U.S. DEPARTMENT OF STATE 95/10/13 DAILY PRESS BRIEFING

From: hristu@arcadia.harvard.edu (Dimitrios Hristu)

U.S. State Department Directory

Subject: U.S. DEPARTMENT OF STATE 95/10/13 DAILY PRESS BRIEFING

OFFICE OF THE SPOKESMAN

[...]

FORMER YUGOSLAVIA

Status of Ceasefire/Fighting in Northwest ...............1-3,9

Banja Luka: Reports of Expulsions/Ethnic Cleansing ......3-9

Srebrenica: Numbers of Refugees/Missing .................10

Proximity Peace Talks: Location, Media ..................10-12

[...]

MR. BURNS: Good afternoon. Welcome to the State Department briefing.

As you know, yesterday I announced that Secretary Christopher would be going to Amman for the Amman Economic Conference; and the sign-up sheet for that trip has been posted. It will be taken down on October l7 -- just to let you all know that.

I'd like to welcome the l995-l996 White House Fellows, who I believe are seated here, and here (indicating) -- is that right? Welcome. They are spending a day in the State Department. They have met with Deputy Secretary Talbott, and I think Jim Steinberg -- Director of Policy Planning -- and a number of others. I think all of you know that this is an outstanding group of professionals from across the United States. They spend one year in the Government working at the White House and other Federal agencies, and you're most welcome.

And with that, George? I'd be glad to go to your questions.

Q The Serbs, as I understand it, are accusing the Muslims of cease-fire violations and want NATO to retaliate. Do you have anything on that?

MR. BURNS: I haven't seen any Serb request for NATO retaliation. That's an ironic request, and I have not seen any official reference to it.

I can tell you that I think based on reporting from our Embassy in Sarajevo, and also based on reports from the United Nations, the cease- fire appears to have taken hold throughout most of Bosnia-Herzegovina. That's certainly true of Sarajevo and true for most regions of the country. However, there has been continued fighting in the northwest, around Sanski Most. When the cease-fire came into effect in the early morning hours of October l2, this is where the rival armies were in battle; and they, for the most part, have not stopped fighting. They continue to fight over that strategic town.

There have been various reports that some of that fighting in the northwest may have tapered off a bit, but that has been contradicted, frankly, by other reports. Consequently, the Secretary got on the phone early this morning with Assistant Secretary of State Dick Holbrooke, who is in New York City this morning, and they agreed that the United States had to make an effort today to try to convince the parties to cease and desist.

Dick Holbrooke has just been on the phone, just in the last couple of hours, with the Serbian Foreign Minister -- Minister Milutinovich -- to advise him that we believe the Serbian Government should use its influence with the Bosnian Serbs to try to end the fighting in the northwest. And our Ambassador in Sarajevo, John Menzies, called President Izetbegovic with the same message: that the Bosnian Government should stop its military activities in the northwest. Ambassador Peter Galbraith in Zagreb was in touch with the Croatian Minister of Defense with the same message.

I think Dick Holbrooke intends to try to reach President Izetbegovic directly this afternoon if he can do so.

The United States calls on all parties in Bosnia to stop the fighting. They can achieve far more at the negotiating table than they can on the battlefield. There is no reason for this fighting. Due to the ebb-and-flow nature of the military action on the ground over the last couple of weeks, there haven't been any significant territorial gains made in that part of Bosnia-Herzegovina, but there has been a significant amount of bloodshed that has been caused by this fighting.

They have all agreed that there will be a cease-fire throughout the country. It is in place in most parts; it now needs to become comprehensive. And we feel strongly about this, as do all of our partners in the Contact Group -- the Russians, the European Union, and the other European members of the Contact Group. That is the line that we will continue to take and the arguments that we will continue to use with the parties.

Yes, Bill.

Q Yes. Nick, the Bosnian Serbs, I believe, have threatened to break the cease-fire accord -- they say there is an offensive in progress by the Muslims. The Muslims have threatened to break the accord over the refugee matter in that particular area of Sanski Most. But Muslims have signed on the dotted line to this cease-fire. Why won't they live up to it?

MR. BURNS: All the parties have committed to a cease-fire, and all the parties should live up to it. The Bosnian Serbs should have concluded some time ago that the tide of the war had turned against them, that it is not in their self-interest to continue fighting, because if you look at the forces arrayed against them -- the combined forces in the Federation of Croatia and Bosnia -- they had begun over the last couple of months to make serious and rather dramatic inroads into Bosnian Serb- held territory throughout the lasts couple of months.

So any threat to break the cease-fire and resume fighting would seem to us to argue against the self-interests of the Bosnian Serbs.

We're going to counsel all of the parties to stop this fighting. What they ought to be concentrating on now is the Proximity Peace Talks that will begin here at Site X somewhere in the United States on October 3l. That's where they can achieve a resolution of the problems that are causing this fighting.

Q (Inaudible) the Muslims are the principal aggressor here. Do you see it that way, and is it not up to the --

MR. BURNS: It depends when you take the snapshot, when you try to capture a moment in time, because the Bosnian Serbs were aggressors for well over three years. And just last week the Bosnian Serbs launched their own counteroffensive out of Banja Luka and into western and northwest Bosnia.

It's certainly true that earlier this week the Bosnian Government counterattacked as well and was able to take the town of Sanski Most just hours before the cease-fire went into place.

So I think that one can say quite objectively that both the Bosnian Government and the Bosnian Serbs have initiated fighting over the last couple of days, and we think it's in both of their interests to stop that kind of action.

Q Does the U.S. Government have any evidence to back up reports that the Serbs have reopened their concentration camps in certain areas?

MR. BURNS: That's a question that we've tried to look into quite carefully. We do not have U.S. Government officials in Banja Luka -- which, Jim, I believe, is the area that you're talking about, where these reports come from.

There are officials of the International Committee of the Red Cross and the U.N. High Commissioner for Refugees who have been in Banja Luka and around Banja Luka over the past couple of days.

We have received some information from these international civil servants. Most of the information we have are from press accounts and accounts from refugees who've reached the town of Zenica from Banja Luka, and these are Moslem refugees and Croatian refugees who have been expelled.

It is unclear to us if they've reopened concentration camps. We would be very naive, indeed, to believe what the Bosnian Serbs are saying in public since we know what happened in mid-July around Srebrenica when six- to eight-thousand men disappeared and remain unaccounted for, and when 43,000 people were driven from Srebrenica to Tuzla. We know what happened then. We know what the Bosnian Serb military is capable of, and they're capable of the most base brutalities. It seems to us that the reports coming out of Banja Luka are credible.

We have called upon the Serbian Government, as Dick Holbrooke told you yesterday, to use its influence with the Bosnian Serb military leadership, and with even rogue elements like Arkan -- so-called "Mr. Arkan" -- to stop their brutalization of the Croatian and Moslem populations of Banja Luka.

Just this morning, Dick Holbrooke sent a message to President Milosevic with a very stern warning that this type of action must stop. This message obviously condemned what we think has gone on, and called on the Serbian Government to use its influence with the Bosnian Serbs to have these actions stop.

Let me try to give you a dimension of the problem as we see it.

We believe that in the past month or so, 40,000 new refugees from Sanski Most and Mrkonjic Grad have gone into Banja Luka, adding to the l20,000 Bosnian and Krajina Serb refugees already in the area.

In addition to that, since mid-August, it appears that 22,000 Croats and Muslims have been expelled from Banja Luka; and since October 4, we believe roughly 4,000 people have been expelled from Banja Luka.

Now, those figures are notional because there's not been a scientific accounting of the number of refugees who have been driven from their homes, nor do we know how many people have been summarily executed by the Bosnian Serbs over the last couple of days. But we're looking at atrocities of a major magnitude.

If you look at these numbers -- and it breaks down to two categories -- the vast majority of these people are victim of the so-called "ethnic cleansing." They are being removed from Banja Luka because the Bosnian Serbs would like Banja Luka to be a totally Bosnian Serb town as they look towards peace negotiations, and they are being expelled to areas held by the Bosnian Government.

We saw the same type of activity occur when the Croatian army went into the Krajina, where tens of thousands of Serbian residents of the Krajina were expelled; and most of them, as I've just said, fled towards Banja Luka. So we're looking at mass movements of populations as these countries get ready, unfortunately, to battle at the negotiating table.

That's a very serious set of activities that requires, I think, the sternest possible reprimand from the international community and the greatest possible investigation by the international community.

But what is deeply troubling are the additional reports that, along with this mass movement of population, there have been executions, reprisals for supposed past transgressions by the Moslem and Croatian populations, and there have been disappearances of many hundreds of people, we think, over the last week or so from Banja Luka.

We don't have U.S. Government officials there, so what I've told you -- at least the numbers -- are notional numbers, but we believe these are credible reports.

Q Nick, what did Holbrooke say to Milosevic in terms of this warning? I mean, did he threaten him with any kind of action if this didn't stop?

MR. BURNS: I don't want to go into the specifics of what we said, Carol, for obvious reasons. It's a private, diplomatic communication. But I'll be glad to say that I think at this point the Serbian Government's posture has been that it is against this type of activity. It has said it's against the ethnic cleansing. It has said that it is against the atrocities that have been committed.

So at this point we would like to believe that the Serbian Government would use the influence that it clearly has with the Bosnian Serbs to both investigate these allegations and to try to do something to stop them completely.

We are willing to work with the Serbian Government and with all other authorities in the area, including the Bosnian Serbs, to try to get these activities stopped. There will come a time when we perhaps have to consider other options and consider perhaps a different kind of communication to them. But they remain, I think, options for the future.

Q Are you talking about military action? Is that what you're --

MR. BURNS: I'm not talking solely about military action or even specifically about it. But I'm not ruling anything out, and we at this point are not ruling -- we're not ruling anything out. At this point I think we're going to concentrate on diplomatic discourse, at least for the next couple of days.

Q Nick, what sort of military action could possibly stop that sort of activity in an urban environment other than a commando raid?

MR. BURNS: I think it's true to say that any attempt to relieve the suffering by an outside military attack on Banja Luka could not succeed right now, because Banja Luka is a city in chaos. It's a city of shifting populations where the different ethnic groups are mixed up and some people have lost their homes and some people are rushing in to take their homes of the refugees that have been forced to flee. Other people are disappearing. There have been executions, we know.

So I don't think it's a situation where military force can be used effectively. But certainly the people who are committing these crimes have to understand that the United Nations War Crimes Tribunal is going to look into these activities; that they will be held accountable for these actions.

The people who should take this message most seriously are the leaders of the Bosnian Serb military -- Mr. Karadzic and General Mladic. They are indicted war criminals for brutalities that we believe they committed several years ago. Those indictments may now be buttressed by further information from some of the refugees who are fleeing Banja Luka.

David.

Q (Multiple questions)

MR. BURNS: I'm sorry, Sid. Let's go back to Sid, David, then we'll go to you.

Q But they are indictments that will probably never be enforced, so what type of leverage do you have other than threatening them with indictments that will never be served, because they'll never leave the greater Srpska.

MR. BURNS: It is true that the United Nations does not have the capability now to march into Pale and arrest them and bring them to justice in Geneva or The Hague or elsewhere. It is also true that Mr. Karadzic and General Mladic are not free to travel anywhere in the world outside of the Balkans at this moment or any time in the future as long as these indictments are valid and are current by the War Criminals Tribunal.

I think that is leverage as these people look to their personal futures. I think there's also leverage here that the international community has with others in the region who may have influence on these activities.

Q Nick, two specific questions. Number one, in Mr. Holbrooke's letter or in any other communications with the Serb Government, has the possibility been raised that the Serb Government ought to be investigating and perhaps bringing charges against a man who is, after all, not a Bosnian Serb but a Serb-Serb -- the man who calls himself Arkan. He's a citizen of the country that Mr. Milosevic is President of.

Secondly, you say that the reports out of Banja Luka seem credible to you. I want to make sure I understand which reports you are referring to. Do you regard as credible any reports that you may have seen of large-scale executions, large numbers of people being executed?

MR. BURNS: What is credible -- to take your second question first - - are what we believe are reports, first and foremost, of people being expelled from their homes and forced to leave the Banja Luka region for areas controlled by the Bosnian Government.

What appears to us also to be credible are the reports of detention of people of all ages, disappearances of large groups of boys and men, and rapes of young girls and women. We would be naive in the extreme to disregard these reports. There were so many of them during the last week from varied sources. We would be naive to disregard them, knowing what happened in Srebrenica just three months ago.

That's been documented by thousands of people who were the victims of Bosnian Serb aggression. So while we don't have a complete accounting, David, of what's going on, we certainly conclude that there's a major problem.

The problem in defining exactly how many people may have been killed in the last week by the Bosnian Serbs is a large one, because we don't have people on the ground. The UNHCR and the Red Cross are delivering humanitarian goods, but they do not have as a mission right now to try to survey the city to find out what has happened.

Most of the reports of murder come from refugees who have fled Banja Luka and have gone to Zenica, and they have been interviewed there by the press and by the United Nations. We're getting most of our information in that respect from the United Nations.

Q Nick, you used the phrase --

MR. BURNS: Excuse me. Let me just -- I'm sorry, I forgot the first part of David's question.

It is entirely appropriate for the United States to direct its attention this week to the Serbian Government in Belgrade, which undoubtedly has influence on the actions of the Bosnian Serbs -- has had influence in the past, does have influence, and will have influence in the future.

They have a joint negotiating team for the peace talks that we're going to be sponsoring in just a couple of weeks. We believe there is influence there. You referred to this criminal who calls himself "Arkan." We do know, and the United Nations knows, a lot about his past activities, and there are too many press reports that place him in Banja Luka over the last couple of weeks, and too many press reports that designate him -- these are refugees now -- who designate him as one of the people leading these activities.

Are we concerned about the fact that he may have a house in Belgrade and is a citizen of that country? Yes. And it's up to the government of that country to make sure that it uses all of its influence to stop these activities, because I think there's influence from Belgrade.

But I think first and foremost, international pressure has to be directed, and the memory of what has happened has to be directed at Mladic and Karadzic, because they are directly responsible for the 80,000-odd people that they have in the field that constitute the Bosnian Serb army.

Carol.

Q There are two issues we've been discussing here, one having to do with the cease-fire and violations of that, and then the atrocity issue. You seem to be dismissing or at least putting the onus on the Serbs for violating the cease-fire. Are you seeming to let the Muslims take a slide on this because you're more concerned about the atrocities and you just lay most of the blame for the whole war on the Serbs?

MR. BURNS: In general, our view of the Bosnian war has been that the Bosnian Serbs are primarily and in many cases almost wholly responsible for much of the suffering, but most particularly for the human rights abuses that have occurred consistently for the last four years. That has been documented, and it's no mistake that almost all the people who have been indicted by the International War Crimes Tribunal are Bosnian Serbs.

Having said that, we are disappointed in both the Bosnian Serbs and in the Bosnian Government for the continuation of fighting in the northwest, and we have made our displeasure and our opposition to the continued fighting known to both the Bosnian Government and to the Bosnian Serbs.

There have been times when one has been the clear aggressor, and there have been times when the other has. In explaining what we have done this morning, I noted that there's been one phone call to President Izetbegovic and there will be another in the next couple of hours. So we're not simply turning our glance away from Sarajevo. We're not winking at this. We don't think it's helpful to us or to the Contact Group efforts to have this fighting continue.

Should the fighting continue in the northwest or elsewhere in Bosnia-Herzegovina, we'll continue to let the parties know that we don't think this is the right way to proceed. This will not deter us, however, from proceeding with the diplomatic track. That's very important.

It's very important that we not allow any of this fighting to deter us from convening the peace talks here on October 31.

Jim.

Q You used the figure in the incident in Srebrenica in July of six to eight thousand people missing. That's substantially higher than the numbers that were being used at the time, which were, I recall, two to three thousand.

Is that new figure the agreed consensus figure of international agencies?

MR. BURNS: You're referring here to Srebrenica.

Q Yes.

MR. BURNS: The two figures that I think are most generally used are numbers of refugees and numbers of missing people. It's, I think, commonly accepted there are around forty-three, forty-four thousand refugees caused by the fall of, the brutalization of Srebrenica in mid- July.

I believe it's also commonly accepted by the United Nations and others that six to eight thousand men and boys remain unaccounted for. You remember the events of July 9, 10, 11, 12, where, when the Bosnian Serbs came into the town, they separated the men from the women. Many thousands of men were herded into a football stadium. Others were taken into warehouses. Many thousands of them were never heard from again.

There's no factual evidence -- but we can only conclude that they are missing because they've been killed.

Q Has any outside observer been to that suspected mass gravesite near the football stadium?

MR. BURNS: I believe that in the weeks following that, the Red Cross, the UNHCR and other U.N. officials were able to get there. But I think by the time they got there, the Bosnian Serbs had tried to cover up their crimes. In recent weeks, as you know, as the fighting surged back and forth, the Bosnian Government and Croatian Government claimed that they had uncovered some of the graves of people murdered during the sack of Srebrenica.

Q Have you come any closer to closure on Site X?

MR. BURNS: We have not. The Secretary will be meeting in two hours with the group that he's been meeting with every day this week on Bosnia, and part of the discussion will center on Pat Kennedy's -- Assistant Secretary Pat Kennedy's initial views of which of the sites makes the most sense. He has been solely working on this for the last 48 hours.

The Secretary wants to make a decision on Site X very soon, and as soon as he does, I think we'll let you know what it is.

Q Apropos of the conversations about media access and what-not. How are you going to deal with journalists who may come as official members of the delegation -- the negotiating delegation?

MR. BURNS: I don't believe we've been given by any of the delegations, delegation lists yet. I can check on that to make sure that that is absolutely the case, but I think it's the case.

Journalists cannot be part of official delegations. You're either government officials or you're journalists. You can't be both. They have pledged to Dick Holbrooke, each of the three leaders, that they will not hold press conferences; that they will not deal with the press, speak to the press, throughout these discussions.

There will, in effect, be a press blackout at the site itself. However, we are mindful of the need to communicate with you, and so we will be holding daily or perhaps even two or three times a day, updates on what is happening there. But that will take place here in Washington. It will not take place at Site X.

Q When you say -- you know, you draw a nice neat line of journalists versus officials. That's our tradition, but it's not necessarily the tradition of the Balkans, so --

MR. BURNS: There's a very clear line here, and if we come to believe that some of the officials are actually members of the press and are reporting from inside the compound or Site X about what is happening, then I think we'll make it very clear to whatever delegation is responsible for this, that that cannot happen. That is in essence a violation of the ground rules.

I think Dick reviewed with you yesterday the ground rules. No press. No appearances on the "Today Show" or "MacNeil/Lehrer" during these discussions. No threats to leave because you're unhappy with the way the discussions are going, and you have to stay until we get an agreement. Those are the basic ground rules -- (laughter) -- and we expect that they will -- (laughter) -- it sounds like the O.J. Simpson jury -- (laughter) -- but those are the --

Q Worse than?

MR. BURNS: Worse than? No, not worse than. Those are the basic ground rules, and they have been accepted personally by the three presidents who will lead the three delegations here. We take that seriously. It would defeat all of our purposes of flying all around the East Coast of the United States in search of Site X if we had official reporting going on from within inside X. We might as well have the conference here in the State Department if that's what the ground rules are going to be.

The reason why we're not having it in the Dean Acheson Auditorium is because we want an environment where they don't have to worry about commenting to the press every day about who's up and who's down and what compromises have been made today and which have not. We take that very seriously.

Q Will leaks be referred to the War Crimes Tribunal?

MR. BURNS: Yes. Absolutely. Any leaks will be referred to The Hague.

[...]

(The briefing concluded at l:49 p.m.)

END