Early in the morning on Monday, August 28, 1995, I arrived with Dick Holbrooke and the rest of the team at a military airport in Paris, nine days after losing our colleagues on the Mount Igman Road. The mood in our six-person interagency delegation was of grim determination to pick up where Bob and the others had left off. But what were we doing in Paris? A number of us asked each other. We had landed in the French capital apparently for no other reason than for Holbrooke to hang out with Pamela Harriman, the intrepid socialite ambassador and scion of Democratic Party politics, whom Holbrooke described as “brilliant” and insightful. The stop seemed to have little to do with our mission. We had preliminary meetings arranged with the French, one of the Contact Group members, so no harm there. We also had arranged for Bosnian president Izetbegovic, who was on a visit to Paris, to meet us and discuss what an eventual peace document could look like, as well as, most important, the shape of the map of Bosnia.
Holbrooke, as I knew from being at his side for the past year, was not at his best around people like Pamela Harriman. He was effective at many things, but pouring unreciprocated flattery on someone whose approval he was desperately seeking was not one of them. As Harriman, the wartime wife of Winston Churchill’s son, the mother of Winston Churchill’s grandson, a mistress to numerous men of power and wealth, and the widow of Averell Harriman, put it to Bob Owen, “Dick is very affectionate, but he still hasn’t been housebroken.”
Both on the airplane and as we settled into our rooms on the second floor at Harriman’s residence, I was getting to know Roberts “call-me-Bob” Owen, our team lawyer, team player, and a close friend of Secretary Christopher. Bob was extremely accomplished in his field, the State Department’s legal advisor to Secretary Cyrus Vance in the late 1970s, negotiator with Iran for the hostage release in 1980, and a man whose legal mind was coupled with a refreshing down-to-earth modesty. More recently Christopher had him working on the vexing problems within the Bosnian Federation, a shotgun alliance between the Croats and the Muslim communities in Bosnia that required constant marriage counseling. Rumor had it that Secretary Christopher wanted Bob on the reconstituted travel team as his eyes and ears. It was probably true, but Bob also brought to the table a very sensible, straightforward drafting style that would eventually form the basis for the entire Dayton Accords. “It’s like writing wills,” Bob said about many of the document’s provisions and their need for absolute clarity. And while Holbrooke did not choose Bob, he was pleased to have him on the team.
Holbrooke was keenly aware of Bob’s closeness to Secretary Christopher and often turned his clumsy efforts at flattery on him. They worked about as well as they did on Harriman. “Bob, this is brilliant!” “Dick, it’s not brilliant, it has nothing to do with brilliant. It’s not even close to being brilliant. In fact, Dick, it’s fairly basic stuff. . . .” Bob kept Dick from using the word brilliant for at least twenty minutes, something for which we were all very grateful. Like the rest of us, though, Bob did eventually fall prey to his charm. Such was the Holbrooke force field, where, if nothing else, people would begin to sympathize with this imposing figure who seemed also to possess equally imposing vulnerabilities and insecurities.
I was struck by how carefully Holbrooke selected his small interagency team, going over with me names of people as if the future of the world depended on his choices. He looked for loyalty, or potential loyalty, but he was also on the lookout for particular skills, especially those that he did not have, such as organization, follow-up, and timeliness. He realized that his laserlike focus on an issue at a given moment might leave other crucial problems completely unattended. I was keenly aware of Holbrooke’s detractors in Washington and the fact that a negotiator in the field needs backup in the capital, especially when things go wrong. And when it came to Holbrooke, backing him up wasn’t always people’s top priority.
Dick was particularly cautious about the choice of a representative from the National Security Council staff. When the NSC staff proposed army Brigadier General Don Kerrick to join Holbrooke’s team, Holbrooke agreed only after several of us gave Don glowing personal references for his restraint, during the dreaded morning teleconference. “Dick, he never tasks the department. Never!” I lied. I added: “He’s a great admirer of yours” (thinking that he could become a great admirer), if only Holbrooke could get over the issue of the NSC representative so the rest of us could get back to work. I started getting somewhere with him. “Dick, he thinks you’re the only person who really understands what to do in the Balkans,” I lied again.
“Okay, I’ll try him out.” Dick and Don went on to be the closest of friends.
In Paris, Dick was very much in the saddle and enjoying every minute of the ride. He turned Pamela Harriman’s ambassadorial residence into the salon of salons, holding court in various rooms of the mansion with different personages. An upstairs drawing room was converted to a map room. General Wesley Clark, accompanied by several junior military staffers, spread an enormous map of Bosnia from wall to wall, “actual size,” I quipped to Bob Owen as we walked in for a discussion along the fringe of the map with President Izetbegovic and his foreign minister Muhamed (Mo) Sacirbey.
With his American-accented English and media presence, Sacirbey had become the spokesperson for the Bosnians on CNN and other networks. Sacirbey had played linebacker for Tulane University, apparently without a helmet, as Holbrooke would quip to me after many difficult meetings with him.
Some people could not stand to be in the same room as Sacirbey. But not Holbrooke. As I explained to him, “When we see a problem person we see a problem. But when you see a problem, you see an opportunity.” For what opportunity, of course, Holbrooke wasn’t quite sure, but he knew that he would need every asset, every relationship he could muster for the battles to come.
On Monday afternoon, CNN broke into its regular programming to report what became known as “the market bombing.” A 120mm mortar shell had hit a line of civilians in a Sarajevo market, resulting in heavy casualties; the Serbs claimed the Bosnian had done it to their own people to gain sympathy. CNN’s live footage brought the scene not only into Americans’ living rooms but also into every senior official’s office in Washington. There would be a response.
Our team began manning phones to Sarajevo and Washington. Holbrooke made numerous calls to Strobe Talbott and Sandy Berger while Wes Clark kept in close contact with the Joint Chiefs. It was clear that President Clinton was not going to punt on this one, and Holbrooke saw an opportunity—albeit a high-risk one—in having bombs fall on the Serbs in Bosnia as we met with Milosevic on Wednesday night, two days away. Holbrooke asked each of us, as if we were a lobbying firm ahead of an important congressional vote, whom we had called to make sure the bombing would happen. I did not have anyone I could call to ensure that President Clinton’s response to the market attack in Sarajevo would be in the form of air strikes against the Serbs.
“Who were you talking with?” Holbrooke asked, having noticed me on my cell phone.
“I was talking with Phil Goldberg,” I replied. Keeping our team in Washington up-to-date on what we were doing in Paris was one of those chores that had to be done.
“Chris, I love Phil. You know that. But there is nothing he can do from his position to . . .”
• • •
A few hours later, U.S. fighter-bombers were in the air out of bases in Italy, hitting Serb targets with a sustained force that had not been seen before. The UN peacekeepers, under British General Rupert Smith’s command, had been pulled into more defensible positions, thus minimizing the possibility that Serb militias, as they had done in the past, would grab peacekeepers and use them as “human shields.”
We discussed the onward leg of the mission to Belgrade and whether it would be feasible while NATO aircraft, mainly American, were hitting Bosnian Serb targets as never before. My own view, and Holbrooke’s, too, was that there was never a better time to go to Belgrade.
Milosevic greeted our delegation warmly as we filed into his large, ornate receiving room. Standing next to him was his foreign ministry advisor, Bojan Bugarcic, who spoke perfect English. Milosevic directed us to a large circle of heavily stuffed brown chairs and couches gathered around two glass-topped coffee tables. A waiter in a white jacket appeared almost instantly to offer us the choice of mineral water or numerous Balkan fruit drinks. Holbrooke, thirsty from the plane ride in from Paris, looked at the selection of waters and other drinks and asked Milosevic: “May I take two?”
“Ambassador Holbrooke, please take three.”
Milosevic began with expressions of condolences on the death of Bob Frasure, with whom he had spent many hours over the course of the spring. The Serb leader was dressed in a double-breasted blue blazer and red tie. I sat next to Holbrooke, occasionally looking over at him as Milosevic continued his sorrowful eulogy for Bob. I knew well that Bob would not have reciprocated the kind words, because, like the rest of us, he held Milosevic accountable for the destruction of Yugoslavia and its peoples. Listening to Milosevic I realized how successful Bob had been in building a relationship with such a person, and how that relationship, even after his death, was now going to help us get to yes.
Holbrooke introduced each member of the delegation: Jim Pardew from the Pentagon, Wes Clark from the Joint Chiefs, General Don Kerrick from the NSC, Bob Owen, and me, whom he described to Milosevic as someone close to Bob Frasure. Milosevic looked us all over carefully. I’m sure he recalled my previous meeting in the fall, when in response to his point that the United States could not maintain sanctions against Yugoslavia because of lost business opportunities, I responded somewhat curtly that the United States could keep up the sanctions against Serbia for decades if need be. Look at Cuba, I said, thinking perhaps that finally we had discovered a purpose in the Cuban embargo. That comment had not been well received, but, on the other hand, Milosevic seemed to have a pretty thick skin.
Milosevic, as Bob had long believed and I was now convinced, was ready to settle. He had not lifted a finger for the Bosnian Serb forces during their defeat in the spring and summer months, and now he wanted to get on with the challenge of implementing the Contact Group plan that essentially split Bosnia into two entities, giving the Serbs living there much of what they had wanted. Our concern about Milosevic all along was not whether he could coerce the Bosnian Serbs, but whether he could actually be accepted as their representative when the endgame came. The relationships between the Serb nationalists in Bosnia and former communist power structure types like Milosevic was far more complex than anyone in the West could understand. Milosevic was no one’s favorite among the Serbs. For the nationalists, he was a former communist, and for the former communists, he was a nationalist. In fact, Milosevic’s loyalties stayed very close to home, but he wanted respect from us, and was clearly prepared to pay to get it in the form of a Bosnian settlement.
Though NATO bombing of Serb positions was front-page news throughout the world, Milosevic never mentioned it in our initial discussions. He turned the subject to the negotiations:
“I have been busy,” he said, reaching inside his blue blazer to pull out a piece of paper. Its contents were astounding. Milosevic had reached an agreement with the Bosnian Serb leadership, witnessed by the patriarch of the Serbian Orthodox Church, to make him, Milosevic, their sole representative for the purpose of the negotiations. I was shocked at the sweep of what had just happened. Milosevic gave the Serbian-language documents to Holbrooke; I was sitting next to him and took it from his hand to see what was actually in it. The one-page paper was extraordinary and I knew immediately it meant that our negotiation would succeed where others had failed because Milosevic had finally acknowledged or at least created via the patriarch the linkage to the Bosnian Serbs that was necessary for negotiation.
A sustainable peace process, which had eluded us for years, was now at hand, and in fact in my hand. A war that had claimed so many lives, and was claiming more lives that very night, could really be brought to an end. As I made my way slowly through the brief Cyrillic text and studied the scrawled signatures to try to decipher whose was whose, I thought about Bob. Holbrooke listened as I read out a translation (with Milosevic trying to help me) and finally said to me: “I wish Bob were here to see this.” I knew I would choke up if I tried to say something. I just nodded. After years of this war, we were going to be the ones to end it.
The meeting continued for hours, until well after midnight. Conversations with Milosevic never followed a linear course. They flowed into historical discussions about the Ottoman occupation of the Balkans, World War II, then New York City, where he spent his youth as a Yugoslav banker. Milosevic would then describe his (always grandiose) plans for the Yugoslav economy, drift back to New York, and so forth. Side conversations began to ensue and I got to know Bojan, the son of a diplomat, as we talked about attending international schools around the world.
Dick ducked out for the occasional phone call, which he would invariably describe as coming from the White House, though most of us suspected they were from his wife, Kati, in New York. Milosevic was at pains to differentiate himself from the Bosnian Serbs, at one point to our amusement calling them “shit.” That was a reminder for me that no matter how well one learns a foreign language (and Milosevic’s English was pretty good), swearing in it can never be mastered.
When the meeting finally adjourned, we left for the Hyatt hotel on the other side of the Drina River and were met by the first of many gaggles of reporters that would follow us through the entire shuttle. The press was always curious about the marathon meetings with Milosevic and what was really being discussed. Were we giving away Bosnian towns to the Serbs? I watched Holbrooke deliver his lines and marveled at his capacity to speak in complete paragraphs without pause, while saying so little about the talks that had lasted eight entire hours with Milosevic. He would also give the press some memorable lines that would drown out everything else, such as “We come on a mission of peace at a moment of war.” It was a line he had not rehearsed nor to my knowledge used in any of the meetings with anyone. In a stroke, it captured the essence of our endeavors and of our mission. When someone has a line like that, who cares if he reveals nothing else?
What Holbrooke did not tell the press that day was the plan hatched with Milosevic to have the three foreign ministers go to Geneva and announce an agreement of some kind. To Holbrooke the exact kind of agreement was secondary. He would figure out that detail later. “Remember, Chris, logistics are always more important than substance. That will come later.” Milosevic had pressed Holbrooke for a conference to decide the entire issue of Bosnia, but Holbrooke, having just met with Izetbegovic in Paris, knew that the Bosnians were not ready for a high-wire act of that kind.
After Belgrade we dashed off to Zagreb, Croatia, where we met President Franjo Tudjman to brief him on the discussions in Belgrade and to convince him of the value of holding a foreign ministers’ meeting in Geneva. Unlike Milosevic, who would be accompanied by a maximum of two or three people in his meetings with us, Tudjman would assemble his entire cabinet, including a formal arrival ceremony at the presidential palace. The ceremony never came off the way Tudjman’s protocol staff planned. Each time we arrived at the front entrance, manned by guards in uniforms that resembled something from an overbudgeted version of The Wizard of Oz, Holbrooke would step into the entryway, Tudjman and his retinue visible far ahead in the palatial greeting area, and immediately turn left to use the men’s room while the president and the entourage stood waiting. After Holbrooke answered nature’s call three visits in a row, the protocol chief implored me to suggest that he use the facilities at the airport, even though our cars pulled up to the plane on the tarmac, thus requiring another stop in the terminal building. It wasn’t going to happen. I gave it a shot with Holbrooke, but he wasn’t interested. “Chris, I appreciate your attention to detail. But this is too much.”
Airplane flights always allowed for the best staff meetings even though there was no table and people had to perch on seats facing the wrong way or sit on the floor of the aircraft to hear. As we departed Zagreb that first visit, Holbrooke discussed how we had secured agreement from all parties to hold a foreign ministers’ meeting, but there was no agreement on what was to be done at it. Holbrooke turned to Bob Owen and said, “Let’s do up a document. We’ll call it Agreed Principles, and it will list the elements of the Contact Group plan, that is, things that have really already been agreed.” Thinking about the agonizing Washington clearance process, I asked how we could get that cleared in just a couple of days, moreover while we were on the road. “Don’t be a typical Foreign Service officer,” he said. This was a favorite epithet of Holbrooke’s. “You know the only thing worse than not having guidance from Washington is having guidance from Washington. Draw it up, Bob,” he said. With a glance at me he added, “I’ll take care of Chris’s concerns about Washington clearances.”