SADAKO OGATA - U.N. HIGH COMMSIONER FOR REFUGEES

May 20, 1996

Sadako Ogata, the United Nations High Commisioner for Refugees, is in the United States after a recent trip to Bosnia, where the fate of tens of thousands of refugees may be critical to the success of the Dayton Peace Accord. She joins Charlayne Hunter-Gault to discuss this matter and the refugee problem in Liberia. First, Jane Bennett Powell of Independent Television News reports on the refugee situation in three towns in Northeastern Bosnia.

JANE BENNETT POWELL, ITN: The liaison officer for IFOR, NATO's implementation force in Sanski Most, Northwestern Bosnia. He's making his first weekly broadcast on local radio to win hearts and minds. But in the town and in Lusci Palenka, a short drive away, the Muslim refugees wanting to travel back into Serb-controlled territory remain unconvinced. Like everyone else making temporary homes in Lusci Palenka, the Menkovic family want to go back to Kozarac after four years as refugees, but they have deep misgivings. The Serbs arrested and interned them for three months in the infamous Trnopolje camp in 1992. ISMETA MENKOVIC: (speaking through interpreter) I'm worried the same thing would happen again, that they'd attack us again or there'd be problems, or that they'd kill Muslims again. I barely managed to get my children out the last time. JANE BENNETT POWELL: But there's been little opportunity to test those fears. Only a handful of people have been able to return. At the British-manned White Fang checkpoint, a group of 300 Muslims and German charity workers were turned back. CAPT. PEDRO VAN DER ENT, IFOR: Probably because a lack of communication and cooperation. A large Serb civilian crowd blocked their movement. IFOR felt that the situation presented possible conflict between the two groups, and we decided to block the movement and dissipate both sides to avoid any innocent people being injured. JANE BENNETT POWELL: Bosnian Muslims would say that what you should have done, in your view, is to open the way up. CAPT. PEDRO VAN DER ENT: In essence, according to the Dayton agreement, you would be right. But in realistic terms, there is still a lot of suspicion and hate, and it's going to take time. JANE BENNETT POWELL: But the mayor here says the Serb police are orchestrating delays, and that's what he wanted to prove. SEJAD CIRKIN, Mayor, Lusci Palenka: (speaking through interpreter) Our goal was to point out those responsible for stopping freedom of movement, and I think we were completely successful in that. We identified that it was the Serb police, including the chief of police, who have publicly announced that not one person from the Prijedor area will return to Prijedor. It's bad IFOR tolerates that. JANE BENNETT POWELL: Tima Zoftic was one of the Muslim refugee groups refused access to visit the Serb side. She and her husband were interned at Tronopolje. They showed us photos of their former like in Kozarac. As journalists, we were able to make the journey. Using their directions, we found their house. The whole of Kozarac had been torched in 1992. Housed in the school, one of the few usable buildings, are Serb refugees who want to back to Lusci Palenka. This couple told us they're still waiting for a sign that the Bosnian Serb authorities are organizing their return. Our presence disturbed the local police, though the Serb mayor in Prijedor wanted us to film and record that local people and facilities couldn't cope with an influx of Muslims. DR. MILOMIR STAKIC, Mayor, Prijedor: (speaking through interpreter) A visit by seven or eight buses, four hundred people, a third are extremists whose names alone irritate the citizens, especially since we can't, we have our own homeless refugees, which I'm telling you for the third time now, I think this would lead to an incident. JANE BENNETT POWELL: In the meantime, Muslims look to IFOR to protect them at least from men still at large here who've been formally indicted by the Hague War Crimes Tribunal. But while Dayton called on both sides to surrender them, the implementation force is staying neutral so as not to jeopardize delicate, inter-ethnic relations. IFOR's role in the transition period has been praised by the UN's High Commissioner for Refugees. Sixty thousand displaced people have gone back but only a handful to areas controlled by former enemies. SADAKO OGATA, UN High Commissioner for Refugees: (May 5) Unless you can cross, people can visit their own communities, their families, the reconciliation will never happen. But here I think, I mean, IFOR has done a very wonderful job of trying to assure the security conditions. DR. MILOMIR STAKIC: (speaking through interpreter) You ask about our 50,000 refugees. For us, the war is not over till we've gone home. JANE BENNETT POWELL: But IFOR envisages full repatriation to be negotiated over as much as two years, time for old confrontation lines to harden. CHARLAYNE HUNTER-GAULT: Joining us now is Mrs. Ogata, the UN High Commissioner for Refugees. Thank you for joining us. We've just seen in the taped piece so many people in Northeastern Bosnia talking about being afraid to go back home. How widespread is that fear? SADAKO OGATA, UN High Commissioner for Refugees: Fear is really genuinely present in the minds of everybody there who's gone through the war, and we're not even talking about return right now. We're trying to promote visits of Serbs to the federation area, the Muslims to the Serb area, and we have seen many, many instances of blockages. CHARLAYNE HUNTER-GAULT: By the local authorities, as we just saw. SADAKO OGATA: By the local authorities. CHARLAYNE HUNTER-GAULT: Serbs as well as Bosnians. SADAKO OGATA: Yes. Both sides have been very serious, and what we tried to do very recently was finally force this issue on the, the three, the refugee commissioners of Republic of Serbska, of the federation, and of the, of the republic, itself. And at least we now have an agreement of how to go about organizing these trips, and we would be--UNHRC will be responsible in coordinating. We will make sure that there will be buses that don't come with hundreds of people all of a sudden so that that might create confrontation or problems, and we'll notify the time, and we'll make sure that these visits take place in a much more calmer and subdued way. CHARLAYNE HUNTER-GAULT: Is that going to overcome what we could clearly see was deep and deep-seated hatred and fear and worry? I mean-- SADAKO OGATA: Step by step. Even in the last two weeks when there were lots of problems, there were some successful visits too, and this has not drawn enough attention, but there were successful cases, and-- CHARLAYNE HUNTER-GAULT: Of Muslims going to-- SADAKO OGATA: To visit the-- CHARLAYNE HUNTER-GAULT: --Serb areas, and Serbs going to Muslim--and nothing happens. SADAKO OGATA: Nothing happens. And then were small visits of individuals taking place all the time, so what we try to do is not to do massive visits of the kind that undermine the feeling of despair but try to be successful one at a time. CHARLAYNE HUNTER-GAULT: And you provided the buses, the UN-- SADAKO OGATA: These were done by the local people themselves but I think what we're going to do is to help organize these, notify each other, and make sure that the big confrontation doesn't take place. CHARLAYNE HUNTER-GAULT: How many people are we talking about? When we talked about 60,000 in the Northeastern area who were afraid to go to areas held by former enemies-- SADAKO OGATA: People who are displaced are still, I would say more than a million people are displaced inside the country. CHARLAYNE HUNTER-GAULT: And how are they living? SADAKO OGATA: Umm, there was surprising amount of small gardening going on all over the place, people are on the street, compared to during the war. CHARLAYNE HUNTER-GAULT: But what about in the camps? SADAKO OGATA: There are very few camps as such. They're collective centers, and there we provide assistance through non-food items, and we try to help them visit their communities and eventually go back. CHARLAYNE HUNTER-GAULT: What about the housing though that we've seen? What are they going back to, because this taped piece that we showed bombed out houses, if houses existed at all? SADAKO OGATA: 63 percent of all the houses have been destroyed, so it's a country that really requires massive reconstruction. CHARLAYNE HUNTER-GAULT: Is that going to be a problem also? SADAKO OGATA: Yes. CHARLAYNE HUNTER-GAULT: People going back. SADAKO OGATA: There are two reasons that would block people from going back. One is a lack of shelter, and the other is the lack of confidence, and the overcoming fear and really making freedom of movement a reality, and on both fronts we are working very hard. CHARLAYNE HUNTER-GAULT: What about the refugees outside of the country who in countries like Germany, for example, who say now that you have the Dayton Accords, these people technically are no longer refugees, plus we can't afford to keep them here anymore? I heard that UNHCR was about to begin a policy to make these people go back, which is different from your previous-- SADAKO OGATA: That is not quite right. I think what we're trying to do is to make sure that the conditions exist within the country, within Bosnia, where people can go back, and because a war is over, we had to come up with certain objective benchmarks like the success of the, of the separating forces, amnesty, and laws in place, human rights mechanism in place, so that at least those governments have taken refugees on a temporary protection basis during the war will at least have a chance of saying, all right, conditions exist, we can lift this, the predict--lift saying that they cannot be sent back, and at the same time, what we're trying to say is that every situation within Bosnia is different, so let us be trying to give the right kind of information, let us have the refugees have a chance to go back and see and make up their mind, these kind of slow confidence-building measures are necessary. CHARLAYNE HUNTER-GAULT: But UNHCR is not changing its policy on, on having refugees go back before they can confirm or assure them that the conditions are safe. SADAKO OGATA: Voluntary repatriations still very much are principle, but we have to help create conditions too. CHARLAYNE HUNTER-GAULT: You painted a slightly more optimistic picture than we've seen in the past. How confident are you that given all of the problems that we've seen, along with the things that you've said, that Bosnia is going to be ready for elections in the fall, which is the cornerstone of the Dayton Agreement, so that people will vote in a free and fair election? SADAKO OGATA: This is something that we are very much concerned and watching with very, watching very carefully. I think for those people who are there the chances of their voting may be greater than those who are outside the country and are in European countries or in the neighboring countries. CHARLAYNE HUNTER-GAULT: But you feel confident to say people, Bosnians in Germany or Sweden or wherever they are, you can go home if you feel like going home, you feel confident enough? SADAKO OGATA: I think we will try to give them all the information necessary so that they can make up their minds, and we have a big information reporting program to exactly say what is happening. I think ethnic groups--the Serbs will probably feel comfortable going back to the Serb area, and the Muslims and the Croats into the federation area, but across these ethnic--the entity lines, I think that concern is greater, and so we will have to--we will not be able to really push them back so quickly. That is something we cannot do, but we have to help in the shelter project so that those who want to go back at least have a chance to improve their shelter, and improve the movement of people, which is the only way to build confidence. CHARLAYNE HUNTER-GAULT: Finally, in the minute or less that we have left, tell us briefly about the refugee situation in Liberia and if that's improving at all. SADAKO OGATA: I don't think it's currently improving. The Liberian conflict has been going on for six years, and I--there are one million refugees in the neighboring countries of Guinea and Ivory Coast, very poor countries, but they have been very generous in receiving these people. But now that the conflict inside Liberia is getting worse, the 13th cease-fire has been violated, and offices like mine have been looted totally for the fourth time in Liberia, the, this situation is aggravating, and you have to stop the conflict first. CHARLAYNE HUNTER-GAULT: Well, Mrs. Ogata, thank you for joining us. SADAKO OGATA: Thank you very much.