BOSNIA VOTES SEPTEMBER 13, 1996 TRANSCRIPT

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Saturday's elections are the next step in the U.S.-brokered Dayton plan to bring peace to Bosnia. Under the plan, Bosnia was divided into two entities, Serb and Muslim-Croat. The elections are aimed at bringing those two entities together in a unified Bosnian state. Elizabeth Farnsworth talks to two former diplomats about the significance of the vote following an ITN report on how it will be conducted.

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A RealAudio version of this NewsHour segment is available. Sept. 13, 1996 An ITN background report on election preparations. Aug. 6, 1996 Assistant Secretary of State John Kornblum discusses preparations for the Bosnian elections. July 22, 1996 Richard Holbrooke discusses his efforts to remove Radovan Karadzic from power. May 8, 1996 State Department ambassador-at-large Robert Gallucci discusses election preparations in Bosnia. Browse the NewsHour's Bosnia Index

ELIZABETH FARNSWORTH: In tomorrow's elections, voters living in the Muslim-Croat Federation will choose a Muslim and a Croat for the newly created three-member national presidency. Those living in the Bosnian Serb area will select a Serb member. Both groups will also choose national and regional legislators. More than half million refugees are expected to vote by absentee ballot. We get two views now. Robert Gallucci was ambassador-at-large for the Clinton administration responsible for the civilian rebuilding effort in Bosnia, among other things. He is now jean of--dean of Georgetown University's School of Foreign Service. Warren Zimmerman was ambassador to the former Yugoslavia during the Bush administration. He is the author of a new book, “Origins of a Catastrophe: Yugoslavia and Its Destroyers.” Thank you both for being with us. Amb. Gallucci, first, clarify something for us. The 641 million refugees voting, some of them from this country--

ROBERT GALLUCCI, Former State Department Official: Thousand--

ELIZABETH FARNSWORTH: I'm sorry, 641,000 refugees voting. Do they vote with an absentee ballot from the area they were kicked out of, or from an area they want to live in next? How does it work?

AMB. GALLUCCI: First of all, one thing I think I can say with confidence is none of this is simple, but I understand that the--those that wish to vote where they were registered by the 1991 Census can do so automatically. Those who wish to vote someplace else, i.e., presumably where they intend to return to apply in the course of registering to do that, and then they can vote there, so that they have a choice, in fact, of going back to where they were, or to move someplace else.

ELIZABETH FARNSWORTH: What do you hope will come out of this very complex procedure where they're, they're electing--there are elections for the national entity and there are elections for the--for the two separate entities?

AMB. GALLUCCI: I think the first thing we all hope for is a process is of voting which is as the language is free and fair and democratic as possible, in other words that we have an election that's free from harassment and people go to the polls safely and people transit the inter-entity border, so the process of the election is as good and clean as possible.

ELIZABETH FARNSWORTH: Just so the process in itself teaches something, is that part of the point?

AMB. GALLUCCI: Exactly. And also I think if that happens, that's a very good first step. We recognize if that happens it's in a context with the presence of IFOR and some very special circumstances, but still--

ELIZABETH FARNSWORTH: IFOR, the UN--the NATO troops.

AMB. GALLUCCI: Exactly. If you talk about the results of the election, the first point to make is it's an election. And while I may have some preferences for a multi-ethnic state and those of us who worked so hard to bring all that about would like to see that be the result. The first thing I think you'd have to say about a democratic election is you want to accept the results of a democratic election. After all, that's what it's all about. They get to choose. And having said that, yes, indeed, I think to the extent to which those candidates that were running for election on a multiethnic slate show substantial support will be a good sign that people are, in fact, thinking about one country.

ELIZABETH FARNSWORTH: What do you think, Amb. Zimmerman? Do you think that the elections will promote a multiethnic state, or are they promoting the opposite, as many critics say?

WARREN ZIMMERMAN, Former Ambassador to Yugoslavia: Well, obviously, there have to be elections. There was a question of when to have them. These elections I'm afraid unless a miracle happens are going to work to--to further the trend that is going in the wrong direction, i.e., toward the separation of the different ethnic groups in Bosnia, toward the increase in nationalism, rather than the reduction of it.

ELIZABETH FARNSWORTH: Explain how that works.

AMB. ZIMMERMAN: Well--

ELIZABETH FARNSWORTH: Why do you think that will happen?

AMB. ZIMMERMAN: Because there isn't really a level playing field. There's a very bumpy playing field for these elections. The media really are still very strongly in the hands of extreme nationalists. There has been very little freedom of movement. Refugees who tried to return to their, to their homes have been harassed, so very few have actually gone back. There's a tremendous distaste, particularly on the Serbian side, but partly on the Croatian side, which we saw in the film clip before, against having a Bosnian state. The Serbs want to return--many of them want to return to Serbia, so I'm afraid that the central organs of the, of the Bosnian state which will be elected tomorrow are going to be trashed and simply won't be effective. So we'll have the facade of a state, but we won't have the reality.

ELIZABETH FARNSWORTH: What about that?

AMB. GALLUCCI: Well, I think in the first instance Warren's exactly right, that unless there's a miracle, we're going to see a great deal of voting along ethnic lines. That is not the ideal outcome that I described a moment ago at which there's an embrace of multiethnic political entities, however--

ELIZABETH FARNSWORTH: And we will see this by looking at whether candidates who promote multiethnicity get a lot of votes, right? That's what we'll be looking at.

AMB. GALLUCCI: Exactly. What I want to add a big “however” after that. Even if that happens before there is a leap to judge the significance of that, remember that what is happening here is that in these elections will result in governments at the level of the Cantons will result in legislatures for both entities, the federation of Croat and Muslim, and Republica Serbska, and also the national entity, the assembly and a three-person, three-headed presidency, so even if voting is along ethnic lines, uh, the first thing that gets established are the national institutions and we must, I think, wait and see whether those national institutions will operate, whether the people of Bosnia wish to have one country, and if they do wish to have one country, those institutions will begin to operate. So I would strongly encourage a certain suspension of judgment even if the voting outcome is not immediately the kind that we might ideally like to see.

ELIZABETH FARNSWORTH: What about Amb. Zimmerman's other point, though, that there wasn't a level playing field, that the conditions that Dayton set down for these elections don't exist. For example, perhaps the multiethnic parties don't have the freedom to pursue the votes that they should.

AMB. GALLUCCI: I said a minute ago that I'd like to see tomorrow be a day in which the process of the election represent a free and fair process to the extent possible. The run up to the election, if you're going to have free and fair democratic elections, also has to have what Warren calls a level playing field, and there was not that. It was certainly a lot better than maybe we had reason to hope for, but we--or reason to expect, but not what we might have hoped for. It was not the kind of--freedom of movement was not experienced in the way we would have liked to have seen it, and the access to media wasn't everything we would have liked to have seen. There was more freedom of access to media than I think some people expected we'd be able to achieve in Independent Television and radio and newspapers, but I don't think one could call it a perfectly level playing field.

ELIZABETH FARNSWORTH: What will you be looking for? Is there--is there--do you have a hope that something good can come out of the elections?

AMB. ZIMMERMAN: I think something good can. I mean, there is an outside chance that the opposition candidates will do better than we all think they will. Even if they don't, I think there are ways to limit the damage that the West can, can do. I think the NATO force has to remain maybe in reduced numbers, but it has to remain, and Bosnia is not quite ready to, uh, to have its people get along with each other without violence. So there has to be more of that. I think the--I think the force has got to be more assertive than it has in the context of arresting some of the major war criminals which it could have done, I think, and failed to do, assuring a freedom of movement, making sure that there's a better press, that, that genuinely reflects different interests. If all of that happens, then I think the damage which I'm afraid is going to come out of the elections can be severely limited.

ELIZABETH FARNSWORTH: Let me just get clear what, what's--the damage that you see is that the elections basically legitimize the most nationalist parties, is that what you're afraid of, because they are the most popular parties?

AMB. ZIMMERMAN: If that's--

ELIZABETH FARNSWORTH: And they're the ones that pursued the war.

AMB. ZIMMERMAN: If that's all it was, it would be all right.

ELIZABETH FARNSWORTH: Uh-huh.

AMB. ZIMMERMAN: But what I think follows from that is that the elections are likely to further the trend that already exists toward the partition of Bosnia, the destruction of the whole idea of a multiethnic state, and that's after all why the United States was involved in the war in the first place, so our major objective is in peril here. That's why I think we can't just walk away from it after the elections. We have to lead as we led before. We have to lead NATO in staying and trying to keep things heading in the right direction and not the wrong one.

ELIZABETH FARNSWORTH: Do you agree with?

AMB. GALLUCCI: Uh, I think it's highly unlikely that the situation in Bosnia will in the next three, four, five months be such that we would agree that the security situation is resolved and everybody can go home in terms of the implementation force. So no, I don't think that's a reasonable expectation, and I do hope that an assessment is made and a view--a consideration is made as to what sort of force is required. I don't think a force that's there necessarily has to be projected into the next six months. But some sort of military presence to assure that there isn't another outbreak in hostilities, I think, would be a very good idea.

ELIZABETH FARNSWORTH: NATO officials have been, the “Washington Post” quoted some recently, saying that they're making plans to stay, right?

AMB. GALLUCCI: I, if they are making plans to stay, I think what they're actually doing is making plans to make plans--

ELIZABETH FARNSWORTH: Yeah.

AMB. GALLUCCI: --about what the future is to be.

ELIZABETH FARNSWORTH: And were making plans to stay in some form or another. I want to get back to the process, itself. We just saw in the piece that Gaby Rado did a leader of the Bosnian Serb National Organization saying on television that something she'd said before was wrong. She said we aren't pushing for the unification of all the Serbs together. She was forced to do that by the European Organization overseeing the elections. Is that the kind of process that you were hoping would happen through this, that, that very nationalist groups would somehow have to pull back because of pressures?

AMB. GALLUCCI: If--the kind of process I was hoping for was that the electorate, itself, would have embraced a multiethnic state and even if there was a fair amount of coalescence of Serbs in the Republica Serbska and Muslims and Croats in the federation that still they'd agree, essentially agree that they were going to work together in these institutions for one country, Bosnia-Herzegovina. The fact that the OSCE had to sort of in a sense force or mandate that change goes back to the Dayton Accords and the deal which really is in place. And it's unfortunate I think the OSCE had to do that.

ELIZABETH FARNSWORTH: I see. Well, thank you both very much for being with us.

AMB. GALLUCCI: Thank you.

AMB. ZIMMERMAN: Thank you.

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