Washington Post - 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.
Copyright 1998 The Washington Post Company
