WASHINGTON, April 13 -- The United States on Thursday defended its dealings with Serbian President Slobodan Milosevic, following the discovery of documents that appear to link him directly to war crimes in Bosnia-Herzegovina. Cedomir Mihailovic, a former senior member in the Serbian secret police, fled the Balkans during the fall and gave a U.N. panel investigating war crimes in the former Yugoslavia a series of written orders from Belgrade to Serb nationalist leaders in Bosnia-Herzegovina, U.S. officials said. The documents, some of which appeared in the New York Times Thursday, appear to show that Milosevic's state police ordered Serb rebel commanders to drive Bosnian Muslims from their homes through such tactics as killing, rape, torture and internment in concentration camps. So-called 'ethnic cleansing' helped Serb nationalists seize nearly 70 percent of Bosnia-Herzegovina. Milosevic has denied responsibility for Serb atrocities in Bosnia- Herzegovina. U.S. officials defend their repeated dealings with Milosevic -- who just rejected a peace proposal brokered by Washington, Moscow, Paris, London, France and Bonn -- saying he is the key to ending hostilities in Bosnia-Herzegovina and preventing the war from spreading. 'By dealing with him, by talking to him, by negotiationg with him, we are in no way endorsing him or Serbian policies now or in the past,' State Department spokesman Nicholas Burns said. 'We are simply trying to obtain Serbian compliance with Security Council resolutions.' A principal architect of Washington's Balkan policy told reporters Thursday, under conditions of anonymity, that 'there is no chance of ending the war without him.'
The five powers, known as the 'contact group,' have offered to ease U.N. sanctions on Serbia if Milosevic recognizes his neighbors and stops supplying war-making materiel to his surrogates in Bosnia-Herzegovina. The U.S. official said Milosevic has let the contact group know in no uncertain terms that the proposal is a 'non-starter.' U.S. officials, who make no secret of their distaste for Milosevic, say they cannot vouch for the authenticity of documents they have not yet seen. Furthermore, they say it is up to the U.N. War Crimes Tribunal for the Former Yugoslavia to decide whether Milosevic should be indicted. 'This issue of war crimes is an issue for consideration by the international tribunal,' Burns said. The Clinton administration believes that people should be held responsible for atrocities, should be held individually accountable for atrocities -- regardless of their rank.' Then-Secretary of State Lawrence Eagleburger said during a 1992 conference on the Balkan crisis that Milosevic should appear before a war crimes panel and explain why he is not guilty of genocide. No Clinton administration officials have made such a statement publicly. Many U.S. officials say it is irrelevant whether or not Milosevic is directly implicated in war crimes. Milosevic started the war, they say, which makes him 'directly responsible' for everything that happpened since. 'I consider Milosevic the man who started this war,' the U.S. official said. 'Whether he is or is not a war criminal, he is the man who started the war.'
