To End a War

by Richard Holbrooke

  Apologizing again, I asked Jacques to come to the dinner. Again he refused. When I offered to send my vehicle, he reluctantly agreed, and arrived at the dinner in a foul mood. When Igor Ivanov heard the story, he laughed, “Blot should not complain until he has been searched at the Kremlin. They used to do it to us every day.” But Blot remained angry, and, irritated by other real or imagined insults in the following days, he was dyspeptic throughout the rest of the conference.

  We arrived in the last hangar—the largest one in the museum—to find a great array of modern warplanes and missiles. The tables were laid out beneath the wing of an enormous B-2 suspended from the ceiling. Along the wall, in a fortuitous coincidence, was an exhibit that intrigued Milosevic—a Tomahawk cruise missile. Hill and Kerrick took him and some of the Bosnian Serbs over to the missile that had so impressed the Serbs in western Bosnia. It was only about twenty feet long. “So much damage from such a little thing,” Milosevic said, almost wistfully, looking up at it.

  Kati had come to Dayton for the weekend, along with several other wives. We seated her between Milosevic and Izetbegovic. Bildt and I took our places on the other sides of the two Presidents, and Croatian Foreign Minister Mate Granic, representing Tudjman, joined us, along with the still-seething Jacques Blot and Haris Silajdzic.

  As entertainment, Wright-Patterson had provided the local Air Force band, which played World War II songs in the style of Glenn Miller. Three black women sergeants performed as the Andrews Sisters, and as they sang “Boogie Woogie Bugle Boy” Milosevic sang along, while Izetbegovic sat sullenly. The scene was surreal: the warplanes and cruise missiles, Glenn Miller and the Andrews Sisters act, my wife seated between Izetbegovic and Milosevic.

  This bizarre feeling increased when we tried to engage Izetbegovic and Milosevic in a single conversation. To break the ice, Kati told Milosevic that in 1980 she had covered Tito’s funeral in Belgrade for ABC. When she was growing up in Hungary during the Cold War, she went on, Yugoslavia had represented the best face of multiethnic socialism. “We always admired Yugoslavia so much,” she said. “What happened to you?” Milosevic shrugged, as if he had been no more than a passive victim of events.

  Kati asked Izetbegovic how he and Milosevic had first met. The two men had been avoiding direct conversation, but this question triggered an exchange. “Alija, I remember calling on you,” Milosevic said, “in your office in Sarajevo. You were seated on a green sofa—Muslim green.” Izetbegovic nodded, and said that he remembered the meeting well. “You were very brave, Alija,” Milosevic said, trying to charm the man he had been trying to destroy. Izetbegovic tried to avoid all eye contact with Milosevic, but the Serbian President was undaunted.

  “How did the war start?” Kati asked. “Did you know that your initial disagreements would lead to this terrible conflict?”

  “I did not think the fighting would be so serious,” said Izetbegovic. Milosevic nodded in agreement, and added, “I never thought it would go on so long.”

  It was a striking conversation. They both professed surprise at the dimensions of what they had unleashed. Yet neither man had made a serious effort to stop the war until forced to do so by the United States.

  DAY FOUR: SATURDAY, NOVEMBER 4

  Several participants wanted to unwind on the first Saturday. Sacirbey took Izetbegovic to Louisville for a football game between the University of Louisville and his alma mater, Tulane. I asked Sacirbey several times not to do this, concerned that a football game was not in keeping with the seriousness of the peace conference. In addition, I worried about the added strain on the frail Izetbegovic of a three-hour car ride and the bitter cold and rain of an outdoor stadium. But Sacirbey insisted. With his usual dour expression, Izetbegovic merely shrugged when I suggested it was a bad idea. When he returned, I asked him who had won. “I don’t know,” he said. “I think it was the people in the red clothes.” (In fact, Louisville—the people in red—had clobbered Tulane.)

  David Rohde. With Izetbegovic and Tudjman away, the pace slowed down that afternoon. We organized soccer, football, and bowling for the delegations, hoping this would diminish their hostility. But for me the afternoon focused on David Rohde. We received word that he was definitely alive, and being held in the northwest Bosnian Serb town of Bijeljina on charges of illegally entering Bosnian Serb territory and falsifying his ID papers. The Bosnian Serbs had threatened to indict him for espionage. At some personal danger, Walter Andrusyzyn, an officer from the Embassy in Sarajevo, had driven one hundred miles through a brutal snowstorm and forced his way into the Bijeljina jail to see Rohde. It was the first trip by any Embassy officer deep into the Serb portion of Bosnia since the war began. When he saw Andrusyzyn, Rohde became quite emotional. He was in reasonable physical shape but was worried that he would be convicted of espionage.

  Violating our rule on no contacts with journalists, I took a call from Ted Koppel, who told me Rohde had worked for him and urged me to make his case a high priority. Then Menzies and I met with ten members of Rohde’s family and two of his editors from The Christian Science Monitor, who had come to Dayton en masse to plead his case. Menzies had already spent a great deal of time with them, as had Nikola Koljevic, who saw this as an opportunity to ingratiate himself with the Americans. When we arrived at the meeting, the little Shakespearean was in full rhetorical plumage, talking, as he had in Geneva, about his profound love of America and his hopes for peace. Rohde’s family did not realize that Koljevic, widely regarded as a drunk and a Milosevic stooge, had no influence over the men holding their relative.

  Asking Koljevic to leave, we had an emotional meeting with Rohde’s family, whom I liked at once. Mostly from Maine, they had gathered in Dayton at their own expense to impress upon everyone that David was not alone. I told them that we were, in effect, ready to hold up the negotiations on David’s behalf—that we would not announce any final agreements while their son was incarcerated.

  Rohde’s family and his editors, including Clayton Jones, the foreign editor of the Monitor, were unsure whether to believe us. Jones wanted us to negotiate with Koljevic over the terms of David’s release. This was not a good idea; it would have made Rohde a pawn in the larger negotiations and prolonged his captivity. The best chance for an early release was simply to hold to the line that there would be no Dayton agreements while David was being held. We would not bargain for David’s release, we would demand it. I said I was certain he would be freed if we stayed firm. Two of his relatives assailed us for not doing enough, but others in the room seemed more sympathetic. We parted on a hopeful note.

  That evening, while Izetbegovic was on his way back from Louisville, we dined at the Officers’ Club as the guests of Chris Spiro, an American who was part of Milosevic’s delegation. Spiro, chairman of the New Hampshire Democratic Party and an early supporter of Jimmy Carter in 1976, had been an intermediary between Carter and the Serbs, and had become Milosevic’s closest American advisor. (He had also run unsuccessfully for Governor of New Hampshire against John Sununu.) I was uneasy about an American in the Yugoslav delegation, but there was nothing illegal about it, and Spiro—a colorful Greek-American who liked to tell us that we “didn’t know shit about the Balkans”—did no apparent harm.

  Before we sat down to a splendid dinner of lobsters that Spiro had flown in from Maine, Kati cornered Milosevic. Speaking in her capacity as the chair of a humanitarian organization, the Committee to Protect Journalists, she said that if Milosevic did not free Rohde he would face overwhelming pressure from the world’s press. Milosevic claimed he did not know where Rohde was, or anything about the case. By prearrangement, I joined the conversation and told Milosevic again that we would not make a final agreement until Rohde was freed. When Milosevic knew the game was up on an issue, he often grumbled and murmured, as if to himself. Now he did just that. “I guess I’ll have to see what I can do,” he said. I stressed the need for speed; after his visit to the prison, Andrusyzyn had reported that Roh
de was “pretty strung out,” and urged us to get him released as quickly as possible.

  The day ended with tragic news: the assassination of Yitzhak Rabin, Prime Minister of Israel, at the hands of a fanatic Israeli in Tel Aviv. He had been murdered because he had been willing to consider a compromise for peace. The reaction of the Balkan Presidents was cold-blooded and self-centered; this showed, each said separately, what personal risks they were taking for peace. None expressed sorrow for Rabin or the Israeli people or concern for the peace process. The only Bosnian who seemed stricken was the Ambassador to the United States, Sven Alkalaj, who was from an ancient and distinguished Sephardic Jewish family from Sarajevo. Izetbegovic let him leave immediately for Israel to represent Bosnia at the funeral. The contrast between Rabin and the Balkan leaders could not have been more evident than it was in the following days, as we watched the funeral on television and simultaneously struggled to find a way forward in the Balkans.

  DAY FIVE: SUNDAY, NOVEMBER 5

  We were determined not to let Sunday become a day of rest. It was time to intensify the effort. To test this proposition, we asked Izetbegovic to meet alone with Milosevic. With a notable lack of enthusiasm, he agreed. From the reports we received from both sides after the meeting, it was clear Milosevic had made an effort to persuade Izetbegovic that they had mutual interests and could make a deal, perhaps at the expense of the Bosnian Serbs. The meeting was inconclusive, but Izetbegovic later told Chris Hill that he felt that Milosevic was “sincere” in wanting to make peace at Dayton—a small but significant step forward in Izetbegovic’s thinking.

  That same day, we turned to the issue of Sarajevo—the Jerusalem of Bosnia, the divided city where the war had started. The Bosnian Muslims had never wavered in their quest for a unified capital city under their control. Although President Clinton had publicly supported this goal, it seemed unlikely we could achieve it at Dayton. As an alternative, we devised something we called the “District of Columbia” or “federal” model, in which Sarajevo would be part of neither the Federation nor Republika Srpska. Instead, it would become an independent enclave governed by representatives of all three ethnic groups. The post of chief mayor of the “Federal District of Sarajevo” would rotate among the three ethnic groups.

  Silajdzic and Sacirbey were intrigued by this idea, although it provoked some jokes about who would be the Marion Barry of Bosnia. While they still hoped for a unified Sarajevo, they said they could live with the federal model if the Muslims had a majority in all joint commissions. I asked Owen and his associates to draft a detailed proposal for Sarajevo as an autonomous city.

  At the same time, we pursued the unresolved issue, left over from New York, on the powers of the presidency and the parliament. Izetbegovic still wanted broad powers for a directly elected presidency and national parliament, while Milosevic continued to favor a narrower mandate without direct elections. But Milosevic left us with the impression that this was a secondary issue to him, and he would bargain it away later.

  DAY SIX: MONDAY, NOVEMBER 6

  “We’ve already been here six days. You may be enjoying Dayton, but we Americans want to go home. We can’t stay here beyond November fifteenth.” It was the first morning of a new week, and I was alone with Milosevic in his suite.

  We had made no significant progress on the key issues. In a sense, our efforts to break the personal ice had been too successful. People were too comfortable at places like Packy’s All-Sports Bar. Milosevic had a reserved table at the Officers’ Club and knew many of the waiters by name, one of whom he jokingly invited to work for him in Belgrade.

  Milosevic complained about the confusion on eastern Slavonia, and said that he thought the Galbraith-Stoltenberg talks were not going well. With this, he in effect invited us to negotiate eastern Slavonia in Dayton. We seized the opening. With Chris Hill taking the lead, we wrote a draft agreement based on Galbraith’s original text, reworded and simplified. The Croatians wanted the agreement to make every detail concerning the return of the region explicit—flags, postage stamps, and so on. Milosevic, on the other hand, was trying to soften the fact that he was ready to give up the region. Among other things, he hoped to reduce the risk that Serbia would be flooded with a hundred thousand Serb refugees. Hill had an idea designed to bridge the gap: to place the eastern Slavonia negotiation within the larger context of Croatian-Yugoslav relations. He proposed that the eastern Slavonia agreement be negotiated side by side with a larger agreement on mutual recognition and respect for the international borders that the Serbs had challenged with the original 1991 invasion. Both Foreign Ministers in Dayton—Milutinovic of Yugoslavia and Granic of Croatia—agreed to this approach.

  As for Sarajevo, the Bosnians showed increasing interest in the “D.C. model” during long morning meetings. Owen, Pardew, and Miriam Sapiro had reduced the idea to a simple ten-point plan. It contained all the main components of a workable solution: a City Council, a rotating mayor, a unified police force, and local control of educational, cultural, and religious activities—and the demilitarization of the entire city.

  I asked Milosevic to join Hill, Owen, and me at the Officers’ Club for lunch. We expected the “D.C. model” to appeal to Milosevic, but he resisted it strongly. A joint city, Milosevic said, would involve a degree of cooperation that the parties had not shown. “These people,” he said, “would kill each other over who would run the day-care centers.” The only way he would consider it was if there was absolute political equality between the ethnic groups in Sarajevo. Milosevic’s position was tantamount to killing the idea, since it would neutralize the huge population advantage of the Muslims. Tired of the charade, I grabbed Owen’s draft from Milosevic’s hands and tore it up. “If you don’t like this proposal,” I said, dropping the torn paper in the ashtray, “this is what we’ll do with it. But that’s the end of it. We’ll go back to our original position—an undivided Sarajevo under the Bosnians.” Owen, who had worked all night on the proposal, looked crestfallen and stared in disbelief at the torn pages of his masterpiece. Milosevic laughed at the theater and said he would reconsider the entire problem.

  A Visit by Strobe—and Sanctions. As we had proposed in October, we wanted regular visits from senior Washington officials. Our first visitors were Strobe Talbott and his wife, Brooke Shearer, accompanied by Jan Lodal, the Principal Deputy Undersecretary of Defense. We gave a dinner for the three delegations at Dayton’s Racquet Club, the first time we had taken the participants off the base as a group. Through the panoramic windows Strobe proudly showed us landmarks of his birthplace. He brought a fine, conciliatory tone to Dayton, and added to this graceful stories about Belgrade, where he and Brooke had spent two years while he was with Time magazine and she was writing for The Christian Science Monitor and The Sunday Times of London. At the head table, the mood was spirited and relaxed. The two Presidents, still enjoying the absence of Tudjman, told each other jokes—jokes from Izetbegovic!—and tested Brooke’s language abilities. The mood, almost giddy at times, even produced a rare moment of consensus.

  The issue that created the good feeling, ironically, was sanctions—but this time with a twist. In the harsh Balkan winter, Belgrade was facing an energy crisis. Milosevic requested permission to import oil to his capital immediately. The humanitarian agencies supported part of Milosevic’s request—twenty-three thousand tons of heavy heating oil into Belgrade. In addition, Milosevic asked for help on natural gas, and permission from the U.N. sanctions committee to export a limited amount of grain to pay for the fuel. According to the agreement that accompanied the cease-fire in October, when the gas went on in Sarajevo it was also supposed to have gone on in Belgrade. However, the Russians had not allowed the gas to reach Belgrade, claiming that the United States had blocked them in the U.N. sanctions committee.

  These requests kicked off another round of intense discussions between Dayton and Washington. Leon Fuerth, still the main engine in Washington on sanctions, believed th
at Milosevic’s requests far exceeded Belgrade’s needs. He estimated that Milosevic’s “grain-for-fuel” proposal would give him a profit of between $20 million and $80 million. Still, Fuerth concluded that the problem was real. After a protracted discussion, we reached a common position: we should not let people freeze in Belgrade—but at the same time we should not let the Serbs turn a humanitarian gesture into a profit-making arrangement.

  Izetbegovic and Silajdzic told Strobe that the October 5 cease-fire agreement had been intended to permit “unrestricted natural gas flow” to both Bosnia and Serbia. “Millions of people are freezing in both countries,” Silajdzic said emotionally, “and with the fighting over, this should be stopped.” Milosevic was clearly relieved. It may have been sunny in Dayton that day, he said, but it was already below zero in Belgrade.

  It was the first time Izetbegovic and Milosevic had found common ground on any issue. Little surprise then, that we ended dinner hopeful that Dayton’s spirit was permeating the drab rooms at Wright-Patterson. Strobe and Brooke left for Washington impressed.

  We could not realize it then, but the dinner Strobe and Brooke co-hosted was Dayton’s high-water mark in terms of good feelings. Never again would there be such a friendly atmosphere among the warring leaders, and never again would Dayton feel as promising.

  DAY SEVEN: TUESDAY, NOVEMBER 7

  “All going well,” Don Kerrick reported that morning to Washington. “Just unclear where all is going. No evidence anyone—parties or Euros—want to close deal. [Holbrooke] intends to rachet up pressure today.”