Failure in Bosnia Is Inconceivable

RICHARD HOLBROOKE, the former U.S. Assistant Secretary of State for European Affairs and architect of the Dayton Peace Agreement, just returned from a special mission to Bosnia earlier this week. He was interviewed by Global Viewpoint editor Nathan Gardels in New York.

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Question: When you met with Slobodan Milosevic and Bosnian Serb copresident Momcilo Krajisnik in Belgrade last week, what agreement, if any, did you come to about apprehending Radovan Karadzic, the indicted war criminal?

Answer: I told them that in recent weeks Karadzic has flagrantly violated the agreement of July 18, 1996, which said that he would disappear from public view and stop spewing out that racist, ethnic hatred that is so deleterious to the peace process. Only last week, he gave an interview to a major German newspaper.

Milosevic and Krajisnik readily admitted Karadzic’s violation and said they would reissue a statement on the matter. That’s insufficient. We want more; Karadzic has to go to The Hague to face the war crimes tribunal.

Karadzic at liberty is incompatible with Bosnia at peace. By refusing to make Karadzic go voluntarily they are taking great risks. He could have surrendered and gone to The Hague for and fair *

Q.: All along you have said that Dayton would not work if war criminals were not apprehended. Does your visit last week signal that the United States and NATO are finally going to get tough on implementing Dayton?

A.: The world should understand that the NATO-SFOR command is going to be very vigorous from now on in implementing the Dayton agreement. Vigorous, but also, and I stress, evenhanded.

Gen. Wes Clark, the new NATO commander in Brussels has decided to get tough. And Gen. Eric Shinseki, the U.S. commander in Bosnia, is going to be very tough.

The British now have a new government and a new, no-nonsense foreign secretary, Robin Cook. He visited Bosnia a few days ahead of me and issued a dramatic realignment of British policy.

Q.: Aside from the war criminal issue, do you see progress elsewhere at this time?

A.: As many as 10,000 refugees have returned to areas where they are a minority. That is far from the flow we’d like to see, but it is something that was considered impossible only two years ago.

Q.: This redoubled effort to implement Dayton began just days after the Madrid NATO Summit. Do you see the capture of Karadzic and the implementation of Dayton as the other side of NATO enlargement--that is, to be credible the new post-Cold War NATO must fulfill its commitments, not just extend them?

A.: Absolutely. Revitalized American policy in Europe rests on three pillars: enlarging NATO; implementing the Dayton Peace Agreement; and continuing to strengthen our relationship with a democratic, free-market Russia.

It is not insignificant in this respect that Russia has troops under an American commander in Bosnia, and that the Founding Act signed in Paris created a new relationship between NATO and Russia.

The test of policy, invariably, is always in the most difficult spot on the globe. Fifty years ago, it was in Berlin. Today, it is in Sarajevo.

It would hardly be a successful policy if we took in three new members of NATO next year while NATO pulled out and left Bosnia in disarray.

Failure in Bosnia is thus inconceivable.