PRESS CONFERENCE BY BOSNIA AND HERZEGOVINA

22 July 1996

Press Briefing

19960722 FOR INFORMATION OF UNITED NATIONS SECRETARIAT ONLY

The Permanent Representative of Bosnia and Herzegovina to the United Nations, Muhamed Sacirbey, informed correspondents at a Headquarters press conference this morning that sanctions should be imposed on the Federal Republic of Yugoslavia (Serbia and Montenegro) and the Republika Srpska because they had not fully complied with the Dayton Agreement, Security Council resolutions and the demands of the International Criminal Tribunal for the Former Yugoslavia in The Hague.

He said the removal of Radovan Karadzic from the leadership of his party was a positive move. However, that did not meet the demands for the arrest and extradition of indicted war criminals to The Hague.

As things now stood, he said, the matter was back in the hands of the Security Council to which his Government had written. He said he had spoken to the Permanent Representatives of Egypt, Nabil Elaraby, and of the United States, Madeleine Albright, of his plan to press for all measures, including sanctions, to prompt the arrest and extradition of indicted war criminals. In the absence of political will to impose sanctions, other alternatives should be considered. Although sanctions were clearly warranted against non- compliant parties, they could not be imposed in the absence of political will in Washington, D.C. Therefore, the United States should firmly demand them in order to ensure progress on a Council resolution on the matter. Failing that, the international community could consider using the troops of the multinational military Implementation Force (IFOR) to arrest and extradite war criminals.

He reminded correspondents of what he called a widely forgotten provision in the Dayton Agreement, which demanded that sanctions against the Federal Republic of Yugoslavia (Serbia and Montenegro) could be fully lifted only after the international community certified the holding of free and fair elections in Bosnia and Herzegovina. Since observers from the Organisation for Security and Cooperation in Europe (OSCE) had already said that the objective of free and fair elections would not be met, they had resorted to such other definitions as "effective elections". Bosnia and Herzegovina continued to demand that the terms of the Dayton Agreement should be met strictly: that there be a certification that free and fair elections had taken place. Such a certification would be necessary for sanctions to be fully lifted. "Any lower quality certification is not, in our minds, acceptable. We think that again largely hinges on what happens to war criminals and whether or not they are actively pursued and, of course, arrested and extradited."

Bosnia Press Conference - 2 - 22 July 1996

In a subsequent question-and-answer session, Mr. Sacirbey was asked whether the Bosnian Government would continue cooperating with the Agreement regardless of whether or not Mr. Karadzic and the Bosnian Serb army commander, General Ratko Mladic, were arrested. He replied that Bosnia and Herzegovina would continue cooperating, as was consistent with the Dayton Agreement. However, such cooperation had only led to an unbalanced situation in which one party was cooperating while the other was not. Likening it to a situation in which one of a car's wheels was turning freely while the others were stuck in a locked position, he said very little could be achieved unless all wheels were unlocked and made to move together. The upcoming election process could lead to a crash unless corrective measures were quickly taken.

As things now stood, he continued, Radovan Karadzic's party was leading in some polls and planned to use the elections as a referendum to help them, for instance, dismantle Bosnia and Herzegovina. A Bosnian Serb leader was already demanding that the joint institutions of Bosnia and Herzegovina, which would be established through the elections process, should be physically placed on the boundary between the Federation and Republika Srpska. While that was unacceptable, it was a Bosnian Serb tactic to show that there were two sovereign entities even though Dayton had established only one: Bosnia and Herzegovina. The signs were that the Bosnian Serb leadership planned to use the elections for their own agenda, which could only bring about new tensions.

As for participation in the elections, it was up to the other parties to decide whether they would do so, he added.

Asked what future awaited Mr. Karadzic, Mr. Sacirbey said that the Bosnian Serb leader had not officially resigned and he remained a behind-the- scenes power in his party. Before the developments resulting from Richard Holbrooke's move, Mr. Karadzic's face had been the premier advertisement used in the party's campaign posters. As for Mr. Karadzic's future, Mr. Sacirbey said that he might be left with nothing else but to take up his poetry.

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