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UNCORRECTED TRANSCRIPT OF ORAL EVIDENCE To be published as HC 1211-ii

House of COMMONS

MINUTES OF EVIDENCE

TAKEN BEFORE

FOREIGN AFFAIRS COMMITTEE

 

 

Western Balkans

 

 

Tuesday 19 October 2004

LORD ASHDOWN OF NORTON-SUB-HAMDON

Evidence heard in Public Questions 60 - 98

 

 

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Oral Evidence

Taken before the Foreign Affairs Committee

on Tuesday 19 October 2004

Members present

Donald Anderson, in the Chair

Mr David Chidgey

Mr Fabian Hamilton

Mr Eric Illsley

Andrew Mackinlay

Mr John Maples

Mr Bill Olner

Sir John Stanley

________________

Witness: Lord Ashdown of Norton-sub-Hamdon, a Member of the House of Lords, International Community High Representative to Bosnia and Herzegovina and European Union Special Representative to Bosnia and Herzegovina, examined.

Q60 Chairman: Lord Ashdown, welcome home. May I greet you most warmly on the part of the Committee, as a former colleague, and pay tribute to your distinguished work in Bosnia and Herzegovina with your two hats on. Most people are content with one. As you know, we are conducting an inquiry as a Committee into the Western Balkans which will include Bosnia and Herzegovina, Kosovo and other areas of tension. Therefore, your evidence to the Committee will be of considerable help to us. We hope to visit Bosnia and Herzegovina early next month and unfortunately you will not be there but I know that you will be very ready to help the Committee. Before I turn to Sir John Stanley, who only recently returned from - I must not say "your country" - may I ask you this: clearly, it is important for you to liaise with Her Majesty's Government. You maintain contacts although, as an international civil servant. Would you give some indication of the help which you receive and generally comment on whether you are satisfied with the policy of HMG to Bosnia and Herzegovina?

Lord Ashdown of Norton-sub-Hamdon: It is extremely welcome that you are conducting this investigation. I think this is just the right moment to do it and I am happy to respond in detail to that question. Would you allow me just to make a few very brief points?

Q61 Chairman: If they are brief, yes.

Lord Ashdown of Norton-sub-Hamdon: First of all, my job is to get rid of my job by putting BiH irreversibly onto the road to statehood and membership of the European community and NATO. I think that is a defining moment and I do not think it is far ahead. Our immediate objectives here in BiH are to join PfP and to start the stabilisation and association process. The first formal steps towards joining both those organisations could be taken in the next two to three months. Secondly, shortly after I became the High Representative I established a thing called the Mission Implementation Plan which identified the tasks we had to do and, as they were completed, closed down those portions of OHR in order to pass them across to the Bosnian authorities. We have been following an aggressive programme of reduction, of down sizing, 25 per cent this year, and I think that has to continue along the lines that have been mapped out on the journey to PfP. Third, as BiH evolves - and I hope we might have an opportunity to discuss this today if the Committee wishes - the role of the High Representatives should evolve too. As we pass through these next milestone points, BiH will change and I think we have to consider very carefully how we change the supplies particularly to the UN Security Council and Chapter 7 and the so-called issue of the Bonn Powers. I have already refused to use my powers in all areas related to accession to the SAA process and the European Union, although I will continue to use them against those who operate against the wishes of the ICTY or who assist indicted war criminals, or who evade their international responsibilities. Lastly, on 2 December, a very important deadline comes which I am sure the Committee is very well aware of, which is the establishment of the EUFOR, taking over from SFOR. That, in my view, marks a very important watershed. The watershed is as Europe takes the lead of the international coalition, both the military and of the peace stabilisation side. At the same time, as you just said, Mr Chairman, I will take on a bigger role as the EU Special Representative. What this means is that, for BiH, Europe not only becomes the instrument to drive the reform process forward; it also becomes the destination. That provides a synergy of effort which I will be responsible for developing which will give Europe and the European Union process a far greater say over what happens in Bosnia and Herzegovina and establishes us as the lead and primary force for pushing this process forward. As for the assistance given to me by Her Majesty's Government, it is very considerable. I would like to pay tribute at this point to the fact that the government has provided me with an immense amount of support, practical and moral. It is fair to say that previous High Representatives may not necessarily have had the wholehearted support of their governments in the way it has been provided to me by this government. I will list for you in a moment the total amount of practical, concrete support which costs the taxpayer a not inconsiderable amount. That is less important I think than the constant, ready supply of help and assistance with lobbying and support of all sorts that the government gives me. If I have concerns about anything, the last thing I have concerns about is the support I receive from Her Majesty's Government to do this task. In terms of the actual breakdown, let me briefly tell you what HMG provides: a secondee working in my private office, a funded contractor working in the office of the High Representative, my private office, the close protection team, depending on how they want to do it. British soldiers largely from the Royal Military Police but from other arms as well as the RMP decide who protect me 24 hours around the clock. That is a considerably expense and a considerable amount of practical assistance. We have to think of weapons, of the other techniques and equipment needed for the protection process. The British Embassy has supported me with providing the accoutrements for my wife and I to live in the house that we have. This is from the furniture provided to most British diplomats abroad, but they have afforded me that as well. Then there is the not inconsiderable matter of the running of a car for use for my protection team, which is an armoured car. For the individual cost of these items the Committee may well want to approach the Foreign Office.

Q62 Chairman: It was just a general feel. Basically, our job is to monitor the Foreign Office. If there are any deficiencies, it would be helpful for us to know.

Lord Ashdown of Norton-sub-Hamdon: There are no deficiencies and I regard that as being generous or perhaps over-generous.

Q63 Sir John Stanley: Lord Ashdown, you said words to the effect that your job is to make your job redundant. Could you tell us how indispensable is the High Representative's/ Special Representative's post as of now and if it was ended at this particular point what do you think the consequences would be for Bosnia and Herzegovina?

Lord Ashdown of Norton-sub-Hamdon: I do not think anybody is talking, nor should they, of an ending so one day it is there; the next day it is gone. We lock the doors and walk away leaving an empty building and somebody else will take over. I think you are talking about a transition process. We did a calculation not long ago. There are more foreigners in Prague than there are in Sarajevo but they are not High Representatives, generals and heavyweight ambassadors and large embassies. They are businessmen, tourists and artists. That is what happens when you go down the transition track and that is where Bosnia is beginning to go. The road ahead of us is after Dayton and before Brussels. That is the watershed we are now approaching. The High Representative in this present heavyweight, intrusive, interventionist mode has been appropriate for the Dayton process and remains appropriate. I set the task that I wanted to fulfil myself when I went there two years ago as putting BiH irreversibly onto the path of statehood and to Europe. Please note: it is not yet a fully functioning state. If we were to overcome the great elephant across the two tracks, one leading to NATO and one leading to the European Union, of cooperation with the ICTY, it is not unreasonable to think that you might pass through those two gates in the first three months of next year. They are probably on track for a positive conclusion from the Commission to start the SAA process. When that happens, I think that is de facto the point of irreversibility. From that point on, it seems to me, the magnetic pull of Brussels is more important than the push of a High Representative. There or thereabouts. I would argue that the High Representative in the present form has been necessary and remains necessary for a short period ahead of us, but not for too long. It is up to my PIC masters to decide exactly when and in what form that will happen. It will not be the case however that the doors are closed and we leave. That would be, in my view, a disaster. We are very close to a point where this is going to be the post-war world's first successful peace stabilisation mission, but we must stick with this process. At that point, I think you are involved in a double transition and the transition is, as BiH moves further into Europe and NATO, so we move further out of the internationalist role we currently have. The High Representative then becomes less - capital letters - High Representative; small letters, eusr and more - capital letters - EUSR; small letters high representative. You may want to keep both hats in this process of transition but it becomes a far more European led process. The key question is what happens to the so-called Bonn Powers. That is a matter which has to be decided by my peace implementation colleagues. Three points: the first is that we are already diminishing the use of those. To use the figures - forgive me if these are ballpark; I do not think they are terribly inaccurate though, within an order of magnitude of plus/minus five - when I arrived I used my powers, I think I am right in saying, on 60-odd occasions in the first year, 36 of those left behind by my predecessor. In the next year, I used them three times. In the last year, I used them twice. That shows you the level of decline of the use of those powers. Second, I think the use of these powers which take a lot of oxygen from the system creates a degree of dependence in the circumstances for dependency. I think we should make sure that that declining use of the powers continues. Whether or not there is a point some time ahead when we should either end them or put them to one side and take them out of the ready use locker, to use a naval phrase, and put them into the break glass to use in emergency locker I do not know. As we move into the SAA process, a very large chunk of the territory across which those powers are used is already removed from us because the SAA process will cover all things related to economic reform, justice reform and governance reform. BiH cannot get into Europe through the High Representative's office. They have to do it themselves. I cannot use my powers there. There is a point arriving where I think we should be considering some step change not far ahead. It is up to my colleagues at the PIC to decide when, how and where but I will not hide from the Committee that I am in favour of making a step change.

Q64 Sir John Stanley: Can I now turn to the other key element in the political, constitutional jigsaw which is the constitution that Bosnia and Herzegovina has had for the last nine years, which I believe you would agree has successfully withstood all the pressures of emerging from that appalling civil war. Do you consider however that that constitution, if Bosnia and Herzegovina is going to be an efficient and not too bureaucratically operating nation state, is going to have to be reformed? If so, how do you see that constitutional reform taking place and in what sort of timescale?

Lord Ashdown of Norton-sub-Hamdon: The answer to your question, "Does the constitution have to be reformed?" is self-evidently yes. It must be. You have a state in which there are far too many layers of government. You have a state which, depending on whether you are talking about the Federation or the Republic of Srbska, spends somewhere between 70 per cent, some argue, and around 50 per cent of the total taxpayers' money governing itself and only 30 per cent on its people. If you want to know why pensions are so poor - and they are disastrously, grindingly low - it is because they spend so much money on government. Why are hospitals so bad? Why are schools so bad? Why can we not pay judges? A state cannot survive on that basis, as you understand, especially a state where there is not a loyalty between the citizens and the state. Building up a sense of loyalty with the state is not an event; it is a process and that process arrives through good government and delivering good services to citizens which makes them then depend on the state first and trust the state and ultimately love the state. A country that spends so much money on government cannot provide that bond between the citizen and the state so self-evidently this has to happen but, again, three points if I may. First of all, let us recollect that the Dayton agreement was an agreement to end a war, not build a state. It served that purpose very well. Personally, I think all the messy compromises, with perhaps a single exception, made in Dayton were necessary and our mistake in the past has not been to explore the room for self-amendment within Dayton. We have amended the constitution in three crucial ways by using Dayton to amend Dayton - the famous Article 3(5)(a) - in which we amended Dayton to put the power to control the armed forces at the state level, to create a state-wide VAT system and to create a state-wide governance and disciplinary body for the judiciary. Dayton is amendable and has been amended. Secondly, if you asked most people in BiH then and perhaps now, they would rightly say that Dayton had served us rather well as a basis for building peace. If you asked them then and even now would they have preferred an untidy peace or a continuing war, they would have preferred an untidy peace, but we are now moving to a different point where we have to begin to build a functional state. The last point is let us very clearly say that if this constitution has to be changed it can only be changed by the people of BiH. It cannot be changed by the international community. It cannot be imposed by the High Representative. We should dispense with the idea that the international community will descend like the archangel and grab the Dayton agreement in its claws and fly away to an air force base 10,000 miles away and rewrite it for the Bosnia and Herzegovina people. That is not going to happen. There is no will to do that. If they are to make their state a functional state, it is them that have to do it. You ask when. Not now. I do not want to be Augustinian about this but not now because there is one priority for now and that is PfP and SAP. This is not an SAP requirement, so the other side of going through those two gates. If we were to tackle that, I have followed a policy of what I call letting 1,000 flowers bloom after Mao Tse Tung. If people want to talk about it and bring forward ideas, excellent. That is a good thing to prepare for a debate that has to be had, but I do not want anybody distracting attention away from getting through these two crucial gates for two reasons. First of all, upon that everything else depends and, secondly, the moment you are through into the SAA process and PfP, you have an external structure which pulls the country forward, which provides a safer structure within which to have a constitutional debate which at present you could not have.

Q65 Mr Chidgey: Can I ask some questions firstly about nationalist politics in BiH? You will be aware more than most of us that there has been a recent upsurge of nationalism within the Balkans, particularly in Bosnia. The latest elections in early October this year saw another illustration of that, coupled with a much lower turn out which is something I would like to hear your views on. I think it has dropped 20 per cent down to 45 per cent. You have previously made clear your willingness to work with nationalist politicians and the Committee would like to know whether these recent electoral results have changed your perceptions of these politicians that you are working with. How obstructive have they been, if they have been at all, in working with BiH's institutions, bearing in mind that the minority groups in BiH have dropped from some 17 per cent in 1991 to about three per cent today?

Lord Ashdown of Norton-sub-Hamdon: Turn out was 47 per cent in local elections. I do not know what it was in your constituency.

Q66 Mr Chidgey: It was previously 65 per cent.

Lord Ashdown of Norton-sub-Hamdon: Yes, but let us reflect on this: we, the international community, have imposed seven elections on them in nine years. I wonder what turn out in Britain's municipal elections might be if you had seven elections in nine years. Low turn outs are an affliction that strike all of the developed democracies and it may well be that as BiH gets itself more developed as a democracy it is suffering from that affliction alongside everything else. We have to remember that a low turn out of 47 per cent in a municipal election is hardly unlikely in our own country. I am not sure we should be very wise to point fingers at BiH for achieving a turn out which, judging from my own constituency and local elections, is a little higher than we sometimes achieve. We have inflicted seven elections in nine years on Bosnia and Herzegovina. I am not satisfied with the turn out. We all want to see that go up but I do not think every cause of that was the nationalists. Secondly, you say I have expressed my willingness to work with the nationalists. No. I express my willingness to work with who the people elect. Who would you want me to work with? I think you would be criticising me pretty heavily in this Committee if the ballot box at the last election returned by an overwhelming majority the nationalist parties and I decided not to work with them. I do not decide to work with any political party. My job as a servant of Bosnia and Herzegovina is to work with the people that the people elect and those turn out to be, regrettably some might argue, the nationalist parties. The hard fact is that the reformist, pro-European parties did not win the October 2002 election. I do not believe it would be right, as indeed happened previously, for me to manipulate the results of the ballot box. My job is to work with those who the ballot box elects. That is not called favouring the nationalist; it is called democracy, as I am sure you appreciate. Let me articulate an idea to you and try and put it in the Balkans context. I think something happens in post-nationalist struggles, whether that struggle is for liberation or an internal civil war which is a national struggle in terms, which is that people start off being nationalists. They call themselves nationalist groupings, nationalist parties, but they are rather more groupings than parties. As politics develops, they break up and reassemble into their more conventional, political forms. You find the same happening in Solidarity in Poland and the ANC in South Africa. Maybe that is what is happening in the Balkans too. For instance, the so-called nationalist parties have nevertheless led the country to the verge of Europe. They have brought about the changes that nobody else thought they could bring about, contrary to what everybody else believed. It would be impossible, people said, to combine Bosnia's ethnic armed forces into state control. Wrong. It has happened under the nationalist government. It would be wrong and impossible to presume that they could create a single, state-wide VAT system. Wrong. That has happened under a nationalist government. It would be ridiculous to pretend that they can create a single, over-arching body for the judiciary for the state but that has happened. The state has been very significantly strengthened. Do they obstruct the process? Yes, they do. My rule of thumb with the Balkans has not been to judge a party by its name or its label but to judge a party by what it does. If they do good things, I work with them. If they seek to obstruct that process, then I seek to provide them with reasons for not continuing to do so.

Q67 Mr Chidgey: What was the prime motivation for, I am sure, the necessary sacking of 60 senior officials?

Lord Ashdown of Norton-sub-Hamdon: Can I come on to that in just one second? There is one final point. The HDZ, the Croatian Nationalist Party, the party of Tudjman: is it the same as the party of Sanader? The HDZ now governs Croatia. The HDZ has taken Croatia into the European Union or to the thresholds of the European Union. They have changed themselves from a nationalist party with a nationalist title into a perfectly ordinary, conventional, centre right European party and led that country to Europe. I would advise the Committee not to judge parties any longer by their names, but rather by what they do. The 59 we had to get rid of: for nine solid years, Bosnia and Herzegovina has failed to fulfil not only its international obligations to cooperate with the Hague but also one of the primary founding stones of Dayton which is that they must cooperate with the Hague. It is not the whole of BiH; it is the Republic of Srbska. For nine solid years, the Republic of Srbska has refused to cooperate in any way with the ICTY. It is not that they have not caught Karadzik and Mladic; they have not caught anybody, not a single war criminal, low and mid-ranking, medium ranking or high ranking. For nine years, they have flagrantly and consistently abused their responsibility, ignored their responsibility under international law as a fundamental part of the Dayton process. You cannot call for the protections of Dayton if you are not prepared to fulfil the obligations of Dayton. We warned them and I warned them for six or seven months. If NATO were to conclude in July last year that, because of their failure, the only peace that Bosnia can have, which is peace within the PfP and NATO, was going to be denied to the whole country, then I would have to take very firm action. I told them time and again but regrettably that is what happened. NATO did not just do that. At the Istanbul Summit, it said, "The country cannot join PfP giving every BiH citizen the gift of peace because of 'a small group of obstructionists in the Republic of Srbska'." I simply could not allow the whole country to be held to ransom by a few people who believe that protecting corruption and assisting war criminals to evade capture was more important than giving the country a future. Yes, I had to take the very difficult action of cleaning out the system in the Republic of Srbska by making sure that those whom we had evidence were assisting war criminals were not any longer in positions of power.

Q68 Andrew Mackinlay: Do you see a situation whereby, although the de jour curtilage of the state is the Federation and Srbska, the Federation could go at a variable geometry as it were in respect of the Partnership for Peace or even the European Union? In a way, whether we like it or not, we have one part of the island of Cyprus going for a considerable amount of variable geometry. It seems from what you have said that you are reasonably content with the progress of the Federation.

Lord Ashdown of Norton-sub-Hamdon: I would not say that I was reasonably content. Each part of Bosnia and Herzegovina has its difficulties. The Bosniaks have tried -- and we have had to resist it very strongly - to politically influence the judiciary and interfere politically in the conduct of the rule of law. That is the battle I have had to have with the Bosnians. With the Croats, they have strongly resisted adopting European standards of education, wishing to keep a segregated education system, contrary to the standards of the Council of Europe. In each part of BiH, there are different kinds of problems. The Republic of Srbska is the one which has attracted most attention because of the ICTY issue. Is there a case for variable geometry? I do not want to dodge the question, as I think you will probably realise, but it is not really my choice. It is up to NATO to decide whether or not they could for instance confer upon the Federation the advantages of PfP or some of the advantages of PfP without doing it for the whole country. It is up to the European Union to decide. If I were asked for advice, I would advise against it. There are enough viviparous issues in Bosnia and Herzegovina, without wishing to divide it more. There is an area of economic variable geometry. Those of you who have been to Bosnia and Herzegovina will go to the Republic of Srbska from the Federation and will see that it is immeasurably poorer because the international community has not invested there because of the curse of Karadzik, in many ways. To treat the country institutionally differently is a matter that would require a very great deal of thought.

Q69 Andrew Mackinlay: Which brings me to the constitution as we have it at the moment. The way I understand it is you have been reasonably successful and you have described the competences of the state being able to get armed forces to set some oversight for the judiciary and one or two other important competences; but below that, the way I understand it, Srbska is pretty much a devolved administration. Whatever the quality of it is, it is one unit. The Federation is cantonal and there is very little at the Federation level. It seems to me there is not a constitutional symmetry. We do not have a state as we know it even in an embryonic way and at some stage we are going to have to address the Federation, what happens at that level and what happens at a cantonal level.

Lord Ashdown of Norton-sub-Hamdon: I agree with that. We do not have a state as we know it. That is true, but I would ask you to put out of your mind the concept of states as we know them. Will Bosnia and Herzegovina ever be a state as we in Britain know it, a broadly centralised state, although becoming more decentralised? Will it be like France, for whom you could use the same two statements? No. On the other hand, that is not the only model of a state in Europe. Belgium is a different kind of state, a state where - I do not mean to be rude in any way - you would trade a certain element of what we might call functionality in order to be able to accommodate the different ethnic and religious mix.

Q70 Andrew Mackinlay: But with a degree of symmetry.

Lord Ashdown of Norton-sub-Hamdon: Yes, but on the other hand is Switzerland perfect in symmetry? Look at the different size of the cantons. No, it is not. I often think that symmetry could well be the hobgoblin of political scientists when it comes to doing things that are practical. Whilst agreeing with you that there is lack of symmetry and that that is a problem that needs to be addressed, in a state like Bosnia and Herzegovina I think I would be prepared to trade a little of the perfectionist symmetry for something that will work. However, I think you have hit on an extremely important point. Accepting that there are some things we would all agree, if you had a representative of the Serbs here from the Republic of Srbska and Croats and Bosniaks, they would agree on these three propositions: one, Bosnia needs to be a light level state. It needs a state that is functional but light level. It needs to deal with only those things that are necessary at this stage. Two, we also know what we want to do at the other end of the spectrum. Everybody will agree that you need a strengthened municipality. At the top and bottom level, I think you will find ready agreement about what the new shape of Bosnia and Herzegovina will be. The place where you find disagreement - the third proposition to put - is what I call the muddle in the middle. Do you have entities or cantons? That is the key constitutional question. That is a very big, singular problem about which there will be huge political contention, but it is only the one level or, if you like, two levels reducing to one that you have to sort out. There are many models for this. Bosnia and Herzegovina is a million miles away from being a functional state qua Great Britain but it is not a million miles away from being a functional state which Europe allows to exist within its borders like, for instance, Belgium or Switzerland.

Q71 Chairman: And may reflect the realities on the ground.

Lord Ashdown of Norton-sub-Hamdon: Exactly so.

Q72 Mr Illsley: Is it economically viable to have the ten cantons and the municipalities? Is there an argument for perhaps trying to sweep away some of the cantons and go straight from the state to the municipalities?

Lord Ashdown of Norton-sub-Hamdon: That is also an alternative solution. It is certainly possible to do that but I would really recommend against the international community sitting in the safety of air force bases in America or even committee rooms in the House of Commons and designing their constitution for them. I agree with you wholeheartedly that the driver for this will probably be economic. It may well be that the European Union when it thinks about stabilisation and association agreements will draw up an SAA agreement which, if you recall, has three sectors. It will have an economic reform sector, a judicial reform and a governance reform sector. Who knows? The European Union may decide that in respect of Bosnia and Herzegovina there is a level of functionality that it requires and it will lay down some guidelines for that. I would caution against a blueprint. Whether that is true or not, what is true is that this is essentially as it touches the citizens an economic problem and that is where you are exactly right.

Q73 Mr Illsley: Is there a tradition of cantons in the Federation?

Lord Ashdown of Norton-sub-Hamdon: We do quite a lot of opinion polls. In descending order, public confidence lies first with the municipalities; second, with the cantons; third, with the state and the least admired and respected level is the Federation, the entity. That is broadly the way it plays out time and again. There are quite serious questions as to whether or not the state in its current form in the longer term is economically viable. I do not have answers to those questions. I think your presumption that this process may be economically driven is probably the right one. This is not the time to deal with it. There is a moment coming when it would be right to deal with it. I do not believe it would be right to have any distraction away from the singular premise of getting into the SAA process because that creates the structure in which this debate can be more healthily and more safely conducted.

Q74 Mr Chidgey: You remarked at the start about the road to accession and the EU, particularly in regard to the stability and association process. You will know that Bosnia underwent a feasibility study just under a year ago in November 2003 as part of the stability and association process and I am sure you will also be aware that the eventual feasibility report that came through showed 16 priority areas of action. I think it said that BiH has not yet assumed full responsibility for government. "It still needs to show through its own efforts that the High Representative's Bonn Powers are no longer needed, particularly in the areas to be covered by an SAA." You have told us that progress has been made. It is too short a time this morning for you to be able to give us a comment on each of the 16 priority areas. I would hope that we could have that in writing at some stage but I would like to know how Lord Ashdown of Norton-sub-Hamdon feels he has been able to accelerate the force necessary on the basis of the signposts in this report and what at the moment are the most pressing of these issues that you feel you have to overcome.

Lord Ashdown of Norton-sub-Hamdon: I could direct you perhaps to the latest Peace Implementation Council public statement at the end in which the Commission of course agreed the wording. They said that Bosnia and Herzegovina had made real progress on the 16 conditions. My Bonn Powers have been used on none of those. They have all been done by the local authorities. That is not to say I have not cajoled and encouraged -- Mr Chidgey may remember how one can cajole and encourage from time to time - the BiH authorities to conduct these but I want to make it clear to the Committee that in the, I think, very significant progress made on those 16 conditions - I use the Commission's words - the High Representative's powers have been used not one single time. They could not have been. The Commission made it clear, quite properly, that BiH had to do this themselves and I could not do it for them. It is also the Commission's view - again, I defer to their judgment - that provided this progress continues there is no reason why negotiations for an SAA should not be commenced in the early months of about the spring of next year. They are the judge and jury on this. Mr Chidgey asked what are the issues yet to be resolved. If I were to identify one, it was the setting up of a public broadcast system. This has not yet been completed. There are some, particularly amongst the Croat side, who appear to want a third language broadcaster. That is directly contrary not just to the SAA process but indeed to the Dayton agreement. It would be completely inimical to the process. That is not to say that that is a European standard. In many European countries they do have single language broadcasters but many European countries do not have Bosnia's history where the single language broadcasters were used as the generators of hate that initiated the war. It is directly contrary to Dayton to have what the Croats apparently seek. Then there are some in the Republic of Srbska who are not prepared to create the central services that a state broadcaster would need in order to provide an over-arching structure within which the entity broadcasters continue. If I were to identify a single block on that front, the 16 tasks, it would be PBS but behind and above that dominating everything is the failure to cooperate with ICTY. That failure, unless it is put right, will block the path not just to NATO but also to the European Union and that is the big one.

Q75 Mr Olner: Lord Ashdown, you touched briefly on the fact that Bosnia has recently failed to fulfil the terms of entry into NATO's Partnership for Peace, mainly because of their non-compliance with the Hague.

Lord Ashdown of Norton-sub-Hamdon: I think pretty well solely.

Q76 Mr Olner: This has been going on for nine years. A couple of big fish have perhaps been caught but how are we going to get this bid of reconciliation going because if there is no compliance and if their past history is not faced how are you going to move forward and how are you going to be able to encourage them?

Lord Ashdown of Norton-sub-Hamdon: There is a process where past history is being faced. I will not go into the details but we have initiated the Srebrenica Commission at the behest of the Human Rights Chamber of the Bosnian Court. That is a Commission set up by the Republic of Srbska Government in which the vast majority - there is only one Bosniak - has uncovered the truth on Srebrenica. The president of the Republic of Srbska in a very brave statement did not quite go as far as Willy Brandt in Auschwitz but went a long way down that track and made a very brave statement acknowledging that this was a crime committed by the Serbs. I think that was an act of some moral stature, in addition to which other statements have been made. He recently visited President Tadic in the Republic of Srbska and they made a joint statement together which is very welcome. In addition, there are certain changes being made to structures that make it better, quicker and perhaps easier to catch these war criminals, but all of these I fear are in the category of words. After nine years of failure, words will not do. If you wish me to characterise the mood in the Republic of Srbska, it is a growing if still reluctant acknowledgement that it will be necessary to face up to what happened in the past. There were black deeds committed on all sides. There are things that Bosniaks need to own up to and Croats need to own up to but under the pressure there is a growing realisation that acknowledging the past is an important part of building the future. All of these are welcome but none of them is sufficient unless there is concrete action and concrete action means catching some of the war criminals and making sure they end up in the Hague. Until that happens, the international community will in my view quite properly be unwilling to say that the Republic of Srbska is cooperating. What can we do to help? Stand at the side, will them to do it, wish them to do it, pressure them to do it, provide them with the resources if necessary to do it but only they can do it.

Q77 Mr Olner: Would NATO be involved in your encouraging words to them to move down this track?

Lord Ashdown of Norton-sub-Hamdon: Absolutely, and NATO is. Commander SFOR and I work very closely together. He looks after the security side of peace implementation. We are frequently meeting with people and frequently discussing these things with them. NATO too is wanting this to happen but we cannot make it happen. Only they can make it happen.

Q78 Mr Olner: You are on the ground and you feel it, touch it and smell it. It has taken nine years to get where we are. How many more years - or now can we measure it in months? - before this cooperation starts with the Hague?

Lord Ashdown of Norton-sub-Hamdon: You ask me to make a prediction. Not another nine years. Maybe wiser and more sceptical voices than me would say I was wrong on this but I think we are potentially quite close to a watershed moment in which everybody recognises that this is a job that has to be completed. The dark curse of Radovan Karadzik wandering as he may well be in the mountains around the Zelengora and Montenegro is now affecting the lives of ordinary people. If you go to Foča you will find this is grindingly poor because nobody wants to invest in this area. In my best judgment, there are the beginnings of a serious mind shift. It is interesting that when we published the first results of the Srebrenica Commission there President Kadic of Serbia and Montenegro was speaking to me the other day and he said there was a very sharp, marked shift in public opinion in favour of catching Ratko Mladic which had been opposed before. I think there is a mind shift going on. All these things are welcome. All these things can be built on. All these things if they continue could deliver a change in the relatively near future but none of them will be worth anything unless they are backed by concrete action. It is that we sit and wait for.

Q79 Mr Olner: What in your opinion is the progress on the defence and intelligence sector reforms?

Lord Ashdown of Norton-sub-Hamdon: I think rather good. By the end of this year, the BiH state will have ticked all the boxes, in all probability, for defence reform. It will have met all the NATO PfP criteria, leaving aside the cooperation with the ICTY. That is going quite well. The area we have to pay attention to is when NATO takes over the lead of the defence reform process there must be no slowing down on the impetus for that. I am confident there will not be. We have worked very hard to ensure that there will not be. On the intelligence side, it is not easy to combine two Communist style intelligence services who spend more time spying on their people than spying on outside forces into a single, state-wide, European standard intelligence structure accountable to Parliament. Progress here is continuing. Is it going as fast as I would wish? No, but it is my job to be impatient and I am. I can look on it with a degree of satisfaction. There have been hiccups. It has not been as well led and managed as perhaps it might have been in the early stages but I think we are on track to combining effectively these two intelligence services together into a state intelligence service by the early months of next year.

Q80 Mr Hamilton: Last month this Committee visited the Hague and while we were there we met President Meron who is in charge of the International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia. What struck many of us was that they are doing a good job but justice is being dispensed a long way from the scene of the crime and I wondered whether you could tell us what progress is being made, if any, and what efforts perhaps to bring that justice closer to the ground in Bosnia itself.

Lord Ashdown of Norton-sub-Hamdon: We are setting up a domestic war crimes capacity. That has been a very big and expensive project which we started this year. The point you make is an excellent one. Bosnia and Herzegovina cannot be a stable state and a functional state unless it has the capacity to try its own war criminals. I give you a view: I do not think that will ever include the capacity to try somebody like Karadzik or Mladic, not in the foreseeable future. That is a job that in my view will have to rest with the Hague for a bit. Some people argue there are some 7,000, 4,000 or 3,000 war criminals of all sorts in Bosnia and Herzegovina. The vast majority of those will have to be tried, in the absence of a peace and reconciliation process, which certainly is not on the cards and nor should it be at the moment, in Bosnian courts. We have already indicted our first war criminal from entirely BiH resources within the new structures which we have been setting up over the last two years. It took us six weeks. It took the Hague two years to do an indictment. That person is almost certainly going to be the first trial of domestic war criminal in domestic procedures and we will have the ability to do that from January of next year.

Q81 Mr Hamilton: That is very encouraging and I wish you well with that but how far do you think the safety of witnesses is in question? That is the big question.

Lord Ashdown of Norton-sub-Hamdon: These are issues we are wrestling with at the moment. It is the big question. It is also the very expensive question with a grindingly poor state. Alongside that, there is a penal institution. We do not have proper procedures. We do not have a place yet for incarcerating potential war criminals awaiting trial or indeed after trial. We are now beginning to build that literally with bricks and mortar so it is very fast to put that into place. The witness issue is a big issue which we are seeking to solve as best we can. It is not going to be tidy in the first instance. In my view, it is very important that we get this process started of trying domestic war criminals domestically as early as possible. I hope it will start in January. That is our target date. Will it be done with perfect grace immediately? Probably not but it will be started properly and properly as early as possible.

Q82 Mr Hamilton: Are there frequent operations still on the ground to try to capture Mladic and Karadzik?

Lord Ashdown of Norton-sub-Hamdon: Yes.

Q83 Mr Hamilton: Why do you think they are not yet in custody? I know it is very difficult and we could ask the same question about other war criminals throughout the world but do you think western intelligence services could do more to help?

Lord Ashdown of Norton-sub-Hamdon: I chased my first terrorist through the mangrove swamps of Borneo 40 years ago. His name was Yassim Offendi and we never caught him. I was blown up against a wall on the Cromlin Road by the first nail bomb ever thrown. It blew one of my marine's feet off. We have not caught him either. We have not caught every person who perpetrated outrages in Northern Ireland, though we control every blade of grass that moves there, presumably. These guys are wandering over the wildest mountain vastnesses in south eastern Europe. I do not know whether Karadzik is there but let us presume he might be somewhere between the Zelengora and Dornberg, which is wildly mountainous. Tito hid 7,000 partisans from six German divisions. They did not catch them in that area. This is not an easy military task. If you have somebody moving amongst a population which, wrongly of course, still regards them as a national hero, this is not an easy task to do. I would advise people to recognise how difficult a military task this is. In my view, there is an absolute total commitment. That is all I have seen. I have heard all sorts of rumours about what went on before. Since I have been there, I can only say I have seen complete commitment on all sides and full resources applied to this task. NATO it seems to me and the western governments are utterly determined it will be completed. They are committing resources to it on a more than adequate scale, I believe. We all recognised this is not going to be finished until it is done. The straight answer to your question do I have criticisms of either NATO or the intelligence services is I suppose if you had them there they would not pretend that everything was perfect. How could it be? On the other hand, I know of nothing that I could recommend that we should be doing that we have not already tried to do. What I think we have done in recent years is expand this. We were following the policy in which you shook the tree and you hoped the fruit would fall. Now we are beginning to attack the tree, its branches and its network. I am using my political powers to work against those who are supporting the war criminal support networks, freezing bank accounts, European Union visa bans, removals from time to time. We are not just going after the individuals. We are going after the whole support structure supporting them. I am not a great believer in saying, "By Christmas, this will be done and that person will be in jail." I have been in this game too long to make predictions like that but I think it would be fair to say that the circle is diminishing in which they are able to move. If we set ourselves the target of doing this, I think it is now going to be done sooner rather than later.

Q84 Mr Hamilton: Finally, you said something very important earlier, Lord Ashdown. If I remember correctly, you said that public opinion was changing and the people who supported these war criminals were beginning to turn against them because they recognised it was in their own economic interest. Do you think in the end that will be the reason these people are captured?

Lord Ashdown of Norton-sub-Hamdon: That is crucial. Mao Tse Tung used to say the guerrilla swims amongst its people like a fish in water and if you can change the water in which they swim you make life much more difficult for them. That precisely is the point but it is, it seems to me, a classic example of how the political action has to back the military action. Perhaps that is what we did not do terribly well in the past. We relied on NATO to be able to do the job but unless you deploy your political actions to change the mood of the public, to close off the corrupt structures - let us recognise that these guys are not hajduks, the Balkan word for a ragged, remote figure wandering in the hills. They are heads of large scale criminal networks. It is the same criminal networks that smuggle women into our cities, that smuggle drugs into our cities, that generate the money, that support the corrupt structures of the nationalist part when they exist - and they do - and that fund the war criminal networks. You have to attack the crime networks as well as the war criminal networks. You have to think about public opinion and do what you can to change it which is the importance of the Srebrenica Commission. Unless you combine all these factors, in the end, you are not going to win this battle.

Q85 Chairman: And recognise that Karadzic is one of the main factors preventing economic development.

Lord Ashdown of Norton-sub-Hamdon: Absolutely.

Q86 Chairman: Turning to the military side, in mid-December, the EU force will take over from SFOR. Do you see any potential problems in that transition?

Lord Ashdown of Norton-sub-Hamdon: It is a very big operation. If you had asked me six weeks ago, I would have said to you that I thought the on the ground planning was behind the curve, but I can confidently say to you that I do not think that is the case now. There has been a remarkable job done by the EUFOR.

Q87 Chairman: How will the mandate change? How will SFOR's differ from EUFOR's?

Lord Ashdown of Norton-sub-Hamdon: There will be a slightly expanded mandate, which I greatly welcome, so that EUFOR can get more easily involved in the whole business of organised crime. The mandate change, which I hope to see and which to a certain extent we have, is so that EUFOR might look much more like KFOR. Its mandate will include explicitly its IPU, its gendarmerie element will be raised and it will have a greater capacity to get involved in tackling organised crime for the reason we have just been touching on. There will be a mandate change there. I honestly think that bearing in mind that 90 per cent, I think I am right, in current SFOR troops are from the EU anyway. They will continue to conduct their operations insofar as the average citizens of Bosnia and Herzegovina see them without much change.

Q88 Chairman: : That same transition happened in Macedonia where effectively it was EU forces ---

Lord Ashdown of Norton-sub-Hamdon: Absolutely and I think the average refugee thinking of returning to Srebrenica will not see much difference; there will be a different shoulder flash and a different cap badge but, beyond that, not. The question is how this loss together at the top level as between General Leakey, the British Commander Designate, and General Schook, the remaining SFOR Commander/NATO Commander for the NATO Office in BiH ... There has to be very close liaison but I am very confident that that has happened. These two guys get on very well together; they have worked extremely closely together, including with me, so I am pretty confident that this changeover, difficult and important though it is, is going to go well.

Q89 Chairman: The transition is belatedly welcome to the US; I guess in part because of overstretch, it is welcome to the European Union because it allows them to walk taller on the military side. Is it welcome to the Bosnians because they presumably will think of the UMPROFOR 1991/05 and the EU position at that time. Is there a deep suspicion of what will happen?

Lord Ashdown of Norton-sub-Hamdon: I think they are watching closely and I think they are right to do so. Let us just remember that dreadful period that you will remember as I do when we sat aside and 250,000 were killed in this country and half the country were driven with blood and brutality from their homes. I think history will deal very, very hard indeed with the European nations who sat aside and did so little and in the end relied on Uncle Sam to come along and bail them out. So, it is hardly surprising that many in BiH, especially Bosnjaks, will regard Americans as the people who saved them and Europe as the people who let them down. Now, that is not in accordance with the historical facts but it is a very understandable position. So, yes, they will watch this with considerable care but I think increasingly, as they have seen the two operations work together, visibly work together, when delegations come out from NATO and delegations with the EU are integrated into it, I think they have been considerably reassured but they will be watching closely to see that this is a success, which is why my recommendation to Brussels is that when this handover take place, try and invest it with as little politics as possible and try and invest it with as much military reality. It is all about capability and capacity and if this looks a serious military takeover, which it ought to because I think it will be, then I think that will go a long way to reassure people.

Q90 Chairman: There will be a great temptation to have fanfares blazing then.

Lord Ashdown of Norton-sub-Hamdon: I think we should blow raspberries to anybody who says words like, "The hour of Europe has arrived." We do not want to hear that kind of language again.

Q91 Chairman: In terms of cooperation with the ICTY, there are some who would express a double standard. In respect of Croatia, for example, when the bar was removed, it was removed when the ICTY said they were cooperating in respect of Gotovina. That was cooperation, that was the inprimaturia of Carlo del Ponti. In respect of war criminals in Bosnia, they are actually saying that they must be handed over which may or may not be within the capacity of the new Government. Do you feel that there is a legitimate ground for unhappiness on this?

Lord Ashdown of Norton-sub-Hamdon: That is well beyond my pay grade, Chairman!

Q92 Andrew Mackinlay: In any event, the way I understood your evidence earlier was that you said they have not handed one.

Lord Ashdown of Norton-sub-Hamdon: That is correct.

Q93 Andrew Mackinlay: Surely the thrust of what you are saying is, if we came back to you some time in the future you might have a different view, but there has not been a gesture, any genuflection at all.

Lord Ashdown of Norton-sub-Hamdon: I think that is perfectly fair. This is not about Karadzic and Mladic, as Mr Mackinlay says, although let us remember that the Republic of Srbska authorities had no cooperation with NATO. If somebody wants to understand why SFOR has not arrested Karadzic and Mladic, one of the reasons is that the Republic of Srbska has provided zero cooperation. Perhaps some would argue that this is a job which has to be undertaken by NATO with its military capabilities that local authorities do not have but, if that is a reason, then it is no reason to explain why, as Mr Mackinlay has said, no war criminals have been arrested. Twenty war criminals have been arrested on the Territory Republic of Srbska, all of them by SFOR troops, none of them by Republic of Srbska authorities. By the by, some of those SFOR troops have been injured in the process and I take the greatest offence to the idea that our young men and women serving in our armed forces have to put themselves in harm's way in order to fulfil functions that the Republic of Srbska Government has failed to fulfil. So, I think Mr Mackinlay is right in saying that there is quantum difference but, further than this, I would prefer not to go.

Q94 Mr Chidgey: Staying, if I may, with law and order in a more general sense rather than the specific war criminal sense, just a short time after you arrived in BiH, the International Crisis Group said in a paper in 2002 when commenting on the rule of law, "The law does not yet rule in Bosnia & Herzegovina. What prevail instead are nationally defined politics, inconsistency in the application of law, corrupt and incompetent courts, a fragmented judicial space, half-baked or half-implemented reforms, and sheer negligence."

Lord Ashdown of Norton-sub-Hamdon: That is very accurate.

Q95 Mr Chidgey: "Bosnia is, in short, a land where respect of and confidence in the law and its defenders is weak." That was some two years ago. It is well established that it is one of your priorities; how are you doing in that regard?

Lord Ashdown of Norton-sub-Hamdon: I think somebody else had better comment on how I am doing! I am not very good at that! Can I make two brief points to you and I am conscious of the time. The first is corruption, crime and criminality follows war like a dark shadow. I often say to people if they are coming out to work in Bosnia who ask me, "What should I do?", "Read a book and read a film." The book is Ivo Andric's great book Bridge on the Drina for which he won the Nobel Prize but the film is The Third Man. Why The Third Man? Because it was done in Vienna in 1953. Look at Vienna today and look at Vienna in 1953. Look at the two pictures. Look at what Rome looked like for the ten years after the war in terms of criminality and look how long it took to get that out of the system. Look at France. Look at our country. Criminality and the Black Market were dominant features in the 1950s. This is what happens after war. It is hardly surprising that, in a war in which 250,000 were killed and half the population driven from their homes, criminality should be there. So, second point: this therefore needs to be priority number one when you move in after a war. The very first thing you need to do is tackle the rule of law issue, I mean from hour one after the midnight hour in which peace arrives. If necessary, creating martial law. If you do not make it priority number one, everything else you do will be subverted by the process. You want to hold elections, the criminals will get elected. You want to have investment into the country, no one will provide it. You want to provide international aid, huge sums of it in Bosnia and Herzegovina, vast amounts will go straight through the system and into the hands of the criminals, which is exactly what happened. We took seven years to make rule of law priority number one, so it is hardly surprising that corruption is endemic into the system. It only started to be made priority number one when I arrived here and, since then, we invested vast amounts of money, well and rightly invested, into the police force. There is no point in having a good police force if you have a rotten judiciary. You have to look at the rule of law synoptically from end to end. So, when we arrived there we made it a first priority to reform the judicial system. So, we have examined and removed large numbers of corrupt judges, reduced the number of the judiciary, reduced the number of courts by 30 per cent and rewritten the laws of Bosnia and Herzegovina written by Bosnians in order to create a framework of law consistent with European practice and make it easier to capture criminals. We have bought in an EU mission to deal with the police, we have created a State Court in which there are now some international judges enabling us to try some of the most high-level corrupt cases in the country. We have just tried successfully the largest human trafficking case ever tired in BiH and, at this moment, a former president of BiH, a Croat President, Ante Jelavic, is before the court on corruption charges, something nobody thought would ever happen. So, we are making progress on this. Is BiH yet a law-abiding state? No, but it is getting there.

Q96 Mr Chidgey: It is very interesting to hear what you have to say on this. Is it possible to introduce the rule of law without effective democratic accountability within BiH or anywhere else for that matter?

Lord Ashdown of Norton-sub-Hamdon: It is possible, yes, absolutely; I think we have to. I think the more difficult question is, is it possible to introduce the rule of law without falling back on the old communist theory that you can interfere in the actions of judges? That is much more difficult for us, much more difficult. Arguably, one of the problems about Bosnia and Herzegovina is that there was never a revolution against communism: (a) communism was Titoism which is slightly different, communism with a human face, and (b) before the Tito experiment failed, which everybody realised it was, the war intervened. So, people blame the war, they do not blame communism. So, the old socialist chip in people's head, unlike in Hungary or Poland, has not gone through that thought-chance process. It is happening now but it is quite a long process. I am sure you can introduce proper rule of law functions without affecting democracy providing democracy understands well and we have had to fight tough battles on this, especially with the Bosnjaks, that it does not really like to interfere in judiciary.

Q97 Chairman: Two things: one, perhaps to give a historical perspective, the problems with the rule of law did not begin in the 1990s.

Lord Ashdown of Norton-sub-Hamdon: No.

Q98 Chairman: There has been smuggling in that part of the world for a long time when there was law and order in Vienna.

Lord Ashdown of Norton-sub-Hamdon: I am sure that is true. I do not think we should blame everything on the corrupt nature of the Balkans. I do not think it is any more corrupt than ...

Chairman: Just to have a certain historical perspective. Secondly, on behalf to the Committee, we thank you most warmly for the way in which you have dealt with such a range of questions. It was most impressive.