The Hague And Poles

Views held by eminent Belgrade experts on international law differ somewhat, but the basic premises are not controversial. A hostage is a person whose life is threatened, while his fate does not depend on him, but on someone else. There is an international convention against taking hostages, and there is also an anti-terrorist convention. Since they have learned something of international law in Pale (Bosnian Serb political capital), the Bosnian Serb authorities claim that "the captured members of the UN peace-keeping force are not hostages but prisoners of war", adding that their capture was an act of "self-defence". An anonymous official gave the following statement: "We don't like to keep those people. It's humiliating for them and their countries, but we had no choice." As far as the Republic of Srpska Foreign Minister is concerned they are not POWs but "UN soldiers whose movement has been limited by the Serbs".

Hostages or POWs? Whichever view is accepted, the following is certain: First, the taking of hostages is a war crime. Second, an attack on UN soldiers is undoubtedly a violation of international law on war. Third, even if the Bosnian Serbs now admit, de facto, that they are at war with UNPROFOR, the tying of UN POWs to objects which are potential targets of NATO air strikes, is a serious violation of the POW's rights, which are also defined by international regulations. Bosnian Serb Army Commander General Ratko Mladic did, allegedly, promise that the observers whom the Serbs are using as human shields would no longer be tied to the objects they are "protecting", "but that they would be brought there every morning and allowed to sit there". The jurists VREME talked to are at odds on whether the capturing of UN peace-keeping force members should be considered a terrorist act or a war crime. One argument holds that terrorism is a term which applies in peacetime conditions, and that there are war crimes in war. Another claims that the Bosnian Serbs and UNPROFOR are not at war, and therefore there are no war crimes. As far as the essence of the matter is concerned, all this wrangling is not very important, since in the case of terrorism and in the case of war crimes, the matter concerns the same, and under the law, punishable acts.

Domestic experts on international relations and international law cannot recall that members of UN forces anywhere in the world were ever in a situation such as the one in Pale. It was tough in the Congo in the Fifties, and in Somalia, and recently in Rwanda, but no one ever used UN members as hostages and tied them to poles, on orders from the highest place.

And speaking of the "highest place", it is necessary to resolve the dilemma over the implementation of state terrorism as the most serious form of terrorism as such, since it has been ordered and carried out in the name of the state and not by some insurgent group. Some jurists believe that there can't be any talk of state terrorism because the Republic of Srpska has not been recognized as a state. From the point of view of the recognized authorities of B-H they can be considered as terrorists, but then the matter does not concern state terrorism. Other experts believe that this is just "splitting a hair four ways" because the authorities in the Republic of Srpska consider it to be a state, so that the action with the hostages, viewed from Pale, is certainly state terrorism. So far, no single country has been held responsible for state terrorism, neither Colonel Gadafi's Libya (the Lockerbee case), nor Khomeini's Iran (the affair over American hostages), nor Saddam Hussein's Iraq. The consequences were political, and in the case of the US attack on Gadafi's residence, military.