Milosevic news dominates Croatian president's interview

The Media and Political Change: Europe

By Maurice Fliess
freedomforum.org

06.29.01

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Croatian President Stipe Mesic, left, during interview with Bernard Kalb.

ZAGREB, Croatia — Croatian President Stipe Mesic said last night that if asked by the U.N. International Criminal Tribunal he would go to The Hague and testify against former president Slobodan Milosevic of Yugoslavia. "The time has come for him to pay for what he did," Mesic said. "The victims (of Serbian aggression and violence) are many."

Mesic's long-scheduled appearance at the opening session of The Freedom Forum-sponsored Europe Media Forum happened to coincide with the breaking news from Belgrade, Yugoslavia, 210 miles to the east, that Milosevic was being extradited to The Hague for prosecution by the war-crimes tribunal.

Answering questions from veteran U.S. television correspondent Bernard Kalb and from other journalists in the audience of about 250 people, Mesic denounced the Serbian nationalist as a misguided leader whose policies put the remnants of the former Yugoslavia on a disastrous course.

Mesic, speaking in Croatian through an interpreter, said he was prepared to tell the tribunal that Milosevic had been the mastermind behind the wars and the genocide that plagued the Balkans after the dissolution of Yugoslavia began 10 years ago this month.

Milosevic was convinced that he would go down in history as having created "a greater Serbia," Mesic said, but he was defeated in war, and Serbia paid the price.

Croatian President Mesic

Mesic, who was elected as a reform president in February 2000, said he believed the Croatian people would support his decision to testify before the tribunal, if that came to pass. "[Milosevic] initiated ethnic cleansing," the Croatian president said, but many other perpetrators also were involved. Milosevic was determined to construct on the ruins of Yugoslavia "'a greater Serbia,' which, of course, could be done only at the expense of other nations and other nations' territories," Mesic said.

In fact, Mesic said he told Milosevic in 1991, four years after the Serbian nationalist began his rule of Yugoslavia and his crusade for an expanded Serbia, that he expected to meet him in court someday. "As I was leaving Belgrade," he said, "I told him he was guilty of all the suffering in the old Yugoslavian territory and all that would be happening … [and] that he would be hanged by Serbs."

Interviewer Kalb said Milosevic's legacy would include more than 200,000 people dead, 3 million others forced to leave their homes, material damage estimated at between $20 billion and $60 billion, more than 1,000 U.N. peacekeepers killed or wounded, and more than 3 million land mines embedded across the Balkans.

The work of the U.N. International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia will individualize the guilt in the way that the Nuremberg Trials did in Germany following World War II, Mesic said. Crime is not a collective act, Mesic said. "[It] has no nationality, and we need to establish which crimes happened and who committed them."

He speculated that Milosevic may use his extradition and prosecution to portray himself as a martyr and to rally support by Serbian hard-liners.

Milosevic and his followers failed to understand that the prevailing winds in Europe favor unity and open borders, Mesic said. The 66-year-old Croatian president, who is pushing for his country's acceptance into the European Union and the NATO alliance, added that "once you have a united Europe … there will be no reason for future wars."

Asked how long peacekeeping troops will have to remain in the region, Mesic said they should stay until democraticization has been fully established and fundamental disputes completely resolved, which he said could take several years.

He called for a political solution to the current conflict in Macedonia that some observers fear could escalate into an all-out civil war. "It's better to negotiate for 10 years than to have a 10-day war," he said.

Mesic also was asked whether the news media in the newly democratic Croatia are adhering to professional standards of fairness. He said many Croatian journalists are bound to their previous way of reporting, which was associated with partisanship and self-censorship.

Croatia is not yet at the stage of understanding that press freedom means democracy, he said.

On the whole, "the media gradually are becoming more free, so that instead of vulgar insults that many of us were subject to, now [they] have a critical approach," Mesic said. "And I must say that my satisfaction with the media is growing," although he noted that "my wife does not like it when they criticize me."

Charles L. Overby, chairman and chief executive officer of The Freedom Forum, opened and closed the program at the Hotel Inter-Continental with warm words for Mesic. Overby said Mesic's presence at the forum was "further evidence that Croatia and its president have embraced democratic reform and freedom of press."

Croatian President Stipe Mesic, left, receives photo from photographer Ron Haviv in Zagreb, Croatia, June 27. Photo is part of Haviv's exhibit, Blood and Honey: A Balkan War Journal, is on display at The Freedom Forum Journalism Library.

"Throughout the ages the cause of freedom has been served by having the right leader at the right time in the right place. In this time, in this place, you are the right leader," he said.

Mesic, a lawyer, was elected to the presidency following the death of strongman Franjo Tudjman in December 1999, a development that set the stage for Croatia's advancement as a democratic society. As a young man, Mesic was a member of the Communist Party of Marshal Tito's Yugoslavia, but he later clashed with party regulars over policy objectives and was imprisoned for a year because of his advocacy of Croatia's independence within Yugoslavia.

On the day before his address to the Europe Media Forum, Mesic attended the opening of a dramatic photo exhibition at The Freedom Forum Journalism Library in Zagreb. The exhibition, Blood and Honey: A Balkan War Journal, consists of photographs taken across the region by American free-lance photographer Ron Haviv.

The forum on The Media and Political Change: Europe continued today with a series of discussions on reporting of war crimes, ethnic conflict and political change in the Balkans.

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