THE HAGUE: Britain's Lord Owen told The Hague war crimes court yesterday that Slobodan Milosevic had the power to stop the Bosnian war in 1993 - but chose not to.
The former European Union peace envoy told the Milosevic genocide trial that the former Serbian president controlled the vital supply arteries sending fuel and weapons to the Bosnian Serbs. "He was in charge of a government that could put real, serious pressure on them to stop them doing what they were doing, to stop shelling Sarajevo, to stop ethnic cleansing," he said.
Then, in an emotional moment, the silver-haired former foreign secretary turned to Milosevic and said: "I'm asking you, why did you fail to use your power to cut the supplies off?"
Coming from the former peace broker, this testimony is likely to hammer a nail into Milosevic's coffin, backing prosecution claims that Milosevic sat at the centre of a web that orchestrated the horrors unfolding in Bosnia.
"If president Milosevic had gone to Pale [the Bosnian Serb capital\] and told them if you do not agree with this there will be no supplies, you will be completely cut off, they would have signed up to the Vance Owen plan," he said.
Lord Owen said the West should also take some of the blame for failing to back his plan with the threat of force - a threat made by NATO two years later to secure the US Dayton peace plan. "The pressure could have come from president Milosevic of Serbia but it also should have come from the West."
The 65-year-old former British foreign secretary was much criticised at the time for appearing to reward Serbian aggression with a peace plan that gave the Serbs much of what they had taken by force through so-called ethnic cleansing. But yesterday, in testimony likely to be controversial, he insisted that Milosevic supported him in his drive for peace.
Prosecutor Geoffrey Nice asked him: "Do you accept that the accused was someone capable of telling untruths and misleading people when it suited him?"
"There was a certain amount of knowing lying," said Lord Owen. "It was not quite the same as a straight lie. I just want to qualify the word. Lie is a rather savage word."
Lord Owen said he did not believe Milosevic shared the sentiments of Bosnian Serb bigots. "He is not a racist. He is a nationalist, but even that he wears very lightly. He's a pragmatist who wanted the Serbs to be in the majority."