1 Tuesday, 5 December 2006

2 [Open session]

3 [The accused entered court]

4 --- Upon commencing at 2.19 p.m.

5 JUDGE BONOMY: We did indicate that we would make a determination

6 in relation to the admission of P407. Before making a final decision on

7 that, I would ask Mr. Marcussen if he would explain to us again the use he

8 considers that we might make of this as a freestanding document, and

9 secondly, to make any further submissions he wants to make about its

10 general reliability.

11 Mr. Marcussen.

12 MR. MARCUSSEN: Thank you, Your Honours. Now, as for the use of

13 the document, as I indicated yesterday, it's the Prosecution's submission

14 that this particular document is -- is a good reference document, a sort

15 of one-stop shop which gives an overview of incidents occurring in Kosovo

16 both in terms of crimes committed by the KLA and acts considered -- or

17 concern -- committed by the Serb side.

18 During the case there has already been a number of references to

19 events and acts carried out by both sides in this conflict. There have

20 been, yesterday, for example, an issue of whether or not there was a rise

21 or fall in the conflicts, and this particular document gives an overview

22 on a day-by-day basis of what was going on in Kosovo. So we would submit,

23 as I said, this is a one-stop shop. Although it is a long document, it

24 gives, in a relatively brief form, an overview of the events in Kosovo for

25 the period of time that the KVM was in Kosovo, plus some time after

1 Kosovo -- sorry, after the KVM had left Kosovo.

2 As to the reliability of the information, we got a fairly

3 extensive explanation by General Drewienkiewicz yesterday as to how

4 this -- this document was created, how there were written reports being

5 sent up from field offices of the KVM to the Fusion Cell which was

6 responsible for compiling all this information, assessing the reliability

7 of the information. This assessment was made by trained analysts,

8 principally, former intelligence officers who have experience in assessing

9 this kind of information, and when deemed credible, the information was

10 included in the various reports that the KVM did, including the blue book.

11 There has been a number of -- there have been a number of

12 documents that have been referred to both by the Prosecution and the

13 Defence during this case where some of the underlying documents and also

14 excerpts of the blue book have been presented as being a true reflection

15 of events on certain days in Kosovo. To a large extent, it seems that the

16 contents of this book is actually already accepted by both parties.

17 I would submit that there's a difference between the concern that

18 has been raised in the context of "As Seen, As Told" and then the blue

19 book, in that one of the concerns in "As Seen, As Told" has been whether

20 or not the underlying -- witness evidence that has been summarised in "As

21 Seen, As Told" is real liable. I think this is a very different kind of

22 document in that we have direct recordings coming from KVM monitors on the

23 ground in Kosovo reporting to the Fusion Cell, who then compiled the

24 information and disseminated in the blue book. And the entries in the

25 blue book are such that when hearsay information is passed on, that's

1 normally reflected in the entries. So on this basis, we submit that the

2 evidence is reliability and it's the way it can be assessed.

3 JUDGE BONOMY: Is all the underlying material disclosed?

4 MR. MARCUSSEN: There is a vast of -- a vast amount of KVM and

5 OSCE material that has been disclosed. I would be reluctant to state that

6 all the underlying material has been disclosed. I'm simply not certain of

7 that. But there have has been a lot disclosed and certainly, I think,

8 about the key events that have been discussed Vukovar, Racak. Also

9 evidence about some of the group heard of individual killings and, I

10 think, at one point, we heard about the killing of an individual policeman

11 and attempts by his family to rescue this -- sorry, a soldier who got

12 caught by the KLA and attempts to rescue him. That was brought up in

13 cross-examination and some of these documents relied on it. A lot of that

14 material has been disclosed at least.

15 JUDGE BONOMY: But where there's a report in a paragraph that says

16 KVM patrol came across something and reported what they saw, perhaps

17 people shot, an investigation going on, is there an underlying report that

18 will be available on that, or does that vary from example to example?

19 MR. MARCUSSEN: As I said, I have -- I'm not in a position to say

20 that for every single incident there is an underlying report.

21 JUDGE BONOMY: Okay.

22 MR. MARCUSSEN: So --

23 JUDGE BONOMY: Can I take it then that when it comes to the

24 submissions in due course where a report in the blue book has never been

25 referred to and explored, there's no question of you inviting us to give

1 it weight as helping to establish a fact or as the basis for drawing a

2 conclusion? You simply view it as background material that gives a

3 general picture of events on the ground.

4 MR. MARCUSSEN: I think one -- one of the issues in this case, and

5 I think we see it in one way developing more and more on the evidence,

6 some of the trends and developments in -- in the -- how things unfolded in

7 Kosovo, and we would be happy if the document is admitted as a background

8 document. I suspect it might be a useful document, actually, later on to

9 get a picture of development in activity in Kosovo and, therefore, to be

10 used as part of the evidence to be considered when some of the sort of

11 broader inferences are to be made in this case.

12 JUDGE BONOMY: Let me give you an example. You may come across a

13 passage that said yesterday there were 50.000 people amassed on the border

14 of Macedonia and now they've disappeared, and it looks as though they've

15 maybe gone home. Would you invite us, without that having been explored

16 at all, to use it as a piece of material that would support the idea that

17 there were 50.000 people amassing on the border on that particular day.

18 MR. MARCUSSEN: In principle, I would say yes, but I would do it

19 with this modification, though: I think at the end of the day when the

20 Chamber is to assess the evidence in this case and look at the different

21 facts of the case, you would be looking at the totality of the evidence on

22 record, and there are some issues that are more significant than others.

23 And I think for sort of the bigger issues there will be more evidence

24 available than the blue book and, therefore, it would just be one piece of

25 a puzzle on some of these things. But there are smaller incidents

1 reported in the book where I think it might be appropriate simply to

2 accept the entry in the blue book as being a correct reflection of the

3 events.

4 I mentioned this example that had been brought up on

5 cross-examination, I think, a number of times, where, as I understand, we

6 all agree a soldier straight off leaving his post, going home, he went

7 home in his uniform, not with his weapon, but he went home in his uniform,

8 he was intercepted by the KLA. Two family members went out to try to

9 recover their son. They got shot. Incident reported. Now, that's a

10 small piece in the puzzle, and on something like that --

11 JUDGE BONOMY: Well, my recollection is that the only witness

12 whose spoken to that denied that's what happened.

13 MR. MARCUSSEN: Or denied knowledge of it.

14 JUDGE BONOMY: And -- no, not denied knowledge of it. He was

15 prepared to give you an assertion that the events were different from

16 those being portrayed and perhaps generally agreed here.

17 MR. MARCUSSEN: But -- yeah. I mean, as I said --

18 JUDGE BONOMY: A better example might be the shooting of the last

19 Serb in the village near Podujevo where you may -- there may be some

20 agreement, I don't know.

21 MR. MARCUSSEN: We would -- as a general matter, we would submit

22 that the contents of the report is sufficiently reliable to be used as

23 evidence of the facts on the ground in Kosovo. There might be instances

24 where things have not been correctly reported, and that is coming out in

25 the evidence, but in general, we would submit that the report can be

1 accepted as reflection of what was going on in Kosovo. But as I said, if

2 the Chamber thinks that is not an appropriate way to use the document, we

3 would nonetheless submit that, at least for reference purposes, this can

4 be used and would be used. Thank you.

5 JUDGE BONOMY: Thank you.

6 Mr. O'Sullivan, do you want to add anything to what you said?

7 MR. O'SULLIVAN: I'd just like to briefly respond to what my

8 learned friend just said. First off, this document is not accepted by the

9 parties. We contest this document. Specific portions of it have been

10 used during the examination and cross-examination, and when these specific

11 portions are used and put specifically to witnesses at different times, we

12 say that's completely in compliance with this letter and the spirit of

13 your order of July on the use of these voluminous documents.

14 We contest the underlying evidence that supports this. We contest

15 both the objectivity of the KVM. We object as well, to give one example,

16 the ability of the KVM to observe the situation accurately. General DZ

17 said that there were several hundred KLA. We heard that the Chief of

18 Staff said there were 18.000 KLA. I won't comment any further on that. I

19 illustrate that to say that we don't rely on -- the underlying reports

20 furnished by KVM are both biased and unreliable.

21 There's portions of this report dealing with Racak. Racak is not

22 in the indictment. It's struck from General DZ's testimony.

23 JUDGE BONOMY: Let me just make one thing clear about

24 cross-examination. Even where it is used in cross-examination, if -- if

25 the witness doesn't accept the propositions being put to him, then the

1 matter hasn't been advanced any and the document's as worthless in that

2 situation as it was before it started. Obviously, the opportunity remains

3 for you to rectify that by establishing the events in some other way.

4 MR. O'SULLIVAN: Your point's well taken, Your Honour.

5 In addition, I would say that the Prosecution cannot demonstrate

6 that the underlying material has been disclosed or is complete and has no

7 ability to verify that underlying material. We say, as we said yesterday,

8 picking up on what my learned friends have said, that your order of the --

9 of July was -- was designed to avoid having irrelevant material with no

10 probative value in the record, which would only lead to confusion at the

11 end of the case to say whether or not and disputes over whether or not a

12 certain portion or section of a document should come in. When it's dealt

13 the other way, as you say, where it's either adopted by a witness as being

14 accurate and truthful or through stipulation, then there will be a neater

15 record and a tidier arguments at the end of this case.

16 JUDGE BONOMY: Our general impression is that this material, and I

17 use this relatively, that this material bears the impression of being more

18 reliable than the Human Rights' material. That's a matter of impression

19 and relativity. I'm not suggesting that it makes it reliable in the sense

20 of justifying admitting it, but it makes it look more generally reliable

21 as we see it.

22 MR. O'SULLIVAN: I've already stated our position about how we

23 feel about the KVM.

24 JUDGE BONOMY: Thank you. Mr. Ivetic, is there anything you want

25 to add?

1 MR. IVETIC: Just to touch on the last point Your Honour made. I

2 tend to view this report in two phases. There was the phase when the KVM

3 was on the ground and when the observations were based upon what they saw

4 and there is the phase after they withdrew that's based upon secondhand

5 information. So I stress that's something that needs to be taken into

6 account, particularly when we see from the general's testimony yesterday,

7 that they look at the reliability in terms of whether something is

8 confirmed by other sources and without knowing what those sources are and

9 in fact having some indications that some of the sources they used are

10 indeed the Human Rights Watch -- the human rights groups analyses that has

11 been found to be questionable, then we really can't -- we can't really

12 appraise the reliability of those aspects of the report that come after

13 the withdrawal of the -- of the KVM mission.

14 And as for the parts prior, that's -- that's the provenance of

15 cross-examination to examine certain of those -- those incidents to see --

16 to test the knowledge of various witnesses we have had coming here from

17 the KVM. But I think with respect to the events that are reported as

18 happening after the withdrawal is virtually impossible to test that

19 material with any of the witnesses since it is secondhand and we really

20 don't know what all the sources are so as to be able to challenge it. So

21 that's one of the -- one of the problems. And I just stress that we have

22 to kind of look at the report in those two veins, the vein of part of the

23 report that was undertaken while they were on the ground and the part that

24 was undertaken while they were outside of the territory.

25 JUDGE BONOMY: Thank you. Sorry, Mr. Marcussen.

1 MR. MARCUSSEN: Let me give a very limited reply, and I think I'll

2 limit it to two things. I do think that in some of the ways the

3 cross-examination on both the blue book and the underlying documents has

4 been carried out. The -- these documents are being presented as a correct

5 reflection of what took place on the ground and certain facts about an

6 event has been put to a witness and the witness has basically being said

7 well, this is what happened, isn't it? An example is the use of Exhibit

8 3D363 on the 7th of November at page 6033, where Zyrapi is being asked,

9 Witness Bislim Zyrapi is being asked about a report. And he's being,

10 basically, so this is the facts. So that's --

11 JUDGE BONOMY: But does he accept it?

12 MR. MARCUSSEN: On this occasion he says no, I don't know about

13 the incident. But it's being used as a presentation of.

14 JUDGE BONOMY: It doesn't take the matter anywhere. Maybe it was

15 used in cross-examination, I don't doubt that, and that would apply when

16 you come to cross-examine, too, but what it amounts to depends in that

17 sort of situation on what the witness is prepared to accept.

18 MR. MARCUSSEN: Thank you. Now, the second -- the second point is

19 with respect to what the witness said yesterday about consultation of

20 human rights people. It's my understanding at page 7762 he says, "Well,

21 we drew on the experience of human rights people as well because we were

22 entering areas that we frankly hadn't got a lot of experience of." Now,

23 the way I understood that at least was that these were on legal issues --

24 what amounts of human rights violations in what kind of situation. I mean

25 these were military people. That was their primary [indiscernible].

1 Maybe, otherwise, that's something that should be clarified with the

2 witness but it's not my understanding of the evidence that the general

3 indicated that they were reporting what the human rights people told them

4 they had been told by refugees. So that would be my -- my -- my second

5 point.

6 Maybe if I may add a third point which is more of a technical

7 thing about how our record looks. A lot of -- well, some excerpts of the

8 blue book, a lot of OSCE and other documents that have been used in

9 cross-examination, I understand the point that has been made about the

10 limited nature of the admission of the documents, but when you look in

11 e-court, all the documents are simply marked as admitted on a certain date

12 and as an exhibit. So depending on how you -- you rule on this issue, it

13 might be something we need to look into just in terms of an illustrative

14 issue and also these kind of documents can also be marked for

15 identification.

16 JUDGE BONOMY: No, that's not the case. The exhibit has to be

17 there for the purpose for which it was used and the Trial Chamber will be

18 able to identify that clearly from the whole context of the transcript

19 when it comes to deliberate. It doesn't follow that simply because it got

20 in in a cross-examination of a witness who denied that it was accurate

21 that the Trial Chamber will then look at it as a matter of accuracy. We

22 would have to accept there's no evidence there in relation to it. But to

23 understand the point, we need the exhibit. If later, evidence comes along

24 from another source to confirm the accuracy of the report, it's still not

25 the report we will be relying upon, unless, in some way, the witness is

1 invited to confirm the report, then, of course, it will be become part of

2 the positive evidence that the Defence could rely on on that point. But

3 we're not getting into an area where we're going to review every exhibit

4 and make it clear when it should already be abundantly clear the purpose

5 for which that exhibit has been admitted.

6 MR. MARCUSSEN: Thank you, Your Honour.

7 JUDGE BONOMY: Sorry. Since it was a Defence objection, the last

8 word should be with the Defence. Is there anything else that's to be said

9 on this? No. Very well. Thank you.

10 [Trial Chamber confers]

11 JUDGE BONOMY: The Trial Chamber considers this material to be

12 different from the human rights material. This is a record compiled by a

13 body on the ground in Kosovo of the evidence -- the material, rather, that

14 they could accumulate on events as they were occurring and being reported

15 to them. It was a duty to do it. So they were presenting a compilation

16 of their findings throughout that period. So it has a value. There is no

17 doubt this material has some stand-alone merit. However, the Trial

18 Chamber do not consider this material to be an appropriate basis for a

19 finding in fact to be made or for a conclusion on fact to be drawn without

20 the matter having been explored in evidence, so that we can have a proper

21 view of the reliability of that individual piece of material in its

22 context.

23 On the other hand, we do think that it's legitimate to look at the

24 way in which the material was compiled and in the context of the matters

25 which Mr. Marcussen identified yesterday and repeated today, namely, an

1 overview, for an overview of the developing situation on the ground in

2 Kosovo.

3 Now, that is the limit of the use that the Trial Chamber will make

4 of the material insofar as it is not explored in evidence, and you can

5 rely on us not saying that because there's been a witness spoke to an

6 event and it's also recorded in the book, you can rely on us not saying,

7 well, the record and the book corroborates the event unless the matter has

8 been explored in oral evidence in some way.

9 Now, I hope that gives suitable guidance. We think it would be

10 irresponsible of us to reject this document out of hand as inadmissible in

11 view of the way in which it was being compiled, the purpose for which it

12 was being compiled, and the circumstances in which it was compiled.

13 Now, there are other items which there maybe some doubt about from

14 yesterday. For the avoidance of doubt, the various exhibits which were

15 explored to some extent with the witness were plainly admitted as we went

16 along, and they were admitted to the extent that the evidence dealt with

17 them. They may have been almost exclusively in the first instance to

18 demonstrate the system and for no other purpose, but to the extent that

19 the facts were also explored, then they fall within the category I've just

20 been outlining.

21 Mr. Marcussen then listed a number that he would wish to have

22 admitted but said he would make submissions in writing in relation to

23 these as I understand it, so some of them have not been dealt with and

24 there will be an opportunity for the Defence to deal with these particular

25 ones which were from P659, a series of numbers.

1 One of the exhibits attached to the statement of the witness is a

2 plan of Racak, which I think is P73 and is known as DZB in the exhibits.

3 There is no basis for exhibiting that, I don't think, and therefore, that

4 will not be part of the admitted documents. And you can rely on us

5 excluding from consideration any of the documents in P407 that relate to

6 the particular events in the village of Racak.

7 Now, does that deal -- I think that deals with all outstanding

8 matters in relation to the exhibits with the witness, and we can now

9 return to the evidence. Could we have the witness, please.

10 [The witness enters court]

11 WITNESS: KAROL DREWIENKIEWICZ [RESUMED]

12 JUDGE BONOMY: Good afternoon, Mr. Drewienkiewicz.

13 THE WITNESS: Good afternoon.

14 JUDGE BONOMY: I'm sorry about the delay, but as I explained to

15 you as I came into the courtroom earlier, there would be this delay while

16 we dealt with the matter that was outstanding from yesterday. Your

17 cross-examination will now resume.

18 Mr. Ackerman.

19 MR. ACKERMAN: Thank you, Your Honour.

20 Cross-examination by Mr. Ackerman: [Continued]

21 Q. Good afternoon, General. How are you today?

22 A. Fine, thank you. Looking forward to some more insights on

23 counter-revolutionary war from you.

24 Q. We're finished with that, General. We'll have some insights on

25 some other things today, I hope.

1 I want to talk to you, first, about NATO and ACTORD which you

2 mentioned briefly in your direct testimony yesterday. An ACTORD is an

3 order basically to NATO forces to raise the level of their readiness from

4 a former level, I think, that was called act-warn to a level where attack

5 can be carried out within a period of 96 hours. Would you agree with

6 that?

7 A. Yes, that's approximately right.

8 Q. Some of my information comes from Wesley Clark's book "Waging

9 Modern War" where he talks about that and mentioned that when NATO issued

10 their ACTORD that the strike aircraft were already assembled in Italy to

11 carry out that ACTORD if necessary. And says about that the ACTORD

12 directed airstrikes after 96 hours with the understanding that any further

13 suspension would have to be voted by the council. I don't know whether

14 you know about that or not.

15 A. I haven't served in -- in shape in that part of NATO, so I

16 think -- I think I would defer to the Supreme Commander on that one.

17 Q. Now, I don't know if you know the dates, but the information I

18 have indicates that the Holbrooke-Milosevic meeting that resulted in the

19 agreement that eventually became the OSCE-FRY agreement for your mission

20 was held -- concluded, the agreement concluded on the 12th of October, and

21 that Mr. Holbrooke then went to Brussels and met with the NATO council and

22 explained to them that he'd arrived at this agreement with Milosevic, and

23 at the conclusion of that meeting on the evening of October 13th, the

24 ACTORD was issued. Do you know about that? Do you remember those dates?

25 Can you confirm that information?

1 A. No, because -- I mean, my source of information at that stage in

2 October was -- was the open press. I was at home in England on leave

3 having been in Bosnia until the middle of August.

4 Q. Okay.

5 A. So I -- I wasn't getting daily updates from SACEUR.

6 Q. If you remember, you could have -- or if you looked, you could

7 have, I think, learned from the public press about the meeting on the 12th

8 and about the ACTORD issuance on the 13th, but I can understand when you

9 don't remember those dates. I wouldn't be able to. I'd be surprised if

10 you could.

11 A. I'm certainly aware that the act warn had been issued and then an

12 ACTORD was issued because it was very significant. It was the first time

13 it had been done.

14 Q. The point I am trying to make and if you can't help me with it,

15 just tell me, is that first came the agreement with Milosevic for a

16 cease-fire and the other matters that were discussed, and then after that

17 came the ACTORD.

18 A. I just don't know what that sequencing is, and I -- if I was

19 looking for dates, I wouldn't go to "Waging Modern War" because it doesn't

20 have dates in it.

21 Q. It has a few but not very many, you're right. I'd like you to

22 take a look at an exhibit that you were shown yesterday, P2535, and I'm

23 interested in page 2 of that exhibit. And we'll have to blow it up a

24 little bit. There's a bullet point that starts with "I will then conduct

25 the inspection."

1 A. Yes.

2 Q. Now, this is a meeting that you're having with General Ojdanic on

3 the 27th of November where you're talking about the kind of inspections

4 that you propose to carry out, and what you apparently told him, if your

5 bullet points are correct here, that you would be involved in checking and

6 counting all personnel, heavy weapons and equipment, even going into

7 barracks and work areas. You said, "I will bring various items of

8 equipment to enable me to effectively complete the inspection. For

9 instance, GPS, camera, tape recorder. I will take photos and record

10 serial numbers of heavy weapons or other equipment as I deem necessary. I

11 have no intention of interfering with routine activities at the inspected

12 unit, but I will conduct a thorough inspection."

13 Now, the first thing that we know was that on November 27th, the

14 ACTORD was still in effect. It had not been withdrawn, had it?

15 A. That's correct, yeah. It was parked.

16 Q. The second thing that we know is that if you have a GPS,

17 especially a GPS -- I can't remember whether the military satellites had

18 been opened to the public by then or not, but if you had a GPS with access

19 to those military satellites, you could pinpoint things down to within a

20 couple of metres, couldn't you?

21 A. Yes.

22 Q. And so with that GPS, you could walk up to a tank and record the

23 coordinates of that tank and someone could find it with those coordinates

24 pretty easily couldn't they?

25 A. Yes, provided it hadn't moved.

1 Q. And target it with a missile?

2 A. Yes.

3 Q. And that information, had you been able to acquire it, would have

4 been quite helpful to NATO as they initiated their bombing campaign as

5 targeting information, wouldn't it?

6 A. If they had done that and if that information had been passed to

7 them, neither of which happened.

8 Q. I think -- I suggest to you that it's really unimportant whether

9 that happened or not. What's important is whether there was a perception

10 among the Serb forces, General Ojdanic and the other persons in charge,

11 that that information could be passed on to NATO. And I think anybody,

12 don't you, would be foolish to allow in a situation where ACTORD is in

13 effect, where an attack can occur within 96 hours, would be foolish to

14 allow at that kind of a pinpoint accuracy inspection of their military

15 hardware, their tanks and artillery and perhaps missile sites? I mean,

16 that would be a huge mistake, wouldn't it?

17 A. Not if they were already flying overhead able to do that for

18 themselves all the time, which they were, because that was the NATO

19 version of the air -- NATO air Verification Mission was entitled to do

20 just that. So if they wanted to collect that information for targeting

21 purposes, they had plenty of means to do it on their own.

22 Q. Well, if those --

23 A. They didn't need us.

24 Q. Yes, absolutely. And if they could observe all these things from

25 overflights then there would be no need for you to do the inspection, and

1 that wouldn't make sense, because the overflights were part of the

2 agreement, just an complementation of part of the agreement, the air force

3 part of that agreement. So it would make no sense for you to go look at

4 the tanks if they were looking at them from the air. It's the ones that

5 they couldn't see from the air that you wanted to go look at wasn't it?

6 A. That wasn't at all in our minds, no. NATO wasn't sending us all

7 the results of all their photos, believe me.

8 Q. But their purpose, there was an agreement signed by General Clark,

9 and I'm sure you're familiar with that agreement, that was part of the

10 agreement with Milosevic to involve flights over Kosovo, reconnaissance

11 flights, surveillance flights, was part of the same agreement. So they

12 are simply implementing that part by flying over and you're implementing

13 the part on the ground, except the part on the ground didn't permit you to

14 go look at their tanks did it?

15 A. Yes, it did.

16 Q. Show me.

17 A. We were there to ensure that the people, the troops on the ground,

18 the troop levels on the ground had returned to their -- their earlier

19 state and one of our great problems was that at no stage did we get a

20 proper formal baseline given to us. Absent that, we had to count what we

21 saw where we saw it. That wasn't a cooperative approach by the Serbs.

22 Q. Well, let me -- I'm not sure I want to go through this, again, but

23 I would like you to look at P432. Okay. We'll stay there on the first

24 page. First thing I want you to notice is that this is the agreement, the

25 OSCE Kosovo Verification Mission agreement, isn't it?

1 A. Yep, got that.

2 Q. On the first page it says that one of the chapeau preamble parts

3 of this is it's devoted to the respect of the sovereignty and territorial

4 integrity of all states in the region; correct?

5 A. Yes.

6 Q. If you go look further into the document, I think it's on page 3

7 that we want to be now, so it's like two pages past where we are. Yeah,

8 to verify compliance by all parties in Kosovo with UN Security Council

9 Resolution 1199. So that was part of your task to verify compliance with

10 that Resolution; correct?

11 A. Yes.

12 Q. And if you go down under "specific terms of reference," the

13 Verification Mission will travel throughout Kosovo to verify the

14 maintenance of the cease-fire by all elements; right?

15 A. Yes.

16 Q. And you were given in the agreement an assurance that you'd be

17 able to travel throughout Kosovo unimpeded for the purpose -- for the

18 purpose of verifying the cease-fire?

19 A. You'll note that we had free -- we were given full freedom of

20 movement and access throughout Kosovo at all times, which we certainly

21 didn't get.

22 Q. But the purpose was to verify the cease-fire, wasn't it?

23 A. Yes. But it -- but it was to -- it's a separate

24 sentence. "Mission personnel will have full freedom of movement and

25 access throughout Kosovo at all times and it's not restricted."

1 Q. Yes, but it doesn't say that you can go into barracks and look at

2 tanks and take a GPS and put in their coordinates and do all of that.

3 That's not in there anywhere that gives you that detailed a right of

4 inspection, is it?

5 A. It doesn't say we can't. It says full freedom of movement and

6 full freedom of movement and access throughout Kosovo at all times in

7 English means we can go where we want, when we want, and that was how we

8 understood it, and that was how we described it.

9 Q. So if the agreement had had one paragraph that said this agreement

10 is to provide for verification of a cease-fire, it -- your view is that

11 you could then do anything because it didn't say you couldn't?

12 A. Yes. We would have discussed it and we'd have agreed what we were

13 going to do, and the head of mission would have said, yes, that's okay. I

14 agree with that concept. This concept of how we were going to do

15 inspections was discussed with the head of mission, and he agreed it. He

16 also wrote a letter, you'll recall, which detailed that in great detail.

17 Q. Well, I understand that you're position now is if it doesn't

18 prohibit your doing something you're just free to go ahead and do it. And

19 I'm satisfied with that position because my understanding has always been

20 that agreements give you permission to do things especially in a sovereign

21 country, and if you don't have those permissions you're not permitted to

22 do them. But I understand it's your position and I will accept it from

23 you, although I don't agree with it.

24 A. Well, may I remind you that inspections of weapon sites happened

25 throughout this region all the time, and this is something which is

1 commonplace. So it wasn't as though there were no inspections of this

2 sovereign state ever. There were arms control inspections in various

3 forms throughout -- throughout the time and throughout the area.

4 Q. Well, yes, but there were agreements for doing that, specific

5 agreements permitting that. This agreement was a different agreement. It

6 was to verify a cease-fire and you don't have to go look at their weapons

7 to verify whether they're shooting each other or not. And that was the

8 disagreement that was going on between you and the Serb authorities.

9 What --

10 THE INTERPRETER: The interpreters are kindly asking you to slow

11 down. We're having enormous difficulties trying to interpret what you're

12 saying.

13 MR. ACKERMAN:

14 Q. Which of you was right about that is not very important, I don't

15 think, as long as you understand that there was a dispute because the

16 agreement was not clear.

17 A. I do understand that, and I can help you, I think, by saying that

18 when we first looked at one of the VJ company positions, we did GPS

19 everything, and this then came up in discussion with the authorities, and

20 as a result of that, I gave instructions that we should not do that any

21 more in order not to -- to have one less thing that we were arguing about.

22 Q. And that was after the 27th of November?

23 A. Indeed. That was in the first week of December.

24 JUDGE BONOMY: Mr. Ackerman, I don't regard the witness as having

25 said simply that it was permissible because it was not prohibited. He's

1 plainly relied on the positive part that gives him full freedom of

2 movement and access throughout Kosovo at all times.

3 MR. ACKERMAN: Well, in the question I asked was it didn't give

4 you permission to go into barracks and do the kind of inspection you were

5 talking about, and he said it didn't prohibit us from doing that.

6 JUDGE BONOMY: I understand that, but I mean, the plain English is

7 not something that has any restriction on it.

8 MR. ACKERMAN: Well, that's his position, that if it's not

9 restricted, then he can do it and that's what I'm quarreling with, Your

10 Honour.

11 JUDGE BONOMY: What then is -- are you suggesting that access

12 throughout Kosovo means?

13 MR. ACKERMAN: The 1199 says that there should be access

14 throughout Kosovo. This agreement says there should be access throughout

15 Kosovo to verify a cease-fire. That's what it's about. And to see

16 whether people are shooting each other or not -- at each other or not,

17 it's important that you have access throughout Kosovo, but you don't have

18 to go into barracks to see if people are shooting each other. That's --

19 that's my position. So that access is important. That means access to

20 the roads, to be able to go down the roads, to go to the villages, to go

21 to the places, to see if there are violations of the cease-fire, and I

22 think that's what this agreement is talking about. I think it's clear on

23 its face.

24 JUDGE BONOMY: Mr. --

25 MR. ACKERMAN: And whether we're having a lawsuit about it, I

1 think that would have to be interpreted.

2 JUDGE BONOMY: We'll hear the submissions later.

3 Mr. Drewienkiewicz, where does the idea come from that there had

4 to be a baseline established and that one of the real issues here was

5 maintaining levels no higher than they were than when the mission arrived?

6 THE WITNESS: Yes, sir. It was as you say, that all of the

7 different discussions that led to essentially the three documents, the --

8 the OSCE-FRY agreement, the agreement with General Wesley Clark, and the

9 agreement on MUP check-points that was, I think, the Djordjevic-Burns

10 agreement, those three all contained references to the situation before

11 essentially reinforcements were brought in from outside to Kosovo over the

12 course of the summer, that the troop and police levels should be back to

13 their original levels.

14 Now, if we weren't able to know what the original level was, then

15 how were we to verify whether or not compliance was in place or not? That

16 was the point.

17 In arms control, you always need a baseline. If you're going to

18 check anything, you need a baseline. You need to know what's normal, and

19 that's what we were asking for constantly.

20 JUDGE BONOMY: Thank you. Mr. Ackerman.

21 MR. ACKERMAN:

22 Q. I'm going to a different subject now. I want to talk about

23 General Loncar.

24 In your statement, at paragraph 171, you indicated you had a good

25 working relationship with General Loncar; correct?

1 A. Generally, yes.

2 Q. In the -- in fact, in the Milosevic case, at page 2841, you said

3 this: "Loncar was very well-informed. He certainly appeared to have good

4 communications with people in the field and was generally one of the first

5 to know when something happened. He also seemed better able to get

6 decisions from Belgrade, and either as a result of a telephone call or he

7 sometimes said something to me that he had spent the night driving to

8 Belgrade and back."

9 True?

10 A. Yes.

11 Q. So from that it appears you had a great deal of respect for

12 General Loncar.

13 A. Yes.

14 Q. At paragraph 69 of your statement, and you talked about this a

15 little bit in your evidence yesterday, you spoke to Loncar about meeting

16 General Pavkovic, and you were told that it was not possible, that you

17 needed to deal with Loncar directly. Now, you don't know who actually

18 made this decision that you were not going to be meeting with General

19 Pavkovic, do you?

20 A. No. I was told by Loncar, to the best of my recollection, that it

21 was a decision from -- from Belgrade.

22 Q. And I take it you have no knowledge at all whether General

23 Pavkovic was ever aware of this situation at all?

24 A. I did not discuss it with General Pavkovic, I agree. It would

25 have been quite difficult for me to take the corps headquarters by storm.

1 Q. But, I mean, you don't know if he knew where this situation where

2 you requested to meet with him had been denied. You don't know that he

3 was ever informed of that, do you?

4 A. No.

5 Q. I want to talk to you now for a bit about the -- I guess I'll call

6 it the -- the attitude that you approached this mission in Kosovo with,

7 and I'm going to suggest to you, just to be fair, that you went there with

8 a -- with a bias that affected your work, which continues today, I

9 believe.

10 Yesterday, we talked about your estimate of the number of KLA

11 fighters in March of 1999, and you told us that it was in the hundreds,

12 less than a thousand, and I suggest to you that you're giving us this

13 relatively small estimate of the KLA force to try to show to this Trial

14 Chamber that the VJ was overwhelming the KLA. The KLA was not a threat of

15 any kind, and that any reaction by the JNA -- by the VJ or the police were

16 just overreactions.

17 A. Those aren't my words.

18 Q. But you did arrive there with a bias, didn't you, against Serbs,

19 pro-KLA?

20 A. I did not. I promise you I did not.

21 Q. Well, with regard to this issue, it's difficult to understand why

22 you insist on such a small number of KLA. You told us yesterday that the

23 KLA commander's testimony of 17 to 18.000 KLA soldiers in March was not

24 true?

25 A. I said I didn't believe it.

1 Q. Yeah. You said that between December and March the numbers of KLA

2 fighters was increasing.

3 A. Yes.

4 Q. So now I think you're probably going to tell this Chamber that

5 Colonel Ciaglinski is also not believable, because when he was here, at

6 page 6911, asked about the Podujevo area at the end of December, how many

7 KLA were in that area, he said there were 1 to 2.000 fighters, well-armed,

8 just in that area, Podujevo. So you don't believe that either, do you?

9 A. Well, he didn't ever go into any KLA areas. I did. The most I

10 ever saw there was about 20, and the first time I went into a KLA area,

11 which was on Christmas Day, the 25th of December, 1998, I remember that

12 they had assembled to impress us, the armoured might of the KLA, and there

13 were 10 guys and they weren't all with the same weapons.

14 Q. Well, didn't he go into Podujevo to try to defuse a situation,

15 defuse a situation at some risk to his own life, and wouldn't that have

16 given him some sense that there were 1.000 to 2.000 fighters there? What

17 do you mean he never went where there were KLA?

18 A. He tended to stay on the Serb side because he was my liaison to

19 the Serbs.

20 Q. But he did go into Podujevo, didn't he?

21 A. He went up onto the hill above Podujevo and he may have seen some

22 of the KLA fighters. There certainly weren't 1 to 2.000 there, believe

23 me.

24 Q. Wasn't that where he was decorated for going in and taking someone

25 out?

1 A. Yes. I personally wrote it up.

2 Q. So we shouldn't believe him either?

3 A. Well, let -- I think I need to be quite -- quite specific here.

4 What I'm talking about is what I would call the hardcore fighters, which I

5 would describe as the football team that's on the field. I'm not talking

6 about the supporters that turn up to the terraces. And as I said

7 yesterday, if a specific area was attacked, then it was quite possible

8 that the people that lived there would defend that village, but they

9 didn't see themselves as available to the KLA as part of the core forces,

10 the core forces of the KLA. Those people that sat on the top of the hills

11 were several hundred, to the best of my knowledge, and that would be

12 supported by my conversations with the various people that went in and out

13 of those locations on a regular basis.

14 Around those, if you went to a village, you could get locals to

15 turn out to defend their village because they were being attacked by

16 forces that they felt were not on their side. So you could get people to

17 defend their village who I don't describe as being in the KLA. They were

18 supporting the KLA, but they were not the core KLA. If you had gone up

19 the hills and taken up the few hundred that were on the top of the hills,

20 then the KLA would have gone away.

21 When the border ambush happened in December, we have it on fairly

22 good authority that there were 140 people in that convoy, and of those

23 140, my reports tell me that less than 10 were proper fighters. The

24 others were impressed people.

25 So what I'm talking about is the people that were the real danger,

1 and that, I would still say, was less than a thousand.

2 Now, once you get to the end of the game, all the supporters run

3 onto the football field, and so do they at the end of a campaign. And so

4 once you get to June, of course there are thousands of KLA. Everybody's

5 in the KLA, because the perception is that the KLA is now a going concern.

6 But in the time that they were fighting on the tops of the hills -- when I

7 went up to the top of Stari Trg, I never saw more than 20 people, and I

8 stick to that. Thank you.

9 Q. You talked about that convoy of 140 people, and you said, "The

10 others were impressed people." What do you mean by that?

11 A. They were people who had been contacted in their villages. They

12 had been threatened that they would be killed if they did not go to

13 Albania to join the KLA. They were -- so they went to Albania because

14 they were fearful that they would be killed. There they received about a

15 day and a half or two day's worth of training, were given a rucksack and

16 told to haul their rucksack into Kosovo, which they did. And when they

17 were ambushed, they didn't know how to use their weapons and they ran

18 away, and many of them were killed. And the nine that were taken prisoner

19 and were held in the gaol in Nis that Richard Ciaglinski went and talked

20 to told him that, and I never heard any denial of it from anyone.

21 Q. All right. Now, to be fair with you because of the answer you've

22 given, I want to share with you the exact testimony given by Ciaglinski.

23 A question was asked of him: "With regard to the incident dated

24 27th of December, when thanks to your invention a Serb civilian was

25 released, you stated also that in that region," that would be

1 Podujevo, "there was a high concentration of the members of the so-called

2 KLA ranging from 1.000 to 2.000 fighters, that they were well-armed; is

3 that correct?" His answer is, "It is correct."

4 Now, he didn't talk about those being village people who were just

5 defending themselves or coming out of the village or something. He talked

6 about these as being well-armed KLA fighters. You don't agree with that,

7 do you?

8 A. No, I don't.

9 Q. All right.

10 A. If they had been well-armed, then the first time that Walker went

11 into a KLA location, which was when I was with him, and they wanted to

12 impress him, they wouldn't have put the 10 people that I saw out on parade

13 and they would have made jolly sure that they all had matching weapons and

14 they didn't.

15 Q. When was that?

16 A. 25th of December, 1998.

17 Q. Things were ranging rapidly, though, weren't they?

18 A. Yes.

19 Q. They were getting better armed and they were getting better

20 equipment?

21 A. Yes.

22 Q. And they wound up with these 50-calibre sniper rifles, didn't

23 they?

24 A. So you tell me.

25 Q. You don't know. You were there to verify things and look at

1 things and you don't know that they had 50-calibre sniper rifles?

2 A. They weren't making arms declarations onto a baseline either.

3 Q. You weren't inspecting them either, were you?

4 A. We weren't able to inspect them formally, no.

5 Q. All right. I want to go on to something else. On the 15th of

6 January, 1999, there was an agreement that the KVM would escort MUP into

7 the Decani area for the change over of their forward posts in order to

8 ensure no reinforcement of those posts. Two orange KVM vehicles led two

9 MUP vehicles and then someone fired on those vehicles wounding one

10 international staff member and one local staff member. I'm sure you

11 remember that incident. You speak about it in paragraph 140 of your

12 statement.

13 A. Yes, I remember it vividly.

14 Q. When you learned of this incident, your reaction was to confront

15 General Loncar and suggest to him that MUP had set that up to make it look

16 like KLA was responsible, didn't you?

17 A. That's a shorthand. The incident happened on the Friday

18 afternoon. I saw General Loncar the next morning, having spent a large

19 proportion of the night trying to put together what had happened. Part of

20 this -- my reason for thinking that we may have been set up by the Serbs

21 was that Ciaglinski had been part of this group and had been talking to

22 the MUP who were standing around because there was a lot of standing

23 around while everyone was working out what was going to happen next, and

24 there had been a lot of discussion about how well armoured the vehicles

25 were and did they think the -- the toughened glass on the jeeps, which was

1 all it was, really, would -- would withstand bullets.

2 At the moment that the vehicles were fired at, it could have come

3 from anywhere. It did come from the KLA. They admitted it, and when they

4 did admit it, we pressed them very hard to admit it publicly, and I was

5 quite clear that that was what had happened. That all happened over a

6 period of several days. It was while Racak was going on, incidentally, so

7 there were a few other diversions to -- to make sure that we didn't

8 concentrate only on this, but at the time, 18 hours after the incident, I

9 had concluded that the balance of probability at that stage was that it

10 had been a set-up by the Serbs, yes.

11 Q. Yes. It took you a long time to answer yes, didn't it? But that

12 was what you did. You went to Loncar and you accused him of that being a

13 Serb trick to make it look like the KLA had done it. And then you

14 maintained that position until the KLA finally publicly admitted that

15 they'd done it, didn't you?

16 A. Yes. And I was also the person who was pressuring, demanding the

17 KLA that they did admit it.

18 Q. And when did you go apologise to General Loncar for that false

19 accusation?

20 A. I am sure that I said it to him at some stage. This was rather

21 overtaken by the Racak event, so we weren't really -- well, that -- well,

22 it got overtaken by Racak.

23 Q. There is an Exhibit P638 that I'd like you to see. I'm sure you

24 didn't write this press release. It talks about a serious breach of a

25 cease-fire near Prizren on 8 January of 1999. The MUP informed KVM of an

1 attack on MUP vehicles at 11.30, and that attack was confirmed by KVM's

2 own patrols.

3 And then the last paragraph is curious. Instead of going off and

4 complaining to the KLA that they should stop attacking MUP vehicles, what

5 KVM did was appeal to both sides not to commit provocations and to avoid

6 further escalation.

7 So when you suspect the Serbs are responsible, you go yell at

8 General Loncar. And when you suspect the KLA is responsible, you appeal

9 to both sides to cool it. Now, isn't there a bias there?

10 A. No. I'm sorry. I was involved in the writing of that press

11 release because it was an a group effort by all of the senior leadership

12 of the KVM. Ambassador Walker was back in the States, and so ambassador

13 Gabrielle Keller was in charge. And clearly this was very serious, and it

14 was very serious not simply because of what had happened, it was serious

15 because it was the most -- the biggest daylight event that the KLA had

16 staged in our time there, and we were very concerned this it.

17 We were also very concerned that the Serb reaction should be

18 reaction and not overreaction, because up until then, we had observed that

19 every time there was provocation by the KLA that the Serbs tended to

20 overreact, and that is why the last paragraph is written the way it was

21 written. And having sat around a table composing this press release, we,

22 as the acting head of the mission, Keller, and the deputy heads of the

23 mission that were present said, "Are we all comfortable? Are we all

24 signed up to? Do we all agree that this is the press release that should

25 go out?" And we all said, "Yes." And if you'd like to ask Ambassador

1 Keller, I'm sure he would confirm that.

2 Q. If I knew where he was, I'd ask him. I'm trying to find him.

3 Another incident was one that was discussed briefly yesterday, and

4 that was the Panda Bar incident where four Serb youths were killed, seven

5 were wounded, and your reaction to that was one of the possibilities would

6 be that the Serbs had done that to show the Kosovar Albanians to be child

7 killers. So you actually were -- were publicly expounding the proposition

8 that the Serbs would kill their own children to make it look like the KLA

9 were bad guys. That was the position you were taking, wasn't it?

10 A. Yes. I'd served in the Balkans for some time at this stage.

11 Q. Well, you took that with absolutely no evidence, didn't you?

12 Zero.

13 A. None of the propositions had any evidence. They were all

14 speculation.

15 Q. But that was a pretty extreme speculation with no evidence for you

16 to say in the position you had to accuse the Serbs of killing their own

17 children, wasn't it?

18 A. No.

19 Q. You can sit there and say that with a straight face?

20 A. Yes, I can because I'd served in the Balkans for over 20 months by

21 that stage.

22 Q. In your supplemental information sheet you now take the position

23 that you no longer believe the Serbs were responsible. What is it you've

24 learned recently to cause you to change your mind about that?

25 A. I think on -- on the -- thinking about it, on the balance of

1 probability, I think it was a drive-by shooting that just happened to be

2 at that moment, and the reaction that -- that the killing of those

3 children caused was -- was such that I felt that that probably would not

4 have been something that would have been done knowingly by the Serbs. So

5 on reflection, I felt more strongly that it was a drive-by shooting by the

6 KLA.

7 Q. Would have been nice if you had that kind of reflection initially

8 wouldn't it, before you made such a wild accusation?

9 A. I didn't make the accusation. I think I -- I wrote it on a note

10 to myself, as I recall.

11 Q. You now think this was a --

12 JUDGE BONOMY: Hold on, Mr. Ackerman.

13 MR. ACKERMAN: I'm sorry.

14 JUDGE BONOMY: Mr. Marcussen.

15 MR. MARCUSSEN: I was actually trying to look in the statement for

16 support for the proposition that the general publicly took this stance. I

17 wanted to ask Mr. Ackerman if there was a reference for that. Otherwise,

18 I think, it's -- the general hasn't explained that he thought there were

19 three options.

20 MR. ACKERMAN: If I'm not mistaken, Your Honour, I think it was

21 publicly taken in the Milosevic trial if nowhere else.

22 MR. MARCUSSEN: That's giving evidence after the events about what

23 he thought at the time. That is not that he took a stand in 1999 and

24 publicly said there were three options.

25 JUDGE BONOMY: Thank you. Let's move on to something else.

1 MR. ACKERMAN:

2 Q. Your position now is that this was a KLA drive-by shooting

3 probably related to crime rather than anything else. I think that's what

4 you said.

5 A. Yes.

6 Q. What do you mean related to crime?

7 A. Well, there was a lot of crime in Kosovo, and the further west you

8 went, the worse the crime got.

9 Q. Well, isn't that your hesitancy to call the KLA terrorists and

10 refer to their acts as terrorist acts? You now want to call them crimes?

11 A. Well, the criminality and the terrorism were very, very closely

12 linked and intertwined. Many of the -- many of the resupply routes over

13 the border from Albania were, to my knowledge, supply routes that had been

14 used for smuggling for years and they were just being used to run guns at

15 this stage. And when they no longer need guns, they would have gone back

16 to running whatever else they were running.

17 JUDGE BONOMY: Mr. O'Sullivan.

18 MR. O'SULLIVAN: In fairness to the witness, it may be best that

19 he not testify with his notes in front of him.

20 JUDGE BONOMY: Is there a particular document you have there?

21 THE WITNESS: I'm writing myself notes as I go.

22 JUDGE BONOMY: In relation to the questions?

23 THE WITNESS: I've written down ACTORD waging modern war.

24 JUDGE BONOMY: These are notes that you've compiled as the

25 evidence has been proceeding? Are they or are they notes that were

1 prepared before?

2 THE WITNESS: That's the note I've written today. Those are the

3 notes I wrote yesterday.

4 JUDGE BONOMY: Well, there's no reason why you shouldn't make

5 notes as the evidence goes along.

6 MR. ACKERMAN:

7 Q. In paragraph 65 of your statement you -- you talked about -- and

8 yesterday you talked about concern that VJ was conducting training

9 exercises in the vicinity of KLA-held villages which you described as an

10 intimidating thing. What I'm wondering is why -- why in the view of the

11 OSCE was there something wrong with the army of the Federal Republic of

12 Yugoslavia conducting exercises on the territory of the Federal Republic

13 of Yugoslavia just because it might stir up a KLA person or two? What's

14 wrong with that?

15 A. Because there had been agreement that they were going to stay in

16 barracks and there would only be outside barracks to the tune of three

17 companies in locations that were defined in the agreement with General

18 Clark.

19 Q. So then what you said yesterday is wrong, because your position

20 yesterday was that they should have been conducting their training

21 exercises somewhere else instead of near a KLA-held village where they

22 would intimidate the KLA. What I'm wondering is why does that make any

23 difference to you? What business does KLA have holding that village

24 anyhow? That's the Federal Republic of Yugoslavia. They're terrorists.

25 They've taken over a village. Why are you supporting them and saying you

1 shouldn't intimidate these poor terrorists taking over a village.

2 A. The reason we were there was because the Federal Republic of

3 Yugoslavia appeared unable to keep its own house in order, and that was

4 why we'd been asked to come in. And what we were trying to do was to make

5 sure that things were not done that made the situation worse.

6 Q. Well, from the evidence that you've given so far, I think it's

7 fair to conclude that it was not VJ presence that made the situation

8 worse. It was VJ absence, because when they were absent, the KLA would

9 take over the territory. So as time went by, the territory kept being

10 surrendered to the KLA and surrendered to the KLA, and, you know, pretty

11 soon, if it kept going that way, they would have the whole province. And

12 they had no business doing that. At best they were insurgents.

13 A. Agreed. Agreed.

14 Q. And you'll also agree that when these exercises were going on,

15 that if the KLA had not fired at them, there wouldn't have been any

16 problem in the first place. It was the KLA firing at these exercises that

17 caused the problem.

18 A. Yes.

19 Q. Maybe we can talk a little bit about global stuff because you

20 wanted to when you came in this morning. One of the problems that we see

21 going on, if you just look at the newspapers, even today's International

22 Herald Tribune is the asymmetrical nature of some of these modern

23 conflicts where you've got a conventional army like the VJ was going up

24 against a bunch of terrorists who tend to operate out of villages and from

25 among civilians, and it makes for a very dicey situation to dry to deal

1 with, doesn't it?

2 A. Yes.

3 Q. And it's a fairly common tactic for these terrorists or insurgent

4 organisations to operate from within civilian enclaves, to carry out

5 attacks from there and then when the army attacked exercises, its right of

6 self-defence, and attacks that area, then you find no insurgents. You

7 find no KLA. You find no people like that. And then there's a big claim

8 that they're attacking civilians. That's a pretty common tactic, isn't

9 it?

10 A. Yes.

11 Q. I take it you're aware of the importance of that road that ran

12 between Nis and Pristina?

13 A. Yes. It was described as the lifeline.

14 Q. Colonel Ciaglinski called it the main resupply route and the main

15 transit route or road route between Kosovo and the rest of the Serbia.

16 A. Yes.

17 Q. And I think you called it the umbilical cord to Belgrade.

18 Paragraph 76 of your statement.

19 I take it, understanding how important that road was, that you

20 certainly wouldn't take the position that the VJ should have just let the

21 KLA take control of that road.

22 A. No.

23 Q. Okay. Well, General, I think I'm going to stop asking you

24 questions. Thank you very much.

25 A. Thank you.

1 JUDGE BONOMY: Thank you, Mr. Ackerman.

2 Mr. Petrovic.

3 THE INTERPRETER: Microphone for counsel, please.

4 Cross-examination by Mr. Petrovic:

5 Q. [Interpretation] Good afternoon, Mr. Drewienkiewicz. I am Mr.

6 Petrovic's [as interpreted] attorney. I shall ask you a few questions

7 regarding your testimony given so far.

8 JUDGE BONOMY: I think we should clarify that since your efforts

9 to introduce yourself seem to have been undermined by the translation.

10 This is Mr. Petrovic who is acting for Mr. Sainovic.

11 MR. PETROVIC: [Interpretation] Your Honour, that is really not of

12 the size of importance for the subject of our conversation, so I will

13 proceed.

14 Q. I will continue in a bit of a different vein in respect of what

15 you talked about with Mr. Ackerman a couple of minutes ago. You are

16 certainly aware of document marked 5395 [as interpreted] here. This is a

17 statement by the Yugoslav government, i.e., an agreement between the

18 Yugoslav government and Wesley Clark at that moment. So could we have

19 that document, please, on the screen in e-court, please.

20 Please be so kind as to take a look at it and possibly agree with

21 me, namely, that the essence of what was the request addressed to the

22 Yugoslav side, which is contained in items 1, 2, 3 and so on of this

23 document, which are pages 2, the bottom of the second page, and page 3.

24 A. I don't have it yet.

25 Q. P395. P395, not 5395. So the document is P395. So document

1 P395. Would you be so kind as to take a look at page 2 and page 3 in

2 e-court.

3 We shall disregard the first page for the time being. So we shall

4 deal with pages 2 and 3.

5 The gist of the request addressed to the Yugoslav side is that the

6 police units, that's item 1, and the army units, that's item 3, should be

7 withdrawn from Kosovo, those units of the police and the army which were

8 deployed there after February, 1993. Is that right?

9 A. Yes. Yes, that's correct.

10 Q. 1998.

11 A. Yes, sorry. I agree, it's 1998.

12 Q. Of course 1998. Please take a look at item 7 of this document.

13 This item 7 describes -- or, actually, sets the deadlines for the

14 withdrawals and deployments, namely, that it should be done by the 27th of

15 October, 1998, by 1200 hours. Is that correct? Is this what item 7

16 contains of the document? And then it goes on to say that KDOM shall be

17 informed about the new numbers. This is the gist of item 7, and this

18 agreement was something on the basis of which you, inter alia, came to

19 Kosovo. Is that not correct?

20 A. Yes, that's correct, although we'd started to deploy after --

21 before this.

22 Q. All right. So today, answering the questions of my colleague, Mr.

23 Ackerman, you said that the essence of your duties in Kosovo -- one of

24 your basic duties was, inter alia, to establish whether Serbian, i.e.,

25 Yugoslav forces, had been reduced to the required level from February,

1 1998. Am I correct?

2 A. Yes, that's correct.

3 Q. Can we now please show the witness document marked 2D10. 2D10,

4 which is -- this document is a statement by the Secretary-General of the

5 NATO after a session of the northern alliance held on the 27th of October,

6 1998. I hope that we shall be able to see the document presently on the

7 screen. This is a document under serial number 25. Can we see the bottom

8 of the page, the last paragraph on the left side of the page.

9 So this is a statement by the Secretary-General of NATO given on

10 the 27th of October, which to say, after the expiry of this deadline that

11 we saw here in this agreement that we saw a minute ago, and it says: [In

12 English] "aerial surveillance assets and the Kosovo diplomatic observer

13 mission have been very fined with Mr. Milosevic's actions matched the

14 commitments he made to us. I'm pleased to report that over past 24 hours

15 over 4.000 members of the special police have been withdrawn from Kosovo.

16 Police and military units that are normally based in Kosovo are now moving

17 back to their barracks together with their heavy weapons. Check-points

18 can be dismantled. In addition, most police and military units that are

19 normally based elsewhere in Yugoslavia have left Kosovo."

20 A. Yes, happy. Yes.

21 Q. [Interpretation] My question is: [In English] "The security

22 forces are returning to the level ... [Interpretation] Let me just read

23 once again the last sentence. [In English] ... they were at before the

24 present crisis began."

25 [Interpretation] My question, Mr. Drewienkiewicz, is this: First

1 of all, do you know who verified the withdrawal of the forces and units of

2 the police and the army to the level from February, 1998, and do you agree

3 that that verification in this particular situation was carried out by

4 KDOM?

5 A. Yes, because we weren't on the ground in sufficient numbers, and I

6 would observe that the NATO statement says most and are returning to the

7 level. It doesn't say they have returned to the level. And it was our

8 job when we got there to make sure that the process had continued, and to

9 do that, I keep coming back to the baseline and to the reports and the

10 paragraph 8 of the Wesley Clark agreement that we were just looking at

11 mentioned all of these detailed weekly reports that we were going to get,

12 none of which we ever got.

13 So the statement that the Secretary-General of NATO made I'm sure

14 was correct at the time. I completely believe it. And it says that most

15 has happened, and they are returning to the level. It doesn't say they

16 have, and we were never able to prove that.

17 Q. So it is your position that at that particular point in time, on

18 the 27th of October, Serbian and Yugoslav forces had not fulfilled what

19 was agreed under the agreement, what was requested of them under the

20 agreement which we just saw, which is to return to the 1998 level,

21 February, 1998 level. Is that what you claim?

22 A. I'm not claiming. I'm reading what the Secretary-General of NATO

23 said, which is before me. It says at the bottom of the page: "The

24 security forces are returning to the level they were at before the

25 crisis -- present crisis began."

1 I've been a scripter for senior people to know that if he'd meant

2 the security forces have returned, they would have said they have

3 returned.

4 Q. So it is your assertion that Yugoslavia, Serbia and Kosovo were

5 not bombed in 1998 despite the fact that they had not met the requirements

6 from the agreement that had been signed a couple of days before that.

7 A. It's my assertion that one of the things we were put in to do was

8 to carry on that process. That's why we were called the Kosovo

9 Verification Mission. And we really wanted to do that so that we could

10 give you a clean bill of health.

11 Q. Mr. Drewienkiewicz, we are going to look at another document on

12 the same page, and this is a statement of Secretary of State Madeleine

13 Albright, also given on the same day, 27th of October, and the number of

14 the document is 26. I have highlighted a few parts which I consider are

15 of relevance.

16 THE INTERPRETER: Would counsel please slow down a bit.

17 JUDGE BONOMY: Mr. Petrovic, just slow down a bit, please.

18 MR. PETROVIC: [Interpretation]

19 Q. And then I'm going to read the second part.

20 JUDGE BONOMY: I doubt if you need to read it. The witness is

21 able to read both -- meets.

22 MR. PETROVIC: [Interpretation] I just want to draw the witness's

23 attention.

24 Q. So the second part where Madeleine Albright says and contends that

25 the army units brought into Kosovo have been withdrawn. So there is no

1 reference to any partial withdrawal, conditional withdrawal, such -- what

2 see says is "Army units brought into Kosovo from outside have been

3 withdrawn." That's what she says.

4 JUDGE BONOMY: Yes, Kofi Annan said that as well. There's no

5 distinction. He said that most police and military units that are

6 normally based elsewhere in Yugoslavia have left Kosovo. But it's the

7 other point that the witness has just drawn your attention to, that

8 progress is being made towards placing heavy weapons in storage. The

9 units are -- the Kosovo-based units are moving back to their garrisons.

10 So both say the same thing.

11 MR. PETROVIC: [Interpretation] Your Honour, this is exactly what

12 this is about. There are statements by most authoritative persons who

13 claim that Yugoslavia had met its obligation, its commitments from the

14 agreement. However, as I can see that it is time for our break, I'm not

15 going to belabour the point right now, but you will see as we proceed

16 that --

17 JUDGE BONOMY: If there is a point arising from this on which you

18 wish to challenge the witness at the moment, do it now before we have the

19 break.

20 MR. PETROVIC: [Interpretation]

21 Q. So first, was this verification done by KDOM on one part and on

22 the other part by the NATO Verification Mission, the verification which is

23 the subject of this conversation?

24 A. What happened in late October and was reported by KDOM and NATO

25 was not my responsibility. My responsibility was to confirm the situation

1 and to confirm that it was not changing.

2 Q. Mr. Drewienkiewicz, why do you confirm a situation that has been

3 confirmed, that is clarified? KDOM and the NATO Verification Mission

4 confirmed the Yugoslav parties' actions in keeping with the agreement.

5 Why a subsequent or additional verification of something that had already

6 been done? That is the essence of my question?

7 A. Well, I think what you're saying is why put the Kosovo

8 Verification Mission in if it was all a done deal, and the answer was that

9 people senior to me and senior to you, sir, agreed it. So we got on with

10 it. And our job was to verify against a baseline which we never got

11 according to weekly detailed reports that we never received. So we were

12 at something of a disadvantage.

13 JUDGE BONOMY: I think, Mr. Drewienkiewicz, that the point's a

14 rather narrow one that's being made, and that is that if this was

15 happening, the baseline must have been established by the KDOMs before you

16 got there.

17 THE WITNESS: [Interpretation] We did not receive that sort of

18 information from any of the KDOMs, and we understood that, at the end of

19 October, the units that lived outside -- that were based outside Kosovo

20 had withdrawn, that the units had gone back to barracks, and the police

21 had left Kosovo, the ones that had been brought in. So we understood that

22 as at the end of October that was the case.

23 Where we were at a loss was to know what that -- what was left,

24 what -- what was left? What did it look like? How many police were

25 there? Where were they? In what police stations? Where were the units?

1 That was the information we needed, we asked for, that should have been in

2 these detailed reports that we were supposed to get according to the Clark

3 agreement, and we never got. And we kept asking for them.

4 JUDGE BONOMY: Thank you. Well, we will break there. Could you,

5 as has been the practice so far, leave with the usher, please, and we will

6 resume at 10 minutes past 4.00.

7 --- Recess taken at 3.50 p.m.

8 --- On resuming at 4.13 p.m.

9 JUDGE BONOMY: Mr. Petrovic.

10 MR. PETROVIC: [Interpretation] Thank you, Your Honour.

11 Q. Mr. Drewienkiewicz, immediately before the break, answering a

12 question by His Honour Judge Bonomy, you said that you had not received

13 any information from KDOM regarding the baseline of the members of the

14 army and police and the armaments. You are certainly acquainted with this

15 agreement that we call the Jovanovic-Geremak agreement which is P658. And

16 can we see the P658 agreement on the e-court, and would you please be so

17 kind as to look at item 1.5 which says, "KDOM shall be acting on behalf of

18 the Verification Mission until it is established." How is it possible,

19 Mr. Drewienkiewicz, that you did not get information from KDOM when KDOM

20 is an entity, which under the agreement between the OSCE and the Yugoslav

21 party, acted on behalf of the mission pending its establishment?

22 A. Well, KDOM wasn't an entity in its own right. KDOM -- was it the

23 UK KDOM, the American KDOM, the Russian KDOM, the French KDOM or the

24 Canadian KDOM, I don't know. We certainly asked for this information from

25 everybody we -- we saw. There had been a very big changeover of personnel

1 within the KDOMs over this period. As we came in, they went out. And

2 there were not very many people left in the KDOMs generally who had been

3 there in the summer and until the end of October, so we were not able to

4 get this information. We therefore went back to the originators of the

5 information and said, we haven't been able to get this information.

6 Please give it to us. It's in everybody's interest. And to this day, I

7 do not understand why that was so difficult.

8 Q. Mr. Drewienkiewicz, please be so kind as to give me specific

9 replies to my questions.

10 So KDOM then had not fulfilled the obligations it had undertaken

11 under the contract, under the agreement, because it is -- it says here

12 that the KDOM will act in place of the mission pending its establishment,

13 until it is up and running. That is one thing.

14 And secondly, did you have personal contact with the people who

15 were in charge of the US KDOM, of the EU KDOM, the British KDOM? Did you

16 know those people?

17 A. Yes, I did. I think the people to whom the information must have

18 been given was US KDOM, and they were the people who had the greatest

19 degree of turbulence as they changed over people as we came in, but at no

20 stage was I given or were anyone -- any people in the KVM given any

21 reports by any of the KDOMs.

22 Q. Sir, did you know a man by the name of Shaun Byrnes, and did you

23 cooperate with that person? Do you know him?

24 A. He was the head of the US KDOM, yes.

25 Q. Did you ever have meetings with that man? Were you ever together

1 during your mission in Kosovo?

2 A. We met quite frequently, yes.

3 Q. And did you ask that person where the proof was, where the

4 verification of the baseline checking which they had done was? It would

5 be only normal that you should have asked him for that. You here have a

6 trip to Belgrade, a trip to Pristina, or comments, objections, and you are

7 not asking for information from the man who is supposed to have that

8 information and was in fact under the obligation to refer such information

9 to you. Is that right?

10 A. I don't remember specifically going to Shaun Byrnes and

11 specifically asking him. I do recall that at the time he was not actually

12 in Kosovo very much, and I don't think I met him until mid-December.

13 Q. So the US KDOM acted in contravention of the agreement OSCE

14 Yugoslav side. Is that what you're saying?

15 JUDGE BONOMY: Don't answer that. I mean, that's argumentative,

16 Mr. Petrovic.

17 MR. PETROVIC: [Interpretation] I withdraw the question.

18 JUDGE BONOMY: [Previous translation continues] ... now. Tell --

19 it might be more helpful if you have the information to tell the witness

20 what the baseline was now so that we can see if in fact there was a

21 significant piece of information being kept back or not rather than this

22 argument over formality, which, you know, makes it very clear why the

23 whole place appears to have blown up eventually.

24 THE WITNESS: [Interpretation] The degree of detail that we got was

25 much less than we felt we needed. We felt we needed to know what the

1 weapons, what the units -- what the weapons were in each location, what

2 the unit holding was. What we really wanted was the serial number of

3 every tank, so that if a tank appeared, we could check that it genuinely

4 was a Kosovo-based tank and so on. Now, that degree of detail was what we

5 asked for in the meetings in -- in the meeting in Belgrade, and it was

6 also referred to in the letter that Ambassador Walker wrote to -- to

7 Milosevic at the time.

8 That was not the degree of detail that we got. We eventually got,

9 at our suggestion, not at the suggestion of the Yugoslav side, a copy of

10 the arms control declaration under what's called Article 4 of, I think,

11 the Vienna document, which was very much more brief. It just said the

12 total number of heavy weapons with a calibre above 12.-something

13 millimetres held in each location and what the type was. This was -- this

14 was the information that was exchanged under the conventional forces in

15 Europe agreement and was far less detail then we wanted and we only got

16 that -- well, we had it, but we had access to it through Vienna. And

17 therefore we went to the Yugoslav side and said, "We propose to use this

18 if you're not prepared to give us anything else," and they said, "Okay."

19 We never got any detail of where the police stations were, what their

20 manning was, what their rotation was, because police units were being

21 rotated in and out of Kosovo from the rest of Serbia.

22 Q. I would really like to ask you to reply specifically to my

23 questions, if possible. If not possible, then tell me so and I will

24 rephrase the question in order to get short answers, because we won't get

25 very far as we're proceeding now.

1 JUDGE BONOMY: Until that answer, your questions were longer than

2 the answers the witness was giving, if you just have a look at the

3 transcript. And that I found a very helpful answer, I may say.

4 MR. PETROVIC: [Interpretation] Thank you, Your Honour. I will

5 move on.

6 Q. Do you agree with the assumption that KDOM transform into the

7 Verification Mission as had been envisaged under the agreement, or rather,

8 had the KDOM transformed eventually into or been absorbed into the

9 Verification Mission, then baseline would not have become an issue at all

10 because it was the KDOM that raised the issue of baseline?

11 A. No, because it was different people. I'm perfectly willing to

12 accept that I should have pressed much harder with everybody I met from

13 every KDOM to see who the mysterious person was who was given the

14 baseline. I'll acknowledge that publicly. I should have done it. I

15 didn't. And having not done it, I went to the people who presumably had

16 given the baseline and said, "Could you give us a copy as well," thinking

17 that that was a very quick way to overcome the problem.

18 Q. In your reports, did you inform the Vienna centre of the fact that

19 you did not have the information you requested from KDOM, that they

20 refused to provide the information? Did you put that down in your report?

21 A. Sir, I didn't say they refused. I said we specifically didn't go

22 to them and say, "Please give us the reports," because there'd been so

23 much changeover of personnel in the KDOMs that it was very difficult to

24 find somebody who admitted to being there in late September. And as I

25 say, which KDOM was it? I'm pretty sure you're talking about the US KDOM,

1 but it was a confusing time.

2 JUDGE BONOMY: Mr. Petrovic, who was the information given to and

3 in what form?

4 MR. PETROVIC: [Interpretation] Your Honour, this is precisely the

5 problem, that the information had not been given. KDOM had not been

6 integrated into the Verification Mission, and the information that KDOM

7 had concerning baseline that had been set down on the 27th of October --

8 JUDGE BONOMY: That's my question. It's relating to the

9 information given to KDOM. Who was the information given to in KDOM,

10 which KDOM, and in what form was it given?

11 MR. PETROVIC: [Interpretation] Your Honour, KDOM carried out

12 verification through its -- well, I'm now supposed to testify on matters

13 that I am not versed in. I will give you my understanding of view.

14 After the signing of agreement, KDOM carried out verification and

15 established that police and military units were withdrawing from Kosovo.

16 He -- or, rather, they informed respective embassies accordingly and their

17 governments, and it was as a result of that that the suspension had been

18 done. So it was KDOM, with the help of the NATO Verification Mission from

19 the area, that had carried out the verification and informed the

20 governments, and as a result, the decision to go ahead with the bombing

21 was suspended. It was on the basis of this that the governments of the

22 Western countries made the decision to suspend bombing. This decision and

23 the evidence --

24 JUDGE BONOMY: Try to do what you've invited the witness to do and

25 stick to the question.

1 You're saying, I assume from that, that it was not the obligation

2 of the FRY to provide this detail, that it was up to KDOM to get it for

3 themselves.

4 MR. PETROVIC: [Interpretation] Your Honour, I cannot go into the

5 details or the specifics of your question. I can tell you this: KDOM had

6 credible information as to the withdrawal having been done. I cannot tell

7 you how KDOM arrived at the information. I can merely tell you that KDOM

8 had information that was suitable to base the NATO decision upon not to go

9 ahead with any bombing. And of course, if you'll allow me, the

10 information -- or, rather, KDOM had to arrive at that information with

11 full cooperation on the Serb or Yugoslav side. Otherwise, it would not

12 have been possible.

13 JUDGE BONOMY: Well, that's a sort of meaningless statement that

14 doesn't assist us. We are not prepared to sit here dancing round

15 formality. We want to get on with establishing what the actual facts of

16 the matter were. So in the circumstances where you really don't have a

17 basis for this cross-examination, let's move on to something else.

18 MR. PETROVIC: [Interpretation] Your Honour, I will move on. I

19 must say that I do not share this position, but I do not want to belabour

20 the point.

21 JUDGE BONOMY: Well, tell me what it is that you're saying was the

22 obligation of the FRY. You say you can't tell me.

23 MR. PETROVIC: [Interpretation] Your Honour, the obligation was to

24 withdraw the forces of police and army that had arrived in the area of

25 Kosovo.

1 JUDGE BONOMY: I understand that. The obligation we're talking

2 about is provision of information about the location of and sizes of the

3 forces and their weaponry. Now, what obligation did the FRY have to give

4 that to either KDOM or the KVM? Did they have no such obligation

5 according to you?

6 MR. PETROVIC: [Interpretation] Your Honour, the state had the

7 obligation to meet the requirements or the undertakings it had taken upon

8 itself. KDOM and Verification Mission were the other parties, and there's

9 nothing more than that. The agreements that we speak of do not imply that

10 verifications of weapons had to be carried out. This is not contained in

11 the agreements. This is what the witness is saying here whilst

12 interpreting the part of the agreement relating to the freedom of

13 movement.

14 JUDGE BONOMY: So your position is, as I think suggested three

15 times now without getting a clear answer, that the FRY had no obligation

16 to give this information.

17 MR. PETROVIC: [Interpretation] Your Honour, now that we are

18 discussing the matter, the state was a signatory to the subregional arms

19 control agreement. According to this arms control agreement, which the

20 FRY fully complied with, all the information that are subject of your

21 interest were regularly reported to OSCE. This is the gist of what we're

22 talking about. The KVM did not have the jurisdiction to verify weapons.

23 It was through other organs and pursuant to another agreement that this

24 should have been done, and the FRY fully cooperated with OSCE organs.

25 JUDGE BONOMY: All I am asking you about is the baseline. I want

1 to know whether your client accepts that the FRY had or did not have an

2 obligation to inform either the KDOM or KVM of the baseline statistics.

3 MR. PETROVIC: [Interpretation] Your Honour, it is our position

4 that the Verification Mission was not entitled to verify armaments in the

5 barracks or other installations.

6 JUDGE BONOMY: [Previous translation continues] ... my question.

7 Just stop and move on with your cross-examination.

8 MR. PETROVIC: [Interpretation]

9 Q. Please look at document P440. I would kindly ask you to look at

10 page 4 of the document and tell me, first of all, do you recognise the

11 document? Are you familiar with the document?

12 A. Sorry, can we go back to the -- I am not aware of what this

13 document is at the moment. It was eight years ago.

14 Q. You can take a look at page 2 of the document. This is the

15 agreement between NATO and the Chief of the General Staff of the army of

16 Yugoslavia at the time, Perisic, concerning the NATO Verification Mission.

17 Please look at --

18 A. [Previous translation continues] ... Verification Mission.

19 Q. Yes.

20 A. Okay. Thank you.

21 Q. Look at page 4, the last paragraph on that page, wherein the

22 obligations of the Yugoslav side are defined concerning the removal of

23 anti-aircraft weaponry from Kosovo and their storage in depots. It is

24 also stated here, as one can well see, that the locations of the depots

25 will be known and that they will be open for inspection.

1 My question for you is as follows: When the sides are willing to

2 arrange an inspection of a barracks, isn't this the precise way in which

3 they do arrange the matter, directly and in a straightforward manner, and

4 not through the agreements wherein the freedom of movement would allow for

5 inspection? Wouldn't you agree?

6 A. I agree that this is the agreement between FRY and NATO, and the

7 fact that we were neither of those parties meant that when we declared or

8 proposed how we were going to operate, we did so in a very specific way,

9 in a very transparent way. We were very detailed about the way we were

10 going to operate.

11 Now, if something had given particular difficulty, then it could

12 have been discussed. No discussion ever took place. Ambassador Walker's

13 letter to the FRY was never replied to. So we went from a -- a very

14 detailed letter to nothing, and that was where we had great difficulty,

15 and that was why we wouldn't let it drop, because we didn't think that it

16 was an appropriate response when we had put it -- been put into this --

17 into Kosovo at extremely great expense, at extremely great difficulty to

18 the sending nations that we should just be cold shouldered like this.

19 What was the point of putting in a Kosovo Verification Mission if

20 it wasn't able to verify? We were not particularly ornamental.

21 Q. My question to you, sir, is: Sides -- two sides, when they're

22 arranging for an inspection of a depot or a barracks, would they do it

23 explicitly as had been done in this NATO agreement with the Yugoslav side

24 or in some other way? Would you agree with me or not, or let's move on?

25 A. Well, it was two separate entities. The -- we were not working

1 for NATO and NATO --

2 JUDGE BONOMY: Mr. Drewienkiewicz, that's not the point that's

3 being put to you. This is being put to you as an example of a far better

4 way of arranging things. So could you address that issue. The counsel is

5 saying to you that if arrangements are being made for an inspection, this

6 is the way to do it rather than the vague terms of the agreement that your

7 mission had. Now, do you want to comment on that?

8 THE WITNESS: Well, I don't agree with that. We were put in, as I

9 say, to verify. We wanted to verify that things that we were aware of

10 were as they should be. Presumably for that reason, there had been the

11 various agreements like the agreement between Clark on returning to

12 barracks, on regular reporting. The agreement with Byrnes on the number

13 of check-points that were going to be occupied by the MUP. These are all

14 things we will needed to follow up on to confirm that the situation was

15 whatever it was. So we cannot rely on air verification. If you're going

16 to do air verification, then the NATO-FRY air verification agreement is,

17 I'm sure, a very good one. We weren't an air verification mission. We

18 were a ground verification mission.

19 MR. PETROVIC: [Interpretation]

20 Q. If there existed this sort of dispute with the Yugoslav side

21 already, if there existed a dispute concerning the true contents of the

22 document, is it true that some of the mission, the OSCE mission officials

23 proposed that a conference be organised where the disagreements would be

24 resolved? Is it true also that at a certain point in time you also

25 thought this to be an expedient way of solving matters?

1 A. I certainly hoped that that was -- sorry. Got it. I certainly

2 hoped that in the wake of the -- after the meeting in Belgrade with

3 General Ojdanic that the next step was going to be the meeting in Pristina

4 with the commander of the Pristina Corps to work out the modalities, yes.

5 Q. Sir, did you understand my question? I apologise for interrupting

6 you. My question was: Did any of the members of the OSCE mission propose

7 that a conference be held where the disagreements or misunderstandings

8 would be resolved, and did you support this idea? That's a simple

9 question.

10 A. A simple answer. Of course everybody wanted everybody to sit down

11 and have meetings and discussions and resolve the difficulties, yes. That

12 is why I wanted to meet the commander of the Pristina Corps. And I didn't

13 get to meet him because it was forbidden.

14 JUDGE BONOMY: Tell me, Mr. Petrovic, the document you've placed

15 on the screen, does that amount to saying that NATO could enter the sites

16 where weapons had been stored and do the job that the KVM were apparently

17 having difficulty doing?

18 MR. PETROVIC: [Interpretation] Your Honour, I understand that that

19 is so. Indeed, that this agreement, indeed authorises NATO to do so. And

20 as far as I know, it was done.

21 JUDGE BONOMY: And what was the problem about allowing KVM to do

22 it, do you know?

23 MR. PETROVIC: [Interpretation] Your Honour, I do not know.

24 JUDGE BONOMY: All right. Thank you.

25 MR. PETROVIC: [Interpretation] I just don't know the answer that

1 to question. I've tried to, but I haven't been successful.

2 THE WITNESS: May I attempt to help, sir?

3 JUDGE BONOMY: If you think you can, yes, please.

4 THE WITNESS: I think what NATO had the -- the authority in this

5 document to do was to inspect weapon and cantonment sites outside Kosovo,

6 that weapons had been withdrawn from Kosovo into cantonment sites, i.e.,

7 in the remainder of FRY, and that they could then be inspected by NATO

8 away from Kosovo. There were certainly no NATO teams inside Kosovo on the

9 ground.

10 JUDGE BONOMY: That's, I don't think, what it says. It says that

11 the conditions apply within Kosovo. And if you read the main part, it

12 said all SAMs and air defence weapons will either be removed from Kosovo

13 or placed in cantonment sites and not operated.

14 THE WITNESS: There were never any NATO individuals on the ground

15 inside Kosovo, and it was not my understanding in the meetings I had with

16 the people on the air verification mission that they intended or thought

17 they could.

18 JUDGE BONOMY: Thank you. Mr. Petrovic.

19 MR. PETROVIC: I am awaiting for the translation, Your Honour.

20 Sorry.

21 Q. [Interpretation] So to my question whether anybody from the OSCE

22 launched an initiative for a similar conference, you cannot give me an

23 answer, so I will move on.

24 A. My --

25 JUDGE BONOMY: Do you not understand the answer given to be that

1 it was a matter to be discussed with the Pristina Corps command and that

2 was prohibited? Is that a separate thing?

3 MR. PETROVIC: [Interpretation] Your Honour, yes, it is a separate

4 issue, and we shall be leading evidence to that effect in due time.

5 JUDGE BONOMY: Leading evidence to what effect? At the moment, I

6 don't understand what you're getting at, and it's important we understand

7 what you're doing.

8 You're putting questions about a proposal for a conference. Have

9 you got some specific information that there was such a proposal that you

10 want to challenge the witness with, and if so, if you don't ask him

11 specific questions, we won't understand what this is all about.

12 MR. PETROVIC: [Interpretation] Your Honour.

13 Q. Did Mr. Bo Pellnas launch an initiative for a conference to be

14 held where the situation would be clarified? Did you support such an

15 initiative, and did that initiative fall through because of Walker's

16 interference?

17 A. Bo Pellnas was our man in Belgrade, and he came -- he set up the

18 meeting with the -- with the FRY General Staff. So he came with me, as I

19 remember it, to the FRY General Staff. And so he and I probably spoke

20 every day or every other day, and certainly if -- if in the wake -- in --

21 after the meeting with the General Staff, he would have been part of the

22 discussions that were going on about how we could sit down with -- with

23 whoever was prepared to sit down with us to get this information. So I'm

24 sure he was going around proposing a conference.

25 I'm not aware that the initiative fell through because of Walker's

1 interference, because Walker was fully informed at every stage what was

2 going on and was fully supportive. He had signed the letter that we sent

3 to FRY saying this is how we want to carry out inspections. And so I

4 reported back to him at least once a day.

5 Q. Mr. Drewienkiewicz, when the KLA is in question, did you at any

6 stage attempt to verify their armaments, to verify their units, to verify

7 the areas in which they were carrying out training, in which they were

8 based? Did you ever attempt to do that during any stage of your stay in

9 Kosovo?

10 A. Yes. If I can take those in -- in order. We wanted, and we said

11 we were going to check up on their armaments because we were very keen,

12 for instance, to know if they had surface-to-air missiles, because it was

13 of a prime concern to us if we were going to get a medevac helicopter in.

14 So we did feel we wanted to know how well they were armed. So we were

15 going to go up to all of the hilltops where they were and make the best

16 assessment we could, remembering that this was -- these were not fully

17 formed units under command with a -- with a table of equipment and a

18 manpower strength in the same way that a regular unit would be.

19 So to verify what armaments they had, yes. To verify their units,

20 yes. To get an idea of what their capability was, where they were, to

21 verify the areas in which they were based, yes, we did.

22 I can remember schematic maps of Kosovo in which we -- we put on

23 what we call duck eggs, circles to show the areas where the KLA were

24 definitely, the areas where they operated occasionally, and the areas

25 where they did not operate. I can remember doing that very well.

1 Q. Did you do that in the way that was to be done vis-a-vis the

2 Yugoslav forces? Did you write down the numbers of -- the serial numbers

3 of the heavy weaponry of the rifles, the sights, where the training was

4 being conducted, et cetera?

5 A. They didn't have any heavy weaponry at this stage. The heavy

6 weaponry I wanted the serial numbers of were things like tanks. They

7 didn't have any. The locations where they were, yes. We did note all

8 that down. And we took GPS with us as well.

9 Q. Thank you.

10 JUDGE BONOMY: Your answer was that you were going to check up on

11 their armaments. Did you never get that job done for one reason or

12 another?

13 THE WITNESS: Well, it took us a long time, sir, to get -- to get

14 into their locations. But when we did, what we did was put people into

15 their locations that lived with them, and they reported back to me on the

16 general level of training, of where they were, of what their sort of

17 numbers and what their capability was. It wasn't an arms-control

18 inspection because they weren't a force that was amenable to that, so we

19 weren't able to say, "Please give us how strong your unit is and what its

20 equipment is," because they weren't -- they weren't that sort of unit.

21 JUDGE BONOMY: Well, we mustn't, I think, lose sight of two

22 things. One, the nature of the KLA for a start; and secondly, that they

23 weren't party to the agreement.

24 THE WITNESS: That is correct. We got reminded of that several

25 times.

1 MR. PETROVIC: [Interpretation]

2 Q. Did you compile any reports on where they were based, how many of

3 them there were, where they were doing exercises? Is this part of your

4 report?

5 A. We did produce some documents on that. They were not -- they were

6 not particularly widely circulated because they had grid references in

7 that might have been of use to -- to -- to ill-disposed people. But, yes,

8 we did produce documents. They weren't doing exercises. I mean,

9 guerrilla units don't do exercises. They -- they sit on the top of the

10 hill until they decide they're going to come down in order to do

11 something. That's not an exercise. That's -- that's a guerrilla

12 operation.

13 Q. And where were these reports distributed? Are there any such

14 reports among this batch of documents that we saw during these last two

15 days?

16 A. I don't know. I can certain -- I -- in digging through the stuff

17 in my garage, I've certainly come across documents on KLA attitudes and

18 some of the maps with where the KLA were and where they weren't. So they

19 existed. They were not made widely available. They were made available

20 on a need-to-know basis.

21 Q. Were they submitted to the OSCE headquarters in Vienna? Were they

22 part of the reports which were prepared for the Security Council?

23 A. Some of the maps with the KLA locations on it were part of a

24 PowerPoint briefing that was given to the chairman in office when he came

25 down. We did not regularly submit full reports on the KLA to the

1 permanent council because we operated with the KLA on the basis of

2 acceptance, and in order to be accepted, one of the things that we were

3 quite keen we were not to do was to give away their positions to people

4 who might take advantage of it. We were trying to be neutral in this, and

5 in order to get that access, certain restrictions were placed on us and we

6 had to restrain ourselves in some areas. So, no, we didn't pass all this

7 information up to the OSCE permanent council, and no, it wasn't

8 distributed everywhere within the mission. And because we respected those

9 confidences, we were able to stay inside the KLA camps and have access to

10 them and be able to attempt to influence them to be -- to be more

11 restrained, which we couldn't have done if we had posted up their

12 locations in a public place.

13 Q. So if you did not send it to Vienna and to New York, to whom did

14 you send that information? Where did that information go to?

15 A. It stayed inside the mission.

16 Q. With what purpose, with what objective, to be used for what? Was

17 that your mandate, to collect information and retain it for your own use?

18 Was this envisaged by your mandate? So information about one of the sites

19 would remain behind closed doors?

20 A. Yes. My mandate was, above everything, to keep the mission

21 together and to keep the members of the mission safe, and I was not going

22 to recklessly do things that were going to endanger the members of the

23 mission, and nor did the permanent council want me to.

24 Q. So your mandate was to inform on one side, and what you collected

25 about the other side and related to the same subject matter would remain

1 for your internal use, if I understand your position correctly.

2 A. The mandate was the mandate of the OSCE-FRY. There was no

3 agreement with the Albanians. And that mandate was what we were sent down

4 to do. We were expecting that there was going to be an agreement with the

5 Albanian side, and that was why Chris Hill, the American ambassador, was

6 down there. And I can assure you that when I was assigned to this job and

7 I was shown the agreement and I saw that it was only with one party, I

8 said, "What the heck's the deal with the -- with the KLA, with the

9 Albanian side?" And they said, "Don't worry. It's being fixed by -- by

10 Ambassador Chris Hill." And that remained the case until mid-December

11 when he admitted he wasn't going to get an agreement, and by that stage,

12 we were down there and we were starting to operate. At that stage,

13 possibly the OSCE should have reconsidered what it had let itself in for,

14 but that was a matter for the OSCE. By that stage, I was doing my best to

15 get this mission up and running as quickly as I could.

16 Q. Just a couple questions more.

17 MR. PETROVIC: [Interpretation] Your Honour, by your leave, I only

18 have several questions regarding a helicopter which -- to which reference

19 was made several times. I hope that I will not ask too much, just five or

20 six questions with your permission. But believe me, in view of the

21 importance attached to the helicopter by the KVM, that importance is also

22 reflected on us, so that I hope that I will not overdo it.

23 Q. So yesterday you said that the litmus test of the Serbian will to

24 cooperate with the KVM was the question of helicopters. You also said

25 that it was so important that it was a symbolic question, that it was the

1 first area where we got a direct reply -- rather, a direct refusal from

2 the Serbian side. I'm asking you this: Is it true that when you raised

3 the question of -- that at the time when you raised the question of

4 helicopters, was it true that throughout Kosovo there were at different

5 levels tens, scores of meetings, and I repeat, at different levels where

6 information was exchanged which were actually the very substance and

7 reason for your sojourn in Kosovo? Is that correct?

8 A. There were -- there were plenty of meetings going on. This was --

9 this was early December, so there were only about -- I would say there

10 were less than 150 people in the KVM on the ground at this stage, and so

11 there weren't scores of meetings. Everyone was trying to set themselves

12 up, and we were not getting information. We were seeking information, and

13 we were generally not getting very helpful information. We were detecting

14 an atmosphere of lack of cooperation which was why these things were being

15 elevated to the level of the head of mission.

16 Q. Very well. My second question is, the aircraft that had been

17 announced by the KVM, were they allowed to land at the Pristina airport

18 and elsewhere in the territory of FRY without any limitations but those

19 that are normally imposed by air control? Is that correct?

20 A. Yes. There were flights into Pristina airport by a civilian

21 aircraft that had been chartered by the OSCE to -- to move heavy equipment

22 up and down, and these movements into Pristina airport were fine.

23 Q. Did you offer a modification of the agreement pursuant to which

24 you were present in the FRY in order to include the use of helicopters for

25 evacuation purposes? Was there such a proposal advanced on your part?

1 A. No. It wasn't needed because aircraft -- the word "aircraft"

2 includes helicopters.

3 Q. Who would be responsible for the safety and security of the

4 helicopter concerned in the event of an incident in the Yugoslav airspace

5 in terms of regulations governing air navigation? Who would have been

6 responsible in that event?

7 A. It would have had to have followed the normal air traffic control

8 rules that presumably would have come out of Pristina airport.

9 Q. Therefore, the Yugoslav side would have been responsible for each

10 and every such incident; is that right?

11 A. Well, which incident? If a helicopter had come in, then it would

12 have obeyed -- for flight safety reasons, it would have obeyed the

13 instructions given to it by ground control in wherever the controlling

14 ground control was. That's what helicopters do. That way they didn't

15 bump into each other or bump into mountains.

16 If you're saying were we --

17 Q. Very well.

18 A. I'll answer the questions. I won't try to suggest your questions

19 to you. I apologise.

20 Q. One more question. You stated yesterday that you were never

21 offered a white helicopter bearing the insignia of the Red Cross. And had

22 you been offered something along the lines, you would most likely have

23 accepted the offer; is that right?

24 A. No. We would -- let me take that one piece at a time. We were

25 offered the -- the ability to contract a Yugoslav casivac helicopter,

1 casual evacuation helicopter. I was not told it was either white or bore

2 the insignia of the Red Cross, but my understanding of those casualty

3 evacuation helicopters was that they were normal service helicopters in

4 effect with a stretcher strapped into them. That was not what we were

5 seeking. We were seeking a fully-equipped medical evacuation helicopter

6 that you didn't have, or we weren't aware that you had, and you certainly

7 never made it clear -- the Yugoslav side never made it clear that you had.

8 And the reason we were so insistent on this was because the

9 permanent council in Vienna were extremely concerned at the safety of

10 their verifiers, to the extent that we were not getting the verifiers

11 turning up, and this was really very serious. People were frightened to

12 come because of the TV coverage. Every time --

13 JUDGE BONOMY: I think you covered most of that yesterday.

14 Let's move on, Mr. Petrovic.

15 THE INTERPRETER: Microphone, please. Microphone for the counsel.

16 JUDGE BONOMY: Your microphone, please, Mr. Petrovic.

17 MR. PETROVIC: [Interpretation] My apologies.

18 Q. My colleague Mr. Ackerman asked you [In English] Big Red Cross on

19 it, would you still reject it?" Your answer was: "It was never offered

20 like that."

21 A. Yes.

22 Q. But the answer would probably be [Interpretation] we would have

23 looked at it.

24 JUDGE BONOMY: But you said you would have probably rejected it.

25 And I think that that's the end of that matter for the moment. What else

1 do you want to ask, Mr. Petrovic?

2 MR. PETROVIC: [Interpretation] Your Honour, the witness stated

3 something else yesterday, but this will be quite clear from the

4 transcript.

5 JUDGE BONOMY: My note is he was never offered a white helicopter

6 with a big Red Cross. If he had been, he would probably have rejected it,

7 and he did not ask if he could paint it orange. Now, are you saying

8 that's an inaccurate note?

9 MR. PETROVIC: [Interpretation] Your Honour, on page 7833, I might

10 have been mistaken, but it says: "[In English] But the answer would

11 probably have been yes, because one of the reasons," [Interpretation] and

12 so on and so forth. I may have been mistaken, but this is on page 7833.

13 THE INTERPRETER: Microphone, please.

14 JUDGE BONOMY: You would still reject it but the answer would --

15 sorry, let me get it. Yeah. "It was never offered like that, but the

16 answer probably would have been yes." Which I understood was it would

17 probably have been rejected. Now, you better clarify this since we seem

18 to have a different understanding of this, Mr. Drewienkiewicz.

19 THE WITNESS: Sir, if -- if we had been offered a helicopter with

20 the same capability as the one that we had hired, then we would certainly

21 have considered it. I did have a -- a medical expert who knew about these

22 things, and I would have got him to crawl over it and say is this up to

23 specification. We would still have been concerned if it was carrying --

24 if it was bearing Yugoslav army markings because nobody would know who was

25 in it, and that would have been a prime concern of mine because the safety

1 of the verifiers was very important to me.

2 MR. PETROVIC: [Interpretation]

3 Q. Mr. Drewienkiewicz, let's try and clarify this question that was

4 put to you yesterday as well. Were you offered, for the purposes of

5 medical evaluation, a white painted helicopter bearing the symbol of the

6 Red Cross? Yes or no?

7 A. No, not put like that.

8 Q. I'm merely trying to put to you a part of the testimony by Colonel

9 Ciaglinski, whom I believe you are acquainted with, who stated quite the

10 opposite. This is page 6880, where you were asked -- he was asked, "Were

11 you offered such a helicopter?" And his answer was, "Yes. We did not

12 take the offer for other reasons, but it was offered to us." And that was

13 Mr. -- or, rather, Colonel Ciaglinski's testimony before this Tribunal.

14 A. Well, let me be clear. First of all, I was in charge of this

15 matter; he wasn't. He was an observer. We were offered verbally quote, I

16 think, "one of our army medevac helicopters." To the best of my

17 knowledge, they were operating without the red cross, not white, and were

18 just a normal military helicopter with a stretcher strapped into them, and

19 I wasn't prepared to consider that low-level of medical assistance,

20 particularly when we'd already got one that was much better, that was

21 sitting in Macedonia, simply waiting to be called forward.

22 MR. PETROVIC: [Interpretation] Thank you, Your Honour. I have no

23 further questions.

24 JUDGE BONOMY: Thank you. Mr. Sepenuk.

25 MR. SEPENUK: Thank you, Your Honour.

1 Cross-examination by Mr. Sepenuk:

2 Q. General, I'm Norman Sepenuk. I'm attorney for General Ojdanic.

3 Good afternoon, sir.

4 A. Good afternoon.

5 Q. And I'm going to start with the first meeting that you had with

6 your staff on November 23, 1998. It was your opening meeting that you had

7 with them. And in a moment, I'm going to put the record of that meeting

8 up on the screen, but take my word for it if you would just for a moment

9 that one of the questions that was raised at that meeting, and I take

10 it -- and this is in your handwriting, I believe, and we confirm this --

11 can confirm this in a moment, is what do we call the KLA. Do you remember

12 that, sir? Do you remember that from your notebook?

13 A. I'm sure that that was a question that we asked many times, yes.

14 Q. Okay. And you testified in the Milosevic trial that your own

15 practice was to refer to the KLA as "the insurgents," and then, "which I

16 felt described them in a way that was accurate but not emotional."

17 Do you recall that testimony?

18 A. Yes.

19 Q. And Mr. Milosevic, on cross-examination, asked you, "Did you know

20 at the time the kind of people you were communicating with and cooperating

21 with? Were you aware of that?" And he was referring to the KLA. And you

22 said, "We were well aware that they were an insurgent organisation, and we

23 were well aware that they were killing policemen, and at no stage during

24 our time in Kosovo did we ever condone the killing of policemen." And

25 then Mr. Milosevic asked you another question, "Do you consider them to be

1 a terrorist organisation or an insurgent organisation?" And your answer

2 was, "I think insurgent is a better word because it is less emotive."

3 Emotive. And Mr. Milosevic said, "And you consider that 'terrorist' is an

4 emotional and emotive word, do you?" And you were answer was, "Yes, I

5 do."

6 Now, the other day, I forget whether it was yesterday, but the

7 other day, Judge Bonomy threw out, at least for discussion, the notion

8 that perhaps you didn't want it -- when I say "you," OSCE didn't want to

9 refer to KLA as terrorists because somehow that would set up a barrier to

10 effective communication, that if you call somebody a terrorist, they're

11 not exactly likely to take to you. Now, that was Judge Bonomy's notion

12 that he threw out, and of course you've already rated Judge Bonomy and the

13 trial panel a 1 when it comes to reliability, and all the Defence teams

14 join that -- tell the panel. And I'd like to know your opinion now on

15 that, on Judge Bonomy's notion. Again, he just threw it out for

16 discussion.

17 A. Yes. Well, I think I stand by what I said in 2002. We were

18 having to make contact with the KLA. We had a lot of Kosovar Albanians

19 working for us, and indeed we had Kosovar Serbs working for us inside our

20 headquarters. And so the way we discussed things among ourselves was

21 bound to be reported back along the Serb channels and along Albanian

22 channels. So unless we specifically went for a walk in the park, we

23 assumed that people were listening to us all the time. And so we tried

24 not to -- we may not always have succeeded, but we tried not to describe

25 the parties to this disagreement that was going on in Kosovo in ways that

1 were going to make our life more difficult.

2 Now, we were having to put people up into the KLA positions to

3 earn their trust and confidence, so that they would talk to us, so that we

4 could attempt to influence them without any formal agreement, but on the

5 basis of a degree of trust that had been built up. To do this, I had to

6 have two separate sets of liaison people, those that dealt with the Serbs

7 and those that dealt with the KLA. But the last thing I wanted was for

8 someone to turn up at a KLA location and to have -- and it be confronted

9 by the fact that we're constantly referring to them as terrorists and in

10 derogatory terms back down inside our offices. So we were cautious, yeah.

11 Q. Thank you for that explanation, General. And in any event, while

12 you were trying -- you personally were trying to diffuse the emotionality

13 of the word "terrorist" by using the term "insurgent," the fact is that

14 this was indeed an emotional and emotive issue for the Serbs, including

15 the VJ, is that fair?

16 A. Yes. Yes. I had this conversation several times with General

17 Loncar.

18 Q. And -- and I think, General, that you appropriately recognise the

19 importance of the -- of Kosovo in Serbian history and any impact the KLA

20 would have on that by a note you made in your notebook.

21 And I would ask the usher to put up 3D412, page 300. Thank you,

22 that's fine.

23 General, you recognise that as a page out of your notebook, and is

24 that your handwriting?

25 A. Yes.

1 Q. Okay. And there are -- there are four numbers appearing on the

2 upper left-hand corner of that document, and it says "FRY," and underneath

3 the four numbers, underneath is the numbers 1389. Now, I'm allowed to ask

4 leading questions on cross-examination, but I'm not going to. I'm going

5 to ask you as if I was questioning you on direct examination. Tell us

6 what 1389 means, please, and tell us what, if anything, you said about

7 1389 to your assembled staff.

8 A. 1389 is the date of the battle on the field of the blackbirds,

9 which is an extremely significant anniversary for the Serb people. I

10 think I -- I think this particular page is my notes to myself for standing

11 at Brezovica talking to a new consignment of verifiers arriving. And so

12 these would -- we've already found that I -- I write myself little notes

13 so that I don't get completely confused. And this would have been -- this

14 would have been those.

15 So this was lesson one to people arriving off the plane in Skopje,

16 some of whom who had never been in the Balkans before, who had not

17 necessarily done any pre-deployment training, and they were about to go

18 into an extremely delicate situation. So I needed to give them, in about

19 half an hour, what their country should have given them in about six weeks

20 before they deployed, and this was my attempt to do it.

21 Q. And essentially the message I take it you were trying to convey

22 was that Kosovo has a very important, really, a special role in Serbian

23 history, a role of almost mythical proportions, is that fair?

24 A. Yes, I'd go along with that.

25 Q. And given the threat of the KLA, whether you call them terrorists

1 or insurgents, it doesn't matter, given the threat of the KLA, you very

2 appropriately at that meeting -- and if the usher would scroll up a bit on

3 the page. Keep scrolling up a bit, please. That's it. You can stop.

4 You very appropriately posed the fundamental question which in a sense is

5 what this trial is all about, General, and that is what can the Federal

6 Republic of Yugoslavia do as a sovereign state to defend itself? An

7 important question indeed; correct?

8 A. Yes.

9 Q. And that was a particularly crucial question at the time since the

10 KLA, as we all know, was not a party to any of the three basic agreements,

11 the one of October, 1998, the so-called Clark-Naumann Agreement signed by

12 Mr. Milosevic; the MUP agreement, signed by Mr. Byrnes; and finally, the

13 agreement setting up the OSCE operation, the KLA not part of any of that;

14 correct?

15 A. That's correct, yes.

16 Q. And at this time, November 23rd, 1998, you're already aware that

17 the Serbian side had honoured that part of the Clark-Naumann Agreement

18 which required the VJ and the MUP to withdraw forces from Kosovo to reach

19 the levels existing in February, 1998. Is that a fair statement?

20 A. They had only until the end of October. What we had been seeking

21 to find out was what had been going on since then, if anything.

22 Q. Right. But they initially --

23 A. Yes.

24 Q. Is it fair to say that they initially did comply; correct?

25 A. Yes. I'm certainly happy with that, yes.

1 Q. Thank you. And did you also learn, at least by this time,

2 November 23, 1998, that all these positions that had been abandoned by MUP

3 and by the VJ were then reoccupied by the KLA?

4 A. Not at this stage, no. That -- it wasn't as quick as that.

5 Q. It was gradual, then, and it took place over a period of time, but

6 it did take place, didn't it?

7 A. Yes.

8 Q. You've so testified?

9 A. Yes.

10 Q. Okay.

11 A. But I would add that on November the 23rd, I think I'd -- I'd

12 actually been back in Kosovo maybe four days. I'd come down in October.

13 I'd then gone back to -- to Vienna, and we had -- we'd been setting up the

14 KVM. We'd been starting to procure the vehicles, the radios, to call for

15 the people to be brought forward, and I'd been on that until I was asked

16 to go -- come down to Kosovo and to implement the plan that I'd just been

17 writing. And I think I came down on the 20th of November. So how much of

18 all that did I know on the 23rd? Not as much as I know now.

19 Q. But I take it that there was at least some and rather substantial

20 reoccupation of positions. Is that a fair statement?

21 A. I wouldn't say substantial. I would say that the reoccupation of

22 the positions was starting to be observed.

23 Q. And it became substantial and as a matter of fact, you protested

24 that to the KLA and they chose to ignore you. Is that a fair statement?

25 That's what you testified to.

1 A. Yes, I mean I personally went into their lines and above Podujevo,

2 into that position, and talked to the local men on the ground and said,

3 You're crazy. If you're going to do this, then you're giving the other

4 side an excuse to come and -- to come after you. You need to get out of

5 here because otherwise you -- you will be in danger. Yeah.

6 Q. So by the time you --

7 THE INTERPRETER: Would the speakers kindly make pauses between

8 questions and answers for the interpreters. Thank you very much.

9 MR. SEPENUK: Yes, thank you.

10 JUDGE BONOMY: You got that message, did you, Mr. Sepenuk?

11 MR. SEPENUK: Yes.

12 JUDGE BONOMY: We're going to break a bit earlier. So just finish

13 when it's convenient.

14 MR. SEPENUK: I'll break whenever the Court wants.

15 JUDGE BONOMY: Just finish the question you were about to start.

16 MR. SEPENUK:

17 Q. By the time you met with General Ojdanic on November 27, 1998, you

18 already knew that it was -- there was at least some evidence, if not

19 overwhelming, at least some evidence that the central premise, a central

20 premise of the 25 October, 1998 agreement was just wrong, and that is the

21 initial sentence of the undertaking by the Yugoslavian government

22 saying -- recognising United States [sic] Security Council Resolution 1199

23 and proceeding from the fact that organised terrorism has been defeated in

24 Kosmet and that all actions against terrorists have ceased as of September

25 29, 1998, the authorities of the Federal Republic of Yugoslavia -- and

1 then there's a series of undertakings, withdrawal by the MUP, withdrawal

2 by the VJ -- and you knew, did you not, sir, that the -- this notion of

3 organised terrorism being defeated in Kosmet just wasn't so. That was

4 wishful thinking and turned out not to be true. Isn't that a fair

5 statement?

6 A. I would say that at the time we were very skeptical that the KLA

7 were going to be as restrained as you describe, and at this time, of

8 course, we were still waiting on the -- the Chris Hill agreement that we

9 were all hoping was going to be something that would -- would bind the

10 KLA.

11 MR. SEPENUK: And, Your Honour, my last question then is and very

12 briefly.

13 Q. And you learned, though, very shortly at that time, sometime in

14 early December, that there was not going to be an agreement because the

15 KLA had threatened to kill any Albanian who signed an agreement with

16 Mr. Hill that would somehow limit the activities of the KLA. Isn't that

17 correct, General?

18 A. Yes, that is how I heard it, how we heard it.

19 Q. Thank you.

20 MR. SEPENUK: This is an appropriate time, Your Honour.

21 JUDGE BONOMY: Again, Mr. Drewienkiewicz, would you go, please,

22 with the usher.

23 And we will resume at 5 minutes past 6.00.

24 --- Recess taken at 5.27 p.m.

25 --- On resuming at 6.09 p.m.

1 JUDGE BONOMY: Mr. Sepenuk.

2 MR. SEPENUK: Thank you, Your Honour.

3 Q. General, my questions before the break were at least in part

4 designed to place in some context the meeting you had with General Ojdanic

5 and his staff on November 27, 1998, and we've already established that

6 there was at least some reoccupations of positions abandoned by the MUP

7 and by the VJ, and at the very least, the KLA wasn't showing any

8 particular inclination to enter into my kind of political agreement. I

9 think that's where we are. Is that correct, sir?

10 A. Yes, I'd go along with that.

11 Q. And so what I'd like to do is direct your attention to the meeting

12 itself. Now, the meeting did take place on November 27, 1998, in

13 Belgrade, and you'll recall that General Ojdanic had only be appointed a

14 few days before; correct?

15 A. Yes, that's correct.

16 Q. As Chief of the General Staff. So he was new in the job.

17 A. Yes. Yes. I knew that.

18 Q. Right. And I think you described the tone and mood of the meeting

19 as fairly neutral; right?

20 A. Yes. Yes.

21 Q. And you said in your testimony yesterday, since General Ojdanic

22 had only very recently taken up his position just a few days before, "We

23 knew that meant we were going to get less out of the meeting because we

24 knew that he would have had less time to be briefed and that he would be

25 less inclined to make decisions at the meeting, so we went into this

1 meeting with lowered expectations, I would say." Correct?

2 A. Yes.

3 Q. But as a matter of fact, would you agree that there were a number

4 of positive developments that took place at that meeting? And I'll get to

5 them now.

6 A. Okay.

7 Q. And if you take a look at OTP Exhibit 2535, which has already been

8 shown to you but was discussed only generally and I'd like to go into a

9 bit more detail.

10 If the usher would put that on the screen, 2535.

11 Can you read that -- yeah, there we go. Okay. And at the top

12 there, in the first paragraph, General Ojdanic stated that "The Yugoslav

13 army would fulfil all of their obligations and tasks under the FRY-OSCE

14 agreement;" correct? That's your notes.

15 A. Yes. Yes, that's what he stated.

16 Q. And General Ojdanic identified a desire to be transparent about

17 troop rotations for Kosovo. "They are a normal part of Yugoslav army

18 operations and should not be misunderstand by international community."

19 That's also what he said; correct?

20 A. Yes.

21 Q. And further, going down just a bit. Yes, just move -- just move

22 up. Thank you. As is outlined in the letter from Ambassador Walker, "We

23 need information on all security forces in Kosovo. General Ojdanic

24 ensured that the first piece of information about Yugoslav army forces was

25 provided before 1 December, the same information about Yugoslav army

1 forces providing under the terms of the agreement on subregional arms

2 control." That was said also; correct?

3 A. Yes.

4 Q. Okay. And then a little bit down. Go down a little bit further.

5 No, go actually up a bit. Go back the other way, please. Yes. Right

6 there.

7 It says, "We are now waiting --" no. Go up just a bit more. I'm

8 sorry. Keep going. Keep going. Okay, stop there please.

9 "We are now waiting for an indication from General Ojdanic as to

10 when the rest of the required information about army elements will be

11 provided. Alternatively, and if this meets with the approval of General

12 Ojdanic, it may be easier for the corps commander to provide it directly

13 to me." Correct?

14 A. Yes. That was what I see.

15 Q. And if we could go to the next page, please, 3D412, page 318. And

16 could you go up a bit, please. That's fine. Thank you.

17 And you say toward the middle of the page, "You may note," I guess

18 this is General Ojdanic speaking. No, I believe it's you, General. Can

19 you confirm this?

20 A. This is my note for the next meeting, the one that didn't take

21 place. So this is my -- my no-brain note for myself. It's my speaking

22 note.

23 Q. In other words, you wanted to use -- but the short of it was, you

24 wanted to use the Pristina Corps unit as the testing ground for the KVM

25 inspection procedures; correct?

1 A. That's correct.

2 Q. Okay. And then on the subject of troop rotation, going down just

3 a little bit -- scroll up just a bit, please. Okay. That's fine.

4 On the subject of troop rotation, General Ojdanic mentioned the

5 scheduled early December rotation of Yugoslavia army forces for Kosovo.

6 He said, "We understand that this is normal part of Yugoslav army

7 operations and usually takes place every three months." And he went on to

8 say, "It is the FRY's interest to ensure sufficient transparency about the

9 process so that local residents and the international community can be

10 assured of the normality of the rotation." And let me make one amendment

11 here, General. I think that was you making those comments.

12 A. Yes, those three bullets points were my words.

13 Q. Right.

14 A. So the preamble -- this was this was to help me in a meeting that

15 didn't take place, but my preamble would have been to mention that General

16 Ojdanic mentioned this rotation and we, the KVM, understand that this is a

17 normal part of Yugoslav army operations. It is all -- and those three

18 bullets would have been the words that I put into my mouth.

19 Q. Okay. And the short of it is that General Ojdanic agreed

20 completely on this point. That's what you have in your notes; correct?

21 A. Yes. I was attempting to talk this up.

22 Q. Okay.

23 A. Of course.

24 Q. Sure.

25 A. And this meeting didn't take please.

1 Q. Now, CNN, what is that?

2 A. This was the discussion that we had where the gist of the

3 discussion was the last thing that anybody of us wants is for there to be

4 busloads of soldiers being seen coming into Kosovo as part of the

5 rotation.

6 Q. Can I just interrupt you, General. Excuse me for that.

7 A. Yep.

8 Q. All I want to know -- you have CNN, I think, in other places.

9 A. Right.

10 Q. What is that?

11 A. Right.

12 Q. What is CNN? What does that stand for?

13 A. We didn't want a CNN cameraman standing by the side of the road

14 photographing a bus full of Yugoslav soldiers and quickly getting onto the

15 6.00 news that the -- the Yugoslavs are breaking the terms of their

16 agreement by reinforcing with new units.

17 Q. You know, General, I caught 1389, but I didn't catch CNN. Sorry.

18 Thank you, Your Honour.

19 A. It's an American disease.

20 Q. Yes. Now -- so you left the meeting with General Ojdanic, as you

21 testified yesterday, thinking that things had gone sufficiently well to be

22 able to follow up on this; correct?

23 A. Yes.

24 Q. You'd say -- you testified, "I would say that I left the meeting

25 with General Ojdanic feeling that there was a basis for future

1 cooperation. I didn't expect to be dealing with him on a day-to-day basis

2 because he was sitting in Belgrade with other responsibilities than just

3 Kosovo obviously. And so what I wanted was to go to him and to get him to

4 issue an instruction to the Pristina Corps commander to deal directly with

5 me and then only to raise things to the level of the Belgrade Ministry of

6 Defence if events proved impossible or too difficult down on the ground."

7 Correct?

8 A. Yes.

9 Q. And then just a few days later, on December 2, 1998, you wrote a

10 letter to General Ojdanic, and that is 2543.

11 If that could be put on the screen, please. Prosecution Exhibit

12 2543.

13 And you -- you said, "I would like to -- to General Ojdanic, "I

14 would like to let you know how much I appreciated the fact that you took

15 time to meet with me." You went on to say that you welcomed the

16 information provided on Yugoslav army forces on 29 November. "I take note

17 of the fact that you have provided the information as we agreed, and I

18 will inform the head of mission of this positive development." Correct?

19 A. Yes.

20 Q. And you further went on to say, "I will also consult with the

21 Pristina Corps commander regarding the rotation of Yugoslav army personnel

22 that you mentioned when we met, so that we'll be able to verify the nature

23 of this activity as well. Then, finally thank you once again for

24 demonstrating your correct attitude with regard to KVM and I look forward

25 to other productive meetings in the future." Correct?

1 A. Yes.

2 THE INTERPRETER: Can the speakers please pause between question

3 and answer.

4 MR. SEPENUK:

5 Q. -- during the briefing that you had or the proofing that you had

6 with Mr. Marcussen and others, in that supplemental statement, little

7 paragraph (e), you said, "During the meeting on 25 November," it's

8 actually, I think, a mistake. I think it should mean -- it means 27

9 November. Let's just assume that. During the meeting on 27 November

10 1998, General Ojdanic did not say no KVM inspections and you left the

11 meeting with him thinking that the next meeting would be with the Pristina

12 Corps to implement further details regarding inspections to establish a

13 baseline. But you didn't receive the information you wanted because it

14 turned out there was a difference of interpretation between the OSCE and

15 the Serbian political leadership as to what was required under the

16 agreement. Do you recall that?

17 A. Yes.

18 Q. Okay. Now, my last two matters, General, are -- I'm told to slow

19 down, so I'll do that.

20 The last two --

21 A. I'll try to say, yes, slowly.

22 Q. No, I was told to slow down, General, not you. The last two

23 matters that I have are contained in your statement. Now, you didn't

24 testify about this, but I'm -- I have to ask you about it, because under

25 the Rules of the Tribunal, your statement is also admitted into evidence,

1 so we have to deal with it. And I'm looking at paragraph 65 and 66 and,

2 General, I note an inconsistency between -- have you had time to locate

3 them? Let me wait until you locate them.

4 A. Yep.

5 Q. I note, at least what appears to me, to be an inconsistency

6 between those two paragraphs, perhaps indicating, at least I hope

7 indicating, frankly, a misunderstanding or a failure of communication

8 between you and the Prosecutor's office, and let me be specific. In

9 paragraph 65, you expressed the need to know the training area boundaries

10 and Ojdanic stated that my request was noted, which was something of a

11 standard reply for him.

12 My first question -- I may have missed it. There are hundreds of

13 pages in your notebooks. But my first question is, where does that appear

14 in your notes, the fact that General Ojdanic noted your request? It may

15 be in your notebook, but I have not been able to find it.

16 A. No. I -- I cannot put my finger on it. I mean, this is a

17 statement I wrote in -- in June 2000 and went through in 2002.

18 Q. Can you conceive that maybe you just might have gotten that one

19 wrong?

20 A. Yes. I think I -- that -- I would need to crawl over it, and I'm

21 prepared to say I might have got that wrong.

22 Q. Okay. And then if we'll go on to page -- to paragraph --

23 A. Sorry. Sorry. That was part of that conversation with Ojdanic.

24 I would need to check my notebook.

25 Q. Right. But absent that or absent quite frankly anything coming

1 from Mr. Marcussen, if you're at least prepared at this point, General, to

2 say maybe you got it wrong. I won't belabour the point and I'll go on to

3 the next paragraph.

4 A. Okay. I'm -- yeah, okay.

5 Q. And on page -- paragraph 66, you're talking about rotation of

6 conscripts in and out of Kosovo, and General Ojdanic had previously said

7 at the meeting that he was willing to give you information about that, put

8 aside for a moment that you never received it to your satisfaction because

9 of the falling through of the inter-meeting with corps commander, but

10 General Ojdanic said he was willing to at least initially to give you that

11 information, but you said this was not noted but flatly refused by Ojdanic

12 and refused with considerable authority. And again, General, I have

13 combed over your notes, and -- I may have missed it, but I don't see

14 anything in your notes that is even close to that statement that you're

15 making, and I'm guessing, General, that that's another one that somehow

16 showed up in your statement but really wasn't said by you.

17 A. No. I think it was said by me. The question is was it part of

18 that meeting or was it part of another meeting.

19 Both the -- the content of 65 happened and the content of 66

20 happened. Was it in that meeting or was it in a subsequent meeting with

21 General Loncar quoting General Ojdanic? That's what there's doubt in my

22 mind, and I think it may be that at a subsequent meeting with General

23 Loncar, he said that this was not to be allowed, and he took General

24 Ojdanic's name as the issuer of the order. Now, that's the best I can do

25 without going through my notebooks.

1 Q. All right. So at least -- at least at this point you're willing

2 to amend your statement that it wasn't General Ojdanic who said this to

3 you, but it may have been General Loncar; is that right?

4 A. I'm pretty sure it was General Loncar quoting General Ojdanic.

5 Q. So that's an amendment to your statement. And that, of course, is

6 not what happened at your meeting. At your meeting, General Ojdanic -- it

7 was a very open meeting and he indicated that he would be willing to

8 provide that information; correct?

9 A. Yes. I think that is correct.

10 MR. SEPENUK: I think that's all, Your Honour.

11 JUDGE BONOMY: Thank you, Mr. Sepenuk.

12 Mr. Cepic.

13 MR. CEPIC: Thank you, Your Honour. If you allow me just to wait

14 for translation on B/C/S.

15 Cross-examination by Mr. Cepic:

16 Q. [Interpretation] Good evening, Mr. Drewienkiewicz. My name is

17 Djuro Cepic. I am Defence counsel here, and I will be putting questions

18 to you.

19 In your statement in paragraph 186, you say -- or, rather, in 176,

20 you said that in late February, 1999, you toured the border area, and

21 yesterday, during the examination-in-chief by my learned friend Marcussen,

22 you gave your positions that are in annex 7, which is Exhibit P640.

23 In this document you gave the following assessment: In order to

24 secure the border, 6.600 men would be required, which tallied with the

25 assessments held by the VJ at the time.

1 This is my question: Do you know how many VJ soldiers secured the

2 state borders at the time?

3 A. No. I wish I had. That brings me back to my question of the

4 baseline.

5 Q. What would you tell me if I were to tell you that at that point in

6 time only 3.282 soldiers were engaged in securing the border, which is a

7 number that is far lower than the number actually required for the job?

8 A. I wouldn't be surprised, because the Yugoslav army were not

9 managing to -- to stop people coming over the border.

10 Q. Thank you, Mr. Drewienkiewicz. Now that we are dealing with the

11 border area, in your statement and in the course of your yesterday's

12 evidence, you mentioned the indents which took place on the 14th of

13 December, 1998, when several members of the KLA were killed and several

14 were captured.

15 In paragraph 86 of your statement, you say that the patrols of the

16 Kosovo Verification Mission photographed bodies but never saw any

17 prisoners. This statement of yours where they never saw any prisoners,

18 was this the reason why on the meeting on the 16th of December, 1998, you

19 refused to contact Verification into this incident or concerning this

20 incident?

21 A. Sorry, give me that again. I thought we worked rather hard on

22 this incident. What didn't I do?

23 Q. [In English] It is a bad translation, actually. [Interpretation]

24 I will try to rephrase my question.

25 After the incident, did you at the meeting on the 16th of

1 December, where Mr. Walker was present as well, refuse to verify the

2 incident because none of your verifiers had ever seen prisoners anywhere

3 on any occasion?

4 A. No. We did verify the incident, and we said that we thought that

5 this was a legitimate action by the VJ in response to a clear breach of

6 the cease-fire by the KLA, and I think we said that publicly to both

7 Walker and Holbrooke who was there at the time. We did quite a long

8 report on it, and -- because it involved having to walk about four miles

9 in through the snow, we thought we'd done rather well to do this. I think

10 there was one prisoner photographed in retrospect, but we didn't get

11 access to the prisoners that we were told had been taken. And we asked

12 for access, but we didn't get it until much later in January. I think

13 that was the main point of contention at the time. Other than that, it

14 was seen as a fair cop by the VJ.

15 Q. Thank you, Mr. Drewienkiewicz. Before I put my question to you,

16 could I ask Mr. Registrar to show the Defence Exhibit 39470.

17 Sir, are you familiar with the member of the Kosovo Verification

18 Mission, a member of the British metropolitan police sergeant Henri Young?

19 A. Young, I think. I remember the name.

20 JUDGE BONOMY: Let's get the exhibit. Is it one of your own

21 exhibits Mr. Cepic? It's been brought up as a number that doesn't exist.

22 Is it a 5D or a 3D number.

23 MR. CEPIC: 3D470.

24 JUDGE BONOMY: Thank you.

25 MR. CEPIC: And I kindly ask you paragraph 38, please. Actually,

1 that is a page number 6, and would I like to mark on paragraph 35, and

2 then later on 38, please.

3 Q. [Interpretation] Mr. Drewienkiewicz, the said gentleman attended

4 the verification of the incident, and in paragraph 35, he stated the

5 following referring to the Yugoslav army: "They took us to the scene of

6 the incident and openly showed it to us. It seemed as if the bodies lay

7 where they had in fact been impacted. I recall that 6 KLA soldiers had --

8 9 KLA soldiers been captured and they were still present in the scene of

9 the incident. We were allowed to talk to the soldiers and we did. We

10 took their personal information and even photographed them."

11 In paragraph 38, Mr. Jan Henrik, in his report, says the

12 following: "Report of our observations together with the details of the

13 KLA prisoners and the photographs taken at the scene were submitted to the

14 HQ headquarters in the usual way."

15 A. Yeah.

16 Q. Mr. Drewienkiewicz, do you have anything to say to this report by

17 your mission?

18 A. I recall some of the details. I remember seeing some of the

19 photos. I do remember now a photograph of at least one KLA prisoner. We

20 were aware that there were prisoners taken. The figure firmed up at nine,

21 and we then started to ask to visit them in prison, either us or the Red

22 Cross.

23 Q. Thank you. Thank you, Mr. Drewienkiewicz. During your testimony

24 yesterday, on page 97 of the transcript, you refer -- you mentioned that

25 on the 20 -- 20th of March, 1999, you had left Kosovo together with a

1 mission in the direction of Macedonia. My question is whether you took

2 the route Pristina-Urosevac-Kacanik and the Djeneral Jankovic border

3 crossing when you went there?

4 A. Yes. Yes, we did. That's the way we went.

5 Q. And you will agree with me that along the Podujevo-Pristina road,

6 that has been referred to quite often in this courtroom, that in addition

7 to that particular route, this is one of the most important routes in

8 Kosovo. Is that not correct?

9 A. Yes. I mean, it was the main north-south highway.

10 Q. Thank you. So this entire road was under the control of Serbian

11 forces, and you reach the border quite safely, did you not,

12 Mr. Drewienkiewicz?

13 A. Yes. And we were -- we were given a police escort as well.

14 Q. Thank you. And had you withdrawn at the end of February that

15 would have been much harder if not impossible altogether, because the UCK

16 had taken certain positions in the Kacanik defile, which you described in

17 paragraph 191 of your statement, namely, that the UCK or the KLA had been

18 in that gorge. And my question is would your -- would your travel have

19 been much more difficult because the KLA had occupied those positions at

20 that time?

21 A. No, I don't think it would have been.

22 Q. And do you know that the KLA forces came to that area from

23 Macedonia and that together with a part of the local forces they started

24 these operations at the end of February in that particular region?

25 A. Yes. I remember well that they described the -- the processes,

1 attempting to open up a new operational area.

2 Q. Thank you. Can we see Exhibit -- Prosecution Exhibit P680 now.

3 Page 1.

4 Mr. Drewienkiewicz, do you know that the KLA incited and

5 encouraged the local population to abandon the area, to leave?

6 A. I didn't know that specifically, but you don't surprise me.

7 Q. Thank you.

8 Can the Registrar just scroll the page down. We want to see the

9 middle of the page more or less. Yes.

10 Well, here in this section we can see that the KLA, with a hundred

11 combatants, crossed the border and combined with the local members of the

12 local Albanian militia, as it is referred to in this report here,

13 encouraging the locals to leave, to leave their homes.

14 Mr. Drewienkiewicz, do you know that virtually the entire region

15 had been evacuated by the 27th of February, that all the people had left

16 their homes because of such an action on the part of the KLA?

17 A. No, I wouldn't say that. I would say that we -- you can see

18 what -- what we thought was happening. I mean, this is a -- a product of

19 the Fusion Cell which was put together by people going up there and

20 talking to the people they could find. And I would -- I would say that

21 that's a fairly good description of -- of what we thought happened.

22 Q. Mr. Registrar, can we please see page 4 of the same document, the

23 bottom part of the -- of page 4. Can we zoom in on the lower part of the

24 page. Scroll down a bit more. Thank you.

25 The last paragraph under the drawing states that the KLA told the

1 villagers in the region to move out, nearly all of whom had actually moved

2 out, left their homes by the 27th of February. It was on that basis that

3 this report was drawn up on IDPs, displaced persons, on the 28th of

4 February, and this was the very same report, the very same document, Mr.

5 Drewienkiewicz.

6 A. I'm -- I'm happy -- I can read it. I must have seen it at the

7 time. I don't instantly bring it to mind, but the events are very clear

8 to me. The degree to which the -- the numbers of internally displaced

9 people that were claimed by some elements of the international community

10 and the numbers that we could find were always a matter of some

11 difference. We spent some time trying to tie down exactly where all of

12 these thousands of internally displaced people were. We concluded that

13 they were in neighbouring villages, staying with relatives or

14 acquaintances. But there weren't thousands of internally displaced people

15 milling around on the roads, and we -- we had a constant concern that

16 the -- at this stage, at this stage, that the IDP situation was quite

17 confusing.

18 JUDGE BONOMY: Mr. Marcussen.

19 MR. MARCUSSEN: Well, I was going to say that no question had been

20 asked, but an answer has been given, so Mr. Cepic got something out of

21 nothing, I guess, which is a good deal.

22 JUDGE BONOMY: Mr. Cepic.

23 MR. CEPIC: [Interpretation] Thank you, Your Honour.

24 Q. Thank you, Mr. Drewienkiewicz. Do you know, Mr. Drewienkiewicz,

25 that the KLA often manipulated the media, casting a distorted image of

1 incidents which happened on the spot and using for that purpose, for the

2 most part, civilians and IDPs in orders to create a different picture in

3 the media, primarily the international media?

4 A. Yes. It was a matter of concern to us.

5 Q. So they did this often, abused the media, showing a totally

6 different picture from the one that actually obtained in situ.

7 A. Well, I didn't say it was totally different. I said that they

8 created -- I agreed with you that they created a different picture. And

9 it wasn't all the KLA. The international media were very persistent in

10 wanting to portray this -- this conflict as -- as an area where the Serbs

11 were bad and the Kosovo Albanians were good, and it was our -- our

12 contention that there were no good people in this fight, that they were

13 all bastards.

14 Q. We have a similar example on the same page, page 4, namely -- can

15 we see the middle part of that page in this document, please. Up a bit

16 more. Thank you. This is it.

17 Well, it is stated here that between the 28th of February and the

18 2nd of March, they said that most of the media interest was in the moment

19 of the IDP and the unconfirmed report of a massacre. In reality, it

20 appeared that the only contact was a small ambush and the subsequent

21 MUP/VJ follow-up. This is exactly one of the examples that we're talking

22 about, is it not, Mr. Drewienkiewicz?

23 A. Yes, this is an OSCE report that is bringing balance to this

24 discussion.

25 Q. Thank you, Mr. Drewienkiewicz.

1 Do you know as well that the members of the Ministry of the

2 Interior, in specifically that region, the region where the KLA was

3 actually displacing the civilian population executed an operation on the

4 8th and 9th of March in Kotlina and Ivaja villages against the KLA forces

5 seizing a large number of weapons, ammunition, uniforms and which they

6 showed to your verifiers and their assessment was that this had been a

7 professional operation?

8 A. I would need to see the report of that, but I'm not surprised by

9 what you're telling -- what you're telling me.

10 Q. Thank you, Mr. Drewienkiewicz. You testified in the case against

11 Slobodan Milosevic, and on page 2846 of the transcript, when you referred

12 to the situation -- when you spoke about the situation in Podujevo, you

13 said that an operation had started there, launched by the KLA, which

14 attempted to occupy dominant positions on that road by randomly shooting

15 at moving vehicles, vehicles moving along at that road which caused great

16 concern on the part of Loncar.

17 A. Yes, I remember that.

18 Q. And if you will allow me, let me go on. The fact that the

19 positions occupied by the army in the summer, which it later abandoned as

20 a result of the October agreement of the army of Yugoslavia, when it

21 returned to barracks --

22 THE INTERPRETER: Would counsel kindly slow down.

23 MR. CEPIC: [Interpretation]

24 Q. It was obvious that those positions were occupied in a gradual

25 manner by the KLA. This is your testimony in the case against Slobodan

1 Milosevic on page 2846. And you adhere to this assertion, do you not,

2 sir?

3 A. Yes. Yes.

4 Q. Thank you.

5 A. Okay.

6 Q. Do you know -- now this is the actual question in relation to this

7 subject which I have broached: Do you know that at the end of the

8 February and the beginning of March, KLA forces in the area of Podujevo

9 managed to mount an attack and to emerge victorious against the Serbs and

10 thereby to conquer, to take the city of Podujevo itself?

11 A. No, I don't think that happened. By that --

12 Q. Can we see this same document, P680, page 2.

13 A. Well, that says they managed to carry out an attack in the town.

14 It didn't say that they occupied the town and defeated the Serbs. And by

15 that stage, you had been back on the hill at Podujevo for about 10 weeks,

16 I would think. Certainly eight weeks. And there had -- you had put at

17 much up onto that hill as you had felt necessary to put -- the Yugoslav

18 forces had put as much onto that hill as you felt necessary. What was

19 happening in February and March was not what was happening in November,

20 December. We were not trying to verify an agreement of October anymore.

21 We were trying to hang on to the situation and stop it erupting into

22 full-scale war. So it was a quite different situation.

23 Q. Thank you, Mr. Drewienkiewicz. Is it true that General Loncar, on

24 a number of occasions, insisted with you, specifically, at a meeting head

25 on the 20th of December, 1998, requiring that you reinforce your patrols

1 along that particular route in order to reduce or, rather, put an end to

2 such attacks?

3 A. Yes, and I did. At the time, we had about 250 people, I think, in

4 the KVM, and we were not able to cover every -- every piece, and within

5 the five counties of -- of Kosovo we were -- at that stage, we'd set up

6 regional centres in Prizren, Pec, and Mitrovica. We had not set one up

7 in -- in the area around Podujevo. And in response to General Loncar's

8 concerns, I put people into Podujevo ahead of -- of anywhere else in that

9 area. So I did respond to his concerns as quickly as I could.

10 Q. Thank you, Mr. Drewienkiewicz. You are probably aware of the fact

11 that in this particular period, which is the second half of the month of

12 December, 1998, all non-Albanian families were forced out of the Podujevo

13 area, were they not?

14 A. Out of some of the villages surrounding Podujevo, yes.

15 Specifically to the west of Podujevo.

16 Q. Thank you, Mr. Drewienkiewicz. Can we therefore conclude that the

17 efforts you invested did not succeed in putting a stop -- to a stop the

18 ethnic cleansing and the attacks on the civilians and police in that area?

19 A. We were not -- yeah. I agree that as -- as unarmed people in

20 soft-skinned vehicles, there was only so much we could do when neither

21 side seemed to want to cooperate.

22 Q. But I suppose you notified all the incidents I mentioned in this

23 period and in the Podujevo area, did you not?

24 A. To the best of my knowledge, yes. I mean, we reported regularly

25 up to Vienna.

1 Q. Thank you. In one part of your statement you mention Vucitrn

2 municipality. Do you know that in the course of January and February,

3 1999, terrorist attacks escalated to a great extent against civilians,

4 members of the police and army? We were even able to see in this

5 courtroom some of the reports produced by your mission which spoke of

6 these numerous attacks. I do not wish to repeat them all here at this

7 time. I suppose you were privy to all these events taking place in the

8 area of Vucitrn municipality?

9 A. Yes. I would -- I would say that they weren't -- this wasn't much

10 going on in Vucitrn in January; it was more in February and towards the

11 end of February and into March that it became a particularly difficult

12 area.

13 Q. The OSCE team at Vucitrn normally consisted of captain Ferdinand

14 Safler and Major Alexsander Gubarenko. You know them personally, don't

15 you?

16 A. I met them. I can remember going to that location in probably

17 late February, early March, yes.

18 Q. And Mr. Ciaglinski told us something concerning this departure of

19 yours. He was with you on that occasion, wasn't he?

20 A. I often went with him. Yes. Because -- because he was out and

21 about more than I was, because that was what his job was, and so if he

22 knew where something was and what was happening, then I would invite him

23 to lead.

24 Q. On that occasion, as you were moving along the main road, you saw

25 fire from the area around the village of Bukos. That's the general area

1 of Vucitrn. Did you not?

2 A. Well, we're talking about -- I've got a vague recollection, but

3 I'm not sure what you're recollecting and what I'm recollecting are the

4 same things. I honestly can't remember exactly where Bukos is and exactly

5 what day we are talking about. I can remember going up there and there

6 being a number of incidents up there, yeah, but please be more specific to

7 help -- to help an old man with Alzheimers.

8 JUDGE BONOMY: Mr. Cepic, is this evidence that you anticipate

9 this witness giving differently from Ciaglinski?

10 MR. CEPIC: No. I just need confirmation about the same event,

11 nothing more than that.

12 JUDGE BONOMY: Why?

13 MR. CEPIC: I can change the topic right now if you allow me.

14 JUDGE BONOMY: Is one KVM confirmation not good enough for you?

15 MR. CEPIC: Yes, it is. It is good enough.

16 JUDGE BONOMY: You seem to have got -- you seem to have got the

17 one with the better recollection who is in hundred per cent health. Is

18 this a suitable time to interrupt you?

19 MR. CEPIC: Absolutely.

20 JUDGE BONOMY: All right.

21 MR. CEPIC: Thank you, Your Honour.

22 Mr. Sepenuk, 3D412, which is the notebook, I think.

23 MR. SEPENUK: Yes, Your Honour.

24 JUDGE BONOMY: There may be a number of notebooks. You referred

25 to one page.

1 MR. SEPENUK: Yes.

2 JUDGE BONOMY: Is that whole book in the system?

3 MR. SEPENUK: The whole book is in the system. I'm not

4 necessarily sure we could follow the same procedure as the mini "As Seen,

5 As Told" situation.

6 JUDGE BONOMY: As far as the book is concerned, the notes are

7 concerned, we're only taking or having regard to what's been referred to.

8 MR. SEPENUK: Yes. Thank you, Your Honour.

9 JUDGE BONOMY: Mr. Marcussen, you want to raise something?

10 MR. MARCUSSEN: Yesterday, we discussed an exhibit, and we

11 undertook to scan a picture from a book. As I cannot contact the witness

12 at the moment, I just want to ask if the usher maybe could retrieve the

13 book in question - I can see the witness has that - and hand it to the

14 Prosecution, so we will do the necessary trick and then hand it back.

15 JUDGE BONOMY: That's certainly in order. Thank you.

16 MR. MARCUSSEN: Thank you.

17 JUDGE BONOMY: The usher will now do as he's done before and

18 escort you from the room.

19 We will resume at 2.15 tomorrow again. Overnight, please, again,

20 discuss your evidence with absolutely no one, and we'll see you again at

21 2.15 tomorrow.

22 THE WITNESS: [Interpretation] Yes, sir.

23 JUDGE BONOMY: We will resume at 2.15.

24 --- Whereupon the hearing adjourned at 7.02 p.m.,

25 to be reconvened on Wednesday, the 6th day

1 of December, 2006, at 2.15 p.m.

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