RFE/RL BALKAN REPORT, Vol. 4, No. 81, 31 October 2000
KOSTUNICA ACCEPTS GUILT... Yugoslav President Vojislav
Kostunica told millions of U.S. television viewers on 24
October that he is ready to accept the guilt for those killed
in Yugoslavia's four wars during the 1990s. Kostunica said
his predecessor Slobodan Milosevic is among those responsible
and should eventually be put on trial.
Kostunica's remarks on a popular U.S. television news
program (CBS network's "60 Minutes II") mark a significant
change in his public declarations about Serbian culpability
in the atrocities of the past decade, as well as in his views
on whether Milosevic should be brought to justice: "I am
ready to accept the guilt for all those people that have been
killed. I'm trying to--taking responsibility for what
happened on my part for what Milosevic had done."
No other leading Serbian politician has publicly taken
responsibility for any of the mass killings since the
collapse of the former Yugoslavia in 1991.
An estimated 200,000 people were killed in Bosnia and
Croatia between 1991 and 1995. As many as 10,000 people lost
their lives in Kosova last year when Serbian forces expelled
nearly one million non-Serbian residents.
When asked whether Serbian forces committed genocide in
Kosova, Kostunica responded that both sides incurred
casualties. That was a reference to the violence used against
Serbian police by the insurgent Kosova Liberation Army (UCK)
in the years prior to NATO's intervention last spring, as
well as to the victims of the 78 days of NATO air strikes:
"Those are the crimes and the people that have been killed
are victims. I must say also there are a lot of crimes on the
other side and that Serbs have been killed."
When asked if there was any doubt in his mind that
Milosevic is guilty of crimes against humanity, Kostunica
responded that Milosevic is "among those responsible."
During last month's election campaign--and even after
his victory--Kostunica often told foreign reporters that
Milosevic's fate was not a high-priority issue for him. In
this television interview, he again said that he has too many
other issues to deal with, too many other priorities that
must be dealt with first. Nevertheless, when asked whether he
thinks Milosevic will ever stand trial, Kostunica responded:
"Somewhere, yes."
In a separate interview with Macedonia's Telma
television the next day, Kostunica was more forthcoming about
the real reason for not detaining Milosevic at present. In
his words: "Any attempt to open the issue about the
cooperation with the international war tribunal in The Hague
in the case of Milosevic will destabilize the situation in
Yugoslavia."
Kostunica faces many obstacles to his goal of bringing
Yugoslavia back into the European family of nations. Since
being sworn into office on 7 October, he has met the heads of
government of the 15 EU member states and the leaders of
Montenegro and Bosnia. He then met other Balkan leaders and
U.S. envoy Richard Holbrooke in Skopje last Wednesday [25
October]. The week ended with his meeting in Moscow with
Russian President Vladimir Putin.
Milosevic remains heavily guarded in one of his suburban
Belgrade compounds. Since Kostunica has yet to gain full
control over the Interior Ministry, he is hardly in a
position to seize Milosevic and put him on trial or extradite
him.
The night before his inauguration, Kostunica--in a
Serbian television interview--dismissed The Hague tribunal as
a "tool of U.S. foreign policy." The comment was as much a
reflection of his own firmly held belief as it was an
indication of the extent to which even "the best and the
brightest" in Belgrade suffered from Milosevic's information
vacuum during the past decade.
However, it is virtually inevitable that the new
leadership in Belgrade will eventually come to the same
conclusion as the leadership in neighboring Croatia did over
the past three years--that cooperation and integration with
the West are only possible if indicted war criminals are
brought to justice.
But Kostunica, who came to power as the first
democratically elected Yugoslav leader, can hardly ignore the
role of public opinion. In a survey conducted last week,
the Belgrade weekly "NIN" found that more than half of the
2,000 people questioned said Milosevic should not stand trial
for war crimes anywhere. Some 30 percent say he should face
charges in Serbia and only 9 percent favor extraditing him to
The Hague tribunal. (Jolyon Naegele)
...OR DID HE? After the broadcast had been aired and after
the Skopje Balkan summit, Kostunica's office issued a
statement on 26 October in which it said that the U.S. CBS
television network recently took his remarks on Serbian war
crimes "out of context."
His statements to the "60 Minutes II" news program were
widely hailed as the first admission by a Serbian leader of
guilt for atrocities committed by Serbian forces during the
conflicts launched by former President Slobodan Milosevic.
The statement from Kostunica's office said that CBS had taped
some 100 minutes of an interview with him. Of that, the
broadcaster used "only a few minutes...and even that was
taken completely out of context." Without elaborating, the
statement claimed that the excerpt used by CBS contained "a
series of untruths and words which President Kostunica did
not use. [In view of the wide publicity the CBS program has
received in the media, it] could have inflicted much
political damage on the president and the forces leading the
democratization in Yugoslavia."
AP reported from Belgrade that unnamed Yugoslav
officials refused to elaborate on the statement and that
Kostunica's chief of staff "was unavailable" for comment.
CBS News correspondent Scott Pelley, who conducted the
interview with the president, told the news agency on 26
October that the broadcast was "absolutely fair." Pelley
added that he recognizes that Kostunica "is trying to
stabilize a government with enemies conspiring all around
him. When he took the courageous steps to be frank in our
interview, I think he knew that telling the truth was going
to cause trouble for him." Kostunica nonetheless "was very
evasive, particularly on the question [of whether he will
arrest Milosevic]. We had to go back to him again and again
and again to get a straight answer," Pelley noted. (Patrick
Moore)
Copyright (c) 2000. RFE/RL, Inc. Reprinted with the permission of Radio Free
Europe/Radio Liberty, 1201 Connecticut Ave., N.W. Washington DC 20036.
http://www.rferl.org
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