Karadzic: A Possibility to Prevent Victims

Portuguese diplomat Cutileiro, who was compelled to testify under a subpoena by the Tribunal at a request by Karadzic’s Defence, said that the fact that the agreement reached through his mediation failed was “a true tragedy”, adding that the peace agreement reached in Dayton three years later was “nearly the same”, which means that “numerous lives could have been saved”.

The witness specified that the lost lives and territories were “predominantly Muslim”. He suggested that Izetbegovic, who, as he said, “lied” during the negotiations, rejected the principles of the future constitutional arrangement of Bosnia and Herzegovina with “encouragement” from the United States of America, USA.

Karadzic, former President of Republika Srpska, is charged with genocide in Srebrenica, persecution of Bosniaks and Croats, terror against citizens of Sarajevo and taking UNPROFOR members hostage.

Cutileiro said that, in February 1992 the Bosnian Serb leadership accepted the reorganisation of Bosnia and Herzegovina into three ethnic communities, but within the existing borders. He said that the two other sides, Bosniak and Croat, later accepted the constitutional principles of the reorganisation.

“A short time after the parties had accepted the principles, I began receiving information that President Izetbegovic was publicly giving up his assent in his statement to the Bosnian media. The Bosnian Government officially rejected the principles in June 1992,” the Portuguese diplomat said.

Cutileiro said that, in the critical period of time he did not believe Izetbegovic, adding that, “despite his cordial manners”, he “lied”. According to the witness, all of the parties lied, but “Serbs lied the least”.

He said that “Izetbegovic’s refusal to accept that the real Bosnia was different from the one he wanted contributed to the prolongation of the war as much as the dreams about Greater Serbia and Croatian hegemony.”

The Portuguese diplomat reminded the Tribunal that, in his letter to London weekly magazine “The Economist” he wrote that, in the summer of 1992 that “Muslims gave up” the agreement on the principles of the future constitutional arrangement of Bosnia and Herzegovina, which the three sides had accepted in February 1992 “as the basis for future negotiations.”

“Had they not done it, the Bosnian issue could have been solved much sooner with fewer victims and loss of territories. I should be fair and say that Izetbegovic and his advisors were encouraged to annul the agreement and fight for a unitary Bosnian state by benevolent outside factors, who thought that they knew best,” Cutileiro said.

Cutileiro told the Court that a Portuguese officer, who served in Sarajevo, informed him that he was convinced that the grenade, which killed 26 citizens queuing for bread in Sarajevo in May 1992, was fired from the area, where “positions held by Muslim forces” were situated.

While confirming that the Bosnian Serb leaders insisted on the continuation of negotiations about the principles of his plan, the Portuguese diplomat said that Karadzic promised to him that Serbs would return the territories they had occupied and enable the return of refugees in case the agreement was reached.

While being cross-examined by Prosecutor Alan Tieger, Cutileiro said that he did not approve of the crimes by his testimony. He indicated that it was true that the constitutional principles accepted by the different sides were not final.

He confirmed that he wrote, in one of his commentaries, that Bosnian Serbs conceived the failure of the agreement as “a confirmation of the paranoid apprehension of history and continued conducting of a brutal offensive”. Cutileiro said that it was true that he warned Karadzic that an agreement would be possible only if the three sides accepted it and if “all ethnically cleansed territories were returned to their pre-war state”.

“We never accepted the ethnic cleansing conducted by Serbs and Croats,” Cutileiro said.

Prosecutor Tieger then quoted several speeches in which Karadzic expressed his satisfaction due to the failure of Cutileiro’s plan, saying that it meant “the end of Bosnia” and that the Bosniaks’ decision to reject the plan was “fatal for them”. The witness responded by saying that he did not know about those speeches.

The trial of Karadzic is due to continue on Wednesday, February 20.