Did Under Secretary of State Nicholas Burns Commit Perjury Before Senate?

International Justice Watch List Serv ^

[Ezekiel2517]

CROATIAN WORLDWIDE ASSOCIATION

November 10, 2005

The Hon. Richard G. Lugar Chairman Senate Foreign Relations Committee 450 Dirksen Senate Office Building Washington, DC 20510 The Hon. Joseph R. Biden Ranking Member Senate Foreign Relations Committee 439 Dirksen Senate Office Building Washington, DC 20510

Re: Request for Investigation into Potential Perjury by R. Nicholas Burns, Under Secretary for Political Affairs

Dear Senators Lugar and Biden:

We write to you to alert you to certain false statements made by R. Nicholas Burns, Under Secretary of Political Affairs, in a hearing before your committee on November 8, 2005, titled “Kosovo: A Way Forward?” Our concern focuses on two statements made by Mr. Burns concerning General Ante Gotovina, a Croatian general indicted by the International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia (“ICTY”) for alleged crimes committed in 1995 during a military operation known as “Operation Storm.” Specifically, Mr. Burns told the committee that Gotovina was in fact a “despicable war criminal” who was “responsible for Europe’s worst human rights abuses since the Nazis.” Gotovina has not been convicted of any crime as he is still a fugitive from the Tribunal, and is still presumed innocent. We note that Mr. Burns went beyond telling the Committee that Gotovina was “indicted for war crimes,” which would have been an accurate statement of the facts. Instead, Burns suggests in his comments to the Committee that he has a factual basis to conclude even before trial that Gotovina is in fact guilty of war crimes.

We believe there is evidence that suggests Burns knew or had reason to know that Gotovina is in fact not guilty of the crimes with which he has been charged by the ICTY, and therefore his statements to the Committee about Gotovina were false. First, the United States Ambassador to Croatia in 1995, Amb. Peter Galbraith, has publicly declared that the principal allegations against Gotovina are false. Specifically, the ICTY’s primary charge against Gotovina is that he is responsible for the deportation, or “ethnic cleansing,” of approximately 150,000 Croatian Serbs from Croatia. Amb. Galbraith has on the record on numerous occasions stated that this allegation is false, telling Newsweek magazine on August 27, 2001, “The fact is, the population left before the Croatian army got there. . . .You can’t deport people who have already left.” Amb. Galbraith later confirmed this fact to the Sarajevo newspaper “Dani,” stating that, “We have to understand first of all that the Serb population left their homes before the Croatian Army took over, so it is very difficult to defend the view that the Croatian Army drove out the Serbs. This was very different from Prijedor, Visegrad and other places that are synonyms for the Bosnian genocide.”

Amb. Galbraith was later called by the ICTY to testify in the trial of Slobodan Milosevic. In his sworn testimony to the Tribunal and under cross-examination by Milosevic, Amb. Galbraith testified under oath that the Croatian military under General Gotovina’s leadership did not deport, terrorize or ethnically cleanse the Croatian Serb population, as is alleged in the indictment against Gotovina:

Q. You were talking yesterday in explaining your interview to the BBC that it wasn't ethnic cleansing [i.e. Croatia’s Operation Storm] because the people had fled before any kind of paramilitaries entered. Now, do you happen to know that the people had fled in the face of the grenades and shelling? Knin was heavily shelled and so were the surrounding areas. Or do you think they just escaped and fled just like that because they feared the Croatian army which was nearby? I'm sure you will remember that the attack began precisely with the heavy shelling of Knin itself. A. Well, I'm sure that people fled the shelling, and I'm sure that people fled because they feared the Croatian army. The shelling was relatively brief because there was effective no resistance. I think Knin fell within 24 hours. Q. Therefore, you're claiming that it -- it's not ethnic cleansing when you use shells to destroy a town and inhabitants have to flee, but you only consider it to be ethnic cleansing from the point that troops enter the town and start to slaughter the people and set fire to the houses? Is that the limit, is that the borderline where you differentiate what is and is not ethnic cleansing? A. The first point is that -- just a factual matter. Knin was not destroyed. In fact, it was not all that heavily damaged. I had embassy officers in there within a few days of the Croatian takeover. Second, as to what constitutes ethnic cleansing, I would say that it is a combination of -- and the important word here is the "combination" of military actions, certainly can include shelling. It includes the entry of troops into the territory -- into a village, but it also includes when the people are there executions, beatings, torture, you know, burning of houses, rape, activities intending to terrorise the population and force them to leave. Q. All right. Now, did all of this actually take place, Mr. Galbraith? Did it happen, all that together, all the things that you enumerated taken together, did they happen? A. They happened in Bosnia and Herzegovina, and they happened in Croatia. Did they happen in Operation Storm? No, because the population had -- almost all of it had already left before the Croatian military entered the towns and, therefore, there were basically no people there for them to terrorise. Burns’ sworn testimony to the Committee that Gotovina is guilty of the crimes of which he is charged, making him a “despicable war criminal,” is thus in direct contradiction to the sworn testimony of the United States Ambassador who was on the ground and who was an eyewitness to events. Burns has never shared (publicly) with the Committee any facts to suggest that Ambassador Galbraith’s version of events is erroneous. Mr. Burns’s testimony to the Committee also appears to be at odds with the views of the Pentagon concerning Croatia’s Operation Storm. On March 21, 1999, the New York Times reported that the ICTY was investigating General Gotovina and others for their actions during Operation Storm, including the deportation of the Croatian Serb population and the alleged “excessive shelling of Knin” by General Gotovina which allegedly caused the Serbs to flee. The New York Times article states that Pentagon officials told the Tribunal that the shelling of Knin was a “legitimate military target.” The New York Times article essentially states that the Pentagon disagreed with the assessment of the ICTY that Operation Storm amounted to an “ethnic cleansing” operation. Accordingly, Mr. Burns’s testimony condemning General Gotovina as a war criminal appears to be contradicted by the positions taken by the Pentagon before the ICTY. Mr. Burns’s conviction of General Gotovina even before trial is troublesome in and of itself because Mr. Burns mocks the presumption of innocence that is guaranteed to all indictees of the ICTY. Even more troubling, however, is the fact that Mr. Burns’s testimony to the Committee concerning General Gotovina is contradicted by the sworn testimony of the United States Ambassador in the region and by the Pentagon. The Committee should therefore take appropriate action to investigate the factual basis for Mr. Burns’s assertion that Gotovina is not merely a war crimes indictee, but a “despicable war criminal” guilty of the worst atrocities in Europe since the Nazis. While we understand that defending the presumption of innocence of persons indicted for war crimes may not be high on the list of priorities of the Committee, we believe a much more fundamental principal is at issue here: the obligation of members of the executive branch to be accurate with their statements and assessments to Congress and to avoid exaggerations, distortions, false statements, or reckless disregard for the truth. We believe that Mr. Burns knew, or reasonably should have known, that his condemnation of Gotovina was without factual basis. Accordingly, we respectfully request that the Committee investigate this matter and take appropriate action should it conclude that Mr. Burns made false and misleading statements in his testimony to the Committee. Sincerely,

Jackie Prkic President Croatian Worldwide Association P.O. Box 81226 Chicago, IL 60681

[Hoplite]

Well, it looks as if the General is going to have his day in court after all.

One down, two to go.

[FormerLib]

How nice that the murderous thug was arrested just about a month after your posting! ;-)