IFOR AFSOUTH TRANSCRIPT July 5, 1996

In the interest of speed transcripts of IFOR press briefings are issued in unedited format Transcript of the IFOR press briefing held on 5 July 96 in Sarajevo J. Van Vliet (OSCE): ladies and gentlemen I have a short statement and then we will continue with the other members of the panel. The head of the OSCE mission to BIH, Ambassador Frowick in his capacity as Chairman of the Provisional Election Commission has taken note of the lists of the party candidates that have come in at the HQ in Sarajevo. It is a total of 12 lists - 11 political parties and one coalition. Another 12 lists are expected to arrive over the next few days from the regional centres. The lists are currently under review in order to check whether the criteria for the candidates have been met. In due course the lists will be brought before the Provisional Election Commission for final approval. As a reminder, it should be noted that the deadline for candidates for cantons and municipalities is set at 8 July 17:00 hrs. Thank you. A. Ivanko: a few words concerning the Finnish team. We've been discussing in this forum is there a change of policy after Madam Plavsic took over as the President of Republika Srpska. We were informed by the Office of the High Rep that yesterday we will have all the authorisation needed given for the Finnish team to proceed. These guarantees were given by Madam Plavsic that the local police will inform us that the Finnish team can proceed. It seems that Madam Plavsic is not very good at keeping her word. The Finnish team yesterday spent quite a few hours in Zvornik, waiting for authorisation from the local police. As of 8:00 p.m. Yesterday no authorisation was given. A decision was made by the Centre for Human Rights here in Sarajevo that since all the conditions have been fulfilled the Finnish team will go ahead this morning. A letter was sent to Mr. Dragan Kec(?) The minister of interior that this morning the Finnish expert team will start implementing the project. I understand that the Finnish team yesterday did some demining in the area and located the remains of 35 bodies. This morning the Finnish team did proceed to start collecting the remains. But at 10:00 we were advised by the Zvornik police that we do not have authorisation to proceed with the project. We think this is outrageous, pathetic and shows a complete lack of sensitivity on the part of the RS authorities, especially in the light of the fact that we were given guarantees by Madam Plavsic through the Office of the High Rep. For some reason either telephone lines went down throughout Republika Srpska or there are no radio connections or whatsoever, but the Zvornik police this morning advised us that we cannot go ahead with the project. I would also like to inform you that the ICTY will begin a major operation involving exhumations at a number of sites in Bosnia and Croatia commencing 7 July. The operation will be conducted by 20 investigators and other experts for a period of up to three months. The operation will cover approximately a dozen sites. The first site will be in the Srebrenica area. The operation will be conducted by the ICTY with the assistance of national authorities, IFOR that will provide General security and logistic support, untas and physicians for human rights, they will provide forensics support. The purpose of this operation is to determine cause and time of death and to identify to the extent possible, the remains and to collect any other physical evidence associated with mass graves. John Burns who some of you know, a forensics expert working with ICTY will be the contact person for reporters. He will hold the press briefing on 6 July at 6 p.m. at Hotel Bristol in Tuzla. And he will tell you where you can go on the 7 July to witness the start of this very major operation. Thank you.

Lt. Col. Marriner: good morning. Unfortunately, once again we must begin our brief with news of accidents. Yesterday at 1520 a Scimitar armoured vehicle was involved in a minestrike about 10 kilometres southeast of Bihac. The vehicle was damaged but fortunately no one was injured. There were no casualties and the personnel stayed inside the vehicle awaiting assistance from an Explosives Ordnance Disposal team. That EOD team came from CANBAT, the Canadian Battalion and was moving to the scene of the earlier strike when it too was involved in an accident. The vehicle rolled and tragically one crew member died and 6 were injured. One of the injured was Casevaced by air to Sipovo and the others went to Coralici. Subsequently one was Medevaced to Trogir. Obviously, an investigation into the cause of the accident has already begun. Commander of the ARRC, Lt. Gen. Sir Michael Walker, extends and sends his condolences to the family and comrades of the dead Canadian soldier, the first soldier from Canada to die in this operation. In the rest of the area of operations, another quiet day with routine site inspections and patrolling. The enhanced security arrangements that we put in place for the Mostar elections have been relaxed, and the city remains calm despite the question marks placed over the legitimacy of the election votes cast in Bonn. Today, a team from the ARRC will travel to Vienna for a meeting with the OSCE, to discuss the procedures required to implement the Sub-Regional Arms Control Agreement agreed at Oslo and ratified at Florence. Finally, I would just like to remind you of one small Parish notice. Tomorrow the media opportunity tomorrow at 1100 in here Admiral Leighton Smith to see, the witnessing the signing ceremony for the 40 IEBL changes. It is at 11:00 o'clock and we will follow that with our normal Saturday press briefing, probably around 11:30. Thank you very much. K. Janowski: from UNHCR two things. One - over the past few days UNHCR managed to organise a conference of refugee ministers and another refugee officials from all of former Yugoslavia. It is the first time all these people got together in one place. It took place in Budapest yesterday and the day before yesterday, essentially to address a problem of huge magnitude - 3.2 million refugees living in countries other than they lived in before the war in former Yugoslavia. The participants agreed to look at the problem and try work out a plan to deal with the problem in a coordinated way over the next two years. Coordination is extremely important since basically we are facing musical chairs situation here. So the refugee situation in Eastern Slavonia is linked to the refugee situation in the Krajina. If the Serbs from Eastern Slavonia or Yugoslavia are not allowed to go back to Krajina, then probably there will be no repatriation or return of Croats to Eastern Slavonia. And again, if Muslims from the Banja Luka region are not allowed to go back then the Serbs will probably never go back to live in areas controlled by the Muslims. We are not sort of holding our breath in, but what I think is important is that for the first time we actually managed to get these officials together in a conference chaired by the UNHCR special envoy and have them directly discuss those problems with each other which is quite important. The other piece of news is less encouraging. Last night we had an incident in Banja Luka where one of the UNHCR staff members was jumped by a bunch of thugs and rouged up, punched about. The man is actually dealing with the whole bus operation in Banja Luka. We see it as not coincidental, we see it as an attempt by Republika Srpska to intimidate our bus operation even further. So far we've been seeing bureaucratic obstacles.

In addition to that we have seen complete hardening of the attitude of the local authorities in Banja Luka on our efforts to have recently evicted Muslims reinstated in their homes. The police and civilian local authorities have not been showing up for meetings and have essentially totally dropped the issue. We've had several meetings planned with them - they have not shown up for any of those, which again is a very bad sign. And thirdly, an international crisis group vehicle was taken at gun point in Banja Luka yesterday, which is also happening for the first time in quite some time. It used to be quite frequent in Banja Luka but it has not been in past months. Thank you. Q: good morning. Alex, how confidant is the UN that the ICTY team will actually themselves be able to do anything because if this Finnish group is having problems, or is your relationship, is the ICTY's relationship to the Republika Srpska different than this Finnish UN team? A. Ivanko: the ICTY did not have any problems before when they conducted probing operations in the areas around Srebrenica. Also IFOR is providing general security and logistic support for the ICTY and to my knowledge ICTY does not expect to have any problems with the Republika Srpska authorities. The Finnish team on the other hand has requested specifically security guarantees, oral or in the written form from the local police. The reason for this is that when we approached the local police they told us - well if we don't give you security guarantees that means that some of your equipment could be destroyed and who knows what can happen and the locals don't like your operation, bla, bla, bla - and that is the reason why the team leader thinks that for the team to proceed ahead he needs very clear security guarantees at the local level. Not at the level of Madam Plavsic but at the local level where it matters more. Q: could you run through the process that we will now see with regard to these lists? Exactly when will the Provisional Election Commission do what it is going to do? And particularly with the emphasis to the SDS list and obviously Karadzic's continued chairmanship of the party. J. Van Vliet: as I said the Provisional Election Commission will get all the lists as soon as they have been reviewed. We still are waiting for a number of lists which will come in a few days. Then it takes another few days before it is all checked, ready to go to the Provisional Election Commission which means that I can't give you an exact time or date when it will be done. But we hope in the course of the next week. Q: yesterday it was made fairly clear in the afternoon that the way the OSCE wanted to handle this question of the SDS is by taking a very legalistic sort of view and letting the Provisional Election Commission make whatever determination it is going to make about this SDS list, that there wouldn't be Ambassador Frowick saying - right it is not acceptable etc. They wanted to pursue this legal strategy. Is the SDS list going to be handled as a priority and is that true what we were hearing yesterday that this is how they are going to address the thing? And who will make the ultimate decision? If I understand correctly it is one Norwegian guy will end up eventually deciding on the SDS. J. Van Vliet: I don't think that is the case. What happens is that there are two issues here. On the one hand there is a technical issue about the lists. We have to check the lists on whether the criteria are met. The criteria are first of all that candidates have to be voters, eligible voters, which means that they have to be citizens of BIH in 1991 census and secondly whether there is a person on the list who is indicted war criminal who failed to appear before tribunal in The Hague. These elements can be checked separately from the issue, the second part, the legitimacy of Karadzic as leader of the SDS.

I can tell you that Karadzic is not on the SDS list. So they are checking the rest of list of course, and then they will come with the lists before the Provisional Election Commission. When legitimacy of Karadzic is concerned, the only thing I can say at this stage is that the OSCE is looking into the matter. It is complex issue. We are considering which steps can be taken and I cannot give you the time for that. Q: where can we expect the decision to come from? Will it be the Ambassador Frowick or will it be the ??? J. Van Vliet: that depends on what steps will be taken. Q: inaudible J. Van Vliet: I can't at this stage because we are really looking into all the possibilities and then a decision has to be made how to approach it and what to do next. Q: it is a fairly clear situation regards to the protest from the four, five opposition parties in the coalition, that filed their protest on Tuesday. As I understand, correct me if I am wrong, it goes to the PEC first, who then reefer the protest to the Appeals Subcommission, is that correct? J. Van Vliet: there are two ways that they can do it. They can either send it to the PEC which will then reefer it or they can send it directly to the Election Appeal Subcommission. This complaint has been received already by the Election Appeal Subcommission. It is complaint for the persons who don't know. Complaint from the united list of BIH. They have brought to the attention of the Election Subcommission the two elements. On the one hand if Karadzic appears on the list, what are you going to do, because we protest that, and on the other hand, but we dealt with that just now, and on the other hand the legitimacy of Karadzic as President of the SDS and subsequently the SDS participation in the elections. It is being considered by the Election Appeals Subcommission at this stage. And a response is expected after the next meeting of the Election Appeal Subcommission which might be by the end of next week. Q: the Election Appeal Subcommission ruling is final? J. Van Vliet: the ruling of the Election Subcommission is binding and final. Q: binding and final. So just what Mr. Frowick or our friends in Washington think will have no affect on the Election Subcommission? J. Van Vliet: they will rule on this specific complaint. That is the only authority. Q: and ruling on the complaint and so they can in effect ban the SDS from the elections? J. Van Vliet: in the rules and regulations that have been agreed by the PEC there are different steps that they can take. It is appropriate penalties and/or other measures, and one of the possibilities explicitly mentioned in the rules and regulations is that they can either reject a party to participate in the elections or withdraw the registration if necessary. Because, if I may remind you the SDS has been accepted as registered party. Q: right, but their decision can supersede that? J. Van Vliet: yes, that is what I mean. It is in there, in the decision. Q: does Ambassador Frowick believe that the SDS is an organisation under public law and therefore Mr. Karadzic is holding a public office? What is the answer to that, and I have a follow up question depending on your answer?

J. Van Vliet: the answer is that Ambassador Frowick has stated last Wednesday -some defined public office under the Dayton Peace Agreement as the state office I (Ambassador Frowick) would define it as any office including the leadership of the party. Q: therefore do you deduce from that that Mr. Frowick believes that Mr. Karadzic is clearly in violation of the Dayton accord by holding this office? J. Van Vliet: yes. Q: can we get a bit more information about the Election Appeals Subcomission? Sorry I don't know, who is on that and exactly how they make their decisions? J. Van Vliet: there are rules and regulations agreed on 10th May. Perhaps it is best if we make some copies available after the meeting. What it says is that they are to ensure compliance with the electoral rules and regulations. They will adjudicate complaints regarding a number of matters - violations of the provisions, violations of the rules and regulations. The Election Appeal Subcommission will have the right to call witnesses, consult with government representatives and other independent experts. In the event a consensus cannot be reached by the Election Appeal Subcommission the chairman will make the final and binding decision. And then they have the right to impose appropriate penalties and fines. And then they have to take it into consideration when applying penalties are fine. So they have to take into consideration certain factors. Q: who are the members of the ..? J. Van Vliet: the members are one international Judge, which is Norwegian person, and then we have representative, a Senior Judge from BIH, from the federation and from the Republika Srpska. Q: is it possible to speak to the Norwegian member of the commission? Could he come and address us for example? J. Van Vliet: I will have to look into that, yes. Q: if Ambassador Frowick believes that a certain party is in violation of the accord, does he have the right to take certain sanctions against that party? Or if the President of that party is in violation of Dayton accord, does Ambassador Frowick have certain measures he can take against that specific party and what are those? Could he for instance just issue an order saying - the SDS cannot take part in the elections? Is that possible? J. Van Vliet: the reason why the President of the party is in violation of the Dayton accord is because he fails to appear for the tribunal. That is clear. And the other part of the question is that I already stated that we are considering which steps can be taken. But I just don't want to go into possibilities of every single step. Q: what is the most serious sanction that Mr. Frowick could impose on the political party, as I said the most serious one? The strongest measure he could take against a certain party, is that banning a party.. Is that the strongest..? J. Van Vliet: the Election Appeal Subcommission can take that decision. Q: but Mr. Frowick himself cannot take that kind of decision? He can just ask them to do it or what can Mr. Frowick do if for instance, for some reason there is no decision coming, forthcoming from the Election Subcommission? Can he himself take certain steps to prevent the SDS from taking part in this elections?

J. Van Vliet: we are looking into what steps are possible. Q: don't you have a catalogue of the worst and the least? J. Van Vliet: no, no. Q: why not? J. Van Vliet: we are looking to the possibilities what steps can be taken and since I explained to you this is a complex matter and it has been in the hands of other organisations and agencies and governments before. Now we have taken the position that we are going to look into it and see what we can do, and then we will decide what to do. And that is unfortunately the only thing I can say about it. Q: can I just ask another question; it appears now that office of Mr. Frowick and office of Mr. Bildt have two very divergent views on this issue. How do these two organisations, from your point of view, from your office, plan to resolve this issue? Because it is rather unhelpful to have international community speaking with about four different voices in Bosnia, never mind if you go to the different capitals. But Mr. Frowick is saying one thing, Mr. Bildt is saying something else, then of course Mr. Steiner has a different opinion too. But we are getting more and more confused and our readers or our viewers are getting more confused, and we'd like some clarity. Are they going to actually come to decision and when, because we must know? There has got to be some accountability, because Mr. Frowick and Mr. Bildt are public officials? J. Van Vliet: I have already stated that Ambassador Frowick has said that the public office concept is different, that some people define it one way and Ambassador Frowick defines it as any office including leadership of a political party. We recognise that, but we still feel that there is something that needs to be done and we are looking into the possibilities that the OSCE mission has before taking a decision. Q: but you can't tell us what you can do? J. Van Vliet: exactly. Q: the problem here is that you go on and Mr. Frowick is going on and everybody seems to go on about the legal importance of all this. Everything has to be done by the law, by the law. And then you say - we are considering what we might be able to do, what we might do, and if you want to go sit in the smoky back room, light up a bunch of cigars and make a deal about.. Well what politically can we do, we would understand that. That seems to be what you are about to do. Can you reassure us that this is not a decision that is going to be made based on the political expediency and on what everybody can think they can get around and agree to or you are going to stick to this legal interpretation that you've said it is so important to you. J. Van Vliet: what I've said is that we are looking into the possibilities and then we will decide what steps to take. I never said that the legal step is decisive in this case, because I said we are looking into which possibilities we have, which steps can be taken. On the other hand there is this complaint before the election appeal subcommission, but that is a separate issue. Q: yes, but you say that you are considering a bunch of possible things that you could do. What will drive the decision making process, for which of those things you choose? It sounds to me like political expediency. Reassure me that it is not. J. Van Vliet: I cannot go further then what I've said right now.

Q: is the OSCE legally obliged to stick to the Dayton Accord? Isn't the Dayton Accord the legal defining document in itself? Does the OSCE consider the Dayton Accord to be a legal binding document? J. Van Vliet: the mandate of the OSCE mission is to implement the Dayton Agreement. Q: is the ICTY excavation and exhumation, this is actually pulling the bodies out? If so, do you have any intelligence about how many bodies you think might be there, do you have x-thousand body bags stacked up in Tuzla waiting? A. Ivanko: a morgue will be set up in Tuzla and physicians for human rights will help with the forensic expertise and support. The number of bodies - no I can't give you that information. Yes, there is an intelligence information available to ICTY, but it is not discussed in public. Q: Alex, just a foot note on the Finnish team work; you said there was some warnings to this team. Does it amount to actual threat or is the leader of the team a bit overcautious about the entire situation? A. Ivanko: it was not phrased as a threat. What was mentioned to us was that the local population is not extremely happy with the team conducting its operation to the area, and that is why if there are no security guarantees from the Zvornik police, things may happen. So the Finnish team leader decided that, since this is the message he is getting at the local level, he would like to have very precise security guarantees. One of the reasons why he wants the security guarantees also is that six experts from the federation side are also part of the team and these six experts feel uncomfortable working in Kravica unless there are firm security guarantees at the local level. Yesterday the six federation experts did not go to Kravica with the Finnish team and preferred to go back to Tuzla since no guarantees were given yesterday. Q: but you would not describe that action as being overcautious and you would not advise those people to just ignore the lack of written guarantees? A. Ivanko: as of this morning the Finnish team did start working in Kravica and I do not know because the Finnish teamleader was only informed of the decision by the Zvornik police at ten o'clock, so I do not know what decision he will make, either to continue working or to stop the operation. Nevertheless, as of yesterday evening the decision was that the Finnish team will continue working in the area. Q: Alex with regard to the Srebrenica digging that begins soon; this is the comprehensive operation to uncover all of the mass graves, to find out exactly how many bodies are in there. And this will finally reveal at least some of the truth of Srebrenica, would you say? A. Ivanko: well, I mean the operation will cover, what I was told a dozen sites. A number of those sites are in the Srebrenica area. The ICTY will not, for the time being, provide all the information on all the sites in the Srebrenica area for operational reasons. Yes, hopefully this operation will allow us to learn more of what happened at Srebrenica. Q: are you expecting, you say you're setting up a morgue in Tuzla . . Are you expecting to uncover potentially thousands of bodies that are reported to be in the area? A. Ivanko: potentially, of course that is possible, but I doubt that are the numbers we are talking about. Because, first of all, the bodies that will be recovered will be taken to a morgue in Tuzla. You can only put an x-number of bodies into makeshift morgue. They will be examined by the forensics experts from the physicians for human rights. How many bodies exactly will be recovered, I cannot tell you right now.

Q: there are a number of sites, I think six potential mass graves etc. That the American satellite photograph . . ? A. Ivanko: I think that the numbers are higher than that. Q: and all of those main mass graves will be opened supposedly in their entirety and all the bodies would be taken to Tuzla or some bodies might be left because the morgue is not big enough? A. Ivanko: I don't think bodies will be left but it will take some time. We are talking here a lot of time to recover all the bodies. Plus one of the issues here is that how many bodies are there in those mass graves. Now people were also killed for example on this hilled site where the Finnish team is trying to collect bodies and we are talking about possibly hundreds of bodies there. So it is very hard right now to asses the numbers.