³⁷⁰⁴⁸

Tuesday, 8 March 2005

[Open session]

[The witness entered court]

[The accused entered court]

--- Upon commencing at 9.04 a.m.

JUDGE ROBINSON: May I mention two housekeeping matters before we begin. Firstly, on Thursday morning, the Trial Chamber will be hearing another matter at 9.00 a.m. We expect to finish that matter by the end of the first break, so the parties should be on stand-by to recommence this trial at 10.30, that's the beginning of the second session. Secondly, I understand that we will not have any German interpretation for tomorrow, but my expectation is that we will conclude this witness's testimony today with the cooperation of Mr. Milosevic and Mr. Nice.

Mr. Milosevic.

THE ACCUSED: [Interpretation] Thank you, Mr. Robinson.

WITNESS: DIETMAR HARTWIG [Resumed]

[Witness answered through interpreter] Examined by Mr. Milosevic: [Continued]

Q. [Interpretation] Mr. Hartwig, we left off talking about your experiences in Pristina. What was the relationship or attitude of the ordinary Albanians towards the political situation?

A. One has to differentiate between those who helped to form public opinion and those for whom it was just a matter of their own lives and survival. The average Albanian was actually less interested in politics, ³⁷⁰⁴⁹ but he was interested in establishing foundations for his economic survival irrespective of external influences for managing his life. That was the average Albanian.

Of course, there was certainly also, among these one or the other, who was pleased to make promises or follow promises from Albanian politicians for -- who promised a better life under different conditions.

Q. To the best of your knowledge, were any rights curtailed with regard to the Albanians?

A. I personally heard only general complaints that most of the Serbs have. They have done one or the other thing. But in personal discussions, I never heard any reprimands against any particular person or individual offices of the Serbs.

Q. Mr. Hartwig, did you ever have an opportunity of asking anybody? Did you ever ask anyone whether they were lacking in some rights and -- or anything else; and if so, what? Denied any rights?

A. I had two cases, and I made inquiries specifically about these. First of all, there was the complaints that the people at the university did not use their language, and I then spoke to the head of the university, and he said that in the first semester for the curriculum and the general administrative rules the Serbian language would be used, but otherwise there was also the possibility, depending on the ethnic relationship of the participants, that they could speak Albanian. The second case, we lived in the house belonging to a doctor couple, and we heard that the man lost his position in the ministry because of his -- because he was Albanian, and the same applied to his ³⁷⁰⁵⁰ wife and applied also to the son and to the daughter. But I heard in a talk that the father didn't lose his position because of his Albanian nationality but because he had simply reached retirement age. And in this period, the mother gave up her professorship at the university to be together with her husband, and the son was in hospital because -- had problems in the hospital because did he not want to operate on a Serb, and the daughter was training to be a specialist doctor. This statement I heard from an Albanian, and that is from the daughter, and this seemed to me to be credible.

Q. Tell me something about the attitude of the Albanian population or individual groups or categories of the Albanian population towards your own mission. Or let me be more specific: Were there any cases where your cars would be stopped, the vehicles belonging to your mission would be stopped by members of the KLA, intercepted?

A. Well, the only ones that ever stopped us or ever stopped me in Kosovo were members of the KLA, or they had set up roadblocks in territories governed by the KLA, and therefore, they did not have a diplomatic pass, just the personal appearance and -- but they were -- did not respect diplomatic passes. But as I said, we were stopped, and in individual cases people did shoot at our vehicles, but we had armoured vehicles.

Q. When you said people shot, who shot at your vehicle?

A. I'm not sure who shot, but certainly either it was in the zone controlled by the KLA, but also -- although that was not the case in my case, but somewhere near Stimlje where this happened. ³⁷⁰⁵¹

Q. And would you say that the KLA was a terrorist organisation, in your opinion?

A. I can only compare with an organisation that one heard about quite a lot in my country, that is the Red Army Faction, and these people wanted to have another republic, and they were designated terrorists.

Q. And how would you qualify the goals and the means of the KLA?

A. If a grouping is concerned with means, using peaceful means, then one can establish a democracy. But the means that were adopted there did not comply with democratic means. They were, in my opinion, very clearly beyond legality, and also the actions that were started with these means were beyond legality.

Q. As you have already told us, you met many members of the KLA. How would you qualify the leaders of the KLA? What would you say about them?

A. Well, I didn't meet the higher people in the KLA but just those that you could call middle management. In principle, these were very simple commanders who quite simply wanted the Albanians to have the sole decision rights in Kosovo.

Q. And what was the attitude of the KLA leaders towards the Serbs, for instance, and other non-Albanians, for that matter?

A. As a personal statement, I think I already mentioned that. In the unofficial version of the constitution of Kosovo, there was a paragraph that they should not continue to live under or with the Serbs, but nothing had been said about the other ethnic groups. And later I read about this in the newspaper, and therefore this is secondhand information for which I would not like to give my assessment. ³⁷⁰⁵²

Q. What is your impression, or what knowledge do you have throughout the time you spent in Kosovo and Metohija about who caused the problems during that period of time that you were there? What would you say?

A. I believe that the origin of the --

JUDGE ROBINSON: Don't answer that question. It's too general, and it just invites mere opinion.

MR. MILOSEVIC: [Interpretation]

Q. Mr. Hartwig, according to your knowledge and information and judging by what you were able to see and learn, led to problems, caused problems in Kosovo and Metohija?

JUDGE ROBINSON: That's the same thing. Move on to another question, Mr. Milosevic. Let's bring this to an end now.

MR. MILOSEVIC: [Interpretation]

Q. Mr. Hartwig, were there any attacks launched by the KLA on police stations?

A. There weren't just attacks against police stations, also attacks at individual police out on patrol. And I believe that ultimately that was the policy, to make such attacks against the executive power of that country, because as a rule they used -- they used to expect to have searches being made. They also probably expected actions which could be seen as very negative.

Q. Can you explain that to us a little better, please?

A. Well, if there was an attack against a civilian, then without doubt it is possible that in a country where perhaps it's normal for a man to carry a weapon, that this escalates into a shoot-out between ³⁷⁰⁵³ individuals. At the moment where the executive branch would come into play, that is then not normally a man-to-man fight but it becomes a collective action instead perpetrated by a unit of the police or security forces directed against not one man or individual but directed, rather, against a group of people.

Q. Well, I must say I'm not following you well enough. It's not clear enough. Did the forces of law and order react to the KLA, to the KLA attacks?

A. As far as I know, most of the actions undertaken by the security forces were reactions to incidents, happenings which had been perpetrated by the other side.

Q. And did the KLA hide behind civilians?

JUDGE ROBINSON: No. That's -- you can't ask that. That's clearly leading.

THE ACCUSED: [Interpretation] All right.

MR. MILOSEVIC: [Interpretation]

Q. Mr. Hartwig, did you happen to talk to the leaders of the police, our police, for instance, in Kosovo with respect to the risks that civilians were running during these provocations on the part of the KLA?

A. I certainly talked to people. As I mentioned, with General Djukic, for example, but I also, and I can't remember -- there was the police chief of Malisevo with whom I've had an extensive discussion on which were the risks which resulted from ambush situations, from attacks against members of the executive and also members of the civilian population. ³⁷⁰⁵⁴

JUDGE ROBINSON: Mr. Milosevic, you asked Mr. Hartwig, Did the forces of law and order react to the KLA, to the KLA attacks, and he said that as far as he knew, most of the actions undertaken by the forces were reactions to incidents, happenings which had been perpetrated by the other side.

It would obviously strengthen your case if you could direct Mr. Hartwig or ask him if he was able to identify any specific incidents where the official forces, security forces, reacted to incidents, because that might go towards a defence of self-defence. But as it is, it has just been left at a very general -- very general level. But you're facing an indictment with many allegations of violence by security forces, and it would clearly help your case if you could bring evidence to show that this violence, the alleged crimes were committed as a reaction and in a proportionate way to action taken by the KLA.

MR. MILOSEVIC: [Interpretation]

Q. Mr. Hartwig, you have heard what Mr. Robinson has just said, and he explained it very well. Could you please now confirm or refute that the conduct of the security forces in Kosovo was a reaction to the attacks from the KLA.

JUDGE ROBINSON: Mr. Milosevic, you're facing an indictment with specific allegations of incidents happening at a particular village, in a particular municipality where so many people were beaten or killed. Just to have him give -- to make general conclusory remarks is not what we're really looking for.

In preparing the witness, you should have sought to find out ³⁷⁰⁵⁵ whether he was in a position to give that kind of evidence. I mean, he was there. In his work with the ECMM, he might have received reports which would have confirmed that the security forces were acting responsibly to the attacks by the KLA.

MR. MILOSEVIC: [Interpretation]

Q. Mr. Hartwig, can you quote some examples of such events having taken place where the forces of law and order reacted to attacks from the KLA?

A. These events are almost six years back. I know I have notes in which KLA attacks are described and where, as a result, some of the attackers were injured or even killed, but currently I'm afraid I can't give you an exact statement telling you this happened in this place or that place or it was this or that incident exactly. But it were -- these were incidents which effected attacks against the police as well as also sometimes military personnel.

Perhaps one example, if I am allowed to mention this: Kotlina, Ivaja, and Gajre, there the radio had said this was an arbitrary action undertaken on the part of the security forces. However, in the course of the discussion, I heard that it was from, I think, Pudina [phoen], but I'm not entirely sure about the exact name, but people shot from somewhere in the hills on bridges below, so that basically that action directed against the three villages can be seen as a reaction.

Q. Mr. Hartwig, I do realise that a lot of time has gone by since then, but if we look at the chronology of events from the time you were the head of the -- of the monitoring mission in Kosovo, I'm going to quote ³⁷⁰⁵⁶ and go through a few events and ask you whether you remember them or not. For example, let's start with January 1999, for instance, and I'll skip over the previous points.

On the 5th of January, a MUP patrol came upon an ambush at Suva Reka. Four policemen were seriously wounded. Do you remember that event?

A. I think that was one of the first large-scale ambushes. And if I'm not wrong, this was near Suva Reka.

Q. Thank you, Mr. Hartwig. Now, do you remember the 8th of January? Let's once again skip over a few days and go to the 8th of January when three officers of the MUP were killed from an ambush and three civilians wounded when eight soldiers -- and this all took place on the 8th of January -- was kidnapped by the --

MR. NICE: If the accused is reading from a document that's available to the Chamber, no doubt the Chamber would like to know what the document is. If he is reading from one of the proposed exhibits of the witness, he should identify which tab. My observation is that thus far, the accused is giving more detail than is contained in the only tab in the witness's exhibit file that relates to these matters. So I don't know what he's reading from.

JUDGE ROBINSON: Mr. Milosevic, what are you reading from, if anything? Are you quoting from a document?

THE ACCUSED: [Interpretation] I am reading from my own chronological notes reflecting events from the time when Mr. Hartwig headed the monitoring mission. I presume that he remembers the 8th of January when three policemen and eight soldiers of the army of Yugoslavia ³⁷⁰⁵⁷ were killed and kidnapped respectively.

MR. NICE: [Previous translation continues] ... is simply leading. If he turns to I think it is tab 2 of the witness's materials, he will find an abbreviated reference to these topics, and an appropriate way, if he wants to go into it, would be to say, and I'm looking at the document headed 14th of June, I think, of 1999, but then typed headed the 6th to the 13th of January, 1999 -- tab 2.

JUDGE KWON: Tab 3.

MR. NICE: I'm sorry, I left my tabbed version upstairs. I'm grateful to Your Honour. Tab 3, of course,.

And if you look at the foot of the first paragraph, you will see references to either 3 MUP in a KLA ambush. We can certainly track the date of that to the 8th of January. If the accused wants detail of that from this witness, then one way he could deal with that without leading the detail himself from whatever records he's relying on is to ask the witness to amplify the entry on the document. Whether that's what he wants to do, I don't know. But simply him reading out his version of the documents won't be satisfactory to the Chamber, I suspect.

THE ACCUSED: [Interpretation] Very well. Very well. I shall adhere to the exhibits, and they are perfectly sufficient to explain the situation. Very well, Mr. Robinson.

MR. MILOSEVIC: [Interpretation]

Q. Mr. Nice has just mentioned tab 3. I will not even linger on the bottom of the page that he described. Just tell us before we start with this, Mr. Hartwig, what does WSS mean -- WASS? ^{37058 BLANK PAGE 37059}

A. This is an abbreviation for weekly assessment. This is a type of report which I had to submit on a weekly basis to mission headquarters. And this was based on the daily reports submitted by individual teams and also used information from additional talks I had and information and intelligence we received.

Q. All right. Mr. Hartwig, this weekly overview of events, as you said, is dated 21st of January, 1999. It's tab 3. I shall draw your attention to page 2, because it gives a dense account of a multitude of events, and it mentions EU-KDOM relationship.

JUDGE KWON: Mr. Milosevic, if the date is 21st, then it should be tab 4.

THE ACCUSED: [Interpretation] I'm sorry. In my binder it's tab 3. I must have made a mistake in arranging the tabs.

MR. MILOSEVIC: [Interpretation]

Q. In any case, yes, it says here, Weekly Assessment, 6 to 13th January, tab 3. Paragraph one says: "... explosion of a hand grenade in front of a cafe at Pristina, the murder of the Serb manager of the Obilic power plant, the killing of 3 MUP in a KLA ambush, and the capturing of 8 VJ soldiers by KLA."

So this is covered in your weekly report. Does it refresh your memory as to these events, because they are contained in your daily and weekly reports?

A. Well, at the moment I can remember the word the manager of the power station Obilic, the story with the murder and under which circumstances they were -- they were killed in an ambush. I'm afraid the ³⁷⁰⁶⁰ details of this I'm not familiar with, but as far as I recall, they used part of a street which formed some of the control area of KLA, and that the capture -- that the capture on the side of the international community caused some disquiet, the capturing of the VJ soldiers. But I cannot recall details as to how and under which circumstances now patrols of the security forces were attacked or how individual policemen were killed.

Q. All right. But I suppose this explosion of a hand grenade in front of a cafe in Pristina and the killing of the manager of the power plant in Obilic and the killing of three policemen, as it says here, from an ambush and the kidnapping of soldiers were events that were doubtlessly recorded and verified by your monitors. That's what it says in this weekly assessment.

A. Certainly there is nothing in this report that was just imaginary. The hand grenade attack in Pristina, which as far as I can recall, actually, was the first attack within a city, within a town, and I said at that time that the war had been transferred to the town after I think also something similar had happened in Pec before that. But this was significant as an event because that village was the main town of Kosovo.

Q. Thank you, Mr. Hartwig.

A. Pristina, I'm sorry, was the main town of Kosovo.

Q. Very well. Thank you, Mr. Hartwig. Let us just go through a number of these tabs. Please look at tab 5, dated 28th of January, 1999. In paragraph 2 under paragraph 1, it says: "After KLA attacks against police cars [In English] with eight policemen injured, MUP surrounded a house at Mitrovica covering approximately 12 KLA fighters; MUP ordered to ³⁷⁰⁶¹ surrender twice - but the response was small-arms fire. When KLA tried to escape, two fighters were killed and the others escaped." [Interpretation] That's the event. And now comes this sentence which is very typical, so I would appreciate your comment on this. "[In English] In public, the two KLA fighters were described as victims of MUP violence and caused clear demonstrations of Albania solidarity."

[Interpretation] Mr. Hartwig, you are a German officer with a great amount of experience, and you know this event that is described here. So vehicles -- not one vehicle but vehicles of the police were attacked, eight policemen were wounded. The police surrounds a house, only the house where the perpetrators are located. The police invite them twice to surrender, with the intention to arrest them, as any police would do. However, the perpetrators respond with fire, tried to break out, and in the attempt, two of them get killed.

This is then portrayed as --

JUDGE ROBINSON: Mr. Milosevic, just ask the question without making comments.

MR. MILOSEVIC: [Interpretation]

Q. -- as a sacrifice on the part of the attackers. Well, Mr. Hartwig, I will ask him [as interpreted] some more questions based on the events, but from this event and the previous events, was the conduct of our law enforcement and security forces an aggressive one or was it, rather, contained? In other words, would you characterise it as normal behaviour on the part of law enforcement and security forces, by your ³⁷⁰⁶² standards?

A. Unfortunately, I do not have the document here, so I'll just follow what has been said, that in this incident both OSCE was there, but also members of our own mission were there, and it was not mentioned in our report that the security forces were aggressive in any manner or -- or that they behaved in an excessive manner. It was a normal police action, which actually must be regarded as having been normal. The claimed perpetrators flee into a house, they barricade themselves, the house is surrounded, and the people in there are then called upon to put down their arms and to surrender. So this was a topic of our evaluation afterwards. And it should be said that the -- or to say that the police did not behave correctly.

JUDGE KWON: Just a second. I think the witness should have his binder in front of him.

MR. MILOSEVIC: [Interpretation]

Q. Mr. Hartwig, I'm sorry, I thought all the time that you had the documents in front of you. I thought they had been put in front of you, and that's why I quoted and invoked certain paragraphs. This is paragraph 5 that we were dealing with.

JUDGE KWON: Tab 5.

THE INTERPRETER: Tab 5, interpreter's correction.

MR. MILOSEVIC: [Interpretation]

Q. I read out to you part of paragraph 2 from page 1, paragraph 1.

JUDGE KWON: It's in the middle of paragraph 1.

JUDGE ROBINSON: But he has already commented on that, ³⁷⁰⁶³ Mr. Milosevic, without the tab in front of him, so you can move on.

MR. MILOSEVIC: [Interpretation]

Q. Mr. Hartwig, what I'm asking you now refers not only to this incident but to your entire experience as head of the monitors in Kosovo and Metohija. Would you say that law enforcement and security forces behaved aggressively or showed restraint?

A. Well, I had no statements as to the police having been behaved aggressively in total.

Q. Very well. Thank you. But let me ask you a more precise question now. To the best of your knowledge from all the time that you spent there, did security forces ever attack the KLA first?

A. Well, I refer to what was given to me as part of my task and what I heard from my team and what I myself saw and experienced or received in reports, but according to that, as a rule we're concerned here with reactions on the part of the security forces.

Q. Thank you. Thank you, Mr. Hartwig.

JUDGE KWON: Mr. Milosevic, I would like the witness to deal with the paragraph which is at the foot of the same page. What was the basis of this observation, and what was the reason for him to put this paragraph in his report?

THE ACCUSED: [Interpretation] Shall I read the paragraph, Mr. Kwon? You mean the one that begins with: "This is the classic and normal development..."?

JUDGE KWON: Yes.

THE ACCUSED: [In English] "... classic and normal development: ³⁷⁰⁶⁴ Attempts and assassinations by KLA against police MUP -- against police/MUP which - in turn - allegedly try to identify and arrest the perpetrators ... but where and how police/MUP search for and identify them? After the operations, weapons are hidden and the fighters convert to normal citizens with no visible link to KLA. Since it is not the speciality of Serb forces and impossible under those conditions to surgically conduct operations, the hammering seems to remain the only response. It can be expected that, as long as KLA applies its guerrilla tactics, the proceeding of police/MUP and VJ against KLA will remain unchanged."

MR. MILOSEVIC: [Interpretation]

Q. Mr. Hartwig, Mr. Kwon wanted you to comment on this paragraph as well, the one from your report.

A. In this paragraph, I stated one of the fundamentals of partisan fighting. This does not relate specifically to KLA or security forces of the Serbs, but this is a generally applicable recipe which one finds in all wars, used in partisan battles. But one mixes among the civil population in the hopes that the moral barriers of those attacks are so high that nothing will happen. But this is simply wishful thinking in most wars in the past, and certainly this type of partisan fighting is very specific, and in principle it has rules that certainly have been laid down in terms of common law, but in practice they are very difficult to adhere to.

JUDGE KWON: So this is your general observation at that time.

THE WITNESS: [Interpretation] To just add to that, it is does not ³⁷⁰⁶⁵ relate specifically to this situation; it is a general observation.

JUDGE KWON: Thank you.

MR. MILOSEVIC: [Interpretation]

Q. Mr. Hartwig, from your contacts with chiefs of police, did you hear anything about their efforts to avoid civilian casualties at all costs?

A. I haven't understood this correctly, acoustically, so perhaps you could repeat that. Would you be so kind as to repeat the question, please. I simply didn't hear it properly.

Q. Certainly. In your contacts with chiefs of police, police administration, were you informed of all the steps taken by the police to avoid civilian casualties?

A. I have not heard anything about this. Probably in the situation, I wouldn't have asked that specific question because tactics of -- in this kind of conflict are such that it is virtually impossible to really direct what is happening unless you completely ignore such attacks and simply accept them without comment.

Q. Tell me, then, if, in response to their attacks, our forces used disproportionate force.

JUDGE ROBINSON: Well, in my view, he shouldn't be asked the question in that way. Ask him specifically what kind of force was used, and then we will assess the proportionality.

THE ACCUSED: [Interpretation] Mr. Robinson, I am bearing in mind that Mr. Hartwig said at the very outset that he had served for 30 years in the German army, that he had dealt extensively with these affairs and ³⁷⁰⁶⁶ issues. He headed a monitoring mission. I presume that he had to come face-to-face with the fact that disproportionate force was being used if it was indeed used. He had several months of practice, direct involvement in Kosovo. I'm simply asking if, in his opinion, disproportionate force was used there.

JUDGE ROBINSON: Mr. Hartwig, you were there. What kind of force was used by the armed forces in response to the KLA attacks?

THE WITNESS: [Interpretation] As a rule, after an attack they started looking for the perpetrators, and when approaching a possible scene, there were still shots being fired from some of the villages. And as part of a simple search of houses, people were arrested, and certainly people were also taken away for questioning.

There may -- yes, there were cases, actually, that when there was stronger shooting from these villages, that then the police forces would have used heavy machine-guns in reply.

During the time I was there, at any rate, no heavy arms were used, at least not until, let's say, the last ten days or so before evacuation. That was a time when I heard from Podpuzuve [phoen], that area in the north, that there was artillery fire occasionally. But until that time, they didn't use heavy arms; light artillery weapons were employed. And KLA attacks were also done with artillery weapons with anti-tank grenades and so on.

JUDGE ROBINSON: Yes. And I will allow you to comment on the proportionality, because I now recollect that several Prosecution witnesses did comment on it. ³⁷⁰⁶⁷

THE WITNESS: [Interpretation] I can only reply something which I was told in a discussion with -- someone said if people could do as they would like to do, he said then we, the Serbs, would probably have managed to cope with the KLA. And I think the way he used the word "cope" was not in a general sense of eliminating the threat but perhaps might have meant they would have used sufficient pressure on the KLA that they might have been forced to negotiate as a result. But there was the statement that if they had been given a free hand, they would have had more opportunities. That was a statement made in my hearing.

JUDGE ROBINSON: Yes, Mr. Milosevic.

MR. MILOSEVIC: [Interpretation]

Q. At the time when you heard that, did you have the impression or maybe was it said explicitly that their activities were minimised, reduced to pure self-defence?

A. It was not mentioned that activities were reduced, but it was stated unequivocally that these were not security forces' actions which were executed in an arbitrary matter. It was also made very clear that it was the job of the security forces to ensure that all people living in Kosovo, irrespective of their ethnicity, could be protected.

Q. While we are still at tab 5, let me draw your attention to item 2, which in this report as well seems to confirm your notes that we saw in tab 1.

In item 2, in your own text, the report of the 28th of January, it says: "The Rector of the Albanian University of Pristina stated [In English] 'Not under the Serbs and not with the Serbs,' the new Albanian ³⁷⁰⁶⁸ constitution does not acknowledge Serbs as a national minority and Albanians engaged in watching human rights cannot imagine at all to think of some type of co-existence with Serbs."

[Interpretation] And then he says: "[In English] This, together with the strong ongoing Albanian demand NATO to militarily interfere indicate that no political resolutions with the Serbs are sought or even preferred any more.

"The Albanian side only needs to continue with its tactics of stitches, just waiting for the (anticipated) Serb reactions - and sooner or later, the international community will react in one or the other way." [Interpretation] Mr. Hartwig, we're not talking about the rights of Albanians here. What this refers to is, as you yourself said and mentioned, you were told by rector of the Albanian University, that they wished that -- to see no more Serbs in Kosovo. So was that the clear message sent out to them? Is that how you understood it?

MR. NICE: [Previous translation continues] ... if he wants to make things difficult for the witness, but he seems to have overlooked the second paragraph that leads "President Rugova's spokesman..." He didn't read that out. Maybe the witness ought to have the whole passage in mind before he's asked to give the sort of answer that's sought by the latest general question.

JUDGE ROBINSON: That's a matter you could raise in your cross-examination.

MR. NICE: I can do, but from the witness's point of view, it's unfortunate if something is taken completely out of context. ^{37069 BLANK PAGE 37070}

THE ACCUSED: [Interpretation] Mr. Robinson, what the spokesman said, Rugova's spokesman said does not carry the same weight as what the witness was told by the rector of the university, because the rector of the university tells him the following, he tells him something quite contrary to what Mr. Nice is saying. They would like ethnically pure --

JUDGE ROBINSON: Mr. Milosevic, let's move on. Let's hear your very specific question.

MR. MILOSEVIC: [Interpretation]

Q. Mr. Hartwig, how did you interpret what the rector of the university told you? Here it says: "Not under the Serbs and not with the Serbs." That's what it says here.

A. To live not with somebody nor under somebody in a house does, for me, mean it's either/or.

Q. Mr. Hartwig, do you know about these stories from the time that you were there about destroyed villages that were told, and did your monitors go and check those stories out to see if they were true?

A. Well, I did give you one example which I'd like to refer to again, Kotlina, Gajre, and Ivaja, where these villages were said to have been destroyed. And after three days, one village had been destroyed, the other two villages had certainly been looted and to some extent devastated as well. Personally, though, I did not see villages destroyed. I did see individual houses here or there which had been destroyed but not villages.

Q. And did you receive reports about large numbers of Albanian refugees, and did you investigate such reports if you did? Was your mission able to check reports of that kind out? ³⁷⁰⁷¹

A. In connection yet again with the event on the three villages, Kotlina, Ivaja, and so on, I heard on the radio that approximately 4.000 refugees had arrived at the border point Djeneral Jankovic, and as it happened, one of my teams was in the area and the members of that team reported to me that up to 3 to maximum 400 people were indeed there in the general area.

Q. And did you learn of the reasons why the population left their villages? Were you informed about that?

A. I think this was linked to the fact that the population may well, at least in part, have known which of the villages or the people in the village belonged to the KLA and who might also have been using arms. In the case of these three villages, I had been told that because of the fact that there had been small fire outside directed from the villages to the Serb guard on the road from Pristina to Skopje, and that as a result of the fire directed against them, the security forces had engaged in a search. And according to the report, the people may, some of them at least, have fled the villages, but the report also made clear that the security forces moved them to, I think it was Kacanik, and the children were taken to school, the men to the police station in order to be questioned or examined there as to finding out whether there was any link between those people and the KLA.

Q. Tell me now, please, Mr. Hartwig, whether you had any information of any kind about the fact that the authorities or -- saying that the authorities had expelled the Albanians from their villages.

A. Personally, I have no knowledge of this, nor did I see any mention ³⁷⁰⁷² of it in the reports.

Q. Thank you, Mr. Hartwig. And did you receive complaints that the police had been behaving improperly towards civilians? Did you receive any complaints like that?

A. I did not hear general -- no, I correct myself. I did not hear any complaints regarding individual police officers behaving in an improper way to civilians. Occasionally the name of the police was mentioned in connection with the arrests of Albanians which were arrested in connection with attacks or other events or people who were taken to be in remand prison. But these were all general remarks along the lines of "The police did this or that," but there were no specific complaints stating that police officers had behaved in any way severely unlawfully.

Q. Mr. Hartwig, was the KLA aggressive towards the Albanians as well?

A. In part, yes. I know from reports that Albanians were killed for the simple reason they worked either for the Serb administration or that they worked for the Serb police force. Or Albanians who were suspected of being collaborators, they were subject to a greater risk.

Q. Well, all right. Apart from those working for the administration and the police or collaborators, can you quote any examples where a doctor might have been killed or a public personage or a humanitarian worker for not supporting the KLA, for instance?

A. There were -- well, basically there was no alternative. The Albanians had to either support the KLA actively, so they had to support the KLA or even join. And I frequently heard that pressure was exerted in order to convince Albanians that it would be sensible to join the KLA. ³⁷⁰⁷³ And there was a story of a doctor who I think had a birthday party near Pec, and in the course of the celebrations some men dressed in KLA uniforms entered the building and shot some of the guests in their knees or in the legs, and the -- some of the family were supposed to be forced to join the KLA as a physician. This was perhaps the most extraordinary example of that kind.

Q. All right. Well, putting it mildly, you referred to that as pressure, when people were being shot at.

Mr. Hartwig, what do you know about the kidnapping of both Serbs and Albanians? So I'm not speaking only about the kidnapping of Serbs but of Albanians as well.

A. At some time after I had received information that over 140 Serbs were alleged to have been kidnapped, talked to the president of the kidnapped Serbs in Orahovac. One of the aims of our mission was to try and effect a reconciliation and cooperation. And I asked this gentleman whether he had a list of the names of all the Serbs who had been abducted or whether he could at least give me the names of those Serbs from Orahovac who were missing. It was interesting, because he told me he could obtain that list for me but only after he had discussed it with his Albanian neighbour. My idea was that activity was in that small area of Orahovac to find out something about the whereabouts of those Serbs who had been abducted, but at the same time, I also wanted to find out where in that very same area there might be Albanian citizens who were arrested, who were kept away. I wanted to know that to relieve the minds of their relatives. ³⁷⁰⁷⁴

JUDGE ROBINSON: Mr. Milosevic, I'm expecting you conclude your examination-in-chief by the break so that we will have the other two sessions for cross-examination and your re-examination.

THE ACCUSED: [Interpretation] Well, I'll do my best, of course, Mr. Robinson, but this is a very important witness, and I can't omit some important questions.

MR. MILOSEVIC: [Interpretation]

Q. Now, did the members of the KLA wear uniforms? Yes or no.

A. Well, the KLA, I don't know whether all the members of the KLA wore uniforms, but it was customary for the great majority of people in the KLA wearing camouflage uniform, and a small part -- I mean, this sort of olive camouflage. And a small part of the people wore uniforms all in black.

Q. And were there any KLA members -- when I say were there, I don't mean exceptions, but I mean a significant number who wore civilian clothing?

A. I'm not aware of that, because obviously I can't see when I look at a civilian whether this is a member of the KLA or not. All I do know is that when, for example, the eight prisoners were released, the Yugoslav soldiers, the negotiating group of the KLA were wearing uniform at that time.

Q. Mr. Hartwig, you haven't answered me fully. What did you know about the kidnapped Albanians? So I'm not referring to the kidnapped Serbs but to Albanians who were kidnapped by the KLA.

A. Concerning the whereabouts of Albanian -- Albanians abducted by ³⁷⁰⁷⁵ the KLA, I know very little about them. Some -- some of them would have been killed. The fate of the others did not become public knowledge partly because it frequently took a long time until links could be established between a kidnapping here and a corpse found there at a later stage.

Q. Did you have any idea about the number of Albanians killed and kidnapped Albanians by the KLA? Any idea of the numbers?

A. Personally, I have no knowledge about this. I think that I can remember, though, that there was a time, probably mid-1999 or a little later, there was a team from Italian television, and let me repeat once again that this is not my own knowledge, this is what I have been told, and this Italian TV team was said to have reported that every second killed Albanian was killed by other Albanians.

Q. Mr. Hartwig, would you please take a look at the last page of tab 4, and the question I'm going to ask you is did the monitoring mission of the OSCE try to place under control your own monitoring mission? And before you answer that question, take a look at what it says here. "[In English] On 13 January, TM Mitrovica was chased by way by OSCE chief operation, General --" Drewienkiewicz, I suppose. That's the DZ. "-- from the place of 8 VJ soldiers' release. On 14 January, HRO had a discussion with the General DZ who clearly expressed that he considers EU KDOM superfluous. If it --" [Interpretation] Yes, superfluous, unnecessary. "[In English] If it could not be absorbed by OSCE, then at least EU KDOM should work for OSCE. It was made clear that EU KDOM, apart from its current name which was going to disappear in the near future, was ³⁷⁰⁷⁶ going to perform its mission according to its mandate given by EU and not accept any restrictions of freedom of movement within its AOR. Final impression was that OSCE operation would like EU KDOM to disappear today rather than tomorrow."

[Interpretation] Please, would you explain to me how it was that Walker's mission endeavoured to place under its control your own mission, and what was the motive for that, or, rather, what was the explanation given?

A. Well, you know, I didn't get any explanation at all for this, but I assume that essentially it was a wish on the part of General DZ, as he was generally called, as we have heard, in other words, this is organised militarily somebody is responsible for a particular area and anybody within area is subjected somewhere to the command of the person in charge and responsible for this area.

Now, we as an observer mission for the European Union, we were -- we did not come under the auspices of OSCE, and therefore there was some disquiet about the fact that other observers were to be seen in this area, that they were active in this area, and basically this was the reason. But after the discussion with the general, there were no problems subsequently.

Q. Take a look at tab 6 now, please. And it's indicative, because once again you speak of -- well, you say -- there's an explanation you give here that they are always dissatisfied, the penultimate paragraph. "Typical example for a part of the situation." "[In English] Typical example for a part of the situation: Kosovo Albanian workers are ³⁷⁰⁷⁷ repairing and reconstructing the damaged school of Lodje; only workers with an ID can pass the control point. Sometimes individuals without personal documents delay the control and passing procedure; in order to help the Kosovo Albanians to receive their ID faster and easier, the Pec mayor asked them to come to his office and to provide just the names and few data. This was refused by the workers' speaker. Obviously, they like to continue to blame local authorities for harassment and disadvantaging them rather than reacting in a smart and normal way." [Interpretation] What does this show, then, Mr. Hartwig?

A. Well, it certainly shows that there were Albanians or functionaries who tried to defuse the situation, and they tried to help where they had the possibility. And there were people who were certainly not interested in defusing the situation.

Q. I'm not sure I've understood you. You said that there were Albanians -- this Pec mayor was a Serb himself who asked them to provide documents, but they refused to do so, as it says in your report.

A. Well, I didn't refer just to Albanians here, but I could have said the same for the Serbs. On the Albanian side, there were some who tried to minimise the problems, and the mayor of Pec, who, incidentally, also had a good reputation in the Albanian region, he wanted to help to speed up the reconstruction of the school. And on the other hand, there was the workers' speaker, who didn't want assistance. He didn't want things to be simplified but he wanted to retain the status quo.

Q. As we don't have much time, I'm going to go to tab 12 now. I hope I'll be able to get through what I want from that tab by the break. Take ³⁷⁰⁷⁸ a look at this weekly assessment of the 11th of March, 1999. After the first paragraph, you say the following: "[In English] Only between the first of March -- only between the first of March and today we noticed the following incidents against police, MUP, and VJ." [Interpretation] That means we're talking about 11th of March, and it was between the 1st of March and the 11th, during those 11 days. "[In English] One police officer killed and four police officers injured in an attack against a police patrol near Kacanik on 1 March. "Two Serbs abducted in the Orahovac area by the end of February were released by KLA one Serb heavily wounded, one dead. High MUP presence --"

JUDGE ROBINSON: We must have a question now, Mr. Milosevic.

THE ACCUSED: [Interpretation] Well, I'll ask my question when I have read all these separate points. This is a report which covers 11 days in the month of March. So it is the final month during which this mission was present there, the mission led by Mr. Hartwig.

JUDGE ROBINSON: We'll be here to the crack of dawn if you're to read all of that. It's in front of the witness, so he sees it.

MR. MILOSEVIC: [Interpretation]

Q. Mr. Hartwig, you have several pages here listing the events, each one of them mentioning dead people, killings, and the like. Does all this relate to KLA attacks against the police and the army? Of course, with some exceptions. I shall read out: "One Albanian was abducted from the village of Perane by 10 Albanians wearing camouflage uniforms and armed with automatic rifles. [In English] The abducted Albanian is a member of ³⁷⁰⁷⁹ the Albanian National minority and inspector of MUP at Prizren. "One woman at Pec was threatened by a masked and unknown person who reportedly was a KLA member. 'How can you sleep peacefully while our brothers in Drenica are dying every day?' After some questioning about her husband the woman was raped twice."

JUDGE ROBINSON: Okay, Mr. Milosevic. We have -- Mr. Milosevic, we have the point that these pages are accounts of KLA attacks. What's the question? Generally they are accounts of KLA attacks, one or two exceptions. What's the question of the witness?

THE ACCUSED: [Interpretation] Well, the exceptions relate to attacks on Albanians. I said that the attacks were -- the KLA attacking the police and army with the exception of the cases where incidents where Albanians were attacked.

MR. MILOSEVIC: [Interpretation]

Q. But are we dealing with KLA attacks here for the most part?

A. Well, according to the documents received at that time, obviously it was a question of attacks by the KLA.

Q. And can you quote a single example whereby the army or police attacked anybody in Kosovo during that period of time?

JUDGE ROBINSON: What period is that -- does that cover, Mr. Milosevic? 1 to 11 of March. Okay.

THE ACCUSED: [Interpretation] Well, this witness -- Mr. Robinson, this report or these reports cover the period from January, but this last exhibit comes from the 1st to the 11th of March. But you have before you Mr. Hartwig's reports from January or, rather, the reports of his ^{37080 BLANK PAGE 37081} missions, and the notes he wrote down covering the entire period of several months, and his testimony covers the period from November 1998, in fact.

So my questions relate to that entire period and his overall experience during it. So please bear that in mind with my request that these exhibits be tendered into evidence.

MR. MILOSEVIC: [Interpretation]

Q. Mr. Hartwig, before I conclude the examination-in-chief, I'm just going to read out the last sentence of this last exhibit of yours which relates to the period between the 1st and 11th of March, and it is this: "[In English] These examples are not a complaint but a demonstration of things are considered, evaluated and sold to the public." [Interpretation] Mr. Hartwig, generally speaking, is it characteristic of your testimony that there are great differences between the findings of your observer team, your monitors and your monitoring teams, and the reports coming out by the governments of the European Union and the media in the West?

A. Well, I would like to start off with a restriction here. I'm not quite sure what the European Union in general published here, but these differences between reality and practice, of course, were very clear, and they were noticeable, and I think that this did not just occur to us observers in the observing mission.

JUDGE ROBINSON: Thank you, Mr. Milosevic, for closing your examination-in-chief.

We'll now take the break for 20 minutes, and then we'll have the ³⁷⁰⁸² cross-examination.

MR. KAY: Can tabs 3, 4, 5, 6, 12 be exhibits.

JUDGE ROBINSON: Yes. They will be exhibited, yes. We will take the break for 20 minutes.

--- Recess taken at 10.35 a.m.

--- On resuming at 10.57 a.m.

JUDGE ROBINSON: Mr. Kay, you had asked for the admission of specific tabs.

MR. KAY: Yes.

JUDGE ROBINSON: We looked at the question over the break, and we are actually minded to admit all of them --

MR. KAY: Very well.

JUDGE ROBINSON: -- as reports prepared by the witness.

MR. KAY: I don't disagree.

JUDGE ROBINSON: Mr. Nice.

MR. NICE: On that, Your Honour, I'd simply observe that the witness hasn't spoken to some three of them.

JUDGE ROBINSON: Yes.

MR. NICE: I wasn't necessarily going to propose to ask any questions about them on the grounds that he hadn't referred to them. I raised at an earlier stage the concerns of the Prosecution, this was in a written filing, the concerns of material being produced without being referred to by the witness. Perhaps we can come back to it at the end of the evidence. I want to be brief with this witness.

JUDGE ROBINSON: Yes. I consider this exceptional. They are all ³⁷⁰⁸³ matters prepared by the witness. Very well.

Cross-examined by Mr. Nice:

Q. Mr. Hartwig, was it your idea to give evidence? Did you volunteer yourself to the accused or were you asked to give evidence?

A. I have been asked.

Q. How were you identified, do you know? By what publication or by what speech were you identified as somebody who might help the accused, do you know?

A. I don't know how this happened in detail, but I do know that a report, which was sometime early in 1999, a report on the KLA also ended up in Belgrade, and I assume that this brought up the connection.

Q. Is this one of the documents in your exhibit tab?

A. No, it is not. That report was an individual report dealing with the expansion of the KLA. It was a report which I had put together as an individual report --

Q. When?

A. We did not have any confidential reports of that type. We spoke very openly and transmitted them openly.

Q. When was your report prepared?

A. I'm not entirely sure any more. I assume it was probably about the end of January, February.

Q. Where was it published?

A. I don't know whether it was published. All I do know is that my ambassador in Belgrade contacted me, saying that he was aware that this report existed. ³⁷⁰⁸⁴

Q. Because you had published something outside the terms of your mission without authority from the ambassador, presumably.

A. I would not have needed authorisation or approval to publish, but I did not publish that report.

Q. Then how did this report get out? You're supposed to be -- your job is to observe something for a European bodied mission, and you then publish something separately on the KLA and it gets out into the public domain. Yes?

A. I would like to repeat once again: I did not publish anything. We openly transmitted our reports to a variety of different recipients. I am not aware how many. I have once been told that about 180 recipients received our reports. I'm not aware in which way this report which was, I will repeat, not dealing with confidential matters, became part of the public domain, but it was never the intention to keep such reports secret. If that had been the case, we would have opted for a secure form of transmission.

Q. I asked you, through the Court last week, to go and check your computer. Did you do so?

A. I not only checked my laptop, I also checked my desktop computer in my office and I never found this paper anyway. Let me add immediately that I am well aware that people can delete reports from a computer, and I would never expose myself to such an accusation. I did write the report at the time stated, and all the --

Q. And did you find the letter to Lukic that I asked you to look for, through the Court? ³⁷⁰⁸⁵

A. I found a letter to General Lukic. I found it in English and in German and I sent them. And in that letter --

Q. Do you have a copy of it with you?

A. I do not have a copy with me but at my hotel.

Q. Did it not occur to you to bring the document here? Did it not occur to you that it was required for evidence?

A. Then that must have been a misunderstanding. The way I understood you --

Q. Very well. Let's move on. These tabs in your exhibit binder, were these documents printed for the purposes of giving evidence recently from your computer?

A. I have a binder at home in which I've collected reports that I deemed important, including this tab 1 document.

Q. Well, that's not entirely an answer to the question. Did -- these tabbed exhibits, did you print them out from your computer specially for this court hearing?

A. I have the weekly reports and everything that file was printed from my computer, yes.

Q. So these are drafts. But we'll never know from you whether these are exactly what was sent by you to Sarajevo, will we, because these are just drafts?

A. All I can say is, yes, I don't know to what extent I may have rewritten or rephrased something. I have some reports --

Q. Did you make any efforts before coming to give evidence to obtain from the body to which you were providing these reports the actual ³⁷⁰⁸⁶ documents you provided at the time? Did you make any effort?

A. No, I did not. May I point out that mid last week, I only returned from a one-year mission to Afghanistan.

Q. You see, if we look at the very last report that was being referred to, tab 12, and the very last sentence in it which the accused focused on, "These examples are not a complaint but a demonstration of how things are considered, evaluated --" which needs respelling -- and then in capital letters "and sold to the public."

Can you just help me one way or another: Did this sentence ever form part of an official report that you sent through to your superiors?

A. This is a draft of my weekly report dated 11 March. I don't know whether I sent it as it is in this draft.

Q. You see, there are various things about your drafts, but help me with this: Did you type them yourself or did you dictate them?

A. Such things I always typed myself.

Q. Because one of the oddities of the style, if you will forgive my saying so, is that when you quote something, as opposed to just putting it in quotation marks, you use the words "quote" and "unquote" time and again. And that's your style, is it? It's not a question of dictating it to someone else and somebody else typing the words "quote" and "unquote"?

A. Quote, unquote, that's a sort of thing I learned for international communications, and if I have written that in my reports, COM, and it's COM or ECOM, it means end of comment. "Quote" is something which I've always done with international communications.

Q. [Previous translation continues]... yourself, you were in an army ³⁷⁰⁸⁷ for 30 years. Which army was that, the West German army?

A. I was in the Bundes. That's the armed forces of the Federal Republic of Germany, yes.

Q. When were you commissioned?

A. 1962.

Q. And when did you leave the armed forces?

A. 1993.

Q. And by that stage you'd risen to the rank of Unterleutnant, yes?

A. I was a lieutenant colonel.

Q. Well, the material was incorrectly revealed on the transcript. It is now corrected. You spoke in the transcript of having command functions. What command functions did you ever hold or did you largely do non-command jobs?

A. I was both in charge of a battalion and a company. I have held different functions in which I had command possibility.

Q. Let's now look at the mission you were actually engaged on. Do you have the mission statement here for your mission in Kosovo?

A. No.

Q. Tell us what the mission's objective was.

A. The objectives of this mission was a continuous monitoring of political, economic, cultural, and religious developments, and within the framework of our opportunities and possibilities, we were tasked to find out how cooperation could be improved between the different parties.

Q. Well, now that's a enormously wide range of activities you've identified. Let's look at it in more detail. Your mission was one of the ³⁷⁰⁸⁸ missions generally described as the KDOMs, the US KDOM, the Russia KDOM, and so on; correct?

A. At the time when I came to Pristina there were different Kosovo Diplomatic Observer Missions. One of them was the Diplomatic Observer Mission of the European Union, EU KDOM.

Q. Yes. But these missions were, as you rather revealed, they were observer missions, weren't they?

A. Yes, they were observer missions.

Q. You've described your role as being to deal with political, economic, cultural and religious developments, but basically you were there to look at things and to report back.

A. That is, I think, what I described; to observe and monitor developments in those named areas.

Q. You weren't negotiators or anything of that sort, were you?

A. There was one occasion when I attempted to negotiate. This concerned the case of the abducted Serbs, where I also wanted to find out whether we could get some information about the whereabouts of disappeared Albanians, but it didn't get very far because I had to go to a conference and immediately afterwards was the evacuation.

Q. You were basically there to observe. And now let's deal with figures. How many people -- the accused has repeatedly said you were the head of the observers and matters of that sort. Just tell us how many people in your mission.

A. So I don't have accurate figures at my disposal now, but I think at the beginning we were something like 38, 40 people. ³⁷⁰⁸⁹

Q. And at the end?

A. We were, well, at the end not fewer, really. Perhaps some people less. Some appointments were sort of recalled by the nations involved, but I think we were still between 20 and 30.

Q. Well, if you just look, please, at tab 2 of your exhibits, last page. This is your address of uncertain date but sometime in perhaps March. And at the last page of this you make it quite clear that, "Our current task is still to provide a picture as accurate, as clear and as quickly as possible... We were not intended to be and are not competitors to OSCE..." Few lines down: "The future of the EU Attache Group ..." is that you?

A. Yes.

Q. "... looks pink - the smaller the better and the more beautiful." Currently, and then we see a total of 12, 13, 14, 15, 16, 18 people. Is that about the right figure, under 20 for your mission covering the whole of Kosovo?

A. At the time of the evacuation, yes, that would have been correct figure, yes.

Q. Very well. And although you've given a figure of 40, on reflection and recollection isn't it true that you were always a very small mission, probably never more than 20?

A. No, that is not correct. At the time when I came to Kosovo, there was a larger number of us. However, over time some observers were recalled by the individual nations.

Q. In contrast, the KVM had some 2.000 people, didn't it? ³⁷⁰⁹⁰

A. Yes.

Q. Now, look at your recording procedures. You've come to court today with none of your original notes.

A. Yes, that's correct.

Q. None of the actually filed reports, only drafts taken from your computer.

A. Yes.

Q. None of the incoming reports from the five or so stations in which your 20 to 40 personnel were staffed?

A. No.

Q. I may be able to show you one of them in due course if I'm -- if I can get it freed. I'll do my best. But not yet.

You made no complaint about the reporting effectively of those 2.000 monitors working for KVM. Can you give any reason why they should, all 2.000 of them, or most of them or any of them, act in an unprofessional and improper way in the way they recorded events?

A. I never said anything like that, and I'm not aware of any unprofessionality in their reports either.

Q. You seem to be saying that the impression given by almost everybody else was false and the impression given by you was true. Are you including in those who gave a false and incorrect impression of what was happening in Kosovo the members of the KVM?

A. I don't know that. All I know is that my reports are based on the information we received and the information that existed, and our reports for a long time were also submitted to the OSCE. ^{37091 BLANK PAGE 37092}

Q. Let's just look at part of tab 4, last page of it, please. The tensions between the fully staffed OSCE of General Drewienkiewicz and yourselves revealed on the last page, and if we look at the foot of the page, we see the justification which wasn't referred to by the accused, but we look at the foot of the page, we see one of the reasons why they were concerned about your not responding, not being responsive to OSCE, because they say this: "EU KDOM should always report to OSCE when they want to operate because OSCE chiefs don't want to be responsible for the deaths of EU KDOM." If they didn't know where you were, they couldn't ensure that you were safe, could they?

A. That was a statement made by General DZ, which as far as I know he simply used as an argument, because the OSCE also had no opportunity, if we had indeed been in a crisis situation, to help us in any way whatsoever.

Q. Let's look at a couple of examples that they reported on that you told us --

JUDGE ROBINSON: Yes, Mr. Milosevic.

THE ACCUSED: [Interpretation] This question is inappropriate. Mr. Nice says if they didn't know where they were, then the OSCE could not have protected their security.

MR. NICE: [Previous translation continues] ...

THE ACCUSED: [Interpretation] The OSCE mission was unarmed. Their own safety was protected by our police.

MR. NICE: [Previous translation continues] ... with Your Honours' leave -- ³⁷⁰⁹³

JUDGE ROBINSON: Mr. Milosevic, you may raise that later.

MR. NICE:

Q. Let's look at a couple of matters you've spoken about. I think I can deal with them in order. I hope so. But before I do, just tell me this: In order to hold the opinions you've had, and you've been very generous -- generous, you've been wide-ranging in your opinions as to where the rights and wrongs lay, have you ever taken the opportunity to review, or even to attempt to review the records by the OSCE in something called their blue book?

A. No, none.

Q. [Previous translation continues] ... why not? You're a senior military figure, you tell us with lots of experience. You're beside a 2.000 strong observer mission or Verification Mission that keeps rigorous records. Do you not think that it would have been appropriate for you to check on what others were saying and what others were reporting?

A. No. This was not -- we -- well, that means I and -- or, rather, the OSCE operations and I myself had frequent meetings, and we discussed matters, and basically no agreement between us was necessary.

Q. And just before we pass from tab 4, we see that Drewienkiewicz's comment on your operation appeared to be that you'd never been seen to get out of your cars, and your response to that was that apparently he'd never seen a UK DOM, one of the 20 to 40 --

JUDGE ROBINSON: Where is that, Mr. Nice?

MR. NICE: The foot of the second page of tab 4. "Never seen EU KDOM leave their cars," and then on team's response he admitted he'd never ³⁷⁰⁹⁴ seen a single EU KDOM in the field.

Q. You were a very small operation whether you were seen to leave your cars or not, weren't you, Mr. Hartwig?

A. Yes, we were a small mission, but we had a major advantage vis-a-vis the OSCE; namely that we spent a longer time in Kosovo, and we certainly had longer naturally evolved relationships with both sides. And from that point of view, the success or failure of our mission did not depend so much on the numbers with which we were engaged but the duration and evolution of ties.

Q. Exhibit 321 is the blue book. You've told us about events at Ivaja.

MR. NICE: If the usher Mr. Nort would very kindly place on the overhead projector two pages from the reports of the 8th and 9th of March of 1999. The first page is 0352539. Thank you very much. And the second -- yes.

Q. This is a systematic report with which the Chamber's familiar, and I'm sorry, Mr. Hartwig, I'm not going to have time to take you through it in systematic method, but if we look, this is something that was reported, top left-hand corner, on the 8th of March, and it says: "At 0905 hours, KLA reported that VJ/MUP attacked the village of Straza and shelled the village of Ivaja. At 1400 hours, Straza was reported burning." And then if we go to the following day, to page 03525246, on the 9th of March, same systematic method of reporting. This is what OSCE provided: "The VJ/MUP operation to clear the KLA from Djeneral Jankovic area continues. KVM patrols were initially blocked from proceeding to the ³⁷⁰⁹⁵ affected villages. MUP or VJ forces then followed their pattern of surrounding the local villages and forcing the inhabitants to flee, through the use of direct and indirect fire. By mid-afternoon, houses were burning in Gajre, Ivaja, Straza, and Alil Mahala. MUP units appeared intent on destroying these villages."

Do you have any reason to doubt the accuracy of the KVM report?

A. [In English] I have only a reason to question the report as far as those villages are concerned which I mentioned, which I visited.

Q. You told us something about something that looked like a lunch break, think I. Are you aware that mosques in two of those villages were destroyed?

A. I was in the village, and I described the situation when I was there like a -- it looked almost like peaceful-like, during a lunch break, but I also mentioned that in that village I discovered only one -- one fire.

Q. What was the date of your visit?

A. I think it was the same day when it was reported, or the next day, but on the 9th, on the 9th I remember one of the reports of one of my teams visiting these three villages, and the next day as well, and there were statements saying that there were -- those villages were not destroyed.

Q. Statements from whom?

A. Pardon?

Q. Statements from whom?

A. From one of my teams. ³⁷⁰⁹⁶

Q. Have you got it here with you? Have you tried to get it from ECMM?

A. No.

Q. Have you attended to the evidence in this trial which includes evidence from two people, Isufu Loku and Hazbi Loku? Have you?

A. Of course I was not here. I can say what I mentioned. I referred to the reports that I received and what I saw myself.

Q. Because they speak of the destruction of the mosques, houses burning, and 13 tanks in the area. Any reason that you can give why that evidence and why this material from the KVM is to be doubted?

A. I don't have any reason and I will avoid in any case any speculation, but I don't know why it is described in that way. I don't have any information on Straza and the second village you mentioned. I referred to those. I mentioned and there I can only repeat what I mentioned already.

Q. Let's take another example of your evidence that the accused --

JUDGE BONOMY: Sorry, Mr. Nice, before you do, which tab was that referred to in the witness's tabs?

MR. NICE: Ivaja is referred to -- I'm sorry, I haven't got that to hand immediately, but we'll almost certainly come to it. I think it's -- yes. It may be, if Ms. Mueller helps me, it may be that he just raised it. We'll check the record.

Q. Can we now go to the tab that you were taken to by the accused this morning --

THE ACCUSED: [Interpretation] Mr. Robinson. ³⁷⁰⁹⁷

JUDGE ROBINSON: Yes, Mr. Milosevic.

THE ACCUSED: [No interpretation]

JUDGE ROBINSON: There is no interpretation --

THE INTERPRETER: No microphone.

JUDGE ROBINSON: Microphone.

THE ACCUSED: [Interpretation] I'm saying I would like to assist you with regard to this question by Judge Bonomy. In tab number 12, there is the weekly assessment for the 1st to the 11th of March, and that covers the events mentioned by Mr. Nice on the 8th and 9th of March. And on page 2 already, you see that the events are described in Kotlina, Ivaja, Gajre, of the 8th and 9th of March, and the witness has already spoken of some of them, saying what he had seen. That is just one reference. And the witness has mentioned on several occasions his personal experience from these villages, what he heard and what he saw.

JUDGE ROBINSON: Thank you. Thank you, Mr. Milosevic.

MR. NICE:

Q. If you go to tab 3, which is one of the passages you were looking at this morning, the 6th to the 13th of January, 1999. We see a very a very spare reference that the accused was seeking in his questions to amplify but you weren't able to help very much with, at the end of the first paragraph which says: "The killing of 3 MUP in a KLA ambush." If Ms. Dicklich would be good enough to lay on the overhead projector or arrange to be laid on the overhead projector from the same exhibit, 3524737. This will give you, Mr. Hartwig, some idea of the systematic method of recording because this is in daily reporting chart ³⁷⁰⁹⁸ form.

We see here at the bottom left-hand side of the chart, pointing to the general area number 2, it says: "R C1 reported that at approximately 1040 hours the KLA ambushed a MUP convoy, 4 kilometres north-east of Suva Reka. It is reported at that there are 3 MUP KIA, 3 MUP WIA --" which I suspect is killed or wounded -- "and 3 Albanian civilians were wounded." We then turn on, in the same document, to item number 2 - Mr. Nort, coming your way - we see a detailed account of what the KVM found. "Number 2. R C1 reported that prior to 1040 hours a MUP patrol consisting of 1 Lada Niva and 2 Pinzgauers was ambushed 4 kilometres north of Suva Reka," map reference given. "The patrol was fired on from well constructed, well camouflaged trenches which appeared to have been occupied for several days. The following casualties were reported." And then again, 3 KIA, 3 WIA and 3 Albanian civilians wounded who happened to drive into the ambush accidentally. "The KLA departed the area immediately following the ambush. An examination of the trenches revealed some shell or shell casings. RPG rounds were fired. The MUP apparently died whilst still inside the Pinzgauers."

Any reason to doubt the accuracy of this as a detailed report of what we see in your report as the killing of three MUP in a KLA ambush?

A. [Interpretation] It is clear this is a weekly report which summarises individual events. It doesn't require detailed description because for this purpose we had daily reports that we sent out.

Q. You have no recollection and you produce no detailed report to amplify what's in your weekly summary report, and you've made no effort to ³⁷⁰⁹⁹ get better material from the authorities if they still hold it. Do you have any reason to doubt, please, Mr. Hartwig, the accuracy of this entry by KVM?

A. I do not doubt the report, but I am not quite clear as to the time at which we delivered our reports to OSCE as a basis for their reports. But I wanted to say something else, and that is that we wrote very detailed comprehensive reports from Sarajevo, and these certainly went on to Brussels, and what I have in my summary, in my broad outline for this period does not include these details but is intended to set up a framework - at least this was my intention - for a weekly overview.

Q. Are you saying, help me, that your reports which no longer exist or haven't been brought here match those of the KVM or are you accepting that your reports from your 20 to 40 staff were substantially less detailed than what KVM were able to provide?

A. I'm not sure. Apart from what I've just read or seen, I'm not sure what OSCE otherwise transmitted or reported. We didn't get these reports --

Q. [Previous translation continues] ... daily reporting is of exactly -- is of at least the level of detail that you've seen on these reports. Your reports better, worse, or about the same? Tell us.

A. [In English] It is different, and I may repeat: The daily report includes details, and my weekly report does not include the details, but it takes the events, sets that in a particular framework, and should serve as a basis for an overall assessment covering that particular week. So far it has to be different, otherwise it would become a repetition of -- ³⁷¹⁰⁰ of daily reports.

Q. You've been able to give opinions on all sorts of matters about these events, but you only arrived there in the autumn of 1998, having no experience of Kosovo before the autumn of 1998, correct?

A. I had no sound experience -- yeah, experience of Kosovo.

Q. Did you read reports from Helsinki Watch of October '89, of March 1990, of March 1993, or December of 1996, all of which were exhibits in this case, to acquaint yourself with the recorded human rights violations in Kosovo?

A. I did not read those reports. I read other reports, one very excellent report from a British source on the -- on the situation in Kosovo, title I don't remember, and I had good luck to have somebody who was there in Kosovo since February, I think 1998, who partially experienced the development and what happened.

Q. Before we move on, so that we can understand what your position is, do you have any reason to doubt the accuracy of a series of reports on human rights violations prepared in the 19 -- well, late 1980s and throughout 1990s? Do you have any reason -- you said everybody got it wrong apart from you. Do you have any reason to doubt what would generally be written in Human Rights Watch reports?

A. I can only doubt what I know, and I don't know these reports.

Q. Well, then, in 1998 there were two Human Rights Watch reports. Did you read the one of the 1st of October, 1998?

A. I did not read one.

Q. Let's read -- have a look at what was said about one of the events ³⁷¹⁰¹ you've spoken of in the report of the 1st of December, 1998. Remember you told us or you told the Judges and all of us about a mass grave? And you told us about how you went there and somebody said it wasn't a result of a killing, it was a result of a tribal fight? Remember that?

A. Yes.

Q. Let's have a look at how this has been reported in an exhibit in this case, Exhibit 198.

MR. NICE: If Mr. Nort could just lay this on the overhead projector, please.

It's first of all page -- the foot of page 1. This is the document headed A Week of Terror in Drenica. Foot of page 1, please. I think -- can I have it back? I've got to find it. It's under the summary. Sorry about this. Save time if I do it this way. I hadn't checked, my mistake. The actual document being produced which is in a slightly different format than mine.

Q. You see, this -- this is an incident, Mr. Hartwig. I'd like you follow it, please. The foot of the page begins: "The worst incident documented in this report took place in late September 1998 at the Delijaj family compound in Gornji Obrinje, a village where there had been intense fighting between government forces and the KLA that left at least --" next page, please -- "fourteen policemen dead. Special police forces retaliated by killing twenty-one members of the Delijaj family, all of them civilians, on the afternoon of Saturday, September 26. Fourteen people were killed in a nearby forest where they were hiding from government shelling, six of them women between the ages of twenty-five and ^{37102 BLANK PAGE 37103} sixty-two. Five of the victims were children between eighteen months and nine years of age. Of the three men killed in the forest, two were over sixty years old.

"Human Rights Watch visited the scene on September 29 while the bodies were being carried out of the forest for burial. All fourteen victims were wearing civilian clothing; most appeared to have been shot in the head at close range, and several of the bodies had been mutilated." Next paragraph: "In addition to the fourteen cases -- fourteen persons killed in the forest, seven other members of the Delijaj family were killed by government forces in and around the family compound." Does that appear to you to be the same incident that you were describing when you told us how somebody said that it wasn't forces that did the killing, it was a feudal fight?

A. I don't question that. I mentioned that it was not my observation, that I was told, and I had something like this statement that others were involved as well, like tribes or clans, more than once. So I don't believe everything which has been told.

Q. No.

A. But I think everything which encourage or which motivates one to think about things, to reinvestigate, could that really be true? To me, at least, it is always useful to get away from a firm root.

Q. Stick with my question, please, if you wouldn't mind. First of all, any reason to doubt that this is describing the incident you spoke of?

A. If it is the same, I don't know. If they write it, I take it for ³⁷¹⁰⁴ the moment. I have no reason to doubt it or to confirm it.

Q. And is there any reason, Mr. Hartwig -- you see, you've been given great licence to give opinions on everything and no challenge to your evidence. You have come along and simply said somebody said it was a tribal fight. Is there any reason to prefer, that you can identify, somebody telling you it was a tribal fight to this evidence or this material produced by experienced human rights observers, in this case Frederick Abrahams?

A. I mean, if it is written and -- it's accepted and a witness and whatever, I have no reason.

MR. NICE: Usher, could I have the book back, please. I'll find another page, and it's probably better if I do it. You see -- thank you very much. It's page 18 at the top. The page numbers are now on the top. Thanks very much

Q. You see, just to explain through to you so that you can think about this, this report, page 18, says the following: "After taking Likovac, the government forces moved on to Obrinje. According to Sejnije Delijaj, who was in Gornje Obrinje with her family at the beginning of the offensive, government forces began shelling the Delijaj compound from the direction of Likovac at around 8 a.m. on Friday, September 26, with various types of artillery and mortars. Most of the inhabitants of the compound fled to the forest to escape the shelling." Then if we turn over to page 19, please, two-thirds of the way down. Further down. Thank you very much. "According to the Pristina media centre, a media centre with close ties to the Serbian government, at ³⁷¹⁰⁵ least seven policemen died in the Obrinje area on September 25, 1998, the day prior to the massacre of the Delijaj family and the summary executions at nearby Golubovac."

And if we can turn over to page 20, please, Mr. Nort. Foot of the page. Further down. Other way. Thanks.

"On September 26, Human Rights Watch researchers observed a Yugoslav army Red Cross helicopter fly over the village of Plocica in the direction of Gornje Obrinje, which could be seen burning in the distance, and return approximately twenty minutes later."

And then finally 21, please, middle of the page. A bit further up. "The village of Gornje Obrinje was largely destroyed during the Yugoslav offensive. The village was still shouldering when Human Rights Watch researchers arrived around 11 a.m. on September 29 ..." and then it goes on to deal with the shooting of cattle.

Your evidence has no detail of any kind, does it, to put against a properly sourced and rooted account like this?

A. There was no eyewitnesses, that's true. There was no eyewitness, and otherwise, I repeat, I left with this or I relied on the reports we received and on the information we received.

Q. You see, do you accept, Mr. Hartwig, that the KVM with its 2.000 observers operated a disciplined code for contacting the press and making public statements? It did it in an organised way with spokesmen at the top and other people keeping quiet. Do you accept that?

A. I'm afraid it would be of my disadvantage if I comment on this one. I don't blame anybody because I have no direct reason to -- to ³⁷¹⁰⁶ accuse or to -- to blame any -- anybody. So far -- and in addition, I don't know their daily reports. I have no reason either to question their reports. But I remember that very few hours after the dead bodies of Racak, for instance, were found, a clear statement to the media was given on who the perpetrators were.

Q. My question's specific but about systems. Do you accept that the KVM was controlled and disciplined in contact with the press? Yes or no.

A. I cannot confirm because I wasn't a witness of any of their press conferences whatsoever.

Q. You, on the other hand, after your two and a half months or nearly three months with your mission of somewhere between 20 and 40 people have felt free to comment on nearly all aspects of Kosovo history and life, haven't you?

A. I haven't provided comments on every aspect of life, but --

JUDGE ROBINSON: He has given an appropriate answer to that question, Mr. Nice.

MR. NICE: Very well.

Q. Let's look at what Klaus Naumann said. Before we look at what Klaus Naumann said - he's the senior German military man, top military officer - do you have any reason to doubt his reliability as a soldier?

A. I have -- I don't question anything, because I don't know what you have in mind right now and what he mentioned, and in particular, I don't know what additional information apart from our information he may have had.

Q. I'm giving you a chance before we look at the way he put things in ³⁷¹⁰⁷ evidence before this Court on one particular topic, I'm giving you a chance. Is there anything you know -- you're free to say this however embarrassing. Anything you know to doubt Klaus Naumann? Tell us.

A. I -- I -- how should I call it? I -- I accept the same right to General Naumann as I accept to everybody, to come to own conclusions and to have his own opinion.

Q. I mean, somebody like the top -- you can use this, please -- the top military officer in Germany would have, apart from good lines of reporting, he would also have access to sources of intelligence it's reasonably to be inferred, correct?

A. [Interpretation] I certainly assume that.

Q. If you just look -- I'm afraid I can't see it very clearly at the moment and I handed my only copy. A bit further down, please. Further -- that's fine.

This is the way General Naumann expressed his opinion of what happened between the October agreements and the time when the bombing started, and he said this. Please listen. "It did not last for too long a time. We saw -- as of November, we saw again and again reports of violations.

"I should really say, in all fairness, to the best information I got from the reports on the ground, from KDOM and later on from the Kosovo verification regime, many of the incidents were triggered by the UCK, who obviously tried to exploit the vacuum created by the withdrawn Serb security forces and who then sneaked in to take control of regions or areas. They also, I think, launched provocations, and they were not free ³⁷¹⁰⁸ of violence in doing that."

Now, he's had access to some of your reporting but a lot of other reporting. Does his summary seem to be about right?

A. [In English] I understand it correctly, he admits that there were violations, and --

Q. You're speaking in another language. Why do you say "admit"? He simply states that there were violations. He's not taking sides. He's not defending anybody. He simply states there were violations.

A. Yeah. Well -- [Interpretation] In this case, the witness will continue in German.

Now, if he states this, then certainly he will have his reason for this, and I would like to return to this. Perhaps it's a question of the point of view in observation and perhaps there is a big difference in that perhaps there are also different means of observing things from a distance or from the close proximity.

I'm not saying that General Naumann is wrong or that he had assessed things incorrectly, but simply because of the proximity there can be slightly different assessments.

Q. Well, the passage we looked at already casts quite a lot of responsibility on the KLA. Let's just look at the end of this short passage. Foot of the page.

"The problem is that in many cases, as far as I have seen later on, particularly in the course of November and December, that the Serb side --" over the page, please -- "reacted again in a disproportionate way. It was, if I may say so, the old attitude to react to an incident ³⁷¹⁰⁹ where perhaps an individual had tried to kill or had killed a police officer, that they then again went in and used heavy weapons against villages and using disproportionately force against civilians." Now, just to remind you, in summary, General Naumann, looking at all the reporting, is saying lots of examples of KLA starting things off filling the vacuum left by the October agreements resulting in some disproportionate use of force by the VJ. This is the evidence the Prosecution has called. It may well be essentially the Prosecution's case. No reason to doubt it, is there? He's got it right, your general.

A. [In English] I can only add to the statement of General Naumann what happened I think between Christmas and the end of 1998 when suddenly the French foreign minister, followed by the French ambassador at Belgrade, followed by even the German foreign minister since Germany had taken over the EU Presidency from 1st of January, later I think even from China foreign minister or whatever, when they not warned but when they reminded UCK increasingly to stick to the rules, to consider the basis of laws, I think this somehow fits to that former statement.

Q. So yes, General Naumann got it right?

A. Pardon?

Q. Yes, General Naumann got it right?

A. Yes, in the right direction.

Q. Let's look at a couple of other things. First of all, the letter to Sreten Lukic. Now, as you haven't brought your version with you, the version I have, and I explained that I had a secondary version, I'll explain how it comes about, Sreten Lukic was interviewed, and when he was ³⁷¹¹⁰ interviewed, he read out the letter that you'd sent him. Here we have a transcript from an interpreted version of the letter, and rather than play the transcript of Sreten Lukic speaking and the interpreter translating it, it will save time if we go through this printed version of the transcript in English. If you had brought your version with you, we could have seen the original. Have you reminded yourself of what is in the version that's in the hotel?

A. First of all, when I wrote him I asked him whether he was this particular general I met several times in Kosovo, and I pointed out that although his information contributed --

Q. Can we go back to my question? Have you as a matter of fact since you were here last week read the letter or your copy of the letter that you sent to Sreten Lukic?

A. Yeah.

Q. I'm going to read what I'm going to suggest is the transcript through translation of that letter, and I'm going to ask you first of all if you recognise it as being essentially the letter that's in your hotel and I'm going to ask you for a few comments on it. The document is on the overhead projector, it reads as follows: "Dear, sir, and, General, on the 18th of March, 1999, I had to leave Kosovo on orders. At the time, I still believed in political measures and soon returned." I'll come back and ask a question about that in a minute. "What happened after my evacuation is something that I wish had never happened, and something that I would like to forget if it were possible. I'm writing these lines as a private person, and not (any longer as a ³⁷¹¹¹ member of the observer mission). With the beginning of the NATO airstrikes, I have severed my contract in the service." Just perhaps pausing there.

Does this seem to you to be a transcription of, through another language, the letter that you sent to Sreten Lukic?

A. Well, apart from the first sentence, this is not my typical style, "Dear, sir, and, General," and so on. This is not my style. But I think the contents is in line.

Q. So far we've just seen reference to your returning. You didn't in fact return to Kosovo, did you?

A. Pardon?

Q. You didn't return to Kosovo?

A. No.

Q. That may be a mistake of translation. You are described as a member, not as a leader of the observer mission. We haven't been able to find any documents dealing with you or anybody who actually knew you at the time. Were you in fact the leader of the mission or were you, as you described in evidence, a manager of the office?

A. I was the head regional office, and there was no documentation like a letter of employment or whatever. This was a decision taken by the mission headquarters, and that was the administrative decision.

Q. So you were appointed as a member and you became, in the short period of time, the person running the office. Is that fair?

A. I came to the Kosovo with the information that I was going to become the head of the regional office. ³⁷¹¹²

Q. I'll read on: "I also apologise for writing in German. My Serbian is not that good. I didn't even get the opportunity to say good-bye to you and to thank you for your help and your patience with which you made clearer your view of the state of affairs and the problem of your work. Something that influenced me to a large degree, and gave me an incentive to understand you and the Yugoslav situation." So you're accepting here that you were strongly influenced by the opinions and descriptions of events given to you by Sreten Lukic.

A. When I came to Kosovo I followed the picture that everything which was going wrong which was crimes committed were committed by Serbs. This was my original belief more or less when I came. It was not that strong as before, but there was still something left from all that saying what the Serbs were doing and how other -- other people were suffering from. So far, he did not occupy my opinion. He did not decisively influence my today's attitude or my attitude in general, but he was a starting point to consider things in a different way.

Q. According to the translated version, "influenced to large degree" is the way you expressed yourself. Now, just thinking back, here is a conflict with two sides to it and different opinions being expressed publicly, and you were there for under three months. Is it safe, do you think, to find yourself strongly influenced by the chief of police of one side of a conflict like this?

A. I think one has also to consider the point of time when I wrote that letter, and that what I mentioned when I began to reconsider my own personal attitude. So far it might be misleading if you want to take the ^{37113 BLANK PAGE 37114} opportunity to use it as a starting point that I -- I was strongly influenced. It changed my mind to come to -- to a wrong decision or to a very partial attitude.

Q. Well, let's read on. "The task that you had been given, until the time of your evacuation, at the end --" of our evacuation - I beg your pardon - "at the end could not be carried out, because you couldn't and weren't able to use your own means the way you thought it necessary, and which would have been most appropriate to the situation." So what was he hoping to do that he wasn't allowed to do?

A. That what I -- what I expressed earlier. I felt a very strong -- a very strong resistance to take action in order not to create any -- any conflict with -- with the details of the Milosevic-Holbrooke agreement.

Q. Well -- and I hope the Chamber will forgive me if I break off from the letter at this stage to return to a point that His Honour Judge Kwon launched and I wanted to develop.

Do you remember you answered a question I think was started by His Honour Judge Kwon, where you said that there were common law rules favouring certain conduct of events? Do you remember that?

A. Yeah.

Q. First of all, what common law rule is it that you had in mind?

A. The UCK always considered itself an army, which means that they were following as [Interpretation] international law as it prevails in wartime conditions. So the KLA always considered itself to be an army, and as an army it claimed the right to abide by the rules governing international law at the time of war. ³⁷¹¹⁵

Q. Well, you gave your answer about the common law rule in relation to tab 5, which we'll look at --

THE ACCUSED: [Interpretation] Mr. Robinson.

JUDGE ROBINSON: Yes, Mr. Milosevic.

THE ACCUSED: [Interpretation] Just a small correction that has to do with the translation. "The UCK or KLA considered itself to be an army." [In English] "Always considered itself an army," that's what it says in the transcript, whereas in the Serbian interpretation is that the KLA was considered an army, which means that it was treated as an army. So it's a difference between whether somebody considers themselves to be something or whether they are treated as something, and I hope you understand the difference between the two.

JUDGE ROBINSON: Well, we note the point, Mr. Milosevic. Thanks.

MR. NICE:

Q. Can we go to tab 5, please, of your exhibits, which is the report for the 28th of January, 1999. You were asked about the last paragraph on the page, which if there's a spare copy we'll lay it on the overhead projector, otherwise, we'll just read out. You said this: "This is the classic and normal development: Attempts and assassinations by KLA against police and then ultimately search for and identify them. After the operations, weapons are hidden and the fighters convert to normal citizens with no visible link to the KLA. Since it is not the speciality of Serb forces and impossible under these conditions to surgically conduct operations, the hammering seems to remain the only response. And it can be expected that, as long as KLA applies its guerrilla tactics, the ³⁷¹¹⁶ proceeding of police and MUP and VJ against KLA will remain unchanged." Hammering what, the whole vicinity, including civilians? Is that what you meant there?

A. I -- that does not mean we're talking about sort of leveling and making everything the same. Perhaps I used not a very fortunate expression here. Basically what I meant to convey was a massive use of forces.

Q. Well, a massive use of forces in reaction to small incidents is inevitably going to involve civilians being killed, and we've heard what General Naumann said about the use of the VJ.

Now, were you, first of all in this report of yours, really approving of the use of hammering of areas to try and dispose of the KLA?

A. [In English] I never approved anything. I never supported anything. My directive was and my own way was to provide information and as far as possible to leave any further conclusions to the people who read it or who receive it.

Q. Let's come become to tab 2, please, which is not numbered pages but it is the -- starting with the title page, it's the first, second, third, fourth page into tab 2, and at the top of the page it says, "... with the material status..." Do you have that page? If we come down to the last paragraph, which begins "KLA stands for Kosovo Liberation Army..." and go six lines down, you said this. This is your notes for a talk, I believe. You said: "Actions against guerrilla fighters are the most difficult military operations and, therefore, something like an area covering action seems to be the only means. This is the only method ³⁷¹¹⁷ behind..." and then you go on to deal with what you say was sympathy by the international community when TV pictures are shown, and then you say this: "Finally, the liberation by the KLA and potential search or retaliation by Serb security forces turn out to be a vicious circle to the villagers; their alternative might be to either be killed by the KLA - or by Serb Security forces."

Now, again, in your use of the phrase "something like area covering action," were you not reflect -- reflecting and acknowledging response of an extensive and it may be disproportionate kind where something like the KLA was involved?

A. If I may repeat, I do not support, I do not acknowledge anything of this. I just considered this from a military point -- point of view that it is most -- most difficult, and if I may remind, this was -- was a draft, but in the sense as far as those lines you were just -- or we were just talking, there is no change.

I don't acknowledge anything. I don't think that any type of armed conflict is good at all. But in such a situation, decisions need to be taken.

Q. Well, finally, since tab 7 is in, let's just look at tab 7 before we return to your letter to Sreten Lukic as we explore your attitude which informs this reporting. On the 4th of February, 1999, tab 7 but the last page of it, and at the top of the page where you deal with the deaths of Albanians at Rugova is something I may or may not have time to deal with, you said this: "Civilians will always be involved, concerned and hit by bullets as long as guerrilla tactics is applied and the 'freedom-fighters' ³⁷¹¹⁸ hide themselves behind normal civilians ..." Were you not, in your letter to Sreten Lukic -- and let's go back to that, please, if we can lay it on the overhead projector while we're dealing with it -- were you not when you said to him because you couldn't and weren't able to use your own means the way you thought it necessary and which would have been appropriate to the situation, frankly accepting that in this type of position and in your judgement widespread retaliation with suffering for civilians was an inevitability?

A. [Interpretation] Mr. Prosecutor, you spoke of my attitude a moment ago, and in connection with what you said just now, let me contradict that most emphatically. That is not my attitude. I am not in favour of violence in any way whatsoever and certainly never for any unlawful violence. It is simply a case, and all the last wars have confirmed this, that increasingly we see civilians being the main sufferers of war when in the past, from history, the military personnel suffered more.

Q. Let's read on the letter. "I have never envied you on this task and the situation, because everywhere in the world politics can impose such a task only on the army and the police. I have no insight into what happened --" pausing there for minute. You felt free to comment widely on this and that. Were you aware of efforts to internationalise the Kosovo problem in 1997, 1998 to which this accused was resistant?

A. [In English] Yes. I know that there were -- that there were attempts, but as results.

Q. Do you know of the man Stanisic and what happened to him when he resisted the approach of the accused? Very well. Let's move on. ³⁷¹¹⁹ "I have no insight into what happened after my evacuation." That holds true, does it? You have no knowledge, no insight into what happened after your departure on the 18th of March, 1999?

A. I don't because I didn't receive any of the regular reports any more. My teams were emigrated, and whatever I was aware of, this came on -- this was a private -- private information.

Q. Very well. And although there's a -- may be a translation error at the top, you in fact did not return after the 18th of March?

A. No, I did not return.

Q. You then go on to say that during your stay you sent "superiors descriptions of the situation which describe -- coincided with the real events and our assessments. Unfortunately, these efforts, as well as efforts of other observers did not yield the most wished results. Upon my return to Germany, I tried to inform the media and politicians of what I'd experienced and for what reasons truly happened. Alongside this, I drew attention to the problems which stem from the fact that the remember rebel army was politically, financially, and materially supports ambush fights against the legal executive authorities.

"Here, as an individual, I have no -- have not had success, because the only things that were believed in were the things that people wanted to believe in, or what they had to believe in for political reasons.

"Now, everything is viewed somewhat differently, and you will see, and it remains to be seen whether this will essentially change something in the situation. ³⁷¹²⁰ "I wish you best of luck and all the best."

MR. NICE: Your Honours, I'd ask the following by way of exhibits: That this document stand as an exhibit for the time being, the witness acknowledging that it appears to be a transcription. But if before he leaves the town he could provide the versions he has in his hotel room to an associate of the accused, then a better version could be substituted for this, or alternatively, they could stand together.

JUDGE ROBINSON: What arises from what you just read? It's the exhibit --

MR. NICE: No, no --

JUDGE ROBINSON: -- point or --

MR. NICE: -- I'm just saying that if we could put this document in as an exhibit now and get the better version later, I'd be very grateful.

JUDGE ROBINSON: Yes. We haven't received a copy of it, Judge Kwon observes.

MR. NICE: I'm sorry, you haven't received a copy?

JUDGE ROBINSON: No.

MR. NICE: Oh, I'm so sorry. The usher has them and hasn't provided them. I think copies are available for the -- I'm very sorry that you didn't have that, and my fault for not --

Q. I have been able to free -- to locate and to free from restriction two reports of yours. Perhaps we can just look at them very briefly.

JUDGE ROBINSON: Mr. Nice, maybe it's better to wait until the beginning of the next session.

MR. NICE: And I shan't be very long, so indeed the -- unless the ³⁷¹²¹ accused has extensive re-examination, it might be prudent for him to have his next witness available.

JUDGE ROBINSON: Yes. Mr. Milosevic, you heard that. You should have your next witness available. We're now going to take a break for 20 minutes.

--- Recess taken at 12.16 p.m.

--- On resuming at 12.40 p.m.

JUDGE ROBINSON: Yes, Mr. Nice.

MR. NICE: The first of two, possibly three documents that I can put to the witness is a report dated the 26th of February. If the usher would be so good.

Q. What you're looking at is a report dated the 26th of February from Belgrade to Pristina, subject weekly assessment Belgrade for the 26th of February. And if we look further down the page, and if the usher could lay a copy on the overhead projector, first page, it goes from Belgrade to headquarters ECMM with information copies to the various posts, one of which is Pristina regional office, the office that you were at; correct?

A. Yes.

Q. This document, therefore, is the compilation from Belgrade of the various inputs coming from offices such as your own; correct?

A. I did not read this report right now. I don't know whether it is a compilation and summary of my own reports or whether this is an individual report made by my Belgrade office. The office tended to use its own knowledge on the basis of our input and input coming from Montenegro and then compiling a summary. ³⁷¹²²

Q. Very well. Let's turn to the second page, please, because this is reporting on Kosovo: "Although Kosovo remained relatively quiet --" which is the way the paragraph begins -- "during the period of the Rambouillet conference, there are disquieting signs that the conflict could erupt again there soon. The KLA had declared they will not give up arms." Next sentence: "Some estimates put their current strength as high as 30-40.000. Evidence of better organisation and training." Next sentence: "Nevertheless, essentially lightly armed guerrilla force." Looking at those sentences, Mr. Hartwig, does this appear to be a report that may have included contribution by yourself?

A. [No interpretation]

JUDGE ROBINSON: No translation.

THE INTERPRETER: Can you hear? Can you --

JUDGE ROBINSON: Yes.

THE INTERPRETER: Okay.

MR. NICE: Perhaps the interpreter could repeat the answer of the witness if she's in a --

THE INTERPRETER: The answer was that during the negotiations of Rambouillet there were periods in Kosovo which were anything but quiet...

MR. NICE: Very well.

Q. Carry on, please, Mr. Hartwig.

A. And to that extent the opinion described here as relatively quiet I would consider to be highly subjective.

Q. To read on --

JUDGE BONOMY: I think, Mr. Nice, the beginning of the witness's ³⁷¹²³ answer was that he believed that this did not contain material from a report of his, and I don't think that's reflected in the transcript.

MR. NICE: Well, I'm grateful to Your Honour. We'll take that as indeed part of his answer because it's consistent with the answer he's given.

Q. Can we read on: "Nevertheless, the KLA remains essentially a lightly armed guerrilla force. Without assistance it is no conventional map for the MUP VJ which can deploy a significant weight of artillery and armour. Already there are reports of KLA beginning to deny minor routes and specific areas to the MUP. This has not yet reached the pitch of early summer 1998 when the whole of central Kosovo was described as a liberated area. Nevertheless, the MUP will insist on their right to patrol the main routes to keep open the lines of communication between the towns where the bulk of the Serb population live." Does that appear to be a reflection of your reporting? It's quite detailed, isn't it? Who else could your organisation have to turn to but yourself?

A. I don't know that this is based on my reports, but at any rate, the head of the office in Belgrade was somebody I have had repeated telephone conversations with. We also paid visit to each other, and basically, yes, that was our idea of events, too. Particularly as far as the main roads and the sort of connections are concerned between the larger towns of Kosovo and --

Q. [Previous translation continues] ... I want to reach this sentence. "Serb response to KLA activity will inevitably be ^{37124 BLANK PAGE 37125} disproportionate. They know no other way. Indeed, with an army made up largely of conscripts whose training doesn't embrace the standards required of counter-insurgency warfare, there probably is no other way." Now, we saw your earlier references to area, to hammering, to what you wrote to Sreten Lukic, the chief of police. This comment here about the inevitability of disproportionate response, that's your opinion, is it?

A. That is very obviously not my opinion. It's also the opinion of whoever wrote this report. They are basic military -- this is basic military information.

Q. Well, the previous bit -- the previous sentence looked like being yours. Let's look at the next sentence. "The current situation then has the potential to escalate with obvious military and humanitarian consequences. It is possible that the KLA have more confidence in their armed prowess than international observers give them credit for, or it could be they do not believe that the Serbs have the stomach or the pocket for a war of attrition. Alternatively, they could be setting store by the fact that the Contact Group has noted the build-up of approximately 4.500 Serb forces ..."

Where does this come from, this detail of on-the-ground position? From you?

A. No. This report was not written by me. It was written by a British colleague in Belgrade who was in charge of the office in Belgrade.

Q. His name?

A. Jocelyn [phoen]. That was the surname, Jocelyn, and the first ³⁷¹²⁶ name --

Q. If you remember it, let us know. In any event, this is a report being prepared by your office in the period February 1999; correct?

A. This report was not put together by my office but by the Belgrade office.

Q. I meant that, yes.

MR. NICE: With Your Honours' leave, may this become an exhibit.

JUDGE ROBINSON: Yes.

THE REGISTRAR: That will be 833.

MR. NICE: And can we turn --

JUDGE ROBINSON: Did we have a number for the earlier exhibit? The letter to Sreten Lukic. Yes. Well, give it a number now.

THE REGISTRAR: That will be 834 for the extract from suspect interview.

MR. NICE:

Q. May we look now, please, at a different topic entirely and first focus on a report dated the 23rd of October 1998. We're going back in time. We have in mind your observations last week about freedom of the press.

Does the witness have a copy? Have you got a copy in front of you? No, he hasn't got a copy. Priority for the witness, please. This is a report dated the 22nd of October, when you were already, you tell us, in training, I think. We can see that it goes from Belgrade to Pristina. So may I take it that this is a report you will have seen?

A. No, I haven't yet seen it. ³⁷¹²⁷

Q. [Previous translation continues] ... at the time, a report coming from Belgrade to the office that you say you were running, is that a report you must have considered at the time?

A. I did not see the report at that time. I only arrived four weeks after that.

JUDGE ROBINSON: Mr. Milosevic.

THE ACCUSED: [Interpretation] Well, it's the 22nd of October, the date on the report, and the witness said himself that he arrived in November. So that's one month before the witness arrived.

JUDGE ROBINSON: He has given his answer anyhow.

MR. NICE: Let's see --

JUDGE ROBINSON: Thank you.

MR. NICE:

Q. Let's see -- first of all, let's see whether -- I'll come back to whether you should or did read this document in your duties as head of the office.

"The law on new information came into effect today and was promulgated in the Official Gazette and the government decree on special measures of NATO threats was abolished. However, the government has yet to inform the banned dailies when their premises will be reopened for business. Nevertheless, editors of the banned papers concluded that when their premises are reopened they will not be able to maintain their paper's editorial policy under the new law. Debate now starts among the editors of the banned papers as to whether they are prepared to publish their newspapers under such conditions and at a time when the government ³⁷¹²⁸ will be keen to test the efficiency of the new law. The situation therefore remains in a state of flux for the time being. "Reaction elsewhere has been predictably hostile to the new law. The editors-in-chief of the independent Belgrade daily papers and magazines yesterday met and characterised the new Serbian law on information as an act which limits immediate media freedom." And I think that's probably all I need read on that. There were protests in Belgrade. Were you aware, taking over this office in the way that you described you did a few weeks later, of the position of suppression of a free press as described here?

A. First of all, as far as I remember, I did not mention press freedom. I, rather, mentioned that the media had taken a one-sided view. I was aware that among the editors and the publishers there had been trouble. That's in the former Yugoslavia. But in my time in the Kosovo, I only once was aware of something like that when it was -- I can't remember whether it was the publisher or the editor. The magazine was Koha Ditore, and whoever it was told me if I report something which is wrong, I can be made to suffer financially in such a way I would be unable to continue my newspaper.

Q. Well, if we can now look at the position in Kosovo itself, and I can find -- if I can, I'll find your answers in evidence in chief about the press, but we can look, please, at the document "As Seen, As Told" at -- which is Exhibit 106 - thank you very much - and at page 309 of it. While that's coming to the overhead projector, have you, Mr. Hartwig, taken the opportunity to read either of the OSCE volumes "As Seen, As ³⁷¹²⁹ Told" or to consider them?

A. No, I did not.

Q. Are you aware that indeed there are two volumes, one focusing specifically on Serb suffering?

A. No.

Q. Let's look at what is said of the Albanian position on page 309 at the top left-hand side. "Closure of Kosovo Albanian newspapers," and I want you to comment on whether what is reported is correct, to your knowledge. "A further suppression of Kosovo Albanians' rights occurred in the form of closing down of leading Kosovo Albanian newspapers, which began on the 13th of March." When you were still there. "The Minister of Information launched the process, and the municipal court for misdemeanors issued the closure orders.

"The daily Kosovo Sot and the bi-weekly Gazeta Shqiptare were prosecuted for violating the law on information by "fomenting religious and ethnic hatred after publishing a UCK picture and an article on UCK respectively."

Three sentences further: "A third newspaper, the weekly Rilindja, was also reportedly prosecuted for not having registered with the Ministry of Information. Although the scheduled confiscation of equipment on the 17th of March did not happen, however, papers stopped publishing." And if Mr. Nort could take us to page 314, which is immediately after your departure but I'll ask you about it in any event. "On the 24th of March, the widely published daily newspaper Koha Ditore was charged with offences of fomenting religious and ethnic hatred similar to those ³⁷¹³⁰ levelled at the above-mentioned Kosovo Albanian papers and was fined a stiff penalty. One refugee, a lawyer and human rights activists saw Serbian forces attack the office and kill a guard." Now, this is a picture of what happened at the press just before and just after your departure. Any reason to doubt any of it?

A. I have no reason to doubt anything. I am aware that shortly before my departure for Sarajevo I became aware of the fact that one or two Albanian papers had been threatened with penalties or even closure. What indeed happened afterwards I do not know because it was on the 14th or 15th March in the evening that I went by car to Belgrade to Sarajevo to attend a conference there, and it was on the evening of the 17th that I returned when part of the mission had already been evacuated.

Q. Did your friend and contact Sreten Lukic justify what was happening to the press? If so, what did he say?

A. First, General Lukic is not my friend. He was one of my contacts. Second, we -- at the time that we had our discussion, we talked less about problems with the media but concentrated on current problems which he encountered within the framework of his job of maintaining security.

Q. You say you talked less about the media. Yes or no: Did you discuss control of the media with him?

A. No.

Q. Did you think it appropriate, given your clear leanings towards and sympathies for, if I may suggest this, the Serbs, did you think it to discuss with him coming from a Western democracy, the prudence of dealing ³⁷¹³¹ with the press in a restrictive way?

JUDGE ROBINSON: Mr. Nice, let him first answer the presumption in your question.

MR. NICE: Certainly. I --

JUDGE ROBINSON: His clear leanings towards and sympathies towards the Serbs.

The Prosecutor is putting it to you that you have a clear leaning towards and sympathy for the Serbs. I'd like you to answer that since that's the basis for the next question.

THE WITNESS: Your Honour [Interpretation] This is a question that I had been afraid of for some time. I have no special preference for the Serbs or anybody else. On the basis of my own personal biography, I feel obliged to try and find a way that I feel is under the given circumstances and conditions within the realms of the law.

JUDGE ROBINSON: Yes. Mr. Nice, you may ask the question that follows now.

MR. NICE:

Q. Did you not think it prudent -- no. Did you not think it reasonable to discuss with Lukic the prudence of dealing with the press in a restricted way, restrictive way?

A. At those times when I had discussions with General Lukic, I discussed topical issues with him. Our meetings were not several times a week either. And had I known anything and had I wished to discuss anything along the lines you suggest with him, I would have been perfectly capable of doing so, but those newspapers which I was aware are published ³⁷¹³² by the Albanians in the Kosovo were available, so I have no reason to assume that any pressure was exerted or any repressions were made vis-a-vis these publishers.

Q. A few last questions about your exhibits. Tab 1. The cui bono document which you say was you discussing things with a ghost or a shadow. Shadow, I think. Now, you've gone back to your computer. Did you find this document on your computer?

A. No, I did not find this document.

Q. So where did this document, this particular version that's been photocopied for our benefit, where did it come from?

A. I said earlier that I have a binder in which I keep documents, Xerox or my own reports. This particular report, after rereading it, I am certain I did not intend to become public knowledge, because as far as this point is concerned, I have a very clear and unequivocal statement of various issues, so I don't know who I could have sent this to. This was a personal collection of material which --

Q. If so, if you were writing in answer to a notional interlocutor, why on earth do it in English rather than German, the natural language for the best expression?

A. I think I already mentioned that. Occasionally I write something in English depending -- sometimes I do that to keep in practice and sometimes because I may be more aware of background in the English language. And quite apart from that, there are some matters which occasionally, as I think you will have noticed, too, when I continued talking in English instead of going on in German. ³⁷¹³³

Q. I suggest to you that your answer in relation to the last page and the last paragraph of this particular report or whatever it is, where you say, "Your connection between the political development of Bosnia-Herzegovina and Kosovo is valid and correct," simply doesn't make sense unless this is a document in genuine reply to someone else. Now, thinking back, Mr. Hartwig, was this document a reply or a response to somebody with whom you were in discussion and, if so, who?

A. No. Since last Wednesday, I really spent a lot of time thinking about what could have been the origin here. I know that at some stage I simply took some facts, things I knew, sometimes very detailed, and that I think makes clear there was a dense lot of information I had available at the time, and sometimes I simply wrote this down. I have no reason why I wrote it down this way or another. Actually, I think it was irrelevant because it was a private document which was never intended to be published.

Q. Very well. Tab --

JUDGE BONOMY: Just before you do that, Mr. Nice. Mr. Hartwig, could I just ask you if you're any clearer now on the question why you have some draft reports but you don't have any of the final versions of these reports at all.

THE WITNESS: [Interpretation] At that time, I wrote the drafts on my laptop computer. I made a printout of this, and after this became established, I passed it on to my office computer and then I typed in the reports again on the office computer. At that time, we didn't have any office internal link between computers and different places of work. We ³⁷¹³⁴ just had a report on which -- a computer on which the reports could be written and then sent to the outside world.

MR. NICE:

Q. In order to save time, very quickly, please, to tab 2, second to last page, where you deal with the passing of refugees at Djeneral Jankovic crossing in the first week of March.

Two questions. First of all, on the related topic of displacement of Kosovo Albanians generally, we have evidence before this court from UNHCR to the effect that by the end of March, or indeed by three-quarters of the way through March, by the 23rd of March, some 349.000-odd Kosovo Albanians were displaced, either internally or externally. Do you have any reason to doubt the figures from UNHCR?

A. If this was around the 23rd of March or so, I have no reason to doubt anything here, because at that time, I was no longer in Kosovo.

Q. But do you have any reason to doubt that there was generally a level of displacement of Kosovo Albanians so that by the 23rd of March, 350.000-odd were displaced?

A. I cannot say anything about this because my statement related period between -- to 19th of March, and then what happened I'm afraid is beyond my knowledge.

Q. Very well. On this page tab 2 you deal with the difference between 3.000 and 3 or 400 people at Djeneral Jankovic, but there's just this simple point: People leaving Kosovo on the first week of March were leaving because they were being forced out, whether it was 300, 400, or 3.000; correct? They were being forced out. ^{37135 BLANK PAGE 37136}

A. I cannot confirm this because I do not know. I do not know that they were forced to leave Kosovo.

Q. You didn't speak to them?

A. No. I have already said several times that as a result of a message on the radio, 3 or 4.000 refugees were said to be in this region, and a team was sent there that happened to be close by, and this team reported that there were rough -- there were roughly 300 people there and they had to be -- they had to be pushed over the frontier, they had to be forced over the frontier.

Q. You've given answers to the accused about the police doing nothing wrong, the army doing nothing wrong. Here are people leaving their homes behind and, on your own observation, going to another country. You can't explain why, can you?

A. I said, and I repeat, that I referred to what we saw and heard and experienced. If people were forced out somewhere, then this is a very bad thing that I personally can quite well feel for, but I don't find it a good thing, and in this context I do not know of people having been forced out. They were people who wanted to cross the frontier. These might have been refugees, and for them it is just as bad as for others. But I do not know exactly what sort of people these were.

Q. Just one minute to ask you this question. We've heard a lot of evidence in this case. There's a lot of reports from human rights organisations, from OSCE about the bad things that the KLA did and about the bad things that the Serbs did. Do you not accept that people were being forced out by the VJ and/or by the MUP in the time you were there? ³⁷¹³⁷ Yes or no.

A. I do not know. I did not experience it and I did not read about this in the reports.

Q. Very well. Tab 3, please. Tab 3, last paragraph. And I'm going back to the suggestion I put to you about some favouring of the Serbs. Let's see what you said here. Foot of tab 3. This is your report, apparently, or a draft of it. It can go on the overhead projector if you've got a spare copy of it, tab 3.

"The demonstrations by armed civilians - if continued - could be considered a new dimension in the conflict. Their commitment supports Serb policy, strengthens MUP and Police, is neither in contradiction to the Milosevic-Holbrooke agreement, nor does it violate other political obligations. For the time being, it is not believed that the conflict will be carried into the towns of Kosovo."

Now, if this is your draft report --

A. Yes.

Q. -- and you are speaking about demonstrations by armed civilians --

A. Yes.

Q. -- supporting the Serb policy, yes or no, were you approving armed demonstrations by Serbs?

A. [In English] I am not approving, but I -- I explained that amongst -- on the -- [Interpretation] that on the Serbian side an increasing mistrustfulness against everything was to be found, that according to -- that was not in order according to how one saw things then. I did not acknowledge. I did not feel this to be good. I described or -- against ³⁷¹³⁸ the -- I described against the background that these demonstrations, the armed civilians, one must also see this in conjunction with the events at the beginning of January starting off with the attacks, with the murder of the Milosevic manager, and some attacks against the police, and that on the civilian side now these measures were adopted. And therefore, naturally, the Serbian viewpoint in Kosovo was supported.

Q. [Previous translation continues] ... because time is limited. I'm going to suggest to you that the two parts of this sentences that you chose to write in English where you say their commitment supports, and you say is neither in contradiction to the Holbrooke agreement nor does it violate other political obligations is the clearest expression of approval of armed demonstrations by Serbs. But your language doesn't allow, I must suggest to you, of any other interpretation.

A. Then I have one further possibility. This -- I described this conflict situation, and I tried to state that the civil actions were not in conflict to the Milosevic-Holbrooke agreement. No longer. I did not claim it to be good. Two or three times I have had to take a look at -- that this is actually a description of the facts, no more, no less.

Q. Last topic, about three questions, and then final questions. Tab 4, please.

We looked at tab 4, but we passed over this morning Racak. Let's look at Racak. And it's halfway down the page. We can pick it up -- well: "The fact that up to 50 or more Kosovo Albanians were killed and some of them mutilated caused and the intended or clumsy follow-on worldwide attention and an increase of the political tensions. The ³⁷¹³⁹ incident also shows the inability of authorities to properly deal with those incidents and the dissension of the people concerned." Then this: "There is, of course, justified suspect that the perpetrator(s) are amongst MUP or its active sympathisers." Now, I don't have time to go into all of this, it's available to others to read, but just tell me this: On your reporting, the MUP were those who were suspected; correct?

A. I said that of course there was a suspicion that the dead -- that the deaths of these were due to the security forces.

Q. If we look at the next sentence --

JUDGE ROBINSON: Mr. Nice, may I just ask Mr. Hartwig. What was the basis for saying that there was justified suspect that the perpetrators are amongst the MUP? By "justified suspect," I think you mean justified suspicion. What was the basis for your saying that that suspicion was justified?

THE WITNESS: [Interpretation] These were the first general statements we have heard about this issue where people said immediately this crime was committed by the security forces. I considered -- I mean, this was a brief description of what public opinion, to my knowledge, was.

JUDGE ROBINSON: You're just reflecting public opinion.

THE WITNESS: [Interpretation] Well, not really of public opinion in the sense of what the population as a whole thought but merely the thoughts of the people I discussed this matter with.

JUDGE ROBINSON: Mr. Nice, yes.

MR. NICE: ³⁷¹⁴⁰

Q. Yes. There could hardly be more a important event for you to inquire into if you were going to do your observing properly, could there, than the Racak massacre if it was a massacre.

A. I think the letter to General Lukic confirms that I was extremely interested in this event.

Q. And you never found any material other than to point at the MUP.

A. I never found anything which points at the MUP either. I only heard what observers on the spot had come up with. I heard and read what the head of the OSCE mission had made public and what we could read about this in the papers.

Q. The second question on this topic is the next paragraph, and it's to do with the judge, Mrs. Marinkovic. "The investigation of this event by Yugoslav judge became a problem as she denied to enter the place under OSCE escort. She tried to enter Racak under strong police escort, jeopardising OSCE members in place."

Then at the foot of the page, or rather the beginning of the next paragraph: "Mrs. Danica Marinkovic is well known and considered a strong but clumsy on orders official." Then at the foot of the page: "So far Mrs. Marinkovic is voluntary or on order the person who significantly contributes to the increased tensions."

So somewhere there was information coming to you that Judge Danica Marinkovic was not only contributing to tensions but it is reasonable to infer that she was doing so on orders. Can you tell us what that piece of information was that she was obstructive, if I can summarise it, on orders? ³⁷¹⁴¹

A. I did not say she did this under orders. I simply put this with a question mark, open the possibility that theoretically this might have been ordered by people other than herself. I have no direct statement on that, and I've left this open.

Q. I'm sorry. Let's see if I follow that. A judge does something, arguably clumsily, and you feel able, in a report disseminated widely through the former Yugoslavia through your organisation, to raise as a possibility that she's doing it on orders? Is that really what you're saying?

A. No, that's not what I mean. I mean, first of all, the report was not disseminated throughout Yugoslavia; and second, I could have added a question mark, voluntarily question mark or on orders. I mean, these were the two options I saw at the time.

Q. Mr. Hartwig, I must suggest to you that you must have had some material before you would start saying this about Judge Marinkovic. Either you can't remember or you won't tell us what the material was.

A. Well, there was one story which I think dealt with the issue of a mass grave, and Ms. Marinkovic intended to go there, I think for reasons of the exhumation which had to be taken place there and to do some investigative work, and we had to agree with the KLA or the UCK that this could be done without having a major escort. However, afterwards - I can't remember whether it was police or military escort involved - the whole thing then wasn't working. We couldn't do the investigation. We had to turn back. And this was the reason why I said it was clumsy.

Q. Two last questions on this topic and one final one. ³⁷¹⁴²

MR. NICE: Could you turn over the page, Mr. Nort. You will see the third line of the -- at the top. Just look at the top, please. Next page. Thank you. Third line from the very top.

Q. We see, Mr. Hartwig - and I have a reason for asking this - that you, out of sensitivity, spell a word f... We know what the word is and we're not necessarily going to fill the airwaves with the word itself. Just tell me this: Do you recall any incident of any of your staff reporting in an inappropriate way, using language like that, to you?

A. The language there was not mine. It was a quote --

Q. The question is: Do you recall any incident of anybody reporting to you using inappropriate language such as that sort of language? Just yes or no.

A. If this is a quote, then yes, of course.

Q. And if I'm able at any stage to produce a document that comes from something called the mobile team of Pristina reporting to the regional office of Pristina, would that be somebody reporting to you?

A. [In English] Yes. Yes.

Q. Do you have any recollection of anybody reporting to you from the mobile team on events in relation to Racak or anything else in an offensive and inappropriate way?

A. [Interpretation] In this -- for this dreadful event, there was no reason to use swear words at all. The quote I used referred to Albanian reactions, and I simply used that in order to indicate the mood prevailing among Albanians vis-a-vis also the international community.

Q. And finally, have you had a chance to think again of that last ³⁷¹⁴³ tab? I made such inquiries as I have -- been able to, the one which includes the phrase "sold to the public"? Are you sure that that report was ever sent, or was this a draft that never got sent? Tab 12.

A. I don't know. I think you asked that earlier. I have it here like this, but I don't know whether it was sent out like that.

MR. NICE: Thank you.

JUDGE ROBINSON: Thank you, Mr. Nice. Before Mr. Milosevic re-examines, I'd just like to take the witness back to the early part of the cross-examination when the Prosecutor drew his attention to the evidence of General Naumann, who testified to the disproportionate use of force by the Serbs. And the Prosecutor said, "General Naumann got it right," and your reply was, "In the right direction." I think you were speaking English at the time. I'm not certain. But could you explain to me what you mean by "in the right direction."

THE WITNESS: [Interpretation] I think that -- no, not I think, but it does go in the direction --

THE INTERPRETER: Interpreter says this is a literal translation from the German. "It goes in the right direction" is what he means.

THE WITNESS: [Interpretation] I believe that every state has not only the right but the obligation to oppose specific developments. The crucial point here is without doubt the way in which actions is taken and how appropriate any such action is, and when I said "in the right direction," I mean that there is an obligation on part of the state which had been exercised. However, I did not comment on the appropriateness of ³⁷¹⁴⁴ this action.

JUDGE ROBINSON: Okay. Mr. Milosevic, we are stopping at 1.43, and I expect you to complete your re-examination by that time.

THE ACCUSED: [Interpretation] Mr. Robinson, I hate to disappoint you, but it would be really impossible for me to finish within 15 minutes. Mr. Nice has raised a lot of issues, introducing a completely new set of documents, which I also wish to use.

JUDGE ROBINSON: Well, make a start, Mr. Milosevic. Re-examined by Mr. Milosevic:

Q. [Interpretation] Mr. Hartwig, I should like to put to you a couple of questions regarding your credibility that Mr. Nice tried to assail at the beginning. Mr. Nice asked you first how come that you have come to our attention, how we identified you as a possible witness. Mr. Hartwig, was your function as head of the observers mission in Kosovo a public or a secret one?

A. Our mission was a public one.

Q. Therefore, was it very simple, not only for me but for anyone in the Serbian and Yugoslav public to become aware of the identity of the head of mission --

JUDGE ROBINSON: Having gotten the reply that -- [microphone not activated].

THE ACCUSED: [Interpretation] All right. I got the answer that it was public. This mystification about how we identified Mr. Hartwig is --

JUDGE ROBINSON: Don't bother with the comments, Mr. Milosevic. Let's move on. ³⁷¹⁴⁵

THE ACCUSED: [Interpretation] Very well.

MR. MILOSEVIC: [Interpretation]

Q. Now, as for your qualifications, please confirm the following set of questions with only a yes or no. You had military training until 1962. Yes or no.

A. Yes.

Q. After that, were you commander of a platoon in the German army? Sorry, until 1964.

A. Yes.

Q. From 1964 to 1993, did you occupy a variety of functions in the field and in headquarters such as commander of various units, staff officer, member of the headquarters, positions in higher headquarters at battalion, company level involving command responsibility?

A. Yes.

Q. Did you receive appointments in the NATO?

A. Yes.

Q. From October 1995 until March 1996, were you involved in the work of the International Conference on the Former Yugoslavia?

A. Yes.

Q. From May 1996 until January 1998, were you in the transitional administration of the United Nations for Baranja, Eastern Srem, and that area?

A. Yes.

Q. From July 1998 until October 1998, were you part of the observers mission of the European Union? ³⁷¹⁴⁶

A. Yes.

MR. NICE: Your Honour, I have to say it sounds like the accused is reading from and leading a curriculum vitae that hasn't been provided to us. Normally I wouldn't object, but as a matter of fact if we were provided with curriculum vitae in advance and not the limited material we've been given, we would be much better able to deal with witnesses and therefore I do object to him raising this matter in a leading way at this stage.

JUDGE ROBINSON: Mr. Milosevic, it's not clear to me to what -- to what does this relate, what part of the cross-examination, and in any event, it is -- these are -- let me finish. These are matters that you really should have raised in your examination-in-chief at the beginning.

THE ACCUSED: [Interpretation] It didn't cross my mind, Mr. Robinson, that Mr. Nice would challenge the qualifications of this witness and his competency. What is at stake here are facts that confirm his qualifications and his competency as a witness. Mr. Nice went so far as to ask him if he had been indeed head of mission, which to my mind was impolite.

JUDGE ROBINSON: The point is you can't lead in re-examination.

THE ACCUSED: [Interpretation] These are not leading questions. These are factual questions regarding previous posts of this witness.

JUDGE ROBINSON: Mr. Milosevic, there is a difference. If you had put it at the beginning of your examination-in-chief, you could have led to them because, at that time, there was no issue. There was no contention about it. But now that it has been become contentious in ³⁷¹⁴⁷ re-examination, you can't lead to it.

THE ACCUSED: [Interpretation] Very well. I'm not going to ask leading questions.

MR. MILOSEVIC: [Interpretation]

Q. Mr. Hartwig, Mr. Nice said, and I noted it down, you had spent less than three months in Kosovo. How long did you exactly spend in Kosovo?

A. Arriving 20th of November, 1998, and leaving 19th March, 1999.

Q. Very well. We need not do the maths now. Thank you for this answer.

Mr. Nice asked you at one point to quote from the last paragraph of tab 3, and he asked you to confirm on this basis that you were biased. "[In English] Their commitment supports Serb policy, strengthens MUP and Police, is neither in contradiction to the Milosevic-Holbrooke agreement nor does it violate other political obligations." [Interpretation] What I just read, does it have anything to do with what is written at the beginning of this same report on the same page? Please look at tab 3. You say what characterises this previous week. This is the weekly assessment. And you are saying that it affects the entire political situation, and you say: "Those events were the explosion of a hand grenade in front of a cafe in Pristina, [In English] the murder of the Serb manager of the Obilic power plant, the killing of 3 MUP in a KLA ambush, and the capturing of 8 VJ soldiers by KLA." [Interpretation] And in the next paragraph you say: "[In English]... resulted in public Serb demands for better protection." ³⁷¹⁴⁸ [Interpretation] So these tragic events within just a few days that you enumerated in paragraph 1, is it the case that this caused the reaction of Serb civilians and their requests to be protected?

A. That was most certainly the catalyst for turmoil among the Serbs, and this, the fact that they were then partially armed or armed themselves.

Q. Thank you. In the next tab, relating to investigative judge Marinkovic, Mr. Nice asked you which order you were talking about, and that's why I have to read this paragraph, in order to show what in fact you were saying: "... seizure of the Racak victims out of the mosque and [In English] the day the need to be buried according to religious rules and the international [sic] forensic examination without presence of OSCE KDOM --" internal -- [Interpretation] I apologise to the interpreter -- "[In English] forensic examination without presence of OSCE EU KDOM, Kosovo Albanians or media representatives increased reservations and nourished the suspect that something will be manipulated. So far, Mrs. Marinkovic is - voluntarily or on order - the person which significantly -- which significantly contributes to the increased tensions."

[Interpretation] Are you speaking here about the steps taken by Mrs. Marinkovic as investigative judge in order to conduct an investigation regarding the victims of Racak or something else that she's doing in circumvention of the regulations?

A. No. I said a moment ago that there was a minor story where despite other agreements, police followed. And I simply quoted that story ³⁷¹⁴⁹ in order to make clear that what happened there happened at another place, too; namely, that the work of an investigating judge is also a job which is not recognised as being necessary everywhere but which sometimes can contribute to tensions.

Q. So you did not call into question the actions taken by Mrs. Marinkovic in her capacity as investigative judge?

A. I never doubted or criticised the way the job was done.

Q. Thank you, Mr. Hartwig. A little while ago you said that you heard about Racak, what the Verification Mission said. I suppose you meant Mr. Walker, because he spoke on behalf of the Verification Mission.

A. The head of the OSCE, yes, that's correct.

Q. Did you learn later, however, that what Mr. Walker stated at the time was not true?

MR. NICE: It seems to me that may constitute a significant leading question. I'm not quite sure whether it falls within the ambit of this witness to deal with.

I have 30 seconds of something to say before we close today.

JUDGE ROBINSON: It's not clear to me, Mr. Nice. Why do you say it's -- he's asking whether he learned later that what Mr. Walker said was not true.

MR. NICE: Well, that -- that contains within it a suggestion that what he said wasn't true. That contains a suggestion in it that what he said wasn't true. It's clearly --

JUDGE ROBINSON: I think he can answer it, and then we'll have to -- we will have to adjourn because there is another case starting. ³⁷¹⁵⁰

THE WITNESS: [Interpretation] Later I simply read reports and newspapers that had been broadcast on the radio. The big question regarding Racak, as far as I'm concerned, is bearing in mind what I described earlier, namely that from the end of 1998, increasingly the Serbs received sort of worldwide sympathy. There were loss of expressions of sympathy from all over the world, and the UCK was requested to keep within the bounds of the law. And then the dreadful events in Racak would have been an almost expected -- or an event such as Racak was almost something which was on the cards. It could be expected to happen, that somehow something would happen to get the mood to change. I don't know what really happened but I put Racak in that particular time frame, which was a very sort of time window which is restricted where suddenly the Yugoslavs received sympathy, and that's all that I connect with the Racak incident.

JUDGE ROBINSON: Thank you. Mr. Nice, quickly.

MR. NICE: As to the next witness, Mr. Lituchy, having reviewed the exhibits provided by the accused, may well argue tomorrow that the evidence is inadmissible. I mention that now so that the accused can be on notice that he may have to justify the relevance of material he seeks to produce, and it may be of assistance for the Court if the Court has an opportunity to review the served exhibits in advance, and of course it may be prudent for the accused to have his following witness available in case the evidence is taken shortly or ruled inadmissible. That's all.

JUDGE ROBINSON: Very well. Mr. Milosevic is put on notice, also the Chamber. ³⁷¹⁵¹ Tomorrow we will be without a translator, but I think we can manage. Can you manage without the translator, Mr. Hartwig?

THE WITNESS: I will go on the slippery ice.

JUDGE ROBINSON: Okay. Let's hope you stay up. We will adjourn now until tomorrow, 9.00.

--- Whereupon the hearing adjourned at 1.45 p.m., to be reconvened on Wednesday, the 9th day of March, 2005, at 9.00 a.m.