IFOR AFSOUTH TRANSCRIPT Sep 4, 1996

In the interest of speed transcripts of IFOR press briefings are issued in unedited format Transcript of the Press Briefing held on September 4, 1996

Major Boudreau: good morning. It was a quiet but busy day in the area of operations yesterday. All divisions carried out routine patrolling, weapons and ammunition storage site inspections and continued their support to the election preparations. There were no incidents of note to report. Now, we have been telling you for some time now that IFOR is totally committed to supporting the OSCE-sponsored elections by providing a secure environment, specialist communications support and logistics assistance. The detail of the latter, I will leave to Lt. Col. Nigel Plowright who will brief you on the nature of our logistics support after today's regular news conference. Of course, security during the elections is a primary concern. We've identified the hotspots where we think there could be tension and trouble, but at the end of the day - in fact, all day long - the burden for keeping the peace and ensuring the freedom to vote lies with the parties. The parties have to stop starting fights at the crossings, and start putting a stop to them. If tension does spill over, we will have a designated location where such information will be collected, collated and, ultimately, shared on election day with other involved international organisations and civil authorities. Here is how that could translate into military movements on the ground. First, an elections response group will be established at ARRC headquarters over the coming days in Ilidza. The intention for this group is to be up and running several days before, during and after election day. This will be the forum to bring the key decision makers for all agencies involved in the security for the elections together under one roof for the elections. They will be informed, they'll discuss situations, identify options, and decide on solutions and initiate remedial action. In plain english, that means they'll learn what's going on and decide what to do about it. All of the key agencies, including the OHR, OSCE, IPTF, ECMM, UNMIBH and UNHCR will be represented, and faction police and interior ministry are expected to participate as well. This group will also have the capability of quickly deploying by air to one or more trouble spots during the elections so as to gain first-hand experience of a situation and to bring pressure to bear on factional authorities -- ministerial, police or otherwise -- to resolve an issue.this group could be described as the decision-making body for security concerns. Secondly, the elections security operations centre, also to be located at ARRC headquarters, will co-ordinate and synchronise operations of the corps. This group is simply an expanded version of our already existing operations cell, with augmentation from IPTF, OSCE and UNHCR liaison officers, among others. This group will monitor the situation on the ground and inform the elections response group of developing situations. This group could be described as the planning and tasking body. Now, today and tomorrow, the ARRC staff at headquarters are holding training sessions to practice this concept with the various organisations. Today is mainly an information session to explain what each group and function will be doing to support the elections, and tomorrow we will carry out a trial run on the communications network and run through some scenarios to test the whole operation. We are planning a media opportunity next week before the elections to let you see the elections response group and the elections security operations centre in action. Due to space considerations, that will be a pool arrangement and we'll let you know more detail later on in the week. So, I'll turn over to Alex and than Jean Ouellet from the OSCE who will brief on candidate registration. Thank you, Alex.

Alex Ivanko: a couple of points. Yesterday a meeting was held at the Zvornik municipality. In attendance were ECMM, IPTF , the Zvornik chief of police, the mayor of Zvornik and the President of the local SDS party. Good co-operation there at the local level between government and party officials. The reason for the meeting was to apologise to IPTF for the incident on the 29th of August. The meeting was taped on Zvornik television, by Zvornik TV and was aired yesterday evening. It was also report on the local radio stations stressing that chief of police Zvornik said that if the problem of Mahala and Dugi do is not solved by the international organisations very soon, he would send 300 policemen armed with long weapons to solve it for the international organisations. We hope that this is only rhetoric - pre-election rhetoric, nothing else. An interesting development in Bihac. A hand grenade was thrown in from of a house of a Moslem who's the member of the SDA, believe it or not. I think this is the first case of a member of the ruling party being harassed, and also in Velika Kladusa, a hand grenade was thrown into a house belonging to a woman . We do not know her political affiliations, never the less the roof of the building was seriously damaged. That's all I have. Jean Ouellet: good morning, ladies and gentlemen. At its 71st meeting held yesterday, the Provisional Election Commission have proved the last of list of candidates for the elections in Bosnia-Herzegovina. The lists include the candidates running for the house of representative for Bosnia-Herzegovina, the national assembly of Republika Srpska, and the house of representative for the federation of Bosnia-Herzegovina. as well as the ten cantons of the federation. With earlier approved lists of candidates for the presidencies, which is the presidency of Bosnia-Herzegovina, as well as the presidency of Republika Srpska. The total number of candidates running in the September 14 election is 3398. the Provisional Election Commission regrets that the need to ensure that the criteria that they have set in order for them to be met gave raise to groundless speculations in media about certain candidates being rejected. It expresses particularly a thank you note to the political parties for their positive response and their effort in getting all issue resolved with respect to the lists of candidates. For the information of the press, there's a list of these candidates available at the OSCE media help desk just over here. Thank you. Kris Janowski: no points from the UNHCR. Major Boudreau: right, open the floor for questions. Q: what was the, what were the problems then you had in identifying the candidate list? Was it that you had a poor database to begin with looking back, was that the problem? J. Ouellet: it's a combination of several circumstances. One of which indeed as you indicated, the data base was not a perfect document which is the provisional voters list. In additions we got data from parties that were not necessarily accurate. I can probably draw your attention to a particular candidate Zlatko Lagumdzija who happens to be 300 years old according to the data that was entered in a computer. So there was also a data entry error. So it's a combination of several factors that made it for us more difficult to find, and so after having proceeded through an exhaustive electronic search as well as manual searches instead of giving up, then we turned to the party and said: "Could you please give a saying to clear those people," and they were very positive in their response and we got them clear. Q: yesterday there was discussion about ethnic expulsions being a clear violation of the Dayton Agreement and therefore would OSCE consider penalties or punishment for authorities responsible or considered responsible for expulsions. What was the result, she said she would get back to us on that, what's? J. Ouellet: oh, I guess she's left the country. (laughter) Q: so the OSCE, is the OSCE still unaware of the expulsions? Your regional office in Banja Luka was not aware or? J. Ouellet: many, many incidents, campaign incidents, as you know, there's code of ethics for candidates and parties. There is also campaign rules, and whenever a violation or an alleged violation of settlement of the Moslems in Mahala, and for the time being, we'll deal with this as strictly rhetoric. Q: with regard to political parties, a number of the platforms that or briefs summaries of the platforms that your office has released for a lot of the Serb parties, give clear indications and state quite explicitly in many cases that they do not accept the Dayton Agreement, that the party's goal is separation, it's statehood or it's joining with Serbia. Given that these are official party documents that your office has actually released to the press, how does that fit in to the requirement for parties to support the Dayton Agreement, which says the opposite? J. Ouellet: well, the field of politics is the expression of visions, the expression of ideas, the expression of the future, and sometimes that future includes changes or aspirations. In certain instance if those aspirations are changed constitution arrangements are achieved through peaceful means, through democratic means, then, you know that would not be considered a violation of Dayton. If it is achieved through means that are such as war, or call to arms and so on, indeed that would be viewed as very extreme and we would have great difficulty with those views. Q: so are you saying then that there is no requirement in the Dayton agreement, for people, for parties to support the Dayton Agreement even if they don't, even if they're saying we don't support it , but we don't want to change it by force? I don't understand, it's clearly explicit in there that they must support the Dayton Agreement to qualify for the elections, is it not? J. Ouellet: when the political party applied for registration, the President or the vice-President on behalf of President signed a statement by which they will abide by the terms of Dayton, we cannot make them like it, but we can certainly make them abide by it. Q: yeah, question on funding. I would go one step further then David and say that, I'll show you an example of some literature that the OSCE has paid for. This is Arkan and his party . It says nothing, doesn't even mention Bosnia on the back, but calls for unity with Serbia. they're getting funding, they're getting twice as much funds as the SDS because the SDS is a larger party. The principal there is that the OSCE will fund the underdog. This is a guy who's wanted in 6 European countries, wanted by Interpol. He paid for his wife's wedding last year with a half of million dollars, he is a known criminal , he's about to be indicted, apparently according to the war crimes tribunal sources. He's running a campaign and you're paying for it. What gives here? J. Ouellet: the political campaign funding is basically for all political parties to get their message across. We may not like some of them; we may not approve some of them, but we cannot censor them. There is still a right of free speech in this particular country, and that is what is occurring. Q: yes, and then Arkan... It doesn't bother anybody in OSCE that he's wanted as an international criminal by Interpol and six different European countries. J. Ouellet: correct me if I'm wrong, I don't believe Mr. Arkan has been indicted by the war crimes tribunal at this time. Q: by Interpol, he's been indicted. A. Ivanko: Dayton specifically says that only those on the ICTY list of indicted war criminals which is 75 names of which Mr. Arkan is not on that list. Q: yeah, I can understand you don't react by yourself then because he is not indicted by The Hague. But on the other hand, you say he can get his messages to the public. I don't understand that he can be elected on the basis of a campaign which is clearly against Dayton. So we are giving the possibility, you are financing a possibility which is going strictly against Dayton. The other things are just background. All his rhetoric, all his will and expressed will is thus, against Dayton, and the voters are going to him because of this, and this should be prevented. Maj. Boudreau: do you have a question? Q: why don't you? J. Ouellet: well, obviously, the electors of Bosnia-Hercegovina will make their judgement on September 14th. Q: (inaudible) Reuters. What are the arrangements for movement of voters across Inter-Entity Boundary Lines? I understand there's been meetings between the Serb and Bosnian government interior ministry, ministers. Maj. Boudreau: in fact, there are meetings. That issue has not been resolved. There are meetings today between the interior ministries and the principals, the various principals in the organizations involved , and we would expect that there'll be a resolution shortly. But in fact, the detail of how they'll move across has not yet been resolved. Q: would IFOR be willing to secure the roads in which voters would be crossing the entity boundary line, or only certain routes will be protected? Maj. Boudreau: well, once again, I mean there is the discussion that there would be some nineteen recommended voter routes set up across the IEBL. Once again, the detail of those routes, and the limits of the protection afforded by IFOR/IPTF and especially the parties is still to be resolved. Question over here. Q: Arkan is getting from the OCSE 300,105 German marks for his campaign ... (inaudible) what is your reaction to that? Is that strange, I mean..... (inaudible)..... K. Janowski: well, I cannot judge OSCE's decisions, but in our book, Arkan's certainly not our most favorable, most favorite person. Arkan was responsible, and his henchmen were responsible last year, for the - just before Dayton - for the deaths of we don't know how many men taken on busses when Muslims were being expelled violently from Republika Srpska. And we all know, I mean, people have been here for quite some time. We all know about Arkaan. It's .... Arkaan may not be indicted, but he was certainly involved with a lot of terrible things that happened in this country. And that's all I can tell you. I cannot comment on OSCE's decisions. Q: for the OSCE. Last week, a Croat was censured by you for d horse, here, i.e. The Dayton Agreement, but what exactly do you mean when you say they have to abide by it if then you say, they can say whatever they want, it appears, as individuals or in their campaign literature or in their party platforms? What exactly are they abiding by, and what qualifies as a violation of the requirement in Dayton that they have the support and sign to supporting the Dayton Agreement? J. Ouellet: as indicated before, they express their vision of change for the future. If it is done peacefully, I don't believe that would be a violation of Dayton. If it is done in a non-peaceful manner, then certainly, we would take exception to that. Q: Jim Fish, BBC World Service. I'd just like to follow up on the previous question about the Croat who was censured because you say you had certain control over his program. Is there no control over the program of Arkan's party if there is funding to the tune of 300,000 Deutsche Marks? J. Ouellet: we had control over the particular program, the TV program section. This program was a three minute offering to each candidates to present their views to the public, and it was produced by OSCE, and therefore, we had total control over content, and this segment was removed because it was viewed to be poor taste. With respect to political programs being printed with OSCE money, there is an issue of censorship which may be more difficult to justify. Maj. Boudreau: due to time constraints, because we do have another briefing coming up, we'll limit it to two more questions. Q: this is a question about election day. I know, I realize you said that your plans aren't final for voter routes. You said that you have nineteen routes that will be recommended for voters to use. I just wanted to know, if voters choose not to use those routes, will they still be able to cross the IEBL to vote - on other routes on their own terms under the freedom of movement? Maj. Boudreau: well, in fact it's not our plan. It's very much the parities' plan. They have signed up to providing security across the IEBL and inter-federation for election day. So it's very much their plan, and of course, we will support them to the maximum extent possible. As I said before, the whole issue is not yet resolved. We expect it to be resolved very shortly, perhaps even over the course of today, so we'd have an announcement for that over the course of the next couple of days, I would expect. Q: okay, I want to understand a technical point that no indicted war criminal by the ICTY is to run, I understand that. The Holbrooke Agreement is separate from that. Does OSCE see the Holbrooke Agreement where it specifically refers to Karadzic and pictures of Karadzic and running as a political entity - Karadzic? Is that part of the Dayton agreement? Does OSCE then enforce that separate agreement? J. Ouellet: I will express my view on this particular one. The Agreement of July 19 - I think that's what you are referring to - indicates that the SDS, if and when they set up a function, a rally or what ever, may not appear on stage or in any of the walls of the function to which they have over control, to which they have control over, may not appear pictures of Karadzic. But sometimes, they cannot control the people who do come in. And with their enthusiasm, sometimes they do come in with posters. There has been lots of them that were passed out prior to July 19, and there's still a lot that are still in existence. They have not been destroyed. The event - if the sds has control over an event - on stage is not permitted to have pictures of Karadzic. Q: OSCE views that July 19 Agreement as part of the Dayton Agreement which... It is to ensure that it's followed? J. Ouellet: it viewed it, I believe, as with respect to the registration of the political party. Q: (inaudible) J. Ouellet: if... There was a point in time where the participation of the SDS in the election was discussed, and that's... This particular agreement has some bearing on this particular issue. Maj. Boudreau: okay, than you. Just draw your attention to.... Q: you have not clarified her question. She's asking is the July 19 agreement recognized by the OSCE or not? J. Ouellet: I cannot answer that particular question, I'm sorry. Q: excuse me, do you not know, or are not answering? J. Ouellet: I'm unable to answer because I don't know. Maj. Boudreau: we do have an OSCE rep. Here you can direct your question to after, Christine, and perhaps, I'm sure he'll.... Q: a lot of people have that question Brett, and it should be answered right now. Maj. Boudreau: I think that Tom will be able to take that and get back to you as soon as he can. Just draw your attention to the World Bank news release in the foyer with respect to the reconstruction of the parliament building, and as well, we'll need about two minutes to set up for the next brief on IFOR logistics support to the elections. Thank you.