Legacy

LEGACY OF AN UNJUST WAR

An interview with James Bissett

November 2002

Ambassador Bissett is Chairman of The Lord Byron Foundation. This interview was produced for Media Almanac and shown on Sunday, November 3, 2002, on Canada's Learning Channel TV.

Keith Morrison (host): Our guest is James Bissett, former Canadian Ambassador, who became interested very early in Eastern European cultures and history. After pursuing postgraduate studies in history and political science he joined the public service in 1956. In the early 1970s he did diplomatic work and moved on to the Department of Citizenship and Immigration in Foreign Affairs. In 1990 he was appointed Canadian ambassador to Yugoslavia, Bulgaria and Albania. He therefore witnessed firsthand the Yugoslav tragedy to which he attributes much of the blame to Western diplomatic blundering and some deliberate scheming too. He has worked in Moscow, among other places, and remains a keen observer of the international scene. Since leaving the diplomatic service you are free to say what you like?

J.B. Indeed.

K.M. Some of what you had said has probably roughed few feathers. I can think of one incident where you went to visit somebody at the embassy you used to run and you were told that nobody wanted to speak to you.

J.B. That's right. I got kicked out of Canadian Embassy in Belgrade when I went back there to distribute some gifts to the locally engaged staff and found out that I was persona non grata,as they say. And they told me to get out.

K.M. And why do you suppose that was?

J.B. Because I was very critical of Canadian position on bombing of Yugoslavia and spoke out against that.

K.M. It was portrayed as a moment when NATO countries were able to work together. They were working constantly against the foe who had been clearly identified as a very bad guy and therefore had to been taken out. What did you see on the ground? Not such a good thing?

J.B. What my main objection, Keith, to the bombing of Yugoslavia was that NATO was a defensive organization. Set up after WW II. In Article one of its Constitution it said that NATO would never , under any circumstances use force or violence to resolve international disputes. Indeed it went further. Article One says they will not even threaten to use force in the resolution of international disputes.

K.M. Oh, but that is not why they were set up.

J.B. Yes, it was. NATO was set up after the war as kind of defensive organization to protect the West from possible Soviet aggression. Purely defensive organization.

K.M. Nothing else?

J.B. It did say that NATO can defend itself and it could operate in conjunction with UN authorities to do other things. But, you see, NATO in 1999 when it bombed Yugoslavia deliberately avoided going anywhere near the UN to get the authority to bomb Yugoslavia.

K.M. Because?

J.B. Because they would not get it. Nine NATO countries at that time were in favor of the bombing. This was a violation not only of the NATO's own Treaty, it was a violation of the UN Charter and of international law. You can not just going around bombing sovereign states because you do not like what they do domestically.

K.M. Who do you blame for this?

J.B. Well, I blame Madeline Albright, Bill Clinton and the US policy at that time.

K.M. They used alliance of convenience to get done what they wanted to be done.

J.B. Absolutely. They wanted to take out their old friend Milosevic. Because, remember, in 1995 he was the hero of Madeline Albright. She called him a man of peace.

K.M. There seems to be a pattern how these enemies become friends and friends become enemies.

J.B. My main objection was that we were violating international law, the UN Charter and NATO's own Charter. And we were doing it without anybody really pointing that out. I felt because I've been in the area, I knew the history of the country, that this was setting a very bad precedent. After WWII, after cataclysmic lose of lives, bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki the UN was set up ostensibly to try resolve international disputes without violence and force.

K.M. Was it not reasonable from the West to look at Milosevic and ethnic cleansing and say this is got to be stopped? We have to actually take a stand we should have taken before WW II against Hitler.

J.B. Remember, I was talking not about Bosnia, which was different situation. In Bosnia the NATO countries did have the UN authority to actually try to stop the fighting by bombing the Serbs. I was not very happy about that, because, you know, everybody kind of pointed out to the Serbs as the aggressors. They were not always the aggressors. The committed crimes but not any worst then the crimes committed by the Muslims and the Croats. But, they were given bad deal in term of the press. Bosnia was another thing. In Kosovo you had an armed rebellion by a terrorist organization, the KLA, who was going about assassinating Serbian mayors, shooting down police.

K.M. Milosevic was surpassingly continuing the same kind of policy they had been stopping in Bosnia.

J.B. But remember: Milosevic was suddenly faced with an armed rebellion by a terrorist organization in his own country. They were shooting Serbian mayors, assassinating Albanian Kosovars who did not agreed with them, or would not give them enough money and suddenly he sent in security forces to put that rebellion down. Now, he could have just sent his bombers and bomb from 15.000 feet and blow Kosovo to pieces. He did not do that. He sent in his security forces and his military. There were some nasty incidents; there is no question about that. And no question about human rights violations, but on both sides. KLA was not somebody from the United church chorus. I addition to that Milosevic was agreeing to with all the UN resolutions. The UN passed the Resolution that they should have international observers sent in to Kosovo. And the OSCE [Organization for Security and Co-operation in Europe] was to head that intervention.

K.M. And he agreed to that?

J.B. He agreed to that. And these people came into Kosovo. I spoke to some of them. Some Canadians were involved. Milosevic lived up to his word. He pulled the army back. He pulled the security forces back. The KLA did not stop fighting, did not stop murdering. As a result of that he than turned his people again lose on the rebellion. But the US were determined to take him out and therefore they forced him to go to Rambouillet and basically said: Look, not only must you treat Albanians in Kosovo properly, but you got to let NATO have free access throughout all of Yugoslavia. Now, no Yugoslav leader could have accepted that. It was a set up that gave them the excuse for bombing.

K.M. What should they have done?

J.B. I think they should have continued on with the OSCE, put more pressure on KLA to stop its killing and withdraw to its positions and then try to resolve it in peaceful fashion. But they were not particularly interested in doing this. Remember that they were not just bombing Kosovo, they bombed Yugoslavia. When hitting military targets was not doing the job, they had to destroy civilian infrastructure: blow up all the bridges down over the Danube, destroy Pancevo big chemistry industrial complex.

K.M. These were said to be surgical strikes. Which were avoiding as much as possible any human casualty.

J.B. Initially they did that, but they realized that they were not doing any damage in Kosovo to the Yugoslav military. As a result of that they had to go to phase two, which was essentially to destroy the power grid, cut off industrial plant and hit the civilian infrastructure. They bombed the market place in Nis, a good-sized Yugoslav city, at noon on Saturday and killed lot of people. They dropped cluster bombs. They were not dropping bombs to knock down buildings. They were dropping cluster bombs that are design to kill people. So the second phase of the bombing got very, very nasty indeed.

K.M. Any idea how many casualties there were?

J.B. The Yugoslavs claim there were 2-3,000 civilian casualties. That was their account. The numbers are confusing because all sides claim different numbers.

K.M. All of this must give you different perspective on events occurring now?

J.B. It does.

K.M. Do you think that we see through the media an accurate portrayal of Iraq or North Korea?

J.B. I was in doubt in case of Yugoslavia, I am less so in the case of Iraq. I think that there is an argument that when you got a wacko in charge, dictator, someone who has murdered his own son and hundreds of other people, who has used weapons of mass destruction, biological warfare before on innocent civilian, there is stronger argument, I think, for his being taken out.

K.M. Could we use the same argument, for example, that you used with Milosevic about putting down a rebellion? That it was what Saddam Hussein was doing to gas the Kurds - because he was putting down rebellion?

J.B. Sure, sure. And the Kurds are not innocent either, you know. I think that there is a little stronger argument, because Saddam has not complied with UN resolutions. Saddam does threaten world security and has threatened indeed by invading his neighbors. Milosevic had none of those. Milosevic had no weapons o mass destruction. He followed all UN resolutions. He did everything he can to resolve the dispute peacefully. I am not defending Milosevic. Milosevic like all of the leaders in the Balkans at that time, were aparatchiks, former communist aparatchiks. They were thugs. They were interested in power, prestige, and privileges. They couldn't care less about their own people.

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