1 Friday, 14 March 2003

2 [Open session]

3 [The accused entered court]

4 --- Upon commencing at 4.04 p.m.

5 JUDGE VASSYLENKO: Good afternoon to everybody. Would the

6 Registrar please call the case.

7 THE REGISTRAR: Good afternoon. This is Case Number IT-97-24-T,

8 the Prosecutor versus Milomir Stakic.

9 JUDGE VASSYLENKO: And the appearances for the parties.

10 MS. KORNER: Good afternoon, Your Honours. It's Joanna Korner,

11 Ann Sutherland, assisted by Ruth Karper, case manager.

12 JUDGE VASSYLENKO: And the Defence.

13 MR. LUKIC: Good afternoon, Your Honours. Branko Lukic and Danilo

14 Cirkovic for the Defence. And I think that our phones are not working,

15 headphones.

16 JUDGE VASSYLENKO: Maybe we could have some technician to help.

17 MR. LUKIC: It's working now. Thanks a lot.

18 JUDGE VASSYLENKO: I haven't heard, for the Defence, appearances.

19 MR. LUKIC: Good afternoon, Your Honours. Branko Lukic and Danilo

20 Cirkovic for the Defence.

21 JUDGE VASSYLENKO: Thank you. Unfortunately, Judge Schomburg is

22 still ill. For the same reasons as stated previously, considering that

23 Dr. Trifkovic is still in The Hague and has not yet concluded his

24 testimony, it is in the interest of justice for Judge Argibay and I to

25 continue sitting under Rule 15 bis to hear him. For the record, I would

1 again ask both parties and Dr. Stakic himself formally register their

2 consent to this procedure for today's hearing, 14th March, year 2003.

3 Starting with the Prosecution, Ms. Korner.

4 MS. KORNER: Your Honour, we consent.

5 JUDGE VASSYLENKO: And the Defence.

6 MR. LUKIC: We consent, Your Honour.

7 JUDGE VASSYLENKO: Dr. Stakic?

8 THE ACCUSED: [Interpretation] I have no objections, Your Honour.

9 JUDGE VASSYLENKO: Thank you. Therefore, considering that Judge

10 Schomburg is still ill and not available to sit in this case today, Judge

11 Argibay and I being satisfied that it is in the interests of justice to do

12 so, and again based on the consent of the parties and Dr. Stakic himself

13 hereby order pursuant to the Rule 15 bis of the Rules of Procedure and

14 Evidence that the hearing continue in the absence of Judge Schomburg.

15 Before I call the witness into the courtroom, could I ask the

16 Defence if there are any updates and breaking news in relation to the

17 witnesses that will be available to testify next week.

18 MR. LUKIC: Yes, Your Honour. It's news, but not breaking news.

19 We will not be able to bring Witness 058 to The Hague.

20 JUDGE VASSYLENKO: Will not be able.

21 MR. LUKIC: Will not be able.

22 JUDGE VASSYLENKO: And what about Witness 089?

23 MR. LUKIC: I think that the situation is the same, so we will not

24 be able to bring this witness either.

25 JUDGE VASSYLENKO: And what about the Father Loncar?

1 MR. LUKIC: I think that Mr. Ostojic is in charge of this witness,

2 and for now --

3 JUDGE VASSYLENKO: But the Defence is one team as I understand.

4 MR. LUKIC: It is really, and we think that we work as one team.

5 But I think that this witness will not be able to testify in front of this

6 Tribunal live.

7 JUDGE VASSYLENKO: Okay, thank you for your information.

8 Could the usher please --

9 MS. KORNER: Your Honour, just before, sorry, just before you

10 bring the witness in, Your Honour, may I know whether it is apparent that

11 the witness cannot finish today, may I know whether the witness will be

12 ordered to return on Monday or at a later stage? Because that will make a

13 difference as to how I conduct the cross-examination.

14 JUDGE VASSYLENKO: Of course, of course. Well only for you,

15 Ms. Korner, we decided to ask the witness to stay on Monday.

16 MS. KORNER: Well, I'm very grateful to Your Honours indeed. The

17 consideration shown by this Trial Chamber is touching, if I may say so.

18 [The witness entered court]

19 JUDGE VASSYLENKO: Good afternoon, Dr. Trifkovic.

20 THE WITNESS: Good afternoon.

21 JUDGE VASSYLENKO: I would like to remind you that you are still

22 under the solemn declaration. I think the parties and the witness himself

23 have been given notice of our ruling in relation of your stay in The

24 Hague. I will now read the Court's written order in this regard dated

25 today, 14th March, year 2003, which was filed earlier this afternoon.

1 "Trial Chamber II of the International Tribunal for the

2 Prosecution of persons responsible for serious violations of international

3 humanitarian law committed in the territory of the former Yugoslavia since

4 1991 [Tribunal],

5 "Noting that Dr. Trifkovic, the expert historian for the Defence,

6 started his testimony in this case on 13 March, 2003,

7 "Noting that although the Defence had originally estimated that it

8 would need only one hour for its direct examination of Dr. Trifkovic, it

9 was not able to conclude the examination-in-chief of this witness

10 yesterday in the hour and eleven minutes of the session remaining,

11 "Noting that the Office of the Prosecutor estimated that it would

12 need two hours to cross-examine Dr. Trifkovic,

13 "Noting that the Chamber took the necessary steps to have the

14 maximum possible sitting time, that is, two hours, available for today

15 despite the fact that no hearing had been scheduled for today in this case

16 in order based on the original estimates to be able to conclude the

17 testimony of Dr. Trifkovic today,

18 "Noting that the Defence now estimates that it will need more than

19 one additional hour today to conclude the examination-in-chief of this

20 witness,

21 "Noting that based on the amended estimate for the length of the

22 direct examination, it will not be possible to conclude the testimony of

23 Dr. Trifkovic,

24 "Noting that for administrative reasons [Courtroom availability,

25 interpretation facilities, et cetera] it is not possible to have

1 additional time for a hearing either today, 14 March 2003, or tomorrow,

2 Saturday, 15 March, 2003,

3 "Considering that it is mandatory to continue with the

4 uninterrupted hearing of this witness in the interests of justice and,

5 especially in the interest of granting the accused a fair trial by not

6 imposing a time limit on the Defence for the examination-in-chief of its

7 expert,

8 "Considering the interests of Dr. Trifkovic and his explanation of

9 his schedule for the next week, that is, 17 to 21 March, year 2003,

10 "Concludes that balancing this interest, priority must be given to

11 the interests of justice and the interests of the accused, not forgetting

12 the fiscal interests of the international community,

13 "Hereby orders Dr. Trifkovic to remain in The Hague until his

14 evidence is concluded,

15 "and emphasises that Dr. Trifkovic must bear the consequences of

16 any breach of this order."

17 Done in English and French, the English text being authorative.

18 Any remarks, questions? Then let us proceed.

19 Well, before I will give the floor to the Defence, I would like to

20 say that in relation to the over 250 documents which Dr. Trifkovic relied

21 upon in writing his report, the Chamber hasn't yet had an opportunity to

22 review these documents. And as it was in the case with the Prosecution

23 expert, Dr. Robert Donia, the Chamber is unwilling to admit them as a

24 package. Therefore, the Chamber would suggest the Defence identify the

25 core documents from the bundle, 250, and seek to have them admitted on an

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1 individual basis during Dr. Trifkovic's testimony, if it is necessary. As

2 to the remaining documents, the Bench will rule at a later stage, at a

3 later date.

4 And now, the Defence. Mr. Lukic, the floor is yours.

5 MR. LUKIC: Thank you, Your Honour.

6 WITNESS: SRDJA TRIFKOVIC [Resumed]

7 Examined by Mr. Lukic:

8 Q. Good afternoon, Dr. Trifkovic.

9 A. Good afternoon.

10 Q. I will continue your direct examination due to the absence of my

11 colleague, John Ostojic. And you heard that you are ordered to stay on

12 Monday as well. We hope that it wouldn't cause too big problems for you.

13 You know, it will be -- probably cause the inconvenience, but hopefully

14 they will be solved.

15 In the context of the discussion you had yesterday with

16 Mr. Ostojic, could you be so kind and explain to us what effect if any the

17 secession of Slovenia and Croatia had on BH, Bosnia-Herzegovina.

18 A. The effect was three-fold. First of all, the rising level of

19 violence in Croatia, and the apparent ineffectiveness of the YPA, both in

20 Slovenia and Croatia, changed attitudes towards this, until that time,

21 highly respected - and I respected from the standpoint both of people who

22 liked the YPA and those who didn't like it, both those who feared it and

23 who trusted it - there was a huge loss of credibility of the Yugoslav

24 People's Army in the aftermath of the Slovene secession.

25 It was effectively routed in Slovenia without ever trying to

1 counter the secession. And in Croatia, in the ensuing months, displayed

2 an inability to counter the secessionist forces, including the surrender

3 of garrisons in for instance Bjelovar and Barusdin [phoen], with the

4 extensive weaponry and even undamaged tanks.

5 The second effect of the secession was to focus the minds of

6 everybody in Bosnia-Herzegovina as to what will happen next.

7 Izetbegovic's position was becoming increasingly clear at this time, that

8 he would not remain in a rump Yugoslavia, and that no Yugoslavia is

9 possible without Croatia and Slovenia, that with their departure, we are

10 looking at a qualitatively new situation in which Bosnia-Herzegovina ought

11 to become sovereign and independent as well.

12 Among the Serbs, the prevalent position was that whoever wants to

13 go is free to go, but they want to remain, and they would not be taken out

14 of even the reduced, rump Yugoslavia, against their will.

15 The third effect, and I don't think it can be overemphasised, is

16 the proximity of violence on the borders of Bosnia-Herzegovina. For as

17 long as various political options remained in the realm of the

18 theoretical, it was one thing. But when in August and September and

19 October of 1991, thousands of refugees started arriving in

20 Bosnia-Herzegovina, most notably Serbs from the urban areas of Croatia,

21 and when the tales of horror that some of them conveyed, including the

22 tragedy, for instance, of the Zec family in Zagreb, who I understand

23 originally came from Prijedor, and with the engagement of the reserve

24 units mobilised in Bosnia-Herzegovina, again notably in the border regions

25 of Bosanska Krajina, across the River Sava and Una, all this had the

1 effect of electrifying the public opinion and creating the sense of

2 imminent danger and of escalating tension.

3 So the effect, to summarise, was roughly speaking three-fold: One

4 was the massive loss of credibility of the YPA; two, the political tension

5 resulting from the determination of the different political forces to draw

6 different conclusions from the secession of Slovenia and Croatia on the

7 Croat and Muslim, the determination that they will not be left in rump

8 Yugoslavia; on the Serbian side, not to be taken out of the Yugoslavian

9 context. And last, but by no means least, the sense that violence is now

10 on our doorstep, and that try as we may, we may not remain immune to it,

11 that there was an almost relentless and fateful march of events over which

12 the people of Bosnia-Herzegovina themselves had less and less control.

13 Q. Dr. Trifkovic, can you also help us understand when these

14 secessions of Slovenia and Croatia happened, and why.

15 A. The formal date, of course, is June 25th, 1991. But the writing

16 had been on the wall for more than a year. Specifically with the victory

17 of the Croatian democratic alliance, HDZ, in the spring of 1990, and the

18 ensuing series of demands from Zagreb and Ljubljana for the reorganisation

19 of the Yugoslav federation along the confederal principles, demands that

20 on the Serb side were seen as only a stepping stone to full secession,

21 because what Kucan and Tudjman were suggesting, as far as the Serbs were

22 concerned was a de facto secession through the back door, because under

23 the proposed confederal arrangement, the soul sovereignty would reside

24 with the constituent republics, and they would be able at any moment

25 through the declaration of the assembly to announce their total separation

1 from the confederal framework.

2 In addition, I believe that the whole concept of secessionism in

3 the individual republics was enhanced by the piecemeal process of

4 verifying the will of the people concerned by not having an all-Yugoslav

5 referendum on whether people wanted to remain part of Yugoslavia or not,

6 but by having it carried out not simultaneously, but at different times,

7 in different republics. And in some cases, by having the referendum

8 question itself couched in ambivalent and ambiguous language which did not

9 imply, quite clearly, the starkness of the choice that faced the

10 electorate.

11 I apologise, I'm down with bronchitis, so my delivery may leave a

12 little bit to be desired today.

13 To this outcome, the near complete control of the media mechanism

14 in practically all of the republics by the not ostensibly post communist

15 ruling structures certainly made a contribution, even though in Slovenia

16 and Croatia, which were usually branded in the western media as

17 pro-western and reform minded, the post communist parties came to power.

18 And in Serbia, the recycled communists led by Slobodan Milosevic

19 reinforced their grip on power in the election of December 1990. The

20 media climate was marked by intolerance, by black and white simplicity,

21 and by mere demonisation of the rival ethnic groups in the presentation of

22 the issues in a way that carried unfortunate overtones of an earlier

23 period of 50 years earlier that were still vividly present in the

24 collective memory of many Yugoslavs on all sides of the ethnic divide.

25 So instead of having a comprehensive and informed debate about the

1 choices facing them, many people in Croatia, in Serbia, and in

2 Bosnia-Herzegovina were almost intoxicated by a heady brew of historical

3 revisionism, and of simplified nationalist rhetoric that blurred the

4 issues and precluded meaningful debate of the kind that, had it be carried

5 out in the spirit of dispassionate analysis of the issues facing different

6 people, could have contributed to the avoidance of the war. It is

7 additionally unfortunate that the so-called voices of reason were all too

8 often identified with the inheritance of the old communist power structure

9 so that the most loudly Yugo nostalgist voices belonged to, for instance,

10 the veterans' association, the League of Communists movement for

11 Yugoslavia, or federal Prime Minister Ante Markovic's reformists, all of

12 which were in one way or another identified with the legacy of the Titoist

13 period that was becoming thoroughly discredited and regarded as unable to

14 provide meaningful answers and to offer a road map for the future.

15 Q. Thank you. And I would like now to move to Bosnia-Herzegovina and

16 ask you first: Did Mr. Alija Izetbegovic get the most votes during the

17 elections of November 1990 which resulted in him being elected president

18 of BH pursuant to the interparty agreement reached between SDS, SDA, and

19 HDZ. And if you can explain us what actually happened with the votes.

20 A. In terms of the actual number of votes polled, the man who is

21 sometimes described as the maverick businessman from Velika Kladusa in the

22 extreme northwest of Bosnia-Herzegovina by the name of Fikret Abdic was

23 the winner. But because of the vagaries of party-political constitutional

24 arrangements and because he didn't belong to the SDA, it was Alija

25 Izetbegovic who was duly elected in the caucus.

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1 Fikret Abdic undoubtedly commanded a considerable body of

2 following among the Bosnian Muslims and was regarded as a somewhat safer

3 bet by many when it came to the arrangements and -- with both Serbs and

4 Croats, and when it came to the nonideological skill in finding optimal

5 solutions, especially since his pivotal role in making the company called

6 Agrokomerc a major player in that part of Bosnia-Herzegovina, and the

7 accusations of financial misconduct notwithstanding, turned the Cazin area

8 into a showcase of relative development and, again relatively speaking,

9 prosperity in that part of the world. But in the aftermath of

10 Izetbegovic's appointment as the president of the presidency, due as I say

11 not to the simple number of votes polled, but to the support of the other

12 members of the collective body, Abdic was very often regarded by the

13 Izetbegovic establishment as a nuisance at best and a dangerous threat at

14 worst, and ultimately proclaimed a traitor for his attempts to chart a

15 middle road and to avoid the kind of political extremism that presented

16 the other side with relatively little choice.

17 It's one of those ifs that we have so many in history. We cannot

18 answer it with any degree of certainty, whether the war could have been

19 avoided if Abdic rather than Izetbegovic had led the Muslims. The one

20 thing we can guess with some degree of certainty is that the outcome could

21 not have been worse than it was.

22 Q. Did Mr. Alija Izetbegovic, a long time before the elections in

23 1990, expressed his views in a book named "Islamic Declaration"?

24 A. I believe that the actual manuscript of the book antedates 1990 by

25 quite a few years. And that it was only in 1990 that it was actually

1 published and openly disseminated. But the opinions expressed in the

2 book, including the view that there can be no peace and coexistence

3 between Islamic and non-Islamic forms of social and political organisation

4 are not particularly remarkable from the standpoint of a committed

5 Islamist. Quite the contrary, Alija Izetbegovic's views are imminently

6 part and parcel of the mainstream tradition of political Islam since its

7 earliest days. And his view that the world is divided into the area of

8 faith, the Uma, in which Islam is triumphant, and the world of war, dar al

9 harb, in which it is yet to triumph, is eminently in line with both

10 Koranic precepts of prophet Muhammad himself, the hadith, the traditions

11 of the prophet, and the 14 centuries of Islamic political and military

12 practice since the Hidra of 1622 and onwards.

13 Let me clarify: Many people claimed that Izetbegovic's views were

14 somehow radical, even in terms of the Islamic thought and practice. I

15 would say that he's just a regular, run-of-the-mill Islamic fundamentalist

16 of the kind that we encounter all over the Muslim world and that he has

17 both the scriptural and the historical precedents for holding the beliefs

18 that he does. Now, of course, it's an entirely different story as what

19 the non-Muslims thought to draw as a lesson of disposition of his. But I

20 have no doubt whatsoever in my own mind that with his beliefs and his

21 views, such as they are, and such as they have been for the past 50-odd

22 years, in the aftermath of September 11th, Alija Izetbegovic would not

23 have been able to sell himself to the western world as a multiculturalist,

24 multiethnicist, multiconfessionalist democrat.

25 Quite the contrary, I think that one might say the Bosnian crisis

1 in this sense came a decade too early, and provided militant Islam with a

2 foothold in the heart of Europe, that when the first warnings of it were

3 sounded back in the 1990s were routinely dismissed in some western

4 quarters as paranoia or Serb propaganda. But now in the aftermath of all

5 too many revelations about the Bosnian connection of a variety of

6 terrorist groups and plots, and the findings of the US house of

7 representatives task force on terrorism, that we can see in the reports by

8 Yossef Bodansky and the James Chatres, I'm afraid that we now know better.

9 Q. Dr. Trifkovic, is it common knowledge that there was presence of

10 mujahedins in Bosnia-Herzegovina, and do you know --

11 MS. KORNER: I'm sorry, that's an exceedingly leading question.

12 "Is it common knowledge that there were mujahedins in.." What is the

13 state of Dr. Trifkovic's knowledge and from what did he get that

14 knowledge?

15 MR. LUKIC: I will restate my question.

16 JUDGE VASSYLENKO: Reformulate your question.

17 MR. LUKIC: I thank you, my learned friend.

18 Q. Dr. Trifkovic, did you have any knowledge in the past or do you

19 have any knowledge now about the presence of the mujahedins in

20 Bosnia-Herzegovina in early 1990s, and if you can tell us from which

21 sources have you gathered those informations.

22 A. First of all, let me emphasise that I am not aware of the active

23 presence of militant Islamists from the rest of the Muslim world in

24 Bosnia-Herzegovina now as we speak. But as I mentioned earlier, there's a

25 comprehensive report by the task force of terrorism of the US House of

1 Representatives, which unfortunately I don't have with me, but can supply

2 the Court with subsequently. And now I'm afraid I speak from memory,

3 which talks in some detail about a whole village in the vicinity of

4 Travnik, formerly inhabited by the Serbs that had been taken over by the

5 jihadists from the Arab world, Pakistan, elsewhere. Also, there had been

6 a Bosnian connection, if you will, to various attempted or actually

7 performed terrorist attacks, including the plan -- the attack on I believe

8 it's Dhahran, Saudi Arabia, the planned attack on the US military bases in

9 West Germany, and the action by the French police in the northern French

10 city of Lille where all five of the people either apprehended or killed in

11 the shootout at the time of a European Union top-level conference in the

12 city, were found to have had either experience as veterans fighting for

13 the Bosnian Muslim army or else having a Bosnian connection of some other

14 kind. I regret not having documentation at my fingertips right now to

15 answer your question in greater detail, but I have written on the subject,

16 and I would be able to follow my oral testimony, once I return to the

17 United States, with a more comprehensive written answer that would contain

18 references to specific documents and events, dates, and names.

19 Q. Thank you, Doctor.

20 Will you be also so kind and share with us and describe the

21 circumstances which led to Alija Izetbegovic requesting the

22 Bosnia-Herzegovina join an organisation of Islamic nations as a whole

23 country.

24 A. Under the Bosnia-Herzegovinian constitution, the president of the

25 presidency was effectively "primus inter pares," first among equals, and

1 was not authorised to make ad hoc decisions, especially those affecting

2 the key political issues, including foreign relations, of the republic

3 without reference to other members of the collective presidency, which as

4 we know also included Serbs and Croats. But both Izetbegovic's request

5 for the membership of the Islamic Conference Organisation on his visit to

6 Turkey and his request for Saudi aid during a visit there on March 27th,

7 8th, and 9th of 1992 came as a surprise to other members of the presidency

8 because neither the request for membership nor the request for assistance

9 had been discussed, let alone cleared, by the collective body in advance

10 of having been made.

11 And of course their effect was to increase mutual mistrust and to

12 feed the fears and the apprehensions of the non-Muslims, that Izetbegovic

13 was not only acting unilaterally, but also that his unilateralism was

14 strongly motivated by his Islamism and that when faced with a choice

15 between following the dictate of his faith and its political consequences

16 on the one hand, and the dictates of constitutionality and legality and

17 political prudence on the other, he would opt for the former.

18 Q. I believe that you have a list of 65 ter exhibits somewhere in

19 front of you. And is it true that under number 165 on that list, we have

20 a clip from Oslobodenje, Sarajevo paper, mentioning the same event.

21 A. I remember the article very well. I don't think I need to look at

22 it. The other Muslim member of the Presidency, Ejup Ganic, when asked by

23 the reporters to comment on the significance of Alija Izetbegovic's sudden

24 departure for Saudi Arabia, declared that -- or rather, admitted that he

25 himself was surprised and explained that the visit had a semi-private

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1 character.

2 Now, the category "semi-private visit" does not exist in the

3 constitutional and political arrangements of Bosnia-Herzegovina of that

4 time, and especially in as sensitive a moment as the end of March of 1992

5 with the Cutileiro-led negotiations entering the period of crisis and the

6 tensions rising throughout the republic, the move had to be seen as both

7 grossly provocative and even sinister. But the interesting twist was also

8 provided only days later when the Saudi Gazette, which is an

9 English-language weekly, commentated that Mr. Izetbegovic could not

10 automatically count on the unlimited support of the Muslim world without

11 undertaking certain obligations in return, implying that Izetbegovic had,

12 in fact, requested open-ended support of the Muslim world. And that in

13 order to obtain that support he would be expected to undertake certain

14 clear commitments.

15 Q. Dr. Trifkovic, yesterday we discussed the formation and

16 proclamation of Serb Republic of BH on January 9th, 1992. And would you

17 be so kind and share with us, was that a public proclamation pursuant to

18 the Badinter commission which requested the deadline of January 15th,

19 1992?

20 A. The proclamation was a reaction to the imposition of the

21 deadline. As I stated quite frankly yesterday, after the fatal memorandum

22 on sovereign and independent Bosnia-Herzegovina of October 14th,

23 everything done by all sides was both constitutionally and legally

24 dubious. By voting for the memorandum in the absence of Serbian deputies,

25 the SDA/HDZ tactical coalition entered the uncharted waters. And

1 likewise, the Serb plebiscite on November 8th and the proclamation of the

2 Serb Republic of Bosnia-Herzegovina of January 9th were all ad hoc moves

3 in reaction to the perceived attempt by the other two parties to present

4 the Serbs with an unacceptable fait accomplis.

5 In that sense, the announcement by the European Community that

6 January 15th would be the cutoff date for recognition requests had the

7 effect of adding fuel to the fire. It prompted the separatist-minded

8 forces to proceed single-mindedly towards what they regarded as an

9 objective that would be aided and abetted by the international community,

10 while at the same time prompting the Serbs, who would have preferred the

11 status quo, remaining within Yugoslavia, to resort to -- improvised

12 devices that would give expression to their collective will not to be

13 taken into secession. In a funny way, we may compare this situation with

14 that prevailing in Ireland in the run up to the partition of 1921 when

15 both the nationalists and the unionists resorted to a whole host of moves

16 and political and military decisions that were extralegal but reflected

17 their determination not to be forced by the other side into unacceptable

18 solutions.

19 Q. I would ask you something now about the Cutileiro plan, and if you

20 would be so kind and share with us the goals of this plan, the process,

21 and the negotiations which resulted therefrom.

22 A. The underlying assumptions of the Cutileiro plan as well as the

23 whole negotiating process initiated by Cutileiro under the auspices of

24 Lord Carrington's negotiating effort were fairly simple. Though

25 assumptions took the pending international recognition of

1 Bosnia-Herzegovina as a given and sought to devise the internal

2 rearrangement of the republic along the ethnic lines so as to provide its

3 constituent nations with a sense that they have a stake in the new order

4 of things.

5 To put it very crudely, and I suspect that neither Cutileiro nor

6 Lord Carrington would ever put it as simply as that, but the underlying

7 assumption was that if we are to get the Serbs to agree to

8 Bosnia-Herzegovina's complete secession from Yugoslavia and its

9 internationally recognised independence and sovereignty, let's at least

10 try to devise the internal constitutional rearrangement that would give

11 them the sense of being the masters of their own destiny in the

12 territories where they compromise a majority and removing the very

13 important ingredient in the equation, which was present on all sides, and

14 way was the fear of being dominated and ruled by another ethnicity.

15 Accordingly, the Cutileiro plan proposed the division of

16 Bosnia-Herzegovina into three ethnically-based cantons, and a central

17 authority in Sarajevo that would have the responsibility for a number of

18 joint functions, including foreign affairs, defence, foreign trade,

19 central bank currency, and so on. And in many ways, it was a mix of

20 federal and confederal ingredients which not only Serbs, but also Croats,

21 found quite attractive.

22 In fact, the leadership of both the Serbian democratic party and

23 the Croatian democratic union was ready and willing to sign on the dotted

24 line and obviously some details concerning the maps that remained to be

25 ironed out. But the ambivalence on the Muslim side was felt even before

1 the referendum on independence, but more strongly in the weeks following

2 it, when Izetbegovic started talking about elements other than ethnic

3 criteria in determining the boundaries of the cantons, such as economic

4 infrastructure or geographic and historical, cultural patterns. When he

5 started mentioning the possibility of more than three cantons, all of

6 which was very alarming to those who believed that it was necessary to

7 provide the blueprint for the constitution rearrangement that would

8 overcome the fear of centralisation among the opponents of full

9 sovereignty and independence for Bosnia-Herzegovina.

10 In the event, after the international recognition of April 6th,

11 1992, the Muslim side increasingly proved to be disinterested in the

12 continuation of the Cutileiro process, and even though the Karadzic/Boban

13 agreement concluded in Grac, I believe, in the first week of May 1992,

14 left the door open for the SDA to come on board, many commentators

15 believed that with the recognition and with the at least tacit

16 encouragement from Washington to persevere in the demount for a more or

17 less centralised, more or less unitary state, Izetbegovic was no longer

18 interested in the deal.

19 JUDGE VASSYLENKO: Mr. Lukic, it seems to me it is high time to

20 have a short break with your permission. The trial stays adjourned until

21 5.10. 10 minutes break.

22 --- Recess taken at 5.01 p.m.

23 --- On resuming at 5.14 p.m.

24 JUDGE VASSYLENKO: Mr. Lukic, please continue.

25 MR. LUKIC: Thank you, Your Honour.

1 Q. Dr. Trifkovic, would you be so kind and tell us when Cutileiro

2 plan was actually brought public.

3 A. To the best of my recollection, the plan was made public in its

4 main outline in the third week of February. I can't remember the exact

5 date. Certainly, it was in the weeks prior to the referendum of February

6 29th, March 1st.

7 Q. Thank you. And please describe the measures taken by the Serbs

8 pursuant to the Cutileiro plan and Badinter commission?

9 A. Well, the reaction to the deadline of January 15th, I already

10 indicated was primarily manifested in the proclamation of the Serb

11 Republic of Bosnia-Herzegovina on January 9th. The crisis of the

12 Cutileiro negotiating process manifest in the increasingly unwillingness

13 of Izetbegovic to commit himself to the principle of the tripartite

14 cantonal internal arrangement led to the proclamation of the constitution

15 of the Serb Republic of Bosnia-Herzegovina on I believe March 28th of

16 1992. I may be off by one day.

17 Q. I'm sorry to bother you, but because of administration of this

18 Tribunal, we have to establish and to spare some time, I will just ask you

19 from the list whether documents 121 from that list, 138, 145, 160, 162,

20 197, 233, 236, and also 105 and 107 talk about this plan and negotiations

21 regarding these plans.

22 A. Yes, they do indeed. And as far as the reactions of different

23 negotiating parties to the Cutileiro negotiating process are concerned, in

24 some of these articles, suspicion is raised on the Muslim side that prior

25 briefings had been made by the European mediators leading to what they

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1 suspected was preconceived outcome vis-a-vis the ethnic tripartite

2 arrangement of the proposed cantons, while on the Serb side, there is an

3 almost oscillating pendulum between encouragement and disappointment, hope

4 and despair, depending on the one hand the vagaries of Izetbegovic's

5 public pronouncements, on the other, continuously optimistic statements by

6 the negotiators and by Cutileiro himself about the prospects for a deal.

7 In retrospect, when we look at these articles, I think that the

8 whole process was doomed by the act of international recognition on April

9 6th and by the at least implicit encouragement from Washington to

10 Izetbegovic to persevere in his attempt to create a more or less unitary

11 and centralised state, and that the political underpinnings of the

12 Cutileiro assumptions were no longer present after April 6th, which in

13 itself indicates the lack of coherence and diplomatic skill and savoir

14 faire of the international community, because the act of recognition - and

15 I'm now talking about one of those ifs in history - but it's realistic to

16 assume that had the act of recognition been made contingent upon the prior

17 agreement among the parties, such as sought by the Cutileiro plan, then

18 those negotiations could have been crowned with a successful outcome.

19 In view of the fact that recognition was extended not only in the

20 absence of such agreement, but while the negotiating process was fully

21 underway, practically sealed the destiny of the proposed deal.

22 Q. Do you have an opinion based upon a reasonable degree of certainty

23 whether the measures taken by the Serbs were reasonable and consistent

24 with the Cutileiro plan and Badinter commission?

25 A. It is impossible to answer this question in a value-neutral way

1 that would be divorced from the context of the times. Until the

2 proclamation of the Republika Srpska in July of 1992, all of the statutory

3 and plebiscitary moves by the Serb side could have been fitted in and

4 could have been made compliant with some kind of Bosnia-Herzegovinian

5 wider framework. The plebiscite was a largely symbolic exercise without

6 clear-cut legal consequences. The proclamation of the Serb Republic of

7 Bosnia-Herzegovina sought to pre-empt the act of international

8 recognition. The proclamation of constitution of the Serbian Republic of

9 Bosnia-Herzegovina sought to emphasise the existence of political and

10 legal structures of the Serb people within Bosnia-Herzegovina that could

11 not be ignored and overcome in the rush for international recognition.

12 But all of them could be made compliant, at least retroactively, with the

13 kind of tripartite internal rearrangement of the Republic of

14 Bosnia-Herzegovina that was the underlying basis of the Cutileiro plan.

15 Let me be specific: Had the plan been accepted and signed by all

16 three sides, the end result quite possibly would not have been all that

17 different from the end result of Dayton, but the republic would have been

18 spared four and a half years of suffering and bloodshed, and even

19 elementary pragmatism on the side of those who sought separation seems to

20 dictate a modicum of realistic understanding of the impossibility of

21 imposing on one third of the population of Bosnia-Herzegovina a dictum

22 that they deemed unacceptable.

23 So what I'm really suggesting in answer to your question is that I

24 cannot judge the reasonableness of those moves from the vantage point of

25 more than a decade later. I would suggest that the way to deal with this

1 judgement, which is obviously a value judgement, is to try and understand

2 the restraints and the metal paradigm and the pressures that were being

3 exerted on the actors at the time, what the French would call l'histoire

4 elementaire, that without putting yourself in the shoes of those people

5 and looking at the options that they were facing and the pressures they're

6 experiencing, simply passing a verdict laden with value connotations such

7 as the reasonableness of their behaviour is very difficult. So I would

8 prefer not to give a clear-cut answer to that question.

9 Q. Thank you, Doctor. Please share with us your view as academic

10 historian and political scientist how the war started in

11 Bosnia-Herzegovina.

12 A. For every war, the pivotal question is who fired the first shots.

13 The war between the States, the civil war in the United States, started

14 with the shelling of Fort Sumter in April of 1861. And it was the guns of

15 Fort Sumter that were taken as the clear-cut point. From that point on,

16 it was no longer possible to resolve the problem by political means.

17 The first shots in Bosnia-Herzegovina were fired on March 1st by

18 the Green Berets, the Muslim paramilitary, illegal organisation. And the

19 first victim was a Serb, a man by the name of Nikola Gardovic who was

20 celebrating the wedding of his son. The first mass slaughter of members

21 of one ethnic group by another in Bosnia-Herzegovina occurred in the

22 village of Sijekovac near Bosanski Brod, days later. The victims were

23 Serbs, and the culprits were Muslims and Croats.

24 There is a certain logic to the mindlessness of violence. It is

25 that unfortunately once the shots are fired and lives are lost, the

1 exponential escalation of violence is much more difficult to control. The

2 barricades that started springing up all over the city of Sarajevo in the

3 aftermath of the slaying in Bascarsija on March 1st were admittedly

4 dismantled some days later, and the violence did not completely get out of

5 hand for some weeks to come, but an important threshold had been passed.

6 Unless we bear in mind both the brutalising effect on the mental

7 framework of the citizens of Bosnia-Herzegovina that the war in

8 neighbouring Croatia had had, it will be difficult to understand how was

9 it possible for people who lived in reasonable harmony for a good many

10 decades to succumb to the collective call of the wild and to seek

11 resolution of the conflict by violent means. But it is also important to

12 remember, and this is something that too many people in the international

13 community were not prepared to do, to remember the painful legacy of the

14 relatively recent past still in the living memory of many people, the

15 legacy of 1941 to 1945 which, in the collective memory of the Serbs in

16 both Bosnia-Herzegovina and in Croatia, was comparable to the collective

17 memory of the Holocaust among the European Jews.

18 The logic of violence in the months of April and May also

19 reflected different expectations on different sides. As far as the Serbs

20 were concerned, the big uncertainty about the willingness and ability of

21 the YPA to act decisively in order to protect their interests was resolved

22 with its departure and with the leaving of Bosnian-born personnel and a

23 sizable segment of equipment behind. In the case of the HVO, the reliance

24 on Croatian regular units was manifested very early on, particularly in

25 western Herzegovina, and except for the desire to carve out and control an

1 area which was more or less clearly Croat in terms of majority population

2 residing there, in western Herzegovina, Central Bosnia, and the Sava River

3 valley, the Croats' essential posture was reactive at this stage rather

4 than proactive.

5 And finally as far as the Muslims were concerned, with the

6 transfer of the paramilitary units into the Territorial Defence and the

7 activation of the pre-existent Patriotic League cells and structures and

8 their blending with the TO in the Muslim-controlled municipalities, we had

9 a numerous, albeit at this stage still, lightly-armed force that was

10 primarily geared to expecting, hoping for, and if necessary provoking

11 foreign intervention by the stunts such as the notorious bread queue

12 massacre in Vase Miskin Street in Sarajevo, and by seeking to expand the

13 territory under its control without entering into an open, all-out

14 military clash of the kind that would display the weaknesses of

15 Muslim-armed formations at that time, all of which is amply documented in

16 the memoirs by Generals Halilovic, Hodzic, and others.

17 Q. And based upon your analysis and literature you reviewed, what was

18 the role of JNA at the beginning of the war and throughout the spring and

19 summer of 1992?

20 A. It is important to bear in mind that the JNA developed from the

21 partisan forces during World War II as an explicitly party controlled

22 armed force that sought to identify Yugoslav patriotism with a strictly

23 Titoist form of party political identity and interpretation of history.

24 MS. KORNER: May I interrupt for one moment. Dr. Trifkovic was

25 put forward as an expert historian and not an expert military man. I

1 understand there is going to be an expert called on behalf of the

2 Defence. I'm wondering whether this is properly an area with which he can

3 deal.

4 JUDGE VASSYLENKO: Yes, Mr. Lukic.

5 MR. LUKIC: Not Trifkovic is not giving an expertise on military

6 matters, but he has to touch upon some military issues because we are

7 talking now about prewar and wartime. And of course, that the war is part

8 of history as well. So I don't think that Mr. Trifkovic will give us a

9 lengthy explanation, but let him tell us a few sentences to be -- because

10 our next questions will be in this context.

11 THE WINTESS: I think that without touching upon strictly military

12 issues -- sorry.

13 JUDGE VASSYLENKO: Dr. Trifkovic, please do continue. I don't

14 believe these are strictly military issues. It is more political issues.

15 THE WITNESS: An officer corps nurtured on the legacy of the

16 so-called people's liberation struggle that was the basis of the JNA

17 esprit de corps and the JNA commitment to defending not just Yugoslavia

18 but socialist Yugoslavia based on workers' self-management, nonalignment,

19 brotherhood, unity, and all the rest of it, was a highly politicised view

20 of Yugoslavia, what it meant, what it implied. So with the beginning of

21 disintegration of Yugoslavia, the JNA and its top brass faced a serious

22 problem.

23 On the one hand, part and parcel of their ideological upbringing

24 was that it was impossible for honest, hard-working, good patriotic

25 Yugoslavs to be ethnic separatists, and the refusal to even countenance

1 the possibility of mass ethnic separatism in any ethnic group as part of

2 the JNA doctrine proved well nigh fatal. A nonideological army will

3 postulate different scenarios and different possible threats to the

4 country's stability, sovereignty, and develop different responses to those

5 challenges. In the case of the JNA, we had the utter inability of the top

6 brass to do so because even postulating the possibility of such challenges

7 as were witnessed in Croatia and Slovenia in the summer of 1991 would have

8 been deemed treasonous or politically incorrect. If you're a communist

9 officer in the JNA, and you started talking in 1986, 1987, 1988, or 1989

10 about the possibility of secession of certain republics and their armed

11 rebellion against the constitutional order, you were putting yourself in a

12 very vulnerable position.

13 And likewise, the insistence of the JNA and of the political party

14 approved of by the JNA which was the League of Communists movement for

15 Yugoslavia, their propensity to call all ethnically-based parties in the

16 context of Bosnia-Herzegovina nationalist and to proclaim that they are

17 all equally culpable for the crisis in the republic was perfectly in line

18 with the old Titoist practice of branding all nationalisms together and

19 claiming that they were all equally bad and equally destructive and

20 equally destabilising [Realtime transcript read in error "stabilising"].

21 So to make the shift and to readjust their mental and political

22 terms of reference to the demand of the Serb people of Bosnia-Herzegovina

23 to have an armed force that would protect their specific right not to be

24 taken into secession by the SDA/HDZ tactical coalition demanded the kind

25 of mental shift that while eminently acceptable for a large number of

1 Bosnian-born Serb lieutenants and majors, and even colonels, certainly

2 when we look at the higher brass of the YPA, the JNA, people such Kadjevic

3 and Hadzic, it becomes obvious this that is the kind of shift that they

4 were simply not able to make, that old Yugo nostalgic assumptions and all

5 ideological mental habits died very hard, and that the rapid developments

6 which they were facing in the second half of 1991 and the first half of

7 1992 required a qualitatively different kind of response, which in the

8 event was not possible without the emotional commitment that locally-born

9 cadre of the former YPA could have by virtue of being Bosnian Serbs, first

10 and foremost, and former communist party members and YPA officers, next.

11 The same phenomenon, let me add, was at work with many Muslim and

12 Croat officers, except for many of them, the shift was easier to make.

13 Because to a large extent, in both the role of Yugoslavia between the two

14 world wars and in the socialist Yugoslavia after 1945, the Serbs were not

15 only the most prominent propagators of the Yugoslav idea, but also the

16 most committed victims of their own propaganda. And while for a patriotic

17 Slovene, Croat, Bosnian Muslim, or Macedonian, when the old Yugoslav

18 assumptions crumbled away, the new patriotic content was easy to find.

19 For many Serbs, this transformation, this shift proved to be more

20 difficult, more traumatic, and more ambivalent.

21 JUDGE ARGIBAY: May I just make an observation only. It's for the

22 transcript. Can you control, Mr. Lukic, in page 26, line 24, I think

23 Dr. Trifkovic said "destablising," and it says here "equally

24 stabilising."

25 Can you confirm what you say, please, Doctor.

1 THE WITNESS: It is destablising.

2 JUDGE ARGIBAY: Destablising. Please correct that.

3 MR. LUKIC: Thank you, Your Honour, for your help.

4 Q. Dr. Trifkovic, staying in the context, describe for us, please,

5 the actions taken by the Muslims, Bosnian Muslims, with respect to forming

6 their own army, EA, Patriotic League, Green Berets, and so on.

7 A. I regret not having at my disposal some of the memoirs of the

8 early Muslim activists who were instrumental in developing and setting up

9 both the Patriotic League and the Green Beret units which came into my

10 possession subsequent to my preparation of the report. But the story is

11 verified by the fact that from different sources, different direct

12 participants in these events, provide a similar timetable.

13 The pivotal point in March 31st, 1991, four months before the

14 crisis in Croatia and Slovenia when the SDA activists meeting in a mosque

15 at Souk Bunar near Sarajevo decided to set up a rudimentary network of

16 local activists who would be charged with preparing and developing a party

17 militia which they would call Patriotic League. The early efforts

18 received their full imprimatur on June 10th, 1991 - let me emphasise,

19 still two weeks before the violence started with the Slovene and Croatian

20 declaration of independence - with the meeting of leading Muslim

21 intellectuals and SDA activists attended by Alija Izetbegovic himself, at

22 which detailed instructions were prepared for field activists and the

23 overall territorial principle of these efforts was accepted as suggested

24 by I believe it was Halilovic himself who said that instead of going after

25 a small body of highly-trained experts in the militia and command

1 sabotage, they ought to seek a broadly-based mass movement that would have

2 its outposts in more or less every municipality of Bosnia-Herzegovina.

3 Highly significant is the fact that at that meeting it was decided

4 to set up nine regional staffs of the Patriotic League of which one was

5 outside Bosnia-Herzegovina, in southwest Serbia, the area that the Muslims

6 call Sandjak. And in subsequent testimonies and statements by the authors

7 of different memoirs and serialised articles in Oslobodenje and Darne and

8 elsewhere, several of these Muslim activists readily concede that they

9 were hoping that if and when the war broke out in Bosnia-Herzegovina, they

10 would be helped by an uprising of the Muslims in Sandjak and the Albanians

11 in Kosovo, and that furthermore they were disappointed that this would not

12 happen in the spring and summer of 1992.

13 By the 2nd of December of 1991, when a detailed military council,

14 again attended by Izetbegovic, was held in a private house on the

15 outskirts of Sarajevo, the Patriotic League had branches in 104 of 107

16 municipalities in Bosnia-Herzegovina, and two months later, when a further

17 military council was held in the village of Mahurici, near Travnik, where

18 a whole series of specific instructions concerning the future developments

19 were issued, by that time, we are looking at a fairly strong and

20 centralised force of close to a hundred thousand men, which while devoid

21 of heavy weaponry, had a detailed command and control structure and

22 compartmentalisation into different arms and services resembling the fully

23 fledged armed force which, as I mentioned earlier, only two months later

24 was indeed blended into the TO which then was turned into the army of

25 Bosnia-Herzegovina.

1 So the initial impetus came on 31st of March of 1991. The

2 detailed blueprint was elaborated on June 10th of 1991. The review of the

3 fruits was summarised in -- on December 2nd of 1991. And the elaboration

4 of specific tasks in the anticipated violence ahead was considered in some

5 detail at Mahurici in the second half of February 1992.

6 Q. Was this whole preparation by the Muslims in Bosnia-Herzegovina

7 done before the referendum held in 1992?

8 A. Not only was it done before the referendum, but the military

9 council at Mahurici which the Muslims themselves called historic in their

10 own literature was specifically convened in order to consider the state of

11 military preparedness for the aftermath of the referendum. Because they

12 had no doubt that the referendum was the kind of challenge to the Serbs to

13 which they were expected to react in more than merely political way.

14 Q. Prior to April 1992, was there the declaration of imminent threat

15 of war, and when was the state of imminent threat of war declared, and by

16 whom, if you know?

17 A. I cannot remember the date without consulting my papers, but it

18 was proclaimed before the international recognition. I believe -- I'm

19 sorry, I'm not able to answer it offhand.

20 Q. From the literature you reviewed, did you have the opportunity to

21 familiarise yourself with the role of the police during the state of

22 imminent threat of war with respect to the military?

23 MS. KORNER: Your Honour, yes, I'm sorry. I haven't objected so

24 far, but none of this, what we're now dealing with, is, in fact, in the

25 report. I think if Dr. Trifkovic is now going to start dealing with the

1 role of the police, then I would like to know on what literature he's

2 relying, on what documents he's relying, not just a general assertion in

3 this way I'm afraid. There are a number of other matters I would be

4 asking for references for, but I don't want to detain the doctor any

5 further. But on this, I would like to know on what he is going to refer.

6 MR. LUKIC:

7 Q. Dr. Trifkovic, are you familiar with the law of all people's

8 defence and self-protection?

9 A. I am familiar with its broad outline including the summary of the

10 law that is also widely available in English. It is a cumbersome document

11 in the original which I readily admit to not having read in its entirety

12 in Serbo-Croatian.

13 Q. Can you, based on your knowledge, answer my previous question, if

14 you know what is prescribed in this law about the role of police?

15 MS. KORNER: Your Honour, the simple answer -- I have no objection

16 if Mr. Lukic wants to put the law in. Rather than having a guess or a

17 memory of what's in this.

18 THE WITNESS: Since I would prefer to give fairly specific answers

19 to matters I am fully familiar with, I would prefer not to deal with

20 issues where I'm not as briefed as I like to be when providing an answer.

21 MR. LUKIC:

22 Q. Thank you, Doctor. Again, because of the procedural matters, I'll

23 just ask you whether the documents listed on this table are based for your

24 conclusions regarding the war. And those documents are 001, 002, 003,

25 006, 115, 216, and 224.

1 A. Yes, they refer to what I mentioned earlier as a whole series of

2 memoirs and personal accounts and reminiscences by various Bosnian Muslim

3 activists and commanders who are surprisingly frank and forthright in

4 their accounts of their preparations, military preparations, even in the

5 period when the public face of the SDA was full of statements about

6 peaceful intentions and determination to resolve all problems by peaceful

7 means.

8 Q. Thank you. And now I would like you -- I would like to ask you,

9 based upon your review of the documents provided, meaning Donia's report,

10 numerous articles and literature, among other things, please describe

11 Dr. Stakic's role before the takeover of Prijedor Municipality on April

12 30th, 1992.

13 A. First of all, I think it's interesting that Dr. Stakic is a

14 relative latecomer to the ranks of the SDS. In the early days of the

15 multiparty renaissance in the former Yugoslavia, he joined the People's

16 Radical Party Nikola Pasic, a political organisation that was initiated by

17 a Belgrade-based lawyer by the name of Veljko Guberina, I believe, in

18 1989, which followed in the footsteps of the well-known Serbian politician

19 from the late 19th and early 20th century who I must emphasise followed

20 the path of social radicalism, which is whence the party got its name. It

21 should not be confused with the later product of the Yugoslav political

22 imbroglio, the Serbian radical party of Vojislav Seselj.

23 Following in Pasic's tradition meant social justice of a

24 distinctly leftish kind when it came to issues of income distribution,

25 land reform, provision of public services. And the desire to give

1 expression to ethnic particularism within the Yugoslav framework. And I

2 emphasise not only that that would give expression to the Serb

3 particularism but also other groups. Because let us not forget that as

4 one of the early prime ministers of Yugoslavia or the kingdom of Serbs,

5 Croats, and Slovenes as it was known then, Nikola Pasic relentlessly

6 worked on the reconciliation with the Croats the work which was crowned

7 with the successful conclusion of the coalition between his radicals and

8 Stipe Radic's Croatian peasant party in 1925.

9 Also, I must say that reading some of Dr. Stakic's speeches and

10 statements from 1991, I was struck by the difference in tone between his

11 approach and that of people clearly identified with the renaissance of

12 Serbian national idea, at that time people like Vuk Draskovic, for

13 instance. Most notably, I believe that his address at the celebration of

14 the republic day in Prijedor on November 29th, 1991, was such an

15 extravagant ode to the Yugoslav idea and to the spirit of Yugoslavism and

16 Yugoslav togetherness, that in itself it would have sounded pretty

17 suspicious, if not outright odious, to a genuine Serb nationalist at the

18 time because by that time, explicit nationalists were no longer talking in

19 terms of preserving Yugoslavia, but of re-inventing a Serb entity that

20 would seek to unite all Serbs on the ruins of Yugoslavia.

21 So as late as the end of 1991, in his public statements,

22 Dr. Stakic reflected the mindset of what I would colloquially call "Yugo

23 nostalgia," the hope for the revival of the old Yugoslav spirit of

24 togetherness, even though by that time, to a political realist, it would

25 have been increasingly obvious that the exercise was forlorn.

1 JUDGE VASSYLENKO: Mr. Trifkovic, excuse me. We have run out of

2 time.

3 THE WITNESS: I am also running out of voice. So thank you, Your

4 Honour.

5 JUDGE VASSYLENKO: So it's in our mutual interest to finish these

6 hearings today. I would like to thank you, all participants, for your

7 cooperation. And for you, Dr. Trifkovic, I would like to remind you that

8 until your testimony here has concluded, you may not contact

9 representatives either the Defence or the Prosecution. Please be back on

10 Monday at 9.00 a.m. to continue with the evidence in this case. The trial

11 stays adjourned until Monday at 9.00 a.m. in Courtroom II.

12 MS. KORNER: Your Honour, I just think that Dr. Trifkovic in light

13 of the fact that he's still in chief shouldn't think he'll be leaving here

14 on Monday because I don't think he is.

15 JUDGE VASSYLENKO: Of course.

16 --- Whereupon the hearing adjourned

17 at 6.05 p.m., to be reconvened on Monday,

18 the 17th day of March, 2003,

19 at 9.00 a.m.

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