Post by Bozur on Aug 18, 2009 15:25:50 GMT -5
From Prison, Karadzic Does Not Regret War Role
By REUTERS
Published: August 18, 2009
Filed at 10:39 a.m. ET
BELGRADE (Reuters) - Radovan Karadzic, who led Bosnian Serbs into a 1992-1995 war that killed 100,000 people, says his conscience is clear and he does not regret his role for which he is now awaiting trial on genocide charges.
"I do not regret my own role," the former Bosnian Serb leader said in a written interview with Reuters from a detention centre in the Hague.
"I didn't seek public office, but when I held it, I carried out my duties with the best interest of the people in my heart."
Karadzic was the president of the Bosnian Serbs, who sought to carve out their own state from Bosnia in the war, Europe's deadliest since World War Two.
"I am most proud of having carried out my duty without seeking personal gain or for my own self interest," he said in a letter to Reuters from the Hague, seat of the International Criminal Tribunal for the Former Yugoslavia. "I will feel free wherever I am for the remainder of my life."
The former psychiatrist is charged with 11 counts of war crimes and crimes against humanity including two of genocide, over the 43-month siege of Sarajevo and the 1995 massacre of 8,000 Muslim men and boys at Srebrenica.
He denies all charges, though in his letter he lamented the war which, as in the past, he blamed on Bosnian Muslims.
"I regret what happened during the war in Bosnia -- the many lives that were lost, the suffering of people of all ethnicities, and the shattering of families and property," he wrote. "I deeply regret that the war was fought, but it was not our choice."
NO PROTECTION IN SERBIA
Serbian authorities arrested Karadzic in the capital Belgrade last summer after discovering that he was living openly behind a thick beard and new identity as a New Age healer.
Karadzic's top military commander Gen. Ratko Mladic remains at large and his capture is a condition for Serbia to gain closer ties and eventually to join the European Union.
"I had no protection in Serbia and I don't believe General Mladic does either," Karadzic said. "I hope that after my trial, things will look quite different and perhaps there will be no need to arrest or try anyone else, including General Mladic."
He declined to answer questions about his guru disguise or any close calls he may have had while living in the Serbian capital. The suspected war criminal said he had not been not politically active from behind the scenes after giving up office in 1996, a year after the war.
Born in Montenegro in 1945, Karadzic spent much of his life in ethnically mixed Sarajevo, the Bosnian capital whose siege by Bosnian Serb forces came to embody the suffering of the war.
The 1995 peace treaty that ended the war left Bosnia divided into two halves, one dominated by Orthodox Christian Serbs and the other by Christian Croats and Muslim Bosniaks, joined under a weak central government.
Many diplomats and experts consider Bosnia the least stable country in the Balkans, but Karadzic said the two halves can live under one federal government.
"I do not really have a dream for an independent RS," Karadzic wrote, referring to the Republika Srpska.
"There is no reason why Bosnia cannot exist with two ethnically based entities. It would not be the first entity in Europe to do so. One need only look to Belgium, Switzerland and Spain, for example." Since his arrest Karadzic has wrangled with the tribunal during pre-trial proceedings, demanding that top diplomats be called as witnesses to support his argument that he was offered an immunity deal in 1996 if he disappeared from public view.
The tribunal has ruled that any immunity agreement would not clear Karadzic from prosecution. Prosecutors were aiming for the trial to start by the end of the year but with various pre-trial motions, it is more likely to start next year.
Karadzic, whose letter was cleared by the war crimes court before being released to Reuters, declined to call himself a Serb hero or say how history should judge his role.
"It has been said by a great Serbian writer that time is a great sifter of events," he wrote. "My contribution to history can only be judged after much time has passed. And I am certainly not the one best placed to judge that."
Karadzic next appears in court for a pretrial hearing on Thursday.
(Additional reporting by Reed Stevenson in Amsterdam)
(Editing by Richard Balmforth)
www.nytimes.com/reuters/2009/08/18/world/international-uk-warcrimes-karadzic.html