Milosevic Transcript 2003-12-15

³⁰³⁵³

Monday, 15 December 2003

[Open session]

[The accused entered court]

--- Upon commencing at 9.05 a.m.

THE ACCUSED: [Interpretation] Mr. May.

JUDGE MAY: Just one moment to get us ready. Yes. I'm going to start with Mr. Nice. Mr. Nice, is there anything which you need to address us on immediately before the accused raises some point?

MR. NICE: I have several points to raise to deal with, matters that would typically, I think, be dealt with in private session even in a fully public session. They are procedural, they deal with disclosure to the accused, matters of that sort. I'm happy to do them now or after the accused has made his point.

JUDGE MAY: We need to deal anyway with a number of administrative matters but we will start with the accused since we're in open session. Yes.

THE ACCUSED: [Interpretation] Mr. May, at the end of last week, when there were no hearings, I received a decision from the Registry in which I am prohibited of having any communication by telephone or any visits, and I don't understand why this came about. Are you informed of this? And I consider this to be in violent -- in gross violation of human rights, and I would request that the matter be addressed.

JUDGE MAY: It's not a matter we'll deal with at the moment. We will look to see what the point is, and if necessary, we'll come back to ³⁰³⁵⁴ it in due course. For the moment, we will deal with those matters which are concerned with this particular issue.

Yes, you want to go into private session, Mr. Nice.

MR. NICE: Yes, please.

[Private session]

(Redacted)

(Redacted) ³⁰³⁵⁵ Pages 30355 to 30361 - redacted - private session. ³⁰³⁶²

(Redacted)

[Open session]

JUDGE MAY: Are we in open session? Yes. There are two -- three matters, potentially, which we have to address at this stage. The first is the extent, if any, it is appropriate with this important witness to have any evidence given under Rule 89(F), he dealing with the accused very substantially on conversations, some of which have been in dispute, in some cases heavily in dispute. And it would therefore seem to us to be appropriate that those matters should be ³⁰³⁶³ dealt with in open session.

We are concerned at the evidence which it is proposed to be given about the conflict - I'm referring to the end of the statement - and the amount of resultant cross-examination which there must be, in fairness, if the evidence is given.

And finally, we have to deal with the admissibility of the book as a whole.

[The witness entered court]

JUDGE MAY: General Clark, I'm sorry you've been brought in. There is a misunderstanding. But it doesn't matter because we're going to have a debate about the extent of your evidence and how much we're going to admit; and unless anybody objects, it seems to me, if you don't mind sitting, listening, it may be no harm is done.

THE WITNESS: I have no objection, Your Honour.

MR. NICE: Your Honour, as to the second of the points that the court expressed as being a matter of concern, could the Court possibly identify the particular passages which you say are concerning because of the degree to which they would open up cross-examination? There's 44 --

JUDGE MAY: Let us deal with it in order.

MR. NICE: Yes.

JUDGE MAY: First of all, the question of live evidence.

MR. NICE: Yes.

JUDGE MAY: I can tell you we have in mind that the witness's evidence should be given in live.

MR. NICE: Very well. It's a matter entirely for the Court. As ³⁰³⁶⁴ ^{BLANK PAGE} ³⁰³⁶⁵ you know, when we first instituted 89(F) statements, we said we would apply comprehensively in order not to take any advantage by selecting that which would be given live. We're entirely in the Court's hands. For our part, there are both exchanges where the previous witness, Klaus Naumann, was present, which might have fallen for different consideration, and there are passages where the accused is not present but other named persons are. It had occurred to us those might have been stronger candidates for 89(F) but we don't say any more than that.

JUDGE MAY: Very well. Next, the book. We've had a chance of reading those passages on which you rely.

MR. NICE: Yes.

JUDGE MAY: And they amount to some 10 per cent, if that, of the total pages in the book; 40-odd pages against 400-odd pages.

MR. NICE: Yes.

JUDGE MAY: And having read the statement, it seem us to broadly that they cover the same material in the most important part, and the others, I should have thought, were not of such significance that they should be admitted. But in any event, there is the question of principle, which is how right it is for a small part of a book to allow the admission of the whole, which of course deals with much broader matters, and we are therefore minded not to admit the book.

MR. NICE: Your Honour, we are, of course, in the Court's hands, and it may be something that falls for better consideration at the end rather than at the beginning of the evidence and cross-examination. We provided you with only a limited number of pages in order, we ³⁰³⁶⁶ hoped, to help and to save the Chamber from the burden of having to go through the totality of the book. We've considered the admission of the book against the rulings that have been made under Rule 70, because of course those follow on an application for limitation of evidence made by us as part of the necessary Rule 70 agreements and requirements, and there is an argument that examination, or certainly cross-examination, outside the identified pages would be in contravention of the ruling of the Chamber.

We considered that yesterday with both the witness, his lawyers, but more importantly perhaps the United States government lawyers, and I think that the view taken was that a practical approach might be to say could the whole book be admitted and the witness would be happy to answer questions on anything within its ambit. But if the Court is at first sight and at this stage inclined towards the view that less rather than more is appropriate, we, I think, are happy to go along with that and await the position at the end of the cross-examination.

JUDGE MAY: Very well. That's the course that we will follow.

MR. NICE: And then finally, Your Honour said that there were particular passages of the statement that might have led to broader cross-examination or more extensive cross-examination that could be allowed for in the time available for this witness. I'm not sure exactly which paragraphs the Court had in mind, because we could consider them and see to what extent we really wish them to go in.

JUDGE MAY: But you may wish to consider paragraphs 39 onwards, which deal entirely with the conflict. ³⁰³⁶⁷ Now, it's a matter for you what course you want to take, but the issue is if such evidence is given, what cross-examination it opens up in fairness to the trial as a whole.

MR. NICE: Your Honour, may -- on the assumption that we go beyond the first break, may I come back to that immediately after the first break?

JUDGE MAY: Yes. And I suppose the final issue is timing. How long do you anticipate you might be?

MR. NICE: I wouldn't have thought that my examination of the witness will last very much more than one session, one ordinary one-and-a-half-hour session. The statement is compact, and the witness knows his material.

JUDGE MAY: And the witness has made himself available, as we have in our order stated, for two days; is that right?

MR. NICE: Yes, I think so. I haven't actually technically asked him when his return flight is. My oversight, but --

JUDGE MAY: Well, no doubt that can be done. Mr. Kay, can you assist us whether you or Mr. Tapuskovic intend to ask any questions?

MR. KAY: Your Honour, the matter so far in relation to the book, in my view, it would be probably the position that we can take stock at the end of the evidence to see where we are. We've often made decisions at the start and ended up changing them by the finish of testimony. In terms of time for cross-examination, the amici would request half an hour. ³⁰³⁶⁸

JUDGE MAY: Thank you.

THE ACCUSED: [Interpretation] Mr. May.

JUDGE MAY: Yes, Mr. Milosevic.

THE ACCUSED: [Interpretation] I don't quite understand the position of this witness since my understanding was that he would be testifying in closed session and that you described that as a temporarily closed session, and then, in the meantime, representatives of the government of his country may be able to review the transcript, to approve some of it, to redact some of it possibly, and only then to release it to the public. I am not aware of any legal court in the world delegating its authority of this kind to any government. This would be the first time for any such thing to happen. Of course, you consider yourself to be a legal court.

JUDGE MAY: We are not going to argue this point. We have made our order. The reason that the government have any rights in the matter at all is this, that in order to provide information to this Court, it is occasionally - and I stress occasionally - necessary for governments to do so, and they are allowed to do so under our Rules on certain terms, and these are one of the terms which has been followed in this case. Yes, Mr. Nice. Perhaps we should begin, and we will ask General Clark to take the declaration if he would.

MR. NICE: May I diffidently remind Your Honour that you were going to make some rulings. I didn't know if you intended to make them before the witness started his evidence. No. Very well. My misunderstanding. ³⁰³⁶⁹

JUDGE MAY: I think all the necessary rulings have been made.

THE WITNESS: Your Honours, I solemnly declare that I will speak the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth.

JUDGE MAY: Thank you. If you'd like to take a seat.

WITNESS: WESLEY CLARK Examined by Mr. Nice:

Q. It's Wesley Clark; correct?

A. Yes, it is.

Q. And General Clark, for you are indeed a general, your history is set out in a summary of your life which is at tab 2 of a bundle of exhibits.

MR. NICE: May that bundle be given a comprehensive exhibit number.

JUDGE MAY: Yes. There is an issue as to whether tab 1 should be admitted because we've not admitted it under Rule 89(F). But we'll -- what we'll do is we'll give the bundle a general number and we can review the position at the end as to which tabs are admitted.

THE REGISTRAR: 617, Your Honours.

MR. NICE: May the witness at some stage have the bundle of exhibits -- may the witness at some stage have that bundle of exhibits if that's convenient.

Q. And General Clark, without going through your personal history in detail, for it's a matter of public record, does it include that you graduated from West Point in 1966, from 1994 to 1996 you served as Director for Strategic Plans and Policy for the Joint Chiefs of Staff with ³⁰³⁷⁰ ^{BLANK PAGE} ³⁰³⁷¹ responsibilities for worldwide United States military strategic planning; that from 1996 to 1997 you served as Commander-in-Chief of the United States Southern Command, Panama, where you were responsible for the direction of the United States military activities in Latin America and the Caribbean; and from 1997 through to May of 2000 you were NATO Supreme Allied Commander and Commander-in-Chief of the United States European Command, and in this position you commanded the Operation Allied Force which was NATO's first major combat action in the area of the former Yugoslavia?

A. This is correct.

Q. General Clark, your first encounter with the accused, I think, was on the 17th of August of 1995 where you met him as one of a delegation that included Richard Holbrooke and the late Joseph Kruzel and others, including Colonel Drew and Robert Frasure; is that correct?

A. That's correct.

Q. And was this part of shuttle negotiations for a Bosnian peace deal?

A. Yes, it was.

Q. Can you give us a little of the setting: What was the topics, who was running it, and so on?

A. Richard Holbrooke was the leader of the American delegation, and this was our first meeting with Serb President Slobodan Milosevic. We wanted to meet each of the leaders in the Balkans and present to them the general outline of what we believed to be a possible settlement that could be achieved, including a settlement achieved with the presence of some ³⁰³⁷² American troops as part of a NATO mission. And this was the first meeting with President Milosevic.

We went to -- went to his office there in the capital of Belgrade.

Q. Was one of the topics who should be representing the Bosnian Serbs in negotiating a peace plan; and if so, what was the accused's reaction to that?

A. Yes. This was the question, because it had come up previously that some people were talking to Karadzic, and we wanted to raise this issue with Slobodan Milosevic, and so we asked him. "Should we be dealing with you or should we be dealing with the Bosnian Serbs?" And then President Milosevic said, "With me, of course." And as we continued the dialogue, we said, "Well, why?" And the basic reason was that he could deliver the peace agreement. And this -- this seemed improbable on the face of it; he was the president of a different country. And he said -- he said, "No. Give me the terms of the agreement, we'll have an election, a referendum on this agreement." And we said, "Well, why would a referendum in a different country bind the Bosnian Serbs?" He said, "They will not go against the will of the Serb people."

Q. There came a time when you spoke to him with only one or perhaps a couple of people present, I think.

A. That's right.

Q. Can you give the setting for that and then tell the Court your recollection of precisely what was said.

A. Well, after we had this exchange, a break was taken and Ambassador Holbrooke went up to visit the facilities outside. The meeting generally ³⁰³⁷³ broke up. President Milosevic stayed there. And Assistant Secretary Kruzel and I approached President Milosevic as he was standing there in a casual setting outside the formal meeting, and I was still wrestling with the idea as to how it is that Milosevic could maintain that he had the authority and the power to deliver the Serb compliance with the agreement. And so I simply asked him. I said, "Mr. President, you say you have so much influence over the Bosnian Serbs, but how is it then, if you have such influence, that you allowed General Mladic to kill all those people in Srebrenica?" And Milosevic looked at me and he paused for a moment. He then said, "Well, General Clark," he said, "I warned Mladic not to do this, but he didn't listen to me."

Q. Your understanding of what he was referring to, if you have an understanding beyond the words themselves, can you give it to us?

A. Certainly.

Q. And explain, if it does have a context and understanding, how you arrive at that understanding.

A. Well, it was very clear what I was asking was about the massacre at Srebrenica. When I said "kill all these people," it wasn't a military operation, it was the massacre. And this was in fact what had been in the news. It had been the starting point for the international agreements which led to NATO's increased resolve to see an end to the fighting in the Balkans. So it was very clear what I was asking. It was also, to me, very clear what Milosevic was answering. He was answering that he did know this in advance, and he was walking the fine line between saying he was powerful enough, influential enough to have known it but trying to ³⁰³⁷⁴ excuse from himself the responsibility for having done it.

Q. The next meeting, I think, was on the 13th of September, or a subsequent meeting was on the 13th of September at the accused's lodge near Belgrade.

MR. NICE: Paragraph 5 of the statement serving as a summary, Your Honours.

Q. Did you have a discussion with Milosevic on this occasion with expectations that he might be able to make some contact with Mladic and Karadzic?

A. Well, we had never -- we had never expected when we went to this meeting that there would be a meeting with Mladic and Karadzic. This was a surprise. This was during the period of the bombing. May I just ask? I have a technical problem with this computer. Maybe this button was hit or something, and I don't know which button to turn it back on with. Thank you.

We went there as part of their shuttle diplomacy, and the bombing was going on. President Milosevic had been saying this bombing was bad for peace, and we of course were -- the bombing was part of the pressure to convince the Serbs to fall back and release the grip of terror on Sarajevo. And Milosevic asked the delegation, he said, "Would you be willing to meet with Karadzic and Mladic?" And Ambassador Holbrooke called us aside, he said, What do you think? These men are now indicted war criminals, should we meet with them in the interest of trying to stop and change the situation on the ground? And the delegation agreed with Holbrooke that we should do this. Holbrooke conveyed that information to ³⁰³⁷⁵ Mr. Milosevic, and Mr. Milosevic said, "Well, they're here. You'll see them in just a couple of minutes, they're only a couple of hundred metres away." We were surprised. We didn't know where they were.

Q. Next topic: Did you form a view as to the VJ and Serb leadership receiving operational reports from the VRS? If so, what was the view and why?

A. It was our view that the Serb military, that the VRS was closely connected to the military of the -- of Yugoslavia, the VJ. We knew this from electronic evidence, from reliable sources, and we even at one point went and told the Serb military that they had to turn off the air defence connectivity that linked the air defence system in Bosnia with that in Serbia. So there was a clear connection. We knew that the Serb military had been -- had been carved out of the Yugoslav military.

Q. And when you asked Serb military to turn off the transmission, which particular Serb military leader did you address?

A. It was General Perisic.

Q. At the Dayton negotiations, did you meet somebody called Jovica Stanisic?

A. Yes, I did.

Q. What was he introduced to you as?

A. He was introduced to me as the head of the Serb intelligence service. He had been -- he'd been rumoured to be very, very influential, and some people were surprised that he was at the negotiations, but there he was, and we all met him.

Q. The military annex drawn at the Dayton negotiations, did you deal ³⁰³⁷⁶ ^{BLANK PAGE} ³⁰³⁷⁷ with Krajisnik and ask him to review a proposed military annex? If so, what happened and how was the problem resolved?

A. We did meet with the Bosnian Serb delegation. I did hand the military annex draft to Mr. Krajisnik and ask him to consider this. I told him I'd like to have an answer back in the next day or two. This was early on in the negotiations. And subsequently he did give me the paper back, and most of the annex was simply lined through. It had the effect of completely obviating the military annex. It would have put a military force into Bosnia that had no authorities.

Q. How did you attempt to resolve it? How was it resolved as a problem?

A. President Milosevic had previously said that if there were any difficulties, to please consult with him. I arranged to see President Milosevic, said that the Bosnian Serbs had rejected this military annex, and asked for his help. He said, "Just give it to Milutinovic and he'll take care of it." And that's exactly what happened. A day or so later, I got it back from then-Foreign Minister Milutinovic. He said, "This is it." There were a couple of minor changes at the beginning of the document, but all those portions which had been excised by the Bosnian Serbs were restored. I thanked Milutinovic.

Q. And what did this reveal to you about where the decision-making power lay?

A. Well, it revealed to me that President Milosevic was fully in charge of the delegation.

Q. During Dayton, was time spent going over military maps of various ³⁰³⁷⁸ kinds, both physical and also computer?

A. Yes, we did spend a great deal of time on maps.

Q. Was one of those maps a map that you brought from America or had brought from America that's on the easel beside you?

A. Yes. This is a military map that was used to discuss the boundaries around Sarajevo and whether Sarajevo would remain a divided city or not.

MR. NICE: A copy of that map, Your Honours, is given the marking tab 5 of Exhibit 617.

Q. General Clark, can you, probably from where you are but with the pointer that's available, explain to the Court what the accused's part was in dealing with this map.

A. This is the map that was used in the middle of the night discussion between President Milosevic and Bosnian Muslim Prime Minister Haris Silajdzic. And the discussion was, this is the city of Sarajevo, this is some of the high ground around Sarajevo, this is the discussion about which parts of the terrain would be given back to the Muslims. And as I recall the discussion, in red here -- Milosevic had this red marker and he scratched things out on it, and this was a personal -- these were personal scrawlings of the leaders here.

Q. It's a long time ago but, reminding yourself from the map, looking at, for example, the vertical line closer to Sarajevo that's been crossed out and the line to the east --

A. I think, as I recall, this is the line that President Milosevic drew in right here and crossed this one out. ³⁰³⁷⁹

Q. And such a line would have achieved what for the Serb forces?

A. It would have given -- it would have been a give-back to the Muslims around Sarajevo. It would have been an effort to resolve this quarrel about how much ground would be given back around Sarajevo. It would have been a concession.

Q. To what degree did the accused, in dealing with this map, have personal knowledge, to what degree did he appear to need to speak to or seek assistance from others with more detailed knowledge?

A. He appeared to have a great deal of personal knowledge and seemed to have no need to speak with anyone else.

Q. Even when drawing these lines?

A. Correct.

Q. Next, the computer map. Did you work on a computer map with the accused?

A. Yes, we did. It was actually at a time prior to this, as I recall the course of the negotiations. It had to do with the corridor connecting the Bosnian Muslim held enclave of Gorazde with the bulk of the territory that was to be held by the Bosnian Muslims and by the Federation. And President Milosevic came in, we looked at the terrain from various angles, and we discussed the high ground and how much terrain would have to be surrendered to the Federation to be able to protect a road, a sovereign road out to Gorazde.

Q. His level of knowledge when dealing with this issue and this computerised map?

A. He seemed very familiar with the road, the terrain, and the ³⁰³⁸⁰ ability to draw the lines in the right place. I remember discussions about the specific area just south of Sarajevo and that road, and he was not unfamiliar with this piece of ground.

Q. At the end of Dayton, did the American delegation intend the Bosnian Serb leaders to initial the agreement; and if so, what was the accused's attitude as to who should be signing?

A. Well, it was the intent that everyone would signal their intent, their agreement with the final document. But the Bosnian Serb delegation did not sign, and President Milosevic indicated that his initials were adequate, that he would produce the Bosnian Serb's signature later.

Q. Going back to the computerised map, help us with this: In dealing with that map, did he turn to the Bosnian Serbs for any assistance or --

A. No, he did not.

Q. Moving beyond Dayton to 1997, was there an incident involving SFOR troops who had been placed at a television antenna to guard it indeed?

A. Yes, there was. There was a period of struggle around the city of Brcko in which NATO troops ended up on top of a piece of high ground. It so happened there was a television antenna there. We continued to occupy that antenna.

One morning a mob showed up. President Milosevic had previously told me that any time there was trouble, just call him and he could handle it. I called him and I said, you're going to have to get the mob out of there, they're threatening our troops, and if you don't pull them back , we'll take other actions. He said, well, no, this is just political. I said no, it's not political, this is a threat against the troops. It ³⁰³⁸¹ seemed that within a half hour or so, the mob disappeared.

Q. You addressed him. Was it regular for you to address him or to think of addressing him? Was there anybody to address apart from him for a problem like this?

A. It was clear that he still had extraordinary influence if not control. It was never clear how much, but he'd always said if there was a difficulty, call him, and I did.

Q. Paragraph 15 of the statement serving as a summary, and now turning to Kosovo.

On the 15th of October of 1998, did you, together with Javier Solana, General Naumann fly to Belgrade to meet the accused for the purpose of getting signatures for an agreement about NATO overflight and verification?

A. Yes, I did.

Q. Were you also going to deal with the proposed pullback of VJ and MUP forces from Kosovo?

A. Yes, we were.

Q. You met the accused in Beli Dvor. By whom was he accompanied?

A. To the best of my recollection, he was accompanied by Milutinovic and Perisic.

Q. How long did the meeting last?

A. Perhaps three hours.

Q. And was the upshot of that that in due course the agreement was signed? And we have that at tab --

A. Yes. The air verification agreement was signed. ³⁰³⁸² ^{BLANK PAGE} ³⁰³⁸³

Q. We can found that at tab 5 in the bundle -- sorry, tab 6, beg your pardon. Look at that, please.

Now, when dealing with this, did the accused ask Javier Solana when the NATO ACTORD would be cancelled?

A. Yes, the accused was quite anxious to have the NATO ACTORD cancelled, and he did ask that question.

Q. Very well. Did that lead to a discussion, or indeed an argument, between him and Solana?

A. Yes, it did, because Secretary-General Solana made it clear that the ACTORD couldn't be cancelled until there was compliance with the UN directives that directed the pullback of the excessive forces that had been deployed in Kosovo since February of 1998.

Q. How consistent or otherwise was the accused's approach to Secretary-General Solana?

A. Well, it wasn't consistent. I mean, at first he had denied that he'd made such an agreement, then he denied that there were any excessive forces there or any new forces that had been deployed since that period; and then, confronted with the evidence, he then relented and agreed to pull those military forces back that we had mentioned.

Q. You spoke to him directly on the basis of information that you had, and at that time he was accompanied by General Perisic, I think.

A. That's right. When he denied that there were any additional forces in there, I simply said, "Well, Mr. President, have you heard of the 211th Armoured Brigade?" We were speaking English. He said, "No, I've not heard of such a unit." He then turned and spoke to General ³⁰³⁸⁴ Perisic in Serbo-Croatian, and Perisic answered him, and then Milosevic came -- turned back, looking unhappy, and said, "All right, there is such a unit." And it went this way for several different units until -- and each one he subsequently agreed to pull out.

It was a grudging acceptance. It wasn't an acceptance of pulling out of the excessive units, it was an acceptance of whatever you name, we'll pull back.

Q. Did General Perisic take a part in revealing the accuracy of your information for just the one example, the 211th, or was he taking a similar role in relation to other information you provided?

A. He confirmed the accuracy of the other two units that we provided.

Q. And was one of those matters you raised a police unit?

A. It was, but in this case this wasn't an armoured unit so General Perisic did not confirm it, and President Milosevic tried to say this wasn't a unit, it was a precinct, or words to that effect.

Q. And did Perisic correct him on that?

A. Perisic wasn't able to correct on that and we were left then with the issue of how many police were there and what was the -- what was the increased strength of the police. And at that point, President Milosevic promised that he would send us that information and give us a full accounting of the police elements that were in there.

Q. Very well. My oversight in relation to an earlier matter on paragraph 14. Very briefly let's cover that. In the summer of 1997, did you have conversation with Biljana Plavsic where she told you something that had been said to her by the accused about Stanisic? Just tell us ³⁰³⁸⁵ about that, please.

A. I did have a conversation with Biljana Plavsic, and she said that Milosevic had offered to provide security for her through Stanisic, and she rejected that offer of security.

Q. Thank you very much. And let's pick up the story at paragraph 18 of the statement serving as summary. Your next meeting on the 20th of October when you returned to Belgrade to discuss --

[Trial Chamber confers]

JUDGE MAY: I was raising paragraphs 27 to 28. You may want to look at those again, but you can look at them over the adjournment.

MR. NICE: Look at them in the sense that querying whether --

JUDGE MAY: The mistake is mine. I was getting ahead.

MR. NICE:

Q. So on the 20th of October you returned to Belgrade to discuss MUP data that had been delivered by the FRY, and I think it was your intention to press further for the withdrawal of forces. Is that correct, General?

A. That's correct. This was a time in which we had to work an agreement to pull back the forces in compliance with the UN Security Council Resolution, and I spoke with President Milosevic. I asked that his generals cooperate in doing this. We had a full disclosure by the military and the police of what they believed to be the KLA dispositions and where their own forces were; at least, where the military forces were, the police dispositions still weren't quite complete.

Q. Can we deal with that in just a second, but before we do, the composition of the meeting and the function of the people attending, was ³⁰³⁸⁶ the accused accompanied by Milutinovic but also by a more personal advisor?

A. Yes, he was accompanied by Milutinovic and, as I recall, by Goran Milinovic.

Q. Tiny detail: The man Milinovic, what did he do in this or in any other meetings that you saw him at? What service or function did he appear to provide?

A. Milinovic had -- was present at almost every meeting we ever had with Milosevic. He seemed to be a Chief of Staff. He was the note-taker, he was the man who listened, who monitored, who, I guess, ensured that the directions given by Milosevic were implemented.

Q. But he did make notes?

A. He seemed to make notes. I recall him having a notebook and a pen there.

Q. Before we come to what it's going to be Djordjevic and Perisic were able to tell you, was there at one stage a private meeting between you and the accused where you walked to an adjoining room and spoke to him about what he should do?

A. Yes, there was.

Q. Tell us about that, please.

A. I began the meeting with President Milosevic on the 20th of October. There didn't seem to be a spirit of cooperation, and in front of his advisors he seemed to be wanting to again backtrack and refuse to pull the forces out and so forth.

I asked him to step aside, I spoke to him one-on-one, and I warned ³⁰³⁸⁷ him that if he didn't comply with the request of the United Nations, that action would be taken against him in the form of bombing.

Q. His response?

A. His response was at first to shrug this off, and then on reflection he decided that he would cooperate. He said he would ask his generals -- tell his generals to cooperate.

Q. By his response did he indicate the ability to control his generals or not?

A. He certainly indicated the ability to control his generals, absolutely. No question about it.

Q. Turning now then to Djordjevic and Perisic and in that order, when you spoke to Djordjevic, was there a map available?

A. Yes. We laid out a map in a room off the president's office there, and General Djordjevic went through the map in some detail, pointing out the location of each of the KLA remnants that were there.

Q. Also present at this meeting? Do you remember who else was present?

A. General Perisic was there also and he then he began to talk about the military dispositions that were present.

Q. Before we come to that, can you remember who else was present? Doesn't matter if you can't at the moment.

A. I had with me some staff members. I had my political advisor, Mike Durkee; staff assistant Colonel Dennis Dimengo; the intelligence officer Brigadier General Glen Schaffer; and, as I recall, somewhere in this meeting also a Major General Lukic came in, another MUP officer. ³⁰³⁸⁸ ^{BLANK PAGE} ³⁰³⁸⁹

Q. In the course of your discussion with Djordjevic and in the marking of the map, was it possible to count the number of alleged KLA people concerning Djordjevic?

A. Yes, we added up these numbers and they totaled 410 KLA, according to Djordjevic's analysis.

Q. Did you raise that with him; and if so, tell us what he said.

A. Well, I certainly did. I said that that you've forced -- words to the effect, you've forced 350.000, 400.000 people out of their homes; you're trying to destroy the province to get at 400 people. He said, "We were within two weeks of killing them all. Why did you stop us?" And I said, "Because you're targeting a civilian population and it's creating a humanitarian catastrophe for your own people."

Q. Very well. Did you say anything further about the appropriateness of otherwise of using force?

A. I made it clear that that wasn't appropriate, it was illegal, against the law; it's not done.

Q. Now let's turn to Perisic who, of course, you'd recently seen being slightly counter to the accused in his force analysis or more force analysis about troop dispositions, hadn't you?

A. Mm-hmm.

Q. What happened with him on this occasion?

A. Well, he pointed out the military locations and he discussed the size of the units that were out there, and so I had a very good feel for the military dispositions and also how they were deployed tactically after I finished the discussion with General Perisic. ³⁰³⁹⁰

Q. And by way of an example, how full was his information when he identified a tank?

A. Well, it seemed to be very -- he was very forthcoming, I would say. Well, we saw a couple of tanks here, and he would say, yes, that's a company. Or -- I said, so if we saw a dozen vehicles here ... He'd say, yes, that's a battalion. So it indicated that we were only seeing a small portion of the total size of the force that was actually there.

Q. Was his approach for the army similar to or different from the approach of Djordjevic for the MUP?

A. He seemed to be very -- he seemed to be very forthcoming in terms of the discussion of the issues.

Q. Did this meeting result in any pullback; if so, complete or partial?

A. This meeting resulted in a plan for a partial pullback of some forces around Malisevo, as sort of a phase 1 of a pullback.

Q. And did this lead to another meeting four days later on the 24th, this occasion General Naumann being present?

A. I took this partial pullback plan. I warned them at the time that I didn't have the authority to negotiate anything for NATO. I took it back to NATO. I said NATO is going to take a look at it, at all the information you've given, and then we'll see what happens. So it turned out that General Naumann and I were sent back on the 24th of October.

Q. Who was present at this meeting?

A. At this meeting we first began with President Milosevic, and there was Milutinovic there, Sainovic, Perisic, and others. ³⁰³⁹¹

Q. The meeting started when and lasted how long?

A. It went -- the initial meeting went around 5.00, and for maybe an hour. Yeah. Yeah.

Q. What was your and Klaus Naumann's objective?

A. Well, the idea was to get a real pullback of all the forces and comply with the UN Security Council Resolution. We had a NATO ACTORD in place, there was a time deadline we were working against here, and we wanted to say in very direct terms to President Milosevic that this was the time that he must pull these forces back.

Q. At one stage did Perisic organise a quiet meeting with you or a private meeting with you?

A. Yes. What happened was that Milosevic said, well, you'll have to go back and continue to work this with these generals. So we went to Perisic first and Perisic said we're the only -- he went through the disposition, we talked about how many forces could be pulled back reasonably, and -- but he said that only President Milosevic could give the authority to pull these forces back. And he warned us, and he asked me, he said, "Please not destroy the Yugoslav military." He said, "This is the last democratic institution in Yugoslavia."

Q. When he said that, had he made arrangements about the number of people present to hear him speak?

A. Yes, he had. He made sure everybody else was out of the room except the interpreter.

Q. And as a result of this, did you have hopes that you might accelerate the negotiations? ³⁰³⁹²

A. That seemed to be a very -- a promising attitude, but on the other hand, we recognised that Milosevic had total control of what was going to be decided.

Q. Did you then make a decision as to whether you were going to achieve a full pullback or whether you needed to take things further with the accused?

A. At that point it was clear that we'd gotten as far as we were going to get with Perisic, and so we decided to go back and see Milosevic and his team.

Q. On this occasion -- this again back at Beli Dvor. On this occasion were others present, some you were meeting for the first time?

A. Well, Sainovic was there. As I recall, that's the first time I'd met Sainovic. The police people came in, and we assembled the whole group again. This must have been around 8.00 or 9.00 at night on that Saturday night, the 24th of October.

Q. What was the accused's initial reaction at this part of the adjourned or however you describe it meeting?

A. Well, we said to the accused essentially that we didn't get any satisfaction, or this is not enough. And I said General Naumann has an idea. General Naumann and I had talked about this previously, I turned to him and he said, you're going to have to pull these excess police back, just pull them all back, Mr. President. That's the only way to solve this problem, that's the only way to get rid of the ACTORD. All the excess police out. And Milosevic looked startled, and then he excused himself. He went back into another room with his team. They were in there for ³⁰³⁹³ about 15 minutes, 20 minutes, and then they came back into the meeting room with us. And Milosevic agreed in principle and then he said, you'll have to continue the discussions now and work out the details of this.

Q. With whom were you instructed to work out details?

A. We went back at that point to the Serb Ministry of Defence, and as I recall, it was Foreign Minister Milutinovic, General Perisic, Djordjevic, Lukic, and I think Sainovic was still there. He went in and out, as I recall.

Q. Did those negotiations continue until the early hours of the following morning, the 25th of October, when you returned to see the accused at Beli Dvor?

A. That's right. These negotiations ended, I think, around -- between 4.30 and 5.00 on the morning of the 25th of January.

Q. And you saw the accused at what time, roughly?

A. As I recall, it was around 9.00. We had the results at that point. We cleaned up, I checked back in with headquarters, and so we went back around 9.00.

Q. And now you were now in a position to require reduction of rather more than you'd originally identified as the number?

A. Well, the problem was -- yes, that's correct, because General Naumann had given the number of excess police at 3.000. The correct number was 4.000, so we had to go in and see Milosevic. He said he wanted to make some changes in the agreement. We said fine, we listened to him, we said now we want to make a change in the agreement; it's not 3.000 police, it's 4.000 police that have to be pulled out. ³⁰³⁹⁴ ^{BLANK PAGE} ³⁰³⁹⁵

Q. Did he accept that or did he resist that?

A. With reluctance, he accepted that.

Q. Did he attempt an argument about accepting more MUP presence?

A. Yes.

Q. How did he base that?

A. He essentially said he wanted to stand on the original 3.000 figure. He said, Where did you get the information of 4.000? I said it came from your own documents. He had given us the documents as a result of the 15 October meeting.

Q. The argument to have more MUP present, was that from Milosevic or from someone else?

A. We were only talking -- as I recall the meeting, we were only talking to Milosevic at this point. There had been discussion the previous night with Milutinovic about the numbers of MUP and whether they could be there and be out of uniform and so forth, but on Sunday morning, Milosevic presented his changes that he wanted, we considered them, we agreed to some of them, we explained the rationale for the document, and then we presented this change and we said you're going to have to take 4.000 not 3.000 out.

Q. During this part of the negotiations, did there come a time when the accused referred to historical events going back to 1946; and if so, from recollection, can you tell the Court what it was he said and what effect it had on you?

A. We achieved agreement and then it remained to type up the agreement and get it signed, and so this must have been 10.30, 11:00 in ³⁰³⁹⁶ the morning or something, and President Milosevic was musing philosophically about this. And he turned to me and said, "General Clark," he said, "We know how to handle these murderers, these rapists, these criminals." He said, "We've done this before." I said, "Well, when?" He said, "In Drenica in 1946." And I said, "What did you do?" He said, "We killed them." He said, "We killed them all." I was stunned at the vehemence with which he spoke, and I just looked at him. General Naumann looked at him, as I recall, and Milosevic then said -- then he qualified his statement. He said, "Of course we did not do it all at one. It took some time."

Q. Did he say how long it took?

A. I don't recall him saying that.

Q. Very well. The agreement being retyped, as you -- or typed, as you've explained, when it was brought in for signature, what did you notice about those who were to sign?

A. That Milosevic -- I noticed that Milosevic's name wasn't on the agreement.

Q. Did you raise that with him? What was his reaction?

A. I did raise it with him. He said it wasn't necessary. I said, well, it is necessary, and asked him to sign it.

Q. Did you indeed have to press him to sign it and explain the level of people that you typically dealt with in your negotiations?

A. I did have to press hard on this because it's been my experience in dealing with leaders in this part world, and with President Milosevic, that they typically didn't like to sign documents because it meant then ³⁰³⁹⁷ that they could no longer disavow them. And I was determined that President Milosevic would sign this. We had negotiated it with him, he had the authority. And had he not signed it, my concern was that he would have then been able to say, "Well, I didn't really see this," and he would have been able to disavow it, so his signature on that document was very important because it represented his promises to NATO.

MR. NICE: Your Honour, this document has already been exhibited as Exhibit 94, tab 3. Perhaps it can just be laid on the overhead projector for the witness to see the way the signature was placed. I haven't got it on the screen I think myself. I don't know if the Judges see it. Yes, there it is. Thank you.

Q. As we can see, no place on the typed version for the accused to sign. You and General Naumann required him to sign. Just show us where, please.

A. Right. This is the signature block. This was typed up in Yugoslavia, in Belgrade, there while I talked to Milosevic. And these were the signatures that he wanted on there and this is what was typed on there, and of course it had our names, General Naumann's name and my name on it, and then this is where he signed it at our insistence.

Q. Thank you very much. And this document is the record of the meeting on the 25th of October of 1998, and that is agreed being set out in an attached statement.

I turn to paragraph 30, the 20th of December of 1998. Did you go to Belgrade on this occasion to meet a person new to you, Colonel General Ojdanic? ³⁰³⁹⁸

A. I did. We knew that Perisic was in trouble and, based on the atmosphere in the meetings in October, I was not surprised that he was replaced by General Ojdanic, and I wanted to be certain that General Ojdanic understood the obligations that Yugoslavia had accepted through the Milosevic document.

Q. Who else was present on this meeting?

A. Well, Mr. Sainovic was there. Apparently I wasn't going to be allowed to meet with General Ojdanic without Mr. Sainovic being present.

Q. At the time, what was your judgement about this? What did it say about the level of confidence or trust reposed in Ojdanic?

A. It said that Ojdanic wasn't sufficiently trusted to meet alone with me with the interpreters present, that he needed the political guidance of Mr. Sainovic.

Q. Did you raise -- really to raise with Ojdanic the presence of VJ tanks north of Pristina near Podujevo?

A. Yes. At that point, we had already seen the evidence of the violation of Milosevic's commitments to NATO. They'd already been deploying tanks north of Pristina along the main line of communication near Podujevo, and I raised this with General Ojdanic, and he said, well, it was a training mission. Well, these weren't training missions. And under the agreement, they would have had to have been notified in advance and they weren't.

Q. In giving his answer to you, did he speak without assistance or did he discuss the matter at all first with Sainovic?

A. Each answer that he gave me was first coached with Sainovic or ³⁰³⁹⁹ cleared with Sainovic.

Q. You made an assessment of Ojdanic. I don't know whether you made it there and then at this meeting or later, but what was your assessment?

A. I thought he was a place-holder; someone ambitious enough to want the job and maybe someone who wouldn't ask too many of the tough questions that gotten General Perisic in trouble.

Q. Racak. Following that event, did you and General Naumann travel to Belgrade on the 19th of January to meet the accused and to attempt to arrange investigation of the Racak incident?

A. Yes, we did.

Q. Did you have objectives about Ambassador William Walker as well?

A. Yes, we wanted Ambassador Walker to remain in the country, and we only wanted Milosevic to reaffirm and maintain his commitments that he'd made to NATO in the 25 October document.

Q. The meeting was in Beli Dvor. How long did it last?

A. This meeting in Beli Dvor lasted seven hours.

Q. Milosevic was accompanied by whom on his side?

A. I recall Mr. Milutinovic and Mr. Sainovic.

Q. Was one of the topics you raised in this long meeting the possibility of the then-ICTY Prosecutor Louise Arbour being permitted access to investigate the Racak massacre?

A. Yes. This was the first topic that we raised.

Q. The accused's reaction to it?

A. He employed several different lines of reaction. First he reminded us that he had never agreed to the jurisdiction of the ³⁰⁴⁰⁰ ^{BLANK PAGE} ³⁰⁴⁰¹ International Criminal Tribunal inside Yugoslavia. We then said you've promised to cooperate with the ICTY. Then he said there was no massacre, and then he said, well, there were bodies. And then we continued to persist. He said that Ms. Arbour could come as a tourist. First he said she couldn't come, then she could as a tourist but she'd have to be escorted, then she'd have to be escorted by the minister of justice. She couldn't investigate anything. Then she could look at the bodies but she could only look at them with other people present.

Q. As these proposals were made, did you relay them to Justice Arbour for her reaction?

A. Yes, I did. I called her several times, in each case affirming her opinion of the various offers that Mr. Milosevic made.

Q. How did your exchanges with the accused on this topic end?

A. Essentially it came to the point that he was not offering her a satisfactory opportunity to come and do the investigation, and he continued to dance around the issues and failed to comply with what was required. So I posed it to him in very simple terms. I said, if you don't want her to come, just say so, if you don't want her to come. Otherwise, let her come, give her the authority to do the investigations properly. He said, no, he didn't want her to come.

Q. Turning to Ambassador Walker, the accused's attitude in relation to him, how was it resolved?

A. Milosevic continued to say that Ambassador Walker had violated his responsibilities as a diplomat by labelling this as a massacre and that it was the decision of the Serb government that he had to leave. ³⁰⁴⁰²

Q. Did you have a discussion, or a short exchange in any event, with Milutinovic about this during a break?

A. Yes. By this time, as I recall, Milutinovic was no longer the foreign minister of Serbia but he was the president of Serbia and Milosevic had moved up to be president of Yugoslavia. But Milutinovic said, on the side, he says, "Now this is going to be -- you could get a compromise on this. This is -- listen to what -- what President Milosevic is saying, he's saying in essence it's the will of the government. So he's offering a compromise. He might not -- he might give in on this."

Q. In the event, there was any conclusion to this part of the --

A. No, there wasn't. There was not a conclusion other than the fact that Milosevic seemed to be determined that Walker must leave.

Q. So far as the October agreements -- commitments were concerned, what was the accused's attitude; compromising or uncompromising, what?

A. Milosevic told me, he said, "I'm not going to comply with these agreements. I warned you that we would 'defend ourselves,' and so we're not complying with these agreements."

Q. Your reaction to that? What did you tell him?

A. Well, I explained to him that his actions went well beyond any reasonable defence, they were disproportionate, they violated the agreements, and I said that "If you persist in this, NATO is going to tell me to start moving aircraft." In other words, implying that he was not living up to his terms of the agreement and NATO would then invoke the ACTORD.

Q. Did you in your exchanges with the accused take a strong line, ³⁰⁴⁰³ make reference generally to what he was doing to his country?

A. Yes, I put this in terms that he could understand what the consequences would be for him and his international position. I said that, "NATO is going to be asking -- these leaders are going to be asking what is it that you are trying to do to this country? You forced professors to sign loyalty oaths, you have crushed democracy, you have taken a vibrant economy, you've wrecked it. They're going to be asking, what kind of a leader are you?"

Q. What did that lead the accused to say and do?

A. Well, President Milosevic became very angry and he then -- he claimed that there were no loyalty oaths, that Serbia was a democracy, and he accused General Naumann and me of threatening him. He -- he said, "You are the war criminals."

Q. Did you try and calm him down?

A. Yes, I wanted to get back to rational discussion, and so he did calm down, but we never made any more progress.

Q. And at one point in this meeting did you refer back to something that you understood the accused had said to Ambassador Holbrooke?

A. Yes. Holbrooke had told me that Milosevic had said at one point that Kosovo is more important than his neck. And I asked Milosevic to confirm that, and he said, "No, that's not correct, I said it's more important than my head," meaning that that was the centre of Serbian civilisation, and that's -- that was the essence of what he was saying, that that was the key to his political future.

Q. On the earlier occasion there had been reference to what happened ³⁰⁴⁰⁴ in 1946. Was there any further reference to that?

A. I believe there was.

MR. NICE: Your Honour, I'm three paragraphs short of the place you've asked me to start a reconsideration. We've been going just an hour. I don't know if that would be a convenient moment.

JUDGE MAY: Yes. We will take the break now. General Walker --

THE WITNESS: It's General Clark, sir.

JUDGE MAY: I'm sorry, General Clark. We have to warn all witnesses, as we do, not to speak about their evidence until it's over. Could I do the same with you. We understand that you're giving a lecture tonight on international relations. Of course that's fine, but formally I must, of course, tell you not to discuss the case during it.

THE WITNESS: Of course.

JUDGE MAY: Yes. We'll adjourn now. Twenty minutes.

--- Recess taken at 10.32 a.m.

--- On resuming at 10.57 a.m.

JUDGE MAY: Yes Mr. Nice.

MR. NICE:

Q. Paragraph 36 in the statement serving as summary. General Clark, when were you first aware of any FRY forces being involved in an offensive in Kosovo?

A. Well, we started to see indicators of this and we began to hear the indicators in January. We had already seen the forces violating the agreement, we knew it was just a matter of time. As I said, in late ³⁰⁴⁰⁵ December we saw the forces moving out, we continued to see more forces deployed.

Q. What about the Podujevo area? And what did you learn of and when there?

A. Well, these were the first ones moving out in December 1998 that I had warned General Ojdanic about on my visit down there, on about the 20th of December of 1998 and -- and then we continued to see those forces deployed out there. They manoeuvred around. And as far as we could determine, what they were doing is they would go around a village, they would stir up trouble, they would look for opportunities to use force, use their guns, heavy guns and so forth.

Q. Again, and from memory if you can, of course, any elements of any particular armoured brigades that you can bring to mind as having featured at this time?

A. We continued to watch the 211th Armoured Brigade because it had been pulled out. We had seen it in there earlier, it came back in to the border and then began to deploy inside Kosovo again.

Q. And as to the Pristina Corps did you notice anything or were you informed of anything as to its level of arms?

A. Well, we saw it being reinforced. It was the command and control headquarters for the province and we saw reinforcements added to it so that it became much more capable.

Q. Did you form a judgement as to the degree to which it had been enlarged?

A. It may have been doubled in strength. It had a lot of additional ³⁰⁴⁰⁶ forces with it.

Q. Did you get to learn of something called a Joint Command? And if the answer is yes, can you indicate your source of knowledge in the most general terms, and what you understood that to be.

A. Well, I had two general sources of knowledge. First I had received some kind of an indication when I'd first met Sainovic, and the accused had introduced him as being someone who was in charge of this. And then it was clear from other reliable sources that there had actually been a joint -- some kind of a joint police and army headquarters established to be able to deal with the region and that Sainovic had some kind of a role in that. Perhaps a role that enabled him to undercut the authority of the General Staff.

Q. What purpose could you see in the use of the Joint Command?

A. Well, first it was necessary to -- it would have been necessary to coordinate the military and police activities on the ground, but it served an adjunct purpose as well because it avoided the direct control of the armed forces by the General Staff, and just following on from the comments that Perisic had made to me, I assumed that there were still elements within the General Staff which might have not been under the full political control of President -- then President Milosevic, then thus enabling him to bypass whatever resistance there might have been.

Q. In early March of 1999, did Secretary-General Solana give you some instructions as to what you were to do so far as General Ojdanic was concerned?

A. Yes. We continued to see the build-up of these forces and I ³⁰⁴⁰⁷ brought them to Solana's attention. He said okay, you got to call and ask him -- tell Ojdanic to stop bringing those troops in. See if you can give him a warning to stop doing it so it doesn't escalate the crisis further. And I did call Ojdanic, and I told him we were watching what he was doing, I asked him not to do this. He replied that -- that we were causing him to do this, that he was doing this in self-defence against the threat of a NATO invasion. And of course there was -- there was no possibility of NATO invasion at that point.

I told Ojdanic that he shouldn't do it. He said that there were forces coming in to Macedonia. I explained that these forces weren't sufficient for an invasion and warned him that he was violating the October 1998 agreement, that I had met with him on the previous December.

Q. With what military or other objective was the build-up of troops consistent in your then-judgement, General?

A. All of this was consistent with the plan that we'd heard rumoured to seek the final solution to this problem in 1999.

Q. Seek the final solution by what --

A. That is to say by using a large-scale ethnic cleansing operation against the people in Kosovo.

MR. NICE: Your Honour, in light of the Chamber's observations about paragraphs 39 to 45, with your leave I will deal with the first sentence of paragraph 39 and with paragraph 41, subject to laying a foundation for knowledge, and not the balance. I don't know if that will be acceptable to the Chamber.

JUDGE MAY: It is simply a question of the extent of ³⁰⁴⁰⁸ cross-examination which is to be let in by it, but that's the only point that we make.

MR. NICE: I quite understand that and we're grateful for the concern that the Chamber has expressed through that question to me. The first sentence of paragraph 39 is a simple point. Paragraph 41 is a matter of pattern evidence, pattern connecting between one conflict and another, and I will be seeking first the witness's account of his knowledge for that sort of material.

JUDGE MAY: Yes.

MR. NICE:

Q. General, on what day or approximately what day, in your judgement, did the Serb offensive begin?

A. Either Friday the 19th or Saturday the 20th, as NATO could best determine.

Q. In the course of your statement you deal with -- it happens at paragraph 41 but don't refer to that, please. You deal with the pattern of events, a typical pattern of events where the VJ and other units came to be involved. Before I ask you for what that pattern was, can you explain what your sources of information were in the most general terms so that we can understand how you could form this judgement?

A. I got this from both the news media and other reliable sources. So it was a combination of information.

Q. And what was the pattern of involvement of the VJ, the MUP, and/or other units?

A. It seemed consistent with an earlier pattern that we had observed ³⁰⁴⁰⁹ over the decade of the conflict in the former Yugoslavia. Namely that the military surrounds an objective, it blocks it, it prevents reinforcement or exit. The police then go through, they arrest people by name if they have particular information, that they search for. The paramilitaries then go in and threaten people and rob them and so forth, and then people are thrown out of their homes afterwards, all under the control of the authorities.

Q. The pattern that you've identified, was it something in your judgement as a soldier that could have happened with or without the knowledge of the local VJ or the local MUP?

A. Could not have happened without the coordination of the VJ and the MUP, and based on what I'd seen of the army, it had to have happened with high-level command and control because this was still a disciplined force.

Q. I want to return to one topic you dealt with earlier and ask you a couple of further questions about it. It's the air defence system. You will remember telling the Chamber, that's paragraph 6, how you once told Perisic to turn off the transmission system. Can you amplify what you've already said about the air defence system, describing in a sentence what your judgement was of its nature, contrasting it with or comparing it with air defence system cooperation of, say NATO countries or the United Kingdom and the United States, something like that?

A. Well, this was an integrated air defence system that was put together coherently, laid out on a single template with various regional reporting nodes and a dispersed early warning radars and target acquisition radars and a certain number of missile launching sites and so ³⁰⁴¹⁰ forth. And it was a leftover from Yugoslavia, and it was still fully operational so it indicated to me that this was as though there had never been a separation between the VRS and the VJ; it was simply an integrated air defence system.

Q. How would that compare with, say, information sharing between allies such as the United Kingdom and the United States, something like that, in general terms without saying anything that would be revealing about particular relationships current at the moment?

A. Well, under NATO agreements, countries delegated their air defence to NATO but it was still under a sovereign agreement. So there was data sharing between nations but it was data sharing over national systems. So there was an international system on top.

So what you've got right here is what was formerly a national system that had never been disestablished, it was still there in the case of Yugoslavia. Integrated. That means all the pieces would fit together. Information would flow back and forth. As far as we could tell, it was seamless.

Q. And the significance of this, what does it -- and what does it reveal about the relationship between the two armies concerned?

A. Well, as we looked at this, our reliable information seemed to suggest that the separation of the two armies was -- it was political but it wasn't substantive. In other words, that what had happened is that when these two armies separated, as best we could figure this out, soldiers who had lived in the republic -- in Bosnia-Herzegovina were taken out of the VJ, but the officers were shuffled in a general sense. Some ³⁰⁴¹¹ officers volunteered to serve there apparently, others didn't. The training was still done, as far as we could determine, inside and by the VJ. Officer assignments were controlled by the VJ, and promotions and pay were subject to the control of the VJ.

Q. Yes. I'm more concerned about being specific to the air defence system, its integrated nature. What does that reveal about the connection of the two armies?

A. It meant that there was an integrated control of the system so that decisions to fire or decisions to turn on radars and so forth were likely to have been made by Yugoslavia, not by the Serbs themselves in Bosnia.

MR. NICE: Your Honour, I just now deal with the present position so far as exhibits are concerned. If the summary of General Clark's background may become tab 2. For the time being we pass over tab 3, but I'd just ask the witness this as a fact.

Q. You wrote the book "Waging Modern War." Have you become aware since writing it of any corrections communicated either to you or to your publishers?

A. No. No.

MR. NICE: There's a chart that shows passages that the Prosecution have asked the Judges to have in mind from that book, and indeed at tab 4 -- at tab 3, you have, I think, the excerpts from the book, Your Honours.

JUDGE MAY: But the question is this: We're not going to admit that. Do you want -- sorry I don't understand the position. Are you ³⁰⁴¹² saying that the book -- that the accused is free to cross-examine on any part of the book? That is not as I had understood the position.

MR. NICE: No, Your Honour, that's not what we're seeking, especially in light of what Your Honour was saying this morning. So that even the extracts, it may be, don't need to be produced.

JUDGE MAY: No, most certainly not because it seems to me there is an unfairness in producing extracts which in any event are being given in evidence largely.

MR. NICE: Certainly. At tab 5 I said there was an interest in the exhibit from a museum. There is letter which doesn't need to become an exhibit but can be distributed. Alternatively, it could become part of tab 5, the map. It comes from the MacArthur Museum of Arkansas Military History, and it explains the only change made to the map is the addition of a pencil accession number, which it identifies. So it may be that this letter could become part of tab 5, particularly if the Chamber is prepared to accept the copy version of the map as tab 5 in order to allow the original to return to the museum.

JUDGE MAY: Let's deal with that now

[Trial Chamber confers]

JUDGE MAY: Yes, we will accept the versions that we have; the original can return to the museum.

MR. NICE: I'm grateful.

JUDGE KWON: Mr. Nice, there are two maps in tab 5, one of which isn't dealt with.

MR. NICE: I think the actual exhibit, if that's what you're ³⁰⁴¹³ referring to, is a map and an overlay. I haven't got my own copy at the moment, but I think you'll find that is original map without markings.

JUDGE KWON: This is different.

MR. NICE: I'm sorry. What you have, I think --

JUDGE MAY: The second appears to be an unmarked version of the first.

MR. NICE: That's right, because the exhibit itself, which is on the easel, is a map with a plastic transparent sheet on top of it on which markings have been made, so what you see in your two maps is the original and the version as effectively marked by, says the witness, the accused. Your Honour, looking at the exhibits, tab 6 has now been produced as well.

That's all I ask of this witness at this stage. General Clark, you'll be asked some further questions.

JUDGE MAY: Before you begin, Mr. Milosevic, there are some matters the Trial Chamber has to decide.

[Trial Chamber confers]

JUDGE MAY: Mr. Milosevic, before you begin cross-examining, you should know that there are parameters in this case beyond which you cannot go. We've already made an order which restricts the scope of cross-examination. I'm not going to go into the reasons for it again. It is limited to the statement which the witness has given, which means that you are restricted in a way that you are not restricted with other witnesses, because then you're allowed to ask any relevant matters. You're restricted in this case to the witness's evidence. So you can give ³⁰⁴¹⁴ -- ask him questions, of course, about what he's said here but not about other evidence. He's given no other evidence against you apart from the matter which General Clark has dealt with here.

So your cross-examination in this case is limited. We have refused to admit the book. It's not part of the evidence. We therefore will not allow some free-ranging cross-examination through it, but you may, if you are entitled to do so, and that will be a matter of relevance, you can, if you wish, ask General Clark about passages of the book which are related to his evidence, and that largely will be -- not entirely will be the matters which are already underlined. So subject to those matters, of course you may conduct your cross-examination, but you will be stopped if you go beyond those particular bounds.

We've considered the time that you should have. We have in mind that you should have some two and a half hours, if you so wish, to cross-examine, and it's now for you to begin.

THE ACCUSED: [Interpretation] Mr. May, I don't understand at all how you can limit my cross-examination to two and a half hours.

JUDGE MAY: Well, we would look at the time that we've given you. It will be subject to others' convenience, but also if you use the time properly and you want extra time, we would, of course, consider extending it, but it depends on your use of it and it seems to me two and a half hours should be adequate to deal with the limited matters which the witness has given in evidence.

THE ACCUSED: [Interpretation] Very well, Mr. May. I see now that ³⁰⁴¹⁵ you're introducing some restrictions linked to the witness's book, and the witness's book is linked to the credibility of this witness, which means that I couldn't question the witness even in relation to matters that have to do with his credit. Is that what it means or am I after all allowed to ask certain questions along those lines?

JUDGE MAY: You know exactly what you've been allowed to do. You must ask questions within those limitations.

THE ACCUSED: [Interpretation] Very well, Mr. May. You will probably allow me to ask at least some questions. Cross-examined by Mr. Milosevic:

Q. [Interpretation] General Clark, in your book you say that the NATO military action Yugoslavia in the spring of 1999 could not be called a war.

JUDGE MAY: I don't think we're going to have that debate. That's precisely what I've been talking about. You're not allowed a free-ranging discussion about the NATO action. You're limited to the evidence which the witness has given.

THE ACCUSED: [Interpretation] Mr. May, a fundamental question here relates to the NATO strike against Yugoslavia. You're not allowing me to ask the witness about the war against Yugoslavia, of which he was in command, then I don't know really what you're letting me ask him about.

JUDGE MAY: Yes. The witness hasn't given any evidence about that war. He has -- the Prosecution have chosen to call him on a limited number of issues, and he has given evidence about a limited number of issues. We will have to look elsewhere for evidence about those broader ³⁰⁴¹⁶ issues which, if relevant for us to consider, you want to put in front of us. You can't do it through this witness.

MR. MILOSEVIC: [Interpretation]

Q. General Clark, is it true that in an interview that you gave for The New Yorker on the 17th of November, you said that the war that you waged was technically illegal?

JUDGE MAY: Now, that is precisely the point. He's given no evidence about the legality of the war. He's not gone into that in his evidence. Now, concentrate on what evidence that he's given here and you'll be allowed to ask the questions, but you can't go into these broader questions with this witness. If they're relevant, we'll hear them from another one.

THE ACCUSED: [Interpretation] I cannot understand, Mr. May, what you are allowing me to ask this witness about. You're not letting me ask him anything.

JUDGE MAY: Let me explain. The general has given evidence about a series of meetings that you had with him. You yourself had with him in 1995, including comments which you have made. He has given evidence about further meetings in -- at a time leading up to the events in the Kosovo indictment. He has given evidence about meetings after Racak. Now, those are all things, and they are meetings at which you were present, upon which the witness has given evidence and you can cross-examine. The other matters are dealt with, insofar as they are dealt with, by other witnesses, and you can ask them about it. But as far as this witness is concerned, and I thought it was plain, you can ask him about his evidence, ³⁰⁴¹⁷ you can ask him about the statement he's made here, and your cross-examination will be so confined.

So you can begin, for instance, by asking about the meeting in August 1995 with Mr. Holbrooke and various other people. You can ask about that, if you wish, if you challenge. If you don't challenge the witness's evidence here, why then there's no need to cross-examine him.

THE ACCUSED: [Interpretation] Mr. May, of course I challenge the testimony of General Clark, because he has distorted the facts to a maximum degree, and I will show that, but it is absolutely not clear to me --

JUDGE MAY: You better get on with it. Put the questions. You make these allegations, the witness should have the chance to answer them. General Clark -- just a moment. You've just made an allegation of a sort which a witness should have the opportunity of dealing with. General Clark, the accused alleges to us that he challenges your evidence. Of course he's entitled to do that. But what he does say is that you've distorted the facts about which you've given evidence. He makes that allegation. Perhaps you would like to answer the allegation.

THE WITNESS: Well, Your Honour, I gave the testimony to the best of my recollection. The facts are exactly as I recollect them, and those are the facts I gave the Court.

JUDGE MAY: Yes, Mr. Milosevic.

THE ACCUSED: [Interpretation] Mr. May, just in order to clarify the basic attitude towards me in relation to this witness, is it in dispute that General Clark was in command of NATO during the war against ³⁰⁴¹⁸ Yugoslavia? And is it disputed that that was his most important role in everything that related to Yugoslavia? And is it in dispute that you're not allowing me to ask him anything at all about that?

JUDGE MAY: That's right. Now, ask questions -- if you wish to ask questions, concentrate on those matters that you've been told about several times. Now, what we're doing is wasting time going over this. You've heard the ruling, and you must abide by it, and you're taking up your time, you see, arguing.

THE ACCUSED: [Interpretation] So I cannot ask him anything at all about the war waged by NATO against Yugoslavia. Is that what you're saying?

JUDGE MAY: Yes.

THE ACCUSED: [Interpretation] Well, Mr. May, that really is an example showing that this is truly nothing more than a farce.

JUDGE MAY: Well, if you've got no questions for the witness, you needn't ask them, but if you want to, you must get on with it now. I also restrict your comments too.

THE ACCUSED: [Interpretation] Very well. Very well, Mr. May. I will move on to questions that you will allow, though I think this is scandalous that you are not allowing me to ask General Clark --

JUDGE MAY: That's exactly what I meant when I said you must restrict your comments and not waste time.

MR. MILOSEVIC: [Interpretation]

Q. General Clark, you started your testimony with your biography; isn't that right? ³⁰⁴¹⁹

A. That's correct.

Q. In your biography, your CV, I see that you were involved - and I don't know how to put it - in some indirect relationships with your former president, Clinton.

THE WITNESS: Your Honour, I don't understand what the question is.

JUDGE MAY: Don't -- General, if you don't understand a question, you don't have to answer it.

MR. MILOSEVIC: [Interpretation]

Q. Very well, General. Were you for many years a very close friend of your former president, Clinton?

JUDGE MAY: What is the point of all this? Now, you've been told to answer the questions -- I mean, to ask relevant questions which the witness can answer. That's not such a question.

THE ACCUSED: [Interpretation] Mr. May --

JUDGE MAY: May I point out to you you have yet to challenge once a specific point in the witness's evidence.

THE ACCUSED: [Interpretation] Mr. May, it is relevant because in the CV, it is stated that he only knew his former president superficially, whereas he personally told me in Holbrooke's presence that they were very close friends from Arkansas, that they went hunting together, that they consult one another about everything. So it's quite different from what is represented in his CV, and I want to establish that the witness is not telling the truth starting from his CV.

JUDGE MAY: Yes. The witness -- you can ask the witness about ³⁰⁴²⁰ that. It's a conversation you allege you had with him. Perhaps, General, you could just deal with that.

THE WITNESS: Your Honour, I did not tell President Milosevic that I was a close friend of President Clinton. I've never been hunting with President Clinton, and I did not and do not consult with President Clinton about everything.

My relationship with President Clinton was formal, it was correct. He was the president of the United States, I was an officer in the United States army. I worked, during the time I was involved in the Dayton negotiations, with the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, and as the Supreme Allied Commander Europe, I had a dual reporting chain. I reported through the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff to the secretary of defence, and I reported to the NATO Military Committee and to the NATO Secretary-General.

MR. MILOSEVIC: [Interpretation]

Q. So you are denying that in that building that you call a hunting lodge, when Holbrooke, you, and I were walking around, that both you and Holbrooke were speaking about your direct and close relationships with President Clinton. So you're saying that you didn't say that and that we didn't talk about that?

A. Your Honour, I have no recollection of any such conversation, and I've never told anybody that I had a direct and close relationship with President Clinton.

Q. You even spoke about hunting wild geese. Do you remember that?

A. Your Honour, I recall in the early days of the shuttle ³⁰⁴²¹ negotiations that on one occasion President Milosevic, Ambassador Holbrooke, and I went for a walk around the lake. During that period of time, I talked about duck hunting in the state of Arkansas. It had no relation to anything to do with President Clinton. It was no more than a social conversation intended to further the course of negotiations to seek an end to the fighting in Bosnia.

JUDGE MAY: Mr. Milosevic, I point out that in the CV which we have in front of us in the exhibits, I may be wrong about this and I'll be corrected if I am, but in it I think I can see no mention of President Clinton. It certainly mentions Little Rock, but I can't see any other mention at all, contrary to what you assert.

THE ACCUSED: [Interpretation] Because it is contrary to what I am saying. What I'm trying to say is that at the time he was saying different things from what is now in the CV. Of course he's now denying that. But we can move on.

MR. MILOSEVIC: [Interpretation]

Q. General Clark, you said that we met for the first time in August 1995, and at the time, your delegation was complete. You remember that. Kruzel and Frasure and Drew and the others, they were all there; isn't that right?

A. Your Honour, in August of 1995, with the US delegation, we met with Milosevic for the first time, as I recounted in my testimony.

Q. Is it true that this was the beginning of efforts to -- to initiate comprehensive negotiations on peace in Bosnia?

A. Your Honour, this was the -- my first involvement in peace talks ³⁰⁴²² aimed at bringing an end to the fighting in Bosnia. However, there had been many efforts, as I'm sure the Court is well aware, for many years, to end the fighting in Bosnia.

Q. But that was the first direct involvement of an official American delegation headed by Holbrooke; isn't that right?

A. Your Honour, to the best of my knowledge, that was the first engagement of Ambassador Holbrooke. It was my first engagement, it was the first time the delegation was involved. Previously, Ambassador Redman had been involved with something called the Contact Group peace plan, as I recall.

Q. Apart from Redman, who was involved through the Contact Group, Bob Frasure came to see me too, and he was a member of your delegation when he came, wasn't he?

A. Your Honour, I have no direct knowledge of the specifics of Ambassador Frasure's visit with Milosevic, but I do recall hearing that Ambassador Frasure had previously met with Milosevic.

Q. Very well. Since you have no direct knowledge about it, though I doubt it as you were all very well-informed, do you at least recollect that at that meeting -- that the meeting was imbued with a spirit of identical intentions, that is between those of Serbia and your delegation, and that was to achieve peace. At least, that was what you were saying. Isn't that right, General?

A. Your Honour, at the time of the meetings in August of 1995, we were sounding out each of the factions and the participants in the fighting in Bosnia in an effort to find a way to end the fighting there. ³⁰⁴²³ It was at that time unclear what President Milosevic's role might be, and that was the purpose of the meeting.

Q. You came to see me precisely for me to assist in achieving peace in Bosnia as soon as possible with the help of the authority enjoyed by the Republic of Serbia and me personally. Isn't that right, General?

A. Your Honour, we came to see Mr. -- the accused because we wanted to determine what his position would be on the strategic plan that we developed for trying to end the conflict and whether he could in fact provide a constructive role. We thought that he was going to be a factor, perhaps the dominant factor, in whether or not we could achieve peace, and we didn't know whether he would provide a constructive role or some other role.

Q. General Clark, do you remember that for several months prior to your inclusion there was a Contact Group plan on the table with Serbia, the government of Serbia, and I personally had supported and insisted on this Contact Group plan being adopted, and that plan implied a separation of the entities in Bosnia-Herzegovina in the proportion 51/49 per cent. Do you remember that?

A. Your Honour, over the previous period of time a Contact Group plan did emerge which called for a 51/49 division of the country. To the best of my knowledge, the Serbs had never agreed to this plan. It was unclear to me personally what Milosevic's role might have been in proposing it, supporting it, or encouraging others to support it. What we knew was that the plan had not succeeded.

We also knew that Yugoslavia still had a major if not dominating ³⁰⁴²⁴ role in continuing the conflict against the Bosnian Muslim forces and Croat forces, that there were heavy weapons used, that the logistics seemed -- chain seemed to go back to Yugoslavia, and so it was unclear to me what Milosevic's role might have been during this period.

Q. Very well, General Clark. It's quite clear to me what you're -- you wish to explain here, but let us go back to the meeting. That was the first meeting that you had in the territory of the former Yugoslavia, wasn't it? As a delegation.

A. Your Honour, this was our first meeting in the former Yugoslavia with the then-head of Serbia.

Q. At that meeting, you presented a plan to me. You said that you were leaving already on the following day and that you would be talking to the leadership in Sarajevo headed by Izetbegovic; is that right?

A. Your Honour, that is correct.

Q. Do you remember that I suggested to you and that I cautioned you not to go, as you had intended to go, via Mount Igman because there isn't a proper road there? There's only a footpath there basically. It's very dangerous. My suggestion to you was that you should take the normal road. Do you remember that?

A. Your Honour, I don't remember all the ins and outs of this dialogue. What I do remember is that we had asked the accused to assure that we could get through on the normal road, that we wouldn't be stopped by checkpoints and other things. And I do recall that the accused was able to contact immediately, I believe it was General Mladic, at least that's the impression that we were given, that I took from the meeting, ³⁰⁴²⁵ and he came back and said that he could not ensure that we could have an unrestricted passage in at that time on the normal routes.

Q. General Clark, it's exactly the other way around. I'm going to remind you. First of all, I'm not the one who went out in order to get into contact with anyone. It's my chef de cabinet, Goran Milinovic, who went out. I never left the room; I went on talking to you. Do you remember that?

A. Your Honour, I don't remember the specific details of who left the room or who didn't at that point.

Q. All right, General Clark. How come you don't remember that Goran Milinovic brought a fax containing written guarantees from General Mladic that you would not be stopped anywhere and that you can pass along the normal route? That is what we discussed for a long time, because he came back a few times in order to establish the exact wording of this guarantee so that it would be absolutely certain that nobody would stop you, because Holbrooke explained that it would be a great shame for the delegation if anyone stopped them anywhere. I assume you should remember that. It was the first meeting. Is that right or is that not right?

A. Your Honour, I don't have any recollection of this specifically. I do remember that there was discussion about the route and that we were unable to get satisfactory guarantees that we could go through it and that that's subsequently why we decided we would go the Mount Igman route. I don't have any recollection of the details other than that there was some conversation with Mladic. That is to say that there was a report that someone had had a conversation with Mladic. We didn't see that. We ³⁰⁴²⁶ stayed in the room. Who might have had that conversation and what was carried back and forth and so forth, I don't recall.

Q. Don't you remember that you were given this guarantee into your very own hands in writing that you would not be stopped anywhere and that Holbrooke refused this out of his very own vanity and that's why four of your men got killed on Mount Igman in the accident because the APC tumbled? You cannot remember that, General Clark? Four of your fellow members of the delegation got killed then because of your vanity.

A. Your Honour, I can assure you I was never given any guarantee in my very own hands that we could travel on the normal routes. I have never seen such a document. I have no recollection of it whatsoever. Of course I remember the tragedy on Mount Igman. I think it's regrettable that it wasn't possible to go in on the normal routes. And at the time, I viewed that as a political decision by someone in an effort to delay our ability to consult with the Bosnian Muslim authority, President Izetbegovic, and Prime Minister Silajdzic.

Q. General Clark, this is really something that an honourable man should not allow himself to say. You know full well the effort that we made --

JUDGE MAY: Mr. Milosevic, this is all by way of comment. You've heard what the witness has said. You challenge it. It doesn't seem to me we're going to get very much further and not by sort of abuse of that kind.

MR. MILOSEVIC: [Interpretation]

Q. And do you remember at least, General Clark, that I was the one ³⁰⁴²⁷ who categorically suggested to you not to go via Mount Igman by any means, to take the road around? And that is why we made every effort in order to obtain this guarantee for you. Do you remember that we -- that I categorically advocated that, that you take the normal route, not the path across Mount Igman, and that that is why every effort was made for you to obtain this guarantee. You are speaking under oath here, and we have witnesses about this.

A. Your Honour, we're talking about what I remember and what I don't remember in some kind of a meeting. In this meeting, I don't remember any of this emotion, I don't remember the sort of extreme efforts that the accused is presenting here. I remember an ongoing discussion about whether or not there were assurances that we could in fact get through the checkpoints without being stopped. I recall the conclusion was that we could not. I'm not sure who the conversations were alleged to have taken place with, but I don't have these specific recollections. What I remember is the conclusion of the meeting, and at the conclusion of the meeting we determined that if we were going to consult in Sarajevo, we would have to do so without going through the checkpoints.

Q. You decided not to go there out of vanity, not because you did not get a guarantee. Isn't that right, General Clark? That's why your friends got killed.

A. Your Honour, this is incorrect.

Q. All right, General Clark. Let us move on to other questions now. You said that you were surprised that I was advocating that Serbia play the main role in the negotiations. Isn't that right? Is that what ³⁰⁴²⁸ you said a few minutes ago?

A. Your Honour, my statement was when the accused said that we should deal with him rather than Bosnian Serbs, the question then that struck me was how is it that he could be so certain, and what legal mechanisms did he have to be so certain that if a referendum were held on the peace agreement inside Yugoslavia that it would apply to the Bosnian Serbs, the leaders of a faction in another country. I was not certain and unclear as to what his authority was over these people. It wasn't clear to me that he had that authority, certainly not legally, and that was the basis for our questions. His answer was, of course, that they would not resist the will of the Serb people, and then I took advantage of the opportunity to ask him personally that if it wasn't a matter of legality, then it was a matter of influence and therefore what was the basis that we should assume he had influence over these people if he couldn't have prevented the killing of innocents at Srebrenica.

Q. General Clark, you've got everything mixed up now, but let us work our way through this, detail by detail, and then we're going to clarify it. Do you remember that precisely because Serbia, and I personally, advocated the achievement of peace, and we conducted marathon negotiations with the leadership of Republika Srpska that included the entire leadership of Yugoslavia, Serbia, Montenegro, and Republika Srpska, and the patriarch of the Serbian Orthodox church was present there, His Holiness Pavle.

We reached agreement to establish a single delegation for the peace negotiations, because this was in the interest of the entire Serb ³⁰⁴²⁹ people, both in the Federal Republic of Yugoslavia and Republika Srpska and all other people who live in the territory of the former Yugoslavia. Do you remember at least that?

A. Your Honour, over the several years of the conflict, we had seen the accused's role as ambiguous; on the one hand seeming to encourage conflict, and on the other hand seeming to at times support peace. During the period when we began the negotiations, he seemed to be attempting to portray himself as someone in favour of negotiations. And in response to our challenge about his influence, the next time we saw him, he reached into his pocket and he pulled out what we came to know as the patriarch's letter, which was the idea that there would be a single delegation that would be comprised of six people and that he would have the controlling vote on this delegation. What went into the completion of this, whether or not there were negotiations and how extensive they were, we have no direct knowledge, I have no direct knowledge of that, but I do recall the patriarch letter.

Q. General Clark, first and foremost, this was no letter of the patriarch. There was an agreement reached between the leadership of Yugoslavia, the leadership of Serbia, the leadership of Montenegro, the leadership of Republika Srpska. In the presence of the patriarch we all signed this letter, including the representatives of Republika Srpska and the representatives of the Federal Republic of Yugoslavia, and finally it was signed by the patriarch too because in this way he wanted to attach importance to it and to bless this agreement.

THE ACCUSED: [Interpretation] After all, this agreement does exist ³⁰⁴³⁰ here, so during the break could you please get a copy of this out for General Clark to see, because he is even twisting that.

JUDGE MAY: Mr. Nice, could you try and find it for the accused. Now, what are you alleging that General Clark has twisted?

THE ACCUSED: [Interpretation] He's twisted everything, Mr. May. He's twisted everything. He's twisted the fact that Serbia was the main factor that advocated peace all those years, that Serbia made every effort to have this peace achieved, and that in very, very intensive negotiations this was precisely attained, that is that Serbia be actively involved in the peace process, and the result of that was this agreement which includes the patriarch's signature. Had this not happened --

JUDGE MAY: The General should be able to deal and can only deal with what he knew himself about the Serb negotiating side. General Clark, can you assist us as to what you knew of the position on the other side in -- we are now talking about August 1995, as to the composition of the other side or anything of that sort?

THE WITNESS: Yes, Your Honour. I do recall this letter. We called it the patriarch letter. Of course it was an agreement, and it's the agreement that the accused used to demonstrate that he was the person who should be consulted and was the lead for the negotiations. We called it the patriarch letter for short because it was signed by the patriarch, among others, that's all.

MR. MILOSEVIC: [Interpretation]

Q. General Clark, then why did Serbia and why did I personally advocate having a single delegation? Wasn't it in order to have a ³⁰⁴³¹ guarantee that the peace agreement would be reached? Isn't that right, General Clark?

A. Your Honour, I believe that the single delegation was the response to the challenge that Ambassador Holbrooke presented in the first session that we had where we asked him who should we consult with; should we consult with the Bosnian Serbs or you? President Milosevic at the time said, "You should consult with me, of course." And this is the piece that I have testified about in my opening testimony. This letter merely established the fact that he would have the ability to control the Bosnian Serb delegation should there be disagreements.

Q. General Clark, even what you said just now is not true, because I had advised you to talk to the leadership of Republika Srpska. Achieving a single delegation was, for us, a question of life itself, of peace, of attaining guarantees that peace would be achieved. If you want to remember this, and if you want something to jog your memory, which is obviously not your intention, I suggested to you precisely that you should talk to the leadership of Republika Srpska and that Serbia and the Federal Republic of Yugoslavia would give their maximum support to all peace efforts. At that time, we trusted you. At that time we really believed that you were interested in peace. Wasn't that the way it was, General?

A. Your Honour, what I remember of the first meeting was I don't remember President Milosevic telling us we should not talk to the Bosnian Serbs. What I do remember his saying was that he was the appropriate person to lead the peace discussions.

JUDGE MAY: I think his suggestion was that he advised you, ³⁰⁴³² General, to speak to the leadership of the Republika Srpska. Did he do anything like that?

THE WITNESS: Your Honour, whether the accused advised us to speak to them or not, I don't recall. At the time, they were both indicted war criminals, and so it wasn't our desire to speak to either Karadzic or Mladic.

MR. MILOSEVIC: [Interpretation]

Q. Now millimetre by millimetre, slowly but surely, General Clark, you are approaching the terrain of the truth. You did not want to accept my suggestions to talk to the leadership of Republika Srpska, and you explained this by saying that you did not want to talk to individuals who were indicted for war crimes. Is that right or is that not right, General Clark? That is just what you've said.

A. What I just told you is my view. What I remember of the conversation at the time, Your Honour, was we asked the accused, "Should we be dealing with you or should we be dealing with the Bosnian Serbs?" He said, "You'll deal with me, of course." And he said, "Give me the terms of the peace agreement and we'll hold a referendum on them." I don't remember what other sideline of the conversation there might have been. I don't recall whether he would have ever said, "By all means talk to the Bosnian Serbs." The main thrust of the conversation was to establish him in a position of power and control over the process. That's what I took from the meeting, that's what I've testified about.

Q. Well, didn't you say just a few minutes ago that you did not want to talk to the leadership of Republika Srpska because you said that you ³⁰⁴³³ did not want to talk to individuals who had been indicted for war crimes? Isn't that what you said just a few minutes ago, General Clark?

A. Your Honour, I did say that a few minutes ago, and that is in fact true, that we preferred not to have to do this negotiation with these individuals. Carl Bildt had already talked to these individuals, and on the other hand, we were prepared to talk to them if that turned out to be absolutely necessary. It was simply one factor. And it was an irrelevant factor for the purposes of my testimony, as I'm explaining to you and as I've testified, it was President -- then President Milosevic who explained that he was the person who should be dealt with in dealing with and talking about the proposed peace agreement.

Q. General Clark, this is a complete lie.

JUDGE MAY: We've been over this topic now for about ten minutes. Let's move on to something else.

MR. MILOSEVIC: [Interpretation]

Q. General Clark, didn't you say several minutes ago during the examination-in-chief or, rather, what is called the examination-in-chief here, didn't you say that I had persuaded you to talk to Karadzic and Mladic about the ways in which the bombing could be stopped, that you and Holbrooke and the other members of the delegation withdrew in order to discuss this, namely whether you should talk to them at all? And I had called them so that they could talk to you, and that ultimately you met up with them and talked to them. Is that true or is that not true, General Clark?

A. Your Honour, this is correct that we did talk to Karadzic and ³⁰⁴³⁴ Mladic on a subsequent meeting at the so-called hunting lodge during the time that the bombing was ongoing.

Q. Well, the point of my mediation was precisely for you to talk to the political and military leadership of Republika Srpska and reach agreement on the terms under which the bombing could be stopped. I wanted to help the bombing stop. Wasn't that the main reason? Wasn't that the main objective? Isn't that right, General Clark?

A. Your Honour, I believe that that is correct, that President Milosevic called these people together. He wanted them to talk to us. As he told us at the time, he said this bombing is hurting the cause of peace. He wanted the negotiations to proceed - at least, that was my understanding - and we did subsequently talk to those people.

Q. Well, all right. At that meeting with Karadzic and Mladic, didn't you reach agreement on the terms for having the bombing stopped? Is that right or is that not right?

A. Your Honour, it's correct that at this meeting we agreed on a cease-fire to -- around Sarajevo and that when that was accepted and implemented that we would be able to halt the NATO bombing in the fall of 1995.

Q. So my mediation between you and the political and military leadership of Republika Srpska helped lead to a halt in the bombing and creating conditions for peace negotiations. Isn't that right, General Clark?

A. This is correct.

Q. And is it correct, General Clark, that this was not your first ³⁰⁴³⁵ meeting with Mladic, that you had met Mladic on an individual basis and independently of that before?

A. That's correct.

Q. When did you meet Mladic?

A. On my first trip to Bosnia in 1994, I met with leaders on both sides at the instructions of some, or the suggestions of some of my colleagues in Washington. I met with Izetbegovic, Silajdzic, Delic, and Mladic.

Q. All right. Did you meet anyone else from the Serb side then or did you only meet with Mladic?

A. I don't recall who else might have been in that meeting with Mladic.

Q. And did you achieve anything at that meeting with Mladic?

A. Your Honour, what I remember about the meeting with Mladic is that we discussed the Contact Group peace plan, that Mladic was angry, belligerent, refused to agree to the peace plan, and was attempting to threaten the Bosnian Muslims should the United States provide assistance to them. I took extensive notes on the meeting and it was a helpful meeting for me to understand what it was like to deal with Bosnian Serbs.

Q. As far as I can remember, that meeting of yours was very cordial. It wasn't any kind of quarrel. Isn't that right, General Clark? Your meeting with General Mladic, according what you told me and according to what Mladic told me, was very cordial. Mladic praised you a great deal, that you had a lot of understanding, and then also you said to me all the best about Mladic. Isn't that right, General Clark? ³⁰⁴³⁶

A. No. Your Honour, I don't remember making any complimentary remarks about General Mladic. But at the meeting that I had with Mladic, I listened to his views, I did write his views down, I said I would convey these views to Washington. They were angry, they were belligerent, they were not the views of someone who could agree to stop fighting. And in fact, he did not agree at that time, the summer of 1994, that he would advocate Serbs signing the Contact Group peace plan at the time. I did my best to bring Mladic around to a position that was more constructive, but I was ultimately unsuccessful in doing so.

Q. And do you remember, General Clark, that Mladic's position then was to stop all hostilities throughout Bosnia-Herzegovina? Well, you told me about that. You told me about your experience with Mladic when we first met with this entire delegation.

A. I don't remember going into any detail on my experience in the meeting with Mladic, Your Honour. I just simply have no recollection of that. I remember in the first meeting that Ambassador Holbrooke did most of the talking and I think I was introduced and the only substantive conversation I had with President Milosevic that I can remember was the one I have produced here in evidence.

I think that the accused is referring to the general Bosnian Serb position, that what they wanted to do was freeze the positions as they were in 1994 in which the Serb side controlled much more than 49 per cent of Bosnia-Herzegovina. That was the position at the time. And that was going to be an unacceptable position in terms of a peace settlement, and that was the Bosnian Serb position; simply stop fighting, we'll hold onto ³⁰⁴³⁷ what we have. As far as I remember, it was 60 or 70 per cent of the territory.

Q. First of all, you are now interpreting people's intentions, General, and you are saying that people had ill-intentions. And as for that meeting with Mladic in 1994, it was aimed at suggesting the cessation of all hostilities throughout Bosnia-Herzegovina in order to promote the peace process. Isn't that --

JUDGE MAY: I'm going to stop the cross-examination continuing on these lines. The witness has told you what he can remember of it. You need to move on to something else.

THE ACCUSED: [Interpretation] I really don't understand, Mr. May, what you're actually allowing me to ask this witness.

JUDGE MAY: Not repetition is one thing. We've been over that conversation several times.

MR. MILOSEVIC: [Interpretation]

Q. Was that conversation between you a cordial one or not? I mean, between you and Mladic.

A. Your Honour, I did my best to have a cordial conversation with General Mladic. I have to say that it was difficult to do so.

Q. What do you mean it was difficult? There are photographs. A couple of weeks ago -- months ago, the Belgrade weekly Nin carried on its front page your photograph with Mladic, smiling, Mladic wearing your cap and you wearing his. It was a cordial encounter. You could have seen this photograph on the front page of the Belgrade weekly Nin, an issue two months ago, I think. I can't give you the exact date but it's easy to ³⁰⁴³⁸ find.

Isn't that the best proof that you had a good understanding between you, a cordial meeting, in accordance with what I'm saying? Do you remember that?

A. Your Honour, the best proof of the quality of the meeting is my memory, which I've already described to this Court on two separate answers to this question. This was a difficult meeting. I did my best in terms of military diplomacy to take something constructive from it.

Q. Very well, General Clark. Since you said that the Serbs held a large percentage of the area, which is quite true, are you aware first of all their public statements were that they would reduce that percentage of the area and that that is something that they wished to negotiate with the other two sides? Do you remember that? That was the content of all the talks conducted in Geneva by Owen and Stoltenberg who also are fully aware of those statements of theirs.

A. Your Honour, I'm not the expert on the Owen and Stoltenberg talks. At the time I was not engaged in this issue, and I can't provide any direct testimony about it.

JUDGE MAY: Perhaps you can help us with this: As far as you were concerned, General, was that the Serb portion?

THE WITNESS: I have no recollection of the details of the Serb position. What I recall was that at the time that I came into the process of trying to bring peace to the Balkans, there was a Contact Group plan. The Contact Group plan was rejected by the Serb Assembly in Pale, and in its place was a proposal that simply all fighting stop, and that's what I ³⁰⁴³⁹ remember, that they would simply freeze in place. Whether there was anything that went beyond that or not is not clear to me. I just don't have any recollection of it.

JUDGE MAY: Yes. That's a convenient time. We're going to adjourn now. We will adjourn for 20 minutes.

--- Recess taken at 12.20 p.m.

--- On resuming at 12.44 p.m.

JUDGE MAY: Yes, Mr. Nice.

MR. NICE: We're tracking down the patriarch letter or agreement. I have some documents, but I'm not yet in a position to make them available, but I hope to be able to do so by the end of the session or, alternatively, to explain why I can't.

JUDGE MAY: Yes. But I do recollect it.

MR. NICE: I don't believe it's been produced, but we'll have to check further on that.

The second point is, in light of the accused's expressions of objection about the scope of his questioning, may I just draw to the Court's attention not only that your order permitted him to cross-examine on the basis of the scope identified by annex A, which is the larger rather than the smaller version of the document, the statement of the witness, but it also allowed the accused and the amici to seek broader scope of cross-examination by a procedure that they could adopt, and neither the accused nor the amici has taken the opportunity of that procedure.

JUDGE MAY: Very well. ³⁰⁴⁴⁰

MR. KAY: Yes, Your Honour. Can I make a few observations, because it's obviously important as there is a big issue behind this witness that I think everyone in the court is aware of. The order of the Court, I believe, of the 30th of October did confine cross-examination to material in annex A. I have been tracking annex A, which is a statement served on me on the 3rd of November, and although slightly wider than the present statement we have, it is the same issues that the witness has dealt with in direct examination this morning that is before the Court. It doesn't deal with the NATO bombing campaign, and so to all intents and purposes, the issues are the same.

One of the big problems has been was the belief, of course, that this book was going to be exhibited, and if the book had been exhibited, it of course dealt with the NATO bombing campaign and the accused would have been able to deal with those issues that arise within the book. That has not happened, and of course I believe the situation has been that he would have prepared a great deal of his cross-examination on that basis, because that was the belief of all parties until very recently, having been alerted to an issue on Friday as to whether the book would be exhibited or not. And so in many respects, the accused has approached this witness from a particular way which it seems has been changed at a very late stage, and of course that has caused him difficulties with his case strategy.

JUDGE MAY: Well, I certainly never understood that. There was no reference to the book in the order which we had made. And while it is true that there was talk about the book, we had never been asked - I may ³⁰⁴⁴¹ be wrong about this - to order its being exhibited. And what I had understood was that the Prosecution would seek to rely on those parts of the book which supported the evidence, which is in fact what effectively has happened because the passages to which they referred are essentially the same as in the evidence. And of course in those circumstances, for the reasons we have given, we haven't admitted the book, it adding nothing.

But yes, that may explain why there has been no application. You will, of course, have the period overnight to consider the position.

MR. KAY: Yes. The history of it is quite important, because when we started with this witness and the Rule 70 issues, the book was served by the Prosecution, and it looked at that stage, and we've been through various other stages since, but it looked at the original stage that that was going to be the basis of testimony because we have been approaching witnesses in a very different way recently from how we did when we started the trial, and there's been a situation where Rule 89(F) could have been used in relation to the book and that be the basis of the testimony. In many respects I had originally expected that, although, of course, I appreciated things were changing as we moved further and closer to this witness's testimony. But it may well be that that was not something that the accused had appreciated.

JUDGE MAY: Very well.

MR. NICE: And, Your Honour, I can actually sort out the point about the patriarch agreement straight away. We don't have a copy of the agreement itself, or letter itself, that we can produce for you, but a ³⁰⁴⁴² document, 469, tab 20, produced by Lilic is the stenographic record of one of the two meetings held at Dobanovci, this one on the 30th of August, 1995, and on page 16 of 19 of that document, the agreement is set out and you can therefore find the terms of the agreement there. And if the accused wishes to find it, that's where he can find it for the time being.

JUDGE MAY: It might be helpful if somebody has a copy available for tomorrow.

We are going to have a copy of this document, and there is this reference to it, Exhibit 469, tab 20, and there should be a copy for the witness.

MR. NICE: In English it turns -- the agreement starts at page 16 of 19. In the B/C/S version, it starts at page 14 at the top, if the accused would find that helpful.

MR. NICE: Page 16 in the English we can find this reference, can we?

MR. KAY: Paragraph 2 is the --

JUDGE MAY: Help us with the date. It seems that the meeting is on the --

THE INTERPRETER: Microphone, please Your Honour.

JUDGE MAY: Date 30th of August, 1995.

MR. NICE: The date of the agreement is set out on page 16 --

THE INTERPRETER: Microphone, please, Mr. Nice.

MR. NICE: Thank you. The date of the agreement is said to be on the 29th of August. If you look three lines above the word "agreement," towards the foot of page 16 of the document. ³⁰⁴⁴³

JUDGE MAY: Yes. Thank you. Mr. Milosevic, we now have that document in front of us, and the witness has a copy, the general has a copy, if you want to ask any further questions about that. Otherwise, we will continue until 2.00, which means another hour for your cross-examination, hour and a bit. Yes.

THE ACCUSED: [Interpretation] I assume I'll have some time tomorrow as well for my cross-examination, Mr. May.

JUDGE MAY: Yes, you will have some time tomorrow.

THE ACCUSED: [Interpretation] Let us first clear up one particular point. A moment ago, Mr. Kay said that by instructions issued on Friday, you specified the scope of the cross-examination or the examination or the testimony of this witness. I have received no document to that effect on Friday.

JUDGE MAY: No, it wasn't an order. It was the -- the order is the written order which has already been referred to, that's the original order. There was some discussion on Friday, or certainly one morning, it may not have even been Friday. There was some discussion about the admissibility or how much of the book should be admitted or not. That was only the point. There was no order.

Now, let us continue.

THE ACCUSED: [Interpretation] Mr. May, when this witness's testimony was announced, the opposite side disclosed his book to me, which is called "Waging Modern War." Therefore the fact that the side opposite provided me with a document, I assumed, and it is only logical for anyone to assume, that that would served as the basis for the testimony of this ³⁰⁴⁴⁴ witness and his cross-examination. However, just now you have prohibited me from asking him a single question about a war of which this witness was in command against Yugoslavia.

JUDGE MAY: We're not going over this again. The order was issued on the 30th of October, it was in writing, and it made quite plain the scope of the examination. Now, let us continue with the examination now.

THE ACCUSED: [Interpretation] But even then, on the 30th of October, the book was not excluded. It was not excluded. On the contrary; the book was produced as a basis for the testimony of this witness. You didn't exclude the book on the 30th of October.

JUDGE MAY: What was referred to in the summary were possible extracts and that was all. And in fact, those extracts, as we've just heard, are substantially the evidence which General Clark has given. Now, if you want to spend your time usefully, you should continue with your cross-examination.

THE ACCUSED: [Interpretation] I will certainly continue. That's not a problem.

MR. MILOSEVIC: [Interpretation]

Q. General Clark, since a moment ago we were discussing a matter you know nothing about, that is the readiness of the Serb side in Bosnia and Herzegovina to give up part of the territory it controlled, will you please place in front of you a map which is not any division map but it is an ethnic map based on the 1991 census, and you will see that most of the territory in fact belongs to the Serbs on the basis of this map. So my question to you is: Are you aware that predominantly - I'm ³⁰⁴⁴⁵ not saying altogether - that the Serbs held territories that belonged to them or not?

THE ACCUSED: [Interpretation] So will you please put this map on the ELMO.

JUDGE MAY: Yes, this is a map that has already been produced several times. I will be reminded of the number. It's got a D number. Yes. We'll get the number in due course.

Yes. What is it that you want the witness to deal with?

JUDGE KWON: It's D215. 215.

THE REGISTRAR: That's correct, Your Honour.

MR. MILOSEVIC: [Interpretation]

Q. I should just like to ask the witness to tell us whether this was roughly the land controlled by the Serbs and that they in fact controlled mostly their own territory because it belonged to them and because they were the majority population in those areas.

A. Well, Your Honour, I'm not familiar with the method that was used to produce this census. I have seen census results, but since we're talking about events that occurred before the period on which I testified, then I think it's just -- it's fair to point out the fact that during this period, and the area in which the Serbs were in control included areas such as Banja Luka, which had very large non-Serb populations which were driven out. We know that for a fact. All of this was relevant. It was all important background.

Some of these camps were set up in this area that's not blue but pink on this map, and this area in here, there were substantial portions ³⁰⁴⁴⁶ of non-Serbs, also appear around Brcko and the surrounding area, the Posavina Corridor, also over here.

So I don't think -- I don't understand the thrust of the accused's question. But if it gets into the point about the specific division of territories, then I think it's clear that if one looked at the territory in 1994 that was controlled by the Serbs, one would have to conclude that non-Serb populations had been driven out and confined. And if one's concerned with the percentages of the land that are controlled, then one would have to say the percentages were not in accordance with the division of the population.

Q. Are you claiming, General Clark, that the non-Serbs were detained in camps? Do you have any idea how many such non-Serbs were in camps? If you make such a claim, then I assume you base it on some figures.

A. Your Honour, I'm only trying to discuss the issue of the map. I've already presented the testimony as requested. I can certainly produce additional figures that would give estimates of the numbers of people detained, the locations of the camps, and so forth. I don't have those in my memory. They're not in the line of my direct performance of duties. At the time I wasn't responsible for this part of it, for these negotiations, but I'm happy to engage in a broader debate if that is the wishes of the Court.

JUDGE MAY: Have you finished with the plan now? Have you finished with the map?

THE ACCUSED: [Interpretation] Yes, you can remove it. I assume it speaks for itself. ³⁰⁴⁴⁷

JUDGE MAY: We will take it back, and it can go back to the accused. In fact, the registry was right about the map; that map hasn't been produced, according to my recollection. It was the Sarajevo map which we produced, a similar one, but it may be we're going to get something else coming up. Yes.

MR. MILOSEVIC: [Interpretation]

Q. Let me briefly go back to what General Clark referred to as the patriarch's letter. I assume the translation is correct. It says "Minutes" or "Record from a meeting of the highest political and military leadership of the Federal Republic of Yugoslavia and Republic of Srpska, held on the 29th of August, 1995, at the Yugoslav army residence in Dobanovci." That's the small hunting lodge that General Clark mentioned. So it says here -- I hope one can see clearly from this document how the meeting developed and evolved and how long the explanations went on for regarding the need for an agreement to be drafted between Yugoslavia and Republika Srpska in relation to the peace negotiations. I should like to read out what it says here on page 16 of the English version from which it can clearly be seen that there are two sides here endeavouring to define their common interest in achieving peace. And it says here: "At a joint meeting of the leadership of the Federal Republic of Yugoslavia, (present: The president of the Federal Republic of Yugoslavia, Zoran Lilic; the President of Serbia, Slobodan Milosevic; the president of Montenegro, Momir Bulatovic; the president of the federal government, Dr. Rade Kontic; federal Defence Minister Pavle Bulatovic; and the Yugoslav Army General Chief of Staff, Colonel General ³⁰⁴⁴⁸ Momcilo Perisic) and of the Republic of Srpska (present: President of the Republic of Srpska, Dr. Radovan Karadzic; vice-president Dr. Nikola Koljevic and Dr. Biljana Plavsic; president of the Assembly of Republika Srpska, Momcilo Krajisnik; the president of the Republika Srpska, Dusan Kozic; Minister of Foreign Affairs Dr. Aleksa Buha; the Commander of the Main Staff of Republika Srpska Colonel-General Ratko Mladic with Generals Zdravko Tolimir, Milan Gvero, and Djordje Djukic) ..." So it is stated that this was a meeting held between these two delegations and that the meeting was also attended, as it says clearly here, by the patriarch of the Serbian Orthodox Church, His Eminence Pavle and Bishop Irinej Bulovic.

And then it says: "The following agreement was reached ..." So it is no letter by the patriarch but the presence of the patriarch and Bishop Irinej at a meeting between delegations of the Republic of Yugoslavia and the Republika Srpska represented on a parity basis, including the highest level of political and military leaderships. And then it says in paragraph 1: "The leadership of Republika Srpska is in agreement with the complete coordination of its approach to the peace process with the leadership of the Federal Republic of Yugoslavia in the interests of peace."

So it means that agreement was reached to coordinate the approach rather than any kind of alchemistry of mine. So the point was in achieving a unified approach with the aim of achieving peace. Is that clear, General?

A. Your Honour, I've seen the so-called patriarch letter before. I ³⁰⁴⁴⁹ understand what it provided. I have not seen this full package before. But the patriarch letter is clear, and it gives the accused the final vote and control over the delegation.

Q. Yes. I insisted because the Vance-Owen Plan of 1993 fell through because our authority from Serbia and the Federal Republic of Yugoslavia, the president of Yugoslavia, Cosic, was there, the president of Montenegro, Bulatovic, myself, and the Greek Prime Minister Mitsotakis. We did not manage to convince them.

JUDGE MAY: General Clark can't deal with what you decided amongst yourselves. You can give evidence about it in due course. We can all read this document. Is there anything else you want to ask the general about it?

MR. MILOSEVIC: [Interpretation]

Q. Is it clear that it was stated in this document that Republika Srpska would delegate three members to the six-member delegation which, while headed by Slobodan Milosevic, President of Serbia, will conduct the negotiations on a comprehensive peace agreement for Bosnia-Herzegovina. And then the members are listed. And it is also stated that the delegation is authorised to sign the peace agreement on behalf of Republika Srpska, the part of it relating to Republika Srpska, with the obligation that the achieved agreement should be strictly and consistently complied with. Is that right, General Clark?

A. Well, Your Honour, I think the patriarch letter speaks for itself. I mean, it has it there in writing. Everyone can read it. I think the broader issue that's being raised is the role of the accused and of ³⁰⁴⁵⁰ Yugoslavia in this conflict, and as an observer of this from the outside and as someone who had reliable sources to depend on, what I viewed was that this side had, at this point in 1995, suffered a grievous strategic setback and they had recognised that with the developments, the military developments on the ground, that they were in danger of defeat on the ground and therefore the best tactical course was to accept the general outlines of the peace proposal that the United States delegation was bringing.

To say that is to say nothing about their motivations, their previous participation in efforts of war and peace and so forth. It's simply -- this is simply a reflection -- I believe this patriarch letter, it's simply a tactical document that reflects the position that they found the themselves in at the time.

Q. Very well, General Clark. You insist on calling this the patriarch's letter, though it is quite clear that it's an agreement between Republika Srpska and the Federal Republic of Yugoslavia which the patriarch gave his blessing to only and signed it, as well as Bishop Irinej. Because it says here on behalf of the Republika Srpska and on behalf of the Federal Republic of Yugoslavia. And then in paragraph 3, it says: "The leadership of Republika Srpska agree that binding decisions for the delegation in relation to the peace plan be made by the delegation at a plenary session based on a majority of votes. In the event of an equal number of votes, the vote of President Slobodan Milosevic would be decisive." Is that clear, General? Surely that's clear. Is it logical to you, in view of the fact that I was, after all, the most senior person ³⁰⁴⁵¹ in that delegation?

A. Your Honour, I think the agreement speaks for itself. It's very clear what this agreement says, it's also clear what it was in response to. There's never been any issue about this. It was simply referred to colloquially by the US delegation as the so-called patriarch letter. We understood exactly what it was, that it was an agreement, and that it did give -- if the terms of the agreement were followed, it gave the accused the final word in the discussions during the shuttle diplomacy and subsequently at Dayton.

Q. Very well, General Clark. The fact that I had the final word, surely that was decisive for the Dayton Agreement to be signed, wasn't it, or not?

A. Your Honour, it was very clear to me during the process of negotiating the Dayton Agreement that the accused was very much in charge of the delegation and that he had the final say. It wasn't the accused alone that made the agreement at Dayton possible. That was a result of work by several different parties, but it was clear that the accused did have effective direction, control over his delegation, including the members from the Serb portion of Bosnia-Herzegovina.

Q. Was this of decisive significance in achieving the Dayton agreements, General Clark? As a participant in the negotiations, can you deny that?

A. Your Honours, I testified when I had difficulties with the Bosnian Serbs, I went to the accused who then was able to insist, I suppose, that they accept whatever it was that I was proposing. ³⁰⁴⁵²

Q. Surely we're not going to call in question the fact that the agreement was reached in Dayton, signed there, and after that in Paris again. Surely that is not at issue, at least.

A. Your Honour, I don't -- that is not at issue, nor is the role of the accused at issue.

Q. Very well, General Clark. That's fine. Since in your examination-in-chief you quoted me as having told you that you were a war criminal, am I quoting what you've said, General Clark, correctly?

A. I recall your saying that I would be the war criminal or that I was a war criminal, yes. That was in the meeting that we had in Beli Dvor in January of 1999.

Q. That is quite true that I said that you would be a war criminal if you attacked Yugoslavia. That is quite true. I said to you, "You will be a war criminal if you attack Yugoslavia. Yugoslavia is a sovereign state and you have no right to intervene militarily in Yugoslavia." Is that right, General Clark?

A. Your Honour, I don't recall all of the qualifications. I recall the accused becoming very angry, red in the face, and making accusations. That's what I recall, and that's what I testified to.

Q. So you were heralding a NATO bombardment, and you said -- and I said that you did not have the right to bomb a sovereign state, and that if you did that you would be a war criminal. Is that right, General Clark?

JUDGE MAY: The witness has answered the question. There's no need to repeat it. ³⁰⁴⁵³

THE ACCUSED: [Interpretation] All right.

MR. MILOSEVIC: [Interpretation]

Q. Do you think that you are a war criminal, General Clark?

JUDGE MAY: That's not a proper question.

THE ACCUSED: [Interpretation] All right. If it's not a proper question, then I'm going to put some other questions.

Could you put this photograph on the ELMO.

JUDGE MAY: What is the photograph about? What is it of?

THE ACCUSED: [Interpretation] The photograph depicts General Clark together with Hashim Thaci, Agim Ceku, General Jackson, and Kouchner. They're like the Musketeers with their hands all together.

JUDGE MAY: It doesn't arise from your examination -- or the examination-in-chief of the witness or his statement.

THE ACCUSED: [Interpretation] Mr. May, during the examination-in-chief the witness said, when quoting me, and I confirmed that, that I said to him that he would be a war criminal if he attacked Yugoslavia. I wish to show him proof of the fact that what I said to him was correct. So I have the right --

JUDGE MAY: You can ask him about the conversation because that is something which the witness dealt with in chief and in his statement. You've asked him about the conversation. You've got the answer. The substance of your allegations, such as they are, is neither here nor there. All we are concerned with is the fact that you made these allegations, if there's any significance in it. ³⁰⁴⁵⁴

THE ACCUSED: [Interpretation] Mr. May --

JUDGE MAY: Don't waste your time arguing about these matters.

THE ACCUSED: [Interpretation] Mr. May, do I not have the right to put a question to him in relation to what he himself stated, that I had said to him that he would be a war criminal? Don't I have the right to ask him about the consequences of what he did afterwards?

JUDGE MAY: No, and you've heard the reasons. You know how far you're allowed to go and how far you aren't, and this goes beyond it. If it's a way to try and get round the ruling, which I suspect it is, it will not be successful. The witness has answered the question. He said you did make that allegation, for what it's worth, but doesn't remember what the qualifications were. Now, we can't take it any further. All you can ask him about is the conversation itself.

THE ACCUSED: [Interpretation] Oh, so I can ask him about the conversation but I cannot ask him about the content and meaning of that conversation? Is that what you're trying to say?

JUDGE MAY: That's right. That's right. Particularly these sort of allegations that you're anxious to pursue.

THE ACCUSED: [Interpretation] Well, that's the point, Mr. May. This entire farce serves that purpose, to cover up the crime committed against Yugoslavia by --

JUDGE MAY: No, we don't want political speeches now. We're far too advanced in this trial to listen to this.

MR. MILOSEVIC: [Interpretation]

Q. All right. General Clark, do you think that in view of your ³⁰⁴⁵⁵ military training and education, the high position you held in the army of the United States and in NATO, that the killing of civilians, the bombing of --

JUDGE MAY: Now, you know quite well that this is not the sort of question the witness is dealing with. We've told you before you were asking questions which you were perfectly permitted to ask before the adjournment. I suggest you return to that.

THE ACCUSED: [Interpretation] So you are not allowing me to put a single question in relation to the crimes that this witness committed against my country?

JUDGE MAY: You know quite well that these sort of questions are not permitted. These sort of allegations which you make are not matters which can be debated now, or indeed at any time probably in this trial, unless you show the relevance of it, but it's certainly not relevant to these -- to this evidence. This kind of allegation does not assist anybody.

THE ACCUSED: [Interpretation] All right. Since you've said just now, Mr. May, that this cannot be discussed here, I have here with me the final report that a commission established to look into the NATO campaign against Yugoslavia, and this commission worked for the Prosecution --

JUDGE MAY: No. You're wasting your own time. It's very limited. You know quite well what your questioning is limited to. You must return to it or this cross-examination will stop. It's a matter for you whether you want the cross-examination to stop or not. Now, you will go back to what the witness gave evidence about in chief or this cross-examination ³⁰⁴⁵⁶ will be brought to an end.

THE ACCUSED: [Interpretation] All right, Mr. May. You are restricting me to mere crumbles, as far as the questioning of this witness is concerned, but in accordance with what he was explaining here, I will try to put some other questions to him.

May I proceed, Mr. May?

JUDGE MAY: Yes. Half an hour ago you could have gone on.

MR. MILOSEVIC: [Interpretation]

Q. General Clark, a short while ago you explained this document that I affixed my signature to as well at the insistence of General Naumann and yourself, as you had explained it.

Now I'm going to show you, by using the document itself, that you've twisted the facts in this respect too. This is a document that bears one of your ERN numbers, 0767673, and it's entitled Record From the Meeting Held on the 25th of October, 1998, in Belgrade.

JUDGE MAY: Have we got that one? It's one, Mr. Nice, that you disclosed, is it?

JUDGE KWON: Microphone.

MR. NICE: Exhibit previously tendered 94, tab 3. And I believe we have courtesy copies. I hope you have.

JUDGE MAY: Yes, we have it.

MR. MILOSEVIC: [Interpretation]

Q. So Record of Meeting Held in Belgrade on the 25th of October, 1998. It has only three items. Item 1 refers to all the people who attended the meeting: Milan Milutinovic, president of the Republic of ³⁰⁴⁵⁷ Serbia; Nikola Sainovic, vice-premier of the federal government of the FRY; Colonel General Momcilo Perisic, Chief of the General Staff of the Yugoslav Army, and so on and so forth; and Colonel General Vlastimir Djordjevic and the members of their delegation, then the NATO military authorities, General Naumann, chairman of the Military Committee; General Clark, Supreme Allied Commander Europe, and their delegations. So isn't it clear that I myself did not attend the meeting at all? You discussed specific matters during that meeting. I'm not a participant in the meeting. Isn't that right, General Clark? Is that right or is that not right?

A. Your Honour, the accused is misrepresenting the meeting. We began the meeting with the accused. We dealt with the substance that was to be worked. The accused reviewed and approved the agreement in every detail, not the first three paragraphs, which is the record of the meeting, but the subsequent attached document which is marked 00766674 --

Q. General Clark, please.

A. -- which was the document, Your Honour, that the attached memorandum referred to. This is the document that was reviewed in detail and approved by the accused. It's the document that he had some objections to, that we changed in accordance with his objections, and we worked together on throughout the night of the 24th of October and that then he assigned -- he signed this cover sheet to the document on the 25th of October.

So this cover sheet applies to the statement that it's attached to, which is marked as a separate document but in fact it is the same ³⁰⁴⁵⁸ document.

Q. General Clark, we'll get to the content, too, and that suits me fine, to get to the content of the document too. But isn't it clear from the document itself, the document that was signed, that you and Naumann attended the meeting together with your staff, and on the other side you had the president of the Republic of Serbia, Milutinovic, then Sainovic, Perisic, and Djordjevic? So you discussed all these particular matters at that meeting, and it is stated that the purpose of the meeting was to discuss specific steps to be taken to achieve full compliance by the Federal Republic of Yugoslavia with the requirements of the United Nations Security Council Resolution 1199. And item 3 says: "The position of the Federal Republic of Serbia and Serbian authorities is reflected in the attached statement. The NATO military representatives took note of the statement."

And then this record is signed on behalf of the Federal Republic of Yugoslavia, Deputy Prime Minister Sainovic; on behalf of the Republic of Serbia, General Djordjevic; and on behalf of NATO, you and Naumann. And I, as an expression of my goodwill, not as a response of any kind of compulsion on your part because you couldn't have forced me to do that, I put my signature there in order to confirm that that is the way it was, namely that I was aware of this and that I supported this record that you had compiled together.

So we are not discussing my signature here in terms of it being missing. I was not at the meeting. Afterwards, I signed the document here on the side, and I confirmed in this way that I agreed with it as an ³⁰⁴⁵⁹ expression of my goodwill --

JUDGE MAY: You must come to a question. You've been allowed to go on to explain your position. Now you must come to a question.

MR. MILOSEVIC: [Interpretation]

Q. Well, isn't it clear that I did not attend that meeting of yours, and isn't it clear that I signed this as an expression of my own goodwill in order to show that I agree with what you had agreed upon and signed? Is that right or is that not right, General Clark?

A. Your Honour, the accused was in charge of the government and all the activities that were going on inside Serbia, including inside Kosovo.

Q. General Clark --

JUDGE MAY: No. Let the witness finish.

THE WITNESS: When I and General Naumann went down there, we saw the accused first. He asked us to work the details with his military people. They said we had to come back, he was the only man who could produce such an agreement. We did come back to him. He did consent to it. He then said, "Please go back, write up the statement." We then brought the statement to him that morning of the 25th, and he then went over it line by line. It represented him. In fact, this was -- this signature page was further proof of the -- of his artifice. It was in motivation, I believed, duplicitous. It was an effort by the accused to wriggle out from his responsibilities to living up to the substance of the statement.

This was his statement that was to be presented to the NATO authorities in order to not have the UN Security Council Resolution 1199 ³⁰⁴⁶⁰ enforced by NATO military action. We were carrying his statement back to the NATO council, and it was his statement and it was for that reason that I insisted that he sign that statement, precisely to prevent the kind of efforts that we're seeing this morning to characterise his presence as sort of perfunctory or goodwill when in fact he was involved in approving the details of this statement and responsible for the compliance with it.

MR. MILOSEVIC: [Interpretation]

Q. General Clark, you've missed the target completely when giving this explanation. I am not bringing into question at all that you -- that I agreed upon what you had been doing all night. As you said, that you worked out this agreement, I had a look at it and I agreed with it. But the document itself states that it was signed by the participants in the meeting itself and that I subsequently supported it, of course, and that is not being challenged in any way. But what you mentioned just now was that you informed -- that you informed NATO - I can't remember the exact words that you used - not to enforce Resolution 1199 by force. Tell me, where is it in Resolution 1199 that you have any grounds in order to resort to force? Answer that question.

A. Your Honour, this is the basic issue that I came to see the accused with on the 20th of October. Under UN Security Council Resolution 1199, Chapter VII, use of all necessary means, I delivered the threat to the accused that if he didn't cease his actions, pull back his forces and comply, that NATO would take action. This document was an effort to demonstrate the specifics by which Serbia would take action to comply with UN Security Council Resolution 1199, and as such it required the solution ³⁰⁴⁶¹ of the accused who was the head of the government in Yugoslavia and in overall charge of what was going on in Kosovo.

Q. General Clark, answer my question: Where does Resolution 1199 authorise you to use force? Are you claiming that you have a Security Council Resolution on the basis of which you waged war against Yugoslavia? Is that your assertion?

A. Your Honour, the accused brought to a state of acute crisis the humanitarian situation in the province of Kosovo. 350 to 400.000 --

Q. General, I'm asking you about --

JUDGE MAY: No. You must let witnesses explain. The general is explaining the position.

THE WITNESS: 350 to 400.000 inhabitants were driven from their homes. They were forced to live in the woods. People perished in the extreme conditions outdoors. Artillery and heavy weapons were used against unarmed civilians. Key elements, including families, were eliminated during this period.

In response to this, the UN Security Council Resolution did direct that humanitarian efforts be made. It authorised such efforts under UN Security Council Resolution 1199.

Acting together, the North Atlantic Treaty Organisation issued to Serbia an activation order. It issued the activation order to its forces. It was to be applied against Serbia. The accused understands this very well. This is what he wanted to have lifted in the 15 October meeting. It was operative in bringing about a relief of the humanitarian situation, the crisis that he himself had directed to be caused by the activities of ³⁰⁴⁶² police and military forces in Kosovo against an essentially unarmed set of inhabitants in that province, the majority of inhabitants in that province. So the NATO action was constructive and in pursuit of a peaceful settlement of the issues there to enable the population to return to their homes. What was at issue here was whether or not the Serb forces and police would be reduced in compliance with the UN instructions or whether the accused and the elements of his chain of command would maintain excessive force in the province to use it and to use it directly and in intimidation against the inhabitants.

Q. General, it is not necessary for you to make speeches in response to questions that relate to documents. You said that you were authorised by Resolution 1199 to use force. I claim that that is not true, because there is no Security Council Resolution for that. You waged an illegal war. Where does it say in Resolution 1199 that you were authorised to use force? Don't make a speech about various false --

JUDGE MAY: Mr. Milosevic, it's a fault with which you're familiar. Were the witness to make speeches, he would be stopped, but he's not; he's answering the questions.

Now, General you were asked about Resolution 1199. We'll deal with this and then we'll move on. The question is who said that you were authorised to use force in this Resolution that was mentioned or discussed in this meeting that you had with the accused?

THE WITNESS: The content of the Resolution is a matter of public record, and I was following the instructions from NATO and from my government. ³⁰⁴⁶³

MR. MILOSEVIC: [Interpretation]

Q. And these instructions that you had from NATO and your government, are they in accordance with the charter of the United Nations, General Clark, and are they in accordance with international law?

JUDGE MAY: You're going well beyond the bounds of the witness's evidence now. You've heard the explanation of why the threat was issued to you.

THE ACCUSED: [Interpretation] Do you know, Mr. May, that threats are also prohibited under the UN Charter, threats issued to states?

JUDGE MAY: No. Let us move on.

MR. MILOSEVIC: [Interpretation]

Q. General Clark, you invoked this document, trying to say that I was trying to evade a discussion about the content of the document, because what was signed was actually only a record of the meeting and the document is actually attached to this cover sheet, as you put it. But on the contrary, I don't want to avoid that. I want to quote the statement. And you invoked it.

"Recognising Resolution 1199 of the UN Security Council and proceeding from the fact that organised terrorism has been defeated in Kosmet and that all actions against terrorists have ceased as of September 29, 1998, the authorities of the Federal Republic of Yugoslavia have decided, among other measures, to undertake a series of actions that would help further confidence-building among citizens, members of all national communities living in Kosmet, as well as the resolution of all pending humanitarian problems especially the speedy return to their homes of all ³⁰⁴⁶⁴ displaced persons. These measures are undertaken with a clear view of ensuring the return to full normality of life as soon as possible throughout Kosmet, while continuing to secure the safety and well-being of all citizens and innocent civilians of Kosmet, and guaranteeing the right of all citizens, members of all national communities living in Kosovo and Metohija to carry on their everyday life free from any threat or constraint, which includes the full freedom of movement for all citizens and state authorities representatives as well as normal activity of all state organs."

And then it says: "In order to further encourage the return to peace and normality," then it says, underlined in hand, "the state authorities of the FRY will bring down the level of presence and the equipment of security forces (MUP and VJ) throughout Kosmet to normal levels..." And now I highlight this: "... to normal levels, i.e., to the levels preceding the outbreak of terrorist activities ..." So terrorist activities stopped and the forces are going back to normal levels. "... with the clear intention of creating conditions that would help the speedy resumption of the political process and the resolution of all outstanding political and humanitarian issues." That is what is written here.

And then it says, further on: "In this process," again this is underlined, the process, "the state authorities of the Federal Republic of Yugoslavia are counting on the assistance and support of the OSCE Verification Mission, KDOM - the Kosovo Diplomatic Observer Mission - and international humanitarian and other organisations." ³⁰⁴⁶⁵ And then the authorities announce the following measures, number 1 through 6, but you're probably going to say that we didn't do some of this. So 1: "Special police units deployed to Kosovo after February 1998 will be withdrawn from Kosovo. Combined police/special police strength in Kosovo will be reduced to their February 1998 duty level." Do you remember that it was stated then that there should be a total of 10.024 policemen? This figure remains imprinted in my memory. So that is the duty level of February 1998.

"Any additional heavy weapons (that is to say, brought in or transferred after February 1998) from 12.7 millimetre above or equipment brought into Kosovo or transferred from the VJ to the police/special police, will be withdrawn from Kosovo or returned to the army of Yugoslavia."

Item number 3: "Police/special police will resume their normal peacetime activities. Heavy weapons and equipment remaining under MUP control in --"

JUDGE MAY: We can read this, Mr. Milosevic. I haven't stopped you before, but we can all read it. What was it that you want to ask General Clark about here?

MR. MILOSEVIC: [Interpretation]

Q. General Clark, is it clear that after the main threats by the terrorists in Kosovo and Metohija had been eliminated, the situation was brought back to the level prior to February 1998 and that in paragraph 5, which refers to the army of Yugoslavia, it was implied that the Pristina Corps would continue normally to be in Kosovo but that only three groups ³⁰⁴⁶⁶ of company level would be positioned to secure certain directions and lines of communication. Was that how it was?

A. Your Honour, first of all I want to just underscore that the statement is the statement of the FRY. It's not the statement of NATO. It was noted by General Naumann and me. We helped to work the specific provisions, but the terminologies and so forth that are in this, including the statement about terrorism and so forth, these are -- this is the wording of the government of FRY.

As far as compliance is concerned, what we saw was partial but not complete compliance. For example, item number 2, heavy weapons or equipment brought into Kosovo or transferred from the VJ will be withdrawn or returned to the VJ. That was not the case. The heavy equipment that was given to the special police was not in every case pulled out of Kosovo or returned to the VJ.

We did initially see the withdrawals of some police. There was no way to determine whether it was the full 4.000 that were required or not. And we then saw by mid-December the violation of the agreements about the deployments, and that started really about the same time that General Perisic was replaced as the chief of the Yugoslav military. And that additional deployment is the one that I mentioned in my testimony. It's the one that we noted that was north of Pristina. So that constituted a violation, and that's the one that I counselled General Ojdanic about in December.

Q. General Clark, why are you linking up the replacement of General Perisic and the appointment of General Ojdanic with any increase of forces ³⁰⁴⁶⁷ in Kosovo when the two have absolutely no connection? Who told you that? Where did you get that information from?

A. Your Honour, it's my impression that General Perisic was replaced as the commander because he wasn't fully supportive of the accused's policies of employing military forces against the population in Kosovo. And what we noted was that almost immediately after his replacement, the forces that were there began to deploy to the field and conduct actions in contravention to the promises made by the accused in this statement to NATO.

Q. That is what you are claiming, and this statement was fully complied with. Are you claiming, General Clark, that this was complied with or that it was not complied with? Let us make things quite clear.

A. Your Honour, I am stating that by the middle of December this statement -- or the 20th of December, this statement was not being complied with. I'm not sure it was ever totally complied with in that we believed that there still remained heavy weapons that had been transferred to the MUP that had not been removed or given back to the VJ in accordance with this agreement, but that in addition, by the 20th or so of December we had evidence that additional Serb military forces were being deployed and used against the population against the terms of the agreement.

Q. Was the announcement complied with up to the 20th of December and not after that? Is that what you're saying, General?

A. Your Honour, I'm saying that the accused did not live up to the terms of his commitment to NATO.

Q. These are commitments in accordance with Resolution 1199. Surely ³⁰⁴⁶⁸ that is not in dispute, General Clark. Is it in dispute or not, General Clark?

A. Your Honour, this statement is the statement that General Naumann and I took back to the North Atlantic Treaty Organisation that detailed the actions that the accused and his forces would take in order to comply with 1199, and it's -- what I'm saying is that he did not live up to this commitment that I took back to NATO.

Q. How do you know that it was not complied with? Where is the evidence? Are you saying that the commitment assumed was not complied with? There were no activities after that until you started spurring them on through Walker and others to start killing once again. Wasn't that so, General Clark?

A. That's incorrect. What actually happened after the agreement was signed in late October, is that there was some brief period of diplomatic activity. The diplomatic activity didn't go anywhere for a variety of reasons. The change was made in the leadership of the Yugoslav military, in my view a more compliant officer was put in place, General Ojdanic. The forces then began to move out again, and starting in mid-December or late December, we began to see the evidence that the campaign against the population in Kosovo was heating up. We saw increased numbers of forces moved in, we saw more tactical activities. We had reports from the Kosovo -- the KDOM mission there, the Diplomatic Observer Mission, that there was more action, and so it was an intensification of operations again, in contravention to the promises made to NATO.

Q. General Clark, during your examination-in-chief, didn't you ³⁰⁴⁶⁹ explain that you had a talk with General Ojdanic and that you asked him why the number of troops was being increased? Yourself said in the border area. Isn't that right? Isn't that what you said a moment ago? Surely I don't need to refer to the LiveNote. You surely remember what you said ten minutes ago if you don't remember what happened five years ago. You spoke to Ojdanic; is that right?

A. Your Honour, I think the accused has confused two separate conversations. The first was my visit to Belgrade on or about 20 December in which I met with General Ojdanic and Mr. Sainovic. And during that meeting, I went through this statement and reminded General Ojdanic of his obligations. I warned him that the deployment to the Podujevo was out of bounds. I asked him to pull those forces back. I subsequently departed Belgrade.

In early March, after the massacre at Racak, after Rambouillet had commenced, there was a continuing build-up of forces and activities on the ground in Kosovo. I then called General Ojdanic and asked him to remove those additional forces that had been brought in, and I asked him why he was building them up and so forth, and that's when he told me that he had brought them in, as I relayed in my previous testimony. So there are two separate conversations here some three months apart.

Q. Very well. And then he explained to you that the forces were going there because you were threatening to attack Yugoslavia. Isn't that so? And that the forces were on the border to defend the border. Is that what General Ojdanic told you? ³⁰⁴⁷⁰

A. General Ojdanic, Your Honour, did not tell me the forces were on the border. The forces were not on the border. The forces were arrayed around generally against -- deployed in such a way that they could take action against the population. They were not arrayed strictly for a defence against a hypothetical NATO attack. I also told Ojdanic that such a defence would be unnecessary because NATO had no intention of invading Kosovo.

Q. But all the time you were threatening with invasion. Is it true, General Clark, that as early as mid-1998 you had planned bombing of Yugoslavia, even though at the time you could not have --

JUDGE MAY: No. No. You can ask the witness about the conversations. You know that.

THE ACCUSED: [Interpretation] Well, Mr. May, I really don't know when you're switching off my microphone whenever I take the lead from what the witness himself has said.

MR. MILOSEVIC: [Interpretation]

Q. So General Clark, you yourself mentioned just now that Ojdanic told you that your threats had provoked certain movement of our forces in order to be able effectively to protect the country's borders. Is that right or not?

A. Your Honour, what I recounted was in full detail the conversation including the excuse given by General Ojdanic for deploying forces. And I also explained my discussion with Ojdanic. There was no threat from NATO at the time. There were no forces in Macedonia which would have warranted such a build-up of forces in Kosovo. And the forces that were in Kosovo ³⁰⁴⁷¹ were not deployed in defensive array against a hypothetical NATO invasion in any case; they were deployed in such a way that they could be used against the civilian population in Kosovo.

Q. But those forces, General Clark, did not act against the population. Is that clear to you or not, or are you perhaps claiming that they did act against the population?

A. Your Honour, when I move into this discussion, I'm going past the bounds of my original evidence, so I'm going to answer the question and then refer it to the Court as to how far we go on this, but, yes, those forces did move against the population. They began moving against the population on the 19th or 20th of March, as I stated.

JUDGE MAY: Yes. That was part of your evidence. And that's as far as it's to be taken, no further, or we get into the areas which the witness did not give evidence about and is not evidence from him. If you want to pursue these matters, you must pursue them in other people. So there's no misunderstanding, if you want to cross-examine the general on the book, you can on those parts which relate to his evidence, those parts which are marked, but at the moment that has not been admitted, it hasn't been admitted, but we should not stop you cross-examining, if you wanted to, on those parts, but those are the only parts.

Yes.

MR. NICE: One point. I notice that the accused has not yet cross-examined on the contents of the conversation set out at paragraphs 3 and 4 in any detail. Now, they're very important paragraphs. I've ³⁰⁴⁷² suggested to him through the court that he'll also want to look at the material disclosed coming from the Tudjman transcripts. I know the normal rule is that if somebody doesn't cross-examine on something that it's, as it were, taken at full value. This is something, of course, of such importance that if there is any suggestion of a nuance to that conversation, it would be in the accused's interests to put it and it would help the Chamber to have the issued joined now.

JUDGE MAY: Yes. We will have that in mind. There are two conversations in particular -- which I have noted in particular. One concerns Srebrenica, and the other was the corroborative evidence of what General Naumann said about Drenica. Both of those could be relied on or might be relied on to support the accused's state of knowledge. Mr. Milosevic, you hear what's being said. No doubt you've got your own time and you've got your own plans. No doubt you will get round to challenging those, but if you do challenge them, you should do so clearly so that a witness can deal with them, particularly matters of importance such as those.

Now, we'll consider for a moment what time you should have in the morning.

THE ACCUSED: [Interpretation] May we just clear up something because that is also probably part of the tactics of the opposing side. I'm never supplied with materials on time. In my document, it says General Wesley Clark was the Supreme Commander during the conflict in Kosovo, et cetera, et cetera. That is paragraph 3 in my documents. And paragraph 4, the witness will testify about his general observations ³⁰⁴⁷³ regarding the style of government of Milosevic. So I don't know which paragraphs 3 and 4 you are referring to. Do you have another statement of the witness? Will you please give me a copy of that statement where those paragraphs appear? I have just quoted from paragraphs 3 and 4 in my document, the one that was disclosed to me.

JUDGE MAY: Let me make one thing --

THE INTERPRETER: Microphone, Mr. President.

JUDGE MAY: Let me make one thing clear: The evidence is the evidence which this witness has given before the Court. It is not, in this case, any statements and the like. You should have, and I hope you do have, the up-to-date witness statement. Has that been served upon the accused, the summary which you served last week?

MR. NICE: A version last week was served which is identical to the version that was served I think today or yesterday - so of today - but for formatting differences. So there have been two versions of a 45-paragraph statement in 11 pages served on the accused, and that's been the basis for the testimony today. And the paragraph numbers are exactly the same for those two versions. So it's 45 paragraph number, if I've got it right, that he's looking for, and he can find it possibly at the beginning of the bundle of exhibits if he's been given that, but he's been supplied with two already.

[Trial Chamber confers]

THE ACCUSED: [No translation]

JUDGE MAY: Just a moment. We're just thinking. We're considering. ³⁰⁴⁷⁴

[Trial Chamber confers]

JUDGE MAY: We've considered the position, and because you are in person, we shall not stick absolutely to the limit which we mentioned earlier today. What we'll do, having regard to how the cross-examination has gone, we will give you an hour and a half tomorrow morning to conclude your evidence, in the course of which you should, of course, bear in mind what the Prosecution said and deal with those matters which are in dispute, those which deal with controversial matters. So you should prepare on that basis.

For a moment, please, the registry.

[Trial Chamber and registrar confer]

JUDGE MAY: Mr. Nice, there seems to be some difficulty about the transcript being provided to the provider, the government. I thought there was no difficulty about this at all, I thought the matter had all been arranged.

THE INTERPRETER: Microphone, Mr. Nice.

MR. NICE: They've got to have a copy, otherwise they can't review it.

JUDGE MAY: Yes. Very well. That will be done.

MR. NICE: Thank you very much.

JUDGE MAY: General Clark, if you could be back, please, tomorrow at 9.00 to conclude your testimony. Thank you very much.

THE WITNESS: Thank you.

JUDGE MAY: We will adjourn.

--- Whereupon the hearing adjourned at 2.09 p.m., ³⁰⁴⁷⁵ to be reconvened on Tuesday, the 16th day of

December, 2003, at 9.00 a.m.