U.S. DEPARTMENT OF STATE 95/10/16 DAILY PRESS BRIEFING

From: hristu@arcadia.harvard.edu (Dimitrios Hristu)

U.S. State Department Directory

Subject: U.S. DEPARTMENT OF STATE 95/10/16 DAILY PRESS BRIEFING

[...]

FORMER YUGOSLAVIA

Proximity Talks:  Site Selection .......................5-6,9-10,12

Peace Agreement:  Implementation Force, UN Troops ......10-13,15

Road Blockage; Cease-fire Violations ...................13,15-16

Detention of Turkish Journalists by Bosnian-Serbs ......13

Human Rights Violations:  A/S Shattuck Travel ..........13-14

Contact Group Mtg in Moscow; DepSec Talbott Arrival ....14-15

Holbrooke Whereabouts, Travel Plans ....................14,16

Alleged FRY Army Cross-border Actions ..................15

[...]

TURKEY

Parliamentary Vote; President Demirel Postpones US

  Trip .................................................25

[...]

Q Nick, you mentioned about the Bosnian conference. Has a selection for Site X been made?

MR. BURNS: It has not. Planning for Site X continued throughout the weekend, and the Secretary and his advisers are meeting in an hour or so to review that decision -- to review the options that are in front of him. There are a couple of sites that have been identified, and he hopes to make a decision on this within the next 24 hours.

Q Are people going down and looking at these places?

MR. BURNS: They're going down, up and sideways, looking at all these places.

Q You have Pat Kennedy and his folks --

MR. BURNS: Pat Kennedy is in charge of this project for the Secretary, yes.

Q But, I mean, they're actually going to places.

MR. BURNS: Yes.

Q They've been there.

MR. BURNS: Pat and a couple of other people have been to a number of sites, looking at the sites, trying to assess their suitability. We would like this to be a site that is large, that has good housing facilities for the heads --

Q And high fences.

MR. BURNS: Very high fences so the press can't scale them. Exactly.

Q And they can't get out.

MR. BURNS: And they can't get out. That's the reverse.

Q Can you talk a little bit about the timing of all of this? There was a piece in the paper this weekend that talked about U.S. concern about not being able to reach a peace agreement in time to get troops in place before the winter. How much of a concern is that?

MR. BURNS: I think that's probably unavoidable at this point. The winter is almost upon them in the Balkans. It's usually a severe winter, and it comes earlier than our winter, and any look at the calendar will tell you that even if these proximity peace talks are successful very quickly, there are a couple of other steps. A final peace agreement would have to be signed probably elsewhere, and only at that point would NATO be in a position to deploy a military force to help implement the peace.

So even by the very best and most optimistic scenario, I think we're talking here about if in fact troops are to be deployed, they will be deployed in the winter. I was puzzled at that article. Not at the people who wrote the article but some of the people who spoke in the article on behalf of the U.S. Government.

It is likely that if U.S. forces are to be deployed, they would be deployed in some part of the winter that stretches from November to April, in that part of the world. And there's really no way around that, and I'm sure that the military will do its very best job once it is given the orders by the President and by the NATO leadership to proceed.

We hope we get to that point, because that will mean that there have been successful proximity talks here, and a successful conclusion to the peace conference and the signing of a peace treaty.

Q So you could not foresee signing some sort of peace agreement and then having an interim before implementation troops were on the ground?

MR. BURNS: No, I think the plans are once the peace treaty is signed among these parties, then the implementation force would proceed to help implement it within days -- not in a matter of weeks, and certainly not in a matter of months, and you can't wait for the ice to thaw. You've got to get out there when the peace occurs.

Q Would you deny that there were some elements in the government who were thinking, perhaps, about just that scenario?

MR. BURNS: I've never heard that type of scenario in all the briefings that I've received and all the conversations that I've been in. The scenario -- let me just make sure I get it right, Carol -- that somehow there be a peace agreement and then you'd wait a couple of months until the weather got better? Never heard of it, except in this article. That's why I was puzzled by it.

Q Well, what would be the harm in letting the natural weather conditions impose the cease-fire. There are certain dangers in putting troops in, although Willy Claes said it could be done. But why not? Why not wait til just before the thaw, giving more time for negotiation and planning and thinking this thing through?

MR. BURNS: Because the war's gone on for many years. We want to stop the war as soon as we can. The cease-fire is in place throughout most of Bosnia, but it's not going to be permanent unless these parties can agree on a peace, and you want to use every day you can to spare further bloodshed -- to prevent further bloodshed.

It makes a difference if the war ends permanently in December, as opposed to March or April. It certainly does make a difference.

Q But you would have to acknowledge that this policy, beside the humane desire to see the war end, is driven partly by the fact that you know the British and the French and the others do not want to go through another winter of this peacekeeping, under the current arrangement. They would rather have a settlement and bring in peace.

So the weather does drive the diplomacy a bit, doesn't it? You're faced with a sort of a deadline. The Europeans have said, "Not another winter, please. We can't go through it this way."

MR. BURNS: You're referring to the United Nations forces.

Q Yes, that the U.S. will have to -- "If you expect us to go through another winter, you'd better be part of it."

MR. BURNS: No, our objective here is to make peace as quickly as it is possible to make it. That's our objective, and the United Nations has assured us, as well as other members of NATO and the Contact Group, that the United Nations forces will remain until a peace agreement is signed and until another force arrives to take its place.

We're just going to operate as quickly as we can, but this is kind of a surreal discussion. It may be that once the proximity peace talks are convened, it takes a long time to conclude them. It may be that they don't succeed at all; that they fail, in which case we'll have to think of other options.

We don't believe that the success of these talks should be assumed, and that therefore the deployment of a NATO military force is something that absolutely will happen. It will only happen if the parties reach a peace agreement which is signed.

Q I'd like to follow, if I could, back to the winter imposition of peace. Nick, what's the difference between having a cease-fire imposed by snow and ice and a cease-fire imposed by NATO troops?

MR. BURNS: Because cease-fires have not lasted. There have been 30 or 40 of them over the last four years. None of them have lasted. All of them have been violated, and people have died as a consequence, and we have a responsibility to use our influence to minimize the number of people who are killed and to hasten the end of this war.

Q But they almost never fight in the winter.

MR. BURNS: I'm sorry. I don't believe you can say that. I mean, you haven't seen some of the major offensives in the winter as you've seen in the summer, but people have continued to die; shells have continued to be fired. Remember what happened last winter in February and March in Tuzla and in Gorazde. There was certainly shelling of both of those cities as well as Sarajevo. We don't want to see a recurrence of that, Bill.

Q Nick, there's a report that the Serb are blocking the road access into Gorazde, which would seem to be against the current cease- fire. Do you have anything on that?

MR. BURNS: I have not seen that report. The latest information we had from the United Nations this morning was that the road from Sarajevo to Gorazde was open. What we understand to be "open," it means that there has been some mine clearing; that U.N. vehicles have traveled from Gorazde to Sarajevo. I don't believe that that road is open to civilian traffic, however, but I've not seen reports that it's been closed by the Bosnian Serbs.

Q Mr. Burns, as you know, two Turkish reporters are imprisoned by the Bosnian Serbs, and it's now one week they're in prison. Do you have a comment on that?

MR. BURNS: I don't know the facts surrounding this case. If they have been imprisoned by the Bosnian Serbs, then obviously we would call, along with Turkey and others, for their immediate release. But I don't have the specific facts in this particular case.

Any more on Bosnia?

Q What's going on in Sansi Most? Did General Shalikashvili have success in his trip to Sarajevo to get the Muslims to back off?

MR. BURNS: Thank you, Bill, I do have something to say on that issue. The Secretary decided late last week that the United States wanted to look further into the question of the alleged human rights abuses and atrocities in and around Banja Luka. He therefore asked our Assistant Secretary of State John Shattuck to travel to the region, which Mr. Shattuck has done. He is today in the region. He is interviewing refugees from Banja Luka. He's in the town of Zenica.

He intends to interview as many people as he can in the limited time that he will have there, personally. He will then be having discussions with the Bosnian Government, the Croatians and others. He will be linking up, at least by phone, with Dick Holbrooke, who is in Moscow today. Dick Holbrooke has been representing the United States at the Contact Group meeting on Bosnia there.

This is an indication of how seriously we take the allegations of brutality in and around Banja Luka. Assistant Secretary Shattuck will be reminding everybody he sees that the international community will look into these allegations very seriously and very comprehensively. We support the activities of the U.N. War Crimes Tribunal, and we intend to make sure that those who are found responsible for the allegations of summary executions, of rapes and of other murders in and around Banja Luka will be held responsible by the War Crimes Tribunal and the international community.

As I said, Assistant Secretary Holbrooke is in Moscow. He stopped in Paris before traveling to Moscow. He had conversations with a number of high-level French Government officials, including President Chirac, in Paris this morning. Tomorrow he'll be going to Belgrade, and he'll resume, I think now, his fifth shuttle mission between Belgrade, Sarajevo and Zagreb over the next couple of days.

His objective in this round of talks is to prepare a specific agenda for the Proximity Peace Talks that begin on October 31.

Q And Moscow, I know he's there now, but you sort of skipped over that one.

MR. BURNS: There was a Contact Group meeting today chaired by Deputy Foreign Minister Ivanov.

Q (inaudible) Moscow?

MR. BURNS: Let me just take them one at a time. That meeting, I think, at least the first part of the meeting, is concluded. They will meet again tomorrow morning, and I think they culminate in a lunch there in Moscow before he leaves.

Before he leaves, he will see Strobe Talbott and Walt Slocombe, the Under Secretary of Defense, and others who will be arriving in Moscow tomorrow morning. Their delegation -- the Talbott-Slocombe delegation -- will pick up with the Russians the question of NATO-Russia cooperation, coordination, on an implementation force for Bosnia -- a military force for Bosnia -- the conversations that were begun by Secretary Perry eight days ago in Geneva.

Michael.

Q Does the United States have a view on who was mainly responsible for the cease-fire violations of the past week? Both the United Nations and media reports from the area suggest that it was primarily the Bosnian Government and the Croatian forces who were doing the advancing. Does the U.S. have a view about this?

MR. BURNS: I think it would depend on what moment you take the snapshot of the action. There have certainly been instances over the past week where the Bosnian Government has taken the initiative in military action, even after the cease-fire took effect last Wednesday. On a couple of occasions we've seen the Bosnian Government initiate military action.

There have been instances during that time and in the days leading up to it, where it's clear that the Bosnian Serbs began military action. It depends on what town you're talking about, because there has been fighting not only in the northwest but in some towns south of Sarajevo, although that has been more limited.

So I think the fair and objective answer is, "Both of them." They're both responsible for violations of the cease-fire. They both should be held accountable. This is a point that General Shalikashvili made yesterday -- that we call on both sides to stop the fighting -- and he made that point to the Bosnian Government in his private meetings with them. We have made that point publicly as well.

Q One other question on that. There were reports also over the weekend of military activity by the Yugoslav army across into Bosnia and some threats that the Yugoslav army might intervene on behalf of the Serbs -- Bosnian Serbs. Can you confirm that there was such activity, that such threats were made, or is there any indication of any possible intervention by the Yugoslav army?

MR. BURNS: I cannot confirm those reports. We have seen the same reports. We have discussed those reports with the Serbian Government in Belgrade. I cannot confirm, and I do not in fact believe, that there have been any such troop movements across the border. But it's still a question we're looking into, as you might imagine.

Q Nick, if I can go back to my last question, is the fighting increasing or decreasing in the Sanski Most area, and will Dick have to spend his time addressing this issue when he goes back himself?

MR. BURNS: The best source on this question is the United Nations, and the general assessment of the United Nations is the cease-fire is taking hold throughout most of Bosnia-Herzegovina. However, there is still fighting today in the area of Sanski Most, and we continue to make the point -- and Dick Holbrooke will do that in his shuttle mission -- that we believe that all fighting should stop, and that these countries should prepare themselves for peace talks.

[...]

Q The Turkish Prime minister lost a confidence vote in parliament. The President of Turkey canceled his trip to Washington which was on Wednesday. Do you have a comment on the current --

MR. BURNS: I understand that President Demiral has postponed the first part of his trip which was to have taken place in Washington -- the first part of his trip to the United States. Yes, we certainly understand from our embassy in Ankara that there was a vote in the Turkish parliament that went against Prime Minister Ciller.

Turkey is an important ally. We would certainly hope and trust that the Turks themselves, the Turkish politicians would now decide on the proper course of action to establish a government.

Q Thank you.

(Press briefing concluded at 2:05 p.m.)

END