Milosevic team to implicate U.K. leaders

By Hasan Suroor

LONDON, JULY 2. Britain's joy over the humiliation of the deposed Yugoslav leader, Mr. Slobodan Milosevic, facing trial at The Hague for atrocities in the Kosovo conflict, has been tempered by reports that three former British Foreign Secretaries may need to do some explaining for their alleged role in propping up his regime at the height of the bloodshed.

It has been reported that Mr. Milosevic's defence team plans to name Lord Hurd, Lord Carrington and Lord Owen as among leading Western negotiators whose actions helped him to remain in power. The team is expected to allege that they had ``secret deals'' with him, according to The Sunday Telegraph which said it was part of the Milosevic team's strategy to ``implicate British and American diplomatic figures in the bloody break-up of Yugoslavia.'' ``They will claim that he was given a `green light' for many of his most controversial actions, including the use of force, by Western Governments'', the newspaper said.

It quoted one of Mr. Milosevic's lawyers as saying that British peers and Foreign Office diplomats were involved in negotiating peace deals designed to keep him in power despite his record. ``Milosevic's lawyers plan to call former peace envoys to give evidence. These include Lord Carrington, the chief negotiator for the European Union in 1991-92; Lord Owen who co- brokered the 1993 Vance-Owen peace deal; and Richard Holbrooke, the American who brokered the Dayton accord on Bosnia'', The Sunday Telegraph said.

The Guardian today confirmed that a key element in Mr. Milosevic's defence strategy would be to disclose the ``long list of Western statesmen and officials who were eager to negotiate with him in the 1990s''. It said: ``Lord Hurd, who as Douglas Hurd, was British Foreign Secretary until 1995 was especially criticised in Bosnia and Croatia for his perceived pro-Serb bias in the mid-90s.'' It also highlighted his ``key role'' in propping up the Milosevic regime by negotiating a billion-dollar privatisation deal which provided Mr. Milosevic ``with his war chest for his Kosovo campaign in 1998-99.''

The Telegraph, in a report today, said Lord Hurd negotiated the deal in 1996 after he left the Government to become deputy chairman of Natwest Markets. Lord Hurd denied any impropriety saying the deal happened after the Kosovo crisis had blown over and ``we were trying to make Milosevic see sense''. ``I don't quite see how it could be connected with any accusations about atrocities'', he told the paper.

Lord Owen shrugged off the controversy saying: ``I am sure lots of things will be claimed. There were no secret deals while I was around.'' A senior Foreign Office official was quoted as saying that Britain's ``hands are clean'' but he pointed a finger at France which, he said, ``may well be nervous about its friendly relationship with Milosevic right upto 1999.''

The embarrassing disclosures climaxed a week of ``celebration'' in political and media circles here over the fate of Mr. Milosevic gleefully described as the ``Butcher of Belgrade''. Conscious of NATO's contentious role in the Balkan conflict and the cash-for-extradition deal which made Mr. Milosevic's journey to The Hague possible, the more liberal sections of the British media have emphasised that his trial must be conducted in the most exemplary fashion possible. ``... it is crucial that justice is not only done but that it is seen to be done in every detail'', The Observer said in an editorial arguing that the trial should be a ``model of fairness, no matter that most believe Milosevic to be guilty.''

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