VZCZCXRO5957
PP RUEHAG RUEHDA RUEHDF RUEHFL RUEHIK RUEHKW RUEHLA RUEHLN RUEHLZ
RUEHROV RUEHSR RUEHVK RUEHYG
DE RUEHVJ #0738/01 0971428
ZNR UUUUU ZZH
P 071428Z APR 06
FM AMEMBASSY SARAJEVO
TO RUEHC/SECSTATE WASHDC PRIORITY 3187
INFO RUEHZL/EUROPEAN POLITICAL COLLECTIVE

UNCLAS SECTION 01 OF 03 SARAJEVO 000738 
 
SIPDIS 
 
SENSITIVE 
SIPDIS 
 
DEPT FOR D (SMITH), P (BAME), EUR (DICARLO), EUR/SCE 
(ENGLISH, FOOKS, MITCHELL, SAINZ), DRL/PHD (CLAYTON), L, 
NSC FOR BRAUN, OSD FOR FLORY 
 
E.O. 12958: N/A 
TAGS: PHUM PREL PGOV SOCI BK
SUBJECT: BOSNIA: TRUTH COMMISSION PROPOSALS CONTROVERSIAL 
 
REF: BRUSSELS 1165 
 
¶1. (U) This is an action request. Please see para 12. 
 
¶2. (SBU) Summary: A number of local and international 
organizations have put forward concepts for the formation of 
a "truth and reconciliation commission" for Bosnia and 
Herzegovina (BiH). However, some of the key players suffer 
from competing visions about how to move forward and are 
unclear who will tackle the task of actually raising funding 
for and implementing a truth commission. Recent efforts by 
the Washington-based non-governmental organization (NGO) 
United States Institute for Peace (USIP) to draft legislation 
establishing a truth commission to explore the events of the 
1992-1995 war have ruffled feathers among international 
organizations and local NGOs in BiH. In addition, some 
question the investment in a parallel process when funding 
for judicial war crimes trials is uncertain (see reftel). 
Donor support for a truth and reconciliation process, likely 
to be a multi-million dollar project, will almost certainly 
compete with the USG priority of ensuring adequate 
international assistance for the BIH War Crimes Chamber and 
State Court. End summary. 
 
¶3. (SBU) The idea of a truth and reconciliation commission 
for Bosnia is not new; a number of local organizations and 
individuals have supported the idea in the past. One local 
NGO headed by Jakob Finci, the leader of BiH's Jewish 
community, actually drafted a law to establish one, but never 
presented the law to Parliament. Since the United States 
Institute for Peace (USIP) initiative was launched in October 
2005, a number of local and international players have 
reacted both positively and negatively to its framework for a 
potential commission. Adding to the controversy, the Sarajevo 
office of the UN Development Programme (UNDP) is presenting a 
parallel initiative on the same subject, trying to position 
itself as coordinator of the entire process. This has caused 
friction with other international organizations (IOs) who 
have accused UNDP of trying to expand their current portfolio 
in BiH at a time when other IOs are downsizing. 
 
THE USIP PROCESS 
 
¶4. (SBU) USIP has formed a working group consisting of 
representatives of eight major political parties to draft a 
state law establishing a truth commission and laying out the 
parameters of its mandate. (Note: USIP appears to have 
dropped the reconciliation portion of the overall concept, at 
least for the time being. End note.) Since October, the 
working group has met six times; the last meeting was held in 
March. The first few meetings did not include any 
representatives from civil society; after strong and 
vociferous objections from both local organizations and IOs 
(who argued that civil society must be involved in drafting 
the legislation), USIP invited a select group of local NGOs 
to the January, February and March meetings. The deadline has 
passed for the Parliament to consider new legislation before 
the October 2006 elections, so USIP has now extended its 
timeline and hopes to submit a draft law to Parliament after 
the elections (realistically, in early 2007). 
 
WHAT WILL THE COMMISSION DO? 
 
¶5. (SBU) According to USIP representative Neil Kritz, the 
truth commission would work for two to two and a half years 
1) to define the causes and consequences of the atrocities 
committed between 1990 and 1996; 2) determine the role played 
by specific sectors of society (i.e. the media, religious 
communities) in the conflict, and 3) establish a detailed 
accounting of what happened during the war. (Note: Including 
the administrative phases of the commission, the total 
lifetime of the commission would be four to five years. End 
note.) USIP sees this detailed accounting as becoming the 
definitive history of the war, and a basis for the education 
of future generations. The commission would not name names, 
make any determinations of criminal responsibility or grant 
amnesty. 
 
¶6. (SBU) The commission would not only focus on the negative. 
USIP argues that it should also focus on telling the positive 
stories from the war (i.e. people who risked their lives to 
help their neighbors) and on developing a blueprint for 
future policy designed to prevent any future reoccurrence of 
ethnic conflict in BiH. The seven commissioners (likely to be 
all Bosnian citizens) would be chosen by a selection panel of 
12-15 members representing the state-level Parliament, the 
international community and civil society. 
 
 
SARAJEVO 00000738  002 OF 003 
 
 
NEXT STEPS UNCLEAR 
 
¶7. (SBU) Poloff recently met with Gordon Bacon, UNDP's 
observer in the USIP-led working group, to discuss possible 
next steps as Bosnia heads into the campaign period before 
the October 2006 national elections. According to Bacon, the 
political party representatives working on the draft 
legislation repeatedly promised their civil society contacts 
that as soon as a draft was complete, they would share it 
with NGOs for commentary and feedback. The key issue now 
causing some differences of opinion is how this process of 
public feedback and commentary should be run. UNDP favors a 
Bosnia-wide, two-year outreach campaign which would use local 
NGOs as implementers. USIP (and its local partner, the 
"Dayton Project" NGO) are planning a series of roundtables 
with the participation of working group members in 15 
municipalities throughout BiH. It is not clear how the UNDP 
campaign (if it gets funding) and the USIP/Dayton Project 
roundtables would interface. Meanwhile, the draft legislation 
was leaked to a reporter who published a well-balanced 
article on the truth commission on March 31. The leak puts 
additional pressure on USIP to share the draft legislation 
with local NGOs, and soon. 
 
WILL THE TRUTH HURT? 
 
¶8. (SBU) No cost estimates are available for the truth 
commission envisioned by USIP, but it is likely to be a 
multi-million dollar project. The Bosnian government could 
not (and does not want to) fund the commission, fearing that 
anyone who did not like its conclusions could reject them on 
the grounds that the commission was manipulated by the 
government. Indeed, the risk of political interference in the 
truth commission is signficant regardless of the source of 
its funding. Although the truth commission is envisioned as a 
parallel and not competing process with ongoing war crimes 
trials, it appears that the State Court's War Crimes Chamber 
and the truth commission would likely be competing for 
funding from the same shrinking donor pool. (See reftel.) 
Critics have also raised concerns about timing, and how (or 
whether) to address regional issues (such as the 
responsibility of the wartime regimes in Belgrade and 
Zagreb). 
 
¶9. (SBU) It is worth noting that in the absence of a truth 
commission, many victims have told their stories already over 
the past ten years, some many times. One local NGO, the 
Center for Research and Documentation, has meticulously 
documented over 90,000 incidents of war crimes through a 
combination of victim/witness statements, archival media 
coverage and government documents. Many victims have also 
given statements to investigators from the International 
Criminal Tribunal for the Former Yugoslavia (ICTY) and local 
courts. 
 
COMMENT: GIVE THE PEOPLE WHAT THEY WANT 
 
¶10. (SBU) Although proponents of the truth commission argue 
that it will provide a catharsis that will help Bosnians move 
forward, it is not clear that a commission is what people 
really want. Civilian war victims, family members of missing 
persons and other victims of the genocidal policies carried 
out during the 1992-1995 conflict are well aware that the 
number of war crimes cases that will ultimately be tried will 
result in punishment for only a small percentage of the total 
number of perpetrators, and that very few victims will ever 
testify in court. Nevertheless, war victims continue to press 
hard for justice via the judicial process; seeing even a few 
high-profile perpetrators punished (particularly via local 
war crimes trials) will bring some sense of closure to many 
in Bosnia. The public's desire to move ahead with war crimes 
trials is even stronger since Milosevic's death forestalled a 
verdict in his case. 
 
¶11. (SBU) Our contacts have emphasized action over 
investigation. People would like to see perpetrators fired 
from their government jobs (especially in the police, 
military and municipal governments) and replaced with 
minority returnees. They also want to start receiving the 
monetary benefits for families of the missing and civilian 
war victims to which they are theoretically entitled. 
Finally, they want to see an end to payments by the RS 
government to families of war criminals (and in some cases, 
to war criminals themselves). Most returnees, especially 
minority returnees, struggle to survive in very difficult 
economic situations. Knowing that relatives of war criminals 
are getting benefits that are far bigger than the average 
pension or disability benefit is a slap in the face to the 
 
SARAJEVO 00000738  003 OF 003 
 
 
survivors of genocide and ethnic cleansing. End comment. 
 
¶12. (SBU) Action request: We bring this to the attention of 
the Department because this issue will not go away. Indeed, 
it has already taken on a life of its own through local NGOs 
as well as the OSCE and UNDP. We are aware that "truth and 
reconciliation" is not a new concept in the world of 
post-conflict societies. South Africa is the clearest 
example. Our concerns about this idea, however, rest on how 
this sort of process could progress in parallel with the 
ongoing criminal process at the ICTY--and what kind of role 
the USG would be willing to take in the future. It will not 
be a surprise if, when the issue hits the shoals of the 
Bosnian Parliament, US assistance is requested to do the 
heavy lifting. Post requests Department's guidance on the USG 
position. 
MCELHANEY