. Who

7 were those people?

8 A. All variety of people, but primarily people who had worked for

9 us. Local people who had been contracted to be part of the Kosovo

10 Verification Mission as interpreters or press officers or security guards,

11 and who -- when the mission evacuated, it was essentially the

12 internationals that left, not the locals. And so, in an attempt to find

13 out, to stay in touch, we wanted to continue to talk to all of the people

14 that had been working for us, and this was not just Kosovar Albanians,

15 this was Kosovar Serbs as well. And at the time, of course, we were all

16 convinced that the NATO bombing would be very short, that a negotiated

17 settlement would be rapidly reached, and that we would very quickly be

18 going back up into Kosovo but this time with a greater international

19 presence, with other people with us, with NATO with us we expected.

20 But we needed to stay in touch with people to see what the

21 situation was on the ground from the first point of view that we would

22 find when we went back, in order to prepare ourselves. I mean, you know,

23 if there was no electricity in the towns that we went back to, then we

24 were going to have to find generators from somewhere to take up. That's

25 the sort of practical consideration that we needed -- you know, that's the

1 first thing we were thinking of. And then as bad things happened in

2 Kosovo, we became more aware and we then started to talk to people to try

3 to find out exactly what was going on, so as to report it in as objective

4 a way as possible.

5 Q. Did you also speak to former liaisons in -- on the Serb side or

6 the KLA side?

7 A. Yes, yes.

8 Q. Now, in terms of the assessment of the evidence --

9 MR. MARCUSSEN: I will ask the usher to assist me with the ELMO,

10 please. Now, the blue book is Exhibit P407, and I've taken a page out of

11 that because it's a rather big document. It might be easier to just look

12 at a page this way. I think it's on the video line no longer.

13 Can we zoom out just a little bit so we can see the whole page?

14 Okay. I think that's -- that's fine.

15 Q. Now, General, once the KVM had left Kosovo and there are reports

16 in the blue book regarding the situation in Kosovo, to the blue book they

17 attached these sort of tables. Could you explain what that is, please.

18 A. This was put in because we were dealing with a huge variety of

19 sources, and what we were trying to do was to distinguish things that we

20 had -- that we felt were correct because they came from someone we knew

21 well, or they came from multiple sources or things which one person who we

22 had never seen before in our lives told us, maybe over a mobile phone,

23 which could have been disinformation and certainly it was not as reliable.

24 So we -- by doing this, you combined the A, B, C, D, E, F, with the 1, 2,

25 3, 4, 5, 6. So if the judge told me something, that would probably be A1,

1 particularly if it was -- if the other judges told me it as well; whereas

2 if someone I had never met before who rushed up to me in the street and

3 said something outrageous, might be F6, and it would be sort of one of

4 those -- you know, a combination of those A to F and 1 to 6.

5 JUDGE BONOMY: You've obviously never heard of the appeal court.

6 THE WITNESS: You have to remember that we didn't always have 15

7 lawyers at your elbow everywhere we went in Kosovo, sir. If only we had.

8 JUDGE BONOMY: One of my colleagues who were overturned -- sorry,

9 who was affirmed in his decision by the appeals court when a friend

10 commented on it said, Yes, but I still believe I'm right.

11 THE WITNESS: And of course there is objectivity in this, but it

12 was the best we could do at the time.

13 MR. MARCUSSEN:

14 Q. Is this a standard way in analytical work to try to classify

15 information this way?

16 A. Yes, yes. I mean, it is the standard way it's taught at staff

17 colleges, to the best of my knowledge.

18 Q. And just to be clear, the people who were doing the assessments of

19 the events in Kosovo after the KVM had evacuated, they were the same staff

20 members that had been in the fusion cell before; correct?

21 A. Yes. But they were also talking much more to our human rights

22 people and drawing on the experience of the human rights people as well,

23 because we were entering areas that we frankly haven't got a lot of

24 experience of. And therefore, where there was expertise, we drew on it.

25 Q. Okay.

1 MR. MARCUSSEN: For the record, first, I should just make clear

2 that what with we have seen is Exhibit P407, page 945. We can remove it

3 now from the ELMO.

4 And, Your Honours, the Prosecution would like to tender the blue

5 book, Exhibit 407, as an exhibit in its entirety at this point and as to

6 the reason for doing this we submit that it's a one-stop shop which is

7 very useful to have an overview of the events in Kosovo throughout the

8 relevant period of time and, indeed, it's a document that has been

9 referred to during cross-examination numerous times. So I think that it

10 would be a handy document to have on record for everybody's reference.

11 JUDGE BONOMY: Mr. Ivetic.

12 MR. IVETIC: Your Honour, I believe the Defence would have an

13 objection to the introduction on whole of everything in the blue book

14 en masse, particularly given the testimony that's just been given at

15 lines 12 through 15, that following the withdrawal of the KVM from Kosovo

16 the persons compiling the blue book were talking more and more to the

17 human rights people. That leads me to the belief that the -- that the

18 matters that have been excluded from this trial already, namely the

19 As Seen, As Told material, might now be finding its way in a much more

20 controversial format into the blue book, to the extent that there might be

21 some information flowing therefrom that is now replayed in the blue book.

22 So that would be at least one basis for the objection on this -- on

23 introducing this entire document into evidence without having foundation

24 and basis for each of the points that are raised therein.

25 JUDGE BONOMY: Mr. O'Sullivan.

1 MR. O'SULLIVAN: Your Honour, we would join the submissions made

2 by Mr. Ivetic and we would add that your order of 11 July 2006 on

3 procedure and evidence, I can't cite the paragraph in that order, but

4 therein the Chamber held that books of this -- large documents like this

5 would not be admitted in total. Only those portions of these books which

6 were actually put to witnesses would be admitted.

7 MR. MARCUSSEN: Your Honours, if I can -- maybe respond to that,

8 those two submissions. With respect to the part of the blue book that

9 concerns events after KVM had left Kosovo, we've just been through the

10 general's evidence about how this evidence was assessed and you will see

11 in relevant entries of the blue book how the system of rating the

12 reliability of the evidence is being used based on this A through F and 1

13 through 6 system is used. So we would submit that it is entirely possible

14 to assess the reliability of that and give appropriate weight to the

15 entries in the blue book on that basis in the context of all the other

16 evidence on record.

17 And with respect to O'Sullivan's submission, I guess it might be a

18 repetition, but we would submit that it is useful at this point to have a

19 reference point on the record that can be referred to. And as I said,

20 actually, this has been done on numerous occasions during

21 cross-examination. So we would urge the admission of this document.

22 Thank you.

23 JUDGE BONOMY: Your second argument simply means that the document

24 has already been admitted so far as necessary, to understand the points

25 that are being made in cross-examination; it doesn't really address the

1 second matter of admitting this without exploration.

2 MR. MARCUSSEN: No, indeed, Your Honour.

3 JUDGE BONOMY: And just one question to clarify something for me.

4 When I read this statement, I remember reading something about the UNHCR

5 provision of material about the movement of refugees, I think. Can you

6 recollect where in the statement that is?

7 MR. MARCUSSEN: I do have the same recollection, if I can find it.

8 I believe it's towards the end of the statement. Paragraph -- it might be

9 paragraph 175 Your Honour is thinking of.

10 JUDGE BONOMY: Yeah. Thank you.

11 [Trial Chamber confers]

12 JUDGE BONOMY: Since we are in a state of ignorance about the

13 contents of this book, we shall have a cursory look at it and give further

14 consideration to the submissions that are being made, and we shall give

15 you a decision tomorrow morning on this. I don't think that impedes your

16 examination in any way, Mr. Marcussen.

17 MR. MARCUSSEN: Thank you very much, Your Honour.

18 Q. General, I'll leave the topic of all these different documents,

19 and I'd like to move to page 10 of your statement at paragraph 62, where

20 you describe a meeting you had in Pristina on the 27th of November. What

21 was the purpose of this meeting?

22 A. We sat around the table in Pristina to work out how we were going

23 to approach the meeting with the VJ General Staff in Belgrade. This was

24 our first introductory meeting with the VJ General Staff, and it was

25 important that we felt we had one chance to set the standard of what we

1 expected from the VJ and therefore -- and because the KVM was comprised

2 with people of different backgrounds and with different expectations, we

3 sat down together to agree a joint position that we would go forward.

4 This was not the way I would normally have done it in a military context,

5 but this was not a military mission. And therefore, I was attempting to

6 draw on all the expertise that there was and to make sure that it was not

7 just -- it was not just my best guess, but it was using -- using the best

8 guess and the knowledge and experience of those who I had available.

9 Q. And also that included Serb representatives. Is that --

10 A. The meeting in Pristina, no -- sorry, excuse me, yes. Sorry, I'm

11 looking at 62 again.

12 Sorry, there was first -- we had a -- we had a meeting first that

13 was internal. Then from that we went and had this meeting, and at this

14 meeting we attempted to -- to trail what we were expecting to achieve in

15 the meeting in Belgrade. And the intention of sharing that was to try to

16 avoid ambushing, surprising, senior people in the VJ. Because in my

17 experience, it's always easier to deal with people if you don't walk into

18 a meeting and immediately surprise them. So we felt it was important that

19 they knew the sort of arguments we were going to bring forward, the sort

20 of approach we were going to take, when we arrived in Belgrade. So it was

21 an attempt to transparency and to try and set the stage for a successful

22 meeting in Belgrade.

23 Q. Thank you.

24 MR. MARCUSSEN: And I would like to take a look now at an exhibit,

25 P2536, if we could call that up. And I guess we need a little zooming in.

1 THE WITNESS: Yeah, we do. I really do.

2 MR. MARCUSSEN:

3 Q. Can we you see this or would you like us to move in a little

4 further?

5 A. Yeah, I know what we're looking at.

6 Q. Yeah. And what are we looking at?

7 A. We're looking at a document that was pasted into my working

8 notebook, which - if I can explain - I always had a working notebook that

9 I carried with me which would either have speaking notes that had been

10 pre-prepared for me so that I made sure I didn't miss anything, or if I

11 went into a meeting and I wasn't sure what the outcome was going to be I

12 would at least take notes to remind myself later of what had been said and

13 what hadn't been said and who was there to the best of my ability. So I

14 tried to keep sort of a running record. And I think there are seven of

15 these books, I'm afraid.

16 But I also, if afterwards we produced a document that was

17 particularly useful, then sometimes I would remember to glue it into the

18 book and sometimes I wouldn't. This is the, as you see, the talking

19 points that we agreed should be the basis of the conversation I had in

20 Belgrade in the VJ Ministry of Defence, and it attempted to make it

21 abundantly clear how we wanted to operate in order to carry out the

22 mandate that had been given to the mission in the agreement that by that

23 stage was over a month old.

24 Q. And these talking points, do they also reflect the information

25 that was given in -- in Pristina to the Serb representatives there during

1 the preparation meeting?

2 A. It was not given on paper, but it was -- it was described.

3 Q. And I'd like to then, if we could -- well, you then describe going

4 to Belgrade and meeting with General Ojdanic. That's in paragraph 63.

5 How would you describe the atmosphere at this meeting?

6 A. It was fairly neutral. It was not particularly friendly, but it

7 was not hostile. It was less friendly than I would have wished, but not

8 as hostile as it might have been. And because he had only very recently

9 taken up his position, we knew that that meant we were going to get less

10 out of the meeting because we knew that he would have had less time to be

11 briefed and that he would be less inclined to make decisions at the

12 meeting. And so we went into this meeting with lowered expectations, I

13 would say.

14 Q. And "he" is General Ojdanic. Is that correct?

15 A. Yes.

16 MR. MARCUSSEN: Now if we could see Exhibit P2535, please. Again,

17 we need zooming.

18 Q. General, do you recognise this document?

19 A. Yes. This is the document that was produced after the Belgrade

20 meeting and was -- was to have been the speaking -- the basis for speaking

21 notes with the Pristina Corps commander, because when I finished the

22 meeting in Belgrade, the expectation was that I should then go on to have

23 a subsequent meeting at the lower -- at the level below that, that is,

24 with the commander on the ground. In the event that meeting did not take

25 place and was cancelled at the -- on the orders, as I understand it, of

1 Belgrade, but I had them all, I was all prepared for the meeting and they

2 went into the book, and they actually served as a useful reminder of what

3 had happened at the Belgrade meeting as well. And I think that's why

4 they're valuable.

5 Q. Thank you. And -- so -- but you left the meeting with General

6 Ojdanic thinking that things had good sufficiently well to be able to

7 follow up on this. Is that --

8 A. Yes, yes. I would say that I left the meeting with General

9 Ojdanic feeling that there was the basis for -- for future cooperation. I

10 didn't expect to be dealing with him on a day-to-day basis because he was

11 sitting in Belgrade with other responsibilities than just Kosovo,

12 obviously, and so what I wanted was to go to him to get him to issue an

13 instruction to the Pristina Corps commander to deal direct with me. And

14 then only to raise things to the level of the Belgrade Ministry of Defence

15 if events proved impossible or too difficult down on the ground.

16 MR. MARCUSSEN: Could we see Exhibit P2543 now, please.

17 Q. General, do you recognise this?

18 A. Yes, this is the letter I wrote to General Ojdanic -- or at least

19 I -- I drafted it. Now, I can't remember whether it actually went because

20 at this stage there was -- were letters that were sent and letters that

21 were drafted and not sent. I think this was sent, but as it was sent we

22 were getting the message that we weren't going to be allowed to meet with

23 the Pristina Corps commander.

24 Q. Would it help you if I indicate -- or if I told you that on the

25 Serbian version that you signed, which is in e-court, there is a date of

1 2nd of December indicated; this would be the date of the letter. Do you

2 think you would send the letter --

3 A. I think we did send it. I think we sent it, and within a day we'd

4 been told that the meeting was off, the meeting with the Pristina Corps

5 commander was off, at the instructions of Belgrade.

6 Q. So had a meeting been -- had steps been taken to actually set up a

7 meeting?

8 A. Yes.

9 Q. What steps had been taken?

10 A. As I recall it, the meeting in Belgrade with General Ojdanic

11 concluded with the -- me saying that my next step would be to go and meet

12 the corps commander in Pristina, and I would be grateful if he could

13 facilitate that and give orders to make sure that the meeting took place.

14 I think we then proposed a date for a meeting, which was quite soon after

15 the 27th of November because we were keen to get moving.

16 Q. You said that you were told that the meeting was called off. Who

17 told you that?

18 A. I expect it was General Loncar. It was either -- it was -- excuse

19 me. It either was General Loncar or the order came through General

20 Loncar's office.

21 MR. MARCUSSEN: Could we see Exhibit P418, please.

22 And, Your Honours, this is an attachment to the witness statement

23 that is DZ/9.

24 Q. General, is this a record of the message you were given that the

25 meeting was off, or is that talking about something else?

1 A. I think that's a separate thing. I think the message that the

2 meeting with the corps commander was, at least, postponed came separately.

3 But I recognise this and I'm aware of the context of this.

4 Q. So if we first --

5 A. It was linked.

6 Q. Right. If we first deal, then, with the first communication

7 calling off the meeting. What made you say that it was -- in Belgrade the

8 decision had been taken not to have the meeting go ahead?

9 A. Because my recollection was that the message that was given to me

10 was that the meeting is off because the corps commander has been told that

11 it's inappropriate for him to meet you, and that the -- the level of -- at

12 which contact should be made should be through General Loncar's office and

13 not direct to the Pristina Corps commander.

14 Q. And do you know who told the corps commander not to deal directly

15 with you?

16 A. I can't remember.

17 Q. I'm then moving back to the exhibit that's on the screen here.

18 What's the context of this document?

19 A. This was all happening at around about the same time. The

20 original letter, the letter from Ambassador Walker to Mr. Milosevic was

21 the thing that preceded my meeting in Belgrade, and this was a quite long

22 letter which said, This is how we would propose to go about the

23 verification process that has been called for in the -- in the agreement

24 between the OSCE and FRY. That letter was never formally responded to but

25 was -- we were rebuked over it because apparently we should not have sent

1 it to Mr. Milosevic, we should have sent it to others in the government.

2 But irrespective of that, there was never a formal response made to it by

3 anybody.

4 I then wrote my letter saying, This is how we propose to carry out

5 inspections in a quite intrusive way, and this was to have been the basis

6 of the meeting with the corps commander. And therefore, the second

7 paragraph General Loncar picks up the inspections issue that I thought was

8 an issue between me and the corps commander of the Pristina Corps but had

9 been told, no, I was only to deal with General Loncar. And we were very

10 keen to get started on inspections as soon as possible because we were

11 under criticism for having been -- it was already at this stage six weeks

12 since the mission had started to be stood up and people were saying, Okay,

13 what are you doing? Can you hurry up, please, get started.

14 Q. You said the inspections were quite sort of intrusive. I can go

15 back to the exhibit, but maybe can you just explain how -- what was it --

16 how did you foresee carrying out the inspections? What does it entail?

17 A. Well, because there was a need to confirm exactly what the level

18 of -- in particular equipment, but equipment and manpower was on the

19 ground, that needed to be checked. Now, it needed to be checked against a

20 base-line, which we didn't have, and we wanted to check that the equipment

21 was the same equipment, that equipment wasn't being moved in and out of

22 Kosovo. And to do that, you weren't going to be able to do it by just

23 standing at the roadside. You were going to have to do it by, for

24 instance, going into every location, every military location in Kosovo at

25 the same moment and counting the equipment all at the same moment so you

1 did a one-time audit. That would be an intrusive inspection.

2 And to make sure that it was done to the satisfaction of the OSCE

3 in Vienna, we proposed to do it on a no-notice basis so that there was

4 no -- so that we could prove that there was no possibility of collusion.

5 And so by proposing a stringent inspection regime, we hoped to be able to

6 prove that compliance was or was not taking place. We very much hoped

7 that compliance was taking place, and the more collateral we could offer

8 to show that compliance was taking place would assist everyone in calming

9 the situation down.

10 Q. Thank you. Now, before moving to sort of the follow-up meeting

11 with Sainovic that followed from this exhibit, I'd just like you to

12 explain one thing for us. In paragraph 71 you talk about a medevac

13 helicopter issue. What was that issue?

14 A. In providing individuals as verifies for the Kosovo Verification

15 Mission, the participating states of the OSCE expressed a lot of concern

16 over the safety of the verifiers. It was a constant theme, particularly

17 at the start. And this was very unhelpful because we wanted to get these

18 verifiers as quickly as possible so we could get working, and remember

19 there were 2.000 of them. And so what we needed to be able to demonstrate

20 was that the verifiers were going to be safe in our hands.

21 Part of that was the medical arrangements. Now, the medical

22 arrangements in Kosovo, the state of the hospitals, was poor by western

23 standards. There were much better facilities in Belgrade or in Macedonia,

24 but within Kosovo there were very few -- there were really no medical

25 facilities that we would wish to use. And to get this -- to get this view

1 of it, I had a medical expert lent to me by the UK as part of the -- one

2 of the early verifiers. And so we -- we were quite clear that we didn't

3 want to use the local medical facilities if we would possibly avoid it.

4 And also, if we had been using the local medical facilities, it was

5 inevitable that we would have gone to the head of the queue in any

6 situation and that would have rebounded in a bad way, that we were

7 demanding priority treatment over locals, and therefore we wanted to

8 provide self-standing medical cover.

9 This was debated a lot up in Vienna, and as a result the Permanent

10 Council required the secretariat to do something about it quickly. And as

11 a result of that, they hired a Swiss medevac helicopter which was fully

12 equipped and had a doctor and life-support assistance on the machine, and

13 having hired it they then told us and said, Here you are, we've got one of

14 these for you. And we said, Great, that's just what we want but we'd

15 better make sure that we can bring it in. And so at that point we asked

16 Bo Pellnas who was our liaison man in Belgrade to get authority to fly the

17 helicopter in. And we felt certainly at the start that this was a mere

18 formality, because ability to use air corridors and landing at airports

19 was specifically mentioned in the original agreement between the OSCE and

20 the FRY.

21 Q. And how did it become an issue?

22 A. It became an issue because we did not get the clearance to bring

23 it in.

24 Q. Were you told why you weren't given clearance?

25 A. The issue was raised within Belgrade, and the information that I

1 received was that this was on the desk of Mr. Sainovic, and that

2 Mr. Sainovic would say yes or no.

3 To start with, we were asked, What are the exact technical

4 specifications of the helicopter? And we gave those. And still, we

5 didn't get the all-clear.

6 There was at some stage an offer by the Serbs to make available

7 military medical evacuation helicopters, and we did not want those, partly

8 because they were obviously identifiable as Serb assets and we were going

9 to be flying -- we would be flying around Kosovo with Albanians on the

10 ground with guns. And they didn't -- they wouldn't have known that there

11 was an international on a stretcher in them. So we felt that that

12 contained an element of danger.

13 And the other thing was that they were not of the same -- equipped

14 to the same standard, not anything like the same standard that the medevac

15 helicopter was that we had already contracted. And so for both those

16 reasons, we wanted to stick with ours.

17 Q. Did it have any implication for the KVM that you were not allowed

18 to have the medevac helicopter?

19 A. Well, the whole drawn-out process became a litmus test of

20 cooperation between the Yugoslav authorities and ourselves, and so it

21 assumed a proportion perhaps out of size to its importance. I mean, it

22 was important, but it became an issue which was described as, This is the

23 first time we've come to you for something really specific, this appears

24 to be an absolutely clear-cut case, ability to bring in things by air and

25 to use airspace is specifically mentioned. It was specifically mentioned

1 that this would be provided it was deemed to be necessary by the head of

2 mission, the head of mission personally said, I deem this to be necessary,

3 and yet we got nowhere on it. So we felt it was inexplicable that the

4 level of cooperation was so low. And we were frankly amazed by it.

5 Q. Thank you. Now, I'll jump now --

6 JUDGE BONOMY: May I before -- may I ask before you do that. What

7 facility was ultimately used for medical treatment or attention necessary

8 to OSCE staff?

9 THE WITNESS: We got together a number of ambulances supplied by

10 one of the sending countries with paramedics permanently attached, so that

11 each regional centre had, I think, two ambulances with professional

12 paramedics available to it. And when we were -- when we suffered

13 casualties, that was the way we got them out and obviously it took a lot

14 longer than helicopter evacuation would have done. And again, we were not

15 assisted in the way we got our people out at that stage because it's

16 perhaps worth remarking that having suffered casualties and with two

17 injured people in the back of these vehicles, they got to the -- the

18 border with Macedonia and were all set to drive over the border with

19 Macedonia. And the official -- the Serbian border official very helpfully

20 said, Of course, if any of you guys going over the -- going over the

21 border have single-entry visas, then you won't be coming back, will you,

22 until you've got another visa from Belgrade, which will take several

23 weeks.

24 Now, this was our medical cover for all of us. And so at that

25 stage we had to strap up the injured individuals who had to walk the 150

1 yards or so that existed between the Serbian border post and the

2 Macedonian border post in order to get into the ambulance that was waiting

3 for them that NATO had provided from its assets. That was particularly

4 unhelpful, sir.

5 JUDGE BONOMY: Thank you.

6 Mr. Marcussen.

7 MR. MARCUSSEN: Thank you.

8 Q. General, moving back now to -- to the chronology. In paragraph

9 80 -- well, 81, rather, you describe a meeting at the Pellumbi

10 restaurant.

11 A. Yeah.

12 Q. In which Walker, yourself, Sainovic, and Loncar participated.

13 A. Yeah.

14 Q. Now, again, what was the atmosphere like at this meeting?

15 A. We went -- the international -- the OSCE part of this meeting went

16 into this meeting thinking it was going to be a negotiation session. We

17 knew what the current issues were that we felt were needing resolution,

18 and we expected to come out of that meeting with resolution on at least

19 some of them and some -- some indication of the degree of cooperation we

20 were going to receive.

21 Q. And did it go that way?

22 A. No, it didn't. It didn't go a bit that way, I'm afraid.

23 Q. How did the meeting begin?

24 A. I can't recall the exact order of the meeting, but I think quite

25 early on Mr. Sainovic berated the head of mission, Ambassador Walker, on

1 the support that was being given to the Kosovo Liberation Army through the

2 western banking system, and specifically from America, and demanding that

3 Walker relay back to his authorities that the western banking system was

4 to cease carrying the money which was, I think, in some cases remittances

5 from European countries to Kosovo.

6 Q. Sorry, General, if I can just interrupt you there. Did the KVM

7 have any mandate or anything that would make banking relevant to your

8 mission?

9 A. No. I mean, it was above our pay grade.

10 Q. Thank you. Then you -- so I guess the meeting didn't start off

11 too well. And then you say that all your requests were rejected, all

12 the --

13 MR. PETROVIC: [Interpretation] Your Honour.

14 JUDGE BONOMY: Mr. Petrovic.

15 MR. PETROVIC: [Interpretation] If you will allow me. It seems to

16 me that in regard of these critical parts of the statement of the witness,

17 the question should not be leading; rather, the question should be put as

18 if this were viva voce testimony.

19 MR. MARCUSSEN: Well, certainly --

20 JUDGE BONOMY: Just a moment.

21 Well, your question says: "You say all your requests were

22 rejected." Where does he say that?

23 MR. MARCUSSEN: At paragraph 81. "Sainovic read a list of

24 complaints and rejected all KVM requests" --

25 JUDGE BONOMY: Oh, yes, very well. Yes, there's nothing leading

1 about the question.

2 Please carry on.

3 MR. MARCUSSEN: Thank you.

4 Q. And so what were the KVM requests?

5 A. Well, it took, it happened the other way in -- when I think Walker

6 brought up the issue of the medical helicopter, which we heard had became

7 a sort of cause celebre by this stage, Mr. Sainovic responded and said,

8 Well, there's no way you're getting that, or you're certainly not getting

9 that, and while we are on the subject, there are going to be no intrusive

10 inspections, and we are certainly not going to reduce the police presence

11 in a particular area called Malisevo, and we don't propose to set up a

12 specific office in Pristina to expedite the issue of visas. Those, I

13 recall, were the specific things.

14 So it wasn't sort of a question and answer; it was a statement

15 that picked up everything by Mr. Sainovic and left us with pretty much no

16 more requests because he'd covered them all.

17 Q. We've already talked about -- touched upon the visa issue and the

18 medevac issue. Could you explain, what was the issue about Malisevo.

19 A. Malisevo was an area to the west that had been the scene of

20 particularly heavy fighting and was pretty much in the centre of the area

21 where the KLA were active. The village was entirely Albanian. There was

22 a police station in it, which was heavily fortified, and the behaviour of

23 the policemen, we felt, having observed it, was making the situation worse

24 not better. And therefore, what we had said was, Look, we're prepared to

25 put our people on the ground in Malisevo in order to talk to the police,

1 to talk to the local mayor, to try to reduce the level of tension here.

2 But you've got to help as well because we believe the police in this case

3 are part of the problem. And so we'll put people in, provided you agree

4 that you're going to reduce the posture and the number of police in that

5 police station, which was a fortified outpost. It was not -- it was not a

6 community police station; it was a fort with armoured vehicles and so on.

7 And this was, as I say, in the context of it being really an area where

8 there was a continued standoff between the Albanian population and the

9 police. And the police -- no, I'll stop there.

10 Q. What was it about the conduct of the police that the KVM felt was

11 creating tension?

12 A. It was the general aggressive way in which they operated and dealt

13 with the Kosovar Albanian people in general, but it was -- it was

14 particularly bad in this area. It was -- it had the appearance of an --

15 an occupying garrison rather than the forces of law and order of a

16 sovereign state.

17 Q. To help the Court appreciate the situation, are there any specific

18 examples of conduct that you could mention so we can understand the nature

19 of this tension?

20 A. I would say that the -- the way the police dealt with the Kosovar

21 Albanians was -- was not in a way that was -- that would endear them.

22 They were very, very rough with them. They frequently stopped them and

23 searched them at check-points, stopped buses and made everybody get out of

24 the bus and searched them, not just males but women and children. It was

25 a policy of generally harassing -- no, I don't know whether it was a

1 policy, but the result we saw on the ground was that it was almost

2 impossible for a Kosovar Albanian to go from A to B without being stopped

3 and harassed by the Serb police on several occasions and that this

4 aggressive approach was particularly bad the further west you went. And

5 Malisevo was one particular area where they -- the police didn't go from

6 the -- move out of their police station except to drive around in armoured

7 vehicles and basically force anyone off the road who got in their way.

8 This was not community policing as we know it.

9 Q. I understand that from what the KVM observed the same kind of

10 conduct also took place in other parts of Kosovo, although on a lesser

11 scale. Would that be a correct understanding of the --

12 A. Yes. It was particularly pronounced in Malisevo, which was why

13 there was something of a standoff there, that we were attempting to reduce

14 the level of tension because it was symbolic. We didn't have enough

15 people to be everywhere. So what we wanted was to put some people into

16 specific areas where we could see the problem was worse to try to achieve

17 something which could be publicised to the benefit of all.

18 Q. In these kind of incidents of harassment, how frequent were they?

19 A. Well, very frequent. I mean, I would expect that on a day as I

20 drove around I would see Kosovar Albanians being -- being stopped at

21 check-points at least once a day, and the -- I mean, it was almost so

22 commonplace that it didn't get reported enough because we became used to

23 the fact that it was going on. It was background activity. It was -- we

24 didn't really have enough paper to report all of this.

25 Q. Thank you. Now, I guess I should start thinking about the time.

1 Towards the end of paragraph 81 you say that Loncar grimaced.

2 What did you make of that?

3 A. I felt that Loncar was uncomfortable with the way the meeting had

4 developed. I didn't get the impression that he went into that meeting

5 expecting to have the -- the verbal fight between Walker and Sainovic that

6 took place. I think the pair of them wound each other up to a degree, and

7 the result was more unfortunate than Loncar had expected.

8 Q. Thank you. I'll jump to some other issues in your statement now.

9 In paragraph 87, you describe the ambush of the resupply convoy of

10 the KLA. Did -- did KVM report on this incident?

11 A. Yes, extensively.

12 Q. Was it reported as a breach of the cease-fire agreement?

13 A. Yes, as a major breach of the cease-fire agreement by the KLA.

14 Q. Thank you. Now -- then I'd like to move on to the Podujevo

15 training part of your statement, paragraph 94, 95, and the subsequent

16 paragraphs. At paragraph -- well, I guess we'll just go to --

17 Paragraph 94, you say that you considered the manoeuvres to be

18 provocative. Why were they provoking, in your view?

19 A. It was described to us as driver training. And the reason -- the

20 way it came about was Colonel -- General Loncar and Colonel Kotur saying

21 that, We've got all these conscripts, they have to be trained. One of the

22 things they've got to be trained in is driving tanks, so they need to do

23 tank driver training. And we said, Okay, got that. Said, So we need to

24 put them on to a training area. So we said, Okay, where is the training

25 area? And there was a sort of -- Over here. We said, Well, that's not a

1 training area. Training areas are where you have a specific area on a map

2 that has boards when you going into it, and it says you're entering a

3 training area, and everybody knows where it is. And the reply was, No,

4 no, no, what we do is we go out and we always drive around here, and it's

5 just what we always do. So it was, in effect, driving over private land.

6 And I said, Well, given where we know the KLA are, if you drive

7 tanks past some of these villages, it's highly likely that somebody's

8 going to take offence at that and interpret it as -- as tanks coming after

9 them. And if then somebody fires out of that village and you fire back

10 into the village, then you've got an incident that doesn't need to happen,

11 and therefore, if you need to do that, why not do it in an area where

12 you're not going to go within a hundred metres of villages, where we know

13 that the -- that there is KLA sympathy. Do it somewhere else and we can

14 understand it, but please don't do it in an area where you are bound to

15 provoke a response.

16 Q. And did the training actually provoke a response, to your

17 knowledge?

18 A. Yes, it did.

19 Q. And how did the VJ respond once being fired on?

20 A. Well, on being fired at they exercised their right of self-defence

21 and they fired back, and therefore they fired into the villages from which

22 fire had come with, first, machine-gun fire and then with tank main

23 armament in some cases.

24 Q. To your knowledge, had there been any firing exercises included in

25 the -- in the training programme, as it was described to you?

1 A. No, no. I mean, it was described as driver training. But -- I

2 mean, I'm -- I understand that -- if I'd been in charge of VJ soldiers in

3 Kosovo at the time, I would -- and I was going to deploy tanks, I would

4 certainly have made sure the tanks had ammunition with them. It would

5 have been stupid not to.

6 So the fact that they had ammunition was not in question. I think

7 all of the tanks were bombed up with ammunition all the time, and I would

8 have been surprised if they weren't. But they -- their ability to return

9 fire was the issue that I was concerned about.

10 JUDGE BONOMY: The detail of this I don't think is in the

11 statement, is it, the actual exchange of fire?

12 THE WITNESS: It came later, sir. It developed over days.

13 JUDGE BONOMY: But was there one particular event where fire was

14 exchanged?

15 THE WITNESS: Yes, I can remember reporting it back to Walker,

16 because I remember Walker going in front of the media and using a phrase

17 that, In our view, they went looking for trouble and they found trouble.

18 And I remember that phrase very well.

19 JUDGE BONOMY: Can you tell us where and when this was or is that

20 something that's simply noted somewhere?

21 THE WITNESS: It's -- it would have been in the -- say, the third

22 week of December.

23 JUDGE BONOMY: Okay. And where?

24 THE WITNESS: In the -- in the villages in the area of Podujevo,

25 which is about 30 minutes' drive north of Pristina.

1 JUDGE BONOMY: Are you saying that there were exchanges of fire in

2 more than one village?

3 THE WITNESS: Oh, yes.

4 JUDGE BONOMY: Thank you.

5 Mr. Marcussen.

6 MR. MARCUSSEN: Thank you, Your Honour. Maybe I should at this

7 stage alert Your Honours to the fact that I have maybe another hour or so

8 to go, although I think I might have used more than two hours. So I might

9 be going a little over time. I will seek your leave to do that. We had

10 indicated three hours, but I hope the evidence is helpful and that it's

11 warranted to go through this in some detail, but otherwise I can cut it

12 short. I can also do that.

13 [Trial Chamber confers]

14 JUDGE BONOMY: We don't see a problem about you taking, within

15 reason, what time is necessary.

16 MR. MARCUSSEN: I shall try to keep a reasonable momentum. Thank

17 you, Your Honours.

18 Q. I think we can move on to paragraph 103, that is a paragraph that

19 begins at the top of page 16. You describe having a meeting with Lukic on

20 the 24th of December. Now, I'd like to show you Exhibit P2544.

21 A. I've got nothing.

22 Q. I think there something's come up.

23 A. Yeah.

24 Q. Well, from this view do you recognise this document?

25 A. Yes. This would have been a note of the meeting taken by the

1 young man that I took with me to do precisely that, to take the note to

2 make sure we had a record of the meeting.

3 Q. David Wilson?

4 A. Yes, that's right.

5 Q. Well, here the Malisevo incident was discussed in paragraph 2. In

6 paragraph 4, you express concern about excessive use of force, and you

7 talk about the Podujevo incident.

8 A. Yeah.

9 Q. Now, you expressed these concerns. What was General Lukic's

10 response to this? Did you feel it sort of resonated with him in any way?

11 A. No. He -- he was quite defensive -- well, he did not agree with

12 me that this was -- this was inappropriate activity. He made the point

13 very strongly that the safety of his policemen was paramount to him, which

14 I -- which I understood and certainly sympathised with. But my point was

15 made strongly that going about his policing activities in this way was

16 making the situation more inflamed, not less inflamed. And this was in

17 the context of increasing instances of heavy-handed policing throughout

18 the area, but particularly starting to happen up in -- in the Podujevo

19 area, which was an area where it hadn't been to the same degree earlier.

20 Q. Thank you. And then if we move down to the -- to the bottom of

21 the page in your statement we just talked about, paragraph -- page 16. At

22 paragraphs 109 and 110, you describe an incident - and 111, I'm sorry -

23 you describe an operation to recover the body of a Serb -- an elderly Serb

24 man that had been shot.

25 A. Yes.

1 Q. And I understand the debate basically was how to carry this out.

2 On the one hand, you describe Walker being of the view that this should be

3 done as a rather low-key operation and there was a proposal by Loncar to

4 use a number of heavy vehicles and I guess a number of MUPs in this

5 operation -- MUP staff in this operation. Why -- why did Walker propose

6 this low-key operation?

7 A. Because every time -- this was an area where the Kosovo Liberation

8 Army had become very clear that it was starting to operate there. We were

9 still attempting to get them to step back, and there was no way we were

10 going to get them to step back if large numbers of police in armoured

11 vehicles turned up and, in effect, aggravated the situation. So our point

12 was that we can -- we can do our best to talk the situation down, to talk

13 to the Kosovo Liberation Army to get them to step back, because they were

14 certainly occupying positions that -- they were moving into positions they

15 had not been before. So they were being aggressive, and we understood

16 that, but we felt the way that -- to get them to step back was not to

17 flood the area with police in armoured vehicles.

18 The point then was then made that here is someone who sadly has

19 been killed. We need to get his body out. We said, Okay, we'll help you

20 get the body out, but let's do it in a non-confrontational way so that in

21 getting one body out we don't create the circumstances in which more

22 bodies -- more dead bodies are created. And that was the whole basis of

23 the discussion.

24 Q. Do you have any idea why that proposal, that is Walker's proposal,

25 was not accepted?

1 A. Well, it was certainly -- it was changing the parameters that we

2 were operating on, that my mission was operating on, because we were, in

3 effect, offering to do a job for the police which was extending our

4 mandate to a degree. We were -- I mean, we were asking the police to

5 lower their profile, and in return for them lowering their profile, we

6 would help them. So it was -- yeah, I mean, it was a negotiation but it

7 was a genuine offer to try to keep the level of violence down.

8 Q. This may tie in with something else. I'd like you -- if you could

9 go to page 19 of your statement, paragraph 134. In the last part of that

10 paragraph you say: "From my observation and with the benefit of my

11 military training, it is my opinion that the Serbian military strategy,

12 when trying to combat the insurgency (KLA), was very poor."

13 A. Yeah.

14 Q. Why -- why do you think that, why was the strategy poor?

15 A. Because it was clearly not working. They were alienating or they

16 had alienated the Kosovar Albanian population to the degree there was

17 more -- there was a greater tendency in the Kosovar Albanian population to

18 support and to give support to the KLA. There was no real attempt made by

19 the Serbian authorities to expose the criminal activities of the KLA when

20 they took place. There was no attempt to find evidence, arrest members of

21 the Kosovo Liberation Army, put them on trial, find them guilty, and send

22 them to jail for a long time, which is -- there was no real information

23 campaign by the Serbian government to -- to change the way that the

24 incidents were seen down in Kosovo. So it was all reaction and

25 overreaction and no attempt to put it into context and no attempt to

1 talk-up the genuine position that the Serbian authorities had, which was

2 that they were the sovereign power there, which we understood.

3 Q. How about the military strategy be used, do you think that was

4 effective?

5 A. No. Because -- I mean, my -- I think the recurring theme that

6 came into all of my -- so many of my conversations with the -- with

7 Serbian authorities was of provocative behaviour of disproportionate use

8 of force, that if you have a village where Kosovar Albanians live and they

9 are giving tacit support to the Kosovo Liberation Army, the way to win

10 them over is not to flatten the village with artillery. The way to win

11 them over is to persuade them that -- of the benefits of supporting the

12 powers that be, whether it's by -- by dealing with them in a more

13 sensitive way or by making sure electricity is connected, by making sure

14 that if someone is arrested that they go through due process.

15 Q. And from a tactical point of view, do you think the forces of the

16 FRY and Serbia could have achieved better results had they carried out

17 their operations in a different way?

18 A. Yes, absolutely.

19 Q. What should they have done?

20 A. Well, they were the best recruiting sergeant for the KLA that

21 there was. Because once they had fired into villages with heavy weapons,

22 the KLA would creep back and say, There you are, that's what you get from

23 the people who are supposed to be the forces of law and order. And so --

24 I mean, to operate differently would have required a completely

25 different strategy that would have needed to have been promulgated to

1 everybody. It would have needed extensive re-training of the individuals

2 on the ground. It could not have been done overnight, but you could not

3 have mistaken it if there had been a different approach because that

4 different approach would have had to have been described by senior Serbian

5 politicians. And then when policemen or soldiers overstepped the mark,

6 then there would have been investigations, there would have been

7 consequences, which we never saw.

8 Q. Did you discuss your views on different ways of doing things with

9 any of your Serbian liaisons or interlocutories?

10 A. Yes. It was a constant theme of my conversations with -- my

11 meetings with General Loncar and his staff, and people like Colonel Kotur,

12 Colonel Mijatovic, who were present at many of the meetings.

13 Q. In your estimate, how many fighting men did the KLA have?

14 A. Several hundred that were actually full-time fighters sitting on

15 the top of the hills. Then the villages had people that were prepared to

16 turn out to defend their village if their village was attacked, but they

17 weren't sort of KLA fighters; they were KLA auxiliaries, I would say. But

18 they were not available for anything that didn't involve their own

19 village.

20 We saw instances of villages being assaulted by Serb forces, where

21 the next village over our people would go along and be talking to the head

22 man of the village and saying, Well, over that hill 3 miles away, you

23 know, there's a fight going on. And the head man would say, Yes, and

24 we're going to sit here and do nothing about it because it's nothing to do

25 with us.

1 And so there was not a sort of call to arms and everybody rush

2 towards the fight. And so several hundred would have been my estimate of

3 KLA strength on the ground in Kosovo around about December/January of

4 1998/1999.

5 Q. Do you think the Serb forces could have dealt with this KLA force

6 had they used different tactics?

7 A. Yes.

8 Q. What tactics should they have used in your view to do this?

9 A. Well, they needed to -- they needed to make it clear that the

10 average Kosovar Albanian had nothing to fear from the Serb forces. Now,

11 to do that, they needed to show that by the way they -- the way they dealt

12 with them. And that would have required a clear decision by the regime to

13 go about it in a different way. I mean, it's a completely different way

14 of doing things. I mean, we would call it a hearts and minds campaign,

15 but it's actually re-establishing the legitimacy of the forces of that

16 sovereign state, making sure the police did what police are supposed to

17 do, which is to protect the inhabitants of the country, not to harass

18 them.

19 Q. Thank you. I'll move on to Racak and I just want to be sure I'm

20 not getting into something I shouldn't. No, this should be safe.

21 Paragraph 156, if you would look at that, that is on page 22.

22 A. Yeah.

23 Q. Before --

24 MR. MARCUSSEN: Sorry.

25 JUDGE BONOMY: Mr. Cepic.

1 MR. CEPIC: [Interpretation] Your Honour, by your leave, the

2 paragraph mentioned by Mr. Marcussen, 156, can be seen as temporarily

3 redacted pursuant to your earlier decision. What was mentioned here was -

4 and I may be corrected if I'm wrong - from paragraphs 154 up to 157,

5 included.

6 JUDGE BONOMY: No, I think you've been -- it may be a bad

7 translation. It was 147 to 154. Now, I hope that will be rectified if

8 it's been wrongly translated for you. You've got all the right numbers

9 but not in the right order.

10 MR. CEPIC: [Interpretation] Yes. Thank you, Your Honour.

11 JUDGE BONOMY: Mr. Marcussen.

12 MR. MARCUSSEN: Thank you.

13 Q. General, to your knowledge, on the 16th had there been an attempt

14 by the investigating judge to enter Racak and carry out an investigation?

15 A. Yes, but I personally didn't witness it. But yes, I -- from what

16 she told me the next day, I understood she had attempted to go in on

17 the 16th in the afternoon.

18 Q. And what had happened, if you know?

19 A. She had gone in with a police -- a large police escort and they

20 had been fired on from the vicinity of the village and so had withdrawn

21 without getting to the village.

22 Q. And so you describe that later on you discussed with Judge

23 Marinkovic the possibility of entering the village again.

24 A. Yes.

25 Q. And Judge Marinkovic proposed essentially to use the same method

1 as she had already tried before, to go back into Racak. Is that right?

2 A. That is correct, yes.

3 Q. And then you describe how she went in and actually did draw fire

4 also during that later attempt. Have you any view as to why Judge

5 Marinkovic preferred to use the MUP option than the KVM option?

6 A. Well, she was a very determined lady and had a very firm view of

7 her responsibilities as the investigating judge and -- I mean, I -- she

8 may have been right. My point that I was making to her over several hours

9 in -- in quite heated circumstances was that what we were trying to avoid

10 was to flare up the situation anymore, and that I understood fully that it

11 was her job to get in and establish the cause of death of the people that

12 were by the -- whose bodies at that stage were in the mosque in Racak, but

13 we could help her do that without causing the fighting to flare up again,

14 if she would just allow us to help her.

15 JUDGE BONOMY: Was there actually someone in her company killed

16 in -- as a result of the fire?

17 THE WITNESS: Yes, sir. When she went in this time on I think the

18 Sunday afternoon, it ended up with one of the policemen being killed.

19 JUDGE BONOMY: Now we need to interrupt shortly, Mr. Marcussen.

20 Is this convenient or not?

21 MR. MARCUSSEN: Let me have one -- if Your Honours allow one

22 question relating to this --

23 JUDGE BONOMY: Yes.

24 MR. MARCUSSEN: -- and then we'll be finished with Racak.

25 Q. At paragraph 180 of your statement, which is at page 25, the

1 second-last paragraph, you mention this situation where Judge Marinkovic

2 goes into Racak with the MUP as an example of MUP-VJ coordination.

3 A. Yes.

4 Q. Could you explain that. She's going in with the MUP. Were there

5 any VJ involved as well?

6 A. I wasn't aware that there were any VJ involved in the place where

7 I was with her. It was a police station and everybody I could see was in

8 the police. The point was that from the moment she said, Right, we're

9 going in, it happened quite quickly. And for that to happen implied,

10 implied very firmly, that there was someone that she was talking to who

11 was in charge of the entire situation because the set-up was that the --

12 the VJ were on the hills and ridges overwatching the area, giving cover to

13 the police that were going to go in.

14 Now, to do that and to know when to open fire and when not to open

15 fire, there's got to be someone in charge. You can't do that by having a

16 vague sort of relationship. There's got to be someone who says, Cease

17 fire now or don't -- or open fire now, otherwise people get killed. I

18 mean, it's what coordination is about. So you couldn't possibly have

19 said, Okay, we're going in and do it quickly, unless there was an existing

20 state of command arrangement over the whole thing.

21 Q. And on that day, to your knowledge, did the VJ open fire?

22 A. Yes.

23 Q. Thank you.

24 JUDGE BONOMY: When you say that the VJ were on the hills and

25 ridges overwatching the area, giving cover to the police that were going

1 in, you're talking of overwatching the area of the village of Racak, are

2 you?

3 THE WITNESS: Yes.

4 JUDGE BONOMY: Did you see VJ on the hills and ridges overwatching

5 the area?

6 THE WITNESS: Yes.

7 JUDGE BONOMY: Thank you.

8 MR. MARCUSSEN: This may be a convenient time, Your Honour.

9 JUDGE BONOMY: We now need to break for lunch, Mr. Drewienkiewicz.

10 If you could withdraw again with the usher, we'll see you again at 1.45 --

11 in fact, at 1.50, I think, just to give the full hour.

12 [The witness stands down]

13 JUDGE BONOMY: So we shall resume at 1.50.

14 --- Luncheon recess taken at 12.49 p.m.

15 --- On resuming at 1.52 p.m.

16 MR. ACKERMAN: Your Honour.

17 JUDGE BONOMY: Mr. Ackerman.

18 MR. ACKERMAN: Can I very briefly add to the discussion regarding

19 the blue book P407 this morning, having done some additional research?

20 [The witness takes the stand]

21 JUDGE BONOMY: Yes.

22 MR. ACKERMAN: Just very quickly, it was suggested that because of

23 this rating system that it took on some authority that it otherwise might

24 not have, especially toward the end. Let me give you an example. At

25 page 943 they talk about reports from unnamed people that they saw dead

1 bodies and they call that fairly reliable and complies with behaviour

2 patterns so therefore possibly true. Now, there's no basis for that kind

3 of thing.

4 Another one, and it has conclusions, the abduction of Albanian

5 males of fighting age is most likely a gambit by Serb forces to prevent

6 the men from joining the KLA.

7 Now there is simply no evidence that would come even close to

8 supporting that in this case, and I don't think there will be. So I

9 really don't think this is a reliable document, and I think you ought to

10 very strictly apply your order on procedure and evidence, paragraph 6.

11 JUDGE BONOMY: In spite of Mr. Ackerman's desire to have the last

12 word, you're entitled to it, Mr. Marcussen, if you wish.

13 MR. MARCUSSEN: Well, fearing it can be an even longer afternoon

14 I'll have one crack at it.

15 Now I think the issues that Mr. Ackerman pointed out, I mean,

16 these sort of things go to weight, and it can be seen from the document

17 itself what kind of information the report is based on in the different

18 parts and that is exactly why we say it could be admitted because it is

19 plausible to assess the information and the basis in the report based on

20 the report itself, so it should be admitted.

21 JUDGE BONOMY: Well, as I said earlier, we'll consider the

22 position and tell you tomorrow morning. So you can carry on now with the

23 examination of Mr. Drewienkiewicz.

24 MR. MARCUSSEN: Thank you, Your Honour.

25 Q. General, I would like to ask you -- I guess we have partly covered

1 this, but I will just make sure that we've fully covered this issue. If

2 you wouldn't mind looking at paragraph 164 of your statement; that is on

3 page 23.

4 A. Yeah, got it.

5 Q. You describe -- we've already touched upon why it is that you

6 thought that the Podujevo operation and what was going on there was

7 provocation. But what do you mean when you say that the situation was

8 horrible? What was it?

9 A. Well, first of all, I think I would say that this is where -- this

10 is my state of mind in January, and maybe what was -- what I thought was

11 horrible in January was more commonplace later. So this was -- this was a

12 younger me looking at this. But it was -- the situation around Podujevo

13 was that complete hamlets were being depopulated and the inhabitants were

14 being driven from them, simply to deny the possibility of there being

15 anybody in there that could be -- could be seen as being a civilian as

16 opposed to a fighter, and all of -- it was widely reported in the media at

17 the time, and so this situation was being well publicised

18 internationally. And the whole thing was serving to escalate the

19 situation in a way that was not helpful to anybody in my view. And I just

20 felt it was the wrong way to be doing this, that a lot of it was tit for

21 tat; in other words, one side would do something which would be responded

22 to by the other side to a greater degree and the other side would come

23 back, and somebody had to break the cycle of violence, and this was my

24 view at the time.

25 And the situation in which we were having to appeal to everybody

1 to let us get through to move wounded people around, to extract corpses,

2 this was not what we had been sent down there to do. This was not what we

3 had felt the government of -- of the federal republic wanted us to do. We

4 just -- I just thought that it needed -- people needed to look at it from

5 how it was seen from the outside rather than in the context of day-to-day

6 provocation and to realise the damage that it was doing to the whole

7 process.

8 Q. Thank you. Now, moving again on to something else. In

9 paragraph 167, you -- well, beginning at 165 and then 166, 167, you talk

10 about the incident at Rogovo, and I believe you were there yourself to see

11 the scene.

12 A. Yes.

13 Q. I showed it earlier but I would like to again call up

14 Exhibit P673, please. And I think you already commented that you were

15 familiar with this report because you were at Rogovo yourself.

16 A. Yes.

17 Q. What I would like to show you is page 3 of the document, please.

18 Yeah, if we can scroll a little more up.

19 Here is a list of victims and sort of a brief description of how

20 the scene looked. Does that look correct to you?

21 A. Yes. I mean, that 20-something, yes, yes, and one dead Serb

22 policeman.

23 Q. Serb -- yes.

24 MR. MARCUSSEN: Sorry, Your Honours, this is one of the documents

25 I mentioned earlier that we would like to tender then. The specific part

1 we are relying on is the description of how things looked at Rogovo.

2 Q. Now, I would like to ask you something else about a related

3 document if we could call up P646 --

4 MR. MARCUSSEN: Oh, I see my learned friend is on --

5 JUDGE BONOMY: Mr. Visnjic.

6 MR. VISNJIC: [Interpretation] Your Honour, I wanted to draw your

7 attention to the toponym being Rogovo, R-o-g-o-v-o. Rugova is another

8 toponym, another place name, just so that we can avoid any further

9 clarification [as interpreted]. Perhaps we can have it clarified in the

10 transcript.

11 JUDGE BONOMY: Thank you. It should be Rogovo, of course.

12 I was going to ask you just one rather minor question about what

13 are described as a group of policemen wearing light grey coveralls. What

14 is a coverall?

15 THE WITNESS: Like a boiler suit.

16 JUDGE BONOMY: Like an overall?

17 THE WITNESS: Yes.

18 JUDGE BONOMY: Thank you. No, that's all I wanted to know.

19 Thanks.

20 MR. MARCUSSEN: Let me see if we have -- right. So this exhibit

21 is an attachment to the general's statement. Now maybe I should ask -- my

22 admission earlier, when I requested that the general's statement be

23 admitted, I was sort of thinking that along with it went all the

24 attachments to the statement, but it might not be so obvious as they have

25 actually been given separate exhibit numbers. So I just wanted to clarify

1 this, my request that the statement plus the related attachments be

2 admitted, and that is one of the attachments we are now -- to clarify that

3 point.

4 I can give the exhibit numbers so -- for easy reference. The

5 attachments have P73, P418, P616, P634 to P641, then there's a gap, and

6 then we have P643 to P651.

7 JUDGE BONOMY: Is there any objection to following that course?

8 No. Very well. We'll admit these as part of the statement.

9 MR. MARCUSSEN: Thank you.

10 Now, could we go to the next page of this exhibit, please.

11 Q. And just one thing for clarification. There are a number of

12 asterisks in the document at different of places. Do you know why that

13 is?

14 A. Because the words couldn't be deciphered from these -- the

15 handwritten scrawl of the young man that was taking notes for me.

16 Q. Thank you. Now, in --

17 MR. MARCUSSEN: Then I ask if we could go to the next page,

18 please. And could we zoom down -- could we zoom in just at the last part

19 which says: "DZ, I'm not going to mention Racak," and that part here.

20 Well, I guess the sensitivity of Racak is obvious.

21 Q. But then you say: "So can I confirm that you agree to a joint

22 investigation?"

23 And General Loncar responds: "Yes, absolutely."

24 Was a joint investigation ever carried out?

25 A. No.

1 Q. Would it have been possible to carry out a joint investigation?

2 A. Yes. We were desperate for one.

3 Q. In your view, was a proper investigation carried out where you,

4 KVM, was involved in it, but was a proper investigation carried out?

5 A. No. It absolutely was not.

6 Q. And why do you say that?

7 A. Because it was all over so quickly. The investigating magistrate

8 was in and out of the scene of crime within about two hours, and this was

9 a huge area, ankle-deep in mud and water and slush, in which there had

10 been a very major exchange of fire and 20-something people had been

11 killed. It would have taken days to have worked out -- taken all the

12 evidence from that scene of crime if a proper investigation had been

13 carried out. And it would have involved probably draining the area to

14 find out where all the bullet -- spent bullets were, where the bullets had

15 gone to. It would have involved a proper forensic examination of the

16 dead. None of that was carried out at all. It could not possibly have

17 been carried out in two hours by one person.

18 Q. Thank you.

19 JUDGE BONOMY: What would be the appropriate action to take when

20 you come across armed KLA groups like this and you are the forces of law

21 and order?

22 THE WITNESS: You would engage them -- well, you might invite them

23 to surrender, but assuming they don't you would certainly engage them.

24 And I would expect that there would be a fire-fight if they were all KLA,

25 and anyone who was innocent would immediately make it clear that he was

1 not part of this and would probably surrender. And after a brief exchange

2 of fire, a number of them, the ones that resisted, would have been injured

3 and down, and the remainder would be standing there with their hands in

4 the air. And at that point, they are then taken away and charged. What

5 was astonishing was that everybody was dead.

6 JUDGE BONOMY: Thank you.

7 Mr. Marcussen.

8 MR. MARCUSSEN:

9 Q. Now, in paragraph 174 of your statement and also then again later

10 on towards the end, I think it's paragraph 208, you touch on the issue of

11 whether or not there was a pre-existing master plan to expel the Albanian

12 population from Kosovo. Could there have been a plan that you did not

13 know about?

14 A. Yes.

15 MR. IVETIC: Your Honours --

16 MR. ACKERMAN: Your Honour, that -- I'm sorry. That question just

17 absolutely calls for pure speculation. That couldn't possibly -- the

18 answer could not possibly be evidence.

19 JUDGE BONOMY: Now, Mr. Marcussen, what was the reason for this

20 question, bearing in mind that I think it's already been answered in a

21 different way to the effect that the witness didn't know?

22 MR. MARCUSSEN: Yeah. Well, I -- all I was getting at --

23 JUDGE BONOMY: I could have given you that answer.

24 MR. MARCUSSEN: If that is clear to everyone that that's the

25 position, then I don't need --

1 JUDGE BONOMY: I think we can move to the next question.

2 MR. MARCUSSEN:

3 Q. Paragraph 176 you talk about touring the border zone with Kotur

4 and I guess other people. Why were you in the border zone with Kotur?

5 A. This -- this was while Rambouillet was on, and there was a number

6 of discussions that were going on at Rambouillet, and one was about how in

7 any future settlement the border zone was to be kept secure. And there

8 was some proposals floating around Rambouillet that suggested that the

9 border zone was somehow something that could be policed very easily. And

10 I was not convinced that this was the case because I knew it to be very

11 rugged country. And in that context, as well as needing to get out and

12 see what was happening generally, I agreed that I would go around the area

13 west of Prizren with Colonel Kotur and he would show me what it looked

14 like, to confirm what I indeed was pretty sure of, that this was not an

15 area that could be -- that could be policed by a few gendarmarie, that if

16 you wanted to seal this border it was going to be -- going to require a

17 very significant effort, which in turn would translate into a very

18 significant police or army presence, which was the thing that was being

19 discussed at Rambouillet at the time. So that was the context.

20 Q. Were there, to your knowledge, at Rambouillet any considerations

21 given to limiting the number of VJ or MUP that could be in the border

22 zone?

23 A. Yes. And the number that was -- the numbers that were being

24 talked about were simply unrealistic and at the request of the folk in

25 Rambouillet, we did a calculation of what we thought would be a reasonable

1 force to carry out surveillance of this border zone, firstly with and then

2 without electronic means. And this was important because at the time

3 Serbia had no access to electronic means, which would have made their life

4 easier in this respect.

5 JUDGE BONOMY: Are you saying that the proposals coming from the

6 internationals involved in the negotiations were unrealistically low?

7 THE WITNESS: Yes, sir.

8 JUDGE BONOMY: All right.

9 MR. MARCUSSEN:

10 Q. Did you offer to the Serb authorities to make an assessment or did

11 they ask you or how did it come about?

12 A. We made an assessment -- we made an assessment. I asked the Serbs

13 to help me go and look at this area, so that I could provide the most

14 credible assessment to the international community in Rambouillet because

15 they had already asked me to provide an assessment. And I said, Well, I

16 would like to go and look at it on the ground, and then I'll make the

17 assessment, and that's what we did.

18 Q. And I'd like to show you an attachment to your statement DZ7, and

19 that is P640, if we would be able to call that up.

20 MR. MARCUSSEN: If we could go to the second page of this. Thank

21 you.

22 Q. General, can you see this or do we need to zoom --

23 A. Yeah, that looks very -- very familiar --

24 THE INTERPRETER: The interpreters are kindly asking the speakers

25 to make pauses between questions and answers. Thank you.

1 THE WITNESS: Can I point out that the date of the 21st of June,

2 2000 is the date that the particularly complicated machine I had at the

3 time printed it off, not the date that it was initiated.

4 MR. MARCUSSEN:

5 Q. When about is this document from; do you think?

6 A. It was from mid-February because that's when we looked at this.

7 So this is the product of the visit to the border with Colonel Kotur and

8 some thought after it.

9 Q. And do you remember how many personnel the Serb authorities

10 thought were needed to guard the border?

11 A. I seem to remember it was in the order of -- it was several

12 thousand, I mean at least 5.000, and possibly more, and my inclination was

13 to broadly agree with them.

14 MR. MARCUSSEN: Maybe we could just see the second page of this

15 exhibit.

16 Q. Which I think confirms paragraph 9, the VJ estimated 6 to 7.000

17 people being needed, and KVM coming to something in the same order in

18 paragraph 15?

19 A. Yes.

20 Q. Now, you also describe -- you describe -- you describe Kotur

21 exposing contempt for the Albanians in Kosovo. Was there anything else

22 that happened that day that gave you this impression of contempt being

23 exposed by Kotur?

24 A. Yes. We went into one of the villages on -- up against the

25 border, about 2 kilometres from the border, and we all arrived in the

1 village and we were about eight vehicles, probably, so we were something

2 of an event.

3 The head man of the village, who was a Kosovar Albanian, was

4 called for. He was not present, so the next in seniority appeared, and we

5 all moved into the meeting house of the village. In moving into the

6 meeting house, I started to take -- remove my boots, as I understand to be

7 the custom, and Colonel Kotur said, You really don't need to do that, you

8 know. And I said, Well, where I come from, this is what you do. And so I

9 told my people to make sure they took off their boots and went into the

10 meeting house in stocking feet and sat around the wall as -- as is the

11 custom.

12 Colonel Kotur went into the meeting house in his boots, and

13 instead of sitting down on the floor, demanded that a chair be brought for

14 him on which he then sat with the -- the senior Kosovar Albanian squatting

15 on his haunches at the -- at the foot of the chair rather like a medieval

16 peasant, and I thought it was a particularly unfortunate way of dealing

17 with these people.

18 Q. Do you remember --

19 A. And remarked so. Sorry.

20 Q. Sorry. Do you remember the name of the village?

21 A. I could find it from my copious notes, but not off the top of my

22 head.

23 Q. Okay. I would like to move -- jump again, and this time I'm

24 jumping to the end of paragraph 181 at the top of page 26. There you use

25 the expression "blue on blue." "Otherwise there's a strong risk of 'blue

1 on blue' contact."

2 What is blue-on-blue contact?

3 A. Traditionally on our tactical maps friendly forces were depicted

4 in blue and enemy forces in red. And so if you shoot at and hit your own

5 troops, that's a blue-on-blue contact, and obviously it's to be avoided.

6 Q. And so you are explaining in this part of your statement that you

7 think there would have been coordination between the MUP and the VJ

8 because otherwise there was a risk of basically Serb forces firing on

9 themselves?

10 A. Yes. Particularly because there were very disparate levels of

11 training involved here and of course the VJ consisted on conscripts who

12 are generally less well-trained than professional troops, and therefore

13 it's very important that you have very, very unambiguous rules when you're

14 using conscripts.

15 Q. Now, how about if you use reserve forces or maybe local police or

16 something like that, how would you avoid blue-on-blue -- that kind of a

17 scenario?

18 A. Well, you -- the less well trained and -- people are and the less

19 good communications they've got, the less strong chain of command they've

20 got, the more risk you introduce into these incidents. The best way of

21 doing it is not to have any of those and to stick to your regulars. And

22 every time you bring in others of these elements, you -- you introduce

23 risk which you can only get rid of by lengthy briefings and putting people

24 into a position and saying, Right, don't move from here. This is your

25 left of arc, this is your right of arc, if anything moves outside of

1 there, under no circumstances do you open fire and don't do anything until

2 I tell you. And if somebody says, Stop, for God's sake stop. It's got to

3 be really simple.

4 Q. Thank you. In paragraph 190 you describe seeing some MUP units

5 seemed to be more motived, fitter, sort of more professional unit. Now,

6 did you ever learn the name of these units?

7 A. No, not specifically.

8 Q. Well, I'd like if we could see Exhibit P2538.

9 MR. MARCUSSEN: And I think if we could go to page 4. I think I'd

10 like to the usher to assist us also with the ELMO.

11 Q. General, this is a picture I believe you provided to us. It comes

12 from a publication.

13 MR. MARCUSSEN: I would like the ELMO to be turned on, please.

14 Q. General, do you have the original of the publication?

15 A. Yes, I do. Here it is.

16 MR. MARCUSSEN: Maybe we could place that on the ELMO.

17 What I propose we do, Your Honours, is in due course we replace

18 the page that is shown now in e-court with a colour scan of what is being

19 shown on the ELMO now.

20 Q. Now, you're referring sometimes to a webbing. Is that something

21 we can see on this picture?

22 A. Yes. That's the web equipment around the body of the policeman

23 with the helmet on, and indeed on the body of the policeman with the hat

24 on.

25 Q. Did the policemen that you saw that day, did they look like these

1 two gentlemen?

2 A. They had similar webbing. They were wearing camouflage green

3 uniforms, not dark blue, and they looked a darn sight smarter than this

4 pair. They were shaven and their bearing was what I would call more

5 upright and alert.

6 So this picture I think is at Malisevo in about December or

7 January. But the webbing is the same sort of webbing.

8 Q. Thank you.

9 MR. MARCUSSEN: Thank you for that. We are done with the ELMO for

10 now. We will need it in a bit for another page in that. You can leave

11 the thing there. We will get back to that.

12 Q. At paragraph 188, so two paragraphs back, you say that at least

13 one new VJ unit came into Kosovo on the 16th of March. How do you know

14 that it was not just some new T-72 tanks that came in but actually a unit?

15 A. Because the T-72 is a completely different tank to the T-55, which

16 was the -- all of the tanks in Kosovo were T-55s. This is an older tank

17 with a different set of duties for each crew member, and the T-72 is a

18 completely different tank to operate. And so you couldn't take the

19 existing crew, a T-55, and tell them to jump into a T-72 and operate it.

20 Many things in the way you operate that tank are completely different.

21 For instance, the number of people in the crew is different, and so the

22 duties of each crew member are different. And of course when you're

23 dealing with conscripts, you train them on one specific piece of equipment

24 because that's all you have time to do. And so the idea of replacing

25 T-72s by T-55s as though you were slipping out of a pair of brown shoes

1 into a pair of black shoes with conscripts is very difficult for me to

2 comprehend.

3 Q. Was it a violation of existing agreements to introduce a new unit,

4 a new armoured unit like this on the 16th of March?

5 A. Yes, because the -- the original agreement going back to October

6 of 1998 had required that the units in Kosovo be at the level that they'd

7 been at in the spring of 1998. And the arms control declaration, which we

8 had legitimately, for the -- for the area of Kosovo showed that the only

9 tanks there were T-55. There were no T-72s declared under the arms

10 control -- the various arms control agreements inside Kosovo.

11 Q. Thank you.

12 JUDGE BONOMY: Did the base-line also include the figures for the

13 number of tanks?

14 THE WITNESS: Yes, it did.

15 MR. MARCUSSEN:

16 Q. At this period in time, so around the middle of March, 16th of

17 March, was it your view that the situation had changed and that

18 international agreements were not so important anymore?

19 A. Yes, because it would have been possible and indeed may well have

20 taken place that a unit that did not have such recognisable equipment

21 could have been added into Kosovo and we might not have known. But to see

22 such highly recognisable different equipment as a T-72 was something that

23 could not be -- could not be hidden, and it was recognised as such and

24 attention was drawn to it.

25 Q. I'd like to show you Exhibit P2533, please.

1 Can you see this on your screen?

2 A. Yes.

3 Q. Do you recognise this?

4 A. This looks like my handwriting.

5 Q. Do you remember making this entry, or is it actually your entry?

6 A. Yes, it's a note to myself.

7 Q. It's a note to yourself.

8 A. And I'm sure it's out of my -- out of one of my notebooks. It's

9 probably out of notebook 6 if we are being specific, and it would have --

10 by saying it was 8.00, it was almost certainly made during the 8.00

11 meeting that we had with Walker and Keller and all the other deputy heads

12 around the table at which we exchanged views and concluded what the

13 situation of the mission was. So this would be a mix of the notes that I

14 made for myself to give to the other members and the conclusions that were

15 reached around the table.

16 Q. And around the middle of the page you say "distinct change of

17 Belgrade attitude." And then you list three points.

18 A. Yes.

19 Q. Does that reflect your recollection of the --

20 A. Yes, the fact that they might have slipped units in with the same

21 equipment as everybody else and we might not have noticed, so they're no

22 longer reinforcing by stealth, which we suspected, but they are now

23 reinforcing overtly and the fact that the change to the border zone refers

24 to an official decision emanating from Belgrade to widen the border zone

25 from 5 kilometres to 10 kilometres.

1 Q. Thank you. And then at the bottom of your -- of the page, you

2 have a note saying that there were 10.000 internally displaced persons in

3 Mitrovica. Was that something that was created around that time, the 17th

4 of March, or was it something that had happened earlier?

5 A. That -- well, if you look, you see we've now gone to 9.00, so that

6 would have been the next meeting. And that would have come out of the

7 briefings that were given to all of us at that stage. And the fact that

8 they're now reporting 10.000 internally displaced people is seen as the

9 current situation, which would have been different to that days and weeks

10 earlier because it was a particular bone of contention within the

11 international community how many people were displaced, were on the road.

12 And it was an issue of some discussion.

13 Q. And why was it difficult -- well, was it difficult to find out how

14 many internally displaced persons there were?

15 A. There were a lot of different reports, and we were not keen to --

16 to give veracity to reports that we could not see on the ground. And we

17 at this stage generally found it difficult to find that number of people

18 in the places that it was said.

19 Now, there are a number of reasons for that, but we generally had

20 difficulty in saying yes there are 10.000 or 5.000. There were moments

21 when I went looking for these people, and I rarely was able to find the

22 sort of numbers that were being described.

23 Q. Sorry. Why was it difficult to estimate or determine the number

24 of internally displaced persons?

25 A. Well, what tended to happen was that if there was military or

1 police action in a particular area, it's quite possible that the

2 inhabitants of that village would -- would decide to leave for reasons of

3 safety, but they wouldn't form themselves into a column and march down the

4 road. They would go to the first place where they felt safe. And if they

5 had relatives in the next village or the next village on, then they would

6 drop in to those relatives who would open their houses to them. And so

7 the further you were from the scene of some fighting, the less people you

8 could find on the road because they would generally have found shelter as

9 close to -- to their point of departure as possible -- in the first place

10 they felt safe. And of course many of them would be related to people in

11 the next village.

12 Q. Thank you --

13 A. So it was just very difficult to verify these numbers, and we

14 tried not to just repeat them blindly.

15 Q. Thank you. You -- the KVM then evacuated Kosovo on the 20th of

16 March. When were you told that you were going to evacuate?

17 A. I think it was late in the afternoon of the 18th.

18 Q. And so you evacuated on the 20th, and where did the KVM go?

19 A. We drove out into Macedonia. We paused in Macedonia to make sure

20 we had everybody, because obviously there were nearly 1400 of us and about

21 500 vehicles. And then we went, according to a pre-arranged plan, mainly

22 down to Lake Ohrid where there was sufficient accommodation to put

23 everybody up.

24 Q. When you were -- had evacuated --

25 JUDGE BONOMY: I think you actually said there was a pre-arranged

1 location - is that right? - rather than town.

2 THE WITNESS: Yes.

3 JUDGE BONOMY: I'm looking at the transcript, "a pre-arranged

4 town," but ...

5 THE WITNESS: No. Lake Ohrid had a complex of large hotels around

6 it, and we lobbed into there -- sorry, we settled into there. But we'd

7 worked out where we had to go. We knew how many beds we needed.

8 MR. MARCUSSEN:

9 Q. Now, after you had evacuated, did you go up to the border zone?

10 A. Yes. About a hundred people stayed up in Skopije at the start in

11 order to remain close to the seat of power in Macedonia in order to do

12 diplomatic business and to be ready to go back in because we were all

13 convinced that we were going to be turning around and going back in within

14 a small number of days. So about a hundred of us stayed in that area, and

15 as -- as events unfolded on the border, we were there straight away.

16 Q. What did you see at the border? Can you describe what you saw up

17 there?

18 A. The border was specifically the main crossing point from Kosovo

19 into -- into northern Macedonia, and it was, therefore, the main point

20 into -- the main point that people would come into Macedonia from Serbia.

21 And there rapidly built up large numbers of what were then refugees who

22 had been ejected or had themselves elected to leave -- to leave Kosovo,

23 and hence to leave Serbia.

24 Q. I'd like you to have a look at Exhibit P2541, please.

25 MR. MARCUSSEN: Zoom in on this.

1 Q. General, can you explain the Court what this document is.

2 A. This is a briefing document made for me by all of the staff which

3 was a summary of what we understood to be going on inside Kosovo at the

4 time based on all of the contacts that we had made with people by mobile

5 phone or by talking to people as they came over the border.

6 Q. What was this document used for?

7 A. I was ordered back to the UK for 24 hours by my minister of

8 foreign affairs so that I could brief him at first hand on what was going

9 on. And so I got my people to produce the best summary they could of what

10 they knew to be going on while discounting the things that they felt were

11 not able to be verified. And so everything on here had been got from more

12 than one source so as to eliminate the wild reporting that was very --

13 very rife at the time. We were trying to get the most balanced view that

14 we could of what was going on. There was a lot more wild stuff than this

15 going on. This was the stuff we felt was verifiable in terms of the

16 reliability of the source and the credibility of the event.

17 Q. Thank you. Now, I'd like to show you the next exhibit on our list

18 which is P2542. You might remember this document while we are getting it

19 up. It's -- I believe it's a press statement that you gave or your note

20 for a statement you gave after your meeting with the foreign secretary is

21 now [indiscernible]. Is that correct?

22 A. Yes, that is correct.

23 Q. In this briefing, if we look at pages -- at the bottom of page 3

24 or maybe we can just go to the last page, actually. Sorry.

25 There you refer to some numbers of refugees. Am I correct that K

1 stands for kilo, a thousand?

2 A. Yes, that's correct. We were at this stage measuring refugees in

3 thousands. We had -- obviously when we said 7.000 we had seen 7.000.

4 Q. So you also consider these refugee numbers as being a correct

5 reflection of what was going on on the ground?

6 A. Yes.

7 Q. Did you return to Kosovo later on in 1999?

8 A. Yes. I accompanied the NATO force when it re-entered Kosovo on

9 D-Day.

10 Q. And what date was that?

11 A. I think it was the 13th of June, but it may have been the 12th. I

12 think, actually, it was the 12th.

13 Q. When you returned, did you see any attempts at destroying

14 documents, mostly ID documents?

15 A. Yes. I came across a smoldering, what I thought was a bonfire,

16 outside the main police headquarters on the evening of D+1, and I was in

17 company with Colonel Richard Ciaglinski. And we stood looking at this

18 smoldering bonfire, which was about 3 feet high, and was all ash on the

19 outside. And it took us a few moments to realise that this was actually a

20 pile of documents that was burning down, and I think it was only when one

21 or other of us kicked it that we -- we realised that in the middle of this

22 were a number of identity -- it was entirely comprised of identity

23 documents that were being burned.

24 Q. I'd like to show you a photograph to make sure that we're not

25 getting something --

1 MR. MARCUSSEN: Oh, sorry, Mr. Ivetic is on his feet.

2 JUDGE BONOMY: Mr. Ivetic.

3 MR. IVETIC: A couple of points, Your Honour.

4 First of all, I'm looking through the statement given by this

5 witness and I'm unable to find this testimony being disclosed anywhere, as

6 a preliminary point.

7 JUDGE BONOMY: Yes. And?

8 MR. IVETIC: And with respect to the exhibit in question that is

9 now I believe being tendered to the witness, that was only disclosed to us

10 on Friday, not previously, and I would object because there's been no

11 foundation as to where exactly this publication comes from. And I'm a

12 little bit confused as to why it was not disclosed to us prior to the

13 cross-examination of Colonel Ciaglinski because I would have utilised it

14 at that point in time, and I believe now I will want to be calling

15 Mr. Ciaglinski back here.

16 JUDGE BONOMY: Mr. Marcussen --

17 MR. SEPENUK: Excuse me, Your Honour, just one quick addition to

18 what Mr. Ivetic said.

19 The text of 2538 we respectfully suggest is certainly not

20 admissible. It's another question about the two pictures, which I don't

21 think Your Honour wants to hear argument about now, but I think the

22 text -- and perhaps Mr. Marcussen will voluntarily withdraw it because I

23 don't think it has any business being in this case. I see him nodding in

24 the affirmative.

25 JUDGE BONOMY: Yes, Mr. Marcussen.

1 MR. MARCUSSEN: Yes, we don't intend to rely on the text of the

2 document and that probably shouldn't have been included in the exhibit in

3 the first place.

4 MR. SEPENUK: That will be withdrawn?

5 MR. MARCUSSEN: So we can withdraw those pages.

6 MR. SEPENUK: I'm sorry, Your Honour, one other thing before we

7 get too far.

8 2541 no objection was made when the witness was testifying, but I

9 do think that's the DZ bullet points of 1 April 1999. It's sort of a mini

10 As Seen, As Told, and I would respectfully note an objection to that

11 exhibit.

12 MR. MARCUSSEN: Your Honour, I think it's different from As Seen,

13 As Told --

14 JUDGE BONOMY: Well, just a second until I note what was in there.

15 This is a document which is not one of the attached exhibits, is

16 it?

17 MR. MARCUSSEN: That's correct, Your Honour.

18 JUDGE BONOMY: Well, let's have P2541 up again because I can't

19 remember the bullet point that's being referred to.

20 MR. MARCUSSEN: This was the --

21 JUDGE BONOMY: Can this be enlarged a little so that it can be

22 read?

23 Now, Mr. Sepenuk, what is the point that you're taking?

24 MR. SEPENUK: Well, the point is that most of the items described

25 in here, Your Honour, come from other unnamed, unverifiable sources,

1 obviously not under oath, and they're being reported by General DZ. And I

2 think it's totally unreliable and, as I say, akin to the As Seen, As Told

3 situation.

4 JUDGE BONOMY: Well --

5 MR. SEPENUK: Particularly looking at, for example "current

6 situation, human interest refugee stories."

7 JUDGE BONOMY: Well, this objection comes too late and your

8 arguments will need to be reflected on a question of weight because the

9 witness gave evidence that this was verifiable information that had been

10 condensed down to verifiable information, and on that basis the Chamber

11 has followed its normal practice in the absence of objection it's been

12 admitted. So it's now for you to deal with it as a question of weight.

13 MR. SEPENUK: Thank you.

14 JUDGE BONOMY: So far as the other matter is concerned there's a

15 question of disclosure raised, Mr. Marcussen.

16 MR. MARCUSSEN: The document was provided to the Defence if not

17 the day we got the document, then the day after. As soon as we got this

18 document from the general, we provided a copy to the Defence. So we have

19 done this as quickly as we could.

20 The general mentioned during proofing that he might have some

21 pages that could be of assistance. He very kindly copied these pages and

22 sent them to us. So we simply didn't have them formerly disclosed to the

23 Office of the Prosecutor.

24 Now, with respect to the pile of documents, I'm unsure about

25 whether or not these documents are actually the same as the one that the

1 witness saw. So there might not even be an issue. And actually what I

2 intended to do was to try to find out whether or not the picture is --

3 JUDGE BONOMY: You mean not the same as Ciaglinski saw?

4 MR. MARCUSSEN: As the general saw --

5 JUDGE BONOMY: Oh, I see. Sorry.

6 MR. MARCUSSEN: And I'm under the impression they're actually not

7 the same, in which case we should clarify that and then there is no issue

8 maybe.

9 JUDGE BONOMY: Well, yes and no.

10 Is your objection, Mr. Ivetic, only to the text or is it also to

11 the photographs?

12 MR. IVETIC: Well, the objection to the text is I think the same

13 as Mr. Sepenuk stated. The text of the partial document that was given to

14 us has nothing to do with these photographs and talks about --

15 JUDGE BONOMY: Well, that's been withdrawn --

16 MR. IVETIC: Right. So that's --

17 JUDGE BONOMY: -- and the question of re-calling a witness is a

18 matter for you -- for you to raise. But the second issue, is your

19 objection also to the photographs being used to clarify the position?

20 MR. IVETIC: Correct. And the initial objection was to the point

21 that there has been no disclosed testimony of this witness relating to

22 seeing any pile of documents, and therefore I'm a little confused as to

23 where this comes up all of a sudden. And then of course, as I indicated,

24 this -- I don't know whether the witness took this photograph -- he's

25 definitely not pictured in it, so I don't know how he can testify as to

1 what it shows absent to one of those two items, because otherwise the

2 proper person to ask about this picture would be Colonel Ciaglinski, since

3 he's the only one I see in it.

4 JUDGE BONOMY: Yeah. Thank you.

5 MR. MARCUSSEN: I'm -- sorry.

6 [Trial Chamber confers]

7 JUDGE BONOMY: In the overall context of the case, we consider

8 this evidence to be rather a matter of detail. It would be no surprise

9 that it would not be particularly referred to in a 65 ter summary. The --

10 it's unfortunate, as you've constantly heard me commenting, that the

11 Prosecution have not carried out investigations in this case at a stage

12 which would have enabled them to identify this sort of thing earlier and

13 disclose it. But it doesn't seem to us that any prejudice will be caused

14 in relation to the use of this -- these particular photographs, and

15 therefore we'll permit them to be presented to the witness.

16 Mr. Marcussen.

17 MR. MARCUSSEN:

18 Q. General, I believe you know which photograph we are talking about,

19 a photograph of a gentleman sitting among some ID documents. Without

20 looking at the document, are you able to tell us whether or not this is --

21 the pile in that photograph is the pile of ID documents that you saw?

22 A. I am almost positive it is not. I am almost a hundred per cent

23 positive it is not because of the background.

24 Q. So we will withdraw that from -- that's what I was actually

25 intending to clarify.

1 MR. MARCUSSEN: So we will withdraw that as well from this

2 exhibit. So what remains is one photograph of a MUP soldier and the rest

3 of that exhibit is out.

4 JUDGE BONOMY: Well, we can leave that dead-end and proceed to

5 another route, Mr. Marcussen.

6 MR. MARCUSSEN: Well, actually, on this high note the Prosecution

7 ends its direct examination.

8 JUDGE BONOMY: Thank you.

9 On the question of the police headquarters in Pristina that we

10 thought we were about to have a look at, in your statement at paragraph 23

11 you refer to two police headquarters in Pristina, the public police

12 headquarters and then the main police headquarters.

13 THE WITNESS: Yes.

14 JUDGE BONOMY: These were two separate buildings, were they?

15 THE WITNESS: Yes, they were. The building outside which I came

16 across the pile of smoldering documents was the public headquarters, not

17 what I could call the administrative and operational headquarters.

18 JUDGE BONOMY: Is that a building that was damaged by bombing?

19 THE WITNESS: Yes. Most of them were.

20 [Trial Chamber and registrar confer]

21 JUDGE BONOMY: Mr. O'Sullivan, can you tell me the order in which

22 questions will be asked?

23 MR. O'SULLIVAN: Yes, Your Honour. General Pavkovic,

24 Mr. Sainovic, General Ojdanic, General Lazarevic, General Lukic, and

25 Mr. Milutinovic.

1 [Trial Chamber and registrar confer]

2 JUDGE BONOMY: I know that this evidence is made up of two

3 elements: The oral evidence of the witness and the statement and

4 associated exhibits. But there is much in the statement that's not of

5 prime importance in the overall context of the case. By the end of

6 tomorrow, cross-examination and evidence in chief will have amounted to

7 about very similar times. It may be that we should have most of it done,

8 if not all of it done, by then, depending on how things are focused and

9 depending on what we decide about the document that we haven't yet dealt

10 with, the blue book. But I think you should proceed on the assumption at

11 the moment that you don't need to go into that. It will be clearly

12 directed in the opposite direction first thing tomorrow if it is

13 otherwise. So let's see how we can get on with focused cross-examination.

14 Mr. Ackerman.

15 MR. ACKERMAN: Your Honours, it's my understanding that the -- the

16 Prosecutor has two witnesses this week, and in anticipation that the

17 cross-examination of this witness would be fairly long, and I suppose if

18 we speed up with this witness then, we're going to finish early and get

19 some time off. But I think there's important stuff that a lot of people

20 want to deal with with this witness. I intend, on the other hand, to be

21 fairly -- fairly brief with regard to this witness, I think.

22 JUDGE BONOMY: Good. Let's start.

23 Cross-examination by Mr. Ackerman:

24 Q. General, my name's John Ackerman. I represent General Pavkovic in

25 this case. Good afternoon.

1 A. Good afternoon.

2 Q. I want to talk to you first about some of the testimony you've

3 given today. At page 65 of your evidence today - and you'll remember this

4 because it was just a few moments ago - you were talking about the

5 harassment of Albanians by -- primarily by Serb police, I think, and

6 how -- how they would just harass them over and over and over. And the

7 question I have of you was -- is that it's true, is it not, that the KLA

8 was similarly engaged in the harassment of Serbian civilians?

9 A. Yes.

10 Q. In fact -- actually, more than harassment.

11 MR. ACKERMAN: Let's look at Exhibit P444, please.

12 Q. First of all, I take it you will recognise that as an official

13 document from the OSCE.

14 A. Yes, it's -- it's one that I had made, yes.

15 Q. If you --

16 MR. ACKERMAN: If we go to the -- I think it's the fourth page of

17 that document; it's got 3069 is the number at the top. Yes, it's the

18 fourth page.

19 Q. "Incidents of kidnap and abduction continue." Contains this kind

20 of information: "On 27th February, three Serbian men were abducted in the

21 Prizren region. On 27 February, two Serb brothers were abducted near the

22 village of Velika Hoca south of Orahovac. The KLA first admitted to

23 holding the men but then distanced themselves from the incident. One of

24 the hostages was beaten to death by the KLA. The other abducted person

25 was released alive but having been severely beaten. 3rd March, two Serb

1 civilians shot and killed by the KLA at a check-point in the village of

2 Mijalic located between on Prizren and Vucitrn. On 9th March, Prizren

3 regional centre reported that an Albanian from Tirana was abducted by a

4 group of masked men wearing black uniforms with KLA insignia. The police

5 said the Albanian was a civilian working as a document clerk in the

6 Prizren police station. The KLA indirectly confirmed their involvement

7 and the OSCE started negotiations to secure his release."

8 So not only were they harassing, they were killing and beating

9 Serb civilians, weren't they?

10 A. Yes.

11 THE INTERPRETER: Could the speakers kindly make pauses between

12 questions and answers for the sake of the interpreters. Thank you very

13 much.

14 MR. ACKERMAN:

15 Q. At page 73 of the transcript today, it's I think at line 21, you

16 were being asked about basically your view of the way that the Serb forces

17 were approaching the problem of the KLA. And you used this language that

18 the -- the -- maybe not exactly this language, but that their retaliation

19 was the best recruiting sergeant for the KLA.

20 A. Yes.

21 Q. It's true, isn't it, that if you just look at our experience in

22 the world with anti-terrorist operations, most frequently any

23 anti-terrorist operation is a good recruiting sergeant for the terrorists,

24 isn't it?

25 A. No, not necessarily. It depends on the way that it's conducted

1 and the way it's described and the overall sense of justice and obedience

2 to the laws that is carried out by the forces of the state. There are two

3 standards here.

4 Q. Well, when you go after --

5 JUDGE BONOMY: Mr. Ackerman --

6 MR. ACKERMAN: Yes.

7 JUDGE BONOMY: Just one moment. You're both quite quickly in on

8 top of the end of the preceding speaker and we have an interpretation

9 problem now. It was working very well with Mr. Marcussen and

10 Mr. Drewienkiewicz, and it would be helpful if you both observed a pause

11 just to allow the interpretation to catch up. Thank you.

12 MR. ACKERMAN:

13 Q. When you go after terrorists, no matter how you do it, it tends to

14 encourage other people to join them. Now, if you can find an exception

15 somewhere in the modern world to that proposition, maybe you can tell us

16 what it is. But I'm thinking of the Russians in Chechnya, I'm thinking of

17 the UK and the US in Iraq, which has been a great recruiting poster for

18 al-Qaeda, I'm thinking of the UK in Northern Ireland, which did a pretty

19 good job of recruiting for the IRA for a while. Can you come up with an

20 example in the modern world where restraint has lessened terrorist

21 activity?

22 A. I don't think I would characterise the operations in Northern

23 Ireland as being in any way similar to what we're looking at here. I

24 would strongly refute that. I think that -- I don't think we're here to

25 discuss Northern Ireland, but I am here to discuss what I saw on the

1 ground and my reaction to it. And I'm quite clear that there is a

2 different standard for an insurgent operation that is fighting against the

3 organs of a state, for whatever reasons, and the way that the organs of

4 the state respond to it. And if they descend to the same level, then they

5 delegitimatise themselves, and I think that that's what we teach in the

6 military academies and which we attempt, as best we can, to follow, not

7 always successfully.

8 Q. Well, you didn't answer my question, but you are trying to

9 legitimatise terrorists by calling them insurgents, and the KLA terrorists

10 certainly were not insurgents, and we'll get to that a little more

11 probably tomorrow about that. But tell me an example in the modern world

12 where restraint, the kind of restraint you're suggesting, was effective

13 against terrorists.

14 A. I would say in Northern Ireland where in every case possible we

15 took evidence and we charged the people and we put them in jail. And that

16 was a better response than shooting them in cold or hot blood.

17 Q. Okay. Any others, or is that the only one?

18 A. I would need -- I would need some -- some notice of the question

19 but I think I could probably find several more as well.

20 Q. All right.

21 A. I don't think they are parallels.

22 Q. Let me go to another subject then. At page 74 you told us that it

23 was your estimate that the number of actual KLA fighters was several

24 hundred in Kosovo while you were there. Did I --

25 A. Yes.

1 Q. -- quote that properly? And when you say "several hundred," I

2 assume that you mean less than a thousand?

3 A. Yes.

4 Q. And would that have been the case in March of 1999?

5 A. It was getting greater then --

6 Q. But would it have been the case in March of 1999?

7 A. I would have said there was still less than a thousand --

8 THE INTERPRETER: Would you kindly again bear in mind that we're

9 interpreting what you're saying.

10 MR. ACKERMAN:

11 Q. We're doing a very bad job, General, at pausing. We need to try

12 much better -- to do that much better.

13 If the Chief of the General Staff of the KLA told us that there

14 were 17.000 or 18.000 soldiers in the KLA in Kosovo, that some of those

15 were involved in logistics but there were 17 or 18.000, I take it you

16 would defer to him?

17 A. No.

18 Q. You would not?

19 A. No. I wouldn't believe it.

20 Q. All right. You were asked about -- I think it had to do with the

21 situation at Racak, and Judge Bonomy asked you if you could see the -- the

22 VJ on the hills; you mentioned they were on the hills. Judge Bonomy asked

23 you if you could see them, and you said you could; correct?

24 A. Yes.

25 Q. In fact, that was an area called -- I think it was called Dulje

1 hill. Is that correct?

2 A. Dulje, yes.

3 Q. Yes. And that was a place where the VJ always was. They had a

4 permanent facility there, didn't they?

5 A. They had a position on the -- on the Dulje heights, but I'm not

6 talking about that. I'm talking about ridge lines much closer to the

7 village than that.

8 Q. But they were always there at the Dulje heights; that's really my

9 question.

10 A. Yes, but that was a couple of kilometres further away.

11 Q. You talked this morning about your observation as you made your

12 trip around Kosovo and looked at the damage that had been done to the

13 houses and villages and told us that it was your opinion that that damage

14 had been done by arson rather than combat.

15 A. Yes.

16 Q. And I take it that -- that you must have seen some instances of

17 houses that had been hit by small-arms fire or machine-gun fire or

18 something like that; correct?

19 A. Yes, that's correct.

20 Q. But apparently it's your position that the vast majority at least

21 were arson?

22 A. That was the impression I gained at the time, yes.

23 Q. And I take it you saw few, if any, that had been destroyed by

24 what -- what might have been artillery fire or something like that?

25 A. At the time, it was -- it appeared to be mainly small-arms fire or

1 direct hits from tank main armament.

2 Q. All right. Let me go, then, to another issue. You were talking

3 about the lack of absorption during the OSCE mission of US-KDOM and

4 EU-KDOM, and I think your actual words were because they were all over the

5 place and creating confusion. And you said that the Serb authorities were

6 irritated by that and that you were also irritated by that.

7 A. Yes.

8 Q. P658, which you will recognise as the agreement on the OSCE Kosovo

9 Verification Mission -- I've got to find the right spot. It's paragraph 5

10 right there on the first page. "KDOM will act in place of the OSCE

11 Verification Mission pending its establishment. Once OSCE is operational,

12 KDOM will be absorbed by the verification mission."

13 That was part of the agreement, wasn't it?

14 A. Yes.

15 Q. And you told us this morning that US-KDOM basically refused to be

16 absorbed and continued to operate throughout that process?

17 A. Yes.

18 Q. Did you provide any reports regarding that and by that violation

19 of the agreement? Did you report that to the United Nations or anyone

20 else that the United States and you were violating the agreement?

21 A. Sadly, I wasn't in charge of the United States at the time and I

22 still am not, but on a -- to be serious, of course we did. It was

23 something which I consistently brought up. It was not just the US-KDOM,

24 it was the EU-KDOM. Both of them continued to get under our feet and

25 complicate issues in a way that was unhelpful to everybody.

1 Q. So if I were to look in the OSCE reports to the UN Security

2 Council, I should find a report of violation regarding paragraph 5 of the

3 beginning of this agreement here on page 1?

4 A. I was not writing the reports to the United Nations Security

5 Council. I don't know.

6 Q. All right.

7 A. I certainly made no secret of the fact that it was irritating and

8 it was, as I say, not just the US-KDOM, it was the EU-KDOM that was as

9 irritating.

10 Q. I want to talk to you just for a moment about this helicopter

11 issue.

12 I think one person, maybe even -- maybe even it was the French

13 diplomat that was the number two person in the mission, Gabriel Keller,

14 took the position that -- that you or General Walker or somebody was too

15 focused on the helicopter and it deterred you from your mission. You

16 spent all your time worrying about the helicopter. Is that a fair

17 statement?

18 A. I would say that it became something of a cause celebre.

19 Q. An obsession almost.

20 A. That isn't my word. We were -- every time we brought it up, we

21 were asked for more details by the Serb authorities, which we then

22 provided. It was important to us because it affected the perception in

23 Vienna of the safety of the verifiers, and they felt very strongly about

24 it up in Vienna. And if they thought their verifiers weren't safe, they

25 weren't going to provide them and we weren't going to get the mission

1 built up as quickly as we wanted it to be built up, as everybody wanted it

2 to be built up.

3 So, yes, it was important. It had a symbolic issue. It was the

4 first area in which we had a very straight refusal from the Serb

5 authorities.

6 Q. It is --

7 JUDGE BONOMY: Can I just interrupt and let's just pause for a

8 moment.

9 MR. ACKERMAN: Yes.

10 JUDGE BONOMY: What explanation were you given for this refusal?

11 THE WITNESS: The explanation that was given -- it wasn't really

12 an explanation. It was a, No, you can't. The -- in the context, it --

13 the statement was made that -- and I think it was by Mr. Sainovic, that of

14 course once you're in the helicopter you can use it for all sorts of other

15 activities. You can use it to spy on the situation on the ground, which

16 we were not really concerned about because NATO had carte blanche to

17 patrol above Kosovo and take as many photographs as they wished, and there

18 was nothing more we would be able to do from a helicopter.

19 JUDGE BONOMY: So it was a fear of abuse that was the reason

20 given?

21 THE WITNESS: That was the only reason that was given, yes.

22 JUDGE BONOMY: Mr. Ackerman.

23 MR. ACKERMAN:

24 Q. It's the case, isn't it, that you were offered a helicopter and

25 that you could paint it any way you wanted to?

1 A. We were offered a helicopter of considerably less capability --

2 Q. Just answer my question. You were offered a helicopter that you

3 could paint any way you wanted to.

4 A. Not that we could paint, no. It would have been -- it would have

5 been remained in the colour at which it was offered to us and would not

6 have been able to be distinguished from any other Yugoslav aircraft.

7 Q. So if it was a white helicopter with a big red cross on it, you

8 would still reject it?

9 A. It was never offered like that, but the answer would probably have

10 been yes, because one of the reasons we'd painted our vehicles orange was

11 to make sure that they were different from the white vehicles and the blue

12 vehicles and the green vehicles that the Serb forces were using.

13 Q. Did you ask if it could be painted orange?

14 A. No.

15 Q. Your rejection of that helicopter apparently was based, by your

16 own testimony, on your understanding of the KLA as a -- as an organisation

17 that would be very likely to try to shoot down a medevac helicopter.

18 True?

19 A. That would be very likely that would want to shoot down a Yugoslav

20 helicopter.

21 Q. A medevac helicopter marked with red cross markings, white?

22 A. Yes, I wouldn't -- I did not put great faith in their ability to

23 not shoot at something if they thought that it was a Yugoslav helicopter.

24 Q. All right. Thank you.

25 JUDGE BONOMY: What we end up with here is the idea that the

1 Albanians won't trust a Yugoslav helicopter, and that the Serbs won't

2 trust an OSCE helicopter. That's what we've got, isn't it, and we're

3 spending an awful lot of time on this.

4 Let's move on, Mr. Ackerman.

5 MR. ACKERMAN:

6 Q. You say in your supplementary statement, and that's at

7 paragraph 5, (v): "The Serb military strategy did not work because the

8 Serbs did not separate or isolate KLA from the civilian population even

9 though most Kosovo Albanians did not support the KLA."

10 Doesn't this go a long way to convincing you that the KLA was

11 truly a terrorist organisation not even supported by most of the Albanian

12 people?

13 A. Yes, I think that's -- that's fair.

14 Q. Shouldn't the international community have joined with the Serbs

15 and the Albanian people of Kosovo that did not support the KLA to rid

16 Kosovo of this terrorist scourge rather than supporting and protecting

17 them, as they did? Wouldn't that have been the proper way to go about

18 dealing with the problem of Kosovo?

19 A. We neither supported nor protected the KLA. And we went there to

20 attempt to make the situation better, which would -- which meant buying

21 time so that the Serb authorities who were the sovereign state there could

22 put their house in order and stop alienating their population.

23 Q. Now, after having told us in the first part of that paragraph that

24 the Serbs did not separate or isolate the KLA from the civilian

25 population, you then tell us they were not prepared to take the fight to

1 the KLA up in the hills where they were. Now, that sounds inconsistent to

2 me. They were either separated from the civilian population or they

3 weren't.

4 A. I'm sorry, what is your question?

5 Q. My question is: Isn't that inconsistent? You're saying at one

6 point they didn't separate them from the civilian population and then

7 immediately you're saying they wouldn't take the fight in the hills to

8 where the KLA was?

9 A. It was my impression that the Serbs were not prepared in the

10 December, January, February time to attempt to go to where the KLA were

11 and only the KLA were and deal with them there. They were much more

12 prepared to go to where the interface was between the KLA semi-controlled

13 areas and the Serb semi-controlled areas.

14 If you want to wipe out terrorists or insurgents, you go after

15 where they are, not where they might be. And it is difficult, because

16 they all look the same. And a Kosovar Albanian in civilian clothes might

17 be a KLA member who's taken his uniform off. I understand that

18 perfectly. That's the problem that security forces have, and it's a

19 problem all security forces have and they have to deal with it.

20 Q. And whether they're guerillas or terrorists or insurgents or

21 whatever that doesn't make much difference in that context, does it?

22 A. Well, they don't conveniently wear pink hats.

23 Q. Right. I want you to look at another exhibit, and before I do

24 that, it's just -- you know, I look at the reports of the OSCE, especially

25 those that were filed with the Security Council, and it appears that the

1 situation in Kosovo was gradually improving with the efforts that were

2 being made by the OSCE mission, that the incidents of violations were

3 diminishing and that things were getting better. And I get that from a

4 lot of places, but for instance if we look at P636, and I don't know if

5 you're familiar with this document. I guess you are because it was an

6 annex to your statement.

7 There's a table attached to this document, a several-page table.

8 And without having it in your hand, it's probably going to be difficult

9 for you to follow, but I just did a quick counting or a not-so-quick

10 counting. The table covers the last 11 days of January and the first 13

11 days of February. Now, if you look at that table, what you'll find out is

12 in the last 11 days of January there were 13 violations by KLA and 25 by

13 FRY; two of the FRY violations were access violations. The total number

14 of incidents was 38.

15 If you then go to February, where you've got two more days, there

16 were ten KLA violations and only nine FRY violations, and all of those

17 were access violations, the total being only 19 violations or half as many

18 in more days in February. So this report to the UN would -- leads one to

19 believe that your mission was meeting with success and that the incidents

20 were diminishing and that everything was working well, wouldn't it?

21 A. Let me try to give you a long answer, if I may, because I think

22 yes/no answers don't work here.

23 Firstly, what -- who decided compliance. The head of the mission

24 and then the OSCE in Vienna decided what was and what wasn't compliance,

25 and it was very important that we did not accuse people of non-compliance

1 before it had been agreed at the mission headquarters that it was or

2 wasn't so that there was a common standard. And therefore, what was

3 compliance, what was judged to be compliance, was taken very, very

4 seriously, and it didn't involve minor things.

5 The second thing is that not every incident is of equal weight.

6 The events at Rogovo that I saw were at quite a different level of

7 violence to whether or not somebody could go into a barracks or not.

8 The third thing is that during this period we were leading up --

9 we were first of all dealing in the -- the aftermath of Racak when there

10 was a notable sensitivity on everyone's part. Secondly, we were dealing

11 with the start of the Rambouillet talks, and everyone involved attempted

12 to restrain themselves. And, as you would expect, the official forces of

13 the state did what they were told. That I would have expected. And so

14 during that period, the first half of February, the level of instance did

15 go down and we reported it as such. And when it went up again, we

16 reported it as such.

17 So, yes, it did go down, but those were the circumstances.

18 Q. Well, I agree with you that weight is important, and when you look

19 at those first 13 days in February, every violation by FRY was an access

20 denial. Nine violations by KLA were either shooting at FRY forces, three

21 of those; there were ambushes and killings, six of those; and only one

22 access. So weight is important, and the weight there indicates the major

23 violators were KLA, doesn't it?

24 A. In those ones that you've specified, yes, because you haven't

25 mentioned Rogovo. How many -- Rogovo is one incident of compliance and

1 it's 25 bodies.

2 Q. You don't have any idea what happened in Rogovo, do you? You

3 weren't there.

4 A. I was the first international -- I was acting head of mission at

5 the time and was at Rogovo and was there in person with General Loncar,

6 yes, I was, and went into that smelly courtyard.

7 Q. I'm sorry, I asked that question poorly. You weren't there when

8 the incident happened.

9 A. No.

10 Q. You were there afterwards.

11 MR. ACKERMAN: I think -- do we have to break now, Your Honour?

12 JUDGE BONOMY: Close enough, yeah.

13 Remind me of the paragraph in the statement where Rogovo is

14 referred to.

15 MR. ACKERMAN: Your Honour, I don't have it, I didn't raise it,

16 but maybe the Prosecution can be of assistance.

17 JUDGE BONOMY: Can you help, Mr. Marcussen.

18 MR. MARCUSSEN: Beginning at 165, I believe.

19 JUDGE BONOMY: Thank you.

20 MR. MARCUSSEN: Your Honours, I guess I have a question arising

21 from cross-examination here.

22 JUDGE BONOMY: You'll get your chance, won't you?

23 MR. MARCUSSEN: Yes. Oh, I trust I will be given the chance. Did

24 I understand correctly that you were coming back with a ruling on the blue

25 book tomorrow?

1 JUDGE BONOMY: Yes.

2 MR. MARCUSSEN: Would it maybe be -- I would suggest that maybe we

3 wait until cross-examination is over, as we are now seeing reliance on

4 these kinds of information. Maybe it's better -- the Chamber might be

5 assisted in assessing the use of this document once we've seen how it's

6 being used and these kinds on which information reported on. That's a

7 suggestion.

8 JUDGE BONOMY: Perhaps and perhaps not. We shall have a look at

9 it in any event.

10 I think I indicated that the decision will be given tomorrow

11 morning. That was on the basis that I forgot we are sitting tomorrow

12 afternoon, so whenever the decision is given, it will be the afternoon, at

13 the earliest.

14 MR. ACKERMAN: Your Honour, to the extent that you understood what

15 Mr. Marcussen just said is some indication that I was referring to the

16 blue book, if I was doing it, I was doing it unintentionally. It was

17 exhibits that the Prosecutor furnished with this witness that I was

18 referring to.

19 JUDGE BONOMY: Thank you.

20 Well, we have to stop there for the day and continue your evidence

21 tomorrow; that will be in the afternoon, as I said, at 2.15. Meanwhile,

22 it is important overnight that you don't discuss your evidence with anyone

23 at all outside the evidence you've given or the evidence you may yet give.

24 So put it to the back of your mind and think and talk about other things,

25 and we'll see you tomorrow at 2.15. You can now leave with the usher.

1 THE WITNESS: Thank you.

2 [The witness stands down]

3 JUDGE BONOMY: We will adjourn until tomorrow.

4 --- Whereupon the hearing adjourned at 3.33 p.m.,

5 to be reconvened on Tuesday, the 5th day of

6 December, 2006, at 2.15 p.m.

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