HAMMER: Is the return of democracy to Yugoslavia a done deal? ROBERTSON: Not yet. Milosevic and his cronies are still out and about. When they have been put in their box and consigned to history, then Mr. Kostunica can get on with huge problems he has inside Yugoslavia.
There’s growing worry that NATO troops in Kosovo could come under attack from ethnic Albanians if the Albanians’ independence aspirations are quashed. Does this concern you? I come from the United Kingdom. I remember seeing peacekeeping troops going in to save the [Roman] Catholic population of Northern Ireland, and then rapidly becoming the enemy. I’m very conscious of that problem, and that’s why we’re committed to building a multiethnic Kosovo. We won’t settle for anything else. The Albanians and the Serbs are not going to create mono-ethnic states. If that means that Serbs have got to be kept in enclaves and protected by KFOR troops, they will be protected.
Can you envision NATO peacekeepers still in Kosovo a decade from now? It’s possible. [After all,] it will be five years in November for the NATO troops in Bosnia. But we’re down to one third as many troops there, so things are moving.
Are you satisfied with the pace of arrests of indicted war criminals in the Balkans? We’re moving with the best speed possible. A lot of these fugitives have disappeared; others have got a lot of bodyguards and a network of support groups behind them. But the net is tightening. The numbers are going down. There were 94 outstanding cases at the end of the Bosnian war. Now 39 [ex-fugitives] are on trial, 35 are in detention and 4 were provisionally released. The outstanding cases will be picked up one by one.
Why has it been so hard to catch [the former Bosnian Serb leader] Radovan Karadzic? He has a network of support, he has sizable protection. It would appear that he’s constantly on the move. There are as many sightings of him as there are of Elvis, yet virtually none of those sightings have been confirmed in the last two years. We do know he spends most of his time inside Yugoslavia. Capturing him requires a lot of advanced intelligence, and one day he will come into the net.
Is it getting harder for fugitives to hide? It is. The Republic of Serbska, for example, is no longer such a refuge. I was told when I took over as British Defense minister in 1997 that if we went for these men, there would be an explosion of anger, soldiers would be attacked. But I gave an order for the arrests to go ahead, and there was virtually no reaction… Some of these criminals have given themselves up, because they’re sick of [being on the run]. It’s pretty rough justice out there. And the net is closing on a number of those who found refuge and support in the former Yugoslavia, which was effectively a police state until last month. Without it, it’s a new dimension.
Why is it worth devoting so many resources to chasing these men down? Because the things they are accused of doing are so awful, so horrifying, that unless they’ve gotten justice you won’t have a lasting peace and stability. Janko Janjic [a Bosnian Serb war criminal who blew himself up with a hand grenade last week rather than face arrest] boasted that for cash he would happily provide the details of how he raped, gouged eyes out and killed. If you’re going to exorcise the ghosts from the European continent, you need to bring such people to The Hague.
You recently met with Russian President Putin. Will the NATO alliance enjoy a better relationship with him than it had with Boris Yeltsin? He’s sharper, younger and far more energetic than his predecessor. Under Yeltsin the Russians imagined they’d been caught off guard in Kosovo and humiliated, and they saw the NATO presence as yet another American footprint closer to Mother Russia. They failed to see that America didn’t want a footprint near Mother Russia, and that most Americans saw that as a footprint in a swamp. Putin recognizes that a standoff makes no sense. They’re beginning to realize that we have common interests here.
You were sentenced in absentia last September by a Belgrade court to 20 years in prison for war crimes. Any word yet on whether your sentence has been commuted? I haven’t heard anything, but I did notice that [French Foreign Minister Hubert] Vedrine, who was also sentenced in absentia, managed to visit Belgrade last week and leave without any problems.
