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Slobodan Milosevic Charged With War Crimes; Former U.S. War Crimes Ambassador on What Former Yugoslav President Faces

Aired June 29, 2001 - 07:16   ET

THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED.

THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED.
CAROL LIN, CNN ANCHOR: Let's get more now on former Yugoslav President Slobodan Milosevic at The Hague, where he'll be facing that United Nations War Crimes Tribunal.

From there, once again: CNN's chief international correspondent, Christiane Amanpour.

Christiane, this is not just any accused war criminal, is he?

CHRISTIANE AMANPOUR, CNN CHIEF INTERNATIONAL CORRESPONDENT: No, this is a history-making situation here: a precedent-setting situation, according to the tribunal.

They say that this is what the tribunal was set up to do, to set the precedent forever that no one -- not the highest official, nor the lowliest foot soldier -- would be immune from the kinds of crimes with which they are accused.

Slobodan Milosevic, along with four other senior Yugoslav and Serbian officials, were indicted two years ago on charges of crimes against humanity and the violation of laws or customs of war. These are among the most serious crimes under international law.

Now, the prosecutor here says she may even expand those crimes. But this indictment stems from his alleged criminal command responsibility in the Kosovo war. It may be that she will expand the indictments to include his role in the Bosnia and Croatia wars, the Balkan wars that started 10 years ago almost to the day.

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

(voice-over): The last time Slobodan Milosevic visited The Hague was for a peace conference 10 years ago. He was president of Serbia. The Yugoslav wars were just starting and there was no war crimes tribunal. It would take the next 10 years to stop Milosevic's rampage, to indict, arrest and extradite him.

This is a triumph for the international war crimes tribunal, which was established in 1993, insisting, despite deep skepticism, that it would go after and get the chief architects of the Yugoslav wars. In May 1999, chief prosecutor Louise Arbour started trying to establish Milosevic's criminal responsibility. LOUISE ARBOUR, WAR CRIMES CHIEF PROSECUTOR: I presented an indictment for confirmation against Slobodan Milosevic and four others, charging them with crimes against humanity, specifically murder, deportation, and persecution, and the violations of the laws and customs of war.

AMANPOUR: Milosevic made history that day, becoming the first ever sitting head of state to be so indicted. But that was just for his role in Kosovo. The current chief prosecutor plans to expand the charges.

CARLA DEL PONTE, WAR CRIMES CHIEF PROSECUTOR: I have two indicted: one about Croatia, one about Bosnia -- crimes committed, crimes responsibility for Milosevic.

AMANPOUR: Croatia, Bosnia, Kosovo: Throughout the 1990s, Slobodan Milosevic's policies, his paramilitaries and his armed forces incited violence and ethnic hatred that would destroy Yugoslavia. Hundreds of thousands of people were killed, millions forced to leave their homes and wander the world as refugees. Civilians were the primary target in this bid to redesign Yugoslavia along purely ethnic lines.

The term "ethnic cleansing" became synonymous with Bosnia, as Serb forces there, loyal to and paid for by Milosevic, tried to carve out a separate state by forcibly moving the non-Serb civilian population.

They did it by bombarding towns and cities like Sarajevo with heavy artillery, besieging villages and massacring civilians. Snipers targeted men, women and children. Markets full of people shopping were shelled. And in scenes unknown in Europe since World War II, there were concentration camps, mass rape and the forced prostitution of women and very young girls.

This orgy of violence peaked with the Bosnian Serb assault on the tiny Muslim village of Srebrenica. To this day, the International Red Cross says that about 7,000 Muslim men and boys remain unaccounted for.

The top Bosnian Serb leaders controlled by Milosevic were Radovan Karadzic and his military chief, Ratko Mladic. They were twice indicted for genocide and crimes against humanity for the horror they brought to Bosnia. And to this day, they remain at large.

In 1995 after NATO conducted bombing raids to stop the Bosnian Serbs, Slobodan Milosevic became the West's partner in the peace that was forged at Dayton that year. But he was as poor a peace partner as he was a war maker. Having lost both Croatia and Bosnia, in 1998 Milosevic launched one more military campaign, this time in the tiny Serbian province of Kosovo. It would prove his undoing.

NATO again went to war to stop him. After 78 days of bombing, Milosevic finally capitulated.

Now NATO forces and the U.N. administration took over Kosovo, hundreds of thousands of deported Albanian residents came home and survivors started looking for their dead. Now the war crimes tribunal was able to start on-site investigations.

But ever the master of miscalculation, barely a year after losing Kosovo, Milosevic called new elections. After supporting him for 10 bloodied years, the Yugoslav people had now had enough. Hundreds of thousands took to the streets to celebrate his downfall and the end of what many called their nightmare years.

Next came Milosevic's arrest. And by April 2001 only a few hundred die-hards mustered the will to protest.

With Milosevic in Belgrade's central prison, Yugoslavia's new government accused him of everything from corruption, political killings and election fraud, to money laundering, and recently, even war crimes.

The new interior minister says that mass graves newly revealed in Serbia contain bodies of tortured and murdered Kosovo civilians. They say Milosevic ordered them removed from Kosovo to avoid a war crimes investigation.

All this evidence has shifted public opinion in Yugoslavia. Now at least half the people want to see their former president in the dock at the war crimes tribunal, where the chief prosecutor says her case is ready to go to trial.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

AMANPOUR: And so the man this tribunal holds ultimately responsible, in terms of his command structure, responsible for 10 years of devastation of the Balkans, will finally face justice here in the international tribunal at The Hague. On Tuesday, he will hear the charges formally and he will plead guilty or not guilty -- Carol.

LIN: All right, thank you very much, Christiane Amanpour reporting live from The Hague.

Let's follow up this discussion on what Milosevic faces at the war crimes tribunal with David Scheffer, former U.S. ambassador for war crimes under President Clinton, an unprecedented role. And he joins us this morning from Washington.

Mr. Ambassador, good morning.

DAVID SCHEFFER, FORMER U.S. WAR CRIMES AMBASSADOR: Good morning.

LIN: I'm wondering if you ever thought you would see this day?

SCHEFFER: Well, you know, I kept saying when I was in office that it was inevitable that he would have to be transferred to The Hague. And I started to believe it. And today, I'm very, very gratified to see that it's actually been accomplished. It's to the credit of so many people internationally and in this country who worked hard to see this day arrive. LIN: You know, I understand the charges, but specifically, what evidence is going to be presented that is going to directly link Slobodan Milosevic to these crimes?

SCHEFFER: Well, that, of course, is the prosecutor's province. She hasn't shared that evidence with anyone outside of her staff. But one can imagine that very critical evidence will be witness testimony, not only of victims, but more particularly, of high level officials, including some who are currently defendants, who are in detention in The Hague, who I think will begin to sing.

There's a lot for them to describe to the prosecutor about Milosevic. And I think they will find an incentive in doing so, particularly with respect to their own cases, because they want to establish where this command responsibility rose -- what was the level that it rose to. And he was at the top of the pyramid -- so I think witness testimony.

There's also some documentary evidence that she certainly has possession of and that combination of documents and particularly of oral testimony I think will be extremely important.

LIN: So you're talking about documents that might specifically have Slobodan Milosevic's signature on them -- a direct link...

SCHEFFER: Well, of...

LIN: ... to the orders of killings, rapes...

SCHEFFER: Yes -- of some character. Remember, he was very careful about how he conducted his business. And that's why witness testimony will be so important. But it's also just the facts.

When you put together the composite of what occurred in Croatia, Bosnia and Kosovo and what we have demonstrated factually has occurred there, you can take that kind of factual evidence and work it up the command chain and basically prove the irrefutable proposition that those who were in command of the forces who committed these crimes must have known of it and did nothing to stop it.

LIN: Considering the situation that we're looking at here, the first former head of state indicted to be charged on war crimes, who else out there, Ambassador -- who else out there is looking over his shoulder this morning?

SCHEFFER: Well, looking over his shoulder is clearly Radovan Karadzic and Ratko Mladic. They're in a much more exposed position now because, at some point fairly soon, if they're present in Serbia -- and we have -- we have assumed that they are -- or are, on many occasions -- they will find that Serbia is no longer a sanctuary for them. I hope that's the case. They'll have to move.

And if they move into Bosnia, I hope that SFOR, our stabilization force there led by NATO, will basically double time their tracking of these individuals so that they really have nowhere to run, because they'll no longer have anywhere to hide. So that's the next challenge for the Serbian government, is to ensure to the international community that Serbia is no longer a sanctuary for any other indicted fugitives.

LIN: And certainly it seems Serbia is being rewarded for its decision with the European...

SCHEFFER: It's being...

LIN: ... Commission now pledging hundreds of millions of dollars to rebuild Yugoslavia.

SCHEFFER: Yes, it's being -- I'm sorry. It's being rewarded with pledges. But I hope that there is some leverage within those pledges as to the disbursement so that the disbursement comes with the transfer of additional indicted fugitives.

LIN: Well, so far the timing of all of this has been very interesting.

Thank you very much, former Ambassador David Scheffer, for joining us this morning.

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