People Want To Vote

I’ve always thought these elections were part of a process. That they’re taking place at all is remarkable. Exactly a year ago, on Sept. 14, 1995, the bombs were still falling on Sarajevo, the city was still under siege, NATO planes were in the air. We negotiated the end of the NATO bombing that day. We always knew elections would be less than perfect … We’re not interested in process simply for its own sake. [Elections are] a way station towards the Dayton agreements, which call for a single country, with a loose central government, and central institutions.

We are not going to allow people elected under Dayton to then destroy Dayton. The parties agreed in Dayton to a single country. They can pick their leaders, but their leaders can’t then violate the constitutional arrangements they are pledged to follow.

I don’t think we’re obsessed with elections. Elections are one of the key manifestations of democracy, and the people of Bosnia from all groups wanted elections.

The federation is a very fragile structure … it’s going to take tremendous effort by both [sides] to make it work. On the elections, I don’t see how you could call them a travesty. People want to vote. To postpone the elections would probably mean they would never take place, because they have to take place while the security forces are still there.

Not at all.

Uncertainty in Bosnia? I’m shocked. (Laughs.)

I’m worried about whether or not, after the elections, we can create the institutions of the central government called for by Dayton. If the Bosnian Serbs try to boycott all the central institutions, it’s going to take tremendous external pressure to make it work. If we don’t apply that pressure the country will fall apart.

The international police task force was badly constructed at Dayton. NATO did not want it connected to the military command and the Europeans did not want to give it arrest and enforcement authority. Both decisions were mistakes. I believe they should be rectified.

I will probably recommend to the president that we reconvene the parties to the agreement and set out the course for the second year.

They have to be brought to justice in The Hague. Karadzic is out of the political process. He’s obviously still hanging around its edges but he’s not going to be in an official capacity.

I don’t want to get into that. That’s for the military to work out.

Ideally it would be better if people did not have the impression the American elections were a factor in our policymaking. But because the Bosnian elections are taking place at the height of our own political season, people draw that conclusion, whether it’s justified or not.