To End a War

by Richard Holbrooke

  But, Milosevic said, all his other agreements were contingent on returning to 51–49. Pulling Silajdzic out of his session with Milosevic, Christopher and I told him that we could not hold to the percentages of the posters any longer. This did not surprise Silajdzic, who had always maintained that the quality of the land was more important than its quantity. He agreed to negotiate land readjustments that would get the map back to 51–49.

  Shortly after midnight, the three men broke off their talks. Silajdzic, feeling extremely good, went back to his building to consult Izetbegovic and his own map expert.

  In the American building, members of our team crowded in the hallway and the small conference room. Stale air and the smell of pizza filled the corridor. In the workrooms, Tom Malinowski, one of Warren Christopher’s best speechwriters, worked on two public statements—one for success, the other for failure. I looked at the failure statement, which tried to put a positive face on events, and tossed it into the air. I wrote a new draft that presented failure, if it came, honestly, bluntly, and unapologetically. “To put it simply,” the draft ended,

  we gave it our best shot. By their failure to agree, the parties have made it very clear that further U.S. efforts to negotiate a settlement would be fruitless. Accordingly, today marks the end of this initiative…. The special role we have played in recent months is over. The leaders here today must live with the consequences of their failure.

  “The Thirty-seven-Minute Peace.” The evening was far from over. Milosevic did not leave our building, but instead moved from my suite to the conference room, where he waited, with Christopher, Hill, Clark, Menzies, and myself, for Silajdzic to return. Shortly after 2:00 A.M., Silajdzic returned with his map expert. Huge maps had been set up by Clark.

  For two more hours Milosevic and Silajdzic argued, yelled, and drew wide, sweeping lines on the maps. Translation was almost unnecessary—the body language, the hand gestures, the emotions told the story. Silajdzic—on the attack, demanding one concession after another from Milosevic, a railroad station here, a hilltop there—was picking up more territory. At one point the Bosnian map expert pointed out that the water reservoir at Faletici northeast of Sarajevo had been left outside the line of Federation control. When Silajdzic raised this, Milosevic said, “I am not a louse,” and yielded immediately. It was clear: Milosevic wanted an agreement then and there. But he insisted, at all times, to 51–49.

  This was not easy, given the concessions Milosevic had already made. More than minor “shaving” of lesser Federation-controlled areas would be necessary. Well after 3:30 A.M., Silajdzic hit upon a solution that retained for the Federation all the key gains of Dayton but returned to the sacred percentage. He outlined a large egg-shaped area on the map south of Highway 5 in western Bosnia, and offered the land to Republika Srpska. This was a mountainous, lightly populated Serb region south of the town of Kljuc that had been taken during the recent Croat offensive—precisely what Silajdzic had meant when he talked of “worthless land.” Because of its shape, Hill dubbed it “the egg,” while Milosevic, thinking it resembled Spain, called it “the Iberian peninsula.” Both men agreed to calibrate its exact size so as to reach 51–49 for the whole country.

  Suddenly Milosevic stuck out his hand. Slightly surprised, Silajdzic took it. Except for some details, the deal was done. It was 4:00 A.M. For a moment, we sat silent, too stunned to react. They talked with sudden ease, and, for the first time, joked. Silajdzic seemed euphoric at his negotiating triumph, Milosevic relieved that it was over. Christopher went outside and asked Bob Bradtke, his faithful executive assistant, to fetch a bottle of his favorite California Chardonnay from the supply with which he always traveled. Out of plastic cups, we drank to peace. (Silajdzic, a practicing Muslim, drank a Coke.) An Air Force photographer came in to record the triumphant scene.

  After a drink or two Silajdzic went off to get Izetbegovic, who appeared wearing an overcoat over pajamas and looking sleepy and annoyed. He refused a drink, even a soft drink, while he stared at the map without comment.

  As we drank, I had been studying the map, puzzled. Something was wrong, but at first, I was too tired to see what was it was. Then it struck me: all of Silajdzic’s “givebacks” were from Croat-controlled territory—and no Croatians were present. I whispered to Hill to get Tudjman.

  Ten minutes later, Hill appeared with Mate Granic. Although it was now after 4:00 A.M., the Croatian Foreign Minister was dressed impeccably and looked as if he had just stepped out of his office on a relaxed day. Sitting down, he politely shared a drink with us and listened to the explanation of the deal. Then, quite calmly, Granic asked to see the map, which was leaning against the wall. As he studied it, an extraordinary transformation came over him. When I thought about it later, it reminded me of the way Zero Mostel had turned himself into a rhinoceros in Ionesco’s play. Turning red and barely able to speak at first, Granic slammed his fist into the map. “Impossible! Impossible!” he finally said, walking rapidly around the small room. “Impossible. Zero point zero zero chance that my President will accept this!” He stormed out, almost tripping over Jim O’Brien, who was sitting on the floor in the corridor drinking a beer and chatting with Jim Steinberg.

  Within minutes, Granic returned with Defense Minister Susak, who took one look at the map and turned on Silajdzic. “You have given away the territory we conquered with Croatian blood!” he yelled, in English, at Silajdzic, who sat motionless at the table. Milosevic said nothing. Izetbegovic was leaning forward now, listening carefully. This, his body language seemed to say, was getting interesting.

  There was still a chance to salvage the evening’s gains. If the problem was simply that Haris had given away too much Croat land, perhaps we could redistribute the “givebacks” more equitably between the Croats and the Muslims. I suggested that we try to do just this, “shaving a bit here and bit there.”

  Izetbegovic still had not said a word. I turned to him, fearing his response, “What do you think, Mr. President? Can we finish the negotiation right now?”

  His answer sealed the long day. “I cannot accept this agreement,” he said in a low voice, in English.

  “What did you say?” Christopher asked, in astonishment.

  More loudly: “I cannot accept this agreement.”

  We sat absolutely silent for a moment. Suddenly Silajdzic took the papers in front of him, slammed them down on the table with great force, and shouted, “I can’t take this anymore.” Then he stormed out into the cold Dayton night, leaving the rest of us behind.

  “Let’s deal with this in the morning,” I said, and Izetbegovic, suddenly quite animated, walked out, followed by Granic and Susak. We were left alone with Milosevic, who had said nothing during the entire scene.

  The “peace” had lasted thirty-seven minutes. We sat with Milosevic for another half hour, utterly spent. The twenty-two-hour day had ended in disaster. Nothing since the Mount Igman tragedy had hit us as hard. Finally, shortly after 5:00 A.M., we parted to get short naps before resuming. We were too exhausted to imagine a way out.

  DAY TWENTY: MONDAY, NOVEMBER 20

  We rose again after one hour of sleep. (Christopher told me later that he had not slept at all.) The conference was now stalled within sight of its goal, and after the drama of the previous night, emotions were raw in all three delegations. Christopher, Donilon, Steinberg, and I met early in the morning, and agreed that it was time to bring in the heaviest weapon we had: President Clinton.

  Intervention (but not a visit) by the President had always been part of our operating assumptions for Dayton, but the questions were when and how. It was important not to weaken the President. The presidential coin is precious, and should not be devalued. The rest of us could rise or fall, succeed or fail, be replaced or repudiated if necessary. But the President represents the nation. There is no higher authority, and his failure or error can hurt the national interest. Thus any involvement of the nation’s chief execu
tive is something that White House staffers debate strenuously.

  We called Tony Lake, and asked him to arrange two calls—one to Tudjman, the other to Izetbegovic. (No call to Milosevic was needed or desirable.) We recommended a simple presidential message: You are very close to success, and I am asking you, in the name of peace, to work out your differences.

  Lake said he wanted to delay any presidential calls until the afternoon, while we made another try to reach agreement. More important, Lake opposed any call to Izetbegovic, on the grounds that the President should not appear to be pressuring the Muslims. Christopher and I felt differently. Both calls, we said, were essential.

  Lake was adamant. He would oppose a call to Izetbegovic, he said, even though Christopher and I said that without it the risks of failure increased substantially. When we argued that the call could be couched in a manner that would not be construed as pressure, he still objected.

  The core team at Dayton was not happy. Kerrick, using his direct channels to the NSC, tried again, but with no success. Then he wrote the first draft of the “talking points” that the President would use with Tudjman. I suggested that Christopher call the President directly to get him involved immediately and more deeply. But the Secretary was reluctant to get in an argument with Tony over whether the President should call Izetbegovic.

  We called on Tudjman, who told us that his ministers had acted with his full support in killing the Milosevic-Silajdzic agreement the previous evening. “We cannot be the only ones who give up land,” Tudjman said. “The Muslims must give up something too.”

  We saw Bildt at 9:15 A.M. and asked him to meet separately with each of the three Presidents, starting with Tudjman. After calling Spanish Foreign Minister Javier Solana in Brussels, Carl went to each delegation with a simple, but important, message: “Don’t hold out for a better deal in Europe. Make it here.”

  Tudjman walked across the parking lot to see Izetbegovic to see if together they could force Milosevic to accept less than 49 percent of the land. They concluded, as we had, that it would be impossible.

  At 11:00 A.M., Bildt came to my room to ask how we were doing. “We are deeply concerned,” I said, “that even if Milosevic makes more concessions, the Bosnians will simply raise the ante.”

  “Do you think Izetbegovic even wants a deal?” Carl asked. It was a question that Warren Christopher had also been asking. “I’m never quite sure,” I replied. “Sometimes he seems to want revenge more than peace—but he can’t have both.” Chris Hill, normally highly supportive of the Bosnians, exploded in momentary anger and frustration. “These people are impossible to help,” he said. It was a telling statement from a man who had devoted years of his life to the search for ways to help create a Bosnian state.

  It was a beautiful sunny day, clear and crisp, not too cold. People walked around outside to relieve the tension. A sort of “parking-lot diplomacy” took place as people ran into each other and discussed the situation. At one point Bildt ran into Milosevic in the barren asphalt between our buildings, and found him “desperate.” “Give me anything,” he said, “rocks, swamps, hills—anything, as long as it gets us to 49–51.”

  At about three in the afternoon, President Clinton made the call to Tudjman. “I am impressed with how much has been achieved in the overall agreement, and with the benefits that will come to all the parties,” he said. “A very difficult trade-off will have to be made to resolve the map. I’m calling to ask you to give back a small percentage of nontraditional Croatian territory in western Bosnia in order to bring the map back in line with the basic 51–49 territorial concept of the Contact Group plan.”

  Tudjman’s reply baffled the President and his advisors in Washington, listening in and taking notes. “We have already made such a proposal,” Tudjman said, adding that we were only two or three hours from a final agreement. This brought the short conversation to an end.

  As soon as Sandy Vershbow, who had listened to the conversation, briefed us on it, Christopher and I went to see Tudjman. Contrary to what he had told the President, Tudjman had made no proposal prior to the call—but he knew that he would have to do so now. “In response to President Clinton’s request,” he said, “I will instruct my negotiators to give up seventy-five percent of the land needed to reach 49–51.” This was good news. But then came two important conditions: “The Muslims must give some of their land up—and I must get back at least part of the Posavina pocket.”

  President Clinton’s call had given us a new lease on life. We returned to Izetbegovic’s suite immediately, hopeful that reason would prevail once again. We told him and Silajdzic that, with the President’s personal intervention, we had gained agreement from Tudjman that he would “contribute” 75 percent of the land required to reach 51–49. The remainder—just 1 percent of the land—would have to come from them. This would not be difficult to accomplish, we said, especially since the Bosnians would not have to give back any land they currently controlled, only land that they had been given in the last few days by Milosevic—”theoretical land,” as we called it.

  To our consternation, Izetbegovic refused to budge. While Silajdzic sat silent, Sacirbey argued that the Croat position was still unfair. And, to Christopher’s amazement, Izetbegovic began talking again about Brcko, Srebrenica, and Zepa. We returned to my rooms, where Christopher expressed himself in unusually vivid terms on the performance we had just witnessed.

  Our next call was on Milosevic. We told him that we could achieve 51–49—but only if he gave back part of the Posavina pocket. Although this request momentarily stunned Milosevic, he understood its importance to Tudjman. Working with detailed maps, Milosevic, Hill, and I started a protracted subnegotiation that went on intermittently for the next six hours. Milosevic finally agreed to return to the Federation a sliver of the Posavina pocket that contained the town of Orasje, which had been the scene of ethnic cleansing of Croats early in the war, and the town of Samac, which lay on the Sava River. A deadlock developed over the exact boundary of Samac. Thinking of Harold Nicolson’s negotiators at Versailles, who drew lines on maps with almost no understanding of what they were doing,* I drew a line on the map that ran down the middle of the Sava River, directly on the international border, and then curved around the town’s boundaries.

  Tudjman accepted this last-minute return of Bosnian Croat land with pleasure. In addition to eastern Slavonia, Tudjman could now show the Croatian people that he had regained some Croat land in Bosnia. And since it was near the home area of Federation President Zubak, it had special value.

  By 9:00 P.M., Tudjman had given us enough land in return so that the map stood at 52–48. A shift of only 1 percent, and the deal was done. Yet the Bosnians still refused to share this tiny amount of land. We met in Christopher’s room to discuss the situation—Christopher, Donilon, Steinberg, Kornblum, Hill, Burns, and myself. We were depressed and tired. “The land the Bosnians have to give up is only theoretical,” I said again. “We are not asking them to give up one inch of land they actually control.”

  “It’s truly unbelievable,” Christopher said. “The Bosnian position is irrational. A great agreement is within their grasp, and they don’t seem able to accept it.”

  “What more can we do?” Christopher continued, almost rhetorically. “We have gotten them everything they asked for.”

  “Chris,” I said, “this game has gone on long enough. We must give everyone a drop-dead time limit.” I then recommended that we tell Izetbegovic that he had one hour to decide, after which we would close down the conference. “And I really mean close Dayton down,” I added. “This should not be a bluff.”

  It was a huge decision, foreshadowed days earlier in my “Closure or Closedown” memorandum. A heated debate broke out in the room between those who wanted to keep trying and those who thought that our best chance for success was to force everyone to confront failure. The argument went on for close to an hour. Would we resume the shuttle if
we closed Dayton down? Would we let the conference continue in Europe under Bildt’s chairmanship? It was a gamble. Some people shifted sides, but Kornblum and I held firm for absolute closedown, without resuming the shuttle. Finally, after protracted debate, Christopher agreed that we had to give the Bosnians an ultimatum. We suggested a flat midnight time limit.

  “I’d better get the President on board,” Christopher said. Over a secure phone line, Christopher told the President what we proposed to do, listened for a moment, and said, “Thank you for your confidence, Mr. President.” Then, turning to us, he said, “The President is comfortable with this approach. He will give us complete support.”

  Kornblum alerted the Bosnians that we wanted to see them immediately, and told Bildt that we were going to deliver an ultimatum. At 10:30 in the evening, Christopher and I walked slowly to the Bosnian President’s suite.

  Izetbegovic, Silajdzic, and Sacirbey sat in the room waiting for us. Christopher and I took up our usual places next to each other on the couch, and Christopher began.

  “Mr. President, we have come a long way in Dayton, and we are very close to a successful conclusion. If you will reduce by one percent the amount of land you claim, we can make a final deal. You do not have to give up any land that you currently control. It’s a very good deal, Mr. President. We have obtained almost everything you asked for.”

  Izetbegovic was visibly uncomfortable. He began to review his grievances—a familiar litany. We tried to reason with him, but he became increasingly obdurate. He mentioned the city of Brcko several times. He felt that he had become the object of all the pressure at Dayton, and he hated pressure. He was tired and beleaguered, and his delegation was about to explode. His eyes narrowing almost to the vanishing point, he looked away from us and mumbled something to his colleagues.