Slavko Kralj, defence witness of Radovan Karadzic

Colonel Slavko Kralj, former liaison officer in the VRS Main Staff, testified today at the trial of Radovan Karadzic. The witnessand the accused were very courteous to each other: the witness called Karadzic ‘Mr. President’ throughout. They agreed that the Muslim side was responsible for the humanitarian crisis in the enclaves of Srebrenica and Zepa, not the Serbs.

Kralj didn’t know that the VRS had prevented the convoys from entering the enclaves. On the contrary, Kralj claimed that the VRS Main Staff ‘did everything it could to facilitate their passage’ and the UNHCR ‘successfully fulfilled its task and supplied food and other goods to the enclaves’. The problem was that more than one third of humanitarian aid was set aside for the army; it ended up on the black market, Kralj explained. According to Kralj, Muslims ‘wanted’ incidents to happen because then they could blame Serbs and thus cause the NATO troops to intervene.

Prosecutor Edgerton noted in her cross-examination that the Dutch Battalion deputy commander Robert Franken testified about the difficult position of the UNPROFOR soldiers in early 1995. ‘Do you mean to say that the UNPROFOR Dutch Battalion starved themselves on purpose?’, asked the prosecutor. Kralj remained adamant that the peace keepers were well-supplied, but, as he said, they gave some of their stockpiles to Muslims and suffered food or fuel shortages as a consequence, Kralj noted.

As he answered prosecutor Edgerton’s questions, the witness basically admitted that he didn’t really know much about the humanitarian aid deliveries to the enclave. At one point, the witness said he was just a translator and that his superior officer, Milos Djuric, was dealing with all major issues.

In the re-examination Karadzic revisited the issue of the supply situation in the Dutch Battalion in Srebrenica. The judges cautioned Karadzic when he started asking leading questions. ‘I will probably learn how to ask questions properly in time for the next trial, in time for the next war’, the accused replied and laughed.

After Kralj completed his evidence, Karadzic called Radojica Mladjenovic, the president of the Executive Board and chief of the Crisis Staff of the Serb municipality of Foca.

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