VZCZCXRO4358
PP RUEHDBU RUEHFL RUEHKW RUEHLA RUEHROV RUEHSR
DE RUEHVJ #1230/01 1521140
ZNY CCCCC ZZH
P 011140Z JUN 06
FM AMEMBASSY SARAJEVO
TO RUEHC/SECSTATE WASHDC PRIORITY 3640
INFO RUEHZL/EUROPEAN POLITICAL COLLECTIVE
RHEHNSC/NSC WASHDC
RUEKJCS/OSD WASHDC
RUFOAOA/USNIC SARAJEVO

C O N F I D E N T I A L SECTION 01 OF 03 SARAJEVO 001230 
 
SIPDIS 
 
SIPDIS 
 
DEPT FOR D (SMITH), P (BAME), EUR (DICARLO), EUR/SCE 
(ENGLISH, FOOKS, MITCHELL, SAINZ), NSC FOR BRAUN, OSD FOR 
FLORY, USNIC FOR WEBER AND GREGORIAN 
 
E.O. 12958: DECL: 05/25/2016 
TAGS: PGOV PHUM SOCI BK
SUBJECT: BOSNIA: PM CAVES ON INVESTIGATING FATE OF SERBS IN 
SARAJEVO 
 
REF: SARAJEVO 738 
 
Classified By: Ambassador McElhaney for reasons 1.4(b) and (d). 
 
¶1. (C) Summary: On May 25, the BiH Council of Ministers 
decided to form a state commission to investigate "the truth 
about the suffering of all citizens of Sarajevo" from 
1992-1995. Although Bosnian Serb leaders had long pushed for 
a commission to investigate the deaths and disappearances of 
Sarajevo Serbs only, they view this broader, multi-ethnic 
mandate as an acceptable compromise. Associations of victims 
and families of missing persons also expressed satisfaction 
with the decision. Prime Minister Adnan Terzic, who resisted 
establishing such a commission despite Parliamentary 
decisions dating from June and October 2004 ordering its 
creation, finally caved under considerable pressure from 
Bosnian Serb politicians -- who walked out of the House of 
Representatives on May 24, a step that threatened to block 
the functioning of state institutions.  Terzic was also 
getting flak from the Bosniaks, who saw the compromise as a 
way to get their own issues on the table.  In the end, Terzic 
found that his backing from Ashdown's OHR had abruptly 
disappeared when the new High Rep, Schwarz-Schilling, urged 
him to respect Parliament's decision.  Even as the process of 
forming the Sarajevo Commission moves forward, it raises more 
questions about the overall framework for pursuing the 
"truth" about wartime atrocities and about the nexus between 
such efforts and the criminal justice system. End summary. 
 
SARAJEVO COMMISSION TO INVESTIGATE WAR CRIMES 
 
¶2. (U) At its May 25 session, the BiH Council of Ministers 
(CoM), chaired by Prime Minister Adnan Terzic, agreed to 
establish a "Sarajevo Commission" (the Commission) to 
investigate mass and individual killings, camps and prisons, 
rapes, and the identity and number of deported, expelled, 
refugees and missing persons among the civilian population of 
wartime Sarajevo. Because the prewar Sarajevo area as defined 
by the 1982 Statute of Sarajevo City was considerably larger 
than it is now, the Commission's mandate will cover the four 
current municipalities of Sarajevo (Stari Grad, Centar, Novo 
Sarajevo and Novi Grad) as well as the municipalities of 
Pale, Trnovo, Hadzici, Vogosca and Ilidza, some of which are 
now located in the Republika Srpska (RS). 
 
¶3. (U) The Commission will have three members from each of 
BiH's constituent peoples (Bosniaks, Serbs and Croats) as 
well as one member representing "others." This member is 
likely to be selected from Sarajevo's small but influential 
Jewish community. The state Ministry of Human Rights and 
Refugees is tasked with submitting a list of proposed members 
to the CoM at its next session. Once formed, the Commission 
will have one year to carry out its mandate and will be 
required to submit quarterly and final reports to the CoM. 
 
TERZIC CAVES QDER PRESSURE FROM ALL SIDES 
 
¶4. (C) After dragging his heels for almost two years, the 
increasingly insistent demands for "truth" about Sarajevo 
Serbs finally caught up with PM Terzic. The work of the 
Srebrenica Commission, which was ordered by the Human Rights 
Commission of the Constitutional Court to investigate the 
July 1995 massacre of Bosniak men and boys in the eastern RS 
town of Srebrenica, fueled the campaign for Serbs to have 
their "own" Commission, designed in part to bolster their 
claims of high numbers of Serb civilian war victims. Despite 
Parliamentary decisions in June and October 2004 calling for 
the establishment of a "Sarajevo Commission" to investigate 
war crimes against the civilian population of wartime 
Sarajevo, Terzic and his allies tried long and hard to avoid 
creating the Commission, at least as envisioned by Bosnian 
Serb politicians. However, the May 24 walkout by Serb members 
of the House of Representatives and their threat to boycott 
Parliament for the next 100 days (which would prevent a 
quorum and thus bring Parliament to a grinding halt) forced 
Terzic's hand, as did the possibility of being forced out of 
the PM position just months before the October 2006 general 
elections. 
 
¶5. (C) In his remarks to the press on May 25, Terzic repeated 
that he still did not agree with using this kind of 
Commission to get at the truth about wartime atrocities in 
Sarajevo, but that he accepted it as necessary in order to 
prevent obstructionists from using increasingly heated 
political rhetoric to block BiH's progress towards European 
 
SARAJEVO 00001230  002 OF 003 
 
 
integration. The High Representative (who pressed Terzic 
privately to relent) welcomed the decision to form the 
Commission and called on parliamentarians not to prevent the 
work of the government. While welcoming the CoM decision, 
some Serb parliamentarians expressed skepticism and cautioned 
that they would not consider returning to Parliament until 
the Commission was actually established. 
 
TERZIC PINS THE BLAME ON OHR 
 
¶6.  (C)  Terzic told the Ambassador that he still thought the 
Parliamentary decision mandating the Commission was "stupid;" 
it could spawn a plethora of such commissions country-wide. 
Terzic claimed he had agreed with previous OHR management 
(PDHR Hays and HR Ashdown) that it would be better to 
establish one such commission for all of BiH at the national 
level.  It could then include investigations in Sarajevo as 
part of its mandate.  According to Terzic, Hays had agreed to 
work on a draft proposal through USIP, in consultation with 
representatives of the eight major political parties 
represented in the BiH Parliament.  But after the new High 
Rep took office, Terzic said, no one told him that OHR's 
policy had changed in favor of a separate Sarajevo commission 
-- until a call on May 23.  Now, he could not rely on 
anything negotiated with the previous High Rep.  Terzic added 
that OHR's insistance that he defer to Parliament was 
hypocritical, given that OHR had recently re-appointed ITA 
Governing Board chair Joly Dixon in direct opposition to 
Parliament's stated preference. 
 
¶7.  (C)  Terzic acknowledged that the prolonged dispute with 
Parliament had given both the Bosnian Serb parties and 
Silajdzic's Party for BiH (SBiH) a perfect issue to attack 
him about.  In addition to losing backing from OHR and the 
international community, Terzic claimed he had been made a 
scapegoat within his own party, SDA, and fingered close Tihic 
confidant (and Minister for Human Rights) Kebo as the 
culprit.  However, Terzic took some comfort in the fact that 
parliament did not get the precise commission it had asked 
for; the new body will investigate a broader range of crimes 
in a broader area surrounding Sarajevo than early (Serb) 
proponents had envisaged. 
 
A COMMISSION FOR EVERY COMMUNITY? 
 
¶8. (C) A number of international organizations active in the 
search for missing persons and in human rights issues 
generally, including the International Commission on Missing 
Persons (ICMP) and the UN Office of the High Commissioner for 
Human Rights (UNHCHR) expressed reservations about this 
Commission. One major concern is that it will encourage 
victims' groups to push for independent Commissions for other 
towns where atrocities took place, including Prijedor, 
Mostar, Visegrad and Foca. (Brcko District mayor Djapo is 
also considering this.)  To some extent, this is already 
occurring as the Human Rights Commission of the 
Constitutional Court has already been ordering investigations 
as a result of cases filed by individual survivors or 
relatives of missing persons. Generally, the Court tasks the 
entity governments with these investigations, and in turn are 
often delegated to the entity Missing Persons Commissions -- 
which lack the capacity to carry out these orders. The 
disappointing lack of progress by the RS commission tasked 
with investigating the disappearance of Bosnian Army Colonel 
Avdo Palic is one prominent example of the ineffectiveness of 
this kind of truth-seeking mechanism. Many international 
observers question why existing state-level mechanisms like 
the State Prosecutor's Office and state-level law enforcement 
bodies cannot be used instead of inefficient, ad hoc 
Commissions. 
 
LINKS TO THE TRUTH AND RECONCILIATION PROCESS 
 
¶9. (C) Under pressure from representatives of the 
Washington-based U.S. Institute for Peace, PM Terzic signed a 
letter in February 2006 supporting the establishment of a 
broader, state-level "Truth Commission" for BiH overall. (See 
ref A). Whatever the mechanism ultimately employed, human 
rights advocates are concerned that there must be appropriate 
information-sharing with the criminal justice system and 
respect for victims' rights. 
 
COMMENT 
 
¶10. (C) Bowing to political reality, PM Terzic finally 
 
SARAJEVO 00001230  003 OF 003 
 
 
acquiesced to the establishment of a "Sarajevo Commission." 
Terzic had little choice:  the Bosnian Serb parliamentarians 
could cite Terzic's long defiance of Parliament's wishes as a 
justification for their election-season walkout.  But Terzic 
was also under fire from the Bosniaks, in both SDA and SBiH, 
who belive the commission will ultimately work in their 
favor.  And finally -- ironically -- Terzic found himself 
pressured by the new High Rep, who reversed his predecessor's 
policy and left Terzic out on an increasingly shaky limb. 
While Terzic has weathered the crisis for now, he has been 
weakened, politically, by his unnecessarily drawn-out 
defiance.  He has given both Serbs, SBiH and his enemies in 
his own party, SDA, a hot-button issue in a pre-election 
season. 
 
¶11.  (C)  That it is a commission for the investigation of 
atrocities against all citizens of Sarajevo is a minor 
victory. However, the decision has brought a number of 
pressing questions back to the surface, including whether BiH 
needs a national Truth Commission and how the decisions of 
the Human Rights Commission in multiple and ever-increasing 
wartime disappearance and genocide cases can best be 
implemented. 
MCELHANEY