International

Richard Holbrook – Unlawful and Immoral Diplomacy By Vahid Sendijarevic, Ph.D. National Congress of the Republic of Bosnia and Herzegovina.  “I never met anyone more tenaciously committed to delivering on results and negotiating and doing whatever had to be done to achieve positive outcomes. And sometimes, people get lost in the methods and means, and thinking that has to be very moral and right. And Richard didn't get lost there.” These are words of Mr. Steve Clemons about legacy of Mr. Holbrook spoken hours after his death.  Mr. Steve Clemons, author of the political blog, “The Washington Note,” was introduced as a friend of Mr. Holbrook by Rachel Maddow in her show on MSNBC on December 13, 2010. What Mr. Clemons said in very polite manner is that Mr. Holbrook would use any mean necessary, regardless how immoral and unlawful, to achieve his diplomatic goals. Dayton Peace Accord brokered by Mr. Holbrook was sold to the public by President Clinton as one of the highest achievement of American diplomacy. However, in reality Mr. Holbrook’s diplomatic negotiations instigated the genocide in Bosnia which led to the Dayton Peace Accord imposed on Bosnian people. The Dayton Peace Accord represents a LEGAL AND POLITICAL PRECEDENT that constitution of sovereign nations can be changed by foreign aggression, ethnic cleansing, and genocide. The claim by President Clinton, Mr. Holbrook, and their protégés that Dayton Peace Accord brought peace to people of Bosnia is a plain lie used to cover up the immorality and unlawfulness of the negotiation process that led to Dayton Peace Accord. The objective of the 1992 aggression by Serbia against the Republic of Bosnia and Herzegovina was creation of an ethnically pure “Greater Serbia”. This could be achieved by dismantling the Republic of Bosnia and Herzegovina and by ethnic cleansing of non-Serbs from 50% of Bosnian territory to create “Republika Srpska” next to Serbia to be used as bases for creation of continuous “Greater Serbia.”  With the genocide in Srebrenica in 1995, the continuous territory was established, and with US backed diplomatic efforts of Mr. Holbrook, Serbian objectives in Bosnia were solidified in the imposed Dayton Peace Agreement. According to the Convention on the Prevention and Punishment for the Crime of Genocide and the UN Charter, the administration of President Clinton was obligated to protect the UN member state, the Republic of Bosnia and Herzegovina, from aggression and genocide and not to reward the perpetrators of aggression and genocide with the territory of the victim state. President Clinton and Holbrook can not claim that they did not know what was going on in Bosnia from the day one of aggression in 1992.  In legally binding Resolutions 752 and 757 from 1992, the UN Security Council adopted economic sanctions and political isolation to Serbia and Montenegro as punishment for their aggression against the Republic of Bosnia and Herzegovina. In the provisional measures of the International Court of Justice on September 13, 1993, in the case of Republic of Bosnia and Herzegovina v. Serbia and Montenegro, “the Court recorded that, since its Order [to Serbia and Montenegro] of April 8, 1993, and despite it and many resolutions of the United Nations Security Council, "great suffering and loss of life has been sustained by the population of Bosnia-Herzegovina in circumstances which shock the conscience of mankind and flagrantly conflict with moral law ...". The war crimes that shocked  the conscience of mankind and flagrantly conflicted with moral law moved the American people to do good for people of Republic of Bosnia and Herzegovina.  The USA congress adapted two times a resolution to lift arms embargo on Republic of Bosnia and Herzegovina so that Bosnians can defend themselves from those horrible crimes. President Clinton vetoed both resolutions. The second resolution was adapted by 2/3 majority in both The House of the Representatives and the Senate. At the hearing at the Senate after the second veto by President Clinton, Senator Joe Biden accused Administration of President Clinton and Warren Christopher, a Secretary of State, for actively participating in partition of the sovereign nation of Republic of Bosnia and Herzegovina and thus participating in war crimes against Bosnian people. After passionate exchange of arguments between Mr. Biden and Mr. Christopher, hearings were moved behind the closed doors far from the public eyes, and Mr. Biden changed his passion for justice and rule of law into new passion which can be described as by any mean necessaryto achieve diplomatic goals, regardless how immoral and unlawful those goals were. Off course, nobody gave any explanations what were the benefits to the American people of President Clinton and Ambassador Holbrook’s decision to go along with Milosevic’s genocidal project.  We know well that America benefits when it stands for what is right.  And, what was right in the case of Bosnia was to defend the letters of the Convention on the Prevention and Punishment for the Crime of Genocide and not to go along with goals of Mr. Milosevic, indicted war criminal for war crimes in Croatia and genocide in Republic of Bosnia and Herzegovina. Still there is time to correct the wrong done by President Clinton and his administration. The International Court of Justice ruled in the binding judgment in February 26, 2007 in the case of Bosnia and Herzegovina v. Serbia and Montenegro that genocide was committed by the government and institutions of “Republika Srpska” and specifically the Army (VRS) and Police (MUP) of “Republika Srpska” and that Serbia had an obligation to prevent the genocide.  Filing the law suit for genocide in 1993 preceded all subsequent constitutional and legal arrangements for Bosnia and Herzegovina. The final judgment of the International Court of Justice supersedes all constitutional arrangements that are offered today to the victims of aggression and genocide including Annex 4 to the Dayton Agreement (the Dayton Constitution). The U.S.A. should help Bosnian patriots to restore the constitution and institutions of the Republic of Bosnia and Herzegovina as they were before the aggression and genocide by applying the legal right to RESTITUTIO IN INTEGRUM (restoration of the original condition) based on the peremptory norms of International law JUS COGENS, and to declare null and void the Dayton Constitution and institutions created under the Dayton Constitution. The constitution of the Republic of Bosnia and Herzegovina is the only legally binding document on the basis of which the independence of Bosnia and Herzegovina has been recognized.  This constitution ended communism and provided for free multiparty elections in Bosnia and Herzegovina in 1990 and provided for free referendum of its independence in 1992.  Under this constitution, Republic of Bosnia and Herzegovina became a UN member nation. This constitution provides that each individual is sovereign on entire territory of Bosnia and Herzegovina irrelevant on ethnicity or religion. The lawfulness and justice in the case of Bosnia and Herzegovina will be accomplished only after the goal of the aggression and genocide is denied to the perpetrators of the aggression and genocide.   According to International law, and domestic laws, anything what was achieved unlawfully can not be recognized as lawful. Under the Dayton Agreement, the unlawful governing power over the victims of aggression and genocide in the state of Bosnia and Herzegovina was put into the hands of those who committed the genocide and those who were complicit in aggression and the genocide.  The U.S. government should terminate its support to those in Bosnia who were complicit in the aggression and genocide. The Declaration of the Republic of Bosnia-Herzegovina Posted by The Henry Jackson Society : http://www.henryjacksonsociety.org/stories.asp?pageid=49&id=1782 EXECUTIVE SUMMARY: 1. The International Court of Justice and International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia have ruled that the Bosnian Serb entity 'Republika Srpska' is guilty of genocide, and that Serbia is guilty of failure to prevent and punish genocide. 2. These rulings provide a legal basis for the abolition of the regime established by the 1995 Dayton settlement, which was illegitimately derived from this genocide. 3. To uphold the Dayton regime is to recognize the precedent, that a legitimate constitutional order may be overthrown by aggression and genocide. 4. The international community should work with the citizens of Bosnia-Herzegovina to restore the legitimate constitutional order of the Republic of Bosnia-Herzegovina. ──────────── 2. Epitaph for Richard Holbrooke I am very sorry to learn that Richard Holbrooke has died . Because I fully intended to bring him to Justice and get him criminally indicted for the genocidal massacre at Srebrenica on behalf of my clients, the Mothers of Srebrenica and Podrinja. It was Holbrooke who deliberately sacrificed Zepa and Srebrenica in order to produce Dayton’s genocidal carve-up map. Holbrooke was the Father of the genocidal statelet known as Republika Sprska. Holbrooke was the Destroyer of the Republic of Bosnia and Herzegovina. Holbrooke was an Accessory Before, During and After the Fact to the Extermination of 8000 Bosnian Muslim men and boys at Srebrenica, which the International Court of Justice ruled was genocide in violation of the 1948 Genocide Convention. Holbrooke shall live in Infamy as a Genocidaire. In his classic work The Phaedo, Plato has his hero Socrates comment upon the transmigration/reincarnation of souls. With respect to Holbrooke, Socrates said as follows: “And those who have chosen the portion of injustice, and tyranny, and violence, will pass into wolves, or into hawks and kites;--whither else can we suppose them to go?” Let Socrates’ words of wisdom serve as Holbrooke’s Epitaph and Fate. Professor Francis A. Boyle General Agent for the Republic of Bosnia and Herzegovina before the International Court of Justice Attorney for the Mothers of Srebrenica and Podrinja Francis A. Boyle Law Building 504 E. Pennsylvania Ave. Champaign, IL 61820 USA 217-333-7954 (Voice) 217-244-1478 (Fax) (personal comments only) ──────────── Prof. Boyle openly said to Richard Holbrooke in many occasions the truth about Dayton accord. For example, the following essay was the first time published in 18 Human Rights Quarterly 515 (1996) 3. Holbrooke's Obituary for the Republic of Bosnia and Herzegovina By Francis A. Boyle Professor of International Law Pursuant to the Dayton Accords, on 15 December 1995 the Republic of Bosnia and Herzegovina was carved up in Paris by Richard Holbrooke, the United Nations, the European Union Member States, the United States, and the many other states in attendance, despite the United Nations Charter, the Nuremberg Principles, the Genocide Convention, the Four Geneva Conventions and their two Additional Protocols, the Racial Discrimination Convention, and the Apartheid Convention, inter alia, as well as two overwhelmingly favorable World Court Orders this author won for the Republic on 8 April 1993 and 13 September 1993. This second World Court Order expressly prohibited Holbrooke's partition of Bosnia by the vote of 13 to 2. Bosnia was sacrificed on the altar of Great Power politics to the Machiavellian god of expedience. In 1938 the Great Powers of Europe did the exact same thing to Czechoslovakia at Munich. The partition of that nation state did not bring peace to Europe then. Continued partition of the Republic of Bosnia and Herzegovina will not bring peace to Europe now. This U.N.-sanctioned execution of a U.N. Member State violated every known principle of international law that had been formulated by the international community in the post-World War II era. This nihilistic carve-up of Bosnia indicates that the current regime of international law and organizations set up by the United States and Europe in direct reaction to the genocidal horrors of the Second World War is in the process of gradual but irretrievable disintegration. The unstopped genocide in Bosnia already served as the harbinger to the genocide in Rwanda. Bosnia will become the precedent for the perpetration of similar mass slaughters around the world in the future. Holbrooke's Dayton/Paris Accords shall always stand for the proposition that genocide pays. So much for the slogan: Never again! ──────────── 4. Found on WikiLeaks: Dishonest Clinton era politics regarding Bosnia continues The following are several cables sent from American Embassy in Sarajevo, and published on WikiLeaks Summary ¶1. (S/NF) The emergence of a new Bosniak party, led by the powerful, reportedly corrupt, and sometimes vindictive media mogul Fahrudin Radoncic, is likely to create further rifts in the Bosniak political scene, particularly amid the campaign for the October 2010 general elections. Radoncic has the support of the leader of the Islamic community. Also, Radoncic's ownership and direct control of the most widely-read daily newspaper in Bosnia will ensure that his campaign message is well propagated. Radoncic's reputation for questionable business ventures with partners from across the political spectrum, combined with his likely desire for influence over the judiciary to escape prosecution for corruption, suggests that he will seek political alliances based on lucrative personal prospects, rather than ideology or even ethnic affiliation. Although it is too early to make concrete predictions, Radoncic's party is poised to capture votes primarily from Haris Silajdzic's Party for BiH (SBiH), as well as a wide swath of apathetic voters allured by his pledges to fix the economy. End summary. The Scandals ¶3. (S/NF) Radoncic is widely believed to be responsible for corrupt business practices, most notably his role in a scandal involving the Federation Development Bank (FDB) (ref A). Radoncic admitted to having hired Ramiz Dzaferovic -- SDA member, director of the FDB -- to conduct an audit of Avaz through Dzaferovic's personal audit company. At the same time, Dzaferovic through the FDB gave Radoncic a loan of KM 22.5 million -- which the FDB had allocated for agriculture -- for the construction of Radoncic's Avaz Tower in Sarajevo. Separately, local media recently reported alleged ties between Radoncic and international drug dealer Kelmendi, which led Radoncic to launch a full-scale attack in the pages of Avaz against the police officials working on that case. Also, staff of the Office of the High Representative (OHR) recently linked Radoncic to an international money laundering scheme. This allegation, which was leaked to the press, sparked a smear campaign in Avaz against the Principal Deputy High Representative, a State Department employee on detail to OHR, somewhat belying Radoncic's claims that one of his priorities will be to cooperate with the international community. The Entree into Politics ¶4. (C) In September 2009, Radoncic launched a new Bosniak political party, the Alliance for a Better Future of BiH (SBB-BiH) (ref B). Radoncic is almost certainly seeking political status in order to secure protection from the investigation of his illegal business deals by wielding government influence over the judiciary. Moreover, now may be a personally appealing time for Radoncic to enter politics, as media outlets besides Avaz indicate that Radoncic's business is struggling and that Avaz's chief rival daily newspaper, Oslobodjenje, is rapidly catching up to Avaz in its sales. This suggests that the pragmatic Radoncic is entering the political scene to seek lucrative deals wherever he can find them, rather than choosing partners based on ideology or even ethnic affiliation. This approach would make him an appealing ally for Republika Srpska (RS) Prime Minister Milorad Dodik, who also dabbles in business and is himself under investigation for corruption. Dodik therefore may see Radoncic as his ideal Bosniak interlocutor. Indeed, Radoncic told the DCM in January that he has met with Dodik, as well as Croatian Democratic Union (HDZ)-BiH President Dragan Covic -- who has been indicted for corruption and is forging a closer relationship with Dodik (septel) -- and has a good relationship with both men. Moreover, the fact that Avaz has kept mostly quiet on the very issue that it could use to galvanize the Bosniak populace ahead of the election -- rhetoric on a referendum in the RS -- has led to speculation that discussions on a partnership between Dodik and Radoncic may already be underway. The Weapons The SBiH Political Vacuum ¶7. (C) Radoncic's entree into the Bosniak political scene will most likely come at the expense of the deteriorating SBiH. SBiH garnered poor results in the 2008 municipal elections, and our SBiH contacts continue to tell us of the disgruntlement within the party with Silajdzic's poor leadership. Bakir Izetbegovic, who is a friend of Silajdzic, has suggested to us that Silajdzic may in fact be preparing to leave the political scene. Moreover, the Islamic community, which had previously endorsed Silajdzic, now supports Radoncic at the expense of SBiH. (...) Comment ¶11. (S/NF) (...) An alliance between Radoncic and Dodik, perceived as two of the country's more corrupt leaders, would send a very discouraging message to those in Bosnia and Herzegovina who are seeking the rule of law, especially the Bosniak intellectual elite. Comment Cont'd ¶12. (S/NF) At the same time -- however distasteful it may be to us or others -- if Radoncic and gains enough authority through the October 2010 elections to join a ruling coalition at the state or Federation level, his comparative lack of discord with RS leaders and pragmatic approach on issues ranging from economic development to constitutional reform and Euro-Atlantic integration could perhaps contribute to a more peaceful political situation in Bosnia and Herzegovina over the near term. ENGLISH ──────────── COMMENT: In those cables of American Embassy in Sarajevo we could see that Ambassador English knows that Radoncic, Dodik and Covic are the most corrupt politicians, criminals, and that they have secret meetings. It is not surprise for Bosnians, because it is very well known that both Radoncic and Covic were secret agents of the Serbian dominated secret police of Yugoslavia and as such they are serving the Serbian aggression against Bosnia. Ambassador English also knows that: An alliance between Radoncic and Dodik, perceived as two of the country's more corrupt leaders, would send a very discouraging message to those in Bosnia and Herzegovina who are seeking the rule of law, especially the Bosniak intellectual elite." What is surprising for Bosnians is that the possible taking of power by those politicians does not bother English. He sees Radoncic's "lack of discord with RS leaders" as a solution. Is not it Holbruk-Clinrton politics again in Bosnia a.k.a. "cilj opravdava sredstva". Muhamed Borogovac, Ph.D., ASA, MAAA National Congress of the Republic of Bosnia and Herzegovina ──────────── Statement of the Bosnian grass-root organization "Citizen Action" regarding indictment for their protest against intended cosmetic changes of Bosnian constitution To all concerned people, We wish to inform you that the first hearing of the trial, which is being brought against the association "Citizen Action" for an unannounced gathering organized by our association during the first "Butmir" talks (Oct. 9, 2009), is scheduled for tomorrow Nov. 26 2010 at 10.00 pm in the Municipal Court Sokolac, East Sarajevo Division at Karađorđeva Street, No. 5. Namely, during the talks of the representatives of the BiH (Bosnia and Herzegovina) political parties and the officials from the E.U. and the U.S., held at the military base in Butmir on Oct. 9, 2009, the representatives of the association planned a peaceful gathering in the base under the jurisdiction of the international forces. The previous day we had visited the military base and obtained verbal permission to hold our campaign. In the campaign titled "Big Shots Defending the Status Quo", the association did not invite the public to protest; it had the intention of sending a message to the participants of the meeting in Butmir that the citizens of BiH want a more functional and stable country. However, the MUP RS (Ministry of the Interior, i.e. police of the Republic of the Serbs) used its authority to deny the group access to the location of their presentation, and in full view of the media detained the activists and took them to the police station Kula for questioning and identification. Many organizations and individuals expressed their full support to the association, including Srdjan Dizdarevic, then president of the Helsinki Committee BiH, who offered to assist us in the further process. Although the nine activists of the association were not harmed at all during their stay in jail, we believe that their arrest was completely unwarranted because they did not in any way violate public order, nor was there any indication that the group would act in such a way. We invite you to follow this trial because it is not just a trial for our association. Instead it is a message to any formal or informal groups and individuals who may want to similarly express their political opinion in the future. Sincerely, Citizen Action ──────────── Let us recall that the Butmir negotiations brought a few meaningless and token reforms. Their purpose was not to open discussion on the key changes that "Citizen Action" and other Bosnians are calling for. Their purpose was just the opposite: to affirm and cement the status quo in Parliament, and thus give a veneer of legality and legitimacy to an apartheid constitution that was created in time of war and signed by Serbian perpetrators of genocide and by their agent on the Bosnian side.