To End a War

by Richard Holbrooke

  November 21, 1:00 P.M.: The three Presidents meet in Christopher’s suite at the Hope Center prior to the initialing ceremony. STATE DEPARTMENT PHOTO/ARIC R. SCHWAN.

  November 21: Bildt tries to encourage Izetbegovic before the initialing ceremony. STATE DEPARTMENT PHOTO/S. SGT. BRIAN W. SCHLUMBOHM.

  November 21, 3:15 P.M.: The initialing ceremony begins. Left to right: Germany’s Wolfgang Ischinger (partially hidden), Britain’s Pauline Neville-Jones, Milosevic, Izetbegovic (showing his ambivalence), Tudjman, Christopher, Bildt. STATE DEPARTMENT PHOTO/S. SGT. BRIAN W. SCHLUMBOHM.

  November 21: After the ceremony, talking to Silajdzic. In the right background, Christopher’s executive assistant, Robert Bradkte. STATE DEPARTMENT PHOTO/S. SGT. BRIAN W. SCHLUMBOHM.

  Not everyone approved of the visit. Several of my colleagues feared it would divert us from our primary mission or unduly distress the families. The first point seemed wrong; we could handle the extra burden. As for the second, I insisted that we let them decide. All three wives said they wanted to visit, with their children. They wanted to understand better what their husbands had lived and died for, and they wanted to meet the three Presidents. In order to ensure that the trip in no way exploited the tragedy, we told almost no one about it, and the press never reported it. This was a private event.

  Jan Lodal, the Principal Deputy Undersecretary of Defense, who had done so much to support our team, brought them to Dayton on a military plane. General Farrell and I met the plane, which landed in a gusty crosswind and freezing temperatures. We took the families—Katharina Frasure, Gail Kruzel, Sandy Drew, and six children, two from each family—directly to the B-29 Room and showed them how the conference was set up. The children reacted in various ways. Some were excited about the visit, but others hung back, still depressed, unable to connect this sterile conference room with the loss of their fathers. After everyone had settled down, I said, “We would not be here today if it were not for Bob, Joe, and Nelson. They are with us here in Dayton at all times.” In the midst of our tense confrontations with the parties, it was a suddenly emotional moment, and I had difficulty finishing my remarks.

  Rosemarie arranged for each family to have a separate private meeting with each President. At the end of the afternoon, we gave a reception that included all three Presidents. I repeated my earlier remarks, and we ended by asking for a moment of silence. Then the families were gone.

  “Shouts, anger highlight map talks,” Kerrick told Lake. That was, in fact, an understatement. Even while the three families held emotional meetings with the three Presidents, we were enduring an endless series of setbacks with the same men.

  Silajdzic began the day in an upbeat mood. He thought his session with Milosevic the night before had produced real movement. But Milosevic produced another ridiculous map that put five important cities in central and western Bosnia under Serb control. Milosevic also made a strange suggestion—that we present his map as an American proposal.

  After lunch with the families, we showed Silajdzic Milosevic’s map. I first warned him that he was not going to like what he was about to see, but my admonition had little effect. When Silajdzic saw the map he became furious. Waving his arms violently, his eyes darting around the room as if looking for escape, he paced up and back in an extremely agitated manner. He finally calmed down, but his reaction disturbed me. He should not have been so shaken; this was all part of the theater Milosevic was putting on. Was this the “cabin fever” Jimmy Carter and Hal Saunders had warned us about?

  We now realized that each map drawn by the parties would be worse than its predecessor. We would have to present our own map—the long-awaited “American map”—the next day. If we did not, we would never move forward.

  The “Perle Markup.” Although it was now well past midnight, the long day was far from over. I returned to the American building to find almost everyone still awake and working feverishly to prepare for Tuesday, when Christopher would return. While Clark and Pardew prepared our first “made in the USA” map, Chris Hill worked on the final details of the eastern Slavonia agreement. Owen and his team of lawyers continued to draft election laws, constitutional amendments, and various versions of the “D.C. model” for Sarajevo. Meanwhile, Kornblum and I went through the Bosnian response to Annex 1-A, which, for shorthand purposes, we called the “Perle markup.”

  While many of Perle’s suggestions were unacceptable or irrelevant, there was no question that their general thrust was to strengthen the role of IFOR—something we also wanted. In the end, we boiled Perle’s 150 suggestions down to about 50 clusters. We recommended acceptance of 35 of these and rejection of only 15. Some of the changes were significant, but to get them through Washington, we needed to downplay that fact. I called both Sandy and Strobe to stress the importance of approving as many of the changes as possible. Sandy Berger scheduled a Deputies’ Committee meeting for the next day to give us a final American position.

  At the same time, we sent back to Washington the only document the Russians ever produced at Dayton: their review of the military annex. While the Perle markup sought to strengthen IFOR, the Russian draft emasculated it, gave the U.N. a larger role, curtailed the authority of the IFOR commander, and limited the use of force to self-defense only. Since the Russians had chosen to serve under the American commander but not be part of IFOR, it was relatively easy to ignore their suggestions. We handed the problem over to Strobe and Walt Slocombe, and asked them to handle the discussions with the Russians directly.

  DAY THIRTEEN: MONDAY, NOVEMBER 13

  We pumped ourselves up by telling one another that this would be the decisive week. We noted that we had now equaled Camp David’s thirteen days.

  It was not a good day. Izetbegovic and Tudjman both withdrew to their rooms, and refused to see each other or Milosevic. Izetbegovic also had ceased talking to Silajdzic. Thus we were back to true “proximity” talks, and every member of our team was in motion, working on annexes, arguing map details, negotiating the Perle markup with the Deputies’ Committee in Washington.

  Clark and Pardew represented the delegation in the teleconference with Sandy Berger and his Deputies’ Committee on the military annex. Sandy steered them through the document, and the deputies accepted almost all of the thirty-five proposals we had supported. One suggestion they rejected, unfortunately, was to delete the reference to a one-year limit for IFOR. I thought such a self-imposed limit did not belong in the Dayton documents. But the White House and the Pentagon, which had overruled us before on this point, did so again, fearing that its omission would trigger a congressional backlash. The one-year time limit remained in the draft agreement.

  The deputies also rejected another major Perle proposal: to create a “mechanism” to investigate suspected war criminals, “in particular all current or former soldiers … [and] oversee [their] discharge from such forces.” I thought that, while sloppily drafted, this was a creative idea that deserved to be refined and incorporated into the final Dayton agreement. Washington did not agree; it viewed it as a step toward mission creep. In retrospect, it is still odd, and sad, that the Pentagon and NATO so vigorously rejected such proposals, which would have given IFOR greater authority in Bosnia—and greatly aided the implementation of the agreements.

  Berger pushed most of the rest of the changes through the Deputies’ Committee without much problem. We could now put this important part of the Dayton agreements, which would give the NATO-led forces their authority and the ability to defend themselves, into final form. There was no question about it: the military annex had been improved by Richard Perle’s involvement. So valuable was his contribution that I called him a few days later to suggest that he come back to assist the Bosnians on other issues, but his schedule did not permit it.

  Engaging the Bosnians. Of the many difficulties we faced that day, the one that disturbed us most was, as I wrote Christopher late that evening, the “immense difficulty of engaging the Bosnian gove
rnment in a serious negotiation.” Desperate to find the key to the increasingly fractious Sarajevo delegation, I took Silajdzic on a long walk at noon. Although it was still cold, the sun was finally out, and as we walked across the quiet streets of the military base, I tried to reach out to this intelligent, remote, often tortured man by appealing to his sense of history. This approach went nowhere; Haris was furious with the Serbs and Croats and gloomy about his own situation within the Bosnian delegation.

  Changing my tone, I warned him that Christopher would consider closing down the talks if we could not make progress. We had said this before, but I added that “if the breakdown were attributable to Sarajevo, there would be serious consequences” to their government, including the possible suspension of our plan to equip and train the Federation forces.

  This infuriated Haris. “You must never, ever threaten us in such a manner,” he said, as we walked past the orderly houses of majors and colonels, trailed by security personnel. “We will never yield to blackmail.” There was an almost uncontrolled fury in his voice. “We’re not threatening you, Haris,” I said, “only trying to convey to you the situation as we see it. We cannot stay in Dayton forever, and we are getting nowhere on the map.” I felt sorry for Haris: he was alternately a belligerent defender of his nation and a beleaguered victim of a conspiracy within his own delegation led by Sacirbey.

  The Key Map Issues—Defined at Last. We began to move rapidly back and forth across the quad, with Clark carrying the precious maps himself. Each President took hard positions on the key issues, although Milosevic conceded a few areas that were already in Federation hands, such as the Livno Valley linking Sarajevo and Bihac. By the end of the day we had our first clear picture of the most important territorial issues:

  Sarajevo. The “D.C. model” was still on the table; the issue was still unresolved.

  Brcko and the Posavina Corridor. In the original 1994 Contact Group plan, Brcko, the disputed city on the Croatian border on the Sava River, had been “solved” by a complicated proposal that returned the city to the Muslims and narrowed the Serb-controlled Posavina Corridor—the all-important link between Serbia proper and the Serb portion of western Bosnia—to a thirty-meter underpass below a railroad bridge. This idea had been “accepted” by Milosevic, who knew it would never be implemented. But that same agreement obsessed Izetbegovic, who insisted it be honored. Milosevic, on the other hand, demanded its widening.

  Gorazde. We had to create a defensible land connection between this last Muslim enclave in eastern Bosnia and Sarajevo.

  The Posavina “Pocket.” Not to be confused with the neighboring Posavina Corridor, the Posavina was a fertile area just south of the Croatian border, comprising about 3 percent of the entire landmass of Bosnia. Early in the war, the Serbs had seized it and driven over 135,000 Croats from their land. Importantly, Posavina was near the home of Federation president Zubak.

  Srebrenica and Zepa. Izetbegovic wanted it clearly understood that these two towns in eastern Bosnia, the ultimate symbols of ethnic cleansing, were still on his list of objectives at Dayton. He knew that he would not get them back, but since they were assigned to the Federation

  in the 1994 Contact Group map, he did not want to give up his claim to them without something in return.

  Bosanski Novi. This was the town, on the international border with Croatia, where the Serbs had stopped the Croatian Army in mid-September. It was another important railroad junction, as well as a vital link on the river route for goods going down the Sava River to the Adriatic.

  There were many other disputed areas, but these seemed to be the most important. Of the six, the most critical were certain to be Gorazde, Sarajevo, and Brcko. And tough as the first two were, we suspected that Brcko would be the most difficult of all.

  “Closure or Closedown.” Through the day and well into the night the map team and the political-constitutional teams negotiated on parallel tracks with the three presidents and their entourages. Near midnight Silajdzic and I took a second, shorter walk. Haris was in a much better mood than I was. “Today has been the best day so far,” he said, to my surprise. “Peace is within sight.” He was excited that we were finally engaged on the last and most critical set of issues; I was depressed because of the difficulties that we still encountered at every turn, especially within his delegation.

  When we had finished our walk, I sent Warren Christopher a fairly downbeat “scene setter” in preparation for his visit the next day. It was the first time we confronted Washington with our view that if we did not succeed, we wanted to close down rather than suspend. “We have to recast your trip,” I wrote:

  Initially conceived of as a possible closer trip, it now becomes a last warning to get serious stopover on your way to Japan, with the clear message that when you return we must have either closure or closedown….

  On Day 14, we are about where should have been on Day 8 or 9. Much has been accomplished here … but the issues that remain include most of the core issues except elections, where we have made remarkable progress. Most disturbingly, we have had a series of emotional map discussions in which the Bosnians constantly changed their minds. While the Bosnians are the sort of friends that try one’s patience, Milosevic has often lied outright about factual data or changed his position after we thought we had locked something in. As for Tudjman, he is fast becoming the King of Dayton….

  You can jump-start this conference by a combination of pressure, rhetoric, and direct involvement on some issues where you can break a logjam…. All the parties want peace, but they still don’t know how to get it. They look forward to your helping them stop killing each other—and so do we.

  DAY FOURTEEN: NOVEMBER 14

  The struggle in Washington over the federal budget was casting dark shadows over Dayton, hard to define but increasingly noticeable. With the day-to-day operations of the federal government shut down except for “essential operations,” the fact that an agreement in Dayton would result in the commitment of twenty thousand American troops to Bosnia at a cost estimated at $2 billion for the first year created conflicting emotions in the White House. On one hand, everyone understood the consequences of failure at Dayton. On the other, the domestic advisors to the President were deeply worried that the Congress and the American people would be doubly resistant to a Bosnia troop commitment in the face of such budgetary problems.

  The domestic crisis took its toll in other foreign-policy areas as well. At the last moment, President Clinton decided it would not be appropriate to attend the Osaka summit of Asian-Pacific leaders when many government services were shut down, and sent Vice President Gore and Secretary Christopher to represent the United States. Christopher planned to spend the day with us, then fly to Osaka for the meeting of the leaders of the Asian-Pacific region, drop out of the rest of the Asian trip, and return to Dayton.

  He began the day, as usual, with a detailed briefing at the Hope Center, where a suite of rooms was always reserved for him. From then until midnight, he and I crisscrossed the quad, arguing, pleading, threatening, and cajoling the three Presidents. In every meeting, we stressed the new theme outlined in the previous night’s memo to Christopher, although he held back from stating that a shutdown of Dayton would be permanent; he wanted to keep open the possibility of a return to the shuttle or a resumption of the talks to Europe. I felt, however, that after Dayton another American shuttle effort would not be effective. Some people in Washington thought moving the talks to Europe would shift the burden of failure from the American hosts to the Europeans, but the core team had gradually concluded that it was all or nothing at Dayton.

  Christopher hoped that his visit to Dayton might result in a breakthrough on Sarajevo. But there was no such luck. Milosevic toyed throughout the day with the “D.C. model,” trying out on us various unacceptable versions of it. At the end of the day, we had gone nowhere on Sarajevo.

  The most difficult meetings were with Izetbegovi
c. In the last of our three meetings that day, we tried to talk in personal terms to the Bosnian leader. We reminded him of all the benefits peace would bring, and listed the substantial achievements the process had already brought Bosnia: a cessation of hostilities, the lifting of the siege of Sarajevo, the partial opening of roads, the damage NATO bombing had done to the Bosnian Serbs, the $5 billion World Bank package that awaited the country after a peace agreement, the equip-and-train program for the Bosnian Army. Christopher concluded with a drama unusual for him. “President Clinton has put an enormous amount on the line to save Bosnia,” he said. “But he will no longer assist your government if you turn out to be the obstacle to an agreement in Dayton.” Izetbegovic said nothing in response, and outwardly seemed unmoved by Christopher’s statement.

  Christopher left for Asia late that night, frustrated that he had spent a day at Dayton and accomplished nothing. To the President, Christopher gave a mixed report. “Dayton,” he said, “offered tantalizing hints that a peace agreement might indeed be possible. It is possible, in the good moments, to see the final shape of the map…. But it is a very fragile system.” He expressed the hope that, in his absence, the negotiators would be able to “fill in the success” of his visit under what he called “Holbrooke’s aggressive tutelage.” While the “optimistic scenario may well not happen,” he added, the “prospect [is] good enough to justify missing the State Visit to Japan.” Christopher still resisted the idea of a choice solely between closure and closedown, and told the President that if we had not finished the agreement by early the following week, “it will probably be necessary to suspend the negotiations on the best possible basis.”