Bosnia and Herzegovina, 1995

Let me first

congratulate you, Sir, and wish you success in your new,

most historically significant task.

The fiftieth anniversary of the United Nations can be

viewed as a time of retirement or as an opportunity for a

new beginning and rejuvenation. We all bear a

responsibility to maximize the possibility that the United

Nations will not only endure the next 50 years but will

thrive as the centrepiece of a new world order and

international peace and security.

Bosnia and Herzegovina is keenly aware of the pivotal

role into which our country has been thrust. It is not a role

we sought or one that we cherish. The successful settlement

of the war in Bosnia and Herzegovina, consistent with the

principles of sovereignty, democracy and respect for human

rights engraved in the United Nations Charter, can be a

catalyst for this new beginning for both Bosnia and

Herzegovina and the United Nations. However, a failure to

honour basic principles of the United Nations Charter and

international humanitarian law could be fatal to Bosnia and

Herzegovina and threaten the vitality and integrity of the

United Nations.

This coming Thursday, we all hope to see another firm

stride towards peace in the Middle East. Although much

more needs to be done to secure the rights of all in the

region and to bring about real stability and therefore true

peace, the peace process in the Middle East is anchored

by leaders who deserve our respect. They represent

peoples who have been long maligned during the recent

past. The substantial differences that still exist between

these peoples are born out of previous injustices and out

of conflicting claims to land.

The war waged upon our country does involve a

land grab and an aggression in violation of the United

Nations Charter. However, more directly, the war is about

ideology — ideology not of religion and ethnicity but of

politics and tolerance. We have been the victims of

genocide and our enemy is not defined by its ethnicity or

religion but by the ideology of intolerance, dictatorship

and fascism that it promotes.

I have just come out of the negotiations with the

members of the Contact Group on Bosnia and

Herzegovina and my two colleagues from Croatia and

Serbia and Montenegro. I wish that I could say that I was

as confident about the prospects of success with respect

to our negotiations as I am for the prospects of the

negotiations in the Middle East. While the Middle East

negotiations involve statesmen trying to resolve the

competing claims of maligned peoples hungry for peace,

we find among our negotiating partners at least two

individuals already indicted by the War Crimes Tribunal

in The Hague for genocide and other crimes against

humanity. While the international media show pictures of

the mass graves of civilians murdered in the campaign of

“ethnic cleansing” and genocide that gave the Republika

Srpska its very beginning, we are now negotiating with a

team that includes the very indicted war criminals

responsible for these murders and the mass graves.

We really do hope that this negotiating process will

bring about a step towards peace. We have come to the

firm understanding that victory can be defined in more

than one way. We are not seeking military victory over

our enemies, even though our legal and moral status is

consistent with absolute military triumph. We have

learned to define our victory in terms of the lives that we

can save and in the opportunity to rebuild and reinstate

throughout our country democracy and human rights. We

certainly do not seek revenge for the thousands of persons

expelled, tortured, raped and murdered. We only seek not

to allow war criminals responsible for these crimes to

dictate our future and to seek legitimacy through the

negotiating process. We do have confidence that the War

Crimes Tribunal in The Hague will bring about justice

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and will certainly know better how to address such war

criminals than the negotiators.

We are sincerely committed to, and do believe in, the

negotiating process. Negotiations are consistent with our

goal, which is to achieve peace, even if we have to make

difficult, painful compromises. Through peace we hope to

re-establish democracy and respect for human rights

throughout the entire country and in that fashion gradually

reintegrate our country. It is in many ways a risky and

unprecedented road. None the less, we do believe that, in

peace, the ideology of an open, free, democratic and

tolerant society is strongest, while a closed, totalitarian and

intolerant ideology is strengthened by conflict. We do

recognize also that there are some legitimate considerations

that have to be addressed in the negotiating process,

including internal territorial delineations and means to

rebuild the confidence of the population in the political

processes and mechanisms that are designed to secure

respect for human rights.

Our country has been too scarred and too polarized by

this war for us to expect that peace and reintegration will

not require a special effort and mechanisms that may seem

unnatural to many of us. None the less, there still remains

a basic contradiction in the existing negotiating process.

That is because it is theorized that dictators and despots as

negotiators on one side are truly prepared to negotiate to

bring about free and fair elections and democratic

institutions as the basis for a new Bosnia and Herzegovina.

That is because it is expected that hate mongers on

one side are prepared to negotiate the establishment of

institutions that in fact ensure respect for basic human

rights.

That is because war criminals on one side — the same

side — are called upon to negotiate the creation of

mechanisms that would facilitate the return of refugees and

displaced persons, the very victims that these criminals

actually subjected to “ethnic cleansing”.

I have just come from a set of lengthy and difficult

negotiations. The other side continues to refuse to accept

the requirement that the future Parliament and Presidency

of Bosnia and Herzegovina should be elected by direct

elections by popular vote.

We are being strongly encouraged — even pressured,

if you will — to agree to what may be a process other than

election by popular vote as the means by which the future

Parliament and Presidency of our country would be

selected.

We have already been lectured that the negotiating

process would collapse if we persisted in demanding that

the extradition of war criminals to The Hague must be

honoured by all authorities within the future Bosnia and

Herzegovina, as is consistent with international law and

the demands of the international community on our

country as a whole.

Let us be clear here once and for all on this. We

will not settle for sham elections or other selection

procedures in respect of our most basic governmental

institutions that dictators and despots want in order to

undermine real democracy and legitimize totalitarianism

under the cover of an international peace agreement.

The other side has been given the opportunity to

choose its own negotiating team. But the fact that they

have selected members who have already been formally

indicted by the War Crimes Tribunal and others who may

yet be indicted will not affect our demand that they be

extradited to the Tribunal.

The selection of these negotiators is their choice. But

let me emphasize once again: we will not allow a

negotiating process to shield war criminals from

international justice — not our justice, but international

justice. In fact, the success of the negotiating process will

be measured by whether or not war criminals are brought

to justice and by whether despots and dictators are swept

out of power, not by the agreements that such criminals

and dictators may sign.

Elections in Bosnia and Herzegovina cannot be

either free, fair or democratic until a basic respect for

human rights is established, until war criminals are sent

for trial to the War Crimes Tribunal in The Hague, until

refugees and displaced persons are guaranteed the right

and opportunity to return and to vote in these elections,

and until overall conditions are established consistent with

a free and open society.

Finally, neither can there be real peace unless an

environment consistent with democracy and respect for

human rights is promoted by all, including the

international community.

Well, what does all this have to do with the United

Nations? It certainly has a lot to do with Bosnia and

Herzegovina as a Member of the United Nations. Simply

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put, the United Nations Charter and basic international

principles can be overlooked only temporarily. However,

the United Nations cannot be the envisioned authority in the

preservation of international peace and security if the

United Nations Charter is overwhelmingly ignored in

establishing the building blocks for peace. This is a

universal principle with global application.

As I mentioned, I have just come from the

negotiations. I will be going back. We are surprised, we are

angry that we have to negotiate over whether or not, in

establishing peace and a new beginning in Bosnia and

Herzegovina, the other side will be forced to accept direct,

free and democratic elections. We are being told that we

must accept compromise language that means less than this.

If they will not accept the words today, we must be truly

suspicious of their longer-term intentions ever to accept real

peace and democracy, or whether they in fact just intend to

perpetuate their hold on power and domination over an

innocent Serb population.

We have already made many painful compromises.

We are prepared to make more — many more — in the

search for a real peace. However, do not ask us — do not

ask yourselves — to settle for concessions to dictatorships,

to intolerance, to illegality, to criminality and hate. Do not

allow yourselves and us to set aside the most basic

principles of the United Nations Charter.

We are prepared to work with all Member States in

partnership for that real peace and the necessary

compromises that all of us can live with.