Examination of Witnesses (Questions 240
- 259)
TUESDAY 1 FEBRUARY 2000
DR SUSAN
WOODWARD, MRS
ELIZABETH ROBERTS
AND DAME
PAULINE NEVILLE-JONES
Mr Illsley
240. Following on the point you have already
mentioned, you talk about divisions in 1998 and then you talk
about Montenegro and Macedonia. Was it divisiveness alone or was
it part of the agenda of the West throughout that period which
allowed Milosevic to exploit the situation to his advantage or
was it simply that the allies could not agree on the way forward
to deal with the Kosovo problem?
(Dr Woodward) I have two parts in my own view, my
colleagues may have different views. One is a form—if I
may be as blunt to say it—of laziness as much in Washington
as elsewhere. That is to say there was a view after Dayton that
their hands were full, that Kosovo was a matter of putting pressure
on Milosevic and there was very little openness—and I know
this from personal experience—to think any differently and
more creatively about how to solve the very, very thorny problem,
and one in the case of Kosovo that was at least a hundred years
old, quite different from Bosnia. Partly laziness more than divisiveness,
of not really wanting to put the energy into going ahead. Also
I think it was very much a continuing focus on whether the question
was when to use force. The question was always shall we or shall
we not act, how soon should we act and shall we act as a military
force rather than thinking about how to solve the problem. We
have the outcome as the result of that particular decision.
241. Let me come to the next question. I am
sure the question of whether we should have used force we will
come to later. On the timing of the use of force, I think, Mrs
Roberts, you mentioned the Operation Horseshoe getting under way,
which I presume by that you mean at the time when the monitors
had left and the bombing started?
(Mrs Roberts) Yes.
242. This is a question which has exercised
this Committee in some detail. First of all, what do you understand
by Operation Horseshoe? Do you believe it was a document? Do you
believe it was a plan that started during the First World War?
Do you believe it was a plan which started later than that? Do
you believe it was planned during 1998 and Milosevic always intended
some form of ethnic cleansing within Kosovo or do you believe
he took the opportunity after the monitors left and the bombing
started to begin the process in Kosovo?
(Mrs Roberts) I do not know and I do not have evidence
that there was a plan and I am not party to that sort of information.
I tend to believe that Milosevic did not have a plan a long way
back to ethnically cleanse Kosovo. I think that certainly he carried
out the abuses, he wanted to silence all forms of political opposition.
He allowed, I would say, Rugova to go on for so long and certainly
he was found to be quite a useful person for Milosevic in the
sense that he was embodying a passive resistance. I think that
was quite critical. It was when the younger generation, disillusioned
with Rugova's policies, had enough that Milosevic's plans, I would
say, took a much firmer line. My feeling is that there is a great
tendency to see conspiracy theories operating in the Balkans.
I do not think it was planned way back. I think withdrawing the
monitoring probably made it far more certain that would happen
and I think that was the view again of people close to the situation
in the region. Certainly there had been ethnic cleansing and pushing
out of Albanians and greater harassments of the Albanians over
many years, this had intensified. The KLA were able to realise
that it was a useful instrument in provoking the Serbs into precisely
the sort of things that the Serbs did, the massacre at Racak were
classic examples of this sort of behaviour, committing terrible
atrocities in response to the worsening security situation.
Chairman
243. Dame Pauline, what is Horseshoe?
(Dame Pauline Neville-Jones) I do not know the answer
to that. Observing his conduct from outside it seems to me that
a probable explanation is that he saw the situation as transformed
by the emergence of the KLA, which he regarded as a terrorist
movement and he was going to deal with it. When allied bombing
started, and I do not think he thought it would last all that
long, I think this was one of the fundamental miscalculations,
I think there was a miscalculation on both sides on that issue.
I think he saw himself as both having the opportunity to, and
probably needing to exercise an option, that option being to get
a greater grip on the place, i.e. to drive the KLA out definitively,
and if that meant actually that you drove the populations out
and drove the villagers out, because you had not got the time
to distinguish, in any case why should you bother, they were all
in it ultimately, he went ahead and did that. Here was an extremely
ruthless man who had no humanitarian instinct. It is a nonsense
to think he has any notion of the interests of his people at heart,
of any group, I suspect including among ordinary Serbs. I think
that he saw it as an operational opportunity and off he went.
I suspect then it assumed a size and dimension that even he had
not anticipated. I do not believe he thought he would be actually
hit from the air for very long.
244. Dr Woodward, operational opportunity or
long laid plan?
(Dr Woodward) Operational opportunity. I think, first
of all, that all of the evidence about Horseshoe which I read
comes, according to my sources, from one single source which has
in the past been known to be unreliable. Secondly, I think that
if you remember we began to threaten the use of air power in June
1998 but did not begin until March 1999. There was a great deal
of disagreement in that interim about whether to go, what the
legal basis would be, whether we had to, inevitably would lead
planners in Belgrade, particularly on the military side, think
about contingencies. One of the advantages that Milosevic among
other Balkan leaders has always had is not controlling the strategic
space and only controlling the tactical space. They gain a great
deal of tactical manoeuvrability against us by having options
on the table and they always have a number of options and they
can shift effectively among them, particularly if they control
the situation on the ground, as the isolation through sanctions
allowed Milosevic to do. Horseshoe was one of a number of options,
should there be military action. I agree completely with Dame
Pauline, this was aimed at counter insurgency against the KLA
not against the Kosovo population. I think also that once the
bombing began then it was a different objective, it was no longer
a campaign against the KLA but a campaign with strong historical
roots, with support for the leader of Serbia weak against external
enemies that they would now fight. They knew when they said publicly
they could not win against NATO but they could go down with pride
in the way they defended themselves. My view is the last stage
of this, the shifting ability of him and his leaders was that
once the bombing began the idea was to divert attention in the
public internationally and by the alliance itself to a refugee
crisis, which NATO would have to deal with, and he succeeded in
doing that, even if he did not succeed in retaining Kosovo.
Mr Chidgey
245. I would like, if I may, to ask the witnesses
to dwell for a little not so much on the events that happened
within Kosovo but the way that in the West we actually reacted
in the political sense to that crisis, bearing in mind that our
Terms of Reference are to enquire into the foreign policy lessons
that can be learned and how the FCO can best promote peace and
stability in the future. I am particularly interested in the way
that the discussion has opened up in the context of the United
States' position, Britain's position and the European Union's
position, and that huge deficit between the military might of
America and the frankly disinterest in the problem that Dr Woodward
has said whereas here in Europe it is of great interest to us.
We have a hugely powerful political presence clearly in the region,
and we have a diminutive, weak and ineffective military presence
in comparison. I would like to dwell on that and perhaps you can
give us your views on where we go in matching the political power
of Western Europe in this area with the military ability, literally
the will and means of our political efforts and how relevant that
is in perhaps a decade's time when America may be less than interested
in what happens in the region?
(Dame Pauline Neville-Jones) I think in some ways
we have in the alliance one of those situations where the Americans
cook the meal and the Europeans are left to do the dishes, that
is not an equal distribution of tasks or prestige. I think that
there are fundamental imbalances inside the alliance which do
need to be addressed, and I will come to that in a minute. It
shows up in such periods as I would identify between 1996 and
1998 where in my memorandum that is probably the period where
I am most critical of the behaviour of the alliance, both the
allies and the Contact Group. It is very hard in practice to distinguish
between these two entities. In the US I think one had a scene
very much as Susan Woodward described preoccupied with limiting
the amount of engagement actually in the follow up actions, certainly
feeling that at the end of the day one can always bash them again
if we have to. I think the European attitude was different but
made no impact. The European attitude was, and this was expressed
both in capitals, by the Higher Representatives and the European
Union generally, we now need to tackle some of these underlying
issues. Why have we got the outer wall of sanctions, we have got
the outer wall of sanctions because there is an underlying unsolved
problem here. There is no doubt that Carl Bildt did try, not effectively,
to set in train a process that would ease the tensions there.
He put in place a German mediator, who I think was not particularly
strong, to attempt to get at some of the underlying problems,
notably the one to do with education and culture, was the first
one obviously he tried to tackle. That mediation effort had no
support in the US. Indeed the US made it very, very clear that
it did not want to have anything to do with this "European"
thing and they would do their own thing. That sends messages to
Milosevic that the outside world is not united, the powerful players
are not united, there is not a serious attempt behind this, we
need not take any notice. That is crucial when you are dealing
with a guy like him. Why, however, does the alliance behave like
that? It is because there is not equal pulling power across the
Atlantic. I do not think there is ever going to be totally equal
pulling power but I do think the Europeans have to do something
about perceptions inside the alliance of the contribution they
make to its ultimate threat. That has to do with backing your
words and your diplomatic strength with a capability to use force
and contributes to the alliances' ability to use force. I think
the Prime Minister's perception on this one is right.
246. Can I ask if Mrs Roberts or Dr Woodward
would like to add anything on that?
(Mrs Roberts) I think I would like just to add that
in talking about the way in which force is going to be used, I
would like to go back to my colleague's point about the fact that
it needs to be co-ordinated with political aim and political vision.
I think one of the things when you talk about the difference between
Europe and the United States, we have to remember that within
the European members of the alliance the view was not necessarily
united. There was a good deal of division and there was some fear
of wavering within the alliance. It was pretty obvious to everybody
that Greece, for example, and Italy to some extent did not share
perhaps a totally wholehearted commitment and strength the UK
did. I think there is a problem in terms of developing common
political vision to which this increase of military force, if
we feel that is the road down which we are going, to which it
will be applied. There are two things which have to be got together.
247. Is it not worse for us to be a hostage
to the fortune of American foreign policy whilst we ourselves
in Europe are not prepared to take up the baton, so to speak,
with interest in our own affairs and the ability to control our
own affairs?
(Mrs Roberts) Yes. I think the Kosovo conflict did
show that there is a need for the Europeans to rethink their position
in terms of military strength. I think we should not be a hostage
to the United States on this. I am just saying it is not necessarily
an easy question, even when you get to that level because you
then have the vision as to what you are going to do and how you
are going to use this military strength you acquire.
(Dr Woodward) In my own view, the only time the military
force would have been effective in the Balkan crisis was in July/August
1991. At that point, there were some proposals made by various
Europeans, the Americans said no to it, the British Government
decided at that time that indeed as a result of the aftermath
of the Persian Gulf War that there was not an independent military
capacity to act, given the United States was saying no.
248. That was in 1991?
(Dr Woodward) That was a long time ago. I do not think,
in my view, that military force has ever been the way to solve
these particular problems, particularly as Elizabeth has said,
divorced from political strategy. It comes back to what in fact
your policy is and whether there can be agreement on it. As long
as the focus is on the use of force alone, the Americans are always
going to have the greater power. I do not think the idea of trying
to increase the military capability, the debate that has happened
since June, within the alliance for the Europeans is ever going
to make that disproportionately different. Moreover, the United
States, as a single actor, is always going to have the rhetorical
advantage over a group of actors, you cannot get around that.
I do think that Britain has a particularly important role in terms
of the design of policy towards these problems because it can
choose, either through the special relationship to side with Washington
or it can choose to try and find and create unity among its own
partners in Europe. It is a very important role it plays, in fact
it is a much more important role than anyone else. I think it
is the role which gives it a burden in a sense in relationship
to Washington. It is true that Washington, especially on these
issues, will always be fickle. You will not know when it will
be interested in something else because it is a global power in
that sense. Now, the one leverage is that the Americans, particularly
since George Bush's Presidency—and I do not see any change
in this—are always going to want Europe, including Britain
to finance as much as possible, burden sharing is the dominant
view. It is rather interesting that we are sitting here in the
Houses of Parliament where the power of the purse is said to decide
policy. That is to say, if the European Union is going to finance
these issues then you really ought to be able, and I think you
are able myself, to decide policy. The Americans in that sense,
in fact, are at a disadvantage.
Sir John Stanley
249. I would be grateful if each of our witnesses
could answer this question if they would. Leaving aside the genealogy
of Operation Horseshoe and what in fact it encompasses, the facts
of the case are that at the end of March last year there took
place a comprehensive ethnic cleansing of Kosovo that was far
and away the worst humanitarian outrage in Europe since the Second
World War. The question I would like to put to you is do you believe
that comprehensive ethnic cleansing of Kosovo could have been
averted or do you believe it was inevitable sooner or later? If
you think it could have been averted, what do you think were the
policies that would have averted that humanitarian outrage taking
place? What were the alternative policies? For example, if there
had been wholesale support of the United Nations, if there had
been a massive deployment of UN peacekeepers alongside the OCSE,
if we had done more to support the democratic opposition in Belgrade,
if we had kept closer alongside Russia or other alternatives,
do you think there was an alternative policy that might have been
pursued that would have prevented the ethnic cleansing or do you
take the view that it was absolutely inevitable and the allies
did their best to try to prevent it and then simply had to deal
with the situation as it developed?
(Mrs Roberts) I do not think I would take the view
that it was absolutely inevitable the massive ethnic cleansing
would take place. It is very difficult, however, to pinpoint the
steps that one might have taken along the way. Of course, it is
impossible to say whether those steps would definitively have
prevented the ethnic cleansing happening. I think that it might
have been possible to do something post Dayton to further negotiations
in Kosovo. I know that people were trying, I do not think it was
very easy. There were steps, for example, to get the Albanian
population back to schools and universities. That was very important
because one of the great sources of discontent, which fuelled
the rise of the KLA, were things like young men with absolutely
no prospects, no prospects of employment, inadequate education,
mounting frustration. I think that perhaps by pursuing and using
far more pressure than we used and using possibly incentives,
exploring a whole range of possibilities, it might have been possible.
I do not say it would have been possible. As Susan Woodward pointed
out, Milosevic was always quite capable of changing the rules.
It was very hard, as everybody knows, to hold him to a firm negotiating
position. He would change to suit his own advantage. I think it
could have been explored more. I think also that pulling out the
OSCE at the time they were pulled out was very difficult because
clearly there would have been hostages on the ground once the
bombing had taken place. Was it really the right thing to do?
I think there is a question mark over that. I would need to know
much more about the way negotiations proceeded at Rambouillet
to be able to answer definitively on it. I do think perhaps there
is some evidence that we had become so frustrated with Milosevic,
he had been threatened so many times, that it almost had to go
ahead because of the threat to Western credibility.
Mr Mackinlay
250. Which is important.
(Mrs Roberts) Which is very important. But I do not
know that we had built into that, as Dr Woodward said, the likelihood
of the ethnic cleansing taking place. I think that people were
taken by surprise. All I can say is I think perhaps it was not
inevitable it should happen, it is very hard to pinpoint the exact
course of action and steps that would have stopped this. We can
only be sure to the extent that I think there was not a pre-organised
campaign going way back for the population to be ethnically cleansed.
I think we have to ask ourselves then were certain steps which
were put in train catalysts in causing this to happen?
(Dr Woodward) There is no question in my mind that
there were alternatives. I know I am in the minority on this,
but I feel very strongly that this was, as I say, a tactical manoeuvre
to create a refugee crisis, not to ethnically cleanse Kosovo.
There is no question that there were people willing to do what
was done and one has to examine why that was the case. But what
were the alternatives? Part of the difficulty in answering that
is to identify the point in time at which the majority Albanian
population of Kosovo would have been willing to accept—depending
on what one gave them—remaining under some political autonomist
status within the current Federal Republic of Yugoslavia. I think
that was very early in the 1990s. That was the difficult part.
It would have been a very hard, tight negotiation in which we
would have had to be very much involved in assisting negotiations,
not just creating the conditions for it and leaving it up to the
parties themselves, giving a lot of incentives to both sides.
But I do feel very strongly, for example, in a memorandum that
I wrote to members of the American Government in October 1997
that there were many, many opportunities, even then, and certainly
more so in 1996, in local negotiations among many parties, both
within Serbia and within Kosovo, that gave opportunity for finding
a pact out of this stalemate. There were many ways we could have
supported it. I do think that by the end of 1997 and early 1998
the prime minimum condition for starting that would have required
some kind of troops on the ground, probably United Nations' peacekeeping
troops, but not in a way that we did UNPROFOR in Bosnia or in
Croatia where we went in to hold the stalemate, but went in to
support a unified, very concerted effort to help negotiate out
of the situation. You had to have both because by then the efforts
of UCK, the Kosovo Liberation Army, were successful enough to
have destroyed the security of the situation and perceptions on
both sides that they could possibly work together. There is absolutely
no question in my mind. We can hear even now from Serb opposition
leaders, and I do not think this is just to build themselves up
at the moment, about the real efforts which were being made from
1996 to 1997 that were constantly being first supported and then
undercut by various European and American leaders. We would have
to go into a lot of detail about that. I do think by the end of
1997, moreover, as you began to get more attention shifting from
Bosnia to Kosovo, governments recognised that even the gains in
Bosnia and Herzegovina would not have survived if we did not do
something about Kosovo. That was the way in which attention first
came rather than saying "This is a serious problem we need
to deal with, Macedonia will not survive if we do not" it
was "How do we protect gains in Bosnia?" By that time
it required a fundamental shift in the thinking, particularly
in Washington and London, to take Serbs seriously. That is to
say there were complicated disagreements about this territory,
that there were people both within Kosovo and in Serbia who could
work together. I remember a very interesting academic article
written by Zoran Lutovac from Belgrade in 1996 of 15 separate
very serious political proposals for how you would keep Kosovo
within Yugoslavia but at the same time give it more self-governing
rights. There were many people, I think, that were able to work
on this issue among the communities at that stage but it would
have required a fundamental shift in attitude towards Serbia and
to the Serbs and we were not willing to do that.
Sir John Stanley
251. One small point of clarification before
Dame Pauline answers the question. Can you just clarify the distinction
which I understood you to make at the beginning of your remarks.
You made the distinction between Milosevic trying to create a
refugee crisis but not engaged in comprehensive ethnic cleansing.
(Dr Woodward) That is right.
252. Are you suggesting, Dr Woodward, that the
Kosova Albanians who were being made refugees were not wanting
to be removed from Kosovo itself permanently?
(Dr Woodward) That is actually my view, yes.
253. Despite the testimony of the refugees that
they were being told to leave their homes in ten minutes and leave
the country?
(Dr Woodward) It was definitely what happened, I am
not denying what happened at all. It happened on an ethnic basis,
there is no question about that, although there were many other
people who were also expelled at the same time. There is no question
it was an ethnic basis for the expulsion. My view is the goal
of Belgrade at that point was a military, tactical goal in its
fight with NATO, that is what my view is. I understand why it
sounds so contrary to what happened but, if you think about it,
why did they not do it earlier? There were lots of ways they could
have done it earlier. Also I am not saying that it was not possible
because of decades of rhetoric and media attention and even to
a certain extent in school curricula within Serbia which enabled
them to think of the Albanians as lesser and able to do that,
not only as a minority but as of less value, there is no question
about that, but why not do it before?
Chairman
254. Dame Pauline?
(Dame Pauline Neville-Jones) In answer to your basic
question, Sir John, I think the inevitable is only what is not
avoided. I think it would be wrong to assume that this thing was
bound to happen. However, I have to say I think the balance of
probability lying in the direction of something ghastly happening
was really very high. Could it have been averted? I think I would
go back to the period before the KLA emerged. I think that in
that period there were some real options. After the KLA emerged
I think that you got into a situation in which the options for
both were actually greatly narrowed and they were on a collision
course with each other. Could we have succeeded in that intervening
period? You will see from my memorandum that I considered that
there was a real possibility, not probability. I put that down
really to two things. The possibility would have been, I think,
if the allies had had much more of a coherent plan, a political
plan, making it clear what their total approach was, which was
something which was never really formulated, so the world could
see, Milosevic could see, that you could rally a degree of united
support externally. It is one thing which keeps on coming through,
Milosevic is impressed when the world is united against him and
is not impressed until that happens. I think that was a problem
and I think that goes back to what I was saying about the dynamics
of the alliance and the distraction in Washington and our willingness
probably to get engaged to that degree. You might have had a chance.
My scepticism, I have to say, about whether even that would have
succeeded actually lies I suppose partly in my own personal experience
of dealing with Milosevic, the feeling that he had a bottom line
and this bottom line was that he was not going to have foreign
armed forces on his soil, in any guise, peacekeeping or any other.
255. His soil including Kosovo?
(Dame Pauline Neville-Jones) Absolutely. Therefore,
if an international option including that, even for peacekeeping
purposes, was what the price was then he was not going to do it.
I think that was a fundamental problem in the end for any approach
which involved something which had credibility. The fact that
the allies had threatened a long way back, the famous Christmas
warnings, "If you do not come to heel we will bomb you",
I think in fact it was repeated at intervals without there being
any evidence in Milosevic's eyes that actually this thing would
happen, actually diminished its credibility rather than increased
it. You had a double problem, you did not have any forces available,
you certainly did not have what Kofi Annan was identifying correctly
as real leverage, which is diplomacy backed by the threat of the
use of force, but the ground force was a crucial issue. So you
could have diplomacy but you did not have anything to make him
believe that he had to take it seriously, and you had the warnings
which somehow did not seem real. In my view, he did not believe
that actually he was going to be bombed for long, and I have evidence
of that from my own conversations with NATO ambassadors, I do
not think they believed they were going to have to bomb for long.
I think there is something in what Susan Woodward said about the
tactical nature of Belgrade's response. I do not think that it
was necessarily a formulated plan to drive all these people out.
I do think that when the Serb troops got down there and the villagers
got down there, the thing developed undoubtedly but I do not know
that that was their intention. It undoubtedly was their effect.
The outside world was manifestly unprepared for this because they
had not thought, of course, that they were going to have to go
in for a long bombing campaign. So you had a driving out of the
population aggravated by a lack of preparation on the other side
for the consequences of that.
256. Why did they not do it earlier, Dr Woodward's
question?
(Dame Pauline Neville-Jones) I think he is a very
tactical player. I think he thought that he could gull these people
into submission, he could keep control of things. I do not think
he thought it was necessary to drive the people out but he was
quite prepared to do so if that was what it required.
Sir David Madel
257. Was there any additional concession or
anything that we could have done at Rambouillet which would have
induced him to sign?
(Dame Pauline Neville-Jones) It is very hard to see,
in my view, that by Rambouillet there was a great deal of hope.
These negotiations are always worth going through, I would not
suggest at all that it was a total waste of time. I suspect by
then he regarded the Western position as being one where this
negotiation was a disguised way of getting an international presence
on to Serb soil which would lead to the separation of Kosovo from
Serbia, and he was not going to have that. It was easier to be
bombed and show the national strength and willingness to defend
the national integrity than actually to be put in the position
that this lot came in and outwitted him and took his territory
away. I think he saw Rambouillet as being precisely that tactic.
Paradoxically, on the Albanian side, I think they thought there
was all too great a chance that actually the allies would not
do that and they would not end up with independence, they would
end up being caged inside Serbia, hence their reluctance to sign.
You got the motives and the likely outcome of allied action mistrusted
on both sides. I think it was at that stage very difficult to
get him to sign up. From his point of view, from the Serb point
of view, it was unfortunate the Albanians were eventually brought
to sign. It would have been very convenient, I think, from Belgrade's
point of view if the Albanians had not been willing to sign up
either. Of course it was very much, as I understand it, the allied
negotiating tactic to ensure that the Albanians did sign up. It
was key to subsequent policy.
258. Could it have been that also one of the
reasons he did not back down was that at the last minute he felt
there would still be American hesitancy as to whether to go ahead
with the bombing campaign?
(Dame Pauline Neville-Jones) I think that there were
always sound voices in Belgrade telling him about splits inside
the alliance and that everybody was worried, the Europeans did
not agree, the Greeks would fall off the log, and I am sure he
wanted to believe quite a lot of that. I think that may well have
fed his hope and desire and expectation that actually the allies,
just as they had not been able to make good on Christmas warnings,
would not be able to make good on this. I think there was an element
of that too, yes.
(Dr Woodward) I think there is no question that Milosevic
has always succeeded and so, therefore, he continues on the same
path—why not—by waiting for others to move first.
We help that beautifully. I do believe very strongly that had
Rambouillet been a serious negotiation, had it been structured
quite differently—for example to recognise that this was
a genuine conflict over territory that had been going on through
the entire century and both sides had arguments on their side,
and this was not simply a matter of imposing an agreement on one
that had violated all international law in other circumstances
and another which did not need to make any compromises—the
way it was structured meant that it would fail. So I do think
that it is very difficult to know what might have, as you say,
forced Milosevic to sign at Rambouillet, if we had structured
it differently and not thought of it as simply a matter of forcing
Milosevic to sign, that we were actually getting quite a long
way towards the negotiations, it was quite serious. You probably
needed to do it sooner. It was probably already too late to do
that kind of negotiation, two sides trying to maintain unity,
getting one side to agree to the terms of another which have already
gained international sympathy by the time that the violence had
taken over the path of this negotiation, that is to say by the
time the KLA had won dominance over the fate of the negotiations
over Kosovo. Keep in mind that it was not only the violent path
that was taken, as Elizabeth Roberts said rightly a while back
that increasing frustration and impatience of particularly the
younger generation that they were spending ten years without being
able to go to school or if they could go to school not to get
accreditation, not able to travel, all of their lives passing
by. It was genuine impatience that supported taking the violent
path. Once you have taken the violent path all the focus by the
outsiders was on how to stop the violence and therefore to privilege
the role of the KLA as one of what was only one of many voices
in Kosovo. I do think that it was a much more complicated situation.
We have had in the past in the 1950s and early 1960s, for example,
under Ralph Bunches' leadership, examples that we know how to
do this kind of negotiation. It is not that we do not know how
to do it but we had it framed by Rambouillet. If we wanted it
done fast our main goal was to stop the violence and not have
to pay much attention to it and we could not change our view on
that.
(Dame Pauline Neville-Jones) Might I just add something
on this? This is a key point. I think you will have detected in
what I have been saying and what Susan Woodward has been saying
that there is a real difference of opinion here and it shows the
extreme difficulty of the sort of issue the policy makers were
faced with. I think my scepticism about what Susan Woodward is
saying relates really to the nature of the man. I think we both
agree that opportunities were missed earlier on. You asked me
the question, which I took in those terms, by Rambouillet was
there any chance. Certainly I agree you could have had a different
negotiation at Rambouillet from the one which actually took place
but frankly I think it would have been very difficult. When you
negotiate with somebody it seems to me you do one of two things.
Either you have a measure of shared objective, in which case you
can get something which sticks in its own right, and it is to
some extent self-enforcing because there is an underlying shared
objective, or else you are in a situation in which you have to
be able to impose your will because the other side does not share
your objective and is not going to co-operate voluntarily. I think
in the case of Milosevic we were in the second of those two situations.
This man is a poker player, whose interest is his own position.
There is his calculus about how he maintains his position exploiting
Serb nationalism. I am very sceptical, I have to say, from my
experience with it, that you could have a real negotiation, a
genuine negotiation, of the kind I think Susan was positing we
should have had and could have had. We should have had but I am
not so sure we could have had.
Chairman
259. That view was buttressed by the aftermath
of the Holbrooke Agreement in October when he went back.
(Dr Woodward) May I just add a sentence or two if
you do not mind. I do agree very much with what Dame Pauline has
said at the moment. It goes back to my notion about when we would
have done this. By the spring of 1999 this was really probably
too late to do it in the way that we were trying to do it. It
is often said that the problem with Kosovo was that the battlefield
of Kosovo Polje, the fight in 1389 against the Turkish Army, was
so defining of Serb national identity that they could never give
up Kosovo. We never gave them a choice. What would have happened
if we had said to the Serbs, "All right, you have lost Kosovo,
it is your own behaviour that has lost it. You are never going
to get it back. We will figure out how to get a self-governance
to Kosovo and to the Albanian majority with good guarantees for
the minority in Kosovo that will also at the same time not destroy
Macedonia but you no longer have it. We have made that decision.
We have made a policy decision and we will do so and give you
something positive in return. We will immediately lift the outer
wall of sanctions. We will begin fast track stabilisation and
association agreements. Think of all the positive incentives we
could do." Now, why do I ask that? Partly in fact because
I think it would have worked but partly because it shows how it
was that our own mind set had excluded a whole range of possibilities.
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