Opmaak Both/Definitief

NORBERT BOTH From Indifference to Entrapment The Netherlands and the Yugoslav Crisis 1990-1995 AMSTERDAM UNIVERSITY PRESS From Indifference to Entrapment From Indifference to Entrapment The Netherlands and the Yugoslav Crisis 1990-1995 N B A U P Cover illustration: Dutch military men leaving for Croatia. Photo: ANP, Rijswijk Cover design: Kok Korpershoek [KO], Amsterdam Lay-out: Magenta, Amsterdam ISBN 90 5356 453 5 © Amsterdam University Press, Amsterdam, 2000 All rights reserved. Without limiting the rights under copyright reserved above, no part of this book may be reproduced, stored in or introduced into a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means (electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise), without the written permission of both the copyright owner and the author of this book. To Jan and Ada Contents Preface 9 Abbreviations 13 Chronology 15 Introduction 25 1 The Netherlands and its Foreign Policy System 45 2 An Emerging Challenge, July 1990-June 1991 69 3 From ‘Even-Handedness’ to ‘Selectiveness’ 101 The Dutch EC Presidency, July-December 1991 4 Moral and Political Entrapment 143 International Peace Plans for Bosnia-Herzegovina, 1992-1994 5 Military Entrapment 181 The Commitment to Srebrenica, 1993-1995 Conclusion 225 Bibliography 243 Index 257 Preface This book is based on my PhD thesis from the University of Sheffield, which I successfully defended in May. As I have been employed by the Netherlands Ministry of Foreign Affairs since October 1998, it was ar- ranged that I should offer a copy of the thesis to two separate official investigations that were being conducted in the Netherlands. One of them was the Commissie Bakker, or the Tijdelijke Commissie Besluitvor- ming Uitzendingen TCBU, a Parliamentary investigation committee set up to assess the domestic decision-making process regarding the deploy- ment of Dutch forces in a number of peacekeeping operations in e.g. former Yugoslavia, Cambodia, Angola and Cyprus (on May 19, 2000). The Netherlands Institute for War Documentation (NIOD), charged with an independent analysis of the events surrounding the fall of Srebrenica, received a copy on May 29, 2000 as well. The theoretical component of the thesis is represented in the introduction to this book. It covers three sets of literature. The first one deals with the international handling of the Yugoslav crisis. The second represents the contrasting views on the nature of the international system and the role of small states within it, while the third focuses on the foreign policy of the Netherlands. In assembling the empirical component of this book, I used various methodological approaches, including the study of unpublished and public documents, memoirs, interviews, secondary literature and press articles. I would be reluctant to claim that participant observa- tion played an important role, although my perspective on the events covered in this book was inevitably coloured by my time spent as a research assistant for David Lord Owen and my work in the European Affairs Department of the Netherlands Foreign Ministry. The core of the primary source material consists of official documents from the archives of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs. The references to the Foreign Ministry’s documents have been deleted, given that they only mentioned the files in which they had been found. A full list of the files that were studied is provided in the bibliography. In addition, I was granted access to former Minister of Defence Relus ter Beek’s personal papers. While Ter Beek did make use of these papers for his own memoirs, the Foreign Ministry’s documents referred to in this thesis are not in most cases available in the public domain. The reasons for not extending my research of the Foreign Ministry’s documents to include the (months before the) actual fall of Srebrenica are discussed in the introduction. I am aware I have not seen all the relevant government documents covering the period under discussion (notably Cabinet minutes), but I feel that I have seen sufficient material to be able to provide a well-informed inter- pretation of Dutch Yugoslavia policy during the period under discussion. An additional primary source is David Owen’s Balkan Odyssey CD- ROM, which includes several references to Dutch Yugoslavia policy during the period discussed in this book, including a report of a meeting in 1993 between the ICFY co-chairmen and Dutch Foreign Minister Pieter Kooijmans. Use was made too of official letters to Parliament and parliamentary records, as well as some official reports by various institutes, including the UN Secretary General’s ‘Srebrenica Report’. This book also draws on the growing number of personal memoirs covering the Yugoslav crisis. I also used the statements made by key players during the Public Hearings of the TCBU in the Hague during the period 22 May - 8 June 2000. On-the-record as well as some off-the-record interviews were conducted with key players. Use was also made of the knowledge gained through the numerous interviews conducted together with Dr Jan Willem Honig for our book Srebrenica, Record of a War Crime. In some cases I received letters from key players explaining their views on particular instances relat- ed to the period in which the Netherlands held the EC Presidency in 1991. The opinion polls conducted under the aegis of the Stichting Krijgs- macht en Maatschappij testify to the pro-interventionist domestic mood in which the Dutch decision-making process regarding the military con- tributions to UNPROFOR took place. I dealt with the problem of how to draw a line between knowledge gained as an academic researcher and knowledge gained as a Foreign Ministry official as follows. Upon my arrival in the European Affairs Department, in October 1998, I presented my draft-thesis to the people responsible for the Dutch version of the ‘Freedom of Information Act’, de Wet Open- baarheid Bestuur. Since then, no new references to unpublished documents have been added to this book. There are numerous people without whose encouragement and advice this book would not have come about. First of all, I would like to thank Dr Ian Kearns and Professor Stephen George from the Department of Politics of the University of Sheffield. They helped me to channel my enthusiasm for international relations into a successful year (1993-1994) as an MA student and continued to encourage me from then on. I would also like to express my gratitude to the University of Sheffield for provid- ing me with a three-year scholarship from the Basil Hicks Lecture Endowment. I would like to thank Dr John Hawthorne as well as Sue Kelk and Sarah Cooke for their help over the past years. Between October 1994 and November 1995, I worked for Lord Owen as a research assistant. Apart from Lord Owen himself, I would like to thank Maggie Smart for her warm support during this phase. In London I also met Dr Jan Willem Honig and Dr James Gow, who willingly shared their knowledge about military strategy in general and the Yugoslav war of dis- solution in particular, and encouraged me to go on when the road ahead seemed too long to travel. It required the hospitality of Andrew and Bryan Crick, as well as Peter and Ruth Martin, for me to be able to live in London during this period. Over the years I have had many formal and informal conversations about Western policy regarding the Yugoslav crisis with people from various backgrounds. While I thank them all for their insights, I will only men- tion by name those with whom I communicated in the specific context of this thesis and who did not pose the condition of anonymity: Commis- sioner of the Queen Relus ter Beek, Ellen Berends, Ambassador Dr Niek Biegman, Hans van den Broek, Peter Lord Carrington, Ambassador Jan Fietelaars, Harm J. Hazewinkel, Jan Hoekema MP, Bert Kreemers, Major- General Ton Kolsteren, Professor Pieter Kooijmans, Maarten Lak, Prof. Ruud Lubbers, Frank Majoor, Ambassador Muhamed Sacirbey, Herman Schaper, General Arie van der Vlis, Dr Joris Voorhoeve, Ambassador Peter van Walsum, and Hanno Würzner. I benefited from conversations with Professor Maarten Brands, who backed up my request for access to the Foreign Ministry’s records, and with Dr Bram Boxhoorn, Professor Koen Koch, Dr Dick Leurdijk and Rob Meines. I would like to thank Peter van Velzen, Ton van Zeeland and the staff of the Foreign Ministry’s library for responding with such flexibility to my requests for documentation. Yvonne van Gog of the Rijksvoorlichtings- dienst was kind enough to provide me with compiled sets of press articles. Jacques Leuven, the documentation specialist in the Foreign Ministry’s European Affairs Department, deserves thanks for helping to streamline a number of footnotes. I greatly appreciate the fact that my hard-pressed but ever-cheerful colleagues in the European Affairs Department showed interest in what I was doing and enabled me to take some time off during the final stages of writing. In my immediate surroundings, I am indebted to my grandfather Willem Polderman, who lent me the funds I needed to enroll as an official MA student at the University of Sheffield. My wife Graciella had to cope with the various downsides of years of PhD work, and I greatly admire her for having consistently encouraged me not to give up. Philippe, many thanks for letting me use your office during the final stages of work. Peter, thanks for applying your whiz-kid talents to solving problems with my ‘tupper- ware computer’. I may have omitted names of people who in reality played an important role in the coming about of this thesis. I apologise and am grateful for their contribution.

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