Under these circumstances, Izetbegovic and his colleagues should have looked forward to New York as a chance to take another step forward. But they were disorganized and unfocused.
Meanwhile, Milosevic’s first priority was the lifting of economic sanctions against his country. He favored an early international conference at which the three Presidents would sign an agreement of “no more than two or three pages” and freeze the contending armies in place. He wanted to keep the political provisions of any peace agreement ambiguous and limited, and restrict the functions and authority of a central government. His goal was to create a situation similar to Cyprus or the two Koreas—a land in which a temporary dividing line becomes a seemingly permanent one.
This was not what we had in mind; if and when we invited the three Balkan Presidents to a conference, it would be with the clear intention of reaching a comprehensive peace agreement, not another weak, meaningless set of general principles that would be forgotten or ignored as soon as the conference adjourned.
Not for the first or the last time, Tudjman was the critical variable. He had a clear sense of what he wanted: first, to regain eastern Slavonia; second, to create an ethnically pure Croatia; and third, to maintain maximum influence, if not control, over the Croat portion of Bosnia. The Croatian President disliked both Milosevic and Izetbegovic, but his leverage over Sarajevo was substantial; the Croats in Izetbegovic’s government, including the most important, Federation President Kresimir Zubak, usually followed “guidance” from Zagreb. The veteran British journalist Misha Glenny, who had covered the Balkans for years, was one of the first to recognize publicly the importance of Zagreb. In a perceptive article for the New York Times op-ed page published just before the New York meeting, entitled, “And the Winner Is … Croatia,” Glenny praised our negotiating efforts but noted that, under any peace settlement, “Sarajevo will be utterly dependent on Croatia economically.” He concluded: “The champagne corks can be opened in Zagreb—nowhere else.”
Washington: The Bureaucratic Game. We had spent only one working day in Washington in the last three weeks. When we returned, we found that interest in our activities had increased substantially. Agencies and individuals that had paid us little attention now wanted to be part of the process. For example, the Agency for International Development (AID), asserting that it would have to carry out the reconstruction program, sought a major role in the negotiations. Some agencies or bureaus wanted to place representatives on the delegation; we fended them off on the grounds that our plane was too small. Tony Lake talked about creating a committee, under NSC direction, to oversee our efforts.
We were concerned that if the unprecedented degree of flexibility and autonomy we had been given by Washington were reduced, and we were subjected to the normal Washington decision-making process, the negotiations would become bogged down. At the same time, our small team was tired and understaffed. With only five days left until the New York meetings, we needed help, but I did not want to increase the size of the core team or relinquish our autonomy.
Faced with similar challenges in earlier crises, some administrations had created secret bypass mechanisms that kept information and authority within a small group—but also deceived or cut out everyone else. Most famously, when Kissinger was National Security Advisor, he had frequently ignored the entire State Department—once making a secret trip to Moscow without the knowledge of the American Ambassador, and regularly withholding almost all information about his secret discussions with China from the Secretary of State. We did not want to arouse the kind of distrust and intrigue that, as a result, had marred the Nixon-Kissinger period—an atmosphere Kissinger told me that in retrospect he regretted.
To avoid this classic bureaucratic dilemma, John Kornblum set up a small, informal team to support our efforts. As we envisioned it, the group would be, in effect, an extension of the negotiating team, but located in Washington. We drew on people outside the European Bureau, but insisted they work solely for Kornblum on this particular project. This meant that its participants, with the prior agreement of their superiors, would have to agree not to process drafts through the regular interagency “clearance process,” which, while essential to the normal functioning of government, was too cumbersome and time-consuming for a fast-moving negotiation.
What Kornblum and I proposed was highly unusual, and could be derailed by forceful objections from a number of people. But Warren Christopher, with the strong encouragement of Talbott and Donilon, protected us. Christopher believed firmly in backing his negotiators, even if he did not agree with all their positions; this was fundamental to the man and shaped his attitude toward his role as the captain of the State Department. He, Strobe, and Tom regularly held off efforts by others to get involved in too many details. Without their support, the process would probably have resembled the one that had taught me such a strong negative lesson in Paris in 1968.
Sandy Berger also protected the negotiations. Several times a week, he chaired Deputies’ Committee meetings on Bosnia. At every meeting, Kornblum would bring the national security apparatus up to date on our activities, while keeping at arm’s length efforts to interfere in them. Sandy handled this deftly, keeping everyone sufficiently involved so that the Kissingerian problem—cutting people out—was avoided.
Kornblum’s core group consisted primarily of lawyers: Jim O’Brien, who was part of Madeleine Albright’s Washington office; Tim Ramish, the legal adviser for Europe; Miriam Sapiro, a lawyer on Jim Steinberg’s Policy Planning staff; John Burley, a lawyer in the European Bureau; Laurel Miller, a lawyer in Bob Owen’s firm who worked pro bono; and Lloyd Cutler, the former Counsel to both Presidents Carter and Clinton, who gave the group the perspective of a senior outsider with decades of experience.
Kornblum ran this backstop operation with skill. He had long been the Foreign Service’s most experienced German hand, and was widely respected for his intellect. But in the Foreign Service “brilliant” is often a subtle code word for “arrogant,” and, with his sharp wit and fierce advocacy, John had made some powerful bureaucratic enemies during his long career. Because he had gone without a promotion for a lengthy period, under State Department regulations he was within a year of being forced into early retirement—a result not of any career problems, but of a State Department budget so sharply reduced by Congress that promotions at higher levels had virtually ceased. This strange regulation had originally been designed to force deadwood out of the senior Foreign Service, and was now driving out some of the country’s most qualified diplomats simply because they had been promoted early and then run into a general promotion slowdown caused by budgetary constraints.
From the beginning, we worked as a seamless team; I could turn a problem or a meeting over to him in midsentence and he would pick it up without a moment’s pause. I felt a strong intellectual kinship with him, and greatly respected his superior knowledge of Europe.
On September 21, the day after we returned from the region, Tony Lake convened a meeting in the White House. He said that the “red lights” that Washington had conveyed to Zagreb and Sarajevo to end the offensive were extremely important and should continue to be emphasized. I wondered if Lake was aware of our conversations with Tudjman and Izetbegovic about continuing the offensive. Kerrick, Clark, and Pardew had kept their home offices informed, and my message to Christopher and Talbott the previous day had discussed the subject in detail.
“I want to be frank in the privacy of this room,” I replied. “We asked them not to take Banja Luka, but we did not give the Croatians and the Bosnians any other ‘red lights.’ On the contrary, our team made no effort to discourage them from taking Prijedor and Sanski Most and other terrain that is theirs on the Contact Group map. The map negotiations are taking place on the battlefield-right now, and that is one of the reasons we have not delayed our territorial discussions. It would help the negotiations greatly if these towns fell.”
“I am very concerned that
we will be blamed publicly for encouraging more fighting and more bloodshed,” Tony said. “We should emphasize peace. This may not be your view, but you should say it in a way that doesn’t exacerbate differences on other fronts, like with the Russians.”
Christopher said he agreed with Tony as far as public statements went. I had no problem with that; the negotiating team had been careful in public, so much so that journalists in the region continued to think, and report, that we were trying to stop the entire offensive. But I refused to try to stop the offensive.
I was puzzled by Tony’s comments. Was he objecting to the position we had taken in Zagreb, or was he simply worrying that it might leak? It was never clear, either to me or to my colleagues, including Christopher, who told me later that his only concern was that we not seem publicly to be encouraging the offensive.
After the meeting, Christopher, Lake, and I spoke briefly by telephone with the President, who was traveling in California. “I want you to make an all-out effort for peace,” the President said. He asked me to return to Bosnia as soon as the New York meeting ended. Late that evening, in a radio call-in show with Larry King, the President was asked about Bosnia. “I feel better than I have in a long time,” he said. “I feel good about the process, but I want to caution the American people that this is Bosnia and we have a long way to go.”
Congress. The Hill can never be taken for granted. Without its support, it is virtually impossible to construct and carry out policy on a controversial issue—and nothing is more controversial than placing American troops in harm’s way. Now that there was a real possibility of deploying American troops to Bosnia, Congress wanted to be heard. Bob Dole had made Bosnia his personal project, but he was relatively quiet at this point; since he had long attacked the Administration for weakness, he was not in a position to oppose a stronger policy. Other critics of the policy, like Senator Joe Lieberman and Senator Joe Biden, who were both Democrats, held their fire, waiting to see what would happen next.
The first warning shot came on the same day as the White House meeting, September 21, during what was supposed to be a routine hearing by the Senate Armed Services Committee to approve a second tour of duty for General Shalikashvili as Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff. It was fortunate for the Administration that the first person to testify on American troop deployments was Shalikashvili, rather than a civilian; his low-key style and ramrod bearing, combined with his unquestionable patriotism and integrity, made him the most credible witness we could have.
Leading the skeptics were three of the Senate’s most independent-minded Republicans: John McCain of Arizona, John Warner of Virginia, and William Cohen of Maine.* “Administration officials,” reported The New York Times the next day, “were surprised by the breadth of Republican opposition to their intentions.” The Times noted that Shalikashvili “seemed momentarily taken aback by the criticism,” but he responded to it vigorously. “We cannot come in and out of the alliance and choose to lead when it’s to our benefit, and let them take the lead when we don’t wish to,” he said. “Absent America’s leadership role, things still don’t get put together right.”
The Senators kept Shalikashvili under polite but persistent pressure. “Why can’t the Europeans carry out these peacekeeping duties themselves?” asked McCain, a former Vietnam prisoner of war whose courage and integrity were unsurpassed in the Senate. Cohen worried about “the consequences to NATO itself if U.S. forces are caught in a cross fire and American public opinion turns against the operation.” These and similar questions gave clear warning that an intense effort on the Hill would be necessary.
Just before our team returned from the region, Kornblum had invited French and Russian officials separately to Washington to discuss a postsettlement military and civilian structure. The British also began discussions with us on the same subject. From the outset, there was agreement that the senior military commander on the ground would have to be an American, or else Congress would not approve U.S. troop deployments.
But what about the chief civilian in Bosnia, the person who would have the difficult task of implementing whatever settlement was reached? Not surprisingly, the Europeans wanted this position for one of their own. There were good arguments on both sides of this issue, but it was not decided on its merits, or on the basis of Bosnia itself. The critical variable would be who paid for the civilian effort.
Here domestic politics collided with Bosnia policy, and the timing could not have been worse. As Leon Panetta had predicted exactly a month earlier during the discussion at Fort Myer, the Administration and Congress were heading into the biggest budget confrontation between the two branches in this century—one so serious that by November it would lead to a shutdown of most of the U.S. government. The President’s domestic advisors warned that getting any funds approved for Bosnia would be extraordinarily difficult. The only exception to this would be the military budget. The Europeans, members of Congress told us, must pay for reconstruction in Bosnia.
Under these circumstances, Berger and the Deputies’ Committee decided that the chief civilian had to be a European. In taking this decision, they recognized that we would significantly reduce our control over one of the most important aspects of the effort. But there was really little choice. Reluctantly—because civilian implementation would be just as important as the military effort—I agreed with Sandy’s conclusion. We informed the Europeans, who began to look for the right person to head the civilian effort.
The situation also gave U.N. Secretary-General Boutros-Ghali a chance to start the U.N.’s disengagement from Bosnia, something he had long wanted to do. After a few meetings with him, I concluded that this elegant and subtle Egyptian, whose Coptic family could trace its origins back over centuries,* had disdain for the fractious and dirty peoples of the Balkans. Put bluntly, he never liked the place. In 1992, during his only visit to Sarajevo, he made the comment that had shocked the journalists on the day I arrived in the beleaguered capital: “Bosnia is a rich man’s war. I understand your frustration, but you have a situation here that is better than ten other places in the world…. I can give you a list.” He complained many times that Bosnia was eating up his budget, diverting him from other priorities, and threatening the entire U.N. system. “Bosnia has created a distortion in the work of the U.N.,” he said just before Srebrenica. Sensing that our diplomatic efforts offered an opportunity to disengage, he informed the Security Council on September 18 that he would be ready to end the U.N. role in the former Yugoslavia, and allow all key aspects of implementation to be placed with others. Two days later, he told Madeleine Albright that the Contact Group should create its own mechanisms for implementation—thus volunteering to reduce the U.N.’s role at a critical moment. Ironically, his weakness simplified our task considerably.
Countdown to New York. On September 22, I met for almost three hours with our backstop team to review the planning for the New York Foreign Ministers meeting. I asked them to try for a huge leap beyond Geneva—an agreement on the framework of a central government for Bosnia that both the Bosnian Serbs and the Federation would accept as the sole sovereign entity. Owen and Hill, with support from Jim O’Brien and Miriam Sapiro, had produced a draft agreement, which established many essential institutions: a division of responsibilities between the central government and the two entities, the Federation and Republika Srpska; elections for both the presidency and the national assembly; and the creation of a constitutional court. I explained our strategy to a reporter at the time: “If we can get a cease-fire, we’ll take that. If we can get some more constitutional principles, we’ll take them. If we can settle Sarajevo, we’ll do it. We’re inventing peace as we go.”
Our plan was first to negotiate with Foreign Minister Muhamed Sacirbey in Washington, then to turn back to Belgrade. As at Geneva, nothing could be left unresolved prior to the meeting itself. Sacirbey wanted a strong presidency, with every detail of the final political structure spelled out in New Y
ork, whereas I continued to follow a step-by-step approach: find areas of agreement, lock them in with a public announcement, and then return to the region for another round of negotiations to narrow the differences further.
It was increasingly obvious that Sacirbey’s distaste for Silajdzic was coloring his own behavior. After a day of contentious discussions with Owen and Hill, during which tempers flared repeatedly and Sacirbey threatened several times to “go public,” the two men warned me that the Bosnian Foreign Minister would try to go around the delegation and get other American officials—particularly Strobe, Madeleine, or Tony—to change our positions. Sacirbey also worked the Congress vigorously, often criticizing the Administration in conversations with Senators, some of whom promptly told us. As Strobe put it, “He goes public anyway, and he can’t get around you.”
Sacirbey’s behavior irritated American officials during this trip. Many of his points had merit, but he left people uncertain of his goal. It was not entirely clear what drove Sacirbey: was he was trying to show his colleagues (and enemies) back home that he was a true Bosnian patriot despite having spent most of the war in New York? Was he positioning Izetbegovic for the struggle back home, or was he simply freelancing for the media?
As Sacirbey worked the town, Strobe Talbott was with his main Russian counterpart, Deputy Foreign Minister Georgi Mamedov, a witty and sophisticated man. The Talbott-Mamedov channel, low profile at the time, was the modern version of the special channel between Washington and Moscow that had existed from 1941 through the end of the Cold War, and now constituted the main vehicle for negotiating important issues between the two countries, including NATO enlargement, economic assistance, presidential summits, and sensitive political issues.*
To End a War Page 25
