CROATIA: FORMER CROATIAN PEACE NEGOTIATOR HROVOJE SARINIC SAYS SLOBODAN MILOSEVIC MANIPULTATED SERBS PRETENDING TO FIGHT FOR PEACE IN THE BALKANS

Record ID: 350437

  • Title: CROATIA: FORMER CROATIAN PEACE NEGOTIATOR HROVOJE SARINIC SAYS SLOBODAN MILOSEVIC MANIPULTATED SERBS PRETENDING TO FIGHT FOR PEACE IN THE BALKANS
  • Date: 13th February 2002
  • Summary: (W1) ZAGREB, CROATIA (FEBRUARY 13, 2002) (REUTERS - ACCESS ALL) 1. SV HRVOJE SARINIC, A FORMER AIDE TO THE LATE CROATIAN PRESIDENT FRANJO TUDJMAN, AT HIS HOME 0.05 2. CU/SV SARINIC WATCHING FORMER YUGOSLAVIA PRESIDENT SLOBODAN MILOSEVIC IN THE HAGUE ON TV/NEWSPAPER HEADLINES (3 SHOTS) 0.18 3. MCU (ENGLISH) SARINIC SAYING: He was a man who w
  • Embargoed: 28th February 2002 12:00
  • Keywords:
  • Location: ZAGREB, CROATIA
  • Country: Croatia
  • Reuters ID: LVADO3GKOFYL7RGKEXJJQIG69GN6
  • Story Text: Slobodan Milosevic was indifferent to human suffering
    and ruthlessly manipulated Serbs in Croatia while pretending
    to fight for peace in the Balkans, a former Croatian peace
    negotiator has told Reuters.



    Hrvoje Sarinic, a former aide to late Croatian
    President Franjo Tudjman who held several rounds of
    clandestine talks with Milosevic in the 1990s, said the
    ex-Yugoslav leader was a pragmatist who "dominated the
    situation like no one else".

    "He was a man who was completely indifferent to the
    suffering of people," Sarinic told Reuters in an interview on
    the second day of Milosevic's trial in The Hague for war
    crimes in Croatia, Bosnia and Kosovo.

    In the lead-up to his trial, Milosevic has insisted he
    worked for peace. Sarinic said that had always been his public
    stance but it was nothing more than a smokescreen.

    "He was the mastermind, but left behind very few traces.

    He always said he was a peacemaker and 'I am the only one here
    who fights for peace in the Balkans'."
    According to Sarinic, who attended 1994 talks between
    leaders of Croatia, Serbia and Bosnian Serbs, Milosevic
    admonished Bosnian Serb leader Radovan Karadzic, also indicted
    by the Hague tribunal, for refusing to yield some territory.

    "And then he told Karadzic: 'Radovan, don't say anything,
    just do your homework. I told you the result you must arrive
    at'," Sarinic said.

    The result -- later formalised in the 1995 Dayton peace
    deal to end the Bosnian war -- was giving up some of the more
    than 70 percent of land held by Bosnian Serbs to Croats and
    Muslims and
    retaining 49 percent, the current Bosnian Serb republic.

    But Sarinic also said Milosevic had never considered
    Bosnia a viable independent country. "I asked him once why he
    wouldn't recognise Bosnia. And he said: 'Which Bosnia, whose
    Bosnia? That
    doesn't exist'."
    To illustrate his ruthlesness, Sarinic related an episode
    when Milosevic told him about problems in Kosovo, where ethnic
    Albanians opposing Serbian repression killed two Serb
    policemen.

    He said: 'Those two policemen were killed and now this
    Albanian village no longer exists.' And he was cool as a
    cucumber, like he was telling a joke. He was completely
    indifferent to human suffering," Sarinic said.

    Sarinic met Milosevic 14 times, mostly on secret
    locations in Serbia or Croatia, while negotiating a solution
    to the Croatian conflict, where rebel Serbs opposing
    Croatia's 1991
    independence controlled one third of the country.

    He said Milosevic had armed and financed Croatian Serbs
    and remained their greatest authority until the end.

    However, Milosevic had personally ordered Croatian Serbs
    to accept a peace deal agreed on the sidelines of the Dayton
    talks.

    "Right before my eyes, he called the Croatian Serb
    leaders. Then I jumped on board a Concorde and flew from
    America to Croatia to sign the agreement the next day,"
    Sarinic said.

    He said the deposed leader still had one aim -- to go
    down in history as a Serb hero.

    "He wants to be remembered as the first person who denied
    the legality of the Hague tribunal and to say 'What I did was
    right and I did it in the interest of the Serbian people."



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