UN Peace Envoy Testifies for Karadzic Defence

Former UN peace envoy Jasushi Akashi testified at Radovan Karadzic’s Hague trial that it was impossible to prove that Bosnian Serb forces were responsible for a market massacre in Sarajevo.

Japanese diplomat Akashi, who was the UN secretary general’s special envoy for the former Yugoslavia during the 1990s conflict, testified that an expert commission which he assigned to investigate the February 1994 massacre that killed 66 people could not level blame at either Serb or Bosnian forces.

“The grenade [that killed the civilians at the Markale open-air market] could have come both from the Serb and Bosnian government’s side,” Akashi told the Hague Tribunal as he testified in Karadzic’s defence on Wednesday.

The day after the explosion, Akashi said, Karadzic insisted that the Bosnian Serb Army did not fire the mortar shell and that the Bosnian Army was responsible.

Akashi said that after the Markale attack, Karadzic agreed to a ceasefire but the Bosnian government “considered it not enough and wanted the Bosnian Serb artillery around Sarajevo withdrawn”.

Former Bosnian Serb political leader Karadzic is charged with conducting a shelling and sniping campaign against civilians in Sarajevo, including the attack on the Markale market on February 5, 1994. He is also charged with genocide, the expulsion of Muslims and Croats and taking international peacekeepers hostages.

On Karadzic’s suggestion, Akashi told the Tribunal that in 1994 and 1995, the authorities in Sarajevo, encouraged by the US, did not want a lasting peace agreement because that would, in their belief, allow Serbs to keep large portions of territories they had seized.

“The balance of power constantly shifted. In the beginning, the [Bosnian Serb] Army of Republika Srpska was very dominant and, at one point, controlled around 70 per cent of the territory of Bosnia and Herzegovina,” he testified.

“By the end of war, in 1994-95, the military balance shifted to the advantage of the Army of Bosnia and Herzegovina and Croatian forces. That is why the Bosnian Serbs wanted a more permanent ceasefire and the stabilisation of the situation, while the Bosnian government was against any kind of freezing of the military situation,” he said.

As an example, Akashi mentioned that Bosnian President Alija Izetbegovic refused to extend a four-month truce in late 1994.

Addressing Karadzic, he said: “You and the Croats agreed to the extension of the truce, but the Bosnian side was against it, which made the agreement impossible”, adding that the Bosnian Serbs were ready to return the seized territories as a part of a more permanent solution.

Asked by Karadzic who was most responsible for violating the truces, Akashi replied: “All sides, especially yours and the Bosnian government’s side.”

He said that the balance of power shifted by military aid to the Bosnian Army provided by the US, Germany, and some Asian countries despite a UN embargo.

The witness said it that Karadzic had assured him he did not want the division of Sarajevo but the creation of a “twin city” with some of its territory controlled by the Serbs.
 
Karadzic’s trial continues on Thursday.