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ON THE RECORD
PADDY ASHDOWN INTERVIEW
RECORDED FROM TRANSMISSION BBC-1 DATE: 24.4.94
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JOHN HUMPHRYS: Mr. Ashdown, NATO issued an ultimatum.
The ultimatum has been ignored, or at least it has not been followed through.
What should now happen?
PADDY ASHDOWN: Whatever the Commander on the ground
believes should happen. The catastrophe that's happened and the humiliation of
NATO and the UN over the last two or three weeks in Gorazde has been precisely
brought about because the Commander on the ground has not been given the room
for manoeuvre or been backed in the decisions he wants to take.
An ultimatum is the point at which you
can but don't necessarily have to take military action, after which that
military action is both justified and can be taken in accordance with the
decisions of the Commander on the ground. And John, there is no good, there's
no point trying to second guess from a thousand miles away or five thousand
miles away in New York what is best to be done on the ground. If you've taken
your decision, and the politicians have now taken it, about the wider use of
air power, you must leave your Commander on the ground to decide when it is
appropriate to use the force available that has been sanctioned.
HUMPHRYS: But if you not only have an ultimatum
but have a very clear deadline, a specific deadline - "do this by midnight or
else"..
ASHDOWN: Well, "do this by midnight" after which
you should be prepared to receive the force which is the sanction attached at
the end of that. It doesn't mean to say that on one second after midnight you
have to take that action. That action has to be taken when the Commander on
the ground believes it's appropriate to be taken, when he's made his
dispositions appropriately and indeed at a point when he chooses, not one
which is broadcast by the UN from New York.
So let's have a look and see what the
situation is. I mean, General Rose is a past-master at this. He's done
extremely well. He needs to be backed. One of the reasons why the Serbs have
believed that they could play fast and loose with NATO, with the United
Nations,is precisely because we failed to back him including, I regret to say,
our own Government, when he asked for more troops in Sarajevo two or three
weeks ago, and he did not receive the response that he should have received,
and the consequence was that Serbs not unnaturally drew the conclusion that we
weren't prepared to back him and they could start playing fast and loose again,
and that's the mistake not to be repeated.
HUMPHRYS: So you're not saying "if there is going
to be military action", you're really saying "when". You're not prepared to
put a time on it but you're saying quite clearly "there must be action taken
against the Serbs now".
ASHDOWN: We have to back what the Commander on
the ground decides is appropriate, given the circumstances. He has now been
given the political instruction which enables him to go further. I wish he'd
been given it earlier. This is exactly the action many of us have been
recommending for the last two years, that we should establish a sort of
"cordon sanitaire", no go area if you like, an exclusion area round the safe
areas and if that had happened we would not be in the position we're now in,
but there's no point in looking backwards. It's now necessary to look
forward. The two catastrophes occur when Generals try to interfere in politics
or politicians try to interfere in warfare.
Now that NATO has taken its decision,
now that the UN has taken the decision, this is now a military situation and
what happens next should be left to the Commander on the ground, our job is to
support him at every turn and every time we fail to support him, every time we
fail to provide him with the resources we will encourage the Serbs to believe
that there is a division between the politicians and the Commanders on the
ground, and they are past-masters are making use of that gap in order to edge a
little forward, confront us again, take a little more territory.
HUMPHRYS: And if no action is now taken, if the
Serbs can get away with defying the main part of this ultimatum, then NATO is
seen to have been humiliated, I'm tempted to say again.
ASHDOWN: Well, exactly so and what's happened so
far is that we have allowed division, lack of clarity, lack of a clear
objective, not just in the last two or three weeks but the last two years. We
have failed to understand right from Mr Major's self-proclaimed success at the
London Conference more than two years ago, failed to understand that unless you
can stop the Serbs on the ground, unless they can be taught that they cannot
gain more on the ground than they have gained from the negotiating table, you
will never get them to negotiate seriously. And while we have presented the
Serbs with that kind of ultimatum as, for instance, in the case of Sarajevo,
they have responded as indeed it appears that they may well be responding in
Gorazde.
HUMPHRYS: But what you seem to be saying now that
is you can't leave it just to the General on the ground because NATO has staked
its authority on this ultimatum.
ASHDOWN: The General on the ground has to choose
the time.
HUMPHRYS: Yes indeed, but that's what we're
talking about, we talking about the timing.
ASHDOWN: And the means. Exactly. He has to
choose the time and the place and the means. But perfectly-self evidently,
If the Serbs flout NATO and the UN's ultimatum ..
HUMPHRYS: They already have.
ASHDOWN: If they flout it and continue to flout
it, then that action has to be used, but the point at which you use it, the way
in which you use it, the means in which you use it, is a purely military
decision, and that decision must not sought to be second guessed from
Westminster, from the UN or from anywhere else but the person who is
responsible for taking the action on the ground.
HUMPHRYS: Indeed, indeed. As far as the timing of
the action is concerned and the manner of that action perhaps that is up to the
General on the ground.
ASHDOWN: Not perhaps, it has to be.
HUMPHRYS: Alright.
ASHDOWN: If it's any other way it'll lead to
disaster.
HUMPHRYS: Alright, it's certainly up the the
General on the ground but what you're saying quite clearly is that the
politicians, those who lead NATO have made a decision, they have issued an
ultimatum, they've received a deadline. If those are not respected then action
has to be taken. It's a call for action as far as you're concerned.
ASHDOWN: Self-evidently. If you do not now take
the action that you have threatened in Gorazde in the face of a repudiation of
the ultimatum presented to the Serbs, then you may expect General Mladic to
do what he's done in Gorazde in one of the other pockets. The Serbs are
absolute experts at playing what I call "international grandmother's
footsteps". As soon as you turn round and confront them, they retreat, as soon
as you turn your back or weaken your will they seek to grab a bit more. That's
what they've done for the last two years.
They've never been convinced that we
were serious about taking the action we said we were going to take. They have
never believed that there was a solid front between politicians and military
Commanders on the ground, they've always seen the divisions and they've always
been prepared to exploit them, and unless we are prepared to stop that, then
our room for manoeuvre, our capacity to shape events, will diminish to the
point where it will be nothing and then the option will be to withdraw. And
the UN and NATO is coming very very close to that ultimate option.
HUMPHRYS: But in the meantime we have to accept
that if we take action of the sort we're talking about against the Serb forces,
the consequence for British and other United Nations soldiers on the ground and
observers is going to be profound. Could be extremely dangerous.
ASHDOWN: Well John, it is extremely dangerous.
Anybody who has been to Sarajevo, anyone who's been to Bosnia, knows it's
extremely dangerous. We've lost troops there already. There's a military
adage that says if you're going to go in "go in hard, go in clear, do not
pussyfoot about'.
HUMPHRYS: But we haven't got the forces to go in
hard.
ASHDOWN: Do not try and send four SAS soldiers to
rotect a City like Gorazde or they'll be wounded and they'll be killed.
HUMPHRYS: So send more soldiers.
ASHDOWN: No. John, what we have to do is
support the military Commander on the ground. I'm not able to say here and
neither are you with respect, that you should send more soldiers.
HUMPHRYS: I'm not saying anything. I'm asking you
about whether that's an inevitable consequence.
ASHDOWN: Precisely. That's a question I can't
answer from the comfort of my sitting room in Somerset, or you from a BBC
newsroom. That's a decision that has to be taken by the Commander on the
ground. We have embarked on this operation, it has to succeed. The status
and standing of the international institutions and international opinion depend
on that, so does the peace of Bosnia and I venture to say probably the peace of
the whole Balkans area in the long term as well, and maybe even the kind of
order that will provide peace for Europe in general. So we've embarked on this
course of action. We must support the Commander on the ground and judgements
about extra troops are his judgements to make, not ours.
HUMPHRYS: Paddy Ashdown, thank you very much.
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