Soon after the partial assumption of power in the beginning of October 2000, Zoran Djindjic, despite having no official position at the time, informed a surprised public that a small group of armed Arbanasi had penetrated the external security zone near Bujanovac and that our police had been forced to withdraw from their positions. He even said that clashes were ongoing and that our police were attempting to regain their lost positions. Had the response at that time been the immediate use of overwhelming force, this episode would have already been forgotten and there would be neither hide nor hair of the terrorists.
Instead, the new government decided to respond to armed violence with a restrained peace initiative and a huge diplomatic offensive. After the political advisor to the KFOR commander, Shawn Sullivan, resolutely "promised" that the Arbanas terrorists would not open fire or create more posts, the federal minister of foreign affairs, Goran Svilanovic, took off on a round-the-world trip seeking support for the expulsion of the heavily armed terrorists from the external security zone in a peaceful manner
He visited both Washington and Brussels and got a pat on the back everywhere for the peaceful and restrained response to the armed violence by the terrorists. He was even presented with the prospect, especially in the headquarters of the Atlantic alliance in Brussels, that his proposal that the security zone be completely done away with or significantly reduced in size so that the Yugoslav Army could join the police in operations in the area, would be carefully considered.
Had there been more caution and justified suspicion in the intentions of our Western "friends" who practically yesterday were bombing and killing us, our unseasoned statesmen would have had to ask themselves: how did the Arbanas terrorists manage to penetrate into the Presevo Valley anyway? Did they not first have to pass through the eastern occupied zone in Kosovo controlled by American troops who, if they did not arm and equip the Arbanasi themselves, surely must have noticed them? And would the terrorists have been able to survive at all, let alone multiply to almost 2,000 members, if someone in the West was not supplying them with light and heavy arms, including mortars, perhaps even sharing with them confidential information on the positions and movements of our police and army? All this, of course, could not only have been anticipated but foreseen down to the details. Could have been, had there been any insight and wisdom among our statesmen.
It is in this very instance of poor judgment that the great similarity between politics and medicine which even Machiavelli pointed out can be observed. Like the sage Romans, wise statesmen - says Machiavelli - need to concern themselves not only with the misfortunes and unrest of the present day but also with those that tomorrow will bring so as to use all the powers at their disposal to prevent them. The earlier misfortunes are foreseen, the easier it is to find a cure for them; whereas if it is permitted for them to advance, then the cure cannot be timely because the illness in the meanwhile becomes terminal. And here we see the same thing the physicians say about consumption: that in the early stages it is difficult to diagnose and easy to cure but if it is not diagnosed or treated in a timely manner, the illness later becomes easy to diagnose and difficult to cure.
The same thing is true of state issues. When misfortunes and rebellions are foreseen in a timely manner, as is the prerogative of the wise, they are easy to cure. But if they are not foreseen in a timely manner but permitted to advance until they can be seen by all, then frequently there is no longer a cure for them at all.
What we can add based on our tragic experience in the Presevo Valley to Machiavelli's science is the simple observation that whoever does not know that an armed revolt and guerrilla must be extinguished immediately and at the source should not be administering a state that is threatened. Because, having fortified their positions, multiplied and grown stronger, the terrorists will not see the offers of the other side for negotiations with the goal of achieving a peaceful settlement as a new form of political tolerance but as a clear indicator of confusion and weakness.
We are aware, it is true, that Slobodan Milosevic and his people on several occasions signed some scribblings by which they obligated themselves to cooperate with the Hague tribunal. However, none of these purported acts was ever ratified and published in a valid manner. At the same time, according to the valid FRY Constitution (Article 16 Section 2 as related to Article 78 Section 4), international agreements are part of domestic law in the sense that they are legally binding for our judicial and other state institutions only if they are ratified by the federal parliament and subsequently published.
Svilanovic's statement that the Yugoslav government has already approved the opening of a Hague tribunal office in Belgrade needs to be subjected to a similar examination. The only thing he failed to mention was on the basis of what law or international agreement the federal Government did this because Slobodan Milosevic's "deals" never did become legally binding. Namely, on August 8, 1996 an agreement was concluded between FR Yugoslavia and the United Nations on the establishment of a liaison office of the prosecutor of the International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia in the form of an exchange of letters between Boutros Ghali, the secretary-general of the United Nations, and Vladislav Jovanovic, the acting envoy of the Yugoslav mission at the UN.
On the basis of this "agreement" the aforesaid office was opened in Belgrade but after two years it via facti stopped with its work.
Now a new office is to be opened citing this same "agreement" of August 8, 1996. In our opinion, this "agreement" was never valid to begin with as it was not ratified by the federal parliament nor published in the "Official Gazette". Similarly, this "agreement" contains elements which undermine our constitutional and legal order, such as the right of the Hague prosecutor to conduct an investigation, gather evidence and interrogate suspects and witnesses on Yugoslav territory.
In conversation with Madeleine Albright, Svilanovic also allowed the possibility that Slobodan Milosevic and other suspects might be extradited to the Hague tribunal. However, he did not indicate on the basis of what constitutional principle or valid law this might be carried out. To the best of our knowledge, the Serbian Constitution (Article 47 Section 2) explicitly forbids the extradition of a citizen of Serbia to another state. Even though no international criminal court existed at the time the federal Constitution was adopted, there are some individuals who claim that the federal Constitution does not prohibit the extradition of a citizen of Yugoslavia to such a court.
In our opinion, it is necessary to cite Article 66 Section 2 of this constitution which establishes that a foreign citizen can be extradited to another state only in the event that this is foreseen by international agreements binding for FRY. This case should be interpreted as an exception and even this exception requires a special legal basis - a binding international agreement. In the case of Yugoslav citizens, there are neither explicit constitutional principles that permit their extradition, nor is there any binding (ratified and published) international agreement or domestic law that foresees it.
So on the basis of which valid legislative act does Goran Svilanovic intend to extradite Slobodan Milosevic and other accused citizens of Yugoslavia to The Hague?
As one of the more favorable possibilities, Svilanovic proposed - and was supported by Gaso Knezevic [the minister of sports and education] in doing so - that Slobodan Milosevic be tried in Belgrade but under the jurisdiction of the Hague tribunal. This apparently even meets with the approval of Madeleine Albright. The only thing he failed to explain is what constitution, law or international agreement permits a foreign court to exercise its jurisdiction over our citizens in our state. In addition, it slipped his mind that justice requires equality and that such a trial would be just only if the Hague prosecutor led both Slobodan Milosevic and Bill Clinton to the defendant's chair.
However, if all these disputable issues are supposed to secure more loans in exchange, then the constitution and the law should be circumvented and a crisis staff trained to cooperate with the Hague tribunal. And that will amount to the same sort of legal nihilism of which Slobodan Milosevic is justly accused.
The response of the Arbanas [Albanian] terrorists followed soon thereafter. According to their statement, the demands of the Albanians could be nothing less than the annexation of the Presevo Valley to Kosmet and its return once and for all to where it belonged together with Kosmet which in practical terms means the creation of Greater Albania that would also include Kosovo and Metohija; Presevo, Bujanovac and Medvedja in the south of Serbia; Plav, Ghunjinje, Bar and Ulcinj in Montenego; western Macedonia; and in the more distant future the so-called Chameria in northern Greece. To this they added that "the freedom fighters did not take up arms for a few places in the local assemblies, participation in the Serbian Parliament or to put on the dirty (shameful) uniform of the criminal Serbian police".
Thus, we have the appearance of irreconcilable opposites: our public officials want to negotiate and do not want to use armed force against the terrorists while the later do not want to negotiate at all about their disarmament and want to use force to fight against our army and police. Since it is obvious who has the great advantage under these circumstances, we need to ask ourselves how it all came about.
During their recent visit to our country, a European Union delegation expressed great appreciation for the Yugoslav "policy of restraint and the seeking of a peaceful solution" in the Presevo Valley. In other words, the powerful foreign factor is asking for restraint and endless negotiations from our new government while only appearing to ask the same of the Arbanas terrorists; in practical terms, it is actually encouraging them to continue to arm themselves, to recruit new fighters, to continuously attack our army and police, and to stubbornly persist in their far-reaching demands. That is why right away we need to ask who gains and who loses with this policy.
The Arbanas terrorists certainly stand to gain because they have managed to recruit new fighters, to arm themselves well, to fortify their positions and win the support of their compatriots. In a way, they have also gained not only international but also domestic recognition as military opponents since our government is not only constantly negotiating with them but is also prepared to conclude an agreement between two parties designated as "the Albanian ethnic community in Presevo, Bujanovac and Medvedja municipalities", on the one hand, and Serbian and Yugoslav governments, on the other.
The powerful international factors also stand to gain because they, according to this proposal, will appear as the alleged guarantors of this agreement thus practically becoming involved in our most painful internal matter. And what is even worse, our government is prepared (a draft of the contract has already been drawn up) to entrust control of the Ground Safety Zone established by the Military-Technical Agreement in Kumanovo to the European Union, thus relinquishing its sovereignty over this part of our state territory as well.
The biggest losers are the Serbian people and state. Thanks to this policy of hesitation and anticipation of what our "friends" from abroad will advise us to do or undertake themselves, the Arbanas terrorists have become a serious opponent, the issue of the Presevo Valley has been effortlessly internationalized and the new government, without any guarantees that they will get anything back in return, has tied its own hands right at the start.
Since we are quite familiar with the many kinds of national loss achieved through similar "peace loving" policies by Slobodan Milosevic, which began with the already forgotten Vance plan for the Republic of Srpska Krajina and the withdrawal of the Yugoslav People's Army and the state flag from those Serbian lands, we need to ask ourselves what is so different about the peacemaking policies toward the Arbanas terrorists by the new authorities in Serbia and Yugoslavia.
In doing so they did not know that as far back as the fifth century before Christ, Aurelius Augustinius [St. Augustine of Hippo] warned that the conduct of government, if justice is not served, is a diabolical task. For if there is no justice in them what are states but giant gangs of bandits? And reversely, what are gangs of bandits but smaller states? For both groups have a leader who heads them, a collective agreement which binds them and fixed rules for the distribution of the loot.
In 1832 this "right" to a distribution of the loot was concisely expressed by William Marcy [Tweed], the senator from New York, when he, intending to justify the dismissal of public officials from the defeated party and the employment of the supporters of the winning party, unabashedly said: "The winner gets the loot."
This slogan in the past few weeks has guided the winning Democratic Opposition of Serbia (DOS) when, before the eyes of the astounded public, it has been distributing the electoral loot. In this they are distributing everything that can be distributed: not only what can be legitimately taken over by the leaders of the winning coalition, such as positions in the National Parliament and the Government but also profitable positions in better standing state-owned companies, public offices, public companies, banks and other attractive institutions.
The distribution of the most attractive ambassadorships is deserving special attention. For example, one of the first things Goran Svilanovic shared upon his return from the U.S. before Christmas was the joyous news that Milan St. Protic has received an official agrément to become the Yugoslav ambassador in Washington and that U.S. officials awaited his arrival with impatience. Protic immediately announced that this was "a thankless and strenuous job" in which he would be faced with "enormous trials".
Almost all Belgraders will readily recall that Milan St. Protic was the DOS candidate for city mayor in the elections on September 24, 2000 and that in that capacity he made numerous promises and gave convincing guarantees that they would be kept. Upon his election to this high office, he gave a touching speech in which he eloquently advised how much he cared about his city of Belgrade and what all he was prepared to do for his Belgraders. He promised, among other things, a thousand buses for the public transportation system.
Now, after the news that Milan St. Protic is going to Washington, Belgraders are bereaved and upset. Because who is going to do what Protic promised to do for them, who will get them a thousand new buses and who, finally, will be responsible if all these promises are not kept? In this disappointment there are, it is true, also some elements of narrow-mindedness and selfishness since Belgraders apparently expect Protic to do something only for them while he, on the other hand, is prepared to neglect his beloved Belgraders to a degree in order to do so much more for all Yugoslavs in Washington.
In all this a far-reaching question presents itself: which positions can be the "loot" of the winning party and which positions require appropriate expertise and experience regardless of which party is in power? Because if the highest positions in diplomacy, which is a specific professional field, are distributed to election winners, could the same thing not be done in education, health or the Yugoslav Army, too? And how far would this lead us? The same thing is true in their army, state administration and other public agencies; one would hope that this is how it should be in our country, too.
Soon after the unpleasant visit of the Hague tribunal's chief prosecutor, Carla del Ponte, yet another surprise ensued. Graham Blewitt, the permanent deputy chief prosecutor who has been with the tribunal right from the start, announced that the Prosecutor's Office was and remained "interested" in Perisic.
He responded awkwardly that he did not know in what sense the Hague tribunal was interested in him; however, he did say that he was aware that at the time that he was the chief of the staff of the Yugoslav Army, "many things occurred against my will that I was powerless to stop, as a result of which I was the only one who publicly confronted former FRY president Slobodan Milosevic and parted ways with him". By saying this, Perisic made it known that he is prepared to testify against Milosevic.
If his memory served him better, he would have said that during the course of his five-year tenure as chief of staff, he never publicly confronted Milosevic but only after the latter dismissed him as chief of staff.
Those better versed will immediately ask themselves why the Hague prosecutor has just now become "interested" in Perisic when such interest might have otherwise been demonstrated as early as 1994 or not until 2004. In our opinion, there are two reasons for this move on the part of the Prosecutor's Office. The so-called "interest" in Serbian deputy premier Perisic is a unique blackmail attempt against this Government and its Prime Minister. It followed on the heels of a demonstrated reluctance by both the federal and the Serbian governments to immediately give in to all the demands of Carla del Ponte. The second reason is even more apparent. Should Perisic withdraw from the position of deputy premier as a result of this "interest" in him, this would create a bad precedent for the dismissal of other officials, especially in the Yugoslav Army, from their respective positions.
In that case, it would be enough for the Hague prosecution to show an "interest" in any active general or colonel in order to create an obligation on the part of the cooperative Serbian president to immediately dismiss him.
After this blackmail attempt, yet another great novelty was introduced to international criminal law: the offer to buy justice. It was created by none other than the businesslike American senators. During their recent visit to Belgrade, they declared that the U.S. Congress is prepared to give us 100 million dollars in aid if Yugoslavia turns over all accused persons by March 31, beginning with Milosevic and General Mladic. In other words, here's the deal: you give us your accused persons so we can subject them to our justice and we will give you 100 million dollars as compensation for the shame and humiliation which you have endured as a people and a state.
There you have it: the American price of our Constitution and sovereignty, to be trampled underfoot in exchange for a little bit of aid. None of our officials in speaking with these senators so much as dared to inquire whether the United States of America, as the aggressor, is perhaps liable on the basis of law and justice to pay us an incomparably greater sum for the enormous war damages which have been inflicted on us and to do so without any blackmail or pre-conditions
The Magna Carta of 1215 contains an unusual provision - article HL, which reads: "To none will we sell, to none deny or delay, right or justice." "The sale of justice" assumes also its "purchase" since the buyer purchases justice from him who sells it for money. That is exactly what the aforementioned senators want to do: to purchase for 100 million dollars the possibility of carrying out their justice over the accused Serbs.
We, of course, do not know whether our government will accept such a transaction - you give us money, we give you the accused - but we can state with certainty that justice which can be bought and sold is not justice.
If by some chance she were at least acquainted with the laws of her own country, since she has no knowledge of our own laws, Pack would have said far more cautiously that in our country there are persons indicted for war crimes who are considered innocent until they are found guilty by the decision of a valid court. However, it is certainly not excluded that this characterization of the indicted as war criminals is the result of privileged information that everyone who is indicted will also be found guilty.
Probably also contributing to Pack's certainty is a very broad, practically painless, interpretation of so-called command responsibilities foreseen and regulated by Articles 86 and 87 of the Protocol Additional to the Geneva Conventions of 12 August 1949. Because if Slavko Dokmanovic, a civilian and the former mayor of Vukovar, can be accused on the basis of command responsibility for the murder of approximately 200 people on the agricultural property of Ovcara near Vukovar, what is going to happen to military commanders in whose areas of jurisdiction individual war crimes occurred?
On the basis of this "interpretation" of command responsibility, practically all reserve and active officers in command in the region of Kosovo and Metohija, from platoon commanders to the commander of the corps and army, could be indicted for alleged war crimes; the chief of staff at that time already has been indicted. Of course, we know that not all of them will be indicted but the very possibility of indicting any of those officers every time someone assesses it is politically expedient represents a permanent obstacle and a form of blackmail to which every of these officers is exposed.
There is no question, of course, that such crimes were committed and that their perpetrators must be brought to justice. However, this must be done through standard court procedures before domestic courts and with full procedural guarantees for human rights and freedoms in order to establish and punish those actually guilty and clear the name of all other members and officers of the Yugoslav Army.
Since, however, instead of initiation of criminal procedures before domestic regular or military courts, there is instead continuous talk about extradition of Yugoslav citizens to the Hague tribunal, it would be advantageous to immediately state what the continuous posing of this possibility can lead to. For many years, all of our military officers have been well acquainted with domestic criminal laws pertaining to war crimes, with the Geneva Conventions of 1949 and other relevant international acts which regulate this matter. Hence, our officers at every moment, both in war and in peace, know what they cannot do under any circumstances and how they will held responsible if they do it nevertheless. However, they also are expecting that their possible guilt will be established by domestic military courts through a process that does not tolerate any arbitrariness.
In the case, however, of the possibility that members of the Yugoslav Army will be extradited to some foreign or international courts which are conducted according to obviously arbitrary standards that are otherwise not used by any member of the armed forces of the Atlantic Pact, which has committed heinous crimes on our territory, then this will shake up the confidence of the officers in the senior, and ultimately the supreme, command and weaken, and perhaps even break, the chain of command from the top to the lowest-ranking officer. And an army in this condition will no longer be able to defend the territorial integrity of the state that is obviously under threat.
Unlike to our public officials, this fact is well known not only to leaders of mighty states but to all states with any degree of sovereignty; consequently, it is out of the question for them to extradite their citizens, especially their military officers, to any foreign court.
This was, by the way, the third time this was requested. The first person to request it was President Vojislav Kostunica; the second was Goran Svilanovic during his first visit to Brussels.
As could well have been expected, the response of the secretary general of the Atlantic Pact, George Robertson, was negative. Because when one responds to a request posed for the third time by saying that some parts of the plan "may be discussed and require further study" when in fact the plan has been known for some time, then that, in diplomatic terms, is an unqualified rejection. Whoever does not understand this is either naive or stupid if not both.
However, if George Robertson indirectly rejected the key part of our plan - the significant reduction of the Ground Safety Zone - he almost directly supported the demands of the Arbanas [Albanian] terrorists. Without any circumlocution he announced that he 'opposed every form of anti-terrorist activity by Serbian and Yugoslav forces" and that the units of the Pristina Corps should withdraw from the region "in order to reduce tensions" as well as because this corps "was involved in ethnic cleansing in Kosovo earlier", thus nominating the war-time commander of that corps for The Hague.
However, since Robertson did not also propose that the Novi Sad Corps, for example, then be deployed in positions along the edge of the Ground Safety Zone and since he knows that the Serbian police is not able to defend the Presevo valley on its own, it is obvious that he wanted to turn over this entire region to the unhindered roaming of Arbanas terrorists armed to the teeth which would certainly lead to yet another mass expulsion of our compatriots.
Hence, here is, finally, the denouement of the real results of Covic's peaceful approach. Instead of defending what remains of the state and her territory using all available means, his continuous hesitation is only serving to embolden the Arbanas separatists and terrorists who are now demanding the demilitarization of Bujanovac, Medvedja and Presevo, by which they mean the complete withdrawal of the Yugoslav Army and the Serbian police so that today's terrorists can don the uniforms of the local police. The same scenario which we have already seen in Kosovo and Metohija.
First Thaci's "liberation" army used force and unbearable abuses to expel the majority of the Serbs, killing many in the process, only to be transformed under the auspices of KFOR into a peaceful "protection corps" which protects Serbs by planting, for example, 100 kilograms of explosive under Serb buses. Covic knows all this, of course, but he still wants to defend the country from heavily armed terrorists using paper and ink, and what is more, he wants to do it with the assistance of the same party which not only trained and equipped the terrorists and allowed them to slip through their ranks but perhaps even sent them to the Ground Safety Zone itself.
We remain hopeful that President Vojislav Kostunica and the immediate circle around him are not completely indifferent to the fate of their people and country and that they actually care about whether Serbia and Yugoslavia are going to have the Presevo Valley, that is, the three aforementioned municipalities, or not and thus retain control over the road to Macedonia and, further on, to Greece. On the other hand, they are in a terrible dilemma because they appear to believe that if they compromise just a little, they will get some big money from abroad without which the economic reconstruction of the country is absolutely unimaginable. Their choice will become far more easier, however, if they realize in a timely manner that nothing will come of the big money no matter what they do, regardless of whether they compromise or not. In this light of this assessment, Covic's defense of the country with paper is a fatal mistake.