Naumann on Milošević’s "solution"

Naumann on Milošević’s "solution"

Former chairman of the NATO Military Committee Klaus Naumann met with Slobodan Milošević three times in Belgrade in 1998 and 1999. At the meetings, Naumann tried to persuade Milošević to withdraw the excess military and police from Kosovo and to cease “the excessive use of force”. Naumann saw Milošević only once after that: in June 2002, in the courtroom in The Hague. The transcript of his testimony was admitted into evidence at the trial of the six Serbian officials charged with crimes in Kosovo. He saw some of them at the meetings in Belgrade, as well.

General Naumann and the then NATO commander General Wesley Clarke met with Slobodan Milošević twice in October 1998. At the second meeting on October 25, 1998 Milošević agreed to sign an agreement to withdraw of 6,000 Serbian police from Kosovo, to bring the military back to the barracks and cease the excessive use of force. He did so because NATO threatened to activate its military force within 48 if he refused. Present when the agreement was signed were two of the six accused: Milan Milutinović and Nikola Šainović. The latter was introduced to General Naumann as “the man in charge of Kosovo”.

The witness repeated the evidence he had given at the Milošević trial: after the agreement was signed the Yugoslav president told them, over a drink, that the Kosovo problem would be solved in spring using the same model as in Drenica after World War Two. This time Naumann claimed that Milošević had used the term “the final solution” which carried a special weight for the witness, who is German. Since the guests didn’t know what the Drenica model was, Milošević explained to them that the Albanians would be “collected in one place and shot to death”. The NATO delegation was “aghast”, Naumann said. Milutinović and Šainović “were silent while Milošević was talking” as they were on other occasions, he added.

Despite the agreement signed by Milošević, by November things went back to what they had been, Naumann said. The KLA was largely responsible for this situation because “it tried to exploit the vacuum created by the withdrawal of the Serbian forces, provoking and engaging in violent acts”. The Serbian side responded with disproportionate use of force, as was its wont. When this approach culminated with the Racak incident, the NATO delegation, led by Naumann and Clarke, traveled to Belgrade for the third time in order to persuade Milošević to stop the attacks on civilians and to withdraw the police forces that had been massing in Kosovo.

Milošević denied that the Racak incident and other actions of the military and police constituted a violation of the October agreement and the delegation left Belgrade empty-handed. The Contact Group then got involved in the negotiations. After its peace efforts proved fruitless, “NATO was reactivated” in March 1999 the German general said.