1 Thursday, 31 January 2002

2 [Open session]

3 --- Upon commencing at 9.14 a.m.

4 [The accused entered court]

5 JUDGE AGIUS: Good morning. Mr. Brdjanin, can you hear me in a

6 language that you can understand?

7 THE ACCUSED BRDJANIN: [Interpretation] Good morning, and I can

8 hear you. Thank you.

9 JUDGE AGIUS: Can you repeat that? Because this was not on.

10 THE ACCUSED BRDJANIN: [Interpretation] Good morning, Your

11 Honours. Yes, I can hear and understand the proceedings.

12 JUDGE AGIUS: Yes. General Talic, can you hear me in a language

13 that you can understand?

14 THE ACCUSED TALIC: [Interpretation] Yes, I can hear and

15 understand.

16 JUDGE AGIUS: Could you call the case, please.

17 THE REGISTRAR: Yes, Your Honour. This is case number IT-99-36-T,

18 the Prosecutor versus Radoslav Brdjanin and Momir Talic.

19 JUDGE AGIUS: Yes. Appearances for the Prosecution.

20 MR. CAYLEY: Yes. May it please Your Honours, my name is Cayley.

21 I appear on behalf of the Prosecutor with my colleague Ms. Korner, case

22 manager Denise Gustin.

23 JUDGE AGIUS: For Mr. Brdjanin.

24 MR. ACKERMAN: Your Honour, John Ackerman. I appear on behalf of

25 Mr. Brdjanin along with Tania Radosavljevic, Milka Maglov, and

1 Milos Peric.

2 I want to apologise to the Chamber for --

3 JUDGE AGIUS: It's okay, Mr. Ackerman.

4 MR. ACKERMAN: -- delaying you this morning. It was just a big

5 mix-up and I'm sorry about it.

6 JUDGE AGIUS: It could happen to anyone.

7 And for General Talic?

8 MS. FAUVEAU-IVANOVIC: [Interpretation] I'm Natasha

9 Fauveau-Ivanovic, attorney at the Paris bar, replacing Mr. de Roux and

10 Mr. Pitron, and I'm assisted by Mr. Fabien Masson.

11 JUDGE AGIUS: Incidentally, while we are at this particular stage

12 of the proceedings, may I have an explanation why Mr. Pitron and

13 Mr. de Roux haven't honoured us with their presence for the last three

14 days? As I understand, they are the Defence counsel for General Talic.

15 MS. FAUVEAU-IVANOVIC: [Interpretation] Yes, indeed, they are the

16 Defence counsel for General Talic, and I think that they were prevented

17 from coming. They have good reasons for not coming, but I'm afraid I

18 don't know anything more than that.

19 JUDGE AGIUS: I am not disputing the justification or the reasons

20 that might be maybe keeping them from being present here. This raises a

21 matter which I think I am duty-bound in open court to refer to your

22 client, General Talic, who has his procedural and substantive rights, and

23 it is my duty here as Presiding Judge, and also the duty of the other two

24 Judges accompanying me in this trial, to ensure that these procedural and

25 substantive rights of your client are observed and that he is happy with

1 the situation, because obviously you will understand, Ms. Fauveau, that I

2 would not definitely leave the door open for subsequent aggravations as

3 has happened in other cases before this Tribunal.

4 MS. FAUVEAU-IVANOVIC: [Interpretation] I understand fully the

5 situation and your position, but perhaps General Talic could tell us

6 more.

7 JUDGE AGIUS: Yes. General Talic, can you hear me?

8 THE ACCUSED TALIC: [Interpretation] Yes, I can, Your Honour.

9 JUDGE AGIUS: Do you understand the import of what I have just

10 been discussing with attorney Ms. Fauveau?

11 THE ACCUSED TALIC: [Interpretation] Yes, I do, Your Honour. I,

12 too, do not know the reason for their absence, but for the present, I do

13 not mind being represented by Madam Natasha.

14 JUDGE AGIUS: But I would suppose, Ms. Fauveau, that this,

15 obviously, you must not take it as a reflection in your regard. It is not

16 meant to be like that and that's why I have been extremely careful.

17 The position is that your client is definitely entitled to be

18 represented as was properly allocated to him, with the Defence counsel

19 that were appointed to represent him. He's definitely very ably

20 represented by you, and you have shown that throughout these last two or

21 three days, but I don't think the situation can be protracted or

22 perpetuated and expect the Trial Chamber to remain silent about it.

23 So perhaps you could pass on this message to Mr. de Roux and

24 Pitron, especially now that I have heard General Talic confirm that he

25 himself has not been informed of the reason underlying their absence from

1 this courtroom.

2 Is there any comments that you would like to make from the

3 Prosecution side on this particular issue?

4 MS. KORNER: We understand, Your Honour. Your Honour, we noticed

5 the same absence, and we had actually remarked on it. Our concern is only

6 this: Our view is that Ms. Fauveau has been doing an excellent job so

7 far, but nonetheless, it is Mr. de Roux and Mr. Pitron who are counsel on

8 the record. We would not wish there to be any grounds for an appeal on

9 the basis that General Talic was not represented by counsel of his

10 choice. That's -- I think that's all that we wish to say. We understand

11 that General Talic, not surprisingly, is happy with representation by

12 Ms. Fauveau, but nonetheless, my understanding is that counsel on the

13 record can only be absent if the client consents in full knowledge of the

14 reasons why they are absent.

15 JUDGE AGIUS: This is why --

16 Yes. General Talic, I put the same -- I repeat the same question

17 to you again. You have just heard what Ms. Korner from the Prosecution

18 has stated, which is more -- not more or less, it is the precise

19 description of what the legal position obtaining is. What I want from you

20 is a clear yes/no indication as to whether you are prepared to continue

21 with the hearing of this trial today now that these two lawyers have been

22 absent for two subsequent days - and this is the third day in which none

23 of them have shown up - whether you are prepared to go ahead or whether

24 you would prefer to invoke your rights and have them present, particularly

25 since you have not been told, informed, of the reasons for their absence.

1 THE ACCUSED TALIC: [Interpretation] I am ready to continue the

2 proceedings for today and tomorrow, and not longer.

3 JUDGE AGIUS: Yes.

4 Ms. Fauveau, please.

5 MS. FAUVEAU-IVANOVIC: [Interpretation] Mr. President, Your

6 Honours, could I make a suggestion that perhaps this question can be

7 clarified next Monday, because Mr. de Roux will be present and I think

8 he's more qualified to discuss the matter than I am.

9 JUDGE AGIUS: Yes. But even as a matter of courtesy. I have

10 worked as a Judge for the past 25 years, and when counsel is not able to

11 show up, usually the Court is informed. I mean, over here, at least from

12 what I have gathered the last week and a half, if from the Prosecution,

13 for example, Ms. Korner considers -- thinks that her presence is not

14 needed at any given moment because Mr. Cayley will be dealing with a

15 particular witness, even though it's almost superficial, an explanation is

16 forthcoming, and the Tribunal -- the Trial Chamber is informed.

17 And I have closed my eyes temporarily for the first day because I

18 thought that anything could have happened, and I didn't want to raise the

19 issue. The second day, I started getting worried. Now it's the third

20 day, and we -- I will not allow the situation to go on like this.

21 And also -- I mean, I am going to make myself very clear. I will

22 not -- I will also not allow the situation to become one which will serve

23 as a pretext for General Talic or for Mr. Brdjanin -- so far I have no

24 reason to complain -- to direct any complaints for the Defence team of

25 Mr. Brdjanin -- as a pretext for a particular sitting or hearing or

1 sitting not to take place, because then obviously -- you know as much as I

2 do what the Rules provide, and we will apply them, no question about it.

3 Yes.

4 MS. FAUVEAU-IVANOVIC: [Interpretation] I quite understand your

5 position, and I appreciate your request, but as my client is ready to

6 continue for another two days with me, I would suggest that the matter be

7 clarified with the lead counsel.

8 JUDGE AGIUS: Okay. General Talic, one last question: You do not

9 wish, I suppose now that you are happy with the situation, at least until

10 tomorrow, to raise any complaints as far as yesterday and the day before

11 are concerned, do you? You are happy with what happened yesterday and the

12 day before, in other words, that the proceedings went on irrespective of

13 the fact that the two counsel allocated to you were not present?

14 THE ACCUSED TALIC: [Interpretation] I do not wish to make any

15 objections regarding the proceedings so far.

16 JUDGE AGIUS: I thank you, General Talic. You may sit down.

17 Yes. I understand the awkwardness of the situation in which you

18 find yourself, Ms. Fauveau. I appreciate the co-operation that you have

19 shown during these two -- the past two days with the Trial Chamber and the

20 co-operation which has actually helped us finish with the -- with what we

21 had to do almost a day earlier in advance. And I thank you for that.

22 So I would suggest that we now call in Dr. Donia for

23 cross-examination by Mr. Ackerman -- accident-prone Mr. Ackerman.

24 MR. ACKERMAN: Well, you've also failed to note the last few days

25 that I'm older than you, Your Honour.

1 JUDGE AGIUS: Sometimes I feel the weight of my age, too,

2 Mr. Ackerman.

3 [The witness entered court]

4 JUDGE AGIUS: Yes. Dr. Donia, you are going to be cross-examined

5 today by Mr. Ackerman, who represents Mr. Brdjanin here.

6 Has the witness made the solemn declaration?

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

8 whole truth, and nothing but the truth.

9 WITNESS: Robert J. Donia [Resumed]

10 JUDGE AGIUS: Yes, Mr. Ackerman, you can proceed.

11 MR. ACKERMAN: Thank you, Your Honours.

12 Cross-examined by Mr. Ackerman:

13 Q. Good morning, Dr. Donia.

14 A. Good morning.

15 Q. How are you today?

16 A. Very well, thanks.

17 Q. Ready to go home?

18 A. Ready to go to Bosnia.

19 Q. To go to Bosnia?

20 A. Yes.

21 Q. Okay. When you -- I think on the first day of your testimony you

22 interrupted the process to tell the Court that you had something you

23 wished to disclose to the Court. Do you remember that?

24 A. Yes.

25 Q. Well, I have to make the same kind of a disclosure to you. I have

1 a brother who is a professor at Ohio State University, Lima, and that gave

2 me the opportunity to inquire of you. And I must say the report that came

3 back was quite favourable, that you distinguished yourself by your

4 presence there. So it would be fair that I tell you what I learned about

5 that.

6 A. Thank you.

7 Q. Okay. The first thing I need you to know about the questions that

8 I'll be asking you is that I have tried very hard to organise what I'm

9 going to do today in such a way that we can get through rather quickly,

10 because I understand that you are anxious to leave here on Saturday, and

11 because of that, it's going to be a little bit disjointed but I think

12 probably not too much so.

13 Let me begin with just a kind of general discussion of what

14 history is and what historians do. Would you agree with me that history

15 is a study of the activities of a certain group of people in a certain

16 time and place?

17 A. Yes.

18 Q. At least that's close to how an historian might define what that

19 is; correct?

20 A. Yes.

21 Q. There is a -- one of the things that historians do is they do

22 research and write the results of that research either in journals or

23 books or papers or whatever?

24 A. Yes, I would agree.

25 Q. And there is a method that has developed over the years to kind of

1 guide the process of historical research; correct?

2 A. Yes.

3 Q. Primarily what you're doing is when you are trying to research a

4 particular group of people at a certain time and place is that you look

5 for sources of reliable information regarding what those people were doing

6 at that time and place that you happened to be interested in?

7 A. Yes. And I think I would add sources about that group's

8 relationships with their environment, with other groups, and their broader

9 situation.

10 Q. Yes. And among the kinds of sources that you consult in that

11 process, I think the method that we are talking about has divided them

12 into basically two categories. There are primary sources and there are

13 secondary sources; correct?

14 A. Yes. It is not always easy to draw a line between the two.

15 Q. Could you explain to the Chamber what the difference is between a

16 primary source and a secondary source?

17 A. A primary source is any document or piece of evidence which comes

18 from an identifiable creator and is generally not disseminated widely

19 unless it is by publication in some collection or other -- other medium of

20 dissemination. I think the most important factor would be the fact that

21 its creator is knowable and identifiable.

22 Q. Just as an example, if you were doing research on Abraham Lincoln,

23 a letter written by Abraham Lincoln would be a primary source?

24 A. Yes.

25 Q. An account in a book of the contents of that letter written by

1 Abraham Lincoln would be a secondary source?

2 A. An account that was not quoting in full the document, yes, would

3 be.

4 Q. And historical research where you utilise primary sources is

5 academically favoured, is it not?

6 A. I'm not sure it is any more. There's always been a value attached

7 to primary sources in the historical profession.

8 Q. Okay. Certainly secondary sources should not be utilised when

9 primary sources are available and could be utilised?

10 A. I would not agree, no.

11 Q. Okay.

12 A. I think secondary sources act as an important filter, echo of

13 primary sources, and themselves become of great interest in that respect.

14 Q. In this case, Dr. Donia, you were asked by the Prosecutor to write

15 a report, were you not?

16 A. Yes, I was.

17 Q. And to write a report with regard to the activities of a certain

18 group of people at a certain time and place.

19 A. The request was broader than that. I was asked to write a report

20 on the broad historical background and context in which these alleged

21 events took place, including the activities of groups relevant to the

22 processes going on at the time.

23 Q. You heard -- I believe Ms. Korner indicated that you were watching

24 on the monitor when Mr. Inayat testified about the searches and seizures

25 that had been done in Prijedor and Banja Luka. Are we correct about

1 that?

2 A. I saw part of that, yes.

3 Q. You're aware that -- that those searches and seizures were done?

4 A. Yes.

5 Q. And Mr. Inayat talked about going to places like the municipal

6 building in Prijedor and Banja Luka and gathering official documents from

7 those places. Those would be the kinds of records that an historian might

8 be interested in looking at who is doing research into what was happening

9 during that time?

10 A. They would be one small group of types of records that would be of

11 interest to the historian.

12 Q. Yes. I'd like to know if in the process of preparing your report

13 in this case that you were given access by the Prosecutor to all of those

14 documents that were seized from Prijedor and Banja Luka.

15 A. No, I was not.

16 Q. As you told the Trial Chamber on the first day of your testimony,

17 you basically were relying on a group of documents which would be the

18 group of documents that are contained in the two volumes we've been

19 referring to for the last several days; correct?

20 A. It's a little broader than that. There were additional documents

21 that are not included here within the collection that I looked at, which

22 included, as I indicated, the records of the Assembly of the Serbian

23 republic and the ARK Assembly.

24 Q. But in any event, it was a collection of documents that was chosen

25 by the Prosecutor and not by you?

1 A. Yes.

2 Q. I think what you told the Chamber was:

3 "Mr. President, I'd like to disclose that the Office of the

4 Prosecutor invited me to review a limited set of documents on which some

5 of these conclusions are based, and those documents consisted of the

6 minutes and conclusions of the ZOBK and the Krajina and also the

7 transcripts of minutes of the Bosnian Serb Assembly and some related

8 documents to these."

9 A. That's correct, yes.

10 Q. You continued that: "In addition, I've looked at a great deal of

11 periodical press and other documentation. I would just like to state that

12 for the record." Correct?

13 A. That's correct, yes.

14 Q. And what you were really telling the Trial Chamber there was that

15 your opinion was only as valid as the integrity of the selection of

16 documents that was given to you.

17 A. No, that's not what I was -- I'm sorry.

18 Q. I'm sorry. My question was poorly worded. As the -- not just the

19 integrity but the completeness of the series of documents that were given

20 to you.

21 A. That was not my message to the Chamber, no. The substantial bulk

22 of information that I used in preparing this report in fact came from a

23 much broader search of the periodical press of the time, some other

24 documents that have been published subsequent to them -- to those times,

25 memoirs, secondary accounts. The documentary base that -- the limited

1 documentary base that I was asked to review, I reviewed in the context of

2 all that information that I've gathered probably over the past several

3 years.

4 Q. So I take it, then, that you have spent a great deal of time in

5 the ARK region, in Banja Luka, Prijedor, places like that, actually doing

6 original historical research.

7 A. No. I have never worked in the -- any of the regional archives of

8 Bosnia-Herzegovina.

9 Q. In the course of the work that you were doing for the Prosecutor

10 in this case - and I think you've already answered that, but I want to

11 make it clear that you have - did you receive from or send any

12 correspondence to the Office of the Prosecutor regarding your work in this

13 matter?

14 A. No.

15 Q. Did you ever request orally that the OTP supply you with any

16 additional documents?

17 A. Yes. I've asked for copies from the Official Gazettes of both

18 Bosnia-Herzegovina and the Serbian Republic of Bosnia-Herzegovina from

19 time to time.

20 Q. As part of this particular project?

21 A. Yes.

22 Q. And did you receive those copies?

23 A. Yes.

24 Q. Any --

25 A. When they were available. I think a couple of them were not

1

2

3

4

5

6

7

8

9

10

11

12 Blank page inserted to ensure pagination corresponds between the French and

13 English transcripts.

14

15

16

17

18

19

20

21

22

23

24

25

1 available, but ...

2 Q. Any other documents that you requested?

3 A. No.

4 Q. Did you ever see any minutes of meetings of the Crisis Staff of

5 ARK?

6 A. There may be one or two documents in this binder, but I -- I don't

7 recall specifically. If -- if there is, I saw that. Beyond that, I have

8 not seen minutes of crisis staff.

9 Q. Okay. With regard to the ZOBK ARK Assembly, I believe you were

10 provided with the minutes of the second, sixth, seventh, ninth, eleventh,

11 fourteenth, fifteenth, and eighteenth sessions of the assembly.

12 A. That sounds right. I believe that's the case, yes.

13 Q. I mean, if you want to go through and check what I did last night

14 to try to make this accurate, you're free to. Do you want to do that?

15 A. I take your submission that those were the ones that I reviewed.

16 Q. My question, then, is: Have you seen the minutes of the first,

17 third, fourth, fifth, eighth, tenth, twelfth, thirteenth, sixteenth, and

18 seventeenth sessions?

19 A. No, I have not.

20 Q. Did you ask for them?

21 A. I asked at one point if any other minutes of the assembly were in

22 the possession of the OTP.

23 Q. And I assume you got an answer to that.

24 A. Yes. I was told that they did not have them.

25 Q. It would have been useful, I suppose, in trying to paint a

1 complete picture of what was going on during this time to have been able

2 to consult those.

3 A. Yes.

4 Q. I mean, that's why you would have asked for them; correct?

5 A. Certainly.

6 Q. And I guess you'd have to agree that it's entirely possible that

7 had you been able to see these other minutes, that that could have

8 modified the conclusions which you arrived at and detailed to the Chamber

9 yesterday.

10 A. It's possible. Certainly, yes.

11 Q. I'm going to in the course of the rest of my examination,

12 Dr. Donia, refer to some pages from a book. It's called "The War in

13 Bosnia-Herzegovina: Ethnic Conflict and International Intervention," by

14 Steven Burg and Paul Shoup. And I know that you're familiar with this

15 book.

16 A. Yes, I am.

17 Q. And I know that you regard it as an authoritative source regarding

18 the events in Bosnia-Herzegovina.

19 A. I wouldn't call it an authoritative source. I'd call it an

20 important book that uses substantially the available documentation.

21 Q. Would you agree with the proposition that it is a work by two

22 well-distinguished American scholars with a very impressive work,

23 especially in regard to the issues in Bosnia-Herzegovina?

24 A. Yes.

25 Q. Okay. I want to go very briefly through some history that you

1 touched upon, and I'm going to go through it a lot more briefly than you

2 did.

3 You talked about the history of the Krajina areas, both in

4 Bosnia-Herzegovina and in Croatia, that borderland, the borderlands.

5 Yes?

6 A. Yes.

7 Q. And I believe what you explained to the Trial Chamber was that

8 those borderlands through there have been for a very long time a kind of

9 dividing line between what, for maybe simplified purposes, we might

10 describe as a Christian west and a Muslim east, at least when the Ottoman

11 Empire was in charge of everything there.

12 A. I think that's an oversimplification.

13 Q. I think it is too.

14 A. The fact -- I would, rather, say it was a boundary zone between

15 the Ottoman and Austrian Empires for the period from, say, the seventeenth

16 century until the latter part of the nineteenth century.

17 Q. And both -- both of those parties had made efforts to protect that

18 border by stationing fighters, for lack of a better word, along that

19 border?

20 A. Yes. I would only propose to modify that proposition by calling

21 it a border zone.

22 Q. Yes.

23 A. Because it was, in fact, a very extensive territory rather than a

24 line, a piece of barbed wire that separated the two areas.

25 Q. The point I'm trying to make is that people were sent there for

1 the purpose of protecting that border zone.

2 A. Yes.

3 Q. As warriors?

4 A. They were recruited for that purpose, yes.

5 Q. And trained as warriors for that purpose?

6 A. Most of them weren't trained, but they were recruited and moved

7 there as whole families or extended families.

8 Q. And in some places that population group was Serbian Orthodox, and

9 in some places that population group was Muslim.

10 A. Yes.

11 Q. And the descendants of those people tend to have been living in

12 that area in 1991.

13 A. In -- in general, yes, that's correct.

14 Q. Can we go now just briefly again to the events in the Krajina area

15 during World War II. It's probably the case, is it not, that well over a

16 hundred thousand Serbs were slaughtered in that region by forces,

17 primarily Croatian, that had aligned themselves with Nazi Germany?

18 A. The number is not certain. I would accept the hundred thousand

19 number as an approximate number based on the sources that have -- studies

20 that have been made of that since then. It may be high based on those

21 demographic sources, but it's close.

22 Q. As many as 17 per cent of the Serbian population of Bosnia and

23 Herzegovina were casualties of World War II. Do you accept that?

24 A. I don't know that number.

25 Q. Okay. This slaughter was without regard to whether it was men,

1 women, or children. They were just slaughtering people; correct?

2 A. The first Ustasha assaults on these communities, absolutely that

3 was the case. Subsequently there was, of course, a lot of armed conflict,

4 particularly between the Germans and Serbs in Krajina, which there was a

5 less of a -- let's say there was some discrimination in which the warriors

6 were principally males of military age.

7 Q. And as you told us yesterday, the -- the atrocities, the

8 slaughter, was especially pronounced in the Prijedor region and that

9 explains the large monument that sits at Mount Kozara.

10 A. The first part of your question is yes. The large monument is a

11 monument to the partisan heroes who resisted particularly the German

12 offensives and established a substantial territory that was outside of

13 German control, particularly in 1942 and 1943.

14 Q. And just a very short distance across the border in Croatia was

15 the infamous Jasenovac concentration camp; correct?

16 A. Yes.

17 Q. And it would be virtually impossible to grow up in the Bosnian

18 Krajina without knowing about that camp and the things that happened

19 there?

20 A. Yes.

21 Q. It was, was it not, an extermination camp such like Auschwitz,

22 Birkenau, and such places?

23 A. Yes, it was.

24 Q. Do you recall when Franjo Tudjman came to power in Croatia that he

25 contended publicly that the numbers of people exterminated at Jasenovac

1 was exaggerated and that the number of Serbs killed during World War II

2 was exaggerated?

3 A. His position on that was long before he came to power.

4 Q. Yes.

5 A. But, yes, that was his position advanced, as I say, already in the

6 1970s.

7 Q. But it was widely circulated at the time he came to power.

8 A. Yes. I think it was widely circulated well before that.

9 Q. Okay. Also during World War II, there was a special SS unit

10 established composed of Bosnian Muslims, was there not?

11 A. Yes.

12 Q. Now, when we get then to 1990, we are not really very far in terms

13 of historical time from those events, are we?

14 A. Forty-five years at least.

15 Q. Yes. Close enough so that there would have been a number of

16 people alive in the Krajina who personally experienced some of the things

17 you and I have been talking about.

18 A. Yes.

19 Q. Who may have lost a significant portion of their families.

20 A. Yes.

21 Q. And who might have had some particularly vivid memories of those

22 times.

23 A. Yes.

24 Q. And I think you also know that it was -- it was such an astounding

25 event - I guess is a way to put it - that it was certainly shared by those

1 people, who experienced it with their children and their grandchildren.

2 A. Yes.

3 Q. And much was written about it, and it was part of curricula in

4 schools.

5 A. Yes, with a somewhat different approach in the socialist period.

6 Q. Yes.

7 A. This theme was, of course, that atrocities were committed by

8 foreign invaders and resistance to that was led by the partisans.

9 Q. When we get to the events that really form the background of -- of

10 the things that we're talking about in this case, that is, the dissolution

11 of Yugoslavia, the creation of nationalist base parties, things occurred

12 that -- that tended to bring those memories back to the fore.

13 For instance -- let me be specific, and then you'll know what I'm

14 talking about. I think it's the case that during World War II, the

15 Croatian Ustasha symbol was a red-and-white chequer-board and that when

16 the Croatian nationalist parties were created, that that chequer-board

17 reappeared as a symbol. Is that true?

18 A. Yes.

19 Q. And that would be the kind of thing that would tend to be seen by

20 victims of the prior Ustasha as something rather threatening and

21 frightening, would it not? Provocative?

22 A. Many viewed it as provocative, yes.

23 Q. It certainly would have had some effect upon the mind-set of Serb

24 people living in that Krajina area right next to Croatia.

25 A. That's -- I would have to assume about that, and I can't really

1 speculate. But the restitution, if you will, of all these symbolic

2 emblems by the national parties had that intent of reviving those

3 recollections.

4 Q. In that context, it would not be difficult to understand why

5 people might want to arm themselves for protection, if for no other

6 reason.

7 A. I don't share that conclusion, no.

8 Q. You and I both live in the United States, and in fact you and I

9 both lived for a time at the same time and place, in Houston, Texas. I

10 think you would agree that it's not unusual in times of, say, a crime

11 spree or something like that in the United States that people maybe

12 without justification, but out of fear, will go to the gun stores and

13 start buying guns. That happens, doesn't it?

14 A. That happens a great deal in Texas, yes.

15 Q. Well, it happens other places.

16 You know, you remember the Watts riots? The Watts riots was a big

17 boon for the gun-making companies, wasn't it?

18 A. Yes.

19 Q. Okay. You talked about the partisans in connection with the

20 monument at Mount Kozara. The partisans, of course, turned out to be

21 victorious at the end of World War II, to the point where the leader of

22 the partisans, Tito, was able to establish a government which actually was

23 a communist state, comprising all those components of Yugoslavia that

24 existed until the break-up in 1991.

25 A. Yes.

1 Q. And almost surprisingly, that government very effectively

2 suppressed ethnic divisions immediately after some of the horrific events

3 in World War II that we've been talking about.

4 A. I wouldn't quite formulate the achievements of the government that

5 way. I think they so much emphasised the unity of the working class and

6 permitted some modest degree of cultural expression by various

7 nationalities that these ethnic tensions were reduced through most of the

8 socialist period.

9 Q. Well, as a matter of fact, it wasn't just a thing that happened.

10 It was a thing that was rather ruthlessly done by the Tito government to

11 suppress public manifestations of ethnic intolerance.

12 A. Public manifestations of ethnic intolerance were dealt with as

13 criminal acts, yes.

14 Q. Rather ruthlessly at times.

15 A. At times. Particularly at the beginning of the Tito period.

16 Q. Yes. Some of the more vocal nationalists were -- I think

17 "silenced" would be an appropriate word. Yes?

18 A. Silenced, imprisoned, yes.

19 Q. Power sharing between the nationalities was mandated?

20 A. Well, I don't know that that was actually the way it was done.

21 There was -- power was exercised by the Communist Party, and that was to

22 replace any nationally-oriented sources of authority.

23 Q. Well, you're familiar with what was called the kljuc, are you

24 not?

25 A. Yes.

1 Q. And what was the kljuc, the key?

2 A. The key was a system of appointments to various governmental

3 social economic institutions, in which the various national groups were to

4 be proportionally represented.

5 Q. And that happened in -- in the government?

6 A. I don't remember the year that it was initiated, but a -- some

7 form of, I'd say, national participation or participation from members of

8 each nationality was encouraged from the beginning and mandated, I

9 believe, somewhat later on.

10 Q. And that went across the board. It happened with regard -- it was

11 with regard to government agencies, with regard to industrial concerns

12 which were -- it's a socialist state, so they were government-owned and

13 controlled -- with regard to the JNA?

14 A. In principle, it applied universally. In reality, there were many

15 institutions which did not conform to that guideline. And the JNA was a

16 good example of one of those.

17 Q. Well, by the time we get to 1989/1990, I think it is a fair

18 statement that the officer corps of the JNA was weighted fairly heavily

19 Serbian but it also had significant numbers of Muslim and Croatian

20 officers also; correct?

21 A. Yes, it did.

22 Q. The -- "Brotherhood in Unity" was what -- a phrase that described

23 what it was that Tito had established and tried to maintain in Yugoslavia

24 after that -- the events of World War II; correct?

25 A. The "Brotherhood in Unity" slogan dated from the beginning of

1 World War II, was the partisan slogan really from the first days of its

2 resistance.

3 Q. And actually, Yugoslavia prospered for many years under that kind

4 of a system. The economy became somewhat robust, it became Europeanised

5 in many ways. Yugoslavians were free to travel around the world on their

6 passports. Tourism was big in various parts of Yugoslavia. It was a

7 successful economic entity up until we begin to approach the break-up; is

8 that correct?

9 A. No. There -- there was a period of great economic success in the

10 1950s, and the economic problems really started to develop in the 1960s,

11 and that in part explains the open borders and the willingness to allow

12 Yugoslavs to work abroad and repatriate hard currencies. And the economic

13 situation ebbed and flowed but was certainly a substantial crisis already

14 by the late -- late 1970s.

15 Q. Okay. This is kind of a -- something I'm just curious about.

16 Have you considered at all what effect on the situation in

17 Bosnia-Herzegovina in the beginning of the disintegration of Yugoslavia,

18 what effect the war that the Soviet Union had been involved in Afghanistan

19 had on that situation? Have you considered that at all?

20 A. Yes. Certainly considered it in the context of the broader ills

21 that beset the Soviet Union at that time and the impact that that had on

22 Soviet reluctance to become engaged directly in the Yugoslav situation. I

23 would say that would be the principal impact of that conflict.

24 Q. Let me ask you if there might not also be the following impact:

25 The -- what we now know as the Taliban - the other word you hear a lot is

1 Mujahedin - those anti-Soviet Muslim fighters were seen in the Islamic

2 world as having defeated one of the two greatest military powers in the

3 world, that being the Soviet Union; true?

4 A. I don't believe there's a continuity between the Taliban and the

5 forces that were -- that defeated the Soviet Union, but in any case, the,

6 let's say, support for fundamental Islam in a broad sense was certainly

7 enhanced by the victory in Afghanistan of the defeat of the Soviets.

8 Q. And you also know, do you not, that some of those Mujahedin

9 fighters that had been trained and fought in Afghanistan wound up in

10 Bosnia-Herzegovina in 1991 or 1992?

11 A. 1992, I believe. I don't know of 1991, but certainly in 1992,

12 yes.

13 Q. And if there was a perception that this was a group of fighters

14 who were especially vicious, especially skilled, it is something that

15 could have created a climate of fear about their arrival to fight against

16 a group of people who were nowhere near as militarily sophisticated as the

17 Soviet Union?

18 A. That's a speculation with a number of presuppositions that I can't

19 really reach that conclusion.

20 Q. At least there are possibilities that that had an effect. Would

21 you agree with that?

22 A. Yes.

23 Q. Okay. Okay. I now want to go closer to time. The disintegration

24 of Yugoslavia is something that has been written about by I don't know how

25 many authors, many, many, many, and there is not universal agreement about

1 the causes of why Yugoslavia disintegrated and broke up. I think our

2 purpose here is not so much trying to understand why it happened but the

3 causes, the result, the fallout from that disintegration. Would you agree

4 with that?

5 A. Yes.

6 Q. It happened during a time when essentially there was a break-up of

7 the Soviet Union and communist systems throughout Eastern Europe. The

8 Communist Party was losing its dominance everywhere and the Cold War was

9 ending; correct?

10 A. Yes.

11 Q. And the Communist Party in Yugoslavia came apart just like others

12 did in Eastern Europe?

13 A. A little bit differently. The Communist Party or League of

14 Communists of Yugoslavia basically broke into its republican components in

15 January of 1990, although that process had begun well before that, and had

16 an afterlife of reformed communist parties in the various republics.

17 Q. And this -- this League of Communists was the party and the force

18 which had enforced this kljuc or this key concept up until that point?

19 A. Yes.

20 Q. You touched very briefly on events I think maybe beginning, and I

21 don't know but I think you do, beginning, I think, in the 1960s, where the

22 Muslim people of Yugoslavia wanted to achieve the status of nationhood in

23 Yugoslavia.

24 A. The Bosnian Muslims --

25 Q. Yes.

1

2

3

4

5

6

7

8

9

10

11

12 Blank page inserted to ensure pagination corresponds between the French and

13 English transcripts.

14

15

16

17

18

19

20

21

22

23

24

25

1 A. -- sought to be recognised as a nation.

2 Q. Could you explain to the Chamber what that means, to be recognised

3 as a nation?

4 A. Well, perhaps the way to explain it is to note that in Yugoslav

5 partisan thinking, there were levels of recognition of groups, and the

6 highest level was for a group to be recognised as a nation. So the

7 nations that were recognised at the first partisan meeting in 1942 were

8 Serbs, Croats, Montenegrins, Macedonians, and Slovenes, and they were

9 defined as constituent stations within the Yugoslav Federation. The

10 Bosnian Muslims aspired to receive that level of recognition, which would

11 mean that they would be granted rights to be counted in the census, to

12 have certain other group rights that were bestowed upon constituent

13 nations as opposed to those considered of a minority or other peoples

14 living in the country.

15 Q. You've talked about the kljuc or the key. It would have affected,

16 would it not, the way they were treated under that system?

17 A. Yes.

18 Q. That process of striving for nationhood by the Bosnian Muslims

19 didn't happen without some expressions of nationalism which broke out, I

20 suppose, in the early 1980s; correct?

21 A. I'm sorry. Could you ask the question again? I --

22 Q. Yes. I may have asked it poorly, and I probably did. This

23 struggle for nationhood on the part of the Bosnian Muslims contain within

24 it a component of what was termed at the time sort of an extreme

25 nationalism, Islamic fundamentalism, did it not?

1 A. It incorporated the -- the movement that actually dated to the

2 months right after World War II known as the Young Muslims, and that group

3 became one stream within the Bosnian Muslim political community that was

4 considered by the government of Yugoslavia and others to be a conservative

5 Islamic or fundamentalist Islamic group, yes.

6 Q. And that group was suppressed by the government, including the

7 arrest and trial of Alija Izetbegovic, and conviction.

8 A. Yes. They did it after World War II and did it again in 1983.

9 Q. You talked in your testimony about the appearance of the

10 nationalist political parties, the SDA, the SDS, the HDZ. This was not

11 the first time in Yugoslav history that there had been nationalist-based

12 political parties, was it?

13 A. No.

14 Q. There was a -- between World War I and World War II, there was a

15 Bosnian Muslim political party, for instance, called the JMO, was there

16 not?

17 A. Yes.

18 Q. As the League of Communists began to fall apart and there was --

19 it became clear that other political parties would take its place, that

20 there would be other political parties, competing political parties, in

21 Bosnia --

22 MR. ACKERMAN: Your Honour, this is a whole new area, and maybe

23 this would be a good time to --

24 JUDGE AGIUS: [Microphone not activated]

25 MR. ACKERMAN: Yes.

1 JUDGE AGIUS: So I think we'll pause for the moment. We will

2 resume at ten to eleven.

3 --- Recess taken at 10.25 a.m.

4 --- On resuming at 10.52 a.m.

5 JUDGE AGIUS: Yes, Mr. Ackerman.

6 MR. ACKERMAN: Thank you, Your Honours.

7 Q. Dr. Donia, as we broke, we were beginning to discuss the advent of

8 a multiparty system. Primarily, I'm concentrating now on

9 Bosnia-Herzegovina. Okay?

10 A. Yes.

11 Q. Apparently, there was sufficient concern regarding what might

12 happen if these parties were nationalist based, that -- as you know, the

13 Bosnian parliament adopted an electoral law in March of 1990 that actually

14 banned the formation of nationalist parties, did it not?

15 A. It authorised the formation of parties but excluded parties based

16 on nationality or religion.

17 Q. And that must have been based upon -- on an understanding that

18 that could create some fairly significant, profound problems.

19 A. Yes.

20 Q. Also that same month a nationalist party, the SDA, was formed

21 under the leadership of Alija Izetbegovic; correct?

22 A. I believe it's February on both dates, if I'm not mistaken. The

23 constitutional amendments and the first -- not the formation of the party,

24 but the formation of a -- an organising committee for the SDA.

25 Q. Yes. This law which had prohibited the creation of

1 nationalist-based parties was declared unconstitutional by the

2 constitutional court of Bosnia-Herzegovina then, was it not?

3 A. Yes.

4 Q. And at the time that court -- the head of that court was a

5 Dr. Kasim Trnka?

6 A. Yes.

7 Q. And shortly after that, Dr. Trnka became an active member of the

8 leadership of the SDA party, did he not?

9 A. I don't know.

10 Q. If that is reported By Burg and Shoup in their book, would you

11 contest it?

12 A. I don't know what source they would cite, so I might.

13 Q. All right. We might come back to that later in the day.

14 And after that decision declaring the law banning nationalist

15 parties was declared unconstitutional, then the SDS party was formed in

16 July of 1990 and the HDZ party in August of 1990; correct?

17 A. All three parties had a similar relationship to that law and to

18 the constitutional court decision. They each formed organising committees

19 prior to the constitutional court decision and engaged in certain

20 party-like activities. But none of them formally held a founding assembly

21 until after the June constitutional court decision.

22 Q. Well, the actual sequence in which parties were formed is, as I

23 suggested, first the SDA, then the SDS, then the HDZ.

24 A. I guess it depends on when the party was formed what that exactly

25 means. I believe your order is correct for the actual constituent

1 assemblies or founding assemblies of those three parties.

2 Q. I think you have before you some excerpts from the book. Was that

3 given to you yet?

4 A. No.

5 Q. The registry has a copy for you, I believe.

6 JUDGE AGIUS: Mr. Ackerman, are you going to exhibit this extract

7 from the book?

8 MR. ACKERMAN: I will leave that up to Your Honours. If you want

9 me to make --

10 JUDGE AGIUS: [Previous translation continues] ... ask the witness

11 to refer to a document which maybe later on we will have to -- we might

12 have to visit again, I would prefer to have it exhibited.

13 MR. ACKERMAN: Okay. Let's make the document, then, Defendant's

14 Exhibit number 1. I guess that would be DB1? Is that the way Your

15 Honours want to do it?

16 JUDGE AGIUS: Well, I would rather prefer the registrar to tell me

17 exactly how she prefers, because this is more important for them than it

18 is for the Court. Eventually we can follow. So I suppose that is how

19 it's going to be.

20 THE REGISTRAR: Yes, DB1. That's correct.

21 JUDGE AGIUS: Okay. DB1.

22 The Prosecution has taken note of that? Thank you.

23 Have you been given a copy -- a photocopy of the relevant pages

24 from this book?

25 THE WITNESS: I have, Mr. President, but no footnotes -- none of

1 the footnotes that are referred to.

2 MR. ACKERMAN: Let me ask the usher to give an actual copy of the

3 book to Dr. Donia, because I think he may very well want to refer to the

4 footnotes.

5 And I apologise for not making those available to you, Dr. Donia.

6 I should have.

7 JUDGE AGIUS: I noticed earlier that you had a copy of the book

8 brought up to you. So that is --

9 MS. KORNER: Your Honour, that's right. We were handed the

10 photocopies first thing this morning, so we got the book from --

11 JUDGE AGIUS: I saw it being brought up, so -- so you're happy.

12 We don't have a copy of the book, but I think we can for the

13 moment live with that.

14 MR. ACKERMAN: We have another copy if it's necessary -- oh, we

15 don't have another copy, I guess.

16 JUDGE AGIUS: You can move ahead.

17 MR. CAYLEY: Mr. President, I can follow in the book if you

18 require spare copies, as long as we get it back for our file, because I

19 have the book and the copy.

20 JUDGE AGIUS: [Microphone not activated]

21 THE INTERPRETER: Microphone, please, Your Honour.

22 JUDGE AGIUS: So please go ahead, Mr. Ackerman.

23 MR. ACKERMAN:

24 Q. Let me refer you to page 46, which I think is the second actual

25 page of text.

1 I'll refer you to basically two -- two things there on page 46,

2 going on over into page 47. I think the first thing you'll notice is

3 the -- in the first -- second full paragraph:

4 "The Constitutional Court, headed at the time by Dr. Kasim

5 Trnka - who will later become an active member of the SDA leadership...."

6 And that was the statement that we talked about a moment earlier.

7 And then if you look at the last paragraph on 46, over into page

8 47, you will see that the authors say that: The SDA was established in

9 March of 1990, the SDS in July of 1990, and MBO in October of 1990.

10 My question, of course, is do you agree with the authors with

11 regard to these matters which I have now brought to your attention? And

12 please feel free to consult the footnote to see what the sources those

13 authors used was.

14 A. I respectfully disagree with the statement that the SDA was

15 founded in 1990, or in March of 1990. I believe I've also in my paper

16 cited a, frankly, better source for the constitutional amendments. If I

17 can look a minute, I can find that for you.

18 I note that footnote number 80, which regards the foundation of

19 the SDA, is a footnote to an essay by Xavier Bougarel in a collection of

20 essays and in no way could be considered a primary source.

21 I am aware that Dr. Trnka at some point became a member of the

22 SDA. I don't encounter him as an active member of the SDA leadership at

23 any point early in the history of the party. I wouldn't necessarily

24 contest this statement but would ask the question of what "later" means,

25 because I think that it may have been substantially later that he became

1 an active member of the leadership.

2 Q. With -- I'm sorry. Are you finished?

3 A. May I just look for my reference on the February constitutional

4 changes?

5 Q. Absolutely, but as you're doing that, you should understand that

6 I'm really not interested in precision with regard to these dates as much

7 as I'm interested in the sequence. Do you understand me?

8 A. Well, I'm very interested in the precision, because you can't have

9 a sequence without precision.

10 Q. That's true. That's true.

11 A. And if you'll note my footnote number 90 --

12 JUDGE AGIUS: We're talking about page 32 of Dr. Donia's report.

13 Correct?

14 THE WITNESS: That's correct, Mr. President. And I believe on

15 page 31 I provided the date of 21 February 1990 that the Assembly passed a

16 law. This is the last sentence on that page, that "... permitted

17 political parties to organise but forbade parties based on national or

18 religion," with a citation to Sluzbeni List, which is the Official

19 Gazette.

20 JUDGE AGIUS: I'm sorry. Maybe I will try to help both of you.

21 It appears from your report, Dr. Donia, page 34 -- sorry, page 35,

22 page 35, that the HDZ party held its founding Assembly in the Great Hall

23 of Skenderija sports complex on my birthday, 18 August 1990. So that

24 seems to be one affirmation that you are making.

25 THE WITNESS: Yes.

1 JUDGE AGIUS: The second affirmation that you are making is

2 further down in the next full paragraph, at the very end of it.

3 "The SDA held its Founding Assembly on the 26th of May in

4 Sarajevo, attended by delegates from 73 ..." whatever.

5 THE WITNESS: Yes.

6 JUDGE AGIUS: So that covers the second one. So certainly the SDA

7 seems to have been founded, constituted before the HDZ for sure, according

8 to you; correct?

9 THE WITNESS: Just to be precise about the formulation,

10 Mr. President, it was the constituent assembly of those parties that were

11 held on these dates, and using that criterion, yes, the SDA was founded

12 first, the SDS second, and the HDZ third.

13 MR. ACKERMAN: Can we move --

14 JUDGE AGIUS: The SDS on page 36, first paragraph, around the

15 fourth line:

16 "Around 3.000 Serbs attended the founding Assembly on 12 July

17 1990."

18 This is, I suppose, the SDS. No?

19 THE WITNESS: Yes, Mr. President, it is.

20 JUDGE AGIUS: Does that coincide with what has been suggested to

21 you by Mr. Ackerman? I mean, I don't want to take over.

22 Please, Mr. Ackerman, go ahead. I was just trying to help clear

23 the picture for you to proceed.

24 MR. ACKERMAN: You're doing just fine, Your Honour. Go ahead if

25 you'd like.

1 JUDGE AGIUS: Yes. Please go ahead.

2 MR. ACKERMAN:

3 Q. I think the question that I asked you, Dr. Donia, was the SDA was

4 formed in March 1990, SDS in July, and HDZ in August. Your report

5 indicates that the SDS [sic] was not really formed until May but agrees

6 with the July and August dates for SDS and HDZ. Fair statement?

7 A. Yes.

8 Q. Okay. The formation of the parties, of course, was founded by

9 elections, and in those elections most of the seats in the Assembly of

10 Bosnia-Herzegovina were won by representatives of the three nationalist

11 parties; correct?

12 A. Yes.

13 Q. Now, there's one thing that I am really curious about, and please

14 understand that I'm -- I don't understand it, and so I'm really asking for

15 an explanation. If you'll look at page 51 of what we've now designated

16 Defendant Brdjanin Exhibit number 1, down toward the bottom of the page

17 where there's a little "x" and some brackets. They say that Fikret Abdic

18 got the most votes and should have been the president as opposed to Alija

19 Izetbegovic.

20 I frankly don't know why that would be true, and is it true that

21 that's what should have happened?

22 A. I agree kind of as a matter of principle that's what should have

23 happened and indeed history might be different if it had, but the way that

24 the inter-party agreement worked was that the party that won the most

25 votes in the election was entitled to designate the president of the

1 Presidency. The party that won the next most votes was entitled to

2 designate the president of the Assembly. And the party that won the

3 third-most votes was entitled to designate the president of the cabinet,

4 essentially the prime ministership. That worked because the members of

5 the Presidency selected the president and the members of the Assembly

6 selected the Assembly president. So the party agreement among the three

7 national parties was what led to this result.

8 Q. When you say "history might have been different if it had gone the

9 other way," I take it you're referring to the difference in positions

10 regarding what should happen in Bosnia-Herzegovina between Izetbegovic and

11 Fikret Abdic.

12 A. Well, there are many differences between the two of them, and I'm

13 not sure that -- I can't speculate on whether things would have been

14 better or worse in the final analysis. But they were very different

15 people.

16 Q. It's true, is it not, that Abdic was in favour of trying to keep

17 Yugoslavia together as a -- the entity that it existed as much as

18 possible?

19 A. I don't know.

20 Q. He was -- he was from that area up around Bihac, a significant

21 Muslim stronghold up in that little pocket up in the corner up there. And

22 he actually wound up fighting against the Bosnian army at one point with

23 his group of Muslim fighters, didn't he?

24 A. Yes.

25 Q. Would you look now, please, at page 63 of Defendant Brdjanin

1 Exhibit 1. Down at the first full paragraph above the bottom, there's a

2 sentence that begins "In the paralysis ..." Do you find that sentence?

3 A. It's the -- I'm sorry. I see the "nationalist revolution," and

4 under that --

5 Q. See the paragraph that starts with "Outside Sarajevo"?

6 A. Yes.

7 Q. Go up six lines from there, and you'll see a sense starting "In

8 the paralysis ..."

9 A. Yes, I have it.

10 Q. "In the paralysis that resulted and thanks to the attrition of

11 non-Muslim cadres in the ministries, the government of Sarajevo came to be

12 largely under SDA control. Since Bosnia-Herzegovina was a highly

13 centralised state, the danger was real that the SDA and the Muslim ethnic

14 community would effectively shut out the other ethnic communities from

15 power, at least at the level of the central government."

16 My question is: Do you agree with that statement by Burg and

17 Shoup?

18 A. No, I don't. If I may, sir, he pronounces it Shoup.

19 Q. Well, he's probably not listening today and doesn't know that I'm

20 mispronouncing his name. So please don't tell him.

21 A. It happens to him often.

22 Q. If you just go down to the bottom of that page, there's a sentence

23 that starts with the words "In Gorazde." Do you see that?

24 A. Yes.

25 Q. "In Gorazde the Muslim SDA began a process of" -- and

1 unfortunately I haven't copied page 64, but the quote goes on to say

2 "began a process of weeding out Serbs from responsible positions." And

3 you've got the book, so if you want to check that, you can. It's at page

4 63 and goes over on to page 64.

5 A. Yes, I see it.

6 Q. And do you agree with that? Are you aware that that happened?

7 A. I don't agree with it, no.

8 Q. Are you telling the Chamber that that did not happen?

9 A. I don't know whether it happened or not.

10 Q. Do you know whether or not if the Konjic municipality in April of

11 1992 the Muslim leadership there created a War Presidency and removed all

12 Serbs from power in the Konjic municipality? Are you aware of that?

13 A. I don't know.

14 Q. Now, it's true, is it not, that initially as these problems

15 started to develop with Croatia and Slovenia wanting to secede and become

16 independent, initially the SDS was in favour of Bosnia-Herzegovina

17 remaining within a federal Yugoslavia?

18 A. Yes, it was.

19 Q. And took that position even if Croatia and Slovenia were to

20 depart?

21 A. The SDS, yes.

22 Q. And would you agree that international law tends to favour keeping

23 a country together than having a country go into dissolution?

24 A. I can't make a judgement on international law. I don't feel I'm

25 qualified to -- to answer that question.

1

2

3

4

5

6

7

8

9

10

11

12 Blank page inserted to ensure pagination corresponds between the French and

13 English transcripts.

14

15

16

17

18

19

20

21

22

23

24

25

1 Q. The SDA, under Izetbegovic, indicated that they had no interest in

2 remaining in a federal Yugoslavia if Croatia were to secede and gain its

3 independence. Is that a fair statement?

4 A. I think I'd have to know when such a statement was made and in

5 what context, because as I indicated in the direct testimony and in the

6 paper, the SDA was trying very hard to straddle these two positions --

7 Q. Yes.

8 A. -- of the HDZ and SDS and can kind of be found on various sides of

9 that issue or be somewhere between them at various times.

10 Q. I think it was immediately prior to June of 1991, when Croatia and

11 Slovenia actually seceded, that Mr. Izetbegovic said that if Croatia left,

12 then he couldn't in good conscience stay within a federal Yugoslavia. And

13 if you agree with that, fine; and if you don't, fine. Just tell me how

14 you feel about it.

15 A. Well, it would not surprise me to find that statement made at that

16 time.

17 Q. Okay. At what point did the European Community get involved

18 actively in what was going on in Yugoslavia?

19 A. In late June of 1991.

20 Q. And one of the things the EC did was form a commission known as

21 the Badinter Commission; correct?

22 A. Yes.

23 Q. And I think the mission of that commission - that's a cute

24 combination of words - the mission of that commission was to study and

25 make recommendations regarding independence and regarding states that were

1 trying to secede at that point from Yugoslavia.

2 A. It was to accept applications for recognition of independence from

3 those republics of Yugoslavia that wished to so apply and to evaluate

4 those applications in terms of certain criteria.

5 Q. And at least at the time that commission was formed, the issue of

6 what was happening and would happen in the former Yugoslavia was pretty

7 much up in the air as to what -- how it was to be treated, until about the

8 29th of November of 1991, when that commission determined that Yugoslavia

9 was a country that was in fact in dissolution.

10 A. I think there was substantial momentum prior to the Badinter

11 Commission's being convened in the direction of independence for Slovenia

12 and Croatia.

13 Q. What the EC finally was resolved to try to accomplish through that

14 commission in other ways was an orderly and co-ordinated recognition

15 process for -- once it was clear that dissolution was happening -- of

16 entities that qualified for recognition.

17 A. Yes.

18 Q. Now, in the process of trying to do that in an orderly and

19 co-ordinated way, Germany jumped the gun and unilaterally on 23 December

20 recognised Croatia and Slovenia.

21 A. Yes.

22 Q. An act that was entirely opposed by the United States and Britain

23 and even the United Nations; yes?

24 A. It was opposed by those countries and bodies, yes.

25 Q. In January 1992, that Badinter Commission with regard to

1 Bosnia-Herzegovina determined that efforts to have Bosnia-Herzegovina

2 recognised as an independent state within its existing borders were

3 contradicted by declarations of Bosnian Serbs in favour of continued

4 membership in Yugoslavia; correct?

5 A. I'm sorry. Could you ask that one more time?

6 Q. Yes. The Badinter Commission, with regard to Bosnia-Herzegovina,

7 was faced with the proposition that unlike Slovenia and Croatia, a

8 significant portion of the population of Bosnia-Herzegovina seemed to be

9 opposed to independence, that being the Bosnian Serbs, and wanted to

10 remain within Yugoslavia.

11 A. The Badinter Commission's conclusion noted the meeting of the

12 Bosnian Serb Assembly on -- I believe it was the 21st of December, and

13 that that Assembly had taken acts which tended toward the formation of a

14 separate Bosnian state, and in order to determine what the popular feeling

15 was, required a referendum to be held.

16 Q. But that was -- was it not based upon the understanding by the

17 Badinter Commission that there was a strong component of the population of

18 Bosnia-Herzegovina that was opposing independence, that being the Serbs?

19 Let's just -- let me refer you to page 96 of the document you have in

20 front of you.

21 If you look about halfway down through the first full paragraph,

22 you'll find a sentence that starts with "In the case of

23 Bosnia-Herzegovina, the Badinter Commission noted ...."

24 A. Yes.

25 Q. "In the case of Bosnia-Herzegovina, the Badinter Commission noted

1 that the government's efforts to declare an independent state within the

2 existing republic borders were contradicted by the declarations of Bosnian

3 Serbs in favour of continued membership in a Yugoslav state. It therefore

4 ruled that the will of the peoples of Bosnia-Herzegovina to constitute the

5 Socialist Republic of Bosnia-Herzegovina as a sovereign and independent

6 state cannot be held to have been fully established. It suggested a

7 referendum of all citizens of the Serbian republic -- of all citizens of

8 the Socialist Republic of Bosnia-Herzegovina as a possible means by which

9 the popular will might be determined."

10 A. Yes. I think that's the way I stated it. They did not make a

11 determination that the Bosnian Serbs favoured continued membership in

12 Yugoslavia. They accepted and noted the declarations, in fact, of the

13 Bosnian Serb Assembly tending toward the formation of a separate state and

14 therefore ordered that the popular will be determined via a referendum.

15 Q. Okay. The Badinter Commission would have at least had some notion

16 at this time of the ethnic make-up of Bosnia-Herzegovina certainly;

17 correct?

18 A. Yes.

19 Q. And they would have certainly had an understanding that there were

20 three primary nationalist parties involved, the SDA, the SDS, and the HDZ?

21 A. Yes.

22 Q. And by pronouncing that -- that the government's efforts to

23 declare independence were contradicted by declarations of Bosnian Serbs in

24 favour of continued membership in the Yugoslav state, by making that

25 pronouncement, they were in effect saying that "Unless you can get all

1 three of your ethnic groups to agree, that independence probably doesn't

2 make sense at this point."

3 A. To be precise about the declarations of the Badinter Commission,

4 they made no determination about the will of the Bosnian Serbs or -- nor

5 in fact did they consult the views of the SDS. They only cited the

6 conclusion of the Bosnian Serb Assembly, which left open the question of

7 whether those representations were in fact representative of a large

8 number of Serbs or others in Bosnia, and that was the basis for their

9 requiring a referendum.

10 I note here you have a secondary source that you're referring to.

11 I believe I referred to the primary source, which was published in

12 Yugoslav survey, in my paper, to the language -- precisely to the effect

13 that I've just indicated.

14 Q. Yes. And I don't think we're in disagreement. The point I'm

15 trying to make is this: The Badinter Commission would have understood

16 that other than the Bosnian Serbs, it appeared that the other

17 constituencies in Bosnia-Herzegovina were in favour of a declaration of

18 independence but didn't have a full understanding of the position of the

19 Bosnian Serbs in that regard and therefore thought there ought to be a

20 referendum.

21 A. Well, I don't know what logic the Badinter Commission went through

22 to arrive at its conclusions. Its conclusions in no way reflected an a

23 priori understanding of the popular will of Bosnias, of Muslims, of Serbs,

24 or Croats.

25 Q. It would not have been unrealistic for Serbs in Bosnia-Herzegovina

1 to interpret what that commission had said as requiring a consensus among

2 the three nations of Bosnia-Herzegovina before they would recommend

3 independence; true?

4 A. No. I can't agree.

5 Q. Well, then why would it have made any difference at all to the

6 Badinter Commission what the Bosnian Serbs thought about independence? It

7 seemed to be the point upon which they refused to recognise the

8 possibility.

9 A. My reading of their decision was that they were asking for a

10 referendum to determine the popular will.

11 Q. They didn't do that in Slovenia and Croatia, did they?

12 A. They did not require a referendum in the case of Slovenia or

13 Croatia.

14 Q. That's because there was apparently no group contesting the

15 proposition that there should be independence, no significant group

16 contesting that proposition in Croatia or Slovenia.

17 A. There certainly was such a group in Croatia.

18 Q. Of significant size?

19 A. Yes. About 600.000 of the Serbs of Croatia were opposed to

20 independence for Croatia.

21 Q. Do you have any idea why there was not a referendum called there?

22 A. A referenda had already been held, I believe, in both Croatia and

23 Slovenia, organised by local authorities.

24 Q. Is there any indication in what the Badinter Commission determined

25 that all they were looking for was a simple majority or that they were

1 looking for a consensus among the national groups?

2 A. I don't -- to my knowledge, they did not define what would

3 constitute the passage of that referendum.

4 Q. A -- a commission that has as its mission to try to make

5 recommendations regarding an orderly process, one would not think that

6 that commission would want to make recommendations that -- that would

7 create disorder, and it was clear, was it not, after the actual referendum

8 had occurred that a significant portion of the population of

9 Bosnia-Herzegovina, that being the Serbs, were very much opposed to

10 independence?

11 A. Yes.

12 Q. Okay. And it's possible, is it not, that the Serbs of

13 Bosnia-Herzegovina, the leadership of the SDS of Bosnia-Herzegovina,

14 believed that if they simply maintained, if they simply maintained an

15 opposition to independence, that it was possible the Badinter Commission

16 would never recommend to the EC that Bosnia-Herzegovina be recognised as

17 an independent state?

18 A. I'm sorry. I've kind of lost your question in that. If you could

19 kindly ask it again, I --

20 Q. I will. I'll try to be clearer. You would concede, I take it,

21 that one of the things that the leadership of the SDS could have concluded

22 was that continued opposition by the Bosnian Serbs to the independence of

23 Bosnia-Herzegovina could prevent the Badinter Commission from recommending

24 the recognition of Bosnia-Herzegovina as an independent state.

25 A. It's conceivable, yes. It's possible that they might reach that

1 conclusion.

2 Q. Are you -- are you aware of a meeting that took place in early

3 November of 1991 - I think that's when it was - between Izetbegovic and

4 Genscher of Germany, Han Dietrich Genscher of Germany?

5 A. I don't have a specific recall of a reference to it, no.

6 Q. Could you look at page 97 and just -- I guess the question that I

7 must ask you then is: Does this refresh your recollection of this

8 incident at all? It's the paragraph beginning with -- the first full

9 paragraph, "This was the situation ..." And you may want to go back and

10 read that so you know what the "this" refers to.

11 A. Okay. I've read the statement.

12 Q. I think we must go back now and talk a little bit about the way

13 the Socialist Federal Republic of Yugoslavia operated with the collective

14 presidency. You know what I'm talking about?

15 A. Well, no, I'm not clear what you're getting at.

16 Q. Okay. I'll be more clear. After the death of Tito, he basically

17 in anticipation of his death left instructions for how the government of

18 Yugoslavia would operate after his death, did he not?

19 A. The way in which Yugoslavia would operate after his death was

20 enshrined in or a part of the 1974 constitution.

21 Q. Right. And that 1974 constitution set up a -- a collective -- I

22 think it's called a collective presidency.

23 A. Yes.

24 Q. So that there were representatives there from each of the

25 republics plus Kosovo, and what other?

1 A. Vojvodina.

2 Q. Vojvodina. Thank you.

3 And -- so that there was a balance there in the collective

4 presidency that would make it difficult for any one particular nation to

5 rule over the others. And that was the intention of the 1974

6 constitution, wasn't it?

7 A. Yes.

8 Q. And when Izetbegovic sees that there is a danger that Slovenia and

9 Croatia could be recognised without the issues of Bosnia-Herzegovina being

10 dealt with in that SFRY collective presidency, two votes that might help

11 protect his constituency would be gone - that would be Slovenia and

12 Croatia - and that would be why he felt like that would put him in a

13 precipitous situation.

14 A. That would be one of many reasons that he would be concerned with

15 that.

16 Q. Yes.

17 A. And it was not clear at the time that recognition even meant

18 withdrawal from the collective presidency, so that would -- that would be

19 one of several considerations that he would have in mind.

20 Q. Okay. It was enough of a concern, according to Burg and Shoup,

21 that Izetbegovic, before his meeting with Genscher was briefed by the

22 German ambassador in Belgrade to make sure Genscher understood what would

23 happen with unilateral recognition of Croatia and Slovenia, that this

24 would create serious problems.

25 Burg and Shoup say right after footnote 153: "The incident

1 remains a puzzle. Izetbegovic would certainly have warned against

2 limiting recognition to Croatia and Slovenia, especially if Germany took

3 this step without the agreement of the remaining members of the EC. We

4 have it on the testimony of a participant in the November 22 meeting,

5 Michael Libal of the German foreign office did not warn Genscher of the

6 danger recognition would pose for Bosnia."

7 I don't know if you agree with Burg and Shoup about the facts of

8 that situation, but you can tell me whether you do or not.

9 A. Well, this is, of course, a secondary account based on memoirs and

10 apparently a possibly private communication from a member of the German

11 foreign office. I certainly find credible that there was a meeting

12 between Izetbegovic and Genscher, but much of this must be looked at as

13 speculative conclusions.

14 Q. All right. I think one of the problems that we have in what we're

15 trying to do here is that there is a great deal about those days that is

16 still not completely fleshed out and understood. There's still a lot of

17 questions, aren't there?

18 A. I would absolutely agree.

19 Q. Yes.

20 A. And that's -- I actually received a call from Professor Shoup two

21 years ago, telling me that they were planning to do a revised edition of

22 this book and asking me who he might search out in Sarajevo to help find

23 some additional information.

24 Q. Okay. And in that kind of a situation where there is so much that

25 is mysterious and unknown, we just kind of do the best we can, don't we?

1 A. I believe we must, yes.

2 Q. Yes.

3 Let's go to January 25th, 1992. In the parliament of

4 Bosnia-Herzegovina, there was a debate going on that day regarding the

5 adoption -- the proposed adoption of a referendum of a proposal on

6 independence -- a referendum on independence. Is that true?

7 A. Yes.

8 Q. And the measure, the proposal, was very much opposed by the Serb

9 members or many of the Serb members of the parliament.

10 A. Yes.

11 Q. And at that time, the president of the Assembly, as you have told

12 us earlier, was a gentleman named Momcilo Krajisnik, a Serb; correct?

13 A. Yes.

14 Q. And Krajisnik, after several hours of debate, adjourned the

15 Assembly.

16 A. Well, he attempted to adjourn the Assembly is the account in, I

17 believe, the source that you're looking at.

18 Q. The Assembly then went back into session, after the Serb

19 representatives all departed, with an SDA member then acting as president

20 of the Assembly; correct?

21 A. Yes.

22 Q. Now -- and the result was that the measure in support of a

23 referendum then passed?

24 A. Yes. Just to be accurate, the following paragraph here in the

25 Burg/Shoup book on page 105 indicates there was 17 hours of debate and

1 what they assess to have been a groping for a compromise prior to that

2 time.

3 Q. Yes. We're going to that. That's where we're going next. But if

4 you want to anticipate me in answer, that's fine with me because that's

5 what -- that's what I wanted anyhow.

6 My next question was: This session was one of those long

7 sessions, 17 hours' worth of debate; correct?

8 A. Yes.

9 Q. And throughout that day, all kinds of efforts were being made in

10 private meetings of leaders and that sort of thing to try to come up with

11 some kind of a solution that would create what would amount to a

12 cantonisation or regionalisation of Bosnia-Herzegovina prior to the

13 referendum being held?

14 A. Much of that discussion centred around the quest for

15 cantonisation.

16 Q. Yes. And around midnight -- this 17-hour thing went late. Around

17 midnight, it appeared that there had been an agreement reached between the

18 SDA and the SDS for a regionalisation or a cantonisation that would make

19 it possible for the referendum to go forward with everyone participating?

20 A. Yes.

21 Q. I think you'll find that -- well, I guess I don't have the --

22 you'll find it on page 106, but I don't think I have a copy of it.

23 Things then deteriorated again when Alija Izetbegovic became

24 concerned that there were conditions being placed on the referendum that

25 he could not accept.

1 A. Yes.

2 Q. The Serb members then of the parliament suggested that the

3 referendum proposal should be sent to the Council for Equality Among the

4 Nations, which was -- was a proposal that had not yet been approved. But

5 the idea behind that was that there would be a body that would have the

6 power to overrule anything that the government might do that did not take

7 into account the needs and desires and protection of any minority nation,

8 very similar to the kljuc concept of Yugoslavia. And do you agree that

9 that was what that Council for Equality Among Nations was designed to

10 accomplish?

11 A. That doesn't have much to do with a kljuc concept, but it was

12 designed to provide each -- representatives of each nationality to review

13 as a nationality laws that affected the interest of their nation.

14 Q. It was -- really was a continuation, was it not, of the Yugoslav

15 concept of "Brotherhood in Unity", that we have nations here that need to

16 get along with each other and to some extent we need to enforce that.

17 A. Yes.

18 Q. Okay. And that didn't work either, and so, as we've discussed,

19 Krajisnik adjourned the session and the Serbs all left.

20 A. Yes.

21 Q. All right. You talked then yesterday about -- we're going to move

22 forward now to February of 1992. The EC was still involved in trying to

23 solve the Bosnia-Herzegovina puzzle, and a mediator by the name of Jose

24 Cutilheiro took over the effort to try to find a solution; correct?

25 A. Yes. Those efforts, in fact, had been ongoing from late 1991.

1

2

3

4

5

6

7

8

9

10

11

12 Blank page inserted to ensure pagination corresponds between the French and

13 English transcripts.

14

15

16

17

18

19

20

21

22

23

24

25

1 Q. Yes. On February 22 and 23, I believe it was, in Lisbon, there

2 was a proposal put forward by Cutilheiro that involved the creation of

3 again kind of a cantonisation of Bosnia-Herzegovina, and that proposal was

4 agreed upon in Lisbon, was it not?

5 A. Yes. We referred to this agreement yesterday.

6 Q. Yes, we did. I want to -- if you go to the very back -- actually,

7 it's not the very back. It's pages 111 and 113 of the materials that I've

8 provided to you. You'll see a couple of maps. And these are maps that

9 were created during this process that was going on with Cutilheiro

10 regarding this cantonisation idea that was accepted by all three parties

11 in February. And the two maps that I've included are the one that

12 Cutilheiro himself proposed and the one that was apparently drawn and

13 proposed by the SDA. Do you see the two maps? You have them, do you

14 not?

15 A. Yes, I do.

16 Q. Do you have any quarrel with these being maps that came from that

17 process with Cutilheiro at that time?

18 A. Yes. The second map is presented in the book as a map adapted

19 from Politika, which is a Belgrade newspaper. So I would not be able to

20 certainly vouch a priori for its authenticity.

21 Q. So you're not able to say that that is an accurate representation

22 of a map presented by the SDA during that conference?

23 A. I'm not able to say that, no.

24 Q. If it is -- let's just -- just for the purposes of asking you one

25 more question, if it is, you note, do you not, that there is virtually no

1 difference between that map and the Cutilheiro map?

2 A. Well, there are a number of significant differences, but the big

3 picture, snapshot, looks very similar.

4 Q. If we look at the area that we're concerned with here, north-west

5 Bosnia, both maps place Bihac and Prijedor in the Muslim districts and

6 then that large area centred around Banja Luka within Serb districts;

7 correct?

8 A. Yes.

9 Q. Okay. After there had been this agreement, and "agreement"

10 perhaps is a little bit strong because it hadn't been completely

11 formalised, but there was an agreement in principle between the three

12 parties in Lisbon to the Cutilheiro cantonisation idea. Almost

13 immediately upon returning to Sarajevo, Izetbegovic announced that he had

14 changed his mind and denounced and withdrew from the agreement, did he

15 not?

16 A. That's not quite the case. He dispatched a letter to

17 Mr. Cutilheiro in which, as I indicated yesterday, citing the Banja Luka

18 Assembly that the proclamation of a constitution of the Serbian republic

19 would make further discussions of the plan pointless.

20 Q. Which was almost a pretense since if the plan were adopted, that

21 other issue wouldn't arise, would it?

22 A. It was a pretense.

23 Q. Yes. All right. I want to go to a different issue now. You have

24 before you the documents that you were referring to yesterday, and under

25 tab 12 in volume 1 is the Prosecution Exhibit 15. Let me know when you've

1 found that.

2 A. Yes, I have that.

3 Q. All right. If you look at the last page of the English

4 translation of that document, the final paragraph is a paragraph you

5 brought to the Chamber's attention yesterday when you were testifying

6 about this document, and that paragraph is -- if this document is a

7 legitimate document, that paragraph refers to the arming of Serbian

8 people, does it not?

9 A. Yes.

10 Q. All of the parties, the Serbs and the Muslims and the Croats, were

11 involved in the process of arming themselves as we get into late 1991,

12 early 1992, were they not?

13 A. Yes.

14 Q. If you'll look now back at Burg and Shoup pages that I've given

15 you, at page 74, the last full paragraph down through footnote 54, where

16 they say this:

17 "All the while, arms were pouring into Bosnia. The JNA began a

18 transfer of arms to the Bosnian Serbs. The Croatian paramilitary group -

19 the Croatian Defence Force - was actively arming its members in

20 Herzegovina. The Bosnian Muslim Green Berets were organised in fall

21 1991. According to Izetbegovic, they numbered between 35,000 and 40,000

22 when the conflict began. The more inclusive Patriotic League was formed

23 at the same time and, in February 1992, drew up a plan for the defence of

24 Bosnia. According to Sefer Halilovic, the League numbered 120.000 members

25 by spring 1992."

1 The first thing I'd like you to do is tell the Chamber who is

2 Sefer Halilovic.

3 A. Sefer Halilovic was, I believe, the first commander of the army of

4 Bosnia-Herzegovina.

5 Q. He also happens to be under indictment at this Tribunal at this

6 time.

7 A. Yes he is.

8 Q. Do you have any quarrel with the pronouncement made there by Burg

9 and Shoup regarding the organisation of all three of these parties,

10 militarily arming themselves and so forth?

11 A. Well, as I indicated in my paper, there's I think reliable

12 evidence that the Patriotic League was organised earlier, starting in May

13 1991. My -- I would just note that Halilovic was a great proponent of the

14 Patriotic League and that number may be high. It may be exaggerated. But

15 other that that, I would accept the statements here.

16 Q. All right. I want to go now to -- as they say occasionally, "And

17 now for something entirely different."

18 The documents that we were dealing with yesterday, one of the

19 things that you see from looking at those documents and studying those

20 documents is the development of significant tension between Radovan

21 Karadzic and what I will call the Pale group, and Vojo Kupresanin,

22 Radoslav Vukic, Radoslav Brdjanin or what I will call the Banja Luka

23 group. There was a significant battle going on between them, was there

24 not, over the issue of -- of what kind of form the Serbs would resolve

25 themselves into and where the seat of that government, whatever it became,

1 was going to be?

2 A. Yes. A substantial disagreement over the organisational form of

3 Bosnian Serb organisations and also the seat of -- of its government.

4 Q. One of the -- one of the announced justifications for the

5 formation of ZOBK and then ARK was that there was a contention by persons

6 in the Krajina area that the concentration of economic resources in

7 Sarajevo was causing the area to be economically neglected?

8 A. Yes.

9 Q. And I think you indicated during your testimony that there really

10 is not a great deal of -- of support for that proposition, as to whether

11 that was an actual thing or simply a perceived thing; correct?

12 A. Yes.

13 Q. If it was -- frequently -- frequently in life our perceptions

14 differ from reality. It really doesn't make a great deal of difference,

15 does it, whether that was the perception that that was happening or the

16 reality that was happening that caused people to believe that it was

17 important to do something to improve the economic situation of the Krajina

18 by forming a regional organisation of some form?

19 A. No, I think it makes a great deal of difference whether a

20 perception has some empirical basis or it does not. So I would not agree

21 with your proposition.

22 Q. You referred to statements made by Dr. Jaksic. Would you tell the

23 Chamber who he is.

24 A. Dr. Jaksic was the director of the Institute of Economics in Banja

25 Luka, and his party -- he was a member of the SDP.

1 Q. Do you know that Dr. Jaksic was one of the forces behind the

2 concept Bosnia-Herzegovina-wide of establishing regions for economic

3 regions?

4 A. Yes.

5 Q. Have you read his book about that?

6 A. No.

7 Q. I haven't either, because it's only in -- written in Serbo-Croat.

8 It is not your contention, is it, that this whole concept of

9 regionalisation was something that was invented by and emanated from the

10 main board of the SDS?

11 A. No, it's not.

12 Q. In fact, when the constitution of Republika Srpska, or the Serbian

13 Republic of the BH, was drafted, it didn't even recognise the existence of

14 ARK or other regional associations in its original form, did it?

15 A. The constitution of Bosnian -- I'm sorry, which constitution would

16 you be referring to?

17 Q. The Serbian constitution of Bosnia-Herzegovina, that original

18 draft constitution that there was such a fight over regarding

19 regionalisation and the capital.

20 A. I don't know what was in the -- what might have been in early

21 drafts.

22 Q. We were looking -- and it would be hard for me to find it, but I

23 probably can -- we were looking at some minutes yesterday where the whole

24 meeting basically was an argument about the draft of the constitution.

25 They were looking at failing to recognise the existence of regions and

1 establish the existence of regions. Do you know what I'm talking about

2 now?

3 A. Yes.

4 Q. Okay.

5 A. And my recollection is that the draft constitution as submitted on

6 the 28th of February did recognise regions but didn't use the language

7 that the Banja Luka group favoured, terms like "autonomy" and

8 "sovereignty." That's my recollection of the difference between the

9 draft constitution and the position taken by the ARK Assembly.

10 Q. Okay. And the -- if you look at your report, at the top of

11 page 66. The failure of those Pale -- the Pale crowd to do what the Banja

12 Luka crowd wanted done resulted in threats to create a totally independent

13 republic of the Krajina; correct? I think that's what you say there on

14 page 66.

15 A. This meeting is in anticipation or on the eve of the proclamation

16 of the republic -- the Serbian Republic on the 9th of January. And so in

17 some sense, in anticipation of that meeting, they expressed this demand

18 for that status for their entity.

19 Q. And also the opposition to the capital being in Sarajevo.

20 A. Yes. If I may, the Pale name is a bit premature because it wasn't

21 until April that this central leadership of the SDS actually went to

22 Pale. It was the Sarajevo group at this point.

23 Q. Okay. The Sarajevo group, about to be the Pale group.

24 A. Yes.

25 Q. Brdjanin was -- expressed his views against the capital being in

1 Sarajevo and said there would be no way to prevent the same old

2 situation. And the same old situation he was talking about was what was

3 perceived to be the economic neglect of the Krajina region; correct?

4 A. Yes.

5 Q. And all of this agitation from the Krajina area was a direct

6 challenge to the authority of Karadzic by the people from the region of

7 the ARK.

8 A. Yes.

9 Q. And this was all going on at the same time that Karadzic was

10 negotiating in the Cutilheiro context for a solution, which would have

11 involved the cantonisation of Bosnia-Herzegovina; correct?

12 A. Yes.

13 Q. And we talked a little bit ago as all of this agitation coming out

14 of the ARK as -- as being a basis that Izetbegovic used to abandon the

15 agreement that had been reached in Lisbon in February.

16 A. His letters only cites the fact that a Serbian -- a constitution

17 is about to be adopted by the Serbian Assembly, as reflected in the

18 debates held in Banja Luka.

19 Q. Right. And that -- then this -- this then prompted Cutilheiro to

20 make the phone call you talked about yesterday, which in effect he told

21 Karadzic he had to keep his Serbs in line if he was going to keep this

22 thing together.

23 A. Yes.

24 Q. And as Karadzic made efforts to control the Serbs from the ARK

25 region, the rift became wider, rather than narrower.

1 A. I don't believe so. I think that the -- from this point in time,

2 which is the 24th or 25th of February, the rift was resolved, not perhaps

3 definitively, but the essential solution was reached within three, four

4 days.

5 Q. Well, if you'll look at your report on page 67. After Karadzic

6 returned from his phone call from Cutilheiro, the meeting degenerated into

7 some fairly serious name calling, with Karadzic accusing Brdjanin of being

8 out of step, of having no right to sabotage what they were trying to do.

9 I mean, that's -- that's language that is not designed to repair a rift

10 but I think make it wider, isn't it?

11 A. He was emphatic in his language in this Assembly, and there is

12 more such language on the -- in the deputy's club meeting of the 28th.

13 Q. Yes.

14 A. However, the rift was essentially repaired at the time the

15 constitution was adopted on the 28th and then endorsed by the ARK Assembly

16 on the 29th in accord with the recommendation of Mr. Krajisnik that the

17 leadership of the Sarajevo SDS meet with the ARK Assembly on the 29th of

18 February.

19 Q. I'm going to refer now to Prosecution Exhibit 33. Now, this

20 document is the meeting of the Assembly of 25 February 1992, is it not?

21 A. Sorry. Let's see here.

22 Q. It's under Tab 29A in my book. But that may not have any relation

23 to yours at all.

24 A. Yes. I have the shorthand notes of the eighth session of the

25 Assembly.

1 Q. Would you look at page 44.

2 A. Yes.

3 Q. And on page 44, it's Karadzic that's speaking. And he says, does

4 he not, that "We cannot allow that five people with personal ambitions

5 destroy our chances. We are very close to achieving our strategic

6 objectives. I do not object if someone has a better plan, Brdjo, for

7 instance, who is responsible to this Assembly, and so he must be because

8 he is a member of this Assembly. If he has a better plan, let him come

9 out with it here."

10 And then skipping just a little bit: "We do not see that he has a

11 better plan."

12 If you go then to the next document, Prosecution's Exhibit 34.

13 And this document is a meeting of the deputy's club of 28 February 1992,

14 isn't it?

15 A. Yes.

16 Q. On page 36, Karadzic speaking again, down near the bottom of the

17 page, the paragraph beginning "We can and we must renounce everyone who

18 refuses to work the way we have agreed, Brdjo and all the rest. When

19 Brdjo appears somewhere, he's like a bomb. He blows up everything. I

20 won't allow it as a psychiatrist and as a party leader. He's crazy. He's

21 not normal." Dr. Karadzic continues: "He doesn't know what he can do and

22 what he can't do."

23 Correct?

24 A. Yes.

25 Q. Let's go now to Prosecution Exhibit 35. It's now 29 February

1 1992, in the Great Hall of the Banja Luka cultural centre. It's a meeting

2 of the 14th session of the Assembly of the Autonomous Region of Krajina,

3 and Radovan Karadzic and Momcilo Krajisnik and Nikola Koljevic and Velibor

4 Ostojic from the Sarajevo Pale group are in attendance; correct?

5 A. Yes.

6 Q. And Karadzic says, looking at page 2, and referring to efforts to

7 have the Krajina region declared a republic:

8 "If a republic of Krajina were declared, all Serbs outside this

9 territory would suffer from the consequences of this decision."

10 That was Cizmovic who said that. Karadzic then stressed that:

11 "It would be a crime again the Krajina if it were declared a

12 republic. Those who advocate such childish ideas are exposing the Serbian

13 people to trouble."

14 Correct?

15 A. Yes.

16 Q. So he then characterises ideas proposed by Brdjanin as being

17 childish.

18 A. Yes.

19 Q. So on more than one occasion, it's fair to say, is it not, that

20 Karadzic has publicly critical and in fact used language that could be

21 characterised as humiliating with regard to Radoslav Brdjanin?

22 A. Yes. In this time between the episode of his being interrupted in

23 the council and this meeting, there are a number of instances of such

24 language in the deliberative bodies with Karadzic so referring to

25 Mr. Brdjanin.

1 JUDGE AGIUS: Yes. Mr. Ackerman, I think if you can conclude on

2 this part, if that doesn't take you more than a couple of minutes.

3 MR. ACKERMAN: I'm in a very good spot to break.

4 JUDGE AGIUS: You are.

5 MR. ACKERMAN: Yes.

6 JUDGE AGIUS: We will resume at ten to one, ten to one.

7 --- Recess taken at 12.30 p.m.

8 --- On resuming at 12.53 p.m.

9 MS. KORNER: Your Honour, while we're waiting for Dr. Donia, may I

10 ask what time Your Honour's going to be sitting today? Simply there are a

11 couple of short administrative matters that I want to raise with Your

12 Honours before Your Honours rise.

13 JUDGE AGIUS: How long do you anticipate it will take you to

14 finish your cross-examination, Mr. Ackerman?

15 MR. ACKERMAN: I'm guessing that I have about an hour and a half

16 left.

17 JUDGE AGIUS: That means we'll go into tomorrow.

18 MR. ACKERMAN: Yes. I expect -- I expect that I would go into

19 tomorrow with what I have.

20 JUDGE AGIUS: And how long do you anticipate these two

21 administrative matters will take?

22 MS. KORNER: Five minutes, no more.

23 JUDGE AGIUS: So I would suppose -- do you have any objection at

24 all if we start with these two administrative matters?

25 MR. ACKERMAN: No, no problem at all.

1 JUDGE AGIUS: Okay. So I will suppose you do that first. Yes,

2 Ms. Korner.

3 MS. KORNER: It's to do with the - I'll say that again - decision

4 that Your Honours handed down the day before yesterday on the Rule 92.

5 May I say genuinely, respectfully, very, very helpful to all of us because

6 we see how Your Honour's mind works.

7 All I wanted to say about that was in relation to Witness 7.167 --

8 JUDGE AGIUS: Wait. I haven't reached that stage as yet where I

9 can memorise the witness numbers and the names. I have it here.

10 MS. KORNER: Your Honour said that he, because of some of the

11 information that he gave, he should attend.

12 JUDGE AGIUS: Yes.

13 MS. KORNER: Your Honours, what I have to say is this: We have a

14 large number of live witnesses already.

15 JUDGE AGIUS: Yes.

16 MS. KORNER: That particular witness would have provided, had Your

17 Honours allowed it, corroborative evidence to be given by two other

18 witnesses. In those circumstances, we do not propose to call him, so that

19 that's quite clear.

20 I should say that this is not to be taken as something we will

21 adopt in each and every case, so that the Defence feel by objecting to

22 each Rule 92 witness that we will drop them. But here we do feel that

23 it's unnecessary to call him because that evidence is effectively already

24 covered.

25 JUDGE AGIUS: So this is 7 --

1

2

3

4

5

6

7

8

9

10

11

12 Blank page inserted to ensure pagination corresponds between the French and

13 English transcripts.

14

15

16

17

18

19

20

21

22

23

24

25

1 MS. KORNER: 7.167.

2 JUDGE AGIUS: Okay.

3 MS. KORNER: Your Honour, that's the first matter.

4 JUDGE AGIUS: Yes.

5 MS. KORNER: In fact there are three matters, really.

6 The second matter is this: We are in the process of pre-numbering

7 the exhibit bundles that have been tendered for Banja Luka municipality.

8 We will provide the Defence with the index showing the pre-numbering. In

9 addition to that, Mr. Inayat is at present carrying out on paper the same

10 exercise that he carried out in court, in other words, individually

11 identifying each document. That, we hope, will be provided to the Defence

12 tomorrow morning. We would ask that if despite that information, there is

13 still going to be an insistence that evidence is given before Your Honours

14 may admit those documents, that we be notified and before we start the

15 evidence from the first witness, and we will put Mr. Inayat back into the

16 witness box.

17 Your Honour, in any event, we intend to for this reason: There's

18 a short - and I mean short; it runs to about 25 minutes - video, which we

19 think may be helpful to Your Honours because it shows many of -- it's one

20 that we made ourselves, but it shows many of the areas that this case will

21 be coming. And I think it helps to look at the actual areas.

22 Finally, Your Honour, can I just ask this: Because we're engaged

23 in the process of planning ahead for this case, it would be helpful if

24 Your Honours and the other branch of this Trial Chamber were able to give

25 any information in the near future about when the Stakic case is likely to

1 have a start.

2 JUDGE AGIUS: I am not in a position to tell you that for the

3 moment. Hopefully I should be in a position, but I can't anticipate

4 any -- any day, anyway. But we will inform you. We will inform you. But

5 we are not in a position to state anything for the present.

6 MS. KORNER: Thank you, Your Honour.

7 JUDGE AGIUS: Okay. Thanks.

8 Now, with regard to what Ms. Korner has suggested, not with regard

9 to Stakic, not with regard to the video, but with regard to the planning

10 ahead, is that acceptable to the Defence?

11 Mr. Ackerman.

12 MR. ACKERMAN: Yes, Your Honour.

13 JUDGE AGIUS: And Ms. Fauveau.

14 MS. FAUVEAU-IVANOVIC: [Interpretation] Yes, Your Honour, and --

15 JUDGE AGIUS: Yes. And with regard to future motions based on 92

16 bis, I'll be very short but I'll make a recommendation. Just food for

17 thought. And then perhaps when you have thought about it, as Milton would

18 have put it, "inwardly digested it," then we can come back and discuss

19 it.

20 My suggestion to you is that provided at -- that at no time --

21 your right to cross-examine, in any case, the witnesses is maintained,

22 very clear, and guaranteed to you -- in fact you have a right to that --

23 perhaps you could, barring few and far between incidents, adopt the

24 procedure of accepting motions by the Prosecution for submission of

25 evidence under 92 bis, because in actual fact, I mean, provided there is

1 nothing illegal or which cannot be permitted under 92 bis in the text and

2 the content of those applications, I suppose your rights remain completely

3 unprejudiced. If cross-examination is forthcoming, not just guaranteed

4 but -- I don't know. Think about it. I mean, the whole idea is to avoid

5 unnecessary work for the Chamber so that we can move ahead. In other

6 words, the same results would be achieved in any case, because there is

7 always the right to cross-examine. So if we can agree, that will at least

8 save on the time of the examination-in-chief and bring on the witnesses,

9 if necessary, to have them cross-examined by you, and the whole scope of

10 the exercise would have been achieved. I don't know. Think about it.

11 There may be pros and cons. Perhaps we can discuss it further some other

12 time.

13 MR. ACKERMAN: I think I understand Your Honour, and I think what

14 you're saying is this: If the Rule 92 bis application is improper in that

15 it is statutorily deficient --

16 JUDGE AGIUS: There is no question about it.

17 MR. ACKERMAN: -- then it should be raised. Yes.

18 JUDGE AGIUS: Like you did, and correctly so and rightly so, in

19 some instances.

20 MR. ACKERMAN: But otherwise, if it is a situation where it is

21 statutorily proper and yet someone who I wish to cross-examine, all I

22 really need to do is let you know that that's someone I wish to

23 cross-examine and not go through the rest of that procedure. I assume

24 that's what you're saying.

25 JUDGE AGIUS: Well, Mr. Ackerman, you are assuming right.

1 Basically what happens is in that in the majority of the cases, when you

2 go through, you read through the statement of the witness that is being

3 proposed to be presented in written form without producing the witness --

4 there are some borderline cases. There are some cases where it is very

5 obvious. There are some cases where it is borderline, and there are some

6 cases which simply do not exist but which are raised just the same for

7 reasons that sometimes we do not understand. What I am suggesting is that

8 unless, unless the objection that arises out of the Rule itself is really

9 manifest on the face of the document itself, you let it go. We admit the

10 statement. You make it clear that you want the witness here for

11 cross-examination. We would have saved a lot of time on

12 examination-in-chief and then we can concentrate on the

13 cross-examination. I mean, it's a suggestion which -- something that we

14 discussed, Judge Janu, Judge Taya, and myself, and we thought of putting

15 it forward to you.

16 MR. ACKERMAN: It's a very good idea and I'm in complete

17 agreement.

18 JUDGE AGIUS: So you think about it and we'll see if it's

19 practical or not. Of course you are not expected not to raise objections

20 when they ought to be raised and when you are practical about raising

21 them.

22 MR. ACKERMAN: Yes. I'm totally in agreement. I think it's a

23 brilliant way to do it. It's a good idea. Thank you.

24 JUDGE AGIUS: And Ms. Fauveau, I do not expect a definitive reply

25 from you because obviously you have to refer the matter to your two

1 colleagues, but I hope that even on your part you understand that this

2 is -- what is being suggested is not to avoid work but to cut on

3 unnecessary -- unnecessary waste of time.

4 MS. FAUVEAU-IVANOVIC: [Interpretation] I completely agree with

5 you, and I'm sure that my colleagues shall also agree with you.

6 JUDGE AGIUS: I thank you. That, I suppose, would be agreeable to

7 the Prosecution as well.

8 MS. KORNER: Your Honour, if I may put a slight potential

9 restriction on this. Some of the witnesses that we have selected to

10 submit to Your Honour should be heard under Rule 92, which only requires

11 attendance for cross-examination if Your Honours order it. There are good

12 reasons; for example, age or infirmity. So I'd like it taken on a

13 case-by-case basis if possible.

14 JUDGE AGIUS: Definitely.

15 MS. KORNER: Yes.

16 JUDGE AGIUS: I didn't have to mention that or refer to that.

17 Point taken, and that's how it will be, obviously.

18 MS. KORNER: Your Honour, the other thing I should have

19 mentioned: In relation to the evidence or the transcript of the late

20 Colonel Kranjc - I'm sure it's not pronounced "crunch," Kranjc - it seems

21 to us a sensible place to deal with that matter will be after the last

22 witness for the Banja Luka municipality who will be dealing with military

23 aspects, and, therefore, Your Honours will be able to assess the weight or

24 otherwise of that transcript after you've heard that evidence.

25 JUDGE AGIUS: And also, also in the meantime, maybe because, as I

1 take it - if my memory is not failing me already - Mr. Ackerman has not

2 objected now to the admission of -- of that testimony because it's --

3 we're talking about the testimony, evidence given in Tadic, no?

4 MS. KORNER: Absolutely. It doesn't affect his client at all. It

5 only has an effect on the case against General Talic.

6 JUDGE AGIUS: So we will -- actually, I think it is wise to wait

7 to give a time, and we wait until maybe the counsel for General Talic

8 would have had enough time to consider, reconsider their position.

9 MS. KORNER: Yes.

10 JUDGE AGIUS: Then obviously it is a point which would need some

11 submissions, which has been decided by this Tribunal before and on which

12 there have been some -- on which there has been some controversy. Anyway,

13 I mean I do not want to open the chapter now. I agree with you. Perhaps

14 counsel for General Talic should make a note of what Ms. Korner is

15 suggesting, that this matter will come up for deliberation towards the end

16 or at the very end of the Banja Luka chapter. Okay?

17 MS. FAUVEAU-IVANOVIC: [Interpretation] I agree with Mrs. Korner,

18 and I think at the end of this part it would be appropriate to decide on

19 the admissibility of the transcript of Colonel Kranjc.

20 JUDGE AGIUS: So I think we can call Dr. Donia again once more.

21 We will stop at -- as usual, at quarter to two, Mr. Ackerman. So you have

22 35 minutes. And if you feel more comfortable stopping earlier, you are

23 closing a chapter or part or whatever, I mean you are at liberty to do

24 that.

25 Yes, Mr. Ackerman.

1 MR. ACKERMAN: Thank you, Your Honour.

2 Q. Well, Dr. Donia, are you ready to go forward?

3 A. Yes, sir.

4 Q. I think I said, "Now for something entirely different and in

5 brief." Rather than go to the document -- I think you'll remember the

6 document I'm talking about. It's Prosecutor's Exhibit 37, and it was that

7 document which instructed from Vojo Kupresanin to municipalities that they

8 had no obligation to assist in holding the referendum of the 29th of

9 February. You remember the document.

10 A. Yes. I have it here.

11 Q. All I wanted to ask you was: You have no information or document,

12 do you, that any effort was made to actively prevent the referendum from

13 going forward, to prevent it from happening in that same manner?

14 A. No.

15 Q. Okay. Near the close of your testimony yesterday, you were

16 talking about the superior armament of the JNA and as it became the army

17 of Republika Srpska, and it occurred to me that the impression that may

18 have been left that there was -- in fact, I think it was almost said that

19 there was very little Muslim or Croat military capacity in the area that

20 we're talking about.

21 During -- also during your testimony, you mentioned that there was

22 dispute - and when I say "dispute" I mean military dispute, that there was

23 actual fighting - over the corridor that would connect the Krajina area to

24 Serbia, and it's the corridor that I want focus on for just a moment.

25 Do you agree that this corridor was actually seized and closed off

1 by a combined Croatian-Muslim offensive early in the war, which offensive

2 advanced on the city of Doboj and placed it under siege?

3 A. I don't know.

4 Q. Would you look, please, at page 133 of the Burg and Shoup book,

5 beginning with the paragraph "In June 1992 ..."? Do you see what I'm

6 referring to? Page 133. It's the last -- it's the last page of defendant

7 Brdjanin Exhibit 1.

8 Have you found the paragraph I'm referring to?

9 A. Yes, I have.

10 Q. It reads, does it not:

11 "In June 1992, the Serbs launched their first attack in the war,

12 most likely with the forces from Serbia, and won back areas seized by the

13 combined Croat-Muslim force in Central Bosnia in May." That's what it

14 says, isn't that true?

15 A. Yes.

16 Q. Do you have any reason to quarrel with that?

17 A. I just don't know if I can accept it at face value or disagree

18 with it.

19 Q. It goes on then after another sentence about Bihac:

20 "The Serbs also failed to establish a secure corridor in the north

21 between Banja Luka to the west and Semberija and Serbia to the east. They

22 were unable to take the town of Gradacac, which lay to the south of the

23 corridor, or the town of Orasje to the north."

24 That's what Burg and Shoup say; correct?

25 A. Yes.

1 Q. And again I take it it's your position that you just don't know.

2 A. Well, I see a single footnote here to I believe a story by Borba

3 of the Belgrade newspaper, and it may be I just don't know. On that

4 basis, I would not conclude that this would be a definitive account.

5 Q. Look, please, then, if you will, at Prosecution Exhibit 33,

6 page 60.

7 A. Okay. I have that in front of me, page 60.

8 Q. Yes. The speaker is Vojo Kupresanin. And if you look at the

9 bottom of page 60, Mr. Kupresanin says: "I think we know what will happen

10 if the Republic of Krajina is proclaimed. We don't hold Doboj. We do not

11 have a crossing to Semberija. We cannot wage war for even five days

12 because we will find ourselves without fuel."

13 That tends to be confirmation, at least in part, of what Burg and

14 Shoup are saying about the corridor and Doboj being in the hands of

15 non-Serb forces, does it not?

16 A. Yes, it would.

17 Q. It doesn't sound from this like the Muslim Croat forces who are

18 able to keep the Serbs from catching the towns of Gradacac and Orasje and

19 are able to take that corridor and hold it is a hollow force, incapable of

20 any military activity, because of the superior armament of the Serb

21 forces, does it?

22 A. Well, the -- there's two parts to your question, I think. One is

23 concerning the Croat forces. And I would say as far as the Croat forces

24 is concerned, your statement is correct.

25 The Muslim forces were in worse shape than the Croats at this

1 point and were -- were characterised by these local TO units.

2 Q. But it's safe to say the Muslim forces were rapidly being supplied

3 with significant weaponry, isn't it?

4 A. It depends a little on the area and the particular location of

5 units that you're talking about. And I just don't have information about

6 how that process went forward at this time.

7 Q. Let me ask you if you know this: Do you know that in the

8 municipality of Konjac there was a major Yugoslavian arms manufacturing

9 facility?

10 A. Yes.

11 Q. Do you know also in the municipality of Konjac there was a major

12 cache of weapons and materiel at a place called Celebici?

13 A. Yes.

14 Q. Do you know that in April of 1992 Muslim forces took control of

15 both that arms factory and the Celebici cache, if it existed?

16 A. I'm aware that they did that. I wouldn't know that it was April,

17 but I would believe that that's about the time that it took place.

18 Q. All right. On Tuesday, you were discussing the decisions in the

19 various municipalities to join the ZOBK. In your testimony, you indicated

20 that Banja Luka did not vote to join until the end of April 1991,

21 significantly after the others had voted to join. Correct?

22 A. Yes. I believe it was the 29th of April or within a day of that.

23 Q. And in connection with that testimony, you mentioned that one SDS

24 member objected when Banja Luka voted to join ZOBK. Do you remember

25 that?

1 A. Yes.

2 Q. Do you know who that was?

3 A. I believe I noted it in a paper, but I can't recall right offhand

4 who that was.

5 Q. You were talking about the various municipalities in that region

6 that were invited to join. Were there any municipalities that were part

7 of the ARK region that were not invited to join?

8 A. As I looked at the -- interpreted the invitation, it was an open

9 invitation to all municipalities in the ARK area, including the areas of

10 Cazin, Bihac, and Velika Kladysa.

11 Q. There's a reason I asked that. On page 48 of your report, you

12 have a Table 2. You have a list of the nationality and municipalities

13 invited to join ZOBK, apparently after the assembly; correct?

14 A. Yes.

15 Q. And what I'm wondering is were there municipalities that were not

16 invited to join that were located in this ARK area that we're talking

17 about?

18 A. I believe the invitation to join was an open one. But exactly who

19 it may have been extended to and who it was not, I don't have that

20 information.

21 Q. I think you -- and maybe it was just with me that this impression

22 was left. But I think the impression was left from your testimony that

23 there was something extraordinary and bizarre, if looking at Table 2,

24 about an invitation to municipalities which had virtually no -- no Serb

25 members to join. And if every municipality in the ARK area was invited to

1 join, that wouldn't really be very significant, would it?

2 A. I've been -- I think I spelled out my understanding of this

3 invitation process at this point was that it was voluntary. It was

4 extended to municipalities which had -- which did not have a Serb

5 majority, as well as those that had a -- either a substantial Serbian

6 population or a Serbian absolute majority.

7 Q. I'm going to do a bit of skipping around. The -- and maybe we can

8 do it rather quickly without having to look at all these documents.

9 The Prosecutor's Exhibit number 25 is the Variant A/B document.

10 And the Variant A/B document -- I do have to look at it. If you look at

11 the document up in the upper -- and I'm looking only at the English

12 translation, of course. On the first page, in the upper left-hand corner,

13 it indicates that its source is the Serbian Democratic Party of Bosnia and

14 Herzegovina Main Board; correct?

15 A. Yes.

16 Q. If you go, then, to its very last page, it indicates that the

17 source is the SDS Crisis Staff.

18 A. Yes.

19 Q. Do you have any indication that there was even such a thing on

20 December 1991 as an SDS Crisis Staff, beyond this document itself?

21 A. Well, there were -- I don't know that this is a definitive source

22 that I would accept. But reports of an SDS Crisis Staff being formed as

23 early an October 1991, they were carried in press reports.

24 Q. So you've heard of it --

25 A. Yes.

1 Q. -- prior to December 1991?

2 A. Yes.

3 Q. Okay. This particular document we're referring to, this

4 Variant A/B document, yesterday you characterised it as a complex

5 document; right?

6 A. Yes.

7 Q. And it's couched more in terms of recommendations to the various

8 municipalities than it is orders that "you must do this," although there's

9 some later material that you're probably going to want to talk about. But

10 that's the way it's couched, in terms of its language, isn't it?

11 A. No.

12 Q. You would disagree.

13 A. I would suggest it's very clear that -- for example, in point one,

14 the second item on page 2: "The tasks, measures, and other activities

15 that are laid out in these instructions will be carried out in order to

16 increase mobility and readiness."

17 Q. So I guess you'd agree with me that one of two things is true: It

18 either was seen by certain people as simply being a series of

19 recommendations or ideas; or certain people simply ignored it because it

20 has a date of December, and in March there were still municipalities that

21 had not followed it at all.

22 A. Yes. I would opt for the second explanation simply because there

23 was so much resistance to these instructions expressed, starting on the

24 11th of December and, in fact, a number of municipalities after the

25 instructions were issued.

1

2

3

4

5

6

7

8

9

10

11

12 Blank page inserted to ensure pagination corresponds between the French and

13 English transcripts.

14

15

16

17

18

19

20

21

22

23

24

25

1 Q. So the SDS was not marching in -- toward this objection. There

2 was quite a lot of dissension about it.

3 A. I think, yes. Dissension and even resistance in various

4 municipalities.

5 Q. Now, one thing that -- that I think maybe has not been made

6 completely clear, and I think it's the case that in many of the

7 municipalities where Serbs were in a minority, and therefore Variant B

8 would have come into play, that the Serb municipalities that were formed

9 were secretly formed, that they were not public but secret organisations.

10 Isn't that true?

11 A. Well, some of them were. Many were announced publicly at the time

12 they were formed. There's one case where I think in the -- one of the

13 Sarajevo suburbs they took the decision on the 3rd of January and

14 announced it on the 10th of January publicly. So I think both cases were

15 true.

16 Q. Yes. Some of them were secret.

17 A. Yes.

18 Q. That's really all I was asking. Could you look, please, at --

19 it's tab 40 of Prosecution Exhibit 44.

20 A. Yes, I have that.

21 Q. This is a communication, is it not, from Vojo Kupresanin of the

22 Autonomous Region of Krajina to the Presidency of the Serbian Republic of

23 Bosnia and Herzegovina?

24 A. Yes.

25 Q. And it is dated 17 July, 1992.

1 A. Yes.

2 Q. Do you know of any communication, either from the -- the ARK or

3 its Crisis Staff to the Presidency of the Serbian republic, or any

4 communication from the republic to ARK or its Crisis Staff between the

5 dates of roughly the 1st of April, 1992, and this date 17 July?

6 A. I would have to review this material, but I -- I don't know

7 offhand of any.

8 Q. Have you seen any response to this document by the Presidency?

9 A. No.

10 Q. Do you have anything that would make it possible for you to state

11 with certainty that it was even sent?

12 A. I note it's signed and stamped, but I think that's no guarantee

13 that it was sent.

14 Q. These assemblies, and we've talked for the last several days about

15 various assemblies, we've talked about the SDS assemblies, the assemblies

16 of -- of the Republic of Bosnia-Herzegovina, the assemblies of ZOBK and

17 ARK, all of these assemblies are, by design, chambers of delegates,

18 basically, in the form of a formally deliberate legislative body. That's

19 kind of a basic view of them, is it not?

20 A. Yes.

21 Q. And legislative bodies basically function in democratic

22 institutions as a group of elected representatives of the people whose

23 task is to pass laws and resolutions and things of that nature, to govern

24 the particular entity that they are an assembly of?

25 A. That's the way they function in democratic institutions, yes.

1 Q. And there is another -- as a general proposition, there are two

2 additional bodies. There is an executive that carries out the laws that

3 are passed by these assemblies or legislatures, and then usually there's a

4 third branch which is the judiciary. Fair statement?

5 A. Yes. Not quite so clear-cut in some societies, but as a general

6 principle, I would agree.

7 Q. And you told us yesterday that the whole concept of a Crisis Staff

8 was to be a body that would replace and take the place of the Assembly

9 when under crisis conditions the Assembly could not meet and conduct its

10 business.

11 A. Yes. I think I characterised it as a body that would act in the

12 name of the Assembly under certain specified conditions, war, threat of

13 war.

14 Q. Well, I think what you said, which probably doesn't -- isn't

15 exactly correct, was that it was a body created to carry out executive

16 functions in place of the Assembly, and the Assembly doesn't carry out

17 executive functions, does it?

18 A. Well, it can. The formulation, as I understand it, the two

19 organisations that existed were the Assembly per se and the Executive

20 Committee, and the Executive Committee was not really an independent

21 executive branch. It derived its authority and was kind of an executive

22 organ for the -- for the Assembly.

23 Q. Well, looking specifically at the ARK Assembly, there was an

24 Executive Committee of the ARK, was there not?

25 A. Yes.

1 Q. And that Executive Committee was headed by a person by the name of

2 Nikola Herceg; correct?

3 A. He was one of the two people who headed it, I believe, during the

4 time that I looked at.

5 Q. And do you know or do you not that that Executive Committee

6 continued to function on virtually a daily basis throughout the entire

7 period from April to December?

8 A. From April to December of 1991?

9 Q. 1992.

10 A. 1992. No, I don't know that.

11 Q. Could you go now please to Prosecution Exhibit 52.

12 A. I have that.

13 Q. Yesterday you pointed out to the Trial Chamber language from

14 page 2 where Karadzic is talking basically about how brilliant it was for

15 him to ask for Mladic.

16 A. Yes.

17 Q. Are you aware of a time when Karadzic tried to fire Mladic, remove

18 him as Commander of the VRS?

19 A. No, not specifically. I know that relations were not great

20 between them at several points in time.

21 Q. Are you aware that there was a time when -- when the General Staff

22 basically threatened to revolt if he insisted that Mladic be removed?

23 A. No.

24 MR. ACKERMAN: Your Honour, I'm kind of going to somewhere else.

25 Maybe this would be a good time.

1 JUDGE AGIUS: That brings today's sitting to an end. Dr. Donia,

2 I'm afraid you will have to come again tomorrow, and hopefully

3 Mr. Ackerman should finish his cross-examination of you within an hour.

4 Is that correct?

5 And then of course there is the further cross-examination from the

6 Defence team for General Talic, which should not take long according to

7 what Ms. Fauveau hinted yesterday.

8 Yes, Ms. Korner.

9 MS. KORNER: Your Honour, in relation to cross-examination on

10 behalf of General Talic, can I just mention this: It is General Talic's

11 defence who have been making, if I can put it this way, not impolitely,

12 the most song and dance about what they describe as the Prosecution's view

13 of history. I have no doubt that Ms. Fauveau has it well in mind, but if

14 there is a serious dispute on anything that Dr. Donia has said such that

15 they intend to call an expert on it, it should be put to Dr. Donia,

16 otherwise we'll end up having to have Dr. Donia back again.

17 JUDGE AGIUS: No, no, Dr. Donia will certainly not come back again

18 unless his presence and statement is required by the Trial Chamber

19 itself. I mean, Dr. Donia's cross-examination will be concluded tomorrow

20 and that will be the end of Dr. Donia.

21 I'm quite aware, because more or less I suffer from almost a

22 photographic memory, of what Mr. de Roux had said, that, "Mrs. Korner, you

23 bring Dr. Donia. We are not impressed. We can bring as many

24 Dr. Donias."

25 So you are obviously entitled to bring as many Dr. Donias as you

1 like, but you are expected to conclude the cross-examination of this

2 Dr. Donia tomorrow, and that will be the end of the story of this

3 Dr. Donia. Then obviously you're sure you --

4 MS. KORNER: Your Honour, A, there's re-examination. I know

5 Mr. Cayley does have a few matters that he wants to deal with in

6 re-examination.

7 JUDGE AGIUS: That's tomorrow.

8 MS. KORNER: That's tomorrow. Your Honour, the point I'm really

9 making is that unless it is put to Dr. Donia what is in dispute,

10 Your Honour won't be able to hear how he deals with it, whether he agrees

11 with it or doesn't agree with it.

12 JUDGE AGIUS: No, no. The chapter will be closed tomorrow. I

13 expect the cross-examination from Ms. Fauveau, because she's the one who

14 is present. And that will conclude matters, as far as I am concerned, for

15 General Talic, too.

16 MS. KORNER: Yes. Well, Your Honour, perhaps I think at the

17 moment I'm not making myself quite clear.

18 JUDGE AGIUS: In other words, tomorrow's cross-examination is not

19 going to be the introduction for a further cross-examination later on or

20 for a further request to bring Mr. -- tomorrow Mr. Donia -- we conclude

21 with Dr. Donia tomorrow, definitely.

22 MS. KORNER: I think Your Honour --

23 JUDGE AGIUS: Because otherwise you can't hold the trial like

24 that.

25 MS. KORNER: No, Your Honour. What I'm saying is this:

1 Effectively it goes back to the Rule I referred Your Honour to earlier,

2 that is for the Defence to put its case. In other words, if they say

3 Dr. Donia is completely wrong about an aspect, that must be put, because

4 otherwise if they call an expert and it's never been put to Dr. Donia, so

5 he hasn't been able to explain why he agrees or disagrees with that, the

6 net result is that we may be having to make an application to bring him

7 back. That's all I'm saying, Your Honour.

8 MR. ACKERMAN: And I would say that that request is almost

9 preposterous. I haven't yet chosen an expert on history. I haven't had a

10 chance to talk to my expert on history. I haven't prepared any testimony

11 by my expert on history. And I am not an expert on history myself. And I

12 have no idea what I might learn in talking with that expert that I want

13 him to testify about when he comes here. So the proposition that I should

14 tell Dr. Donia today what it is that expert is going to say, so he can

15 either accept it or deny it, is just ridiculous. That just can't happen.

16 JUDGE AGIUS: I think you are moving one step further than what

17 Ms. Korner said. Ms. Korner --

18 MR. ACKERMAN: I don't think so.

19 JUDGE AGIUS: [Previous translation continues] ... what Ms. Korner

20 has said, that if you are contesting something from what Dr. Donia said in

21 his examination-in-chief or in his report that was filed by Prosecution,

22 you do it now in the course of your cross-examination. You will -- the

23 way that this Tribunal -- this Trial Chamber looks at things is that you

24 knew beforehand that at some point in time in the course of the hearing of

25 this trial, there would have come up the historical aspects. And I cannot

1 allow a situation to obtain whereby someone comes and says, "But I did not

2 prepare that part before we started the trial." No. You are expected to

3 have prepared that part. And if you haven't, you will have to suffer the

4 consequences. I am sorry.

5 MR. ACKERMAN: I totally agree. That's not what I'm saying.

6 JUDGE AGIUS: So in other words, I mean, to me it's difficult to

7 reconcile what you are saying, especially that you agree with me, that

8 what you are asserting, that you don't even know who your historical

9 expert is going to be. You are expected by this Trial Chamber to have

10 already known who your historical expert is going to be and to have

11 consulted him before actually starting your cross-examination of

12 Dr. Donia. That's how trials ought to be conducted. Otherwise, we would

13 be swimming in a notion which -- ocean which is even vaster than all the

14 oceans of the world put together, and we would never start and we would

15 never end.

16 Okay. So we'll rise. We'll reconvene tomorrow 9.00, this same

17 courtroom again.

18 --- Whereupon the hearing adjourned

19 at 1.46 p.m., to be reconvened on Friday,

20 the 1st day of February, 2002, at 9.00 a.m.

21

22

23

24

25