Milosevic's interview to the Washington Post and FS Net commentary

Q&A

'I Can Only Be Proud of My Role'

Sunday, December 13, 1998; Page C01

Ever since the breakup of Yugoslavia seven years ago, Slobodan Milosevic has been a central figure in the Balkan quagmire--first as self-appointed champion of the Serbs and then as the elected president of what remains of Yugoslavia. Rarely seen in public, he granted an interview last week in Belgrade to Newsweek contributing editor and Washington Post correspondent Lally Weymouth.

During a wide-ranging and often combative discussion which lasted more than two hours, Milosevic explained his position on Kosovo, a province of Serbia that was autonomous until 1989. Claiming he will not bend on his harsh press crackdown, he threatened to fight back if the NATO "extraction" force in Macedonia enters Kosovo and scoffed at U.S. claims that his regime is growing weaker.

Excerpts of the interview, which was conducted in English, follow:

Q: What is your response to [U.S. State Department spokesman] James P. Rubin's statement last week that you are "the problem" in the Balkans?

A: My duty is to protect the interests of my people and my country, so if it is a problem for somebody, I must tell you I can only be proud of my role.

Q: Do you think the United States has changed its policy and is now trying to oust you from power instead of working with you?

A: Oh, many powers have tried that. It is not [a] question of personal position; it is [a] question of political approach to problems in Yugoslavia and in Kosovo.

Q: The United States is now calling on Yugoslavia to democratize in order to get sanctions lifted. Your response?

A: When we finished Dayton [the 1995 Dayton accords, which ended the Bosnian war and divided Bosnia into a Serb republic and a Croat-Muslim federation], there was clear agreement that all sanctions would be lifted. But after the signing of Dayton, the United States created a so-called "outer wall" of sanctions. That was not fair.

Q: How do you feel about America and the Clinton administration?

A: As [the] greatest superpower in the world, you have one weakness--you believe that everything can be solved by force.

Q: If the United States had bombed Serbia as it threatened to last October when U.S. envoy Richard Holbrooke was here negotiating over Kosovo, were you ready? Did you have anti-aircraft guns in place?

A: We had no choice but to preserve our country and couldn't accept anything which would take Kosovo out of Serbia. Kosovo is the wrongest possible spot in the world to perform any kind of threat because of the sensitive position of Kosovo in the heart of every Serb.

Q: Will you give the people of Kosovo the degree of autonomy they had prior to 1989?

A: It was not appropriate [that] they had it, because they abused that power to terrorize the rest of the population.

Q: So the Serbs, who are 10 percent of the population [about 90 percent of Kosovo is Albanian], now control everything?

A: No, that is not the truth. The problem is that [the] media created that distorted picture. Many Albanians are in [the] administration.

Q: Will you allow the people of Kosovo to make the everyday decisions regarding their lives?

A: They cannot ask for more rights than others in Kosovo.

Q: Most of the people of Kosovo--the ethnic Albanians--want independence. You want to keep Kosovo as part of Serbia. Is there a compromise?

A: Kosovo was a region of Serbia and will always be a part of Serbia. That region is populated by many different national communities: Serbs, Montenegrins, Albanians and others. The approach of the Serbian government is that the national communities living there have to be equal.

Q: Are you willing to accept the American plan for Kosovo?

A: The plan has to be developed. [Right now, it] favors the Albanians. . . .

Q: Reportedly, you once had a vision of a Greater Serbia.

A: If you find anything in common with nationalism [in my speeches], I will say I was lying. We never had that program of Greater Serbia. I never said that. We were for preservation of Yugoslavia because all Serbs were living together, in different republics, but in one country.

Q: You talk about "foreign factors" stirring up Kosovo. What do you mean?

A: You know the implosion [of Albania occurred] a year before Kosovo. Their army disappeared practically and they are living in chaos. Albania is a factor of instability in [the] whole region. There is not one single terrorist faction in the whole world [that does not have a] base in Albania. And [there is an] Albanian narco-mafia which is . . . giving money to foreign journalists and politicians--bloody money [because] they are earning it dealing with drugs.

Q: What journalists, what politicians?

A: Many of them.

Q: Do you have any names?

A: Nomina sunt odiosa. Do you know that Latin sentence? Names are odious.

Q: Why are you shutting down newspapers?

A: They are completely free.

Q: Journalists are not free if they get fined every time they say something.

A: That is the law of Serbia.

Q: I understand you used to allow more [press] freedom.

A: The press is completely free.

Q: No, that's not true.

A: The press is completely free, but if you publish lies . . . you must pay a penalty.

Q: Bosnian Serb Gen. Radislav Krstic was recently captured by U.S. troops in the NATO stabilization force [SFOR] to be tried before the [United Nations] war crimes tribunal [for alleged crimes during the 1991-95 Bosnian war]. Did you assist in any way in his capture, and what's your reaction to it?

A: That was a very bad thing. We had nothing [to do] with his capture. . . . He was an officially active general of the army of Republika Srpska [the Serb entity in Bosnia] and was captured on the road by SFOR. That kind of secret accusation [his indictment was not publicly disclosed before his arrest] is not helpful to normalization of the situation in Bosnia.

Q: You are reported to be shielding four to seven Bosnian Serbs who played a crucial role in the Bosnian war. . . . Is it worth it for you to shield them? After all, isn't relinquishing them one of the conditions for lifting U.S. sanctions?

A: We don't see that tribunal as even-handed to Serbs . . . and that is a matter of principle. They're accusing Serbs for everything that happened and that is part of the distortion of [the] picture of what happened in [the] former Yugoslavia.

Q: What about the Bosnian Generals [Ratko] Mladic and [Radovan] Karadzic [who are wanted by the war crimes tribunal]?

A: Mladic is not here. [There are] 1,200,000 Serbs living in Republika Srpska. They had a civil war against [the] Muslims of Bosnia, or against Croats.

Q: But you armed them and you helped them, didn't you?

A: Of course we helped them. There were Serbs who were starving, who were in cellars.

Q: But the Bosnians were no match for the Serbs in the beginning, right?

A: Well they were not so strong--that is the truth, but Serbs were not taking their territory.

Q: Why didn't you call off that battle? Why did you have to turn it into all those thousands of deaths?

A: From the beginning of that crisis, we were for a peaceful solution.

Q: Let's face it, the fact is there were horrible slaughters of people and thousands died.

A: That was [a] tragedy.

Q: People say you could have stopped it.

A: We did our best to stop it.

Q: When was the last time you saw Gen. Mladic?

A: Many years ago.

Q: Could you turn him over to the war crimes tribunal if you wanted to?

A: He is not our citizen. He is not living in this country. He is [a] citizen of Republika Srpska.

Q: But could you turn him over anyway, if you wanted to?

A: No.

Q: And the same for Karadzic?

A: Same for Karadzic. . . . I don't believe that the war crimes tribunal is helpful. If that kind of tribunal was helpful, [it] would treat all kinds of crimes around the globe, not only the Serbs.

Q: In the United States, you've been accused of some of the worst crimes in this century.

A: I think the main problem in the United States is that we have very bad PR.

Q: But what about the facts?

A: The facts are all on our side. The truth is not very popular.

Q: But what about ethnic cleansing?

A: What ethnic cleansing? Where [did] we have ethnic cleansing?

Q: In Bosnia.

A: In Bosnia, all of them were doing so and we condemned them all categorically--Serbs, Croats, anybody.

Q: People say that the high leaders of your country were the people who gave the orders to do the ethnic cleansing.

A: No, that's out of the question; that would be a real crime.

Q: Do you have any regrets?

A: For what?

Q: Do you think you made any mistakes?

A: All I was doing was struggling for peace. . . . There were some mistakes, no doubt, but nobody can be immune to mistakes.

Q: What were your mistakes?

A: Nothing specific. I have a clear conscience.

Q: What happens if the [NATO] force comes into Yugoslavia to rescue international monitors?

A: If they come onto our territory, we will consider it as an act of aggression.

Q: And you'll fight back?

A: That is the duty of our army--not to allow any foreign troops to get into our territory.

Q: You're president of Yugoslavia until 2001?

A: Yes. I was elected [in] 1997. My mandate expires in 2001.

Q: You can only run for one term, is that right?

A: Yes, under our constitution.

Q: Could you change the constitution to make it so you could serve for two terms?

A: I had no idea to do so.

Q: But you're probably planning to remain in political life.

A: Well, I'm president of the strongest party--not only president, I am founder of that party.

This interview is desperate attempt of ruined dictator to show that he still remains a factor on Balkan. Recent shift of US policy towards Serbia disturbed Milosevic deeply. Ever since civil war in Yugoslavia started, Milosevic stopped giving interviews and speaking on public places. Every interview with him or his appearance in public is a rare occasion which can help us understand his diabolical mind. We can see that he is completely drawn away from reality and that he lives in some parallel world where different laws and physics apply. He has a similar paranoia syndrome that Stalin had. He fights against enemies around him, paid imperialist agents, domestic traitors, CIA, Pentagon, forces of darkness. His only friends are die-hard communists who still believe in Stalinism. He is buying oil from Libya, gas from Russia, radioactive salt from Belarus, sugar from Cuba while selling tractors to China.

Let's analyze his interview question by question:

Q: What is your response to [U.S. State Department spokesman] James P. Rubin's statement last week that you are "the problem" in the Balkans?

A: My duty is to protect the interests of my people and my country, so if it is a problem for somebody, I must tell you I can only be proud of my role.

He is proud that because of him hundreds of thousands of people perished while millions of them had to resettle during Yugoslav civil war caused by his Stalinist ideas. He is proud that hundreds of thousands of people demonstrated several months against him during Protest '96 in Serbia. He is proud of 200,000 police officers that beat, torture and kill all who are against him. He is proud of his son Marko who built the biggest disco club in Balkan while he never worked a single day in his life. He is proud of his wife who got her own political party JUL created from the funds of Milosevic's Socialist Party. He is proud that independent media is banned in Serbia while their editors are questioned by the police. He is proud of the fact that millions live in poverty while his members of parliament are entitled to 3 servants, a car and lifetime salary.

Q: The United States is now calling on Yugoslavia to democratize in order to get sanctions lifted. Your response?

He forgets the fact that all indicted by the Tribunal in Hague must be arrested and sent to Hague.

Until this day Yugoslavia has not extradited a single person indicted for war crimes.

Q: How do you feel about America and the Clinton administration?

A: As [the] greatest superpower in the world, you have one weakness--you believe that everything can be solved by force.

This applies to Milosevic not to the United States. Milosevic ordered tanks to go to Slovenia, Croatia, Bosnia and streets of Belgrade to fight democratic opposition elected by the people of Yugoslavia.

Q: So the Serbs, who are 10 percent of the population [about 90 percent of Kosovo is Albanian], now control everything?

A: No, that is not the truth. The problem is that [the] media created that distorted picture. Many Albanians are in [the] administration.

Unfortunately, Serbs live badly on Kosovo. Person who conducted this interview was supposed to know how Serbs live on Kosovo. Only his servants live well oppressing both Albanians and Serbs. Good source of information is Kosovo.com run by the Serbs who live there.

Q: Will you allow the people of Kosovo to make the everyday decisions regarding their lives?

A: They cannot ask for more rights than others in Kosovo.

This confirms my previous statement about Serbs who live on Kosovo. Pay a close attention on the question. It was about PEOPLE OF KOSOVO not Albanians. And who are the others? His servants who conduct everyday oppression?

Q: Reportedly, you once had a vision of a Greater Serbia.

Another bad question. Vojislav Seselj was behind the idea of Greater Serbia not Milosevic. Milosevic wants to preserve communism in Yugoslavia, he doesn't care about Serbs. He only used Serbian nationalism to mislead people. While many thought that they were fighting for Greater Serbia, they fought only for communist dictator Milosevic and his Stalinist Yugoslavia. Adolf Hitler also wanted that all Germans live in one state but we all know that he was just a fascist lunatic who wanted to conquer the world using German people.

Q: Why are you shutting down newspapers?

A: They are completely free.

Milosevic doesn't answer the question. He is either demented or he is arrogant.

Q: Journalists are not free if they get fined every time they say something.

A: That is the law of Serbia.

Another huge mistake by Milosevic. It looks like the law in Serbia is that journalists are supposed to be arrested from time to time for whatever reason that might be. He was supposed to tell us why they are fined and what are the amounts they have to pay. What is forbidden? Any law details or any cases that need to be mentioned to justify media repression.

Q: I understand you used to allow more [press] freedom.

A: The press is completely free.

Q: No, that's not true.

A: The press is completely free, but if you publish lies . . . you must pay a penalty.

Another refusal to answer the question and then a poor attempt to mislead people about media repression in Serbia. While citizens of democratic countries can sue the papers through civil law suits, in Serbia anyone can press criminal charges against journalists and the verdict is known within 24 hours while convicted journalist or the newspaper must pay the fine within 24 hours. Dnevni Telgraf, daily Serbian newspaper, was fined with $240,000 that was supposed to be paid within 24 hours on Saturday. You can read more about chronology of media repression here and if you are an attorney you can examine the Information Law.

The fact is that Muslims and Croats were sentenced by the Tribunal as well as Serbs. Their list of persons indicted for war crimes includes all parties who participated in civil war in Bosnia.

Q: But you armed them and you helped them, didn't you?

A: Of course we helped them. There were Serbs who were starving, who were in cellars.

People who are starving need food not weapons. Is he talking about wine cellars?

Q: But the Bosnians were no match for the Serbs in the beginning, right?

A: Well they were not so strong--that is the truth, but Serbs were not taking their territory.

Bosnians are people who live in Bosnia. It looks like they fought against Serbia not that there was a war between three groups of people, Serbs, Croats and Muslims in Bosnia. One time, Karadzic had control over 81% of Bosnia and refused to sign any peace agreement. Fact is that Serbs are accounted for only 32% of population in Bosnia. What was the reason for the siege of Sarajevo and continuos bombardment of Karadzic's heavy artillery?

Q: Why didn't you call off that battle? Why did you have to turn it into all those thousands of deaths?

A: From the beginning of that crisis, we were for a peaceful solution.

Q: But what about the facts?

A: The facts are all on our side. The truth is not very popular.

Only mentally deranged person can say something like this.

Q: But what about ethnic cleansing?

A: What ethnic cleansing? Where [did] we have ethnic cleansing?

Q: In Bosnia.

A: In Bosnia, all of them were doing so and we condemned them all categorically--Serbs, Croats, anybody.

First he denies then he tells more about it.

Q: Do you have any regrets?

A: For what?

Q: What were your mistakes?

A: Nothing specific. I have a clear conscience.

Man without a consciousness.

Q: But you're probably planning to remain in political life.

A: Well, I'm president of the strongest party--not only president, I am founder of that party.

All he did was to rename Communist Party of Serbia to Socialist Party of Serbia. Communist Party of Serbia has been founded long time ago when Milosevic was not even born.

This interview indicates that the only solution is to permanently remove Slobodan Milosevic from political life in Serbia. This is obviously a person seriously mentally ill who needs clinical treatment. I would recommend to Richard Holbrooke that the next time he visits Milosevic offer him clinical treatment in the United States. Don't forget strait jacket Dick.

FS Net Editor