_ by Richard C. Holbrooke

[Richard Holbrooke, a former US ambassador to the UN and Assistant Secretary of State for European Affairs, was the chief architect of the Dayton Peace Agreement. He also writes a monthly column for The Washington Post.]

NEW YORK – Standing with Slobodan Milosevic 13 years ago on the veranda of a government hunting lodge outside Belgrade, I saw two men in the distance. They left their twin Mercedes and, in fading light, started toward us. I felt a jolt go through my body; they were unmistakable. Ratko Mladic, in combat fatigues, stocky, walking as though through a muddy field; and Radovan Karadzic, taller, wearing a suit, with his wild, but carefully coiffed, shock of white hair.

The capture of Karadzic and his arrival at the war crimes tribunal in The Hague took me back to a long night of confrontation, drama, and negotiations – the only time I ever met him. It was 5 p.m. on September 13, 1995, during the height of the war in Bosnia. After years of weak Western and United Nations response to Serb aggression and ethnic cleansing of Muslims and Croats in Bosnia, United States-led NATO bombing had put the Serbs on the defensive. Our small diplomatic negotiating team was trying to end a war that had taken the lives of nearly 300,000 people.

Milosevic, Mladic, and Karadzic were the primary reason for that war. Mladic and Karadzic had already been indicted as war criminals by the International Criminal Tribunal for the Former Yugoslavia. (Milosevic was not to be indicted until 1999.)

In a change of strategy, the negotiating team had decided to marginalize Karadzic and Mladic and to force Milosevic, as the senior Serb in the region, to take responsibility for the war and for the negotiations that we hoped would end it. Now Milosevic wanted to bring the two men back into the discussions, probably to take some of the pressure off of himself.

We had anticipated this moment and agreed in advance that, while we would never ask to meet with Karadzic and Mladic, if Milosevic offered such a meeting, we would accept – but only once, and only under strict guidelines that would require Milosevic to be responsible for their behavior.

I told each member of our negotiating team to decide for himself or herself whether to shake hands with the mass murderers. I hated these men for what they had done. Their crimes included, indirectly, the deaths of three of our colleagues – Bob Frasure, Joe Kruzel, and Nelson Drew, who had died when the armored personnel carrier they were in plunged down a ravine as we attempted to reach Sarajevo by the only route available, a dangerous dirt road that went through sniper-filled, Serbian-controlled territory.

I did not shake hands, although both Karadzic and Mladic tried to. Some of our team did; others did not. Mladic, not Karadzic, was the dominant figure that evening. He engaged in staring contests with some of our team as we sat across the table. Karadzic was silent at first. He had a large face with heavy jowls, a soft chin, and surprisingly gentle eyes. When he heard our demand that the siege of Sarajevo be lifted immediately, he exploded. Rising from the table, the American-educated Karadzic raged in passable English about the “humiliations” his people were suffering.

I reminded Milosevic that he had promised that such harangues would not occur. Karadzic responded emotionally that he would call former President Jimmy Carter, with whom he said he was in touch, and started to leave. For the only time that long night, I addressed Karadzic directly, telling him that we worked only for President Bill Clinton and that he could call Carter if he wished but that we would leave and that the bombing would intensify. Milosevic said something to Karadzic in Serbian; he sat down again, and the meeting got down to business.

After ten hours, we reached an agreement that would end the siege, after more than three years of war. The next day, we were able to fly into the reopened airfield in Sarajevo. That indomitable city was already beginning to come back to life. Two months later, the war would end at Dayton, never to resume.

But while the Dayton agreement gave NATO the authority to capture Karadzic and Mladic, an arrest didn’t occur for nearly 13 years. During that period, Karadzic spread a completely false rumor that Secretary of State Madeleine Albright and I had made a deal that, with Karadzic’s disappearance from public view, NATO would not seek his arrest. Of course, this another ridiculous fabrication from the same man who famously said that the Bosnian Muslims had shelled their own villages in order to lure NATO into the war. Finally, one of these dreadful murderers is in The Hague. It is imperative that Mladic follow Karadzic on this one-way journey.

Karadzic’s capture is all the more important because Serbian authorities accomplished it. Serbian President Boris Tadic deserves great credit for this action, especially since his good friend Zoran Djindjic, then prime minister of Serbia, was assassinated in 2003 as a direct result of his courage in arresting Milosevic and sending him to The Hague in 2001. Karadzic’s arrest is no mere historical footnote; it removes from the scene a man who was still undermining peace and progress in the Balkans and whose enthusiastic advocacy of ethnic cleansing merits emphatic repudiation. It also moves Serbia closer to European Union membership.

Moreover, Karadzic’s arrest is another reminder of the value of war crimes tribunals. Even though almost 13 years is an inexcusably long time, the war crimes indictment kept Karadzic on the run and prevented him from resurfacing. In far-away Khartoum, Sudanese President Omar Hassan al-Bashir, now indicted by the International Criminal Court, should be paying close attention.

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Copyright: Project Syndicate, 2008.
 www.project-syndicate.org

By JOHN HEILPRIN, AP

UNITED NATIONS -One of South Africa’s leading female jurists who won acclaim defending apartheid opponents was nominated Thursday to serve as the next United Nations high commissioner for human rights.

Navanethem Pillay was formally put forward for the job by U.N. Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon, who cited her “outstanding credentials in human rights and justice.” Pillay, who holds a Harvard Law School degree, serves as an appeals chamber judge with the Dutch-based International Criminal Court, where she has been since 2003. Pillay, who is in her mid-60s, is of Tamil descent.

Her selection now goes to the General Assembly for consideration where she is likely to be approved at a plenary meeting next Monday, U.N. officials and diplomats said. The world body previously elected Pillay as a judge to the International Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda in 1995. She became that court’s president in 1999.

Zalmay Khalilzad, the U.S. ambassador, said Pillay will occupy a very important position.

“She has to be the voice for human rights, focus on the violations of human rights, speak clearly and focus world attention on the egregious violations of human rights that unfortunately still take place in many places around the world,” he said. “We look forward to working with her.”

In 1967, Pillay became the first woman to establish a law practice in South Africa’s Natal Province, where she defended apartheid opponents. She also became the first woman of color to serve on her country’s High Court, whose divisions hear both civil and criminal cases.

She also co-founded Equality Now, a New York-based international women’s rights organization.

During the selection process some nations, including the United States, had expressed reservations about Pillay, including her support for women’s access to abortion, contraception and other reproductive freedoms, and how she might handle next year’s follow up to the 2001 U.N. World Conference on Racism in Durban, South Africa, which drew controversy due to anti-Semitic and anti-Israeli stands.

If confirmed to the job, Pillay will take over the fast-growing U.N. Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights, based in Geneva, Switzerland. During the coming year, the office will have almost 1,000 employees and budget approaching $120 million.

She would succeed Louise Arbour, a former Supreme Court judge in Canada, who stepped down at the end of June. Pillay won out over two other finalists for the job, Pakistani lawyer and human rights activist Hila Jilani and Argentine human rights lawyer Juan Mendez.

According to the Associated Press

-Excerpts from the 1995 U.N. war crimes tribunal indictment charging former Bosnian Serb leader Radovan Karadzic and his wartime military commander, Gen. Ratko Mladic, with genocide and crimes against humanity in Bosnia:

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_ “They are criminally responsible for the unlawful confinement, murder, rape, sexual assault, torture, beating, robbery and inhumane treatment of civilians; the targeting of political leaders, intellectuals and professionals; the unlawful deportation and transfer of civilians; the unlawful shelling of civilians; the unlawful appropriation and plunder of real and personal property; the destruction of homes and businesses; and the destruction of places of worship.”

_ “Thousands of Bosnian Muslim and Bosnian Croat civilians, including women, children and elderly persons, were detained … for protracted periods of time. They were not afforded judicial process and their internment was not justified by military necessity. They were detained, in large measure, because of their national, religious and political identity. The conditions in the detention facilities were inhumane and brutal …

“In many instances, women and girls who were detained were raped at the camps or taken from the detention centers and raped or otherwise sexually abused at other locations. Daily food rations provided to detainees were inadequate and often amounted to starvation rations. Medical care for the detainees was insufficient or nonexistent and the general hygienic conditions were grossly inadequate.”

_ “Radovan Karadzic and Ratko Mladic, individually and in concert with others, planned, instigated, ordered or otherwise aided and abetted in the planning, preparation or execution of unlawful attacks against the civilian population and individual civilians with weapons such as mortars, rockets and artillery.”

_ “Radovan Karadzic and Ratko Mladic, individually and in concert with others planned, instigated, ordered or otherwise aided and abetted in the planning, preparation or execution of the destruction of sacred sites or knew or had reason to know that subordinates were about to damage or destroy these sites or had done so and failed to take necessary and reasonable measures to prevent them from doing so or to punish the perpetrators thereof.”

_ “Radovan Karadzic and Ratko Mladic, individually and in concert with others planned, instigated, ordered or otherwise aided and abetted in the planning, preparation or execution of the taking of civilians, that is U.N. peacekeepers, as hostages and, additionally, using them as ‘human shields.’”

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On the Net:

U.N. war crimes tribunal, http://www.un.org/icty/

by Aryeh Neier

[Aryeh Neier, the president of the Open Society Institute and a founder of Human Rights Watch, is the author most recently of Taking Liberties: Four Decades in the Struggle for Rights.]

It is only a little more than fifteen years ago that the first of the contemporary international courts was created to prosecute those who commit war crimes, crimes against humanity, and genocide. Yet there is already a persistent theme in criticism of such tribunals: in their effort to do justice, they are obstructing achievement of a more important goal, peace.

Such complaints have been expressed most vociferously when sitting heads of state are accused of crimes. The charges filed by the prosecutor of the International Criminal Court against Sudanese President Omar Hassan al-Bashir for crimes against humanity and genocide in Darfur are the latest example. Indeed, the denunciations of the justice process this time are more intense and more vehement than in the past.

The complaints were also loud in 1995 when the prosecutor for the International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia indicted the President of the Bosnian Serb Republic, Radovan Karadzic, and his military chief, General Ratko Mladic, and even louder when they were indicted again later in the same year for the massacre at Srebrenica. The timing of that second indictment especially aroused critics, because it came just before the start of the Dayton peace conference. Because they faced arrest, Karadzic and Mladic did not go to Dayton.

But, as matters turned out, their absence did not hinder the parties from reaching an agreement. Indeed, it may have helped as the leaders of Bosnia, Croatia, and Yugoslavia negotiated an end to the war in Bosnia.

In 1999, the ICTY indicted Slobodan Milosevic, President of Yugoslavia, for crimes committed in Kosovo. Again, there were denunciations that focused on timing. NATO’s intervention in Kosovo was underway, and critics claimed that prosecuting Milosevic made the tribunal an arm of NATO and would prevent a settlement. That prediction was wrong. Milosevic capitulated two weeks after he was indicted, and the war ended.

The next sitting head of state to be indicted was Liberian President Charles Taylor. Although the prosecutor for the Special Court for Sierra Leone indicted Taylor in March 2003 for his crimes in the war that had devastated that country, the indictment was not disclosed publicly until three months later. Again, timing was a principal factor in sparking outrage. The indictment was made public in June 2003, while Taylor was attending a peace conference in Ghana that was intended to settle the civil war in his own country.

As hosts of the conference, the Ghanaians were particularly incensed at being asked to make an arrest under such circumstances, and refused to do so. Though it is possible to sympathize with the Ghanaians, who were placed in a very awkward position, the indictment intensified demands for Taylor’s removal. He fled into exile in August, effectively ending the war. Taylor is now being tried in The Hague, and, after two decades of horrendous conflict, Liberia is at peace and rebuilding under a democratic government.

We cannot rule out the possibility that doing justice in Darfur will make it more difficult to achieve peace there. Justice and peace are independent values. Each is immensely important in its own right. In the long run, doing justice seems a way to contribute to peace, but one cannot be sure that things will work out that way every time.

On the basis of the record so far, however, some skepticism seems in order over the claim that justice will obstruct peace. After all, the conflict in Darfur has been underway for five and a half years. An estimated 300,000 people have been killed by forces ultimately controlled by al-Bashir, and an estimated 2.7 million have been forcibly displaced. Just a week before the indictment, seven African Union and UN peacekeepers were killed and 22 injured during an ambush by well-armed militiamen. No peace settlement is under serious consideration. So what basis is there for suggesting that the indictment of al-Bashir is obstructing a settlement? What settlement is there to obstruct?

It should be noted that the Darfur case was referred to the ICC by the UN Security Council. The treaty establishing the ICC empowers the Security Council to delay a prosecution if this is needed to bring about a peace settlement. So critics of the indictment should at least be made to bear the burden of demonstrating to the Security Council that a peace settlement is likely if they wish the Council to act.

The world embarked on the creation of international criminal tribunals a decade and a half ago in order to end the impunity with which heads of state and leaders of guerrilla groups commit atrocious crimes. That effort is gradually succeeding, and the indictment of al-Bashir, who is as entitled to the presumption of innocence as any other defendant, is an important milestone on the long road that must be traveled to reach the goal that the world set for itself.

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Copyright: Project Syndicate, 2008.

www.project-syndicate.org