Examination of Witnesses (Questions 180
- 199)
TUESDAY 18 JANUARY 2000
MR TIM
JUDAH, PROFESSOR
ADAM ROBERTS,
JANE SHARP,
MR JONATHAN
STEELE AND
MR JOHN
SWEENEY
Chairman
180. Professor Roberts, on this?
(Professor Roberts) Just for clarity, I did not say
that the NATO action was illegal, I said that it was in an area
which was not clearly either legal or illegal.
Ms Abbott
181. And just for clarity, is there anything
in NATO's Charter, is there anything that actually allows NATO
to intervene out of area in this way? I am not an academic, but
I understood NATO to be essentially a defensive organisation.
However justifiable the intervention may be, there is something
problematic about an essentially defensive organisation taking
it on itself to intervene out of area?
(Professor Roberts) Can I just finish on your NATO
point? You implied that NATO was picking and choosing and deciding
where to act; well, the history of it is not like that at all,
the history is one where a problem was recognised, including by
the OSCE, by numerous other European entities, including the European
Union, by individual Western European Governments, and, above
all, by the Security Council of the United Nations, as posing
an extremely serious threat to the Albanian population. And it
was in the process of recognising that and taking action about
it that NATO was involved, first of all, in the area of the monitoring
of the October 1998 Agreement, and, of course, in the threats,
to try to get Milosevic to peacefully change his policy in respect
of Kosovo. So NATO was involved in those two ways; and it was
not a matter of picking and choosing.
182. My point is that there may well have been
a role for an international intervention, and NATO may have been
an instrument to hand, but was NATO the ideal instrument, I can
scarcely think so, partly because of issues in relation to Russia
that we know of?
(Professor Roberts) But NATO was not the ideal instrument,
it was simply the only one that was there.
(Ms Sharp) I agree with that, and, I think, what you
have to look back to, when Jonathan was talking about his coalition
of the willing he was talking about Britain, France, the US, leading,
who are, of course, all on the P5. And if we had had a United
States Government that had been seriously committed to the United
Nations and took its responsibilities and commitments to the UN
Charter seriously, obviously, it would have been better to do
it under UN auspices, but the fact is that at the moment you could
not get the United States to do it under the United Nations. And
this is a problem that is still with us; they are about to pay
some of their dues, but they are certainly not in any way committed
to using the United Nations as it was designed to be used.
Mr Chidgey: What I would like to do, if I may,
now, is to try to draw together some of the threads of the features
of the military campaign; we have sort of touched on bits and
pieces in the last half an hour, or so, but I have got three or
four points I would like to put to the panel, if I may. Professor
Roberts, in your evidence to the Committee, you have argued that
the campaign against Milosevic was launched, and I quote, as a
result of "guilt over past inaction regarding Bosnia, and
concern about the peace and security in the region...reluctance
to accept large numbers of refugees on a permanent basis...a further
key element was NATO's credibility...". What I would like
to know, from the panel members here, is which were the decisive
reasons for intervention; that if NATO's credibility was a key
issue, was it right for NATO to arrive at a position where it
had to defend its credibility in this way? I have got a couple
of other points I would like to raise at the same time, I will
give them to you all so that you can take them through piece by
piece. I would like to know whether the other witnesses agree,
or think that there is any justification for Professor Roberts'
view that there are "grounds for doubting" whether ethnic
cleansing would have proceeded with "such speed and viciousness"
if there had not been a bombing campaign; we have touched on that,
I would like some clarity? Then two more points. To what extent
did the expectation of a successful air campaign depend upon the
view that attacks on Serb targets in Bosnia in August 1995 were
successful? Is it not the case that Croat and Muslim ground forces
were the decisive factors in forcing the Serbs to do a deal at
Dayton? And, finally, do you believe that the NATO leaders were
excessively optimistic about the likely effectiveness of air attacks,
and/or that it was a mistake—a mistake—to rule out
the possibility of a ground offensive from the outset?
Chairman
183. There is a series of questions; who would
like to start: Jane Sharp?
(Ms Sharp) I think the basic reason for going in was
a sort of sense that NATO was saying, "We're just not going
to tolerate genocide on the continent of Europe any more,"
and you could dress it up any way you like, and a lot of shame
for not acting before. And, here, I think, Tony Blair was crucial,
the difference between the Tory Government and the Labour Government
and the way that they moved within the NATO Alliance, I think,
is critical, and you can talk to any Ally and they will tell you
the same thing. This question about the bombing causing more ethnic
cleansing, to me, there was enough ethnic cleansing from February
1998 in Kosovo, and, as we have said around this table all morning,
we are looking at a man who had committed ethnic cleansing since
1991 in the former Yugoslavia; so, to me, that is sort of an immaterial
question. A very interesting point about lessons of the bombing;
yes, I think the Americans completely misread the impact of the
bombing in the summer of 1995. I think not enough credit is given
to people like Rupert Smith, who when he took over the command
of UNPROFOR, in January 1995, immediately called for a rapid reaction
force; he did not get it until after Srebrenica, and it was not
functional. But I think it was the Croats moving forward after
the American training, it was the contribution of the bombing,
and I think it was very much the Anglo-French-Dutch rapid reaction
force on the ground, and a completely different kind of UNPROFOR
Commander, who read his Chapter 7 mandate in a totally different
way than General Michael Rose or any of the Commanders before
him. So it was very much a ground element in 1995, and I think
the Americans did not recognise it in 1995 and still do not recognise
it now. So a complete misreading of what happened.
(Mr Judah) I think one thing we have not talked about,
which was a legitimate fear, was the fear that unless the war
was checked it would spread throughout South-Eastern Europe, was
the great Domesday scenario, that the war would spread to Macedonia,
Albania would be drawn in, Albania would invoke its defence agreements
with Turkey, what would the Greeks do then. I think that was a
perfectly legitimate fear; there is that element to bear in mind.
And I think we have already touched on this; obviously, the bombing
gave Milosevic the chance to speed up the ethnic cleansing. The
next question, about the results of August 1995, where you talked
about the Croatian and the Muslim advance, but the Croatians and
Muslims could not advance until there was the bombing, it was
the bombing that knocked out the Serb communications, and the
Serbs were so shocked that they fell back; if it were not for
that bombing then the Croatians and Muslims would not have been
able to advance.
Mr Chidgey
184. That is a question of integrated military
strategy, is it not?
(Mr Judah) Well, advancing slowly, but they did not
take 30 per cent of Bosnia in a week, or two weeks, which they
did after the bombing had started. And were Western leaders excessively
optimistic, the answer is yes. I suspect, and I do not know, but
I think, if we are looking for a fault, it is probably not going
to lie with the Foreign Office and with the diplomats, it is probably
going to lie with the intelligence, because I have no idea but
I suspect that there was very little intelligence, or it was no
good.
185. It is probably, as you say, what is picked
up so far as this question of NATO's credibility and whether that
was a key factor in the way this was played out?
(Mr Judah) I think it was one of them; there was a
kind of whole package, yes, there were several reasons, there
was no one reason why they intervened.
186. Were NATO right to defend their credibility
in this way?
(Mr Judah) I would have thought, yes; yes, as part
of a package.
Sir John Stanley
187. One of the most serious issues which has
arisen in the context of the military campaign, in terms of policy
and truthfulness, is the issue which has been raised in The Observer
newspaper as to whether or not the Chinese Embassy was bombed
deliberately. John Sweeney and his colleagues wrote an extensive
article on this on October 17 and then, following the denials
of the accuracy of that article, followed it up with your further,
detailed account on November 28. The Observer article on October
17 commenced: "NATO deliberately bombed the Chinese Embassy
in Belgrade during the war in Kosovo after discovering it was
being used to transmit Yugoslav Army communications." The
very serious allegation that that bombing was deliberate has,
of course, been denied strongly by NATO and has been denied by
Ministers in this country, and I just would like to ask John Sweeney,
as you are clearly making an allegation of an international senior
conspiracy to disguise truthfulness in democratic countries, are
you totally confident in your sources, or how much does your judgement
in this rest on a combination of sources plus conjecture?
(Mr Sweeney) I am very confident, not totally, no-one
can be totally confident, I am very confident in my sources. I
am not going to tell you in public anything about those sources,
I would invite you to have a chat with me in private, and I can
tell you a little bit more. We, not just myself but also a Danish
colleague and a British colleague, who works for Janes Defence
Weekly, whose name was attached to the second story, and a number
of NATO targeteers, all said the same thing; and if you look at
the story it beggars belief that NATO did not know where the Chinese
Embassy was. I am conscious that this is a subject almost in its
own right, rather than what we have been talking about more generally.
Can I just address my mind to that?
Chairman
188. I really want to move on; because you have
said that you are pretty confident in your sources?
(Mr Sweeney) Yes. I was going to give copies of both
this—they are very interesting documents in their own way.
189. And you can give those to the Committee?
(Mr Sweeney) Yes. In here is a picture of the Chinese
Embassy. If it was bombed by mistake, why was it bombed so accurately.
190. You will give additional evidence to the
Committee on that basis?
(Mr Sweeney) Sure thing.
Chairman: I would like to move on to the future.
Sir David Madel, please.
Sir David Madel
191. Could I ask you all about the future administration
of Kosovo. Since Yugoslavia broke up, you have had ethnic hatred,
you have had political gangsterism, corruption, mismanagement,
dotted around; now how can we administer Kosovo to avoid all that
and avoid another military clash with Milosevic?
(Mr Steele) I would very much like to see the police
force, which has been promised, after all, by all the various
member states, in action; they just have not produced, I think
it is probably less than a third of the police who are supposed
to be there are now there, and this is six or eight months after
the KFOR operation began, so this is really a disgrace. Whether
or not, even if you had a full police contingent, it would be
enough is another issue, but, certainly, that is a start. On the
wider issue, if it is appropriate, and it may come up in a question
later, is the issue of the future political status of Kosovo.
I very strongly feel that we should be working much more clearly
towards the independence of Kosovo; it seems to me quite unrealistic
to pretend that the Albanians are going to go back under Serbian
administration, or Yugoslav administration. The unclarity, the
ambiguity, of the present position makes it very difficult for
any foreign investor to even think of investing. What are the
property laws of Kosovo, are they under Yugoslavia, are they under
the UN, what are they; nobody is going to invest in there. There
is going to be no clarity on the money system, on border controls,
on anything, unless we tackle this issue of the independence of
Kosovo. I feel we made serious mistakes before the bombing started
in not making it clear that that was the ultimate result, although,
for obvious political reasons, one can see why they did not want
to make it so clear. There are still various political obstacles
in making it clear now, but, nevertheless, to expect we can just
live in limbo for year after year after year, without resolving
the issue of what is the future status of Kosovo, I think is wrong,
and we should now be working towards recognising it will be independent.
This comes back very much to the issue of the Serbian opposition;
it would be terrible if we had a change of regime in Belgrade,
which I hope we will have, with a more democratic government coming
in, and then saying to that democratic government, "We want
you to accept you've lost Kosovo." The man who has lost Kosovo
for the Serbs is Milosevic, and it should be done while he is
still in power; we should be saying, "The consequence of
your loss is that you have indeed lost it, it is now going to
be an independent state." So do not let us dump that as a
time-bomb for the future, hopefully future, democratic government
in Belgrade.
Chairman
192. Even though it would be rewriting the Security
Council Resolution?
(Mr Steele) Always one Security Council Resolution
supersedes another, like Acts of Parliament, and I think we should
be moving towards some kind of resolution in the Security Council.
(Professor Roberts) It seems to me out of the question
that Western powers can just suddenly announce, however much it
would seem right to do so, that they are in favour of separate
sovereignty for Kosovo; but what they can do, and what is within
the framework of existing Resolutions, including of the Security
Council, is to work and move forward the `political process' in
Kosovo to which the Security Council Resolution 1244 refers, and,
therefore, that seems to me to be the direction in which we should
move. Now if the political process does, as I expect it would,
result in a strong Albanian expression of desire for independence,
at that point then it becomes possible for us to react to that
expressed desire; but I think the first thing is to get the political
process moving forward. I am glad Sir David has raised the question
of what now happens in Kosovo, the future of Kosovo, because I
think it is very important, and there are a number of failures
to discuss it seriously. I thought that the Dimbleby TV programme
the other night was deeply misleading on this, as on other matters,
not least because it pretended that the Kosovo war had been a
war to establish heaven on earth, as it were, a multi-ethnic,
stable, peaceful Kosovo, which is beyond the bounds of the imagination;
and that was not how the war came about, everybody involved had
some sense of the tragedy and difficulty. Although I have to say
that I do think some governmental statements, by, as it were,
producing an ad-man's version of events, were overhyping them,
have given rise to this subsequent sense of disappointment that
still exists in Kosovo, withSerbs are being expelled, and so on.
But, having said that, there are things that positively can be
done. One is that it is true, as Jonathan Steele says, that the
police element has been disappointingly undersupported by outside
powers; it is a very difficult thing to do, not least because
of language reasons—the police need to have some understanding
of the local language, but also the Stability Pact, frankly, is
not going well. Here is the major effort made by the European
Union to address the problem of South-East Europe generally, including
Kosovo, and so far there is very, very little evidence of any
achievement, and not much sense of dynamism behind it, and something,
in my view, needs to be done to put new life into the Stability
Pact.
Sir David Madel
193. If you get an independent Kosovo, is there
a risk then that there will start to be a campaign in Kosovo for
union with Albania? And you will get the same trouble as you had
Enosis in Cyprus (Union with Greece), that would never be acceptable
to the Turks, so, eventually, in 1960, we had an independent Cyprus,
which for a long time calmed the matter down. Therefore, the only
way to keep reasonably peaceful co-existence between Serbia and
Albania is to have an independent Kosovo?
(Professor Roberts) The difference there, in my opinion,
is that the ethnic composition of Kosovo is such that once it
became independent it would not be a case of a sector of the population
feeling threatened in the way that the Greek population in Cyprus
may have felt threatened by the Turks, and therefore demanding
Enosis. There is no necessary threat of a sufficient kind to make
it a political priority to require union with Albanians, whether
the Albanians in Macedonia or Albania, and also there are very,
very strong historical differences, and a history of separation
between the Albanians of Kosovo and those of Albania; the level
of contact over the 20th century was not very great and there
are many in Kosovo who are suspicious of union with Albania. So
I do not think it is inevitable that that would happen; clearly,
it cannot be ruled out.
(Mr Steele) I would very much agree with what Professor
Roberts says. I think one of the things that was really quite
interesting, when one talked to Albanian refugees from Kosovo
while they were in Albania, many of them were there for the first
time. One has to remember that for most of Albania's history post
war it was hermetically sealed under the Enver Hoxha regime, Kosovar
Albanians did travel a lot to northern Europe, to Switzerland,
Germany, Austria, but they very rarely went to Albania, even after
it was possible to go there, some of them went for university
studies but otherwise very few. And many refugees said they were
really quite shocked, if you like, at the difference of the standard
of living between Kosovo and Albania, they did not see any particular
need to join up; and I think there are, historically, examples,
different from the Greek and Cypriot one you mentioned, which
is Moldavia and Romania. I remember at the time when Moldavia
became an independent state and the Soviet Union collapsed, and
so on, everybody said, "Well they will very quickly join
Romania;" they have not done so. So I think it does not always
work like that, that because people seem to be ethnically similar
they necessarily want to join together.
Dr Starkey
194. Can I go back to the discussion about constructing
a civil society, etc., within Kosovo, because I think a lot of
the debate about whether it should be independent, or whatever,
is a bit of a diversion from the nature of the society within
Kosovo, whatever its constitutional arrangement. And I wanted
to ask on two separate points and then I would like to hear your
responses. One is whether you actually think it is possible to
build any sort of multi-ethic society within Kosovo, or whether
you think that the bitterness is so great that that is a lost
cause? And I particularly would like you to comment on the fact
that I understand the Kosovo Serbs, in any case, their official
organisations, are boycotting any sort of agreement on a new power-sharing
administrative council, so they obviously do not want to co-operate
in any sort of multi-ethnic future. And the second is about the
economy and the lessons that might be learned from failures in
Bosnia. I understand that, despite an investment of $5 billion
in the reconstruction of Bosnia, what actually has happened is
that 60 per cent of the Bosnian economy is based on black market
commerce and has helped to fuel the rise of a huge criminal class,
and that, unless we actually get a proper framework of economic
and business law within Kosovo, it is probable that exactly the
same thing is likely to happen there. Is there any sort of impetus
to getting a decent legal framework in Kosovo so we can get legitimate
business there; and are there any other things you can think of
that would actually reduce the power of the criminal mafias, who
seem to be generally poisoning the political situation?
(Mr Sweeney) It is very, very disappointing, and one
of the things that I would urge this Committee to do would be
to say it is completely disgraceful for the now Albanian majority
to do to the Serb minority what before the Serb minority did to
the Albanian majority. A very excellent bloke, a Liverpool barrister,
Frank (Ledwidge ?) was an OSCE monitor; before the war, he went
into Serb police stations and said, "I know you have got
some Albanians in here, I've heard they've been beaten; get them
out," and at gun-point he did that. And now, after the war,
he told me, "I am bitterly disappointed, bitterly disappointed,
that now the Albanians are using this opportunity for revenge."
And, most disgracefully, they are taking their revenge most of
the time on people who were not the war criminals, Milosevic,
Arkan, all those people, they were in Belgrade. When you see a
94 year old lady being beaten up, somebody else being killed,
all of that, that is disgraceful, and the message that should
go from the civilised world is, "That must stop." The
problem is this, that the bitterness is so deep. You are talking
about a community which did not just wake up to Serb overlordship,
they were brutalised for a long time, it eased off and became
actually quite a gentle backwater under late Tito, early post
Tito, and then, since Milosevic fired the gun in 1987, it was
very, very nasty, and it has been nasty for, what, ten, 12 years.
195. So what can be done?
(Mr Sweeney) The problem is that, after the French
liberation, the liberation of France, about 4,000 French people
were killed, and you have got to bear in mind that for the Albanians
that is their mind set, plus the fact they are speaking a different
language, with a different alphabet, with this history of hate;
so it is very, very difficult. Jonathan is right, yes, where are
the cops, where is law and order. I am actually much more optimistic
about the economy. There is this great tradition of Gastarbeiter,
the Albanians make Germany and Switzerland work, they seem to
be very, very entrepreneurial, very hard-working; it will work,
but there are various concerns about criminality there, and that
is a worry. As to the question of a civil society and the future
of a multi-ethnic Kosovo, I am afraid, to be honest, I am more
pessimistic than optimistic about that. Solutions, they are all
there, all the good things are being done, but the mind set of
the people, from the fact that they were ground down so much,
and, whatever the numbers, 5,000, 10,000, 15,000 of their own
kin folk were killed last year, it is going to take a long time
before you get that civil society.
(Ms Sharp) I just think we ought to remember, when
we are talking about Albanian revenge attacks, I think the Western
democracies have quite a responsibility, in the sense of the way
we allowed the Kosovo Albanians to be radicalised; the time to
have dealt with the Kosovar question was 1991, 1992; in fact,
Peter Carrington had it on the agenda of the EU meeting in September
1991. We had an EU (Badinterre ?) Commission which ruled that,
in fact, these people who wanted to be independent should not
be thought of as seceding because Yugoslavia had collapsed; that
was the time to deal with this question of an independent Kosovo.
Chairman
196. And what do we do now?
(Ms Sharp) Just one more point to make is that the
Dayton Agreement was the thing that radicalised the Kosovo Albanians;
because if they had had this period under Rugova from 1992 where
the resistance to the Serbs was very passive, it was very Ghandiesque,
and then they look at the Dayton Agreement and they see that the
Bosnian Serbs, after a campaign of ethnic cleansing, are given
their own independent Serb entity, autonomous Serb entity. So
I think all that has led to a radicalisation.
Dr Starkey
197. But what do we do now?
(Ms Sharp) But the point is, we bear some responsibility
for this.
Chairman
198. But what do we do now? I will give you
a chance to answer, what do we do now, and then Jonathan.
(Ms Sharp) Okay, but I think it is all relevant, and
I think that Jonathan's point about the way that we have sort
of denied, as Western policy, Kosovo Albanians means that we have
an ambiguous situation in Kosovo and people will not invest in
it, and unless you get private investment nothing is going to
happen. And we are not looking at the lessons from Bosnia; everybody
who goes to Bosnia now will tell you that we have created a complete
culture of dependence, and yet—
Dr Starkey
199. So how do we do it differently?
(Ms Sharp) When we get to the situation in Kosovo
where a lot of Albanians, KLA or not, are taking control of local
communities and actually doing things in a much more enterprising
way than Bosnians do, what happens, the UN comes and tells them
to stop it. We are suppressing initiative in Albania.
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