Clark says Milosevic knew of killings

PARIS -- Retired General Wesley Clark, the former NATO commander, told a UN war crimes tribunal in The Hague this week that Yugoslavia's former president, Slobodan Milosevic, indicated in 1995 that he had prior knowledge of the massacre of Bosnian Muslims in Srebrenica, the worst act of slaughter of the Bosnian civil war, according to transcripts of Clark's testimony released yesterday.

Clark also told the tribunal that based on extensive conversations with Milosevic during political negotiations in the 1990s, he believed that Milosevic was the "guiding force" for the string of ethnic wars in the Balkans and that the Bosnian Serb militias took direction from and reported to Milosevic.

Clark, now a contender for the Democratic presidential nomination, was called as a prosecution witness in Milosevic's trial on charges of war crimes and genocide in connection with the conflicts in Bosnia, Croatia and the Serbian province Kosovo. The two-day appearance brought together two adversaries who know each other well and resulted in frequent tense exchanges. Speaking in his native Serbo-Croatian, Milosevic used his cross-examination of Clark on Tuesday to try to turn the trial into a political forum and make his own indictment of NATO's 1999 bombing of Yugoslavia. He hammered away at the witness as a "war criminal" and accused Clark of deceitfulness and of commanding a "terrorist" army by siding with the Kosovo Liberation Army, or KLA.

At one point, Milosevic displayed a picture of a KLA soldier holding up two severed heads of Serbs and asked, "Are these allies of General Clark's infantry in Kosovo?"

"Do you think you are a war criminal, General Clark?" Milosevic asked, before presiding Judge Richard May interrupted, saying the question was not proper.

In his presidential campaign, Clark is using his NATO experience as evidence that he has the foreign policy expertise to challenge President Bush in November. The trial has offered him a forum to showcase the crowning operation of his military career, the six-week bombing campaign that drove Serb troops from Kosovo.

During the proceedings, however, Milosevic made reference to questions about Clark's temperament and penchant for independence that has drawn criticism from his superiors. At one point, the former president cited a New Yorker magazine article quoting Army General Henry Shelton, former chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, as saying Clark was removed from his post as NATO commander for "integrity and character issues" and that Shelton would not vote for Clark.

"So your former superior talks about your character. Isn't that right, General Clark?" Milosevic said. He later asked, "Why were you removed from your post prematurely?"

Clark responded by reading a lengthy commendation given to him by former defense secretary William Cohen, and also the citation read by President Clinton when he gave Clark the Presidential Medal of Freedom. Clark said he and Shelton had policy disagreements over how to pursue peace in the Balkans. Clark recalled a break in a 1995 meeting, when he asked Milosevic, "You say you have . . . much influence over the Bosnian Serbs, how is it then, if you have such influence, you allowed General Mladic to kill all those people in Srebrenica?" Ratko Mladic was the Bosnian Serb military commander. According to Clark, Milosevic replied: "I warned Mladic not to do this, but he didn't listen to me." Clark said he found the remark "stunning" because "that was an admission that he had foreknowledge of Srebrenica." Clark also said he did not know if Milosevic was telling the truth when he said he tried to stop the slaughter.

Milosevic called Clark's account "a blatant lie" and denied that such an exchange took place.