YUGOSLAVIA: MAKE THE ARRESTS AND ZERO IN ON MILOSEVIC

By Swanee Hunt** International Herald Tribune

Friday, May 21, 1999

CAMBRIDGE, Massachusetts - Slobodan Milosevic is again showing himself to be a talented manipulator of the press. While civilized NATO constituents cringe at the well-publicized loss of life and property caused by the bombing, proposals are made to carve up Kosovo and grant him the ethnically pure land he set out to win. But NATO should chart its Kosovo course guided by the experience of Bosnia. There we learned the futility of negotiating with Mr. Milosevic, and the high cost of not finishing the job we had promised to do. After the Dayton agreement in late 1995, NATO troops stationed in Bosnia could have apprehended immediately those indicted by the International War Crimes Tribunal in The Hague. Instead, the U.S. intelligence community failed to produce information needed to support that action. I repeatedly heard U.S. military commanders on the ground cite ''force protection'' as their highest priority. NATO was so afraid of possible retaliation from angry citizens that it gave impunity to Bosnian Serbs

whose horrific atrocities would have led directly up the chain of command to Belgrade. In effect, tens of thousands of fully armed international peacekeeping troops stationed in Bosnia functioned as hostages rather than as protectors. They needed to be protected from neighbors who might be angry if indicted war criminals in their midst were rounded up. U.S. commanders in post-Dayton Bosnia cited a policy of ''evenhandedness.'' Unfortunately, that did not mean that they would pick up all indicted war criminals. An American general explained to me that the large number of ethnic Serbs on the indictment list was evidence that the tribunal was biased. He refused to admit that the reason for the preponderance of Serbs, versus Croats or Muslims, might be Mr. Milosevic's tactics of systematic mass murder, rape, torture and terrorism. The court justices and prosecutors made numerous trips to Washington, imploring policymakers for action. I lobbied half a dozen people in the highest positions of authority. AlwaysI wa

s assured that there was a secret plan. By refusing to apprehend the indicted war criminals, whose locations were well known, NATO military commanders mocked the tribunal. Frustrated State Department officials were left to insist meaninglessly that it was up to Mr. Milosevic to turn in the indicted men. International waffling, motivated by timidity about seizing indicted war criminals or by a desire to preserve Mr. Milosevic as the endgame negotiator, undermined the Dayton agreement, which called for the return of refugees to their homes in a multicultural state. Worse still, Mr. Milosevic was left to carry his nationalistic campaign into other regions, using the same methods. And now? A million Kosovo refugees later, NATO may launch an invasion, in part because three years ago, in the name of force protection, it refused to pick up the BosnianSerb rogues who would have implicated Mr. Milosevic. Well-intentioned peace-lovers urge negotiations, as if unaware that any scenario in which Mr. Milosevic remains in

power means continued instability and heartbreak in the Balkans. Let's finish our work. Pick up the indicted war criminals from Bosnia who took their orders from Belgrade. Let the tribunal name Mr. Milosevic as the war criminal he is. Then offer an ample bounty for his delivery, alive, to The Hague.

** The writer, a former U.S. ambassador to Austria (1993-1997), directs the Women and Public Policy Program of the Kennedy School of Government at Harvard University. She contributed this comment to the International Herald Tribune.